Category: Superman

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Man of Steel – the Official Movie Novelization


By Greg Cox (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-78116-599-7                  E-book edition ISBN: 978-1-78116-600-0

As you might have noticed, there’s another Superman movie hitting big screens at the moment and, as is the norm, the movie blockbuster comes with all the usual attendant extras.

Released a week after the premiere of Man of Steel, the Official Movie Novelization recapitulates that tale in an absorbing 320 page paperback – sadly sans any illustrations – for fans of a literary bent, duly expanding the breathtaking visual experience in the adroit, incisive way specialist author Greg Cox has made his own.

Don’t take my word for it: check his adaptations of films such as the Underworld trilogy, Daredevil, Ghost Rider or The Dark Knight Rises, comics series such as Infinite Crisis, Countdown, Final Crisis amongst others, as well as his legion of cult media tie-ins and comics-related books…

Spoiler Alert: since almost everybody alive knows the mythos of Superman by now and the whole point of this latest movie is to reinterpret, reinvigorate and reinstate that legend, I’m going to manfully restrain myself from outlining the plot of this engaging prose package in anything but the vaguest detail, in case you haven’t seen the stunning visual tour de force yet.

Krypton dies and scientific rebels Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van send their newborn son to another world to escape its destruction. However a goodly portion of film and book concentrate on the fabulous, uncanny and war-torn planet where Jor-El struggles with former friend and desperate terrorist General Zod as each strives to preserve Krypton in their diametrically opposed ways, so you won’t be reading about the child of two worlds until chapter seven…

A ship lands in Kansas, years pass and strange, anonymous miracles occur…

A young reporter begins to chart these odd occurrences.

Another star-craft is found, buried millennia-deep in polar ice…

And one day a ghastly extraterrestrial war-craft comes to Earth, full of deadly super-beings hunting someone called Kal-El…

Full of sly in-joke nods to previous comics, film and TV iterations and littered with those arcane snippets of lore beloved by seasoned fans, this engaging yarn, based on the original screenplay by David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan, adds some depth to the frantic on-screen spectacle and will delight every Superman that loves to curl up with a good book.

© 2013 DC Comics. MAN OF STEEL and all related characters and elements ™ and © DC Comics.

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Superman: Transformed!


By Dan Jurgens, Karl Kesel, David Michelinie, Louise Simonson, Jon Bogdanove, Scott Eaton, Ron Frenz, Tom Grummett, Ron Lim, Paul Ryan, Dennis Janke, José Marzán Jr, Denis Rodier & Josef Rubinstein (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-406-0

The Man of Steel has proven to be all things to most fans during his 75-year existence so, with the character currently undertaking his latest radical shake-up, what better time to spotlight one of the strangest and most controversial refits of Superman ever conceived?  Although largely out of favour these days as all the myriad decades of accrued mythology are inexorably re-assimilated into an overarching all-inclusive multi-media film-favoured continuity, the stripped-down, gritty post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Man of Tomorrow as re-imagined by John Byrne, and marvellously built upon by a succession of immensely talented comics craftsmen, resulted in some stunning highs and lows.

The fan in me loathed this “stunt” at the time, but the seemingly desperate attempt to keep reader attention high at all costs now reads rather well and offers genuine moments of sheer Fight’s ‘n’ Tights magic – especially in the stunning combat sequences….

Almost as soon as the Byrne restart had stripped away much of the mythology and iconography which had grown up around the Strange Visitor from Another World over fifty glorious years, successive creative teams spent a great deal of time and ingenuity putting much of it back, albeit in terms more accessible to a cynical and well-informed audience far more sophisticated than their grandparents ever were.

Thus as a notional tip of the hat to the legendary imaginary story ‘The Amazing Story of Superman–Red and Superman–Blue’! from Superman volume 1, #162, July 1963 this strange transformation occurred…

Collecting Superman volume 2, #119, 122-123, Adventures of Superman #542, 545, Action Comics #729, 732 and Superman: Man of Steel # 64 and 67 (from January and April 1997) this hyper-charged thriller reads best if taken in conjunction with a working knowledge of the characters, but newcomers can soon get up to speed by paying attention to the carefully administered snatches of expository dialogue and the handy “Previously” prose page…

When an inter-cosmic Sun Eater devoured our life-giving star, Earth was plunged into a sudden and catastrophic Big Freeze. The ultimate sacrifice by a hero-turned-villain ended the “Final Night” by reigniting Sol, but not before Superman, unceasingly battling to the limits of his strength, utterly exhausted his body’s solar-charged power and became no more than merely mortal…

Now as ‘Sunburned!’ (Superman #119 by Dan Jurgens, Ron Frenz & Joe Rubenstein) opens, the all-too human Clark Kent at last admits that his abilities are not returning, even as a squad of time-displaced teenagers from a millennium away also struggle to find their proper place…

Man of Tomorrow and Legion of Super-Heroes stumble over each other whilst breaking into Lex Luthor‘s citadel of science and, with the cautious consequence-drenched assistance of the Wickedest Man in the World, borrow a spaceship to take Superman to the Sun and – hopefully – a massive solar booster shot.

The attempt fails and the Metropolis Marvel, forced to fight crime as a powerless mortal, is compelled to take even more drastic measures in Adventures of Superman #542. ‘Power Trip!’ (Karl Kesel, Paul Ryan & José Marzán Jr.) has him turn his secret problem over to the scientists of clandestine Genetic Research Project Cadmus. Unfortunately their facility is in trouble too as spoiled, fun-loving, bratty metahuman genius Misa has infiltrated the factory of wonders with her incredible gadgets, looking to make a little mean-spirited mischief…

After the Project barely survives her devastating pranks, all Security supremo Guardian can do is offer Superman transport to the Antarctic Fortress of Solitude where the former Man of Steel has stored many super-scientific devices from shattered Krypton…

Action Comics #729 follows that voyage to its disastrous conclusion as a massive electrical disturbance brings Superman crashing into the polar vastness far short of his goal. ‘Generator X!’ by David Michelinie, Tom Grummett & Denis Rodier, sees him rescued by research scientists who expected help with their own dilemma – a real job for Superman…

Whilst probing the Earth’s mantle they had unleashed a semi-sentient energy force which was periodically ravaging their base, and even though powerless, Kal-El valiantly led the battle to get rid of it. Tragically the only thing that could hold the ephemeral entity was Superman’s depleted Kryptonian body…

After eventually expelling the energy-beast into space, Superman arrived at his Fortress and rendezvoused with friend and technical advisor Professor Emil Hamilton, but even alien science was unable to fix his power-problems. Moreover, odd electrical anomalies kept occurring. Appliances short-circuited and even the trans-dimensional barrier around the Bottle City of Kandor flickered in un-Superman’s presence…

Suddenly the despondent defender was urgently summoned by New Gods Mister Miracle and Big Barda with a crisis of cosmic proportions that only Superman could handle…

‘Into the Fire!’ (by Louise Simonson, Ron Lim & Dennis Janke from Superman: Man of Steel #64) saw Kal-El help to investigate an uncanny mystery which had smashed the antithetical worlds of Apokolips and New Genesis together and stolen the memories of Metron, God of Knowledge. The incredible solution involved a deadly trip into the heart of our sun which inexplicably restored Superman’s full powers.

