Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Nickname Spotlight: The Last Son of Krypton

I've addressed some of the common phrases attached to Superman before, such as "strange visitor from a distant planet," but this is one I'd never even considered might be an immigrant: did you know "Last Son of Krypton" first appeared outside of comics?

According to CBR, Elliot S! Maggin had been trying to get the moniker into comics for a long time, but he was always told he couldn't use it. When Maggin got a gig to write a tie-in novel for the movie, however, no one could stop him. Hence, we got an origin story titled Superman: Last Son of Krypton (1978).


I don't know the exact first time it was used in comics, but I know it definitely appeared by 1993 on the cover of Action Comics #687. And the way it was used, alongside other phrases like "Man of Steel" and "Man of Tomorrow" - each Superman replacement used one of his nicknames - makes me think it was already well-known to comics readers by then.


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