The more I observe everything going on with Birthright, the more I'm inclined to think Waid and DC are playing fast and loose with the truth about what the project really is and what it will entail.

How can Waid honestly say that Birthright just kinda fills in the blanks or somehow augments what Byrne laid out, when the publicity artwork CLEARLY shows that this story FLATLY changes what Byrne did in the reboot?

How about this page:

http://www.comicon.com/pulse/images/supermanbirthright_1_11.jpg

Looks like they're back to the traditional scene of Jor-El and Lara loading Kal-El into the rocketship, rather than Byrne's "genetic matrix" that would allow Kal-El, essentially, to be "born" on Earth. This isn't a minor cosmetic change...this is a change to one of Byrne's central tenets: That Superman belongs to Earth (ala the speech at the end of the final issue of the Man of Steel mini-series that launched Byrne's vision for the character).

True, shadows and echoes of Byrne's Krypton design remain, but Jor-El and Lara are now clearly amalgamations of pre- and post-reboot continuities (similar to how they handled the characters in the Animated Series pilot episode):

http://www.comicon.com/pulse/images/supermanbirthright_1_07.jpg

Note: For a second there, I thought the last panel on the linked page above was KRYPTO wrapped in a blanket, since the legs looked kinda dog-like. I realized it was probably baby Kal with some kinda little sleeper outfit on with the droopy footies you might see actual babies wear. Plus, the hand-arm thing sticking out of the blanket near the face
looks a bit like a dog's paw, rather than a baby's hand. It's most likely the baby Lara was holding in panels one and two (since she's not holding it in the last panel), but.....weird.

And....lo and behold.....the S-symbol FAMILY CREST (panels 2 and 5)! One of the best contributions of the Supeman movie to the mythos that makes sense on so many levels. Apparently Mark Waid agreed! Very, very cool.

I really, really WANT to like this series, and stuff like this makes it a bit easier. I'm still a hard-sell on the super-social worker stuff from the Wizard preview, but I like what Waid appears to be doing with the Krypton side of the equation.