Those odd electrical events kept happening though…

The second section of this collection features tales from a few months later – most of the intervening events having been separately collected in Superman vs. The Revenge Squad! – as the annoying sparks and short circuits around the Man of Steel slowly intensify…

Superman #122 revealed ‘The Kandor Connection’ (Jurgens, Frenz & Rubenstein) wherein hyper-powered rebel Ceritak agonises and acts out against his imprisonment. This version of Kandor was an enclave of thousands of alien captives, enslaved by a marauding tyrant named Tolos and penned in a pocket-dimension. Although Superman had liberated Kandor from the intergalactic body-snatcher, he was unable to restore the inhabitants and, after establishing the container in his Fortress, left them alone to forge their own multi-species society in enforced isolation…

Now however as Ceritak’s petulant rages become a menace to everybody, in the outer universe Superman and Lois have come to the Fortress to assess the Man of Steel’s latest symptoms. During a fight against thugs in Metropolis, Superman became intangible and a bystander was wounded by a bullet that passed through, rather than bounced off him…

When it happens again in the Fortress, Superman phases through the impenetrable dimensional walls of Kandor, and Ceritak – seizing a chance in billion – latches on to his energy wake as the hero struggles back to Earth…

Oblivious to the fact, Lois and Clark return to America only to discover something is terribly wrong: Superman is turning into an explosive, out of control generator of deadly lightning…

The calamity continues in ‘Power Crisis!’ (Adventures of Superman #545 by Kesel, Scot Eaton & Marzán Jr.) with the horrified hero blinking in and about of existence, emitting shattering blasts of radiation, materialising all over Earth and agonisingly bombarded by new senses, perceptions and sensations.

Barely able to move without causing disasters, Clark is helpless when delusional maniac Atomic Skull kidnaps Lois. The embattled hero then suffers another terrifying transfiguration – into a blazing being of blue white energy.

Battling the nuclear madman in this state, Superman loses and is apparently dispersed into nothingness…

He recondenses in Antarctica in Action Comics #732, gaining enough control to teleport back to Metropolis in time to team-up with his former adversary and prevent a radioactive catastrophe in ‘The Saving Skull’ (Michelinie, Grummett & Rodier).

Meanwhile the blockbusting Ceritak slowly makes his way towards the city and an inevitable showdown…

The clash came in Superman: Man of Steel #67 and ‘Say Goodbye to That Costume…’ (Simonson, Jon Bogdanove & Janke) as the ferocious fight pits Ceritak – dubbed Scorn by the uncomprehending journalists on the scene – against a blazing energy avatar that used to be Superman.

The monster’s immense strength and speed are easily the equal of the bizarre battery of new abilities exhibited by the mutated Man of Power – electrical blasts, intangibility, magnetic bursts and much more. The pointless, futile fight ultimately leaves Scorn crushed and the Metropolis Marvel on the edge of a final, fatal dispersal…

In Superman #123, with her husband on the verge of extinction, Lois rallies friends and foes alike for a last-ditch attempt to save the valiant voltaic hero. In a desperate race against time and with only Clark’s indomitable willpower holding him together, Hamilton and S.T.A.R. Labs’ chief Kitty Faulkner – suspiciously assisted by Lex Luthor – build a suit to contain and channel those volatile forces.

This allows a ‘Superman… Reborn!’ Jurgens, Frenz & Rubenstein) to begin a new phase in his “Never-ending Struggle” and begin a year of astounding adventures the likes of which fans had never seen.

Clever drama, spectacular action and rollercoaster pace, coupled with the usual high standard of character interplay, all underscore this much-maligned but hugely enjoyable diversion in the amazing life of Superman and this saga is truly deserving of a second look and honest reappraisal.

A British Titan Books edition is also readily available from on-line sellers.
© 1997, 1998 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman Spectacular No. 2


By Cary Bates, Alex Saviuk & Vince Colletta (DC/London Editions)
ISBN: 0-86173-042-9

The Superman album clearly made some impact in Britain (or at least the editors thought it would) and a second volume – also sporting a lushly airbrushed Alan Craddock cover – was produced. Also celebrating the sharp, plot-driven costumed dramas which predominated in the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC universe, this cosmic mystery revenge saga ideally shows how old stories could and should be reinvigorated rather than overwritten…

‘Superman Meets the Zod Squad’ was created by cobbling together Action Comics #548-549 (October and November 1983) into one improbable saga of cosmic vengeance as a race of primordial reivers discovered the remains of Argo City and realised that there was at least one Kryptonian left in the cosmos…

Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El had been born on a city-sized fragment of Krypton, hurled intact into space when the planet exploded. Eventually Argo City turned to Kryptonite like the rest of the detonated world’s debris, and her dying parents, observing Earth through their scopes, sent their daughter to safety as they perished. Landing on Earth, she met the Man of Steel who created for her the identities of Linda Lee and Supergirl, hiding her from the world whilst she learned about her new home and to use astounding abilities in secrecy and safety.

The aliens were Vrangs – savage slavers who had conquered Krypton in ages past: brutally using the primitive populace to mine minerals too toxic for the aliens to handle. The planet’s greatest hero was Val-Lor who died instigating the rebellion which drove the Vrang from Krypton and prompted the birth and rise of the super-scientific civilisation.

All Kryptonians developed an inbred hatred of the Vrang, and when Phantom Zone prisoners Jax-Ur, Professor Va-Kox, Faora Hu-Ul and General Dru-Zod observed their ancestral oppressors from the stark and silent realm of nullity that had been their drearily, unchanging, timeless jail since before Krypton perished, they swore to destroy them.

If their ‘Escape from the Phantom Zone!’ also allowed the Kryptonian outcasts to kill the hated son of the discoverer of the eerie dimension of stultifying intangibility so much the better…

Using the psycho-active properties of Jewel Kryptonite – a post-cataclysm isotope of the very element so poisonous to Vrangs – a quartet of Zoners perpetrate a mass break-out and head to Earth for vengeance… but who is their primary target?

Not long after, Clark Kent, still blithely unaware of his peril, is investigating a new citizens’ defence group that has sprung up in Metropolis in response to a city-wide rash of petty crimes. Even as Zod, Faora, Tyb-Ol and Murkk infiltrate human society and bide their time, the Man of Steel and Lois are most concerned with how the grassroots White Wildcats can afford to police their neighbourhoods with jet-packs and martial arts skills unknown on Earth…

Uncovering militarist order-freak Zod behind the scheme, Superman is astounded when the Kryptonian criminals surrender, offering a truce until their ancient common foes are defeated.

…And that’s when the Vrang teleport the Man of Steel into their ship, exultant that they now possess the mightiest slave in existence. Moreover, there are four more potentially priceless victims hurtling up to attack them, utterly unaware in their blind rage and hatred that the Vrangs have weapon even Kryptonians cannot survive…

This clever, compulsive thriller of cross, double and even triple-cross is a fabulously intoxicating, tension-drenched treat from scripter Cary Bates and illustrated by Alex Saviuk & Colletta that still blends human foible with notions of honour, and shows that even the most reprehensible villains understand the value of sacrifice and the principle of something worth dying for…

Superman has proven to be all things to all fans over his decades of existence, and with the character again undergoing another radical overhaul, these timeless tales of charm and joy and wholesome wit are more necessary than ever: not just as a reminder of great tales of the past but as an all-ages primer of the wonders still to come…
© 1982 DC Comics Inc. This edition © 1982 London Editions Magazines (formerly Egmont Publishing). All Rights Reserved.

