10 Terrible Mistakes That Almost Ruined Superman For Everyone

7. His Terrible Future

We've seen a lot of weird, alternate reality versions of the Man Of Steel - yes, there's a Nazi one, obviously - but most of them can be waved away by virtue of them being self-proclaimed "imaginary" stories. Harder to do with Superman: At Earth's End, a post-apocalyptic Elseworlds tale which nonetheless purports to show a possible far-flung future for the Kryptonian hero. A future which involves him growing a big white beard and wielding a ludicrously huge and unwieldy-looking machine gun, like a psychopathic Father Christmas. With superpowers. Fighting cyborgs. Trying to stop Gotham City from being nuked. Okay, we're clearly not explaining this properly, because that sounds awesome, and At Earth's End is definitely not that.

The one-shot graphic novel does have some good ideas on paper, like taking Jack Kirby's weird dystopian seventies series Kamandi: The Last Boy On Earth as canon for the future of the mainstream DC Universe. That was pretty cool, we'd be okay with that. That doesn't ruin Superman. What does ruin Superman is turning him into a weird techno-viking who shirks his superpowers in favour of using guns - we know he's not Batman, but something about Supes using guns doesn't seem right either - and, er, has replaced Lex Luthor as his arch nemesis with twin clones of Adolf Hitler. So stupid. Get in the bin, At Earth's End.