Gene Yang's New Super-Man was a relatively short-lived title marked by some excellent storytelling and characterization. It focuses on Kong Kenan, a brash teenager granted enormous powers by the Chinese government's secret Ministry of Self-Reliance. Kenan is a resident of Communist China, one of Earth's most populous nations. However, for all its size and significance, DC's readers don't get to peek behind this fictional Bamboo Curtain very often.
It's perilous to tackle real-world political and cultural differences via the superhero genre, like performing surgery with a hatchet. Even so, Yang managed to create unique characters and settings where derivatives would have sufficed. Yang's Super-Man and Justice League of China standout as superheroes that feel connected to our world as much as to DC's. What are the differences that separate the New Super-Man from the original?
10 Points of Origin
Kong Kenan and Clark Kent are from different worlds in several ways. Clark's got the most famous origin story ever-- rocketed from Krypton, raised in the Kansas heartland, yada yada-- and Kenan is from urban China. This is no small thing. Superman's long represented "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." While Kenan, unlike most versions of Clark, ends up working for his government, he also has a much more complicated relationship with it. From the moment Kenan meets Doctor Omen and her shadowy Ministry it's obviously a difficult relationship. The Ministry of Self-Reliance comes across as an aberration even for a dictatorial regime, but its excesses-- Kryptonite torture guns?-- also seem more realistic in a totalitarian context.
9 Family
Kal El was adopted by the Kents, Midwestern farmers who wanted children. In direct contrast, Kenan was both raised and abandoned by his birth parents. He spent his childhood believing his mother had died as a result of government negligence. This leaves him with a deep-seated rage that turns the athletic young man into Clark Kent's opposite: a bully. Kent's family is also profoundly supportive, while Kenan's father is emotionally absent. Where Jonathon Kent is dedicated to his family, Zhongdan is a secret freedom fighter, in danger of being consumed by his larger cause. Kenan starts off with a lot less moral and social guidance than Clark, and in moral conflict with his misguided parents.
8 Motives
At essence, Kent's fighting to make his Ma and Pa proud. Kong's a more complicated guy. He fights because of personal loyalty to his teammates, a need to save his family, and the desire to protect people from the agency he works for. The more Kong Kenan finds out about The Ministry, the more he feels like he needs to protect Chinese people from their own government. He also has to protect China from the Freedom Fighters of China, some whom have stopped being freedom fighters and have branched off into terrorism. He even has to protect his father from his mother.
7 Experience
In spite of his government-assigned codename, Kenan is more Superboy than Superman. He wasn't born with his powers either. He's had little time to adjust to his new circumstances. This explains his powers' early unreliability. Literally no one, not even Doctor Omen, knows how to access Kenan's new powers at first, giving him a huge initial obstacle to overcome. These early struggles are the opposite of Clark's early experiences, discovering godlike abilities in a nurturing environment.
6 Training
Clark was allowed to simply discover and experiment with his powers. Kenan's circumstances are more desperate. The first candidate to undergo the Super-Man treatment went mad and it's evident that Kenan will die-- either in battle or via super mishap-- if he can't get his abilities under control. This provides a kind of opportunity for Kenan, though.
At a friend's suggestion, Kenan seeks out Wonder Woman's old martial arts teacher I-Ching, who's able to see that Kenan needs more than a few Tai Ch'i classes. I-Ching turns out to be a mystical entity as well as a wushu master, and he's able to give Kenan training Clark never got. Clark's superhuman powers never shut off, an obvious advantage, but Kenan's training allows him to do some tricks Clark never imagined.
5 Bagua Powers
Kenan's understanding of his powers is linked to his body's Eight Trigrams, referenced in Chinese Taoism, martial arts, and medicine. The basis for yogic chakras, Kenan has to learn how to activate his bagua to use Superman's traditional powers. I-Ching's training helps him learn where his powers reside in his body and how to focus his chi to use them. Some of this makes intuitive sense, as Kenan directs his chi in his ears to use his Super Hearing. Activating his X-Ray vision by focusing on his thighs is less intuitive but still makes sense in a Chinese context. It's based on where different energies theoretically reside in the body, not where energies are expressed.
4 Yin/Yang Powers
With I-Ching's super-help Super-Man becomes the living embodiment of Yin and Yang, the balance between light and darkness. This foundation in Taoist philosophy gives Kenan some odd powers. Yang is associated with light and life. Kenan's light powers help him resist traditional Kryptonian weaknesses like Kryptonite and magic, boost his Kryptonian-derived powers beyond even Superman's, and explode with enormous blasts of raw life-energy that can even overcome Apokalips' gods.
Yin is associated with darkness and death. Kenan's Yin powers are a little reminiscent of the Blue Superman's electromagnetic powers but include the power to become a ghost. This means Kenan can not only phase through physical objects but travel to the spirit world. His Yin powers also seem to have changed Kenan's X-Ray Vision, which sees through not only objects but magic and illusions. Kenan's power to see what's really there exceeds anything any member of the JLA has ever exhibited.
3 Weaknesses
Superman has a lot of well-known weaknesses but even though Kenan's powers are knock-offs of the original's, the weaknesses don't play out in his body the same way they did in Kal-El's. For example, Kenan never tested his vulnerability to Red Sun radiation, and while Kryptonite hurts him and interferes with his powers, it can't kill him on his own.
Kenan comes equipped with his own weakness, an initial inability to access his powers when he needs them. I-Ching's training helps him overcome this, and Kenan's synchronization with the magical Red Jade Dragon overcomes it. This brings us to Magic, one of the original Superman's major vulnerabilities. Instead of being vulnerable to magic, Kenan's a magical adept. His understanding of his powers is based in Chinese mysticism, and it changes his relationship to the DC Universe's myriad eldritch forces.
2 Place in History
Siegel and Schuster's Superman is the foundation of DC Comics. He's had so many titles, identities, and mini-series attached to his name it's impossible to track them. He's also extremely Caucasian. Yang's Super-Man is the first non-white Superman with his own title. New Super-Man directly responded to DC's history of racist, "Yellow Peril" tropes directly in unexpected ways. The series' main villain, All-Yang, initially disguises himself as DC's Fu Manchu knock-off Chin Lung and reproduces the cover of Detective Comics #6 in the process. Just by existing, Kenan stands as a rebuke to the company's history of peddling stereotypes like Chin and the evil racist Humpty-Dumpty Egg Fu, and helps rewrite I-Ching as a less stereotypical figure as well.
1 Team
The Justice League of China is united more by friendship than by ideology. It's a smaller, closer-knit team whose heroes have no jobs outside their service to the state. It's also a less stable team in some ways, as evidenced by the fact that Wang Baixi almost loses his title to a cheating upstart from The Academy of the Bat. Also, there's an Academy of the Bat full of kids who might take Baixi's place. The team's government-sponsored status also adds some instability to the JLC. They're motivated by loyalty to each other, which puts them in conflict with some of Doctor Omen's goals. They're also in competition with the more established Chinese superteam, The Great Ten, which they end up absorbed by when the Ten later expand their roster. The JLA's gone through a lot of changes, including disbandment, but it still feels a lot stabler than the JLC.