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DC Superheroes Presents Superman Spectacular No. 1


By Bob Rozakis, Paul Kupperberg, Adrian Gonzales & Vince Colletta (DC/London Editions)
ISBN: 0-86173-041-0

These days, when maintaining a faux-historical cloak of rational integrity for the made-up worlds comicbooks inhabit is paramount, the saddest casualty of those periodic sweeping changes, upgrades, rationalisations and reboots is the great stories that suddenly “never happened”.

The most painful example of this – for me at least – was the wholesale loss of the entire bizarre and charm-drenched mythology that had evolved around Superman’s birthworld in the wonder years between 1948 and 1985.

Here then, in response to the new Superman film is something not every Kryptonian Kompletist may be treasuring in his vault: a canonical pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Man of Steel yarn which didn’t appear in the regular runs of Superman or Action Comics, packed with all the gloriously convoluted lore, wry wit and all-ages thrills which for decades made the Man of Tomorrow indisputably the most recognisable comics character on Earth.

This extra-sized tale was actually devised by American creators for the European market as Superman Album series #1 (cover-dated Januar 1982 und pronounzed mit ein deutsche achzent, iff you pliss), printed in what was then West Germany by Ehapa Verlag.

It subsequently appeared in the USA as an English-language edition in a large (212 x 397mm) one-off paperback album in American convenience chains like 7-11 later that year. In Britain, where London Editions then held a DC reprint license, producing a wonderfully eclectic black-&-white anthology The Superheroes Monthly (with painted covers by the likes of Alan Craddock, David Jackson, Bryan Talbot and Brian Bolland), the tale was released as a similarly sized, full-colour edition to rack beside such beloved European imports as Asterix and Tintin.

In case you’re wondering: it was printed in Germany, presumably by simply replacing the black plate of the four-colour print process with one that had the lettering in English.

The ‘Startling Saga of Superman-Red & Superman-Blue!’ was scripted by Paul Kupperberg from a Bob Rozakis plot and illustrated by Adrian Gonzales & Vince Colletta, with the legendary Julius Schwartz in editorial command as always.

The bombastic battle royale was based on a much-beloved imaginary story by Leo Dorfman, Curt Swan & George Klein from Superman #162, July 1963, adroitly co-opted into the mainstream continuity to beef up the ominous if ill-starred alliance of arch nemesis Lex Luthor with space owlhoot Terra-Man.

(This last was conceived during the period when costumed heroes were in decline during the early 1970s. The Deep Space Desperado resembled a space-age Clint Eastwood in Spaghetti Western mode. He was a Wild West bandit’s son shanghaied into space. After eventually killing his kidnapper, the young man returned to Earth only to discover a century had passed. The furious outcast of infinity had already adapted his purloined extraterrestrial technology to accommodate his childhood antecedents and decided to drive aliens such as Superman off “his” planet forever…)

This intergalactic grudge match opens as Luthor invades a Daily Planet story conference to challenge Superman to another fight. The resulting clash goes badly for the criminal genius, however, even though he has devised an entirely new form of energy weapon to destroy his alien antithesis…

Meanwhile in space, solitary star rider Terra-Man has finally found a chunk of Kryptonite. He had long heard stories that the rare radioactive remnant was fatal to Superman, and now believes the end of his vendetta against the extraterrestrial squatter on his home range is near.

He should have listened more closely to the stories, though, as the shard he holds is red, not green…

Wary of being beaten again, Terra-Man contacts Luthor and proposes a combined attack, but doesn’t trust his new partner enough to hand over the radioactive space rock…

On Earth Superman is renewing his oft-postponed romance with Lois Lane when Terra-Man attacks, and after deflecting the initial assault is lured into orbit where the menacing mineral is secreted.

From his hiding place Luthor can only watch in horror as the Red K (which produced not radiation poisoning and death but temporary mutagenic effects on Kryptonians) divided the Man of Steel into twins in primarily blue or red uniforms…

It wasn’t a complete disaster, however, as each of the pair seemed to be missing some of Superman’s vast array of powers…

Frantically regrouping, Luthor and Terra-Man deduced what had happened, and as Clark Kent endured confusion at work with a brace of himself tripping over each other, the vile villains plotted to use their conventional resources and Lex’s new discovery to destroy their foe(s).

With double the super manpower, “Red” and “Blue” begin cleaning all the trouble spots on Earth and discover a new crisis: an inter-dimensional rift threatening to consume the world. The mystery of Luthor’s new energy source is revealed – the madman has tapped magical forces from another plane of existence and weaponised it to kill his arch foe, regardless of the potential for universal cataclysm…

As Supermans Red and Blue move to quell the threat, they find one more quandary confronting them: each is only half as powerful as the whole hero. When the divided defenders split up to battle Terra-Man and Luthor, this tragic deficiency causes the Crimson Crusader’s “death” with the collateral catastrophe of Lois felled by Luthor’s lethal magic weapon…

And at that very moment the Red K effect faded and the one true Man of Tomorrow was reborn…

Once upon a time smart, affecting absorbing drama and wild-eyed adventure such as this was the bread-and-butter of comics. For decades, new exploits and dangers were created – sometime three of four times a month – with characters operating seamlessly in a shared milieu that wasn’t obsessed with incessantly mining and refining the hero’s origin or shockingly revealing lost or evil relatives like some spandex-bedecked cheap soap opera. And they frequently began and ended in one issue…

This tale is a delicious example from the dying days of that era and perfectly shows us what we’re missing today…
© 1982 DC Comics Inc. This edition © 1982 London Editions Magazines (formerly Egmont Publishing). All Rights Reserved.

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Superman


By Otto Binder, Jerry Coleman, Bill Finger, Edmond Hamilton, Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye (Four Square/New English Library)
ISBN: 1757

I’ve often bored anyone who would listen about the mini-publishing revolution during the “Camp” superhero-crazed 1960s, which first saw previously denigrated four-colour comic stories migrate from cheap, flimsy pamphlet to the stiffened covers and relative respectability of paperback bookshelves.

I can’t express the sheer nostalgic elation these mostly forgotten fancies still afford (to me at least) so, just because I want to, here’s one that probably qualifies as one of my absolute top three, just in time to cash in on the new Superman film.

Silver Age readers – we just thought of ourselves as “kids” – buying Superman, Action Comics, Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, World’s Finest Comics and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen (not forgetting Superboy, Adventure Comics and Justice League of America) would delight every time some fascinating snippet of information leaked out. We spent our days filling in the impossible blanks about incredible alien worlds (America as much as Krypton) through the enthralling, thrilling yarns in those halcyon treasures. But somehow when the tales appeared in proper books it made the dream realms a little more substantial; and perhaps even real…

The Man of Steel has proven to be all things to all fans over his 75-year existence and, with the character currently undergoing yet another radical overhaul, these fabulous gems of charm and joy and wholesome wit are more welcome than ever: not just as a reminder of grand times past but also as an all-ages primer for wonders still to come…

At the time this British edition of the New American Library edition was published, the Action Ace was enjoying a youthful swell of revived interest. Thanks to the TV Batman-led boom in superheroes generally and a highly efficient global licensing push, Superman was starring in a new television cartoon show, enjoying a rampant merchandising wave and had even secured his own Broadway musical: all working to keep the Last Son of Krypton a vibrant icon of modern, Space-Age America.

