And as for what that means for Superman: The Harvests of Youth?
“It’s just this really beautiful, heartbreaking, lovely story about a teenage Clark Kent who’s not learning to use his powers, but learning how to use his power,” he says. “There’s no training montage, but asking ‘how do I actually take this stuff and apply it in situations where maybe brute force isn’t even an option?’ I think that’s the Superman that we really all love and believe in. This person whose heart and mind are just as much a part of the equation of his heroism.”
Grace was given the assignment prior to and began working on it just as the pandemic struck, which gave him a lot of time to focus.
“Nothing’s great about a pandemic, but when you’re paid to draw it does help to be trapped at home with nothing to do but design each and every cast member and think about every nook and cranny of Smallville,” he says. “I had the time to think about that, to think about what eyeglasses Clark Kent is gonna wear. How do I modernize these characters while still touching on what’s true to them? Then just going back to what’s true to me, and to just put all that love into it.”
As you can tell, it’s not something that Grace took lightly.
“I guess it’s just this wonderful thing of like, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. And it was also the best time in my lifetime to approach this. I’m never going to have this much time to develop the visual aesthetic core of a concept like I did with this book. And good! Because this is my first time doing Superman, maybe the only time doing Superman like this and so I just took it with the most responsibility and care.”
