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Classic Comic Compendium: SUPERMAN ANNUAL #11, the famed ‘For the Man Who Has Everything’

This column celebrates its 150th edition with the all-timer by Moore and Gibbons.

06/16/2025 11:00 am

When we’re children, we’re often beings of want.

Partly because everything’s new. A wide slate of possibilities that we want to experience. We want it all. We see what our friends have and we want it too. All the toys. All the brand name clothes. All the games. It’s not exactly greed, but rather a kind of belonging through having. As we get older, those wants and desires change. Some may still have a dream or desire for big ticket items. For million dollar homes or an expensive shiny sports car.

But for a lot of people as we age, our wants become simpler. Our material needs are often met through work. If we want some kind of luxury we save or use credit to just buy it. What we ask from others for birthdays or holidays diminish. (I realize that this is a position of privilege not experienced by everyone. And that there are decidedly people who always want more, who hoard wealth and material goods.) We’re satisfied by less because we’ve been lucky that life has given us enough.

Our perspective shifts. And what we desire changes. Often to just a little more time.

“He’s in a world of his own.”

Two-thirds of the Watchmen team worked to tackle the question of what do you get for a man who can see the Sun rising from the surface of Mars, fly around Jupiter for fun, and apply enough pressure to a piece of coal to form a diamond. Superman Annual #11 by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and Tom Ziuko looks to answer what’s at the heart of Superman’s desire. As Mongul delivers to him a Black Mercy plant, locking Superman into a fantasy world where he gets just that.

Of course, the answer is fairly complicated. In Superman’s fantasy world, Krypton survives, but it’s not a perfect world. It makes you wonder if the conflict is something that Superman desires or if it’s a byproduct of his mind working against the trap. Because you wonder who would want a world where his father is a bitter, forgotten man, having been proven wrong about the destruction of Krypton. Or the encroaching of authoritarian and reactionary regimes looking to turn back the clock, feeling like Alan Moore is still working out some of his themes and feelings of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain and V for Vendetta.

When you think about it, though, the state of the world on Krypton is a bit of window-dressing. What’s really Superman’s desire is likely a bit simpler, something that Moore will visit again in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? It’s a family. A wife and children. Time spent with his father, his cousin, his aunt. And a simple, quiet life. He doesn’t cast himself as hero. Or even particularly important in this fantasy world. What does the man who can have anything want? Peace.

“Which of you would it be polite to kill first?”

The artwork from Dave Gibbons and Tom Ziuko is stellar. Gibbons’ ability to portray Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman as icons is nothing to scoff at. Like Neal Adams or Alan Davis, there’s just something special, some intangible rightness, when he tackles superheroes. A grace in motion. A capturing of their larger than life aspect. Something that is turned on its head when they come up against Mongul and he dwarfs them.

There’s also a solid distinction between the real world and Superman’s fantasy life. Tom Ziuko gives the real world full colour with white gutters separating the panels. The fantasy world is confined in red borders, with a limited colour palette for backgrounds. It works to make it feel both a bit illusory and easily understood as a separate reality. A convention that repeats in different forms for differing characters. Also, there’s several clever transitions between the two worlds either visually repeating an image or with carryover dialogue.

The entire creative team of Moore, Gibbons, and Ziuko is firing on all cylinders for Superman Annual #11. It is rooted in a few pre-Crisis characterizations and situations, though much of it could be considered timeless. The story shows us what the apotheosis of good that is Superman truly wants and the cruelty of delivering it in a simulacrum. Even Superman wants what just about everyone wants at heart, a little more time with family. Found or blood, doesn’t really matter.