Although we might think of Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s iconic invention as the epitome of comicbook chic, the plain truth is that within months of his landmark 1938 launch in Action Comics #1, Superman had already grown into a multimedia star. Far more people have enjoyed the Man of Steel than have ever read his illustrated exploits and yes, that does include the globally syndicated newspaper strips which have existed since 1939.

By the time his 25th anniversary rolled around he had been a regular on radio, appeared in an eponymous novel by George Lowther and stunned audiences in a series of astounding animated cartoons.

In 1948 and 1950 he starred in a brace of live-action movie serials (Superman and Atom Man vs. Superman) before graduating to a full-length feature in 1951’s Superman and the Mole Men which led in turn to a groundbreaking and long-running television series.

He was a perennial success for toy and puzzle manufacturers and, after six seasons of The Adventures of Superman, an almost seamless succession of TV cartoons began with The New Adventures of Superman in 1966.

In his future were more TV shows (Superboy, Lois & Clark and Smallville), a franchise of stellar movies and, once they’d been invented, computer and video game incarnations. Even super-dog Krypto got in on the small-screen act…

This terrific little black and white paperback pocket book – part of National Periodical Publications’ on-going efforts to reach wider reading audiences – surfaced in 1967 during the “Camp” superhero craze, re-presenting five reformatted Superman stories culled from the archives illustrated by signature illustrator Wayne Boring and all inked by regular collaborator Stan Kaye.

At this time many American comics publishers used the “Batman Bounce” to get out of their ghetto and onto “proper” bookshelves, however understandably DC concentrated most of their efforts on comics compilations and prose novels starring the Dynamic Duo…

The wholesome intrigue and breathtaking fantasy commence here with ‘The Invulnerable Enemy’ written by Otto Binder, and originally seen in Action Comics #226 (March 1957) wherein archaeologists uncovered the statue of a giant gladiator. Further excavation revealed the colossus to be a petrified alien crashed to Earth in ages past. When the Man of Steel brought the unmoving artefact to Metropolis an incredible accident caused by Lex Luthor brought the giant back to life.

The revived relic went on a rampage of destruction with powers even Superman could not cope with until, forced to use wits instead of muscles, the harried hero solved his dilemma and returned the marooned monolith to his proper place…

During the 1950s, even as his comicbook back-story was expanded and elaborated, the Metropolis Marvel had settled into a remarkably ordered existence. Nothing could really hurt him, nothing ever changed, and sheer excitement seemed in short supply. With the TV show concentrating on action, DC’s Comics Code-hamstrung scripters increasingly concentrated on supplying wonder, intrigue, imagination, a few laughs and, whenever possible, drama and pathos…

‘Superman’s 3 Mistakes!’ (by Edmond Hamilton from Superman #105, May 1956) provided both personal revelation and tense suspense when ClarkKent received an anonymous letter which declared that the writer knew his secret. Forced to review his past for cases which might expose evidence of his alter ego, Kent carefully excised all errors but could not learn the identity of his potential blackmailer until a second post-dated letter surfaced…

Superman #127 (February 1959) saw the debut of a hugely popular returning menace in ‘Titano the Super-Ape!’ The chimpanzee had mutated into a gigantic ape with Kryptonite vision after being shot into space, and upon his return caused massive destruction with only Lois Lane able to sooth savage ravages.

Again the Man of Might had to resort to brains not brawn to solve the crisis in a true classic of the period, courtesy of Binder, Boring & Kaye’s sublime treatment which combined action and sentiment to superb effect in a memorable homage to King Kong.

‘The Menace of Cosmic Man’ was a sharp mystery with political overtones written by Bill Finger (Action Comics #258, November 1959) wherein an impoverished European dictatorship improbably announced it had its own all-powerful costumed champion; drawing Lois and Clark into a potentially deadly covert investigation, after which this riot of reformatted revels concludes with ‘The Menace of Red-Green Kryptonite!’ (Jerry Coleman, Action #275, April 1961).

Guest-starring Supergirl, this uncanny conundrum featured a bizarre battle between Superman and alien marauder Brainiac, whose latest weapon combined two isotopes of the deadly radioactive remnants of Krypton to produce a truly weird transformation and inexplicable behavioural changes in the embattled Man of Tomorrow…

Superman has proven to be all things to all fans over his decades of existence and, with the character currently undergoing another overhaul, these peerless parables of power and glory are more welcome than ever: not just as memorial to what has been but also as a benchmark for future tales to aspire to…

This book is probably impossible to find today – even though entirely worth the effort – but whatever format or collection you happen upon, such forgotten stories of the immortal Superman are part of our cultural comics heritage and should never be lost.

You owe it to yourself to know them…
© 1956, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1966 National Periodical Publications. All rights reserved.

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Superman: The Return of Superman


By Dan Jurgens, Karl Kesel, Jerry Ordway, Louise Simonson, Roger Stern & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-2-56289-149-6

Although largely out of favour these days as all the myriad decades of Superman mythology are inexorably re-assimilated into one overarching all-inclusive multi-media Film-favoured DC continuity, the stripped-down, gritty post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Man of Steel as re-imagined by John Byrne, and marvellously built upon by a succession of immensely talented comics craftsmen, resulted in some genuine comics classics.

Most significant of them was a three-pronged story-arc which saw the martyrdom, loss, replacement and inevitable resurrection of the World’s Greatest Superhero in a stellar saga which broke all records and proved that a jaded general public still cared about the venerable, veteran icon of Truth, Justice and the American Way.

The dramatic events also provided a spectacular springboard for a resurgent burst of new characters who revitalised and reinvigorated more than one ailing franchise over the next decade…

This final landmark collection features material which originally appeared in Action Comics #687-691, Superman: the Man of Steel #22-26, Superman #78-82 and Adventures of Superman #500-505, plus Green Lantern volume 3 #46, spanning cover-dates June-October 1993 and originally published as the braided mega-saga “Reign of the Supermen”.

Written by Dan Jurgens, Karl Kesel, Louise Simonson & Roger Stern with art by Jon Bogdanove, Tom Grummett, Jackson Guice, Jurgens, Brett Breeding, Doug Hazlewood, Dennis Janke & Denis Rodier, it details the stunning events which led up to the resurrection and return of the one and only Man of Tomorrow – although just who that might be was the subject of much debate at the time…

After a brutal rampage across Middle America a mysterious monster dubbed Doomsday had only been stopped in the heart of Metropolis by an overwhelming and fatal effort on Superman’s part.

Dying at the scene, the fallen hero’s body was the subject of many legal battles before it was ostensibly laid to rest in a tomb in Metropolis’ Centennial Park. However as Earth adjusted to a World Without a Superman rumours began to circulate that, like Elvis, the Man of Tomorrow was not dead…

It all began with a series of teaser ‘First Sightings’ (from Adventures of Superman #500) as, across America, four very different individuals appeared, saving lives and performing good deeds as only the departed defender could.

Then events start to properly unfold in ‘Born Again’ (Action #687 by Stern, Guice & Rodier) as scientists in Antarctica experienced unnatural power manifestations whilst, deep below the polar crust in the Fortress of Solitude, a confused creature more energy than matter manifested.

