This week DC kicks off its Summer of Superman initiative with the release of the Summer of Superman Special #1. The oversized issue, hitting comic book stores on Wednesday, looks at the past, present and future of the character through the eyes of an all-star team of writers and superstar artist Jorge Jimenez. To celebrate the book’s release, DC invited us to sit down with its three writers, Dan Slott, Mark Waid and Joshua Williamson to talk all about the Man of Steel.
Along with journalists from Polygon and Superman Homepage we spent almost an hour sharing our love for Superman, Lois, Lana and the rest of the Super-Family with the writers. You can read our exclusive chat below alongside some preview art from each chapter of the book.
Note: this interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Naturally our talk began at the beginning of the process and how team coordinated putting together not just the Summer of Superman Special but all of the books in the initiative which runs up to the release of James Gunn’s Superman movie in July.
“A lot of Zoom calls” jokes Waid. “The Superman editorial team, Paul Kaminski, Brittany Holzer and Jillian Grant and everyone else working on the Superman books is really good about facilitating conversation between us all. Sharing script, sharing art. It’s been really important that we all stay together on this and we have been very successful so far.”
“Paul Kaminski, these books are really important to him. He is sort of the focal point between all these different teams building these books” adds Williamson.“But, you know, between the three of us, but also the artists, you know, and there’s other obviously, the Superman line is bigger than just the three of us.”
“And then we always bow to who has the coolest stuff in their office” says Slott.
Next talk turned to the subject of the Summer of Superman Special which brings the family back to Smallville to celebrate the wedding of Lana Lang and John Henry Irons. We asked why the creative team chose a more family-oriented story over a more traditional Superman vs. Lex Luthor battle of wits.
“We had started talking about Smallville and it was the summer” starts Williamson. “Once we started getting in to one of the themes being a little bit of past, present and future then some as important as Smallville is to the mythology, it was like this this is a good location for us to stay in. I remember we had talked a bit about John and Lana’s wedding and it’s just nice to have nice moments in these books, especially right now.”
“I remember Paul jumping in and going ‘we have the John wedding'” adds Slott. “You don’t just want to throw an old special out there. You want there to be an event. You want Superman fans to go ‘oh we don’t want to miss this big moment of Superman lore.’ So it’s neat that there’s a focal point around all of our stuff.”
Talk naturally turned to Jorge Jimenez, the superstar artist who is bringing the Summer of Superman Special #1 to life. “Every page you’re like, genius. Every time” says Williamson. “When we were doing [Dark Knights] Metal we had this one shot. It’s called Batman Lost. We all knew Jorge. We had seen his work, but he did a sequence that’s in the future was like Batman was tripping and was having visions of alternate realities. He had this moment. We were trying to make this really weird issue and there was this moment where we were like ‘we’re gonna have Batman do this Mad Max thing right?’ and every time those pages came in, me, James [Tynion IV] and Scott [Snyder] were like this dude’s the future.”
“His work is so sweet” adds Waid. “He did a really good job of differentiating the characters from the past and the present, which I really like. He knows how to draw kids. A lot of comic book artists will tell you it’s really easy to just draw them as short adults. He gets all that across in the Superboy chapter. He gets all that emotion across in the wedding. It’s really good.”
“The thing about Jorge is he’s a Superman fan through and through and it shows in every single page” proclaims Slott. “He’s not just somebody drawing a character for this assignment. This is a guy that wants to draw Superman and wants to draw Superman’s world and wants to draw Superboy as a young Clark and wants to draw this stuff with the Legion in the future and everything in the present. It’s all beautiful.”
Before wrapping up we asked each of the writers what it means to them to be the caretaker of Superman’s story right now. Having heard each of them share their love for the character, touching on how he fits in to the world today it seemed fitting to wrap up on a poignant note.
“Don’t screw up” says each of them in turn.
“It’s intimidating at times” says Williamson. “Superman is really easy to get wrong. It’s really easy to get right. Especially in this moment when I think there is a lot of eyes on Superman. But we need Superman. So it’s like you have all these things. So we just don’t want to screw it up.”
Waid adds “On a very personal level, it means something to me in that it gives me hope. It’s really easy to succumb to this existential dread that is just permeating our society. It’s easy for even me sometimes just to get grumpy and go, you know, there’s nothing. We’ve got nothing ahead. The act of sitting there out the keyboard and writing Superman just helps me get in the right mindset about there there is hope for the future. We’ve got to work for it. But it’s there.”
“I never thought I would write Superman” adds Williamson. “I’ve been at DC for a long time and I have worked on a lot of books for them. But Superman was something I always wanted to do, maybe it was a self esteem thing but I never thought I would write it. During Dark Crisis, Paul Kaminsky came to me and he was sort of having this conversation with me about Superman. [I said] let me give you a list of writers, here are people I think would be great for it. He was like ‘no, no, you don’t understand’. When he called and formally offered me Superman it was super intimidating. But it really meant a lot to me.”
Summer of Superman Special #1 will be available at participating comic book stores and digital platforms from Wednesday, April 16, 2025.
