As might go without saying, there’s many iterations of “lost” in Christopher Priest and Carlo Pagulayan’s Superman: Lost. The Man of Steel himself has been lost, on a literal (if not also “literary”) 20-year journey to return to Earth; upon his return, Lois Lane is perhaps even more “lost” than Clark, enacting a particularly dangerous gambit to bring Superman back to himself. An alien species is “lost” in its own self-destructive cycles, light years from Earth but reflecting problems very familiar. And the farther things spin, the more operatic events become, there’s some question whether Superman: Lost might not get a little lost itself toward the end.

Lost is an impressive Superman epic from Priest; yes, go and read it, and if you can do two issues a night for five nights as I did, stretching it out and living with it a bit, all the better. It surely speaks well of the book that the chapter where Lost begins to go off the rails is also a chapter of impressive narrative prowess; that is, Lost’s “worst” is still a storytelling masterclass. Life, Superman: Lost shows us, can change in an instant; but for a few stumbles, I wonder if Superman: Lost might’ve become an instant classic.

[Review contains spoilers]

To an extent the literal storyline of Superman: Lost — the 20-year travail of the Man of Steel — is its least impressive. In dramatic scenes, Lois has to remind a seemingly traumatized Clark to breathe, for instance, since he’s so used to 20 years of holding his breath in the vacuum of space. But to follow the timeline of the black interlude boxes that are hallmark of Priest’s work, it’s roughly the first five years where Clark had to hold his breath on and off and then about 15 years where the oxygen in the air on his alien planet was toxic to everyone except him. (See also the scene of Clark sleeping on the floor, moving but at the same time inexplicable when he’s had a bed for the last 15 years.) The “remember to breathe” stuff would be an aspect of a journey Superman might’ve taken to return to Earth from the far reaches, but it’s not actually this journey despite how that’s played up.

From the start, Priest anchors Lost in the existentialism of Soren Kierkegaard (Camus also gets a nod), mainly Sickness Unto Death — the question of losing oneself, of spiritual death, of not being true to oneself or one’s values. For me this was the more interesting “lost” as relates to the characters — out in space, Superman finds the alien Arkasians who need his help, and as such he can’t go back to Earth and still be “Superman,” because Superman doesn’t leave needy people behind. When, after 20 years, Superman does finally gamble and return to Earth, it’s with the express purpose of recruiting fellow heroes to return to the Arkasians, though that’s complicated both by his inability to find the Arkasians and also by his love for Lois Lane, whom he regrets leaving before and having to leave again.

“Lost” then comes to speak to the characters' raison d’etre. Clark was raised to help people, but if he’s not helping people — even if he’s making the very human choice to have a home and a family — who is he? Similarly, Lois is the consummate crusading journalist here, investigating a maybe-corrupt senator, but resorts to lying to Clark and involving Lex Luthor to help Superman return to normal. Lex is a late addition to the story, and in some respects ill-fitting, but he too struggles with his own identity separate from Superman — who he is, even, if Superman’s paying him no mind.

Most fascinating among the “lost” are the Arkasians, a group of so-called “zealots” among the factions that make up the planet’s Republic. The Republic believes in the law being subservient to the people — the superstitious Arkasians reject the idea of planetary defense and climate change (also, apparently, school lunch), and so they miss out on the protections afforded to the rest of the Republic, because the Republic won't force sensible laws on them if the Arkasians don't want them.

It is as if (and this was hypothetical when I wrote this review!) one city or state were able to opt out of fluoride in their drinking water while the rest of the country still received it — and the fact that the comparison is so easy to make underscores the metaphor Priest is working with. Superman, for his part, does precisely what Batman warns him the League doesn’t do, imposing a kind of “nanny state” where he helps the Arkasians despite their beliefs otherwise. Once Superman returns to Earth, this becomes another element in the equation of what is or isn’t Superman, how much or how little hand he takes when his powers might verily let him rule the world.

Lost is primarily drawn by Priest’s Deathstroke collaborator Pagulayan, and with variant covers by Lee Weeks. Oddly, though, in the seventh chapter, there’s nine pages drawn by Weeks depicting Clark’s potential future when he returns to Earth as told by his future self — which we learn right afterward is a fabrication. Put another way, the reader deviates from the main story for nine pages to read a Superman story within a Superman story that’s immediately revealed to be false and also hardly bears on the story afterward. Just my impression, but this seemed very much to me like pages drawn for another story that were sandwiched here to fill up pages, something you might see in a monthly series¹ but that’s highly unusual in a self-contained miniseries. That’s followed by an issue partially by Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding;² those pages have slightly more relevance, but multiple splashes of Lex imagining Superman killing him (but not actually doing so) also has an air of pages needed filled.

At the same time, setting aside the odd Lee Weeks interlude, that seventh issue is a brilliant gut-punch of 22 pages. Part of the issue is Clark on an upward trend — he’s starting to see a psychologist, and also — after the Weeks interlude — we flash-back to when he finally arrived back in our solar system. The final pages are Lois on a downward trend — she solicits help from Lex and he infects her with malignant cancer in an attempt to rile Superman.

Though Lois and Clark are separate here, Priest bookends the issue with the same scene, Lois arriving home. In the beginning, when Clark says, “Went to see a doctor today,” the reader believes he and Lois are talking about Clark’s psychologist (“[I] went ...”); when we see the scene again at the end, we realize Lois' hesitation is that she thinks Clark is talking about her appointment with the oncologist (“[You] went ...”). The colliding stories, and the challenge to the reader to assess and reassess our understanding of the narrative, all smack of prestige television, a demonstration of Priest in control of his medium even in an issue that seems like it’s got index pages in it.

The overall depth and cleverness of Lost smoothes its rougher edges. Despite Priest’s Lois as a dogged investigator, a lot of his portrayal of her evokes Lois' worse depictions — mistrustful of Batman, jealous of Wonder Woman, and suspecting Clark of having an affair with the alien Green Lantern Hope. Further, the book makes really nothing of the fact that Lois fakes a pregnancy — lets Clark believe she’s carrying his child — to cover up that she’s dying of cancer. Given 10 issues and seemingly more pages than he could fill, Priest still elides this gaping hole in the plot.

It’s rare that stories teasing Superman being unfaithful ever use it well — the options are either that Superman acts very un-Superman-like or that what’s being teased will clearly be a feint. Among Weeks' variant covers is one that depicts Superman and Hope kissing, something that doesn’t happen in the book but sets a prurient overtone for their interactions; there’s a scene where Superman wantingly glimpses Hope in the shower, but we almost never see Superman and Hope conversing or, for instance, debating alien Kierkegaard. There’s an alien Szhemi (“Jimmy”) who authentically reminds of young Mr. Olsen, but Priest never quite achieves the argument for Hope-as-Lois, instead suggesting a Superman more tempted by base lust than we might like.

At the least, Christopher Priest ties everything up at the end of Superman: Lost, negating Superman’s journey while also saving the Arkasians. Arguably that conclusion comes too quickly, four pages for a bendy time-travel finale that, no, I couldn’t entirely explain to you. Things happen in an instant here — a car crashes, a hero flies off and never(-ish) returns, an ill-considered deal leads to sickness (almost) unto death, and ultimately the end of the book. I love continuity, don’t get me wrong (and this book weirdly dovetails with Priest’s Black Adam), but the thoughtfulness of Lost reminds me again why I’m drawn to these sub-Elseworlds book, just a step out of continuity where the plots are deeper than the mainstream allows.

[Includes original and variant covers, character sketches]