The bizarre being remembered dying in battle against Doomsday and, after flicking across the world in an eye-blink to explore an empty tomb in Metropolis, it reasonably concluded he was Superman reborn through Kryptonian technology…

He was however much reduced and changed. Unable to covert solar radiation into strength, he was so painfully sensitive to light he had to wear a protective visor. This Man of Tomorrow only manipulated energy and, after returning to Metropolis to resume his “never-ending battle” against chaos and injustice, soon displayed a callous disregard for the humans he protected when he executed a rapist and crippled a car-jacker…

The “Dirty Harry with a cape” soon attracted the attention of apparently benevolent billionaire Lex Luthor II (actually the wicked original in a cloned body) and Supergirl, but received his most telling confirmation when he met Lois Lane and disclosed things only Clark Kent could know…

In Man of Steel #22, ordinary construction worker John Henry Irons – who had been saved by Superman in the past – felt compelled to carry on the hero’s mission and built a high-tech suit of armour to facilitate his crusade. ‘Steel’, by Simonson, Bogdanove & Janke, found the urban inventor cleaning up the streets of Metropolis and searching for a gang who used a deadly new form of super-gun dubbed “toastmasters” – a weapon Irons had designed in another life…

Tracking the munitions enabled him to save the life of a fortune-teller and brought him into savage conflict with White Rabbit – a new criminal major player in the city – but life only got more complicated the morning after, when Psychic Rosie went on TV claiming Steel was possessed by the unquiet soul of Superman…

Superman # 78 (by Jurgens & Breeding) offered another apparent pretender. ‘Alive’ saw a Superman grotesquely bonded with mechanical appendages raid the top-secret genetics lab Cadmus Project to take the comatose Doomsday from rogue Director Paul Westfield, before dispatching the deadly mystery monster into deep space where no Earthly agency could exploit it.

When the partially amnesiac Cyborg-Superman subsequently met Lois, her suspicions were shockingly quelled by the few facts he could recall: the name Kent, a farm in Kansas, his feelings for her…

And when she took him to see maverick inventor Emil Hamilton, the Action Ace’s personal scientific advisor pronounced the bionic additions to be Kryptonian machines whilst the fleshly parts of the modern Prometheus comprised Superman’s unique DNA…

The final contender for the S-shield cropped up in Adventures of Superman #501 as ‘…When He Was a Boy!’ by Kesel, Grummett & Hazlewood revealed the secret history of a brash and cocky kid who wore an adaptation of the Man of Tomorrow’s outfit and claimed to be a clone of the deceased hero, escaped from Cadmus.

After alienating everybody at the Daily Planet the horny, inexperienced juvenile latched onto ambitious journalist – and hottie – Tana Moon and fell under the spell of corrupt media mogul Vinnie Edge. Soon the kid was fighting crime live on TV to boost ratings…

As the world reeled from news that their defender was back, the fallen champion’s intimates and enemies were forced to wonder which – if any – of the newcomers was the real deal…

After hard-line hero Guy Gardner clashed with the visored energy Superman in Action #688, the former Green Lantern determined that the Kryptonian vigilante’s brutal treatment of offenders in ‘An Eye for an Eye’ (Stern, Guice & Rodier) proved that, even if he wasn’t exactly like the old guy, he was the kind of champion criminals deserved to meet.

In Man of Steel #22 (Simonson, Bogdanove & Janke), the spiritual successor of Superman barely survived an insidious ‘Ambush!’ Even with Toastmasters, street-gang the Sharks proved no match for Steel’s armoured might, but after a contentious clash of wills with the juvenile Krypton clone, Irons met White Rabbit and discovered she was an old flame from his Army weapons building days.

Caught off-guard he almost perished until “Don’t-call-me-Super BOY” flashed in to rescue him…

Jurgens & Breeding took an experimental tack in Superman #79 as Daily Planet reporter Ronald Troupe reviewed all the facts on the quartet of newcomers in ‘Prove It.’ After the Cyborg crusader spectacularly saved President Clinton from assassination he – and the Federal Government – could reach only one conclusion…

Meanwhile in Adventures of Superman #502, ‘Boy Meets Girl’ (Kesel, Grummett & Hazlewood) followed the impetuous clone as he clashed with – and perved over – Supergirl before tangling with hired gun Stinger, commissioned by Vinnie Edge to perk up the viewing figures whatever the collateral costs…

Action and mystery expanded exponentially in #689’s ‘Who is the True Hero?’ by Stern, Guice & Rodier. Metropolis reeled from the devastation caused by the clone’s clash with Stinger, with Supergirl and the horrified kid frantically saving survivors, whilst in the Antarctic Fortress a fifth Superman emerged from a Kryptonian regeneration matrix…

Although barely stronger than an ordinary human, the reborn Kal-El quickly began catching up on what had happened since his demise, courtesy of the battery of alien machines in the icy citadel…

Back in Metropolis the merciless avenging Superman cataclysmically clashed with his ethical opposite Steel with Lois and Jimmy Olsen utterly unable to calm them down.

The combat carried over into Man of Steel #23, but the furious heroes were blithely unaware that an horrific alien conqueror was approaching Earth in ‘Impact!’ by Simonson, Bogdanove & Janke. Also oblivious to the impending disaster, the forces of Luthor and White Rabbit bloodily battled for control of the city…

‘Deadly Alliance’ (Jurgens & Breeding) in Superman #80 found Earth’s authorities made too-suddenly aware of the alien intruder. They responded by sending the Caped Cyborg to intercept it.

En route the officially recognised hero joined forces with his energy-based alternate – only to kill him and allow 77,000 space mines to explosively erase Coast City and its seven million inhabitants from the face of the planet.

As the planet shuddered the invader was revealed as cosmic conqueror Mongul – but nobody on Earth knew he was simply a pawn and the devoted servant of the Cyborg…

The drama kicked into overdrive in Adventures of Superman #503, with ‘Line of Fire!’ (Kesel, Grummett & Hazlewood) showing the bionic betrayer eradicating survivors before luring the clone to ground zero and disposing of him as he had the Avenger, whilst in Antarctica the merely mortal Kal-El climbed into a Kryptonian war-suit and headed for the disaster zone…

‘Lies & Revelations’ (Action #690, by Stern, Guice & Rodier) saw the visored vigilante framed for the mass destruction by Cyborg Superman and Mogul as they sought to divert the attention of the Justice League and Earth’s other heroes.

