Superman’s Mystery Man Mr. Oz Identity Revealed – DC Rebirth Spoiler!!

DC REBIRTH MR OZ IDENTITY REVEALED. SPOILER WARMING!!!

Alright guys, well, if you were goofy enough to click on this article and not expect a spoiler, here is your last warning. If you don’t want to spoil things, check out this weeks Action Comics #987, in stores today before continuing any further into this article.

Okay? Okay, so, it’s Jor-El. Now, this is interesting, but I can’t say I was surprised. For one thing, this cover, which had been floating around for a month or so, seemed to indicate Jor-El very much is Mr. Oz, but because that was just speculation, I’ve been sitting on this information up until now. Ozymandias was the more obvious choice I would have expected up until that cover came out, but since then I’ve been leaning towards it being Jor-El.

For one thing, it’s a pretty good twist. Based on this cover it seems like Jor-El was pulled from Krypton moments before it was destroyed by someone. Was it Dr. Manhattan, or some other unseen force? Who knows, at this point. But now that we do know whoever Jor-El is working for, or if he is some independent agent with his own agenda, he has been very busy acting on it.

We’ve seen him observing a great deal of events closely while also occasionally intervening in unique ways – such as taking Tim Drake captive when everyone thought he was dead, or as we see in Action Comics 987 has gained followers all over the world. It’s not clear to me, at all, what his end game is, although he does seem to still be Jor-El, and is working for some sort of greater good. When asked by Superman about recent acts of chaos he just unleashed on the world by manipulating various humans, Jor-El responds,

“I did nothing but present them with options. They had a choice between darkness and light. Darkness one. They embraced, murder, mayhem, and destruction.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, but it seems like he still at least views himself as someone working for the better. Yet he is clearly dissatisfied with the human race and openly says to his son that he doesn’t think Earth deserves Superman. I really like how they are framing this. It’s a good twist, something really new to DC cannon and Superman himself, and seems like a real, legitimate conflict. What we know of Jor-El suggests he was a benevolent man and a powerful scientist but we don’t know a lot about how he might view the human race. What we know of Krypton suggests that their people might look down on the human race in comparison to their own world. When I think of how Zod and Supergirl tend to act when they first came here, I can believe Jor-El might have this belief. There’s also no telling what has happened to the guy since the events of Krypton’s doom. It’s very possible he has changed in some fundamental ways that puts him in conflict with his son.

Whatever the case may be, this is another example of some of the great work they are doing with Superman. Merging the two versions of the character, giving Superman a family, and this are all solid examples of DC really treading new ground with their characters, and none more than Kal-El, whose comics have been really good lately.

It’s all pretty fresh news but the implications are striking. Points to DC for their restraint on the reveal, but it also means they’ve been very careful in not bringing the Watchmen characters too quickly, either. They just keep cookie crumbing us with bits and pieces of news like this, and this slow trickle of an interesting, unpredictable mystery that is the overarching narrative of Rebirth really has me hooked. Each scrap of narrative keeps building this mystery up, and what’s most impressive is that they clearly have an end game to all of this.

Things are heading towards… something. Though DC has been wonderfully careful in guarding what that something is, each step of the way is entertaining enough in its own right, that’s it is worth following. So yeah, that’s the big news of this week and my thoughts on it. Let me know what you guys think in the comments section below.