Superman Prime (DC One Million): Strength, Powers, Origin

In 1998, famed writer Grant Morrison wrote a four-part miniseries titled DC One Million. The story was actually a clash between the present and the future, with Superman being one of the primary heroes in the storyline. In this article, we are going to explore the powers and the story of one of DC’s most powerful characters ever, of Superman Prime (DC One Million).

Superman Prime (DC One Million) is the ultimate version of Superman. He has been alive for around 85,000 years and has become the living extension of the Sun and the most powerful iteration of the Superman character ever. On top of that, he has become one of the most powerful superheroes in the history of DC Comics.

In the rest of the article, we are going to tell you everything we know about Superman Prime (DC One Million), who appeared in Grant Morrison’s DC One Million comic book. You’re going to find out who Superman Prime (DC One Million) is, what his powers and weaknesses are, as well as how fast he is, if he is immortal or not, and who could defeat him in a fight. It’s promising to be a very entertaining article so stick with us to the very end!

Who is Superman Prime (DC One Million)?

Superman Prime (DC One Million) is a version of Superman that appeared in the DC One Million comic book, written by Grant Morrison. He is actually Superman, but from the 853^rd century, who survived by becoming the living extension of the Sun itself. Superman Prime (DC One Million) is actually the modern-day Superman who left Earth sometime during the late 21^st century, after everyone he ever cared about had died. He traveled the whole DC Comics universe and survived by becoming a sort of deity and an embodiment of the Sun itself.

His travels lasted from the 21^st century and ended somewhere around the turn of the 700^th century. During his travels, he acquired tremendous skills and abilities from across the universe. When he returned, he made a covenant with his descendants and decided to give them a small fraction of his powers, as long as they served for truth and justice. After the covenant, he left and returned to his new Fortress of Solitude in the center of the Super Sun.

When Solaris fired what he thought was the Knight Fragment at the Sun to kill Superman Prime (DC One Million), the Green Lantern retrieved a DNA sample from Solaris’ core that had been placed there when it was constructed and started a supernova reaction in Solaris’ core. The Green Lantern then tried to contain the explosion with its power ring. He was joined by Kal Kent, who contained the explosion with his force vision. Superman Prime (DC One Million) suddenly reappeared in the Sun after fifteen thousand years of solar energy and shattered the tyrant Sun once and for all with the Green Lantern ring that Solaris had accidentally given him.

The time he spent in the Sun increased his already great power to presumably infinite levels. His strength and a whole myriad of other skills he had acquired also rose to unknown levels since his time in the Sun. After the destruction of Solaris, much was revealed about Superman Prime’s (DC One Million) hibernation in the Super Sun. During this time he had been waiting for Solaris to try his hand at life because, thanks to his time-traveling younger self, he had known the events beforehand.

He knew about the DNA sample in Solaris’ core and, with the help of Lzyxm Ltpkz (the Fifth Dimension’s Superman) and Hourman, used it to his advantage, reviving his beloved Lois Lane in the process. After what seemed like an eternity to him, he had withdrawn into the Sun to await her return, and now a Silver Lois Lane and a Golden Superman Prime (DC One Million) were reunited. In all the time since her death, life had had little meaning or warmth for him, but now Superman Prime (DC One Million) felt that he was complete again.

What are the powers of Superman Prime (DC One Million)?

In this section, we are going to give you a detailed overview of Superman Prime’s (DC One Million) powers and abilities. Let us commence:

• Kryptonian Physiology: Under the effects of a “yellow” sun, Superman Prime (DC One Million) has the same potential powers as the average Kryptonian. These include:
  
  • Solar Energy Absorption: Under optimal conditions, this is the main source of Superman Prime’s (DC One Million) superpowers as they depend on the solar radiation from a yellow sun star system. His biological structure includes a number of organs that lack counterparts in humans and whose functions are unknown. It is believed that “yellow” solar energy is stored between one or more of these and its bio-cellular matrix for later use. This allows these powers to be used to fade when yellow solar radiation is not available, rather than failing immediately.
    
  • Heat Vision: Superman Prime (DC One Million), as a conscious act, can fire rays of intense heat at a target by looking at it. He can vary the heat and the affected area.
    
  • Super-Hearing: Superman Prime’s (DC One Million) hearing is sensitive enough to hear any tone at any volume or pitch. With skill and concentration, he can block ambient noise in order to focus on a specific source or frequency.
    