The allies-in-atrocity had a plan and a timetable. Planning to raze Metropolis too, they would construct colossal world-moving engines in the craters and turn the planet into a War-World capable of dominating the galaxy and populated by the army of extraterrestrial soldiers they had amassed…

As Kal-El approached his hometown and the site of the next horrific Engine City, in Antarctica the swiftly-fading visored vigilante learned his true origins at last and, re-energised, headed back to the remains of Coast City…

Man of Steel #24 featured ‘The Return!’ (Simonson, Bogdanove & Janke) as Super-clone broke free and attempted to warn the world, even as Steel and Supergirl intercepted the war-suited warrior and discovered that the one true Metropolis Marvel was back …

Superman #81 ‘Resurrections’ (Jurgens & Breeding) revealed the secret origin of the Cyborg and his pact with Mongul, as Kal-El, Steel, Supergirl and the Superboy rocketed to California and a desperate ‘Assault on Engine City!’ (Adventures of Superman #504 Kesel, Grummett & Hazlewood)

It all culminated in a cross-continental chase and the clone kid seemingly sacrificing himself to destroy the city-smashing space-ordinance in the skies above Metropolis…

Action #691 revealed the heroes’ late-arriving and extremely angry ‘Secret Weapon’ (Stern, Guice & Rodier) just as the war in Engine City roared to a blockbusting climax, after which ‘Blast Off!’ (Man of Steel #25, Simonson, Bogdanove & Janke) saw Kal fall to the merciless fists of Mongul as John Henry used his own armoured body to wreck the heart of Engine City…

Such an epic storyline naturally had repercussions outside Superman continuity and Green Lantern #46 intersected with the ongoing epic. GL Hal Jordan was a Coast City native and his inability to save his home, family and friends shattered him. (In fact these events would lead to his becoming manic mad mass-murderer Parallax and destroying the entire Green Lantern Corps – but that’s a tale for another tome…)

Arriving in ‘Death City’ (by Gerard Jones, M.D. Bright & Romeo Tanghal) just as Mongul prepared to deliver a killing blow, the Emerald Avenger saved Kal before venting all his wrath on the genocidal monster.

This savage assault allowed the restored Caped Kryptonian to reclaim his name and save the world once again in Superman #82’s ‘Back for Good’ (Jurgens & Breeding)… but only after one of his well-meaning pretenders surrendered everything he was…

This Earth-shattering epic winds down with a brace of excepts designed to re-establish the natural order, beginning with the first two pages of ‘Reign of the Superman’ (from Adventures of Superman #505 by Kesel, Grummett & Hazlewood) as the one and only Superman at last returns to his grieving widow, before ‘Epilog: …And Who, Disguised as Clark Kent’ (from Action #692 courtesy of Stern, Guice & Rodier) clears up the last little details by “finding” the mild-mannered reporter in the subterranean basement he had been trapped in since Doomsday’s rampage through Metropolis months previously.

This powerful if ponderous epic perfectly embodies all the human drama and cosmic spectacle of the Superman mythology: evocative, tense, drenched in action and spilling over with great ideas and characters

This enthralling classic served as a valuable and necessary expansion of the legend, introducing a plethora of Supermen in a bold and long-term push to revitalise the venerable franchise, whilst the positively manic public interest beyond the world of comics took everyone by surprise and made the Man of Tomorrow as vital and vibrant a sensation as he was in the earliest days of his creation.

Best of all, it looks beautiful and reads great.

Together with the previous two volumes in this truly magnificent triptych, this saga is possibly the greatest Superman story ever told. What more do you need to know?
© 1993 DC Comics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman Chronicles volumes 1 and 2

New revised reviews

By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0764-9 & 978-1-4012-1215-5

It’s incontrovertible: the American comicbook industry – if it existed at all – would have been an utterly unrecognisable thing without Superman. His unprecedented invention and adoption by a desperate and joy-starved generation gave birth to an entire genre if not an actual art form.

Superman spawned an inconceivable army of imitators and variations, and within three years of his 1938 debut, the intoxicating blend of eye-popping action and social wish-fulfilment which hallmarked the early Man of Steel had grown to encompass cops-and-robbers crime-busting, socially reforming dramas, science fiction, fantasy, whimsical comedy and, once the war in Europe and the East finally involved America, patriotic relevance for a host of gods, heroes and monsters, all dedicated to profit through exuberant, eye-popping excess and vigorous dashing derring-do.

Now with moviegoers again anticipating a new cinematic interpretation of the ultimate immigrant tale here’s my chance to once more highlight perhaps the most authentic of the many delightful versions of his oft-reprinted early tales.

Re-presenting the epochal run of raw, unpolished but viscerally vibrant stories by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster which set the funnybook world on fire, here – in as near-as-dammit the texture, smell and colour of the original newsprint – are the crude, rough, uncontrollable wish-fulfilling, cathartically exuberant exploits of a righteous and superior man dealing out summary justice equally to social malcontents, exploitative capitalists, thugs and ne’er-do-wells that initially captured the imagination of a generation.

The first of these oft-covered recollections of the primal Man of Steel – printed in chronological order – features the groundbreaking yarns from Action Comics #1 through #13 (June 1938 – June 1939) and his pivotal appearance from New York’s World Fair No. 1 (also June 1939) before comicbook history is made with the landmark first issue of his own solo title.

Most of the early tales were untitled, but for everyone’s convenience have been given descriptive appellations by the editors. Thus after describing the foundling’s escape from exploding Planet Krypton and explaining his astonishing powers in nine panels, with absolutely no preamble the wonderment begins with ‘Superman: Champion of the Oppressed!’ as the costumed crusader -masquerading by day as reporter Clark Kent – began averting numerous tragedies.

As well as saving an innocent woman from the Electric Chair and roughing up a wife beater, the tireless crusader worked over racketeer Butch Matson – consequently saving feisty colleague Lois Lane from abduction and worse – and outed a lobbyist for the armaments industry who was bribing Senators on behalf of greedy munitions interests fomenting war in Europe…

The next breathtaking instalment in Action #2 (July 1938) saw the mercurial mystery-man travelling to the war-zone to spectacularly dampen down the hostilities already in progress in ‘Revolution in San Monte Pt 2’ before ‘The Blakely Mine Disaster’ found the Man of Steel responding to a coal-mine cave-in to expose corrupt corporate practises before cleaning up gamblers who ruthless fixed games and players in #4’s ‘Superman Plays Football’.

The Action Ace’s untapped physical potential was highlighted in the next issue as ‘Superman and the Dam’ pitted the human dynamo against the power of a devastating natural disaster, after which in #6 canny chiseller Nick Williams attempted to monetise the hero – without asking first. ‘Superman’s Phony Manager’ even attempted to replace the real thing with a cheap knock-off but quickly learned a very painful lesson in ethics…

Although Superman featured on the first cover the staid and cautious editors were initially dubious about the alien strongman’s popular appeal and preferred more traditional genre scenes for the following issues (all by Leo E. O’Mealia and all included here).

Superman’s (and Joe Shuster’s) second cover appeared on Action Comics #7 (December 1938) and prompted a big jump in sales as a riotous romp inside revealed why ‘Superman Joins the Circus’ as the caped crusader crushed racketeers taking over the Big Top. Fred Guardineer then produced general genre covers for #8 and 9 whilst the interiors saw ‘Superman in the Slums’ working to save young delinquents from a future life of crime and depravity and latterly featured the city cops’ disastrous decision to stop the costumed vigilante’s unsanctioned interference in ‘Wanted: Superman’.

That manhunt ended in an uncomfortable stalemate…

Action #7 had been one of the highest-selling issues ever, so #10 again sported a stunning Shuster shot whilst Siegel’s smart story of ‘Superman Goes to Prison’ struck another telling blow against institutionalised injustice with the Man of Tomorrow infiltrating and exposing the brutal horrors of the State Chain Gangs.

Action Comics #11 featured a maritime cover by Guardineer as inside heartless conmen were driving investors to penury and suicide before the caped crimebuster interceded in ‘Superman and the “Black Gold” Swindle’.

Guardineer’s cover of magician hero Zatara on Action #12 incorporated another landmark as the Man of Steel was given a cameo badge declaring he was inside each and every issue, even as inside ‘Superman Declares War on Reckless Drivers’ provided a hard-hitting tale of casual joy-riders, cost-cutting automobile manufacturers, corrupt lawmakers and dodgy car salesmen who all felt the wrath of the hero after a friend of Clark Kent was killed in a hit-&-run incident.

