Mark Millar's take on a Superman reboot could be Kal-El at his most poignant, if DC would ever sign off on such a dark take on the character.

I want to start on Krypton, a thousand years ago, and end with Superman alone on Planet Earth, the last being left on the planet, as the yellow sun turns red and starts to supernova, and he loses his powers.

Great idea, and amazingly it's one I don't think we've ever seen before. The perfect source material is already out there and begging to be adapted—just do Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman—but if they're foolish enough to pass on that they could do a lot worse than Millar's take. (Also via io9.)

In other Superman news, Bryan Singer, having already destroyed the franchise once, appears to be opting out of destroying it a second time.

Will the next Superman movie reboot the franchise? A lot of people are taking recent statements from Warner Bros. President Jeff Robinov in the Wall Street Journal that way:

Warner Bros. also put on hold plans for another movie starring multiple superheroes -- known as "Batman vs. Superman" -- after the $215 million "Superman Returns," which had disappointing box-office returns, didn't please executives. "'Superman' didn't quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to," says Mr. Robinov. "It didn't position the character the way he needed to be positioned." "Had 'Superman' worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009," he adds. "But now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman without regard to a Batman and Superman movie at all."

I hated Superman Returns as much or more than anyone, but in the absence of a longer interview I find this an excessively optimistic reading of Robinov's statements. "Reintroduce" pretty patently doesn't mean "reboot"...

Looks like Chris Nolan is now officially the Batman of movie directors: The Dark Knight broke a bajillion records this weekend.

Can we give him a crack at Superman next? He certainly couldn't do any worse than Bryan Singer...