Spoilers ahead for Icon and Rocket Season One #3!
While Superman's death in the main DC universe was grim, it is nothing compared to his death in the Milestone Universe. In Icon and Rocket Season One #3, readers see more of the enigmatic Icon’s past, and learn that his adversary, the mysterious Mr. Lord, once brutally murdered an alien bearing a strong resemblance to Clark Kent.
Icon was part of the first wave of titles offered by Milestone Media in the early 1990s; the line’s goal was to bring more diversity to comics by focusing on BIPOC characters. Icon is over 200 years old, an alien who crash-landed on a plantation in Northern Georgia in the 1840s, after the ship he was traveling on was attacked by terrorists. His escape pod was found by a slave couple, and when they touched it, it reconfigured Icon’s DNA to match that of a human. In Milestone’s original incarnation, Icon did not involve himself in human affairs until he met his future sidekick Rocket, who challenged him to use his powers to better the world. However, when the character returned as part of a reinvigorated Milestone earlier this year, his history was extensively rewritten. Now, readers learn, Icon had been active since arriving on Earth, covertly ending the Civil War, among other actions. But along the way he has made some powerful enemies, including Mister Lord, who killed a young version of Superman.
In Icon and Rocket Season One #3 by Reginald Hudlin, Leon Chills, Doug Braithwaite, Andrew Currie, Brad Anderson readers learn that the terrorist who hijacked Icon’s ship is still alive and living on Earth. He goes by the name Mister Lord and is employed by the CIA. Lord specifically deals with alien threats, eliminating them before they can go public. One of Lord’s handlers reveals that in 1939, he traveled to a small town in Kansas to eliminate an alien who had “already embedded himself with the locals.” Readers then see a couple cradling an infant near a crashed rocket ship. Later that night, Lord uses his shape-shifting abilities to sneak into the farmhouse and kill the baby.
In essence, Mister Lord killed Superman. Everything Lord’s handler described: the downed rocket ship, the small town in Kansas, an infant demonstrating fantastic powers—are classic elements of Superman’s origin. Yet here, Superman is killed in his crib by Mister Lord, bringing the Man of Steel’s story to a close before it can truly begin. Icon himself is a Superman pastiche, adding another layer to Lord’s actions; furthermore, Lord’s body is made of the one substance that can truly hurt Icon, making Lord all the more frightening.
It now falls on Icon and Rocket to stop Mister Lord’s reign of terror once and for all. Lord’s list of crimes in the Milestone Universe are many, but brutally murdering Superman in his crib might be the most grotesque.
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