I know my way around Comic Books. I've had a Comic Book Store since 1992 and I've read since then around 15-20 issues per week, mostly to be able to sell those titles to my customers and to make them fall in love with the stories so they become avid readers and thus, avid buyers.
This is a new section of my blog where I'll make some comic book reviews and recommend some titles to anyone reading my entries.
"In other world, superheroes are taken from their normal scenery and are taken to other worlds, time and strange place - some have existed before, some others have never been real, and there are those places that can't couldn't and shouldn't exist. The stories resulting from this kind of scenarios are those that makes our usual characters who are well known to us to seem fresh, renewed and somehow, new to us."
That's some paraphrasing of the introduction of Elseworlds, an editorial brand from DC Comics. The creative media it's one made up by ideas and posibilities; for a long time, DC explored this type of stories were explored as Infinite Earths until in 1986, they decided to organize them and sort them out with the Saga Crisis on Infinite Earths.
With this, the idea was to have one version for each character to avoid confusion to new readers, but the stories were already there... what would happen if Batman was set in the Victorian Era?, What would've happened if Supeman had landed in Gotham city instead near Metropolis?, Or what about if Abin Sur had chosen Lex Luthor instead of Hal Jordan to be Green Lantern?
How could those stories be told without going back to the mess DC had before 1986?
That problem is solved by the ELSEWORLDS saga. An editorial branch of DC that means that any story with the stamp elseworlds in the cover, is not canon and doesn't affect the original storyline, it's just an imaginary story, sort of a what if?, which is a little bit ironic since comic books are pure fiction and the storylines are mere imagination from the authors.
The branch Elseworlds was born in 1989 but it became official until the early 90's. There are many great stories and there are also some that lack flavor and punch, but most of them are good and the creative aspect of them is good, to say the least. Some of these stories have been that good that DC decided to make them Canon and to include them in the original and main storyline of the character or the universe, which means that these stories happened, had happened or will happen, which in the end would reactivate the Multiverse and the Metaverse in the long run, but these posts are not about that, so worry not.
-- KAL --
The last son of Krypton arrived in earth in the middle age instead of the 20th century. Kal-El in this story was raised by farmers and grows up into a blacksmith who loves his life; the feudal lord in charde of his parents' land is Lex Luthor and the love story between Kal and Lois Lane is inevitable (unlike some other stories in the original storyline in Action Comics/Superman... but as every feudal lord - farmer in that age, Lex claims the first night with Lois Lane after their wedding, making this a unique situation in Elseworlds.
Love. Death. Nobility.
This storyline counts with the art of the legendary José Luis García López.
I remember reading that particular one! Elseworlds were always a lot of fun. I do enjoy the self-contained stories more than the ongoing ones, too; having a concise ending makes for a good story.