The Donnerverse

Richard Donner, the director of 1978's Superman: The Movie, took over the writing of Action Comics along with experienced writer Geoff Johns.  After Infinite Crisis, it seemed like a lot of comic book outsiders from film and television were taking over comics with mixed results.  Richard Donner appeared to rely heavily on co-writer Geoff Johns to fill in the continuity changes in the last 30 years.  His story would ultimately be plagued with delays and wouldn't even be finished in the regular series.

Action Comics #844

Last Son part 1 of 6

A strange pod from space crashes in Metropolis, with only a single boy inside.  The child is taken to a secure facility, and when Superman goes to see the boy he's shocked to find he speaks Kryptonese.  When Superman returns the next day, he finds the boy has already been moved to another facility after the scientists' tests confirm he's Kryptonian.  Superman breaks the boy out of custody and takes them to his own adoptive parents, the Kents, asking them to show him how they were able to raise an alien boy as their own.

The boy introduced here would eventually become Chris Kent, an awkward attempt to make Lois and Clark surrogate parents years before they would have a son of their own.  As typical of child characters that writers didn't know how to use, he would later be artificially aged and then become part of a new teenage Nightwing and Flamebird team.

Superman #657

Arion, Lord of Atlantis, hovers above the Daily Planet and narrates a post-apocalyptic future to Superman, Lois, Jimmy, and Perry.  In the near future, a Muslim-themed villain named Khyber organizes all the villains against Earth's heroes, and defeats Superman by hurling the Man of Steel into the Earth and causing devastating earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes, and a nuclear winter.  In this dystopian future, Lois, Jimmy, and the Parasite form an alliance with Lex Luthor in the ruins of Metropolis.  Though Superman rises from a volcano like a phoenix, Arion predicts that things are about to get much worse.

Superman/Batman skips a month, a common trend during this period.