Reign of the Supermen #234: Superwoman of Earth-11

Source: Superman/Batman #23-25 (2006) and Countdown Presents The Search for Ray Palmer: Superwoman/Batwoman #1 (2007)
Type: Alternate EarthBorn out of the new Multiverse, Earth-11 is an almost completely transgendered DC Universe (I say almost because there's still a male Bruce Wayne, and Helena Bertinelli became Batwoman). Superwoman herself is Laurel Kent, a reference to the Legion Academy character of a bygone continuity, but despite having a name that doesn't sound like "Clark", she's this Earth's Superman in every other way. Many Elseworlds apparently made it into the Multiverse, but not yesterday's. Earth-11 is a sillier idea based instead on Superman #349 (1980; or Reign #232 as the blog flies), and as a wink to that story, Superwoman's first appearance also features her original creator, Mr. Mxyzptlk.

Earth-11 DOES feature better designs than that original story though. For example, Wonder Warrior is replaced by a more formidable Wonderman who led his Amazonians into Earth-11's own version of Amazons Attack:
There's a transgendered JLA where even Red Tornado was built to be a woman, Freedom Fighters led by Columbia instead of Uncle Same, and my personal favorites, Miss Miracle and Big Bard!
An Earth like this brings readers the same enjoyment as, say, Amalgam Comics, because we understand very well the redesign filter the characters are going through. Compare to Flashpoint where we don't really even know what changed in the timeline, and where redesigns thus seem more arbitrary.

Comments

Delta said…
You probably mean something like "reverse-gendered".

Really nice observation at the end.
I commented re: the last Reign, I would have liked the Batgirl/Supergirl Elseworlds to have been retained, considering there was Abin Sur as GL, as well as other clever points.

If you go to the list of the 52 on the DC Multiverse Wiki page, the synopsis for Earth-11 is laughable. Wonderman breaks Maxing Lord's neck, et. al. Nothing clever at all, much like everything that came out of Countdown.
Anonymous said…
Big Barda and Scott bit is interesting on the flip, since, well...

They already had the opposite of the default. Scott's the light, flippy escapey one, and Barda's the one that hits like a Sherman tank.

Flipping it again just gets back to default.

Also, vague memories of Superdickery suggest they did something similar with Superboy back in the silver age. I remember a panel with super-woman's intuition or something. Did that happen? Probably a dream, hoax, or imaginary story.