KNEEL BEFORE... Ah, you know the rest.

A bit of a disclaimer, I've never liked Superman all that much. Like a lot of people have mentioned in the past, the character's main problem is that he is too powerful to be interesting. It's almost impossible to threaten him in a compelling way.

Although Lex Luthor is his traditional main enemy, I always felt the biggest threat to Supes came from General Zod. Here's a guy who has all of Superman's physical advantages, plus military training. If anyone is going to whup Superman it's going to be the General.

A note on the drawing: I used General Zod's look from the New Krypton storyline, but I haven't personally read the books. I found it hard to find good reference for the symbols on his chest so I left them blank (there seems to be some inconsistency anyway in how different artists rendered them). Also, I realized as soon as I had finished the drawing that Zod doesn't carry traditional guns in his holsters (anyone know what's in them? Beard trimmers?) but I left them as guns since I felt they looked better that way, and I'm not getting paid to get that sort of stuff right.

Preliminary stages
pencils [link]

inks [link]