The story featured the "definitive" origin of Superman for the modern, post-Infinite Crisis DC Universe continuity,[2] starting with Clark Kent in his pre-teens as Superboy.
The series featured new elements for the origin tale, such as telling the story from the singular perspective of Clark, and not having at least one scene set on the planet Krypton.
Clark's parents Jonathan and Martha Kent reveal to him he's an alien and show him the rocket that brought him to Earth.
Elsewhere in Smallville, a young Lex Luthor discovers a chunk of Kryptonite and takes it to a street fair the next morning where he is selling his stuff.
Clark decides he wants to help people, and Martha makes an indestructible outfit based on the clothes from the rocket's holographic images.
Clark starts feeling sad and isolated from his human peers, when Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad of the Legion of Super-Heroes appear.
Meanwhile, upon hearing his father died from heart failure, a gleeful Lex Luthor plans to use Lionel's insurance policy to go to Metropolis.
Arriving at the dilapidated Daily Planet, he meets Rudy Jones, the overweight janitor, as well as photography intern Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Perry White and the rest of the staff.
Perry forbids Lois to get involved with billionaire and businessman Lex Luthor, who nearly killed the Planet financially because of a story they had about him.
The next issue of the Daily Planet runs with Lois's story and Jimmy's picture, naming "Superman" as the city's new savior.
Lex calls upon General Sam Lane, Lois' father, who agrees to help him in exchange for high-tech weapons.
Lex reveals that Superman is an alien, and can likely be stopped by kryptonite, the rock that also powers the Metallo battlesuit.
Superman melts a manhole to cover the kryptonite and flies Metallo into space until the lack of oxygen knocks him out.
[3] In order to definitively answer the glaring continuity questions, in 2009 DC enlisted the Action Comics creative team of writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank (hot off their stories such as Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes and Brainiac) to pen what was planned to be the "definitive" origin story of the modern Superman, post-Infinite Crisis.
[2] As opposed to Green Lantern: Secret Origin (also penned by Johns), which ran in the monthly Green Lantern title, it was decided by Dan DiDio (then-executive editor of DC Comics) to have Secret Origin run as its own mini-series and not part of the regular Superman or Action Comics ongoing titles.
It was during their run on Action that the pair of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank planned "Secret Origin", realizing that with stories such as Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, or Superman's first encounters with the likes of Parasite for example, that there weren't any modern retellings of those adventures, and planned them to be part of their origin storyline.
[2] For Gary Frank, his reason for doing the series was because of "clarity": wanting enjoyment from readers, and not arguing what is and what isn't canon.
In the end, IGN said that despite being similar to previous Superman origin stories, they did not consider the comic to be problematic, due to Johns' ability to bring new personality and style to make it feel fresh while standing on its own.