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Superman #670 Here are Kurt Busiek's answers to questions fans put to him about "Superman #670" and other relevant topics:

Kurt's Answers

Van Banoovong (vbanoovong@yahoo.com) asks:
Will there be a search for the real Kandor? Will Karsta be joining the Super-Family?

Kurt: Superman certainly wants to look for the old Kandor, though he doesn't know where to start. The new one's little more than a legend, so far -- we know there was a Kandor on Wegthor (one of Krypton's moons), but we don't know what Karsta and Ro-Kul's dreams mean. But more on the legend of Kandor is in the works, at least.

As for Karsta joining the Superman Family -- the Superman Family doesn't have a formal membership, so it's not something you join or quit. Back in the Seventies, it was Superman, Lois, Jimmy and Supergirl to start, and later included Krypto, the Earth-2 Superman, the Nightwing and Flamebird of Kandor, and others. At times in more recent eras, it's included Steel, Kon-El, the Matrix Supergirl and a few others. Mainly, it seems to consist of Superman's relatives and those that tend to get lumped in with them, so if Karsta returns, she might fall into that category.

I will add, as long as we're talking about families, that Karsta is (a bit distantly) related to Chris Kent, though neither of them know it at present.



Chris Clow (demolitionist@gmail.com) asks:
Right now, comic cover prices seem kind of erratic. $2.99 at the beginning of one arc, $3.99 in the middle, etc. Were the extra pages in this issue a necessity in order to tell the story adequately? Don't get me wrong, at least DC actually puts pages of STORY when they up the cover price on a book, unlike another company in their "24 Hours More" story filling them with supplemental crap.

Kurt: I don't think we've had any extra-length Superman issues in the middle of an arc, Chris -- we've had Superman #666, which was a complete story, and #670, which ended one -- and it's likely that #675 will be extra-length, because it's an anniversary issue of sorts, and will herald a special event.

But the reason #670 is 38 pages is that it was originally done as this year's Superman Annual. When the decision was made (at a fairly late date) to start "The Third Kryptonian" an issue early and finish "Camelot Falls" in the Annual, the finale of "T3K" got moved into #670. We couldn't exactly cut off the last 16 pages, so it got made an extra-length issue by happenstance.

Hopefully, with the schedule problems of the last year-plus behind us (knock wood!), we won't have that sort of change happening any more, and any extra-length issues will be scheduled, solicited and promoted that way.



Rick O'Connell (Email address withheld by request) asks:
Kurt, I really enjoyed "The Third Kryptonian" story - I think you've laid the ground work for a lot of interesting plot lines in the future. I'm particularly happy to see Karsta is a feisty, resourceful woman who (appears to be) over 35 years of age. Was this an intentional attempt to diversify the portrayal of older women in the Superman family of characters?

Kurt: Not really, Rick. We just wanted someone different, and making her a tough, experienced military veteran, who'd seen a lot in her years, seemed to give us a foundation for a distinctive and interesting character to work with. So we didn't set out to address the diversity of the older cast, just to create an interesting Karsta -- which involves diversity in a different way, in that we've already got Supergirl and Power Girl, so why not make Karsta clearly different from them?

Besides, the other major "older woman" in the Super-cast is Ma Kent, and she's feisty, resourceful and over 35 too!



Michel Weisnor (michelweisnor@gmail.com) asks:
Hi Kurt, in "Superman #670", Power Girl shows vulnerability to red solar radiation. Since she originates from Pre-Crisis Earth-2, is it possible for PG to be susceptible to this weakness? Any chance readers might see Super Monkey in 2008?

Kurt: Yes and no.

Yes to Power Girl being affected by red-sun radiation -- as you'll recall from Infinite Crisis, Superboy-Prime was rendered powerless by Krypton's sun, so red-sun radiation seems to affect even extra-dimensional Kryptonians, while Kryptonite's effects are narrower in who they work on and who they don't.

And no, no plans for Beppo. Not on my part, at least.