By now the editors had realised that the debut of Superman had propelled National Comics to the forefront of the fledgling industry, and in 1939 the company was licensed to produce a commemorative comicbook celebrating the opening of the New York World’s Fair, with the Man of Tomorrow topping the bill on the appropriately titled New York World’s Fair Comics among such early DC four-colour stars as Zatara, Butch the Pup, Gingersnap and The Sandman.

Following an inspirational cover by Sheldon Mayer, ‘Superman at the World’s Fair’, by Siegel & Shuster, described how Clark and Lois were dispatched to cover the gala event giving the mystery man an opportunity to contribute his own exhibit and bag a bunch of brutal bandits to boot…

Back in Action Comics #13 (June 1939 and another Shuster cover) the road-rage theme of the previous issue continued as ‘Superman vs. the Cab Protective League’ pitted the tireless foe of felons against a murderous gang trying to take over the city’s taxi companies. The tale also introduced – in almost invisibly low key – The Man of Steel’s first great nemesis – The Ultra-Humanite…

This initial compilation concludes with a truncated version of Superman #1. This was because the first solo-starring comicbook in history actually reprinted the earliest tales from Action, supplemented with new and recovered material – and that alone is featured here.

Behind the iconic Shuster cover the first episode was at last printed in full, describing the alien foundling’s escape from exploding Planet Krypton, his childhood with unnamed Earthling foster parents and journey to the big city. Also included in those six pages (cut from Action Comics #1 and restored for Superman #1) was the Man of Steel’s routing of a lynch mob and capture of the real killer which preceded his spectacular saving of the accused murderess that started the legend…

Rounding off the unseen treasures is the solo page ‘Scientific Explanation of Superman’s Amazing Strength!’, a 2-page prose adventure of the Caped Crime-crusher, a biographical feature on Siegel & Shuster and a glorious Shuster pin-up from Superman #1’s back cover.

 

Superman Chronicles volume Two resumes the power-packed procession featuring the high- (leaping-but-not-yet) flying hero in tales from Action Comics #14-20 (July 1939-January 1940) and issues #2-3 of his 64 page solo spectaculars; cover-dated Fall and Winter 1939 respectively.

Sporting a Guardineer Zatara cover, Action #14 saw the return of the premier money-mad scientist in ‘Superman Meets the Ultra-Humanite’ wherein the mercenary malcontent switch from incessant graft, corruption and murder to an obsessive campaign to destroy the Man of Tomorrow.

Whilst Shuster concentrated on the interior epic ‘Superman on the High Seas’ – wherein the heroic hurricane tackled sub-sea pirates and dry land gangsters – Guardineer illustrated an aquatic Superman cover for #15, as well as the Foreign Legion cover on Action #16 wherein ‘Superman and the Numbers Racket’ saw the hero save an embezzler from suicide and disrupt another wicked gambling cabal.

By #16 sales figures confirmed that whenever the big guy appeared up-front issues sold out and, inevitably, Superman assumed that pole position for decades to come from #19 onwards.

Superman’s rise was meteoric and inexorable. He was the indisputable star of Action, plus his own dedicated title; a daily newspaper strip had begun on 16th January 1939, with a separate Sunday strip following from November 5th of that year, which was garnering millions of new fans. A thrice-weekly radio serial was in the offing and would launch on February 12th 1940. With games, toys, a newspaper strip and a growing international media presence, Superman was swiftly becoming everybody’s hero…

The second issue of the Man of Tomorrow’s own title opened with ‘The Comeback of Larry Trent’ – a stirring human drama wherein the Action Ace cleared the name of the broken heavyweight boxer, coincidentally cleaning the scum out of the fight game, and followed by ‘Superman Champions Universal Peace!’ wherein the hero crushed a gang who had stolen the world’s deadliest poison gas weapon, once more going up against unscrupulous munitions manufacturers.

‘Superman and the Skyscrapers’ found Kent investigating suspicious deaths in the construction industry, leading his alter ego into confrontation with mindless thugs and their fat-cat corporate boss, after which a Superman text tale ended the issue.

Action Comics #17 featured ‘The Return of the Ultra-Humanite’ in a viciously homicidal caper involving extortion and the wanton sinking of US ships and featured a classic Shuster Super-cover as the Man of Steel was awarded all the odd-numbered issues for his attention-grabbing playground.

That didn’t last long: after Guardineer’s last adventure cover – an aerial dog fight – on #18 and which masked into ‘Superman’s Super-Campaign’ as both Kent and Superman determined to crush a merciless blackmailer, Superman just appeared on the front every month from #19, which found the city temporarily in the grip of a deadly epidemic created by the Ultra-Humanite in ‘Superman and the Purple Plague’.

Only the first and last strips from Superman #3 are in this volume, as the other two were reprints of Action #5 and 6.

‘Superman and the Runaway’ however offered a gripping, shockingly uncompromising expose of corrupt orphanages, after which Lois went out on a date with hapless Clark simply because she needed to get closer to a gang of murderous smugglers. Happily his hidden alter ego was on hand to rescue her in the bombastic gang-busting ‘Superman and the Jewel Smugglers’…

This incredible panorama of torrid tales ends with ‘Superman and the Screen Siren’ from Action #20 (January 1940) as beautiful actress Delores Winters was revealed not as another sinister super-scientific megalomaniac but the latest tragic victim and organic hideaway of the Ultra-Humanite who had perfected his greatest horror… brain transplant surgery!

Although the gaudy burlesque of monsters and super-villains still lay years ahead of our hero, these primitive captivating tales of corruption, disaster and social injustice are just as engrossing and speak powerfully of the tenor of the times. The perilous parade of rip-roaring action, hoods, masterminds, plagues, disasters, lost kids and distressed damsels are all dealt with in a direct and captivating manner by our relentlessly entertaining champion in summarily swift and decisive fashion.

No continued stories here!

As fresh and thrilling now as they ever were, these endlessly re-readable epics are perfectly housed in these glorious paperback collections where the savage intensity and sly wit still shine through in Siegel’s stories – which literally defined what being a Super Hero means – whilst Shuster created the basic iconography for all others to follow.

Such Golden Age tales are priceless enjoyment at an absurdly affordable price and in a durable, comfortingly approachable format. What dedicated comics fan could possibly resist them?

As well as cheap price and no-nonsense design and presentation, and notwithstanding the historical significance of the material presented within, the most important bonus for any one who hasn’t read some or all of these tales before is that they are all astonishingly well-told and engrossing mini-epics that cannot fail to grip the reader.

In a world where Angels With Dirty Faces, Bringing Up Baby and The Front Page are as familiar to our shared cultural consciousness as the latest episode of Dr Who or Downton Abbey, the dress, manner and idiom in these near-seventy-five-year-old stories can’t jar or confuse. They are simply timeless, enthralling, and great.

Once read you’ll understand why today’s creators keep returning to this material every time they need to revamp the big guy. They are simply timeless, enthralling, and great.

© 1938, 1939, 1940, 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Trinity volume 1


By Kurt Busiek, Fabian Nicieza, Mark Bagley, Scott McDaniel, Tom Derenick, Jerry Ordway & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2277-2

DC’s mythologizing of its most renowned character properties saw their ultimate expression in the ambitious if overly-convoluted year-long publishing event Trinity which revealed the unexpected cosmic significance of the relationship between Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.

