Injustice: Year Zero #12 just confirmed Superman wanted to make a key decision about his Justice League status before his family was killed.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Injustice: Year Zero #12, by Tom Taylor, Cian Tormey, Rain Beredo, and Wes Abbott, on sale now.
When it comes to the Justice League, it’s hard to imagine the group without Superman helping lead the way alongside Batman and Wonder Woman. They form DC’s Trinity and for decades they’ve been the heartbeat of so many events, not just in comics and cartoons, but also in the burgeoning DC live-action film world as well.
However, in the twisted Injustice Universe, Year Zero #12 reveals that Superman was actually willing to make a shocking move and quit the team, albeit for the sake of his family.
In this series, Superman’s been working with Dr. Mid-Nite of the Justice Society of America to see if he and Lois can get pregnant. It’s a precursor story to the first Injustice game where Joker would trick him into murdering Lois and their unborn baby, so it’s an emotional rollercoaster watching Kal-El second-guess himself and deal with potential challenges. So far, he doesn’t know if a pregnancy will be successful but parenthood has been weighing on his mind a lot.
It’s even worse with the Joker murdering his allies, causing an existential crisis as the Man of Steel comes home to his Metropolis apartment after a session with Mid-Nite. He tells Lois he doesn’t know if he’s ready for the rigors of being a dad, with the Daily Planet reporter admitting that she doesn’t care — once she has Clark as a soulmate, that’ll be enough. Kal’s already worried about leaving Lois alone whenever he goes off of duty, and that stress would be doubled if she were with child.
But then Clark drops a bombshell: he’d be willing to quit the team to spend time with them, protecting them and laying a foundation down. It’s a temporary retirement, “paternity leave” as Lois calls it, from the superhero game so he can be there with the ones he cherishes most. Admittedly, in the main DCU, Clark has taken time off to be with family, but here, there’s some dark irony to his desires because had he done this, maybe Joker wouldn’t have gotten his hands on Lois. Maybe if Superman went off the grid with them, they’d still be alive and he wouldn’t have become a dictator.