One of this summer's most anticipated DC titles is Superman and the Authority, a miniseries from Eisner Award-winning writer Grant Morrison and Future State: Superman artist Mikel Janín. The four-issue arc will bring Superman into the WildStorm world. As an older Man of Steel assembles a different version of the Authority to shape the course of humanity and battle foes, he encounters the world's own heroes -- including Apollo and Midnighter.

In an exclusive interview with CBR, Morrison teases how Superman and his history fits into the world of the Authority, what other familiar DC Universe faces are slated to appear in the upcoming story and how well Superman plays with established Authority characters. Also, included with this interview is an unlettered preview of the first issue and standard cover, drawn by Janín and colored by Jordie Bellaire, and a variant cover created by Bryan Hitch.

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Grant, you're not just jumping back into Superman but also the world of the Authority, a world you helped completely redefine. How does it feel to jump back into the Authority and its characters, with Superman front and center?

Grant Morrison: That's the thing, it wasn't so much the Authority characters as it was the Authority concept and what that meant at the end of the 20th century when the powerful people weren't our enemies but were on our side and how poignant and tragic that looks nowadays. But that idea of what if the good guys were on our side, it's more from that and there's not a lot of characters from the Authority, apart from Apollo and the Midnighter, that appear. What I wanted to do was take characters from DC's past who would fit the roles of the Authority: The Engineer becomes Natasha Irons, the niece of Steel, and instead of the magical Doctor, it's the Enchantress, the DC witch, and so on. It was about falling into those roles and seeing how we could fit it into the concept without using the same characters.

And bringing in Superman changes everything because, when they came to me with it, they said, "We want Superman to go kind of authoritarian." And I just do not like the idea that Superman would ever be dictatorial or would watch his loved ones die and not be able to deal with it like the rest of us do. I wanted to do a Superman that was older and made very different choices and did something that looked authoritarian but was way bigger and way more sci-fi and that was kind of the idea.

A lot of the Authority is postmodernism borne from cynicism and yet Superman, I would argue classically, doesn't have a cynical bone in his body.

No, he doesn't! But when you go back to that very first Action Comics, Superman is the defender of the downtrodden and champion of the oppressed. I think the Authority took that to a different level and tried to engage that with real-world politics or at least metaphors that suggested real-world politics. So suddenly, to get Superman to that point in his life, it honestly was like me. I was about 28 when I wrote my first Superman scene in Animal Man and now I'm 61. It becomes a very interesting prospect to see an older Superman and how he would recalibrate his mission and make it work in a different way but still live up to the promise of that, the champion of the oppressed and savior of the downtrodden.

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You've got this story starting in the '60s towards the abrupt end of the Kennedy Administration. Was bringing Superman here having him sort of personifying the New Frontier and its promise?

Well, the Golden Age Superman, that we were talking about, is very much the man of the people, he just fights everyone who is messing with the vulnerable. Then you have the Superman of the '60s, who is definitely part of that weird, Space Age utopian sci-fi thing that America had in the '60s. To me, that was exemplified by Kennedy, who was a normal human being with all kinds of problems but I think he pretty much represented that New Frontier notion of America's tomorrow. And to have Superman represent that as well and say, "Where did that go? Where did it go wrong? Why didn't it work?" That's kind of the philosophical basis of this series.

You've got Manchester Black prominently here. What made him the perfect foil for Superman as the Man of Steel enters his grizzled years?

It's kind of a reflective age for Superman who looks back and wondered if it worked, all that gaudy presentation, fighting with Doomsday, having Crises? Were we all wrapped up in our superhero bullshit and not dealing with all the problems that we started out with and tried to [solve]? And then you have Manchester Black and his first appearance in that celebrated story by Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke, "Whatever Happened to Truth, Justice and the American Way?" Manchester Black is an absolute punk opposite, he's the Johnny Rotten to Superman's Elvis. I kind [of] brought that dynamic back, with Manchester Black as the questioning, angry voice of the cynic saying, "You know why that didn't work? You talk a good game but you don't follow through!"

