Superman: Exile

Superman: Exile

By various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-438-1

When Superman was re-imagined after the epic Crisis on Infinite Earths, one of the major aims was to add drama and tension by reducing his god-like abilities. As well as making him more vulnerable, many of the more charming, but just plain daft stand-bys of the Man of Steel were abandoned. So goodbye flying off to the next galaxy and being back by lunch-time, and no more drop-kicking planets; Superman was now tough but still had the capacity to be shocked and awed by the very concept of deep space. He was also more human and flawed in his personality.

This collection is a superb slice of pure comic wonderment for fans of action and adventure and collects stories from a period when DC was trying to reach new readers with their oldest icon, so the material here can be enjoyed by anyone, and there’s no need for a vast and specific knowledge of the character.

Collecting Superman (volume 2) #28-30, #32-33, Adventures of Superman #451-456, Action Comics Annual #2, and Action Comics #643 written and illustrated by Dan Jurgens, George Pérez, Jerry Ordway, Roger Stern, Kerry Gammill, Mike Mignola, Curt Swan, Brett Breeding, Dennis Janke, John Statema and Art Thibert, it sees a traumatized Man of Steel forced to abandon Earth as a result of a psychotic break.

When trapped in a pocket dimension he had been forced to execute three super-criminals who had killed every living thing on their Earth and were determined to do the same to ours. Although given no choice, Superman’s actions plagued him, and on his return his subconscious caused him to stalk the streets in a fugue-state dealing out brutal justice to criminals in the guise of Gangbuster. When he finally made aware of his schizophrenic condition Superman banished himself before he could do any lasting harm to Earth.

And thus the door to a fabulous saga of action and adventure opens. In the more than 300 pages here we see an endearingly human hero rediscover his purpose, revel in his sense of cosmic wonder and even discover some dark secrets about the lost planet Krypton. The epic concludes with a rapidly weakening hero (deprived of Sol’s rays his powers quickly fade) battling as a gladiator and overthrowing the monstrous Mongul and the hordes of the giant battle-planet Warworld, before returning to Earth with the most powerful device in Kryptonian history.

If he had only known how much trouble The Eradicator would cause he would have left it where it was, but since he didn’t we get to enjoy even more thrills and chills in subsequent collections as brilliant and engrossing as this one…

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