Absolute Superman #5 (2025)

Six years ago on Krypton, the Els fight their way through a crowd of Law Guild shock troopers sent to kill them and escape to the Rao Mountains with their ship, where their friends and neighbours are waiting to evacuate with them. They desperately wish they could save more, but Lara cannot make any more space on board without compromising the ship's integrity. Kal-El looks out at the world literally breaking apart and swears to himself that they will make the next world better, no matter what it takes. In the present Superman, enraged by Smith's massacre, breaks into the Peacemaker outpost in Pakistan. He effortlessly smashes through all lines of defence, but when he gets inside finds that Smith isn't there. He orders Sol to hack into the Lazarus database and find Smith, but Sol reports that Lazarus' cyber defence are beyond Earth's capabilities and Smith's location is highly encrypted. Superman grabs a nearby Peacemaker and demands to know where Smith is, but the terrified man says he doesn't know and begs Superman not to kill him. Horrified at what he has done, Superman's rage suddenly ends. Sol tells Superman that someone known as "Brainiac" is attempting to infiltrate his systems as he is hacking Lazarus. Sol is able to track Brainiac to the Lazarus facility in Nevada, and discovers that Brainiac's lab contains miniaturised alien cities in bottles full of people who won't stop screaming. Brainiac sends Sol a message asking to speak to Superman, and has offered to give them Smith's location as an incentive. However, Superman ignores him and leaps away from the Peacemaker outpost. In the past, the Kryptonian refugees board the El's ship. The ship bonds with each of them and forms a spacesuit around them. Kal-El hangs back for a moment to collect a handful of Kryptonian soil, and a rent opens up right under his feet. He falls but is saved by Krypto and hurried onto the ship by his parents. Meanwhile in Krypton's cities, the people riot and attempt to board the Science League's starships, enraged at the elite's plans to abandon them and escape to safety. Every one of the League's ships are destroyed or crash shortly after takeoff, leaving the El's ship as the only one to successfully launch. Once they are in the air, Kal-El feels a strange sense of calm and even hope that they will make it. He sees a younger child looking out of the viewscreen at Krypton exploding and comforts them, telling them that they are on the best ship that ever flew. Suddenly, a huge chunk of the exploding planet smashes into the ship, breaking it apart. The refugees fall out of the devastated ship and their spacesuits form individual pods around them. The pods try to escape the debris field, but are one by one destroyed by the asteroids until only Kal-El's ship survives. Kal-El's rocket launches away from the exploding Krypton as he tearfully calls over the ship's comms for anyone to answer him. On Earth in the present, Superman lands on the side of a highway in Kansas. He tells Sol he doesn't want to know where Smith is, because he's afraid of what he would do to him if he ever found him. He tells Sol that he needs to be alone, and reminded of home. Superman starts to walk along the road to the nearest town: Smallville.