Having these two characters is just such great opposition, like one of those brilliant buddy movies where they're complete opposites. Manchester Black is constantly trying to get through Superman's defenses but, ultimately, Superman is just a really nice dude and he's just trying his best and sometimes he's messed up and doesn't know how humans think. We have these two battling it out and it's almost like, if Superman can get through to Manchester Black, he can get through to anyone; it's the emotional spine of the story.

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This is your first time working with Mikel Janín. How has that been?

It's just brilliant! He's been great and I've never worked with him before. It's one of those younger generations of artists that I've never worked with before and he's just brilliant with the scale and the scope and just focusing in on the emotions. I think his Manchester Black is a breakout character. In his first appearance, he's a bit more swarthy and what Mikel has done is make him look a bit more like Johnny Rotten, with his body language and that spidery, tight-assed Johnny Rotten thing and it really, really works; it's a great characterization. I think Manchester Black is going to be a favorite.

This book is coming out at a time when we're seeing a lot of authoritarian Supermans and Superman analogs. What do you think is behind this trend of subverting Superman into something more sinister?

It's something I've come to terms with and pared down to it coming down to the patriarchal structures that have been oppressing us and Superman can easily be made to be representative of that. This dad-like figure looking out for us can be made authoritarian but I think that's a mistake. I think the idea that Superman would react to the death of Lois Lane by becoming a tyrant is ridiculous; my mum and dad died and I didn't become a tyrant. If I can handle it, Superman can handle it.

But I think there's a certain degree of, if he's that powerful, couldn't he change things? We're kind of leaning into the idea that he's a really good man and wants to do the best for us but he's not actually human. He doesn't want to break us but he's gotten to the point where he thinks maybe he should break us, maybe we need this. It's slightly scarier than Superman as an authoritarian dad with heat vision eyes, it's more of an alien perspective saying, "I've had enough of you. You've been messing up too long and are really going to hurt yourselves if I don't do something."

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As someone that's written a love letter to Superman's Silver Age with All-Star Superman and written him in stuff like JLA, was it hard retrofitting Superman and his history into the Authority's world?

No, it was about how do I take that same perspective that I had with All-Star. All-Star was about Superman at the end of his life and this is a slightly different take which connects way more with the Action Comics stuff I had done, with the firebrand, radical Superman. It's always easy to get into his head, he's so beautiful. [laughs] You just have to think of what someone really cared, like a dad who really loves you and will die for you but you don't get it; doing it that way, instead of putting all of our problems on him, because I don't think he's like us.

That's what's great and what's tragic about Superman, I want to go back to that, that's what really interests me about the character. How do you really do the notion of the attrition of the omniscient, with him looking at everything with his X-Ray vision and he's creepy and authoritarian? How do you get away from that? This is bigger than that, this is like your dad coming to pick you up after you've been drunk for a night. What if we're really fucking up and he's the one person who says, "You're fucking up and I'm going to have to step in."

How well would Superman play with characters like Midnighter and Apollo?

I think it's great, I love these dynamics! The way we're doing Midnighter and Apollo, there's this whole Pet Shop Boys things when they first appear, they're a married couple and they've been around for a while and they're just getting sick of doing what they do. What I've got is that Apollo really loves Superman, he's his idol, he's based his entire career on him. And Midnighter is like, "I've never heard this guy tell me he was such a fanboy." And Apollo starts to think Midnighter fancies Superman more than he loves him. [laughs] There's all these brilliant soap opera dynamics, there's a lot of fun to be had with these characters.

This comes as we're seeing a whole shift in the Superman titles. Is this part of that ongoing tapestry or very much its own thing?

It started out as one thing, but we integrated it and I spoke with Phillip Kennedy Johnson, who's doing the Superman stuff, and I really like that guy, he's very smart and he has got big ideas for Superman. What I did was kind of retrofit it all in so it absolutely ties in, it's kind of important. If you don't read this, you'll probably die! [laughs] It's very much tying in with what happens next with Superman and with Superman's son Jon Kent.

Written by Grant Morrison with artwork by Mikel Janin, Superman and the Authority #1 goes on sale July 20 from DC Comics.

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