Just in, Gunn teased his Superman prep by revealing that he’s reading All-Star Superman from Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, and Jamie Grant. Here’s Gunn’s post:

The secret to happiness is starting the morning with coffee and comic books. pic.twitter.com/NCAKhD6xoC

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) January 17, 2023

All-Star Superman had come out back in 2005 and is regarded as one of the best stories featuring the Man of Steel. In the book, Superman is left with only one year to live after Lex Luthor tricks him into going into the Sun. which caused him to absorb too much power; rendering his cells unstable.

Seeing that Gunn wanted his next Superman film to be a new start for Clark Kent, I doubt he’s going to have Superman dealing with one year left to live in the film. If anything, I think Gunn’s new movie should establish all the characters that surround Clark’s world, particularly the staff of the Daily Planet including Perry White, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen.

As someone who was really rooting for Cavill all these years, I am honestly disappointed that Gunn decided to reboot everything, but I guess it was the only way to really allow for a clean slate of stories for the DCEU. I just don’t like the feeling that we have to wait another ten years for the next DC team-up.

No release date has been set for Gunn’s Superman project, but hopefully we get an announcement soon.

Talking to CBR, Morrison thinks that storylines where Superman turns evil because of the death of Lois Lane are not strong enough reasons for Kal-El to turn to the dark side. He says:

“It’s something I’ve come to terms with and pared down to it coming down to the patriarchal structures that have been oppressing us and Superman can easily be made to be representative of that. This dad-like figure looking out for us can be made authoritarian but I think that’s a mistake… I think the idea that Superman would react to the death of Lois Lane by becoming a tyrant is ridiculous; my mum and dad died and I didn’t become a tyrant. If I can handle it, Superman can handle it.”

For now, Morrison is promoting his new Superman run with Mikel Janin called Superman and the Authority, and he says that it will have a different take when it comes to ‘tyrant Superman.’ Morrison explains:

“I think there’s a certain degree of, if he’s that powerful, couldn’t he change things? We’re kind of leaning into the idea that he’s a really good man and wants to do the best for us but he’s not actually human. He doesn’t want to break us but he’s gotten to the point where he thinks maybe he should break us, maybe we need this… It’s slightly scarier than Superman as an authoritarian dad with heat vision eyes, it’s more of an alien perspective saying, ‘I’ve had enough of you. You’ve been messing up too long and are really going to hurt yourselves if I don’t do something.'”

While Lois Lane dying is admittedly a flimsy excuse for Superman turning bad, there are some stories that I think deal with the tyrant Superman trope really well. For one, Mark Millar’s Superman: Red Son also has a dictator Superman figure, but you can tell that he’s not a bad guy, just raised with Soviet ideologies. It’s going to be interesting to see Morrison will set his take apart from Millar’s.

Superman and the Authority #1 comes out on July 20.