EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW: It's Raining Kryptonians - Hallelujah!

DC Comics has provided Newsarama with an exclusive look at the full Alex Ross image that will make up the covers to Superman #681, Action Comics #871 and Supergirl #35 - encompassing parts 2-4 of the nine part "New Krypton" storyline.

Click the image at the right for the full picture.

As we originally reported from San Diego Comic-Con:

Beginning in October with the one-shot Superman: New Krypton Special and then spilling into all three comics, the nine-part story promises to change everything about Superman and Supergirl's world.

"Change is what New Krypton is all about. One-hundred-thousand more Kryptonians. He's no longer the last son of Krypton," Geoff Johns said. "Obviously it's going to affect his life, especially when they all say, 'Hey! We're on New Krypton! Earth is New Krypton!' That's going to cause some problems.

For Superman and Supergirl, the prospect of having so many people like them on Earth may seem like a good thing, but the team said it's not going to be that easy.

"You've got 100,000 people with the powers of Superman," Superman Editor Matt Idelson said, "but they weren't raised the way he was. They don't have human values. They don't know what's important to us. And it's going to get messy."

"And there's hundreds of Zod's soldiers in there from when Brainiac attacked Kandor. It's not like, 'Hey! Cool! We're back! Alright!,'" Johns said.

The writers said the New Krypton storyline grows out of events in the current Brainiac storyline in Action Comics by Johns and artist Gary Frank, as well as the Atlas story that James Robinson is telling in Superman with artist Renato Guedes. Sterling Gates, the new player on the Superbooks, will start on the Supergirl series with issue #34 in October with artist Jamal Igle.

"For Supergirl, who remembers life on Krypton, having 100,000 Kryptonians creates some unique conflicts," Gates said. "From that, Supergirl's relationships change as we get going. Her relationship with Superman is such right now that he's like a big brother to her, because he is her family. And through New Krypton, you're going to see that dynamic get turned on its ear and go through changes."

Johns said that Superman, Supergirl, 100,000 Kryptonians and Zod's soldiers are just the start -- the entire Superman universe will be involved in the story.

"It's going to involve the entire cast and a lot of the villains. It's going to redefine a lot of villains, like Reactron and Metallo," Johns said.

"There's so much that will be important to the DC Universe that we can't really tell you much more," Robinson added.

The storyline will also feature the return of the triangle numbers that used to grace the covers of Superman-related comic, as the books attempt to tie closer into each other. And as for concerns about a crossover "forcing" readers to buy multiple titles, Johns countered, "They'll want to read it!"

"The plan is to make all three Superman books so interesting and so good that you want to pick them up," Robinson said.

"The unfortunate thing is that 'crossover' has become a dirty word," Johns said. "We want to make it so that, why wouldn't they want to buy these books? They're all good books! There's no reason not to make it a big story."

"If the story wasn't big enough it, we wouldn't do it. There's just so much story to tell," Idelson said.