Basically, Joker used kryptonite and fear gas to get Superman to kill pregnant Lois Lane and Metropolis is destroyed.
What would the main-universe Superman have done with Joker?
Basically, Joker used kryptonite and fear gas to get Superman to kill pregnant Lois Lane and Metropolis is destroyed.
What would the main-universe Superman have done with Joker?
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Main universe Superman shows up in the end and is horrified by what Injustice Supes has done.
So… probably not the same thing. I think at worst he’d make sure Joker was locked up and then self exile to space.
There are any number of things he might have done although we can be confident that he wouldn’t have walked that particular path. One possibility I find appealing is withdrawing from the world in order to devote every moment to keeping Joker imprisoned alone until the day he died.
Superman would be horrified, then probably have a talk with other Leaguers like Batman or Diana about if he’s anything like that Superman.
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Superman would throw an absolute fit and might even have killed the Joker. I dare say even probably: Superman has a temper, what Joker did would set him off harder than anything he has ever faced, and Joker is very delicate. It wouldn’t take much for Superman to break him in a moment of slightly losing control.
He would then be absolutely horrified that he murdered a man in anger, turning himself into the authorities to stand trial for the crime. And when he is inevitably found not guilty he would insist on punishing himself by Supermaning as hard as possible until he collapses, dude will not be in a particularly healthy or sustainable state of mind. A complete emotional collapse would only be a matter of time.
What he wouldn’t do is put up with Injustice Wonder Woman’s shit. Or drive Batman away with his self righteous, even this asshole version of Batman. And while he would possibly become more authoritarian and certainly more active he wouldn’t become a tyrant as he would be utterly terrified of losing control again. Because losing control is how he lost everything, even before Joker murder him lashing out in a fear gas induced rage killed Lois. Sure by any metric it’s not his fault, he’s going to blame himself anyway.
My personal guess would be that he would eventually end up like Flash in Kingdom Come: Basically abandoning everything outside of protecting his people from everything, especially himself.
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Killing Joker is not absolutely out of the question, but if he did it, he would just retire from superheroing after, like he did when he had to kil Mr. Imnottypingthatname.
Most likely, tho, throws the joker into the phantom zone
One of the strongest reasons Clark doesn’t kill, even tho he doesn’t have a never kill rule like batman does, is because he has the easy phantom zone alternative.
He would’ve done the same thing. The world as a whole wasn’t very different up to that inflection point, so presumably—all things being the same—that series of events would’ve been his breaking point too, and things would’ve played out the same way. There’s no in-universe reason to think otherwise—it’s essentially the same concept explored in “The Nail.”
Sure, the primary Superman was horrified at the end, but that’s different than what happens when you rationalize the journey step by step. Plenty of people are horrified by the aftermath of actions they perform, yet they still performed them.
That said, this is squarely in the what-if category. There’s nothing that I know of in canon that would answer this question so it’s all speculation.
He would not have gone that far, like even if he killed the Joker. Main universe Wonder Woman would not be this Lady MacBeth egging him on and manipulating him to become more and more evil, she’d be keeping Supes in check along with Bruce and the rest of the League.
Hard to say. There’s a difference between seeing what InjusticeMan has become as an outside observer, and experiencing it firsthand. It may well be MainstreamMan would suffer the same reaction, had he lived through that.
InjusticeMan was presumably as decent and kind and good as PrimeSuperman before that day.