The series explored the metaphysical underpinnings of the DC Universe through 52 weekly instalments, split into a lead chapter with a connected ancillary episode intended to ultimately combine into a complex web of narrative encompassing the entire multiversal cosmos.

This initial volume – of three, natch – collects issues #1-17 of the omniversal odyssey (from June to October 2008) and was conceived and written by Kurt Busiek, with Fabian Nicieza co-scripting the sidebar stories. The art on the primaries was by Mark Bagley& Art Thibert, with Scott McDaniel, Tom Derenick, Mike Norton and others tag-teaming on the back-ups…

The reality-busting drama begins with ‘Boys and their Games…’ in the heart of the cosmos where an ancient, immensely powerful and obsessive being struggles to break free of a vast all-encompassing prison. Meanwhile in Keystone City, as their heroic associates take care of the usual distractions, old friends Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince meet for breakfast and discuss the distressing fact that they have all been enduring the same disturbing dreams of a monster escaping its imprisonment…

The first back-up tale ‘In the Morrows to Come’, by Busiek, Nicieza, McDaniel & Andy Owens, casts a light on Castle Branek where dark witch Morgaine Le Fey is accosted by a mysterious mortal dubbed Enigma who offers her the chance to rewrite Reality in her favour, tempting her with glimpses of other Earths and unfamiliar heroes. The first thing they need to do, however, is find a third co-conspirator and then seek out and capture a young girl with a strange knack for reading Tarot cards…

As the conspirators’ plans come together, reality begins to warp and wobble around Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman in ‘A Personal Best at Giant Robot Smashing’ (Busiek, Bagley & Thibert) but the heroes are proving remarkably resilient in the face of the bizarre and deadly outbreaks. Things are tougher for Green Lantern John Stewart in ‘It’s Gonna Throw the Car’ (Busiek, Nicieza, Derenick & Wayne Faucher) as alien powerhouse Konvikt and his diminutive mouthpiece and legal advocate Graak crash to Earth and go on a rampage.

Before long the unstoppable ETs are thrashing the entire Justice League in ‘Kplow’ (Busiek, Bagley & Thibert) and only the big three are left to stop them… until the big bruiser decks Superman… Meanwhile ‘Earth to Rita’ (Busiek, Nicieza, Norton & Jerry Ordway) reveals how street Tarot reader Marguerita Covas starts getting some very strange readings even as she realises her predictions have been misused by a local gangbanger.

However when the superstitious thug tries to abduct Rita to secure her exclusive services, concerned citizen Jose Delgado steps in too late and finds her dazed and reeling near a pile of dismembered gangstas. Something far more dangerous than the urban vigilante called Gangbuster is watching over the baffled clairvoyant…

The spectacular struggle against the fully amok Konvikt is going badly, prompting Batman to break off to investigate the aliens’ arrival point in ‘Caped Simoid Thinks So, Hm?’ (Busiek, Bagley, Thibert). During his absence a secretive new player makes use of the melee to surreptitiously brand Wonder Woman with a mystic sigil, whilst ‘World-Something…’ (by Busiek, Nicieza, Norton, Ordway, McDaniel & Owens) reveals how Rita’s dreams contact another alien  monster. The bloodthirsty Despero is mercilessly eradicating the forces of his stellar rival Kanjar Ro and, although she doesn’t know how or why, Rita is painfully aware that her foresights will become fact, affecting her and the entire Earth…

‘Great. Now He’s Holding His Breath.’ (another BBT production) sees the defeat of Konvikt by Batman, who also captures the mystic Howler which branded Wonder Woman. Miles away Rita’s Tarot face cards undergo a bizarre transformation, whilst things get hot for her self-appointed bodyguard Delgado as hired super-freaks Blindside, Throttle and Whiteout attack the ‘Knight in Shiny Armor’ (Busiek, Nicieza, Norton & Mark Farmer) to seize the tarot-reader…

Barely escaping, the hero and his charge flee, but Tarot is almost oblivious to her personal peril: all she can see is that the pictures on her cards keep changing…

‘Truth, Justice & the American Way…’ follows the recovering Trinity of heroes through the visions of the ever-evolving Tarot. Her attempts to divine the meaning and significance bear no fruit until a horde of Howlers overpower Gangbuster and drag the girl away. Just as ‘Almost’ (Busiek, Nicieza, McDaniel & Owens) shifts focus to Hawkman, as he defeats the seductive Nocturna , the reincarnated warrior stumbles onto the bloodied and brutalised Delgado who is obsessively searching for Rita. His hunt has taken him to StonechatMuseum – where her old Gangsta associates are stealing ancient artefacts – and into accidental combat with the Winged Wonder.

Once the dust settles and amends are made, the two heroes confer and learn that other relics are being taken from museums all over the world…

With odd incidences of threes occurring everywhere, the League start researching and discover a link to the “primal creation energies of the universe”. A check on the Cosmic Egg holding captive the rogue Guardian of the Universe Krona proves a dead end, but the Amazon’s brand has changed shape and ‘A Third Symbol Now’ is revealed just as Hawkman and Gangbuster arrive.

Soon the Pinioned Paladin’s millennia of knowledge and Batman’s deductive ability have reasoned out a link to Ancient Egyptian Tarot rites and discovered that an army of the Dark Knight’s old enemies have been hired to steal pertinent items and relics for an unknown client…

And far across the galaxies Morgaine and Enigma appear to Despero and offer him an equal partnership in controlling all that is…

In ‘Away from Creation’ (Busiek, Nicieza, Derenick & Faucher), John Stewart gives new Firestorm Jason Rausch a history lesson on Krona, who brought evil into the universe through his hunger for forbidden knowledge, unaware that the rogue Guardian and the Cosmic Egg that holds him are now in the possession of the triumvirate of universal usurpers…

Back on Earth ‘Have You Tied Him Up, Yet?’ finds Batman fighting off an attempt to brand him with a sigil as a new force of super-foes is formed by the still-unidentified masterminds. Atomic Furnace Sun-Chained-in-Ink, lovelorn super-ape Primat, eerie Trans-Volitional Man and the flamboyant Swashbuckler have their ‘Dreams of Power’ (art by McDaniel & Owens) as do the exultant Morgaine and her two comrades in re-Creation…

Overcoming the Howler pack assaulting him, the Dark Knight notices that he is acting out of character. All of the Trinity are slowly assuming each others attributes and attitudes, but this hasn’t stopped him deducing who is behind the Tarot-related plot in ‘Crumbs in the Forest’ (still Busiek, Bagley & Thibert) but before he can act a global crisis diverts the JLA’s attentions and forces the team to travel to another dimension, leaving Barbara Gordon, AKA digital information-wizard Oracle, to coordinate Batman’s network of Gotham-based champions on Earth by ‘Making the Pieces Fit’ as a series of macabre and surreal robberies mark the second part of the Dark Trinity’s scheme…

Anti-matter alternate metahumans the Crime Syndicate of Amerika have often battled the JLA but after their last clash their planet, – a polar opposite of ours where Evil, not Good, is dominant, was devastated by a super weapon called the Void Hound.

In ‘Rough World’ the villains were revealed to have abducted humans from many other Earths as a slave force intended to rebuild and repopulate the shