DC is launching its new Absolute Universe this month, and a trio of titles in Absolute Batman, Absolute Wonder Woman, and Absolute Superman are leading the way. Each is an intriguing reimagining of those characters from strong creative teams, and a lot of digital ink has already been spilled about how these projects came together and why they’re something the publisher is doing. But the most exciting part about each, at least to me, is the art and artists. Nick Dragotta, Hayden Sherman, and Rafa Sandoval have been tasked with creating a new look for some of the most iconic characters the world has ever seen — and each seems to have nailed the job. That kind of work deserves a spotlight.

So, to do that, I’ve written a series of features about what they did to bring the new iterations of these characters to life with insight from the artists themselves. And to close this effort out, we have one about Sandoval’s work designing this new Superman and the unexpected twists and turns that came with that project.

Redesigning a legend is a challenging task for any artist. That’s both because of how hard it can be to come up with something original for characters that have existed for the better part of a century and due to the self-doubt that comes alongside a task like this. The difficulty of such an endavor was proven by the experiences of Nick Dragotta on Absolute Batman and Hayden Sherman on Absolute Wonder Woman. Both are exceptionally talented and thoughtful artists, and yet the roughly year-long journeys they took to reach their final designs came with plenty of tweaks and uncertainty along the way.

It was simply part of the job for these Absolute designers.

The same was not necessarily true for Absolute Superman’s Rafa Sandoval, even if the artist and lifelong fan of the character carried his own self-doubts. The reason for that is simple. He didn’t have a year to craft a public-facing version of his design.

He had about a month.

The artist’s journey began when he wrapped his final issue of the recent House of the Brainiac arc in mid-June 2024, or a little more than a month before the line — and Absolute Superman itself — was announced at San Diego Comic Con. That meant the publisher needed a visual for its reveal, so the project came with a deadline attached. And there’s a reason he came on so late: Sandoval wasn’t the project’s original artist.

While writer Jason Aaron has been a constant on Absolute Superman, it was actually Rafael Albuquerque who was initially hired before he had to bow out due to the catastrophic flooding his home country of Brazil experienced earlier this year. 8 When he departed, the visual development of the project was in its early days. While Albuquerque had brainstormed visual concepts with the rest of the Absolute Superman team and done a few design sketches, 9 there was still a long way to go.

So, DC had to move fast in finding a replacement. That’s a tough task. It couldn’t just be anyone. After all, this was a tremendous undertaking, one with a tight timeline. For that reason, they didn’t just need an artist with a true vision for Absolute Superman; They needed someone who could tap into those gifts quickly, for all their sakes.

That’s why this isn’t the story of an artist who pinch hit for his peer, simply finishing the work someone else started. It’s the tale of one of the defining visual voices of Superman’s recent history stepping into a project late in the game to craft something special, saving the day for everyone involved in the process.

Despite the obvious challenges that came along with this project, it was an easy one for Sandoval to say yes to. The artist recalled that it was Absolute Superman’s editor Chris Conroy who pitched him the job. He viewed it as a “big and incredible proposal” and “a surprise I never expected.” DC wanted him to “create a new Superman,” one that was “insecure” with “many struggles inside him.” It would be a version of the character with obvious “imperfections” that the regular version of character rarely displays. That was an enticing hook. From that pitch alone, the artist could see the potential of what this team might do together.

“I loved that idea,” Sandoval said. “After the first five seconds of conversation, I already knew it was a project I (would) love to do.”

Part of that was simply because of his own affinity for the character. Getting the chance to develop a “more human” Superman “with all the flaws and virtues that implies” — like cartoonist John Byrne once did, Sandoval noted — was appealing to him.

But he also enjoyed the challenge of taking something that had been started but not completed and then finding a way to make it his own. The artist said there were already “a lot of descriptive details about the character” when he signed up, ones he found “useful as a starting point.” Having those to build from was important, both because it was a powerful look — Sandoval emphasized that Albuquerque’s design had a “solidity” to it that brought immediate credibility to the character — and because the artist knew “the right thing to do was to respect” the work of his predecessor.

“I knew I had all the necessary pieces, but I had to assemble the whole puzzle and make it coherent for the readers,” the artist said.

Albuquerque’s original suit designs were a useful place to start. Certain elements of his design stuck around after Sandoval took over. 10 But even then, those were quickly built upon and turned into something new by the incoming artist. And when I say new, I mean it. Sandoval emphasized that beyond Albuquerque’s original design, he tried to utilize as little reference as possible in the development of this look. While he “reviewed several science fiction movies,” none of it was used. In fact, a lot of what he discovered was used as guardrails for the true goal he had for Absolute Superman’s look.

“A completely new and different design was my intention from the first second,” Sandoval said.