The DC Universe, led by James Gunn, enjoyed back-to-back hits with both Superman and Peacemaker Season 2. Of course, it was 2024’s Creature Commandos that immediately made good on Gunn’s promise that this shared continuity would not be restricted to a single medium. With animation in the mix, the DCU can adapt some of comics’ boldest stories like 1989’s Superman: Exile.
When DC Comics rebooted its continuity after the Crisis on Infinite Earths event, Superman lost much of his history. Some iconic villains, like Lex Luthor or Brainiac, had been around for decades, so fans mostly welcomed their reimagined counterparts. Eventually, post-Crisis retellings of classic Superman stories restored some of what was lost. Superman: Exile was a 13-issue saga spread across three titles in which the Man of Steel left Earth to travel the cosmos alone as penance for killing General Zod and his two allies. Mongul, a strange yellow alien introduced in 1980, came back into the canon as one of Superman’s most powerful and deadly villains. With all of its implied backstory, the DCU could easily adapt Superman: Exile, but only animation could deliver the same massive scope found in the comics.
Superman: Exile Shifted the Post-Crisis Paradigm Back Into Outer Space
Some of the strangest Superman stories happened during the Silver Age, the silliest of which the post-Crisis continuity was designed to eradicate. The goal was to bring the Last Son of Krypton down to Earth with more grounded stories for the “serious” readers of the 1980s. In the old days, Superman often traveled through outer space to fight new threats and visit alien worlds. Not only did the Superman: Exile arc send him back into the cosmos, it made that kind of travel much more challenging for him.
One of the most controversial post-Crisis changes, however, was what happened to Superboy. Rather than Clark Kent’s heroic adventures as a youth, he existed in a pocket dimension created by a villain called the Time Trapper. Three years after the comics event, DC mandated Kal-El remain the only surviving Kryptonian. The pocket dimension gave storytellers a loophole around that restriction, specifically the introduction of a new version of Supergirl and the iconic General Zod.
Superman was able to capture the rogue Kryptonians, but not before they destroyed all life on Earth. Fearing they would find a way to escape to his own reality, Superman chose to execute Zod and his two allies with Green Kryptonite. Taking these lives traumatized him so much, he started blacking out and assumed the Gangbuster identity. Riddled with guilt and unable to trust himself, he chose to leave Earth and live in solitude on some far-flung planet. It was a bad plan, especially when the high-tech belt he used to breathe in the vacuum of space stopped working.
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An Adaptation of the Exile Storyline Would Be Perfect for The DCU’s Superman
Images of Superman comic book covers during the Superman Exile runImage via DC Comics
With Guardians of the Galaxy, Peacemaker and Creature Commandos, James Gunn took little-known characters and made them superstars. Superman: Exile introduced Krypton’s Eradicator technology, reintroduced Mongul and centered on a tragic, emotional journey. Yet, this powerful arc somehow got lost to history. Superman: Exile is a great, but forgotten, story, perfect for adaptation into the DCU. The character’s journey and exotic, alien settings are too good not to use.
In fact, alien threats may already be on their way to the DCU, especially considering the rumors about the villain in Man of Tomorrow. If Gunn does finally bring Brainiac to the big screen, it also opens up outer space for business at DC Studios. Faced with an existential threat and, supposedly, partnered with Lex Luthor, old Vril Dox has a slim chance of surviving the conflict. If David Corenswet’s Superman feels like he’s responsible for taking a life, exiling himself to space as penance is not an unreasonable next step for the character.
Of course, the biggest conflict in the DCU isn’t about Brainiac, but rather it pits public institutions against metahumans. Superman could end up sent to Salvation, but once there, all he’d do is try to convince the villains to work together to get home. On the other hand, if Superman exiles himself in outer space, metahumans will lose their best defender. Without him, Rick Flag, Senior and A.R.G.U.S. will have free rein to send every villain and hero to Salvation with few obstacles.
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Only Animation Could Do Justice to a Superman Story This Fantastic
In the hierarchy of media, some fans and even filmmakers believe that ‘mere cartoons’ are a lesser form of storytelling. That’s not discernment but, rather, snobbery. In fact, there are practically perfect episodes of Superman: The Animated Series that could serve as the foundation for a live-action film. Given that James Gunn began the DCU with an animated series, he’s clearly not one of them. Trying to adapt Superman: Exile in live action would be cost-prohibitive, especially in the limited runtime of a feature film.
While traveling through space, Superman encounters an alien craft in distress. Not only does he rescue them, but he also flies them back to their planet. Later, he accidentally finds himself inside a gigantic creature, forced to fight off giant antibodies mistaking him for an infection. However, it’s Warworld and the gladiatorial battles Superman fights while Mongul’s prisoner truly demands to be animated to capture their destructive force, similar to battles in Invincible.
The Superman: Exile story features one more element where animation would serve better than live action. A millennia-old alien cleric who once visited Krypton is also in exile on an asteroid orbiting Warwold. He tells Superman his story through visions created by a sentient Kryptonian artifact of unimaginable power. Even with the miraculous visual effects technology today, it couldn’t do justice to this epic saga like animation. This was Superman’s first tangible connection to Krypton in the post-Crisis continuity, but the Eradicator eventually broke bad.
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Supergirl’s Presence In the DCU Would Change Superman: Exile For the Better
Images of Superman comic book covers during the Superman Exile runImage via DC Comics
No adaptation of a comic into a film or series is ever the same story exactly. One major difference in the DCU version of Superman: Exile is that Kal-El is not the only Kryptonian. As the 2025 film showed, Superman is a relentlessly positive person with a strict moral code. Yet, the writer of Supergirl revealed Kara is much darker because of what she endured. While it’s unclear if Kara has her cousin’s aversion to killing, she could nonetheless be vital to a Superman: Exile adaptation.
This story stemmed from Superman’s deliberate execution of Zod in the comics, but also the Man of Steel killed him in two films. In either case, the aftermath of that act was never truly examined. An animated Superman: Exile adaptation could make up for that in either a series of films or a season of television. While it wouldn’t be Zod, if the DCU’s Superman took a life, this story could be an emotional powerhouse made even more devastating by the moral purity of David Corenswet’s character.
In the comics, the Eradicator teleports Kal-El from the far end of the universe back to Earth in an instant. As wonderful as this storyline was, that ending felt rushed. One of the lingering questions about Supergirl’s cameo in Superman is how she can get to planets with a red sun for her benders. Still, it implies she can travel through space with relative ease, so this means she could show up to help Superman defeat Mongul and get home. This change would give DCU fans a chance to see the more serious side of their family bond.
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For all the discourse after Man of Steel, Superman killed at least 15 people in the comics (though most were alternate reality variants). Superman: Exile is arguably the best story arc that examines the fallout from that choice. This emotional journey, combined with far-out aliens, Mongul and Warworld, is the kind of profound-but-fun comic story that Gunn does best. Sure, animation costs less and faces fewer limitations, but that doesn’t mean an animated Superman: Exile adaptation is some kind of compromise. Done right, the animated version of this story would be more epic and beautiful than any other medium.
Superman is available on DVD, Blu-ray, digital and streams on HBO Max, and Man of Tomorrow is expected to debut in theaters on July 9, 2027.
Release Date
July 11, 2025
Runtime
130 minutes
Director
James Gunn
Rachel Brosnahan
Lois Lane