  • Enhanced Vision: Superman Prime’s (DC One Million) vision processes the entire electromagnetic spectrum and allows full control over selective perception and focus. This umbrella function includes the following:
    
    • Electromagnetic Spectrum Vision: Superman Prime (DC One Million) can see most of the electromagnetic spectrum quite well. He can see and identify radio and television signals as well as any other radio or broadcast frequency. With this ability, he can avoid detection by radar or satellite surveillance methods. This also enables him to see the aura that living things create.
    • Telescopic Vision: This is the ability to see something from a great distance without breaking the laws of physics. Although limited, the exact extent of the ability is indefinite. In practice, it is similar to the zoom lens of a camera.
    • X-ray Vision: This is the ability to see through any volume of matter except lead. Superman Prime (DC One Million) can see things behind a solid, opaque object as if it weren’t there. He can focus this ability to “peel off” layers of an object so that hidden images or internal functions can be observed. The exact type of energy perceived – such as x-rays, cosmic rays, or some other energy that is invisible to normal people – is unclear. However, we know that this ability is perceived by a source of ambient energy without the eye projecting a concentrated, potentially toxic beam that is reflected back from objects themselves.
    • Microscopic Vision: This is the ability to see extremely small objects and images down to the atomic level.
    • Infrared vision: Superman Prime (DC One Million) can see better in the dark and, to some extent, in complete darkness.
      
  • Flight: Superman Prime (DC One Million) is able to manipulate graviton particles to defy gravity and achieve flight. This ranges from floating to moving in any posture or in any direction.
    
  • Invulnerability: Due to the interaction of its dense molecular structure and the charged bioelectric aura, Superman Prime (DC One Million) is almost invulnerable to extreme energy forces and most other types of attacks, in fact. In addition, this ability extends the protection against toxins and diseases.
    
  • Superhuman Stamina: Superman Prime (DC One Million) is capable of sustaining strenuous physical activity for an indefinite period of time. This is based on the fact that his body converts yellow solar radiation directly into energy, but is limited by physiological and psychological needs for eating, drinking and sleeping.
    
  • Superhuman Strength: The strength of Superman Prime (DC One Million) is enhanced by yellow solar radiation, which interacts with the above-average density, resilience and biological efficiency of his muscles. His strength is more an act of conscious will on energy fields than actual physical strength, which is quite impressive and differentiates him from other versions of Superman. It is this act of conscious will that enables him to perform physical feats that go beyond the mere force of application, such as moving a mountain top without the stone collapsing beneath its own mass.
    
  • Superhuman Speed: Superman Prime (DC One Million) can move at incredible speeds using sheer willpower. This extends to his perception and enables achievements such as catching bullets in flight and covering great distances in a short or very short time. This also gives:
    • Superhuman Agility
    • Superhuman Reflexes
      
  • Super-Breath: Superman Prime (DC One Million) is capable of generating hurricane-force air currents by exhaling air from his lungs. He can cool the air as it leaves his lungs to freeze targets. He can also reverse the process to draw large amounts of air or steam into his lungs.
    
  • Longevity: Superman Prime (DC One Million) can live longer than normal people and remain at his peak as long as he has been exposed to the radiation of a “yellow” sun.
    
• Solar Supercharge: Superman Prime (DC One Million) stayed in the Earth’s sun for 15,000 years, increasing his abilities to an unknown level, although it is presumably immeasurable. He is known for dwarfing the might of even the massively powerful Kal Kent, who is himself stronger than the gravitational pull of a collapsing star and is many times faster than the speed of light.
  
• Power Bequeathment: Superman Prime (DC One Million) is able to share some of his power with his descendants. This faction alone is a level of power “well beyond what has ever been held by metahumans” (though tying them inextricably to the Super-Sun that Prime inhabits as the source of their powers).
  
• Immortality: Superman Prime (DC One Million) hasn’t visibly aged since the late 20^th / early 21^st century.

On top of all of this, Superman Prime (DC One Million) also – like his modern-day counterpart – possesses what is called indomitable will, which allows him to function rationally even in the most chaotic situations and not fall under the influence of external factors. This ability has also allowed Superman Prime (DC One Million) to control a Green Lantern Ring, which was an impressive feat in itself, as the Rings are quite specific about the requirements for their bearers.

Does Superman Prime (DC One Million) have a weakness?

We have established that Superman Prime (DC One Million) is in every aspect stronger than the modern-day Superman. Although their powers aren’t, on a general level, that different, the level of Superman Prime’s (DC One Million) powers is completely incomprehensible and probably immeasurable, which cannot be said about modern-day Superman’s powers. In that aspect, Superman Prime (DC One Million) also has a different set of weaknesses, or – to be more precise – one specific weakness, but even that one hasn’t been completely proven as far as the stories are concerned and is merely a presumption.

Namely, it was found that Superman Prime’s (DC One Million) earlier self was unable to connect to Headnet, the transgalactic information system that unified the inhabitants of the 853^rd century, due to his underdeveloped brain. In fact, the frequencies he was broadcasting devastated his overhearing, which means that his overhearing was still prone to overload. If Superman Prime (DC One Million) has never overcome this limitation, then he will be excluded from the flow of information shared by virtually every other living being of his time and will be prone to extremely high noise levels. Still, as we state, this is just an assumption.

As far as Kryptonite, Superman’s well-known weakness is concerned, we advise you to observe this panel:

This panel doesn’t really concern Superman Prime (DC One Million), but it does contain an important revelation – each iteration of Superman is only affected by the kryptonite from their own universe! This means that kryptonite from another Earth won’t have any effect on any Superman. Now, if we consider the fact that Prime-Earth Superman does, at one point, overcome this weakness and that Superman Prime (DC One Million) is so enormously powerful, we can deduce that he is not actually weak to kryptonite like his predecessors, especially since it seems that his universe doesn’t even have any kryptonite left.

The most precise answer would be that we don’t know since Grant Morrison never revealed this fact in his story, but based on what we know about Superman Prime (DC One Million), we assume that kryptonite would not have any effect on him.

How fast is Superman Prime (DC One Million)?

Now, the question of Superman’s speed has been a hot topic ever since the character debuted back in 1938. We have already talked about modern-day Superman’s speed compared to the Flash’s here on Fiction Horizon, but since Superman Prime (DC One Million) is so much more powerful than the modern-day iteration of the character, that comparison doesn’t really help us much in determining how fast Superman Prime (DC One Million) actually is. Luckily for us, there are some numbers we can use to give you a proper answer.

Based on a Comic Vine post, we know (although we are aware that these are not official numbers) that Superman Prime (DC One Million) traveled at a speed of around 17,000,000,000 (17 billion) miles per hour, which is several times faster than the speed of light. Another Quora post suggests that his speed can go as high as around 26–28 quintillion miles per hour, which is even more impressive. This means that at top speed, Superman Prime (DC One Million) can go at 28 times 10 to the power of 18 miles per hour (2.8×10^19 mph). This is truly fast, faster than any Superman before him and the numbers are quite impressive, suggesting that Superman Prime (DC One Million) might even be the fastest non-Speedster character in the DC Universe.

But, since we’re talking about Speedsters, it would be fair to at least draw a comparison between Superman Prime (DC One Million) and Flash. In an article about Flash’s powers, we have already scrolled through some numbers and calculations, as well as in the above-cited article about his races with Superman, so we have a rough idea of how fast the Flash is. Now, we have to ask ourselves – is Superman Prime (DC One Million) faster than the Flash?

Based on the fact that the Flash saved hundreds of thousands of Koreans from a nuclear blast at 2.5 quintillion miles per second in one comic book story, we can calculate his speed. Doing the math, we’ll find that he’d be going at around 9 times 10 to the power of 22 miles per hour (9×10^22 mph). This is, as you can observe, significantly faster than the speed of Superman Prime (DC One Million). Meaning? Well, despite all of his enhancements, Superman Prime (DC One Million) still remains slower than the Flash. In fact, at his best, the Flash would still be able to run circles around Superman Prime (DC One Million).

Is Superman Prime (DC One Million) immortal?

Now, when you see a character that is more than 85,000 years old and still looks like he is in his late twenties/early thirties, you’ll probably ask yourselves whether that guy is immortal or not. As far as Superman Prime (DC One Million) is concerned, this is a completely valid question and we are going to try to answer it for you. Before we do, though, we have to state that Grant Morrison never revealed too many details about his character and a lot of the things written in this section, as well as in the rest of the article, are either speculations or deductions based on the little official information we actually have. Now, we can continue.

Superman Prime (DC One Million) has been around for more than 85,000 years and he still looks the same as he did when he was young. This is due to the fact that he had been absorbing the Sun’s energy for 15,000 years before “returning” to the world. His (un)official Wikia page states that he is immortal, substantiating that with the fact that he has lived longer than any mortal being in the DC Universe and that he has not aged even a day. This, of course, would be enough in itself, but since we don’t know much about his physiology, we don’t really know the reason for his long-lasting life.

We could speculate that he is truly immortal, but the storyline suggests that he isn’t really unkillable, which – in itself – is a very important fact to know. Also, if he has really just become an extension of the Sun, would he die along with it? The Sun is essentially a batter and at one point in time, it is going to run out of energy and just shut itself off.

Even if we assume that Superman Prime (DC One Million) has collected enough solar energy to outlive his main energy source, without new “fuel”, would his powers also start disappearing? Sure, there’s more than one “yellow” sun in the Multiverse, but there isn’t an infinite number of them. These are, all, valid questions, but seeing how Morrison never really bothered to answer them in his story, we can only presume the answers.

We think that Superman Prime (DC One Million) is not really immortal in the divine sense of the word. He can be killed and despite gaining enough energy to become as strong as he is, he still seems to depend on the Sun itself and just like the Sun, his powers will fade at one point. This is probably going to happen far into the future, farther than we can even imagine, but in fact, he doesn’t seem to be literally immortal, although based on our perception of time – effectively, he is.

Is Superman Prime (DC One Million) stronger than Superman?

Well, this is probably the easiest question we have on the “menu” today. To be blunt – yes, Superman Prime (DC One Million) is in every aspect stronger than the modern-day iteration of Superman. In fact, he is stronger than any iteration of Superman that we have seen so far.

First of all, he survived after being in the Sun for 15,000 years. From an earlier story, we know that after the modern-day Superman “bathed” in the Sun for a short time, he came out at least three times stronger than he was. Now, just imagine doing nothing but that for 15,000 years! The amount of power Superman Prime (DC One Million) garnered is practically immeasurable and although it’s probably not limitless, its limits are far beyond anything we could comprehend.

Secondly, he was created as the “final form” of the Superman character, the very last Superman to ever exist. And even after thousands and thousands of years, Superman Prime (DC One Million) still lives on. Based on these two facts, we can clearly see that Superman Prime (DC One Million) is way stronger than any iteration of the Superman character ever.

Who can beat Superman Prime (DC One Million)?

We have established that Superman Prime (DC One Million) is one of the strongest superheroes in the history of the DC Comics fictional universe. A guy “bathing” in his most potent energy source for 15,000 years has to be immensely powerful, right? Well, he is.

Now, Superman Prime (DC One Million) hasn’t really appeared much in the stories themselves and his brief appearances have, always, resulted in him coming out as the victor in his fights… well, except for recent events, but more on that later. In this section, we are going to give you some ideas on who could defeat Superman Prime (DC One Million) in a fight by comparing him to some other DC Comics characters.

Although Superman Prime (DC One Million) has practically become a deity himself, we are quite certain that he would not be able to defeat the more powerful omnipotent characters from DC’s universe, including The Presence (DC’s own God) and even Mister Mxyzptlk, the omnipotent, yet playful trickster of DC’s own universe. This is due to the fact that Superman Prime (DC One Million) has only nigh limitless powers – we cannot comprehend their limits, but it does seem that they do exist at some point. These two guys aren’t really limited by anything, not even reality.

As for the Justice League’s greatest rival, Darkseid, Superman Prime (DC One Million) could easily defeat any of his avatars. The same also goes for Trigon, for example, who is an enormously strong magical entity. Yet, with Darkseid’s True Form lingering like an omnipresent threat, recently released from its prison, we aren’t exactly sure that Superman Prime (DC One Million) would be able to defeat the tyrant from Apokolips in his true form. In fact, although we have to wait and see how the story goes on, we think that Darkseid’s True Form is more powerful than Superman Prime (DC One Million).

Now, a recent storyline published in Future State: Black Adam #1 tells us of a dark moment in DC’s future when Vandal Savage, an immortal supervillain, gathers the Seven Deadly Sins and forms a villainous group called The Unkindness. The Unkindness are an extremely dangerous group bent on destroying everything and Superman Prime (DC One Million) really seemed like the perfect solution for that problem. Yet, when The Unkindness arrived in front of him, near his Fortress of Solitude in the center of the Sun, the Seven Deadly Sins quickly swarmed Superman Prime (DC One Million), broke his body and his will, leaving his lifeless corpse floating in space. This was a surprisingly quick defeat of Superman Prime (DC One Million) and yet another proof that he is not undefeatable.

Now, before we finish this, we’ll just put one extra character into the equation – Dr. Manhattan. We have already stated that we consider the Doomsday Clock version of the character to be the strongest fictional character ever created. Without repeating our arguments, we can only reiterate that we have not managed to find a way of killing Dr. Manhattan except for Dr. Manhattan going back in time himself and stopping himself from ever being created. The guy also literally destroyed time.

Superman Prime (DC One Million) never attained the godly powers of Dr. Manhattan; he could not create, he wasn’t omniscient, omnitemporal, or omnipresent. He was powerful, he did achieve powers that are practically at their maximum level, but he was never a true god, like Dr. Manhattan was. This is why we think that Dr. Manhattan would also be able to defeat Superman Prime (DC One Million).