ANI-MOVIES, *Superman: Man Of Tomorrow

Meant to act as the possible beginning of a brand new continuity as the post-Flashpoint DC Animated Movie Universe, Superman: Man Of Tomorrow(one of the Man of Steel's earlier monikers)is a fresh retake of the Kryptonian Crusader's origin. A brand new crew of animators and creators seems a little genrebreaking considering the asthetic set by the previous 15 movies, but does craft a cool experience for anyone wanting to get into the DC Universe.

Kansas farmboy Clark Kent is really a superpowered human-looking alien who spent his youth keeping his abilities secret, known only to his adopted Earth parents. Clark moves to the big city of Metropolis, and gets a job working at the Daily Planet paper, but hints his secret identity to the public as the "Flying Man" as he stops an exploding rocket from crashing into the city. This gets the attention of the cigar-chomping Kiss Army reject alien bounty hunter, Lobo, who manages to be a physical match of Clark in his currently masked persona. Lobo claims that there is bounty on Clark for being the last of the Kryptonian race, and their fight goes to the STAR Labs, exposing the kind-hearted janitor Rudy to alien chemicals. Clark gets help from a shapechanging Martian that had been ghosting him for days, ultimately allowing Clark the chance to knockout Lobo. The Martian named J'onn tracks Clark back to the Kent farm and reveals his extraterrestrial background of being the last known survivor of Mars, and helps Clark unlock a piece of Kryptonian tech that informs him of own heritage. Rudy awakens from his accident with the power of sucking off energy from people and electricity, which causes him to go on a rampage, resulting in this "Parasite" sucking the powers from Clark, now going under the name Superman. J'onn, who Superman calls the Martian Manhunter, is seemingly fried by Parasite, so now Clark has to ask help from the imprisoned genius, Lex Luthor. Luthor managed to hire Lobo after he broke out of STAR Labs, and hopes that a Kryptonite ring that was used against Superman could be used to stop the now gigantic Parasite.

Man Of Tomorrow is a fairly stilted new approach to doing Superman's origin story. The main fault was alot of story points were left out, like who hired Lobo to catch Superman, or Martian Manhunter's background on being secretly being an Earthling for years. This might meant to be explored in future DC Animated releases, but aside from a hint of Batman existing in this, nothing else about the broader DC Universe, like the Green Lanterns just neglecting all the superpowered alien battles that keep popping up on Earth. It's nice to finally see Lobo in one of these direct-to-video DC titles, and cool to seem him go a little more blue in a production outside network television. This is one of the weaker Superman origin stories, more interested in delivering a message of social acceptance instead of compelling superhero epic.