James Gunn loves comic books. That’s been clear ever since he and his co-CEO of DC Studios Peter Safran announced their Gods and Monsters slate of new DC projects. And when we sat down with Gunn on the rooftop of Los Angeles' (W)rapper building, he couldn't wait to talk about all the stories that influenced his vibrant and action-packed take on Krypton's Last Son.

“When I started making a Superman film, one of the things that struck me was that although we've had some really good Superman movies over the years, we haven't really had a Superman movie that reflects what I experienced reading comics growing up,” Gunn shares.

Instead of the lore-heavy origin stories introducing us to one hero at a time that we've gotten over the decades, Gunn was inspired by an entirely different kind of experience.

“When I started reading comics, I was three or four years old—I learned to read through comics. I wasn't entering a world where I'm seeing Superman landing in a spaceship, just him alone among a bunch of human beings. I was seeing a world where Superman had superhero friends and he had a Superman family, and there were robots and giant monsters and he had a flying dog and technology so extreme, it seemed like sorcery.”

It was that action-packed, awe-filled wonder that Gunn wanted to translate with his Superman.

“I wanted to bring that world to the screen,” he shares. “I thought that would be fun in a different way, while also focusing on a Superman that's a little more personal and a little bit more flawed, that has a personal struggle about the way he's looking at himself throughout this movie.”

Throughout the press rollout for his DC relaunch, Gunn has been a passionate advocate for the comics that have inspired him and their creators. From Superman for All Seasons by Tim Sale and Jeph Loeb to Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All-Star Superman, Gunn has been leading the charge on celebrating the stories that led to Superman. But those two books were just the beginning. It turns out there were quite a few comic storylines that he looked to as he shaped his Clark Kent.

“I love Birthright a lot,” Gunn enthuses. “I love the John Byrne run of Superman comics. I love Grant Morrison's New 52 version of Superman. I love Superman in jeans! What's cooler than that?”

It wasn't just iconic contemporary or ’80s runs either, as Gunn went all the way back to the classics.

“I love reading Jerry and Joe's early Superman comics when he was just punching down walls and didn't have any heat vision or X-ray vision,” he reveals. “I like the crazy stuff from the ’50s and ’40s where he was able to make tiny versions of himself. All the old Lex stuff, the real, actual ’50s science fiction stuff that was what All-Star Superman was based on.”

Speaking of that Eisner-winning story (which recently got a full-cast audio production), it's clear that Gunn was eager to not only bring Morrison's existential exploration of Superman to the screen, but also the artistic vision of the visual artists who brought it to life on the page.

“We had Frank Quitely's art everywhere in the production room,” he shares. “Jamie Grant's colors inspired the colors of the movie.”

Quitely was also in the details of the film, inspiring everything from broad strokes to technology. 

“The way all of the machinery in All-Star Superman looks was very much inspirational to when you see Superman's computer,” Gunn continues. “Even the way Superman walks—there's a moment at the beginning where he's like, ‘I gotta get back to the fray.’ That was Frank Quitely. Same thing with the Superman robots—they're based on Frank's robots."

And in something that Quitely will surely enjoy hearing, Gunn shares, “He was probably the single most important creative force influence on us, besides Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.”
 

Superman, directed by James Gunn and starring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan and Nicholas Hoult, lands in theaters this week! Click here to get tickets.