The news dropped yesterday out of nowhere, and on one hand it was what we were expecting to hear for the past year, and yet on the other hand we definitely didn’t see this coming yesterday. And I have to give credit to my friend Jim Bowers and the CapedWonder Superman Podcast for being the first to drop the news to the world, at least before I had a chance to see it elsewhere.

Superman ‘78 is coming back this year, in time for the 45th anniversary of the release of Superman: The Movie as well as the climax to the 85th anniversary of the birth of the Superman franchise!

We had known that there would be a sequel to the highly successful Superman ‘78 series since the release of the hardcover collection, when it was teased that writer Robert Venditti was developing a second storyline set during the Christopher Reeve movie series. And after the incredibly spectacular storyline against Brainiac, the field was wide open for more stories to tell.

Now we have our first sneak peek at the second series, Superman ‘78: The Metal Curtain, an all-new six-part storyline which will debut on November 7th. Joining Robert Venditti this time around is artist Gavin Guidry, who has worked on Captain America: The Ghost Army for Marvel Comics and illustrated covers for Army of Darkness, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Transformers: Beast Wars, among others. Gavin will bring his unique visual style to the Reeve franchise, aka Earth-789 (named in honor of the Superman films and the Tim Burton Batman films).

In the first issue, we will see how another fragment of the planet Krypton landed in the Soviet Union and how the Russians take advantage of the discovery to create their own weapon of destruction to use against the Man of Steel. Then in the second issue, which releases on December 5th, we see that weapon of destruction, entitled Metallo, unleashed against Superman. As we know from established comics lore, the Superboy TV series, Superman: The Animated Series, and Smallville, Metallo is driven by kryptonite, so any contact with Superman will immediately weaken him. So it’ll be interesting to see how this version of Metallo will go up against our hero in this series. Expect the next chapters to street through the first third of 2024, respectively.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Superman ‘78 series without a plethora of variant covers, and The Metal Curtain will be no exception! The first issue will have no less than six variant covers, including the standard version, a variant cover by our fan-favorite artist Wilfredo Torres, a 1:25 variant cover from artist Doug Braithwaite, a 1:50 variant cover by artist Adam Gutierrez, a blank white sketch cover for your favorite artist to customize, and a Todd McFarlane action figure variant. (And don’t be surprised if variants of those variants pop up in the wild somewhere.)

The second issue will have three cover versions, including the standard cover, a Michael Cho variant cover, and a 1:25 Max Dunbar variant cover. So bottom line, if you’re like me and you want all of the cover variants, put on your Indiana Jones hat, hit the comics shop, search out the different online stores, and (to borrow from Pokémon) catch them all!

And of course we can expect digital versions to drop for the Kindle and iTunes libraries, as with the previous series, so I plan to pick those issues as well. As for a hardcover collection, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it down the road next year.

So start saving up your dollars especially for all of those cover variants, because like with the first series, this will be another big hit with the fans, I’m going to call.