Despite claims to the contrary from certain quarters, we're not trying to bring back all of the Silver Age purely for the sake of bringing it back -- we only want to use concepts (from any age) that we think will make for good modern stories. And Beppo... well, in the 16 appearances Beppo made in the Silver Age, only two or three actually used him front and center as a major character, rather than as a cameo appearance, in a crowd scene with the other Super-Pets, or showing him just for completism's sake. That's not a whole lot of significant appearances, and if he wasn't all that useful a character back then, when monkeys were all the rage, it's hard to imagine him being anything more than a one-shot appearance and then cameos for the sake of cameos in this newer era, where monkeys and gorillas strangely don't make sales skyrocket. And without a Superboy series, where the more playful aspects of the Super-mythos made their home (as well as in Supergirl or Jimmy Olsen), it's not that easy to see a place for a super-powered monkey in a diaper...



Gerry Beritela (berbacc@aol.com) asks:
Hi Kurt, love your writing, but I'm still confused about Kandor. Wasn't the entire arc of "Superman: Godfall" and "Supergirl: Candor" about the fact that Kandor had both Kryptonians and non-Kryptonians in it and the racism that arose because of that? "Godfall" did happen before "Infinite Crisis", but "Candor" happened after it. Did some Kandorians falsely believe they were really Kryptonian? Is the Supergirl arc out of continuity now? But that doesn't make sense either because in another of your recent issues you have her make a reference to the fact that she was recently in Kandor. Help!!!

Kurt: There were Kandorians in "Godfall" and "Candor" who certainly thought they were Kryptonians, Gerry. But they weren't. At the time of "Godfall," for instance, there weren't any Kryptonian survivors to be in Kandor.

So why did they think they were Kryptonian? That's a story that's yet to be told -- I'd expect it to come up, though, if and when that Kandor resurfaces...



Chris (dorkseid@maktoob.com) asks:
Now that Superman has learned that the Kryptonian millitary not only enslaved other worlds, but commited genocide, how does that make him feel about his heritage? Plus, why is there another non-Kryptonian Kandor? And is it just me, or does Amalak look like a Klingon?

Kurt: Since Superman was already aware of genocidal lunatics, mass-murderers and conquering tyrants in Krypton's history (along with brilliant scientists and heroic figures, of course), he wasn't under the illusion that Krypton's history had been millennia of unimpeachable kindness and good deeds. Zod and the other Phantom Zone villains are from Krypton too, after all.

So Superman probably feels like Britons aware of their nation's imperial past do, or Americans aware of our complex past involving great deeds and brutalities as we expanded from our beginnings to what we are now, or anyone else from a nation whose history has both bright and dark in it. He's proud of what was accomplished by the good people, and saddened by those who didn't show as much honor.

Krypton may have been an advanced society at the time it died (though traditionally, that's meant "scientifically advanced" more than anything else), but to get there, they had to go through developments and growing pains like anyone else.



Superfan Unlimited (daniel15ark@yahoo.com) asks:
Why does Superman still have his Superman Robots? I thought he destoryed them all after one of them went crazy and killed Donna Troy in "Teen Titans: Graduation Day"!

Kurt: Good question, Daniel, and I can't answer it. They're there in the Fortress as of Action Annual #10, which post-dates "Graduation Day," and I picked them up from there. Perhaps he rebuilt them, but both took steps to prevent a recurrence of such mania, and confined them to the Fortress as well.



Captain Kal (Email address withheld by request) asks:
That's great that Amalak is powerful enough, even without special red sun and K-simulated weaponry, to approach Kryptonian powered might, even to take on at least 3 Superman robots (which clearly aren't affected by such gadgets). Are the rest of Amalak's crew similarly with grudges about the Kryptonian Occupation? Or are they just motivated by loot? Or are they a mixture of both?

Kurt: Probably a mixture. Amalak started out as a space pirate, and most of his crew at the time was probably out for adventure and loot. But as he's devoted time to Kryptonian-hunting, he's probably picked up crew members who have a particular taste for it.



With comics now featuring a 2008 cover date, we're all looking forward to seeing what you guys bring to the world of Superman in the year ahead.

Kurt: We've got some pretty cool stuff in the works, so I hope everyone enjoys it!



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