Superman #37 (DC)

via DC Comics

writer: Geoff Johns

artist: John Romita, Jr.

This is the issue the Ulysses arc has been waiting for.

Geoff Johns posited this new figure as the inverse of Superman from the start.  Readers like me waited to see the apparent hero turn into a villain, and that's exactly what happened.  Right?

Except, now the lines are blurred.  Yes, Ulysses seems pretty bad now, considering the fairly naively innocent guy he originally seemed.  Somewhat monstrous, in fact.

Yet Johns has twisted the inversion still further.  The Ulysses arc has looked from the start like Johns doing something boldly new instead of stepping into the hands of tradition, as he'd done previously, exactly what he's tended to do in other projects.  Usually he'll do it by playing very directly with tradition, before turning it on its side.  He's done that again.

Superman has become something of a do-gooder villain.  He's convinced Ulysses to turn away from his original plans and in fact cause the destruction of the "Great World."  It really is a tragedy, too: Ulysses, the strange visitor who has just lost his adopted world, after having found his birth world the complete opposite of everything he'd ever known.  Just as if Superman had lost Earth, too.  Except, beyond anything Ulysses himself had planned, it's Superman who caused the destruction.

It's complicated.  The concept of the Great World is pretty monstrous, and Ulysses' complicity in its upkeep is no doubt monstrous, too, but there's enough room for gray areas to emerge.  

As the story continues, it has the potential to change Superman's outlook.  And that's the kind of stuff Johns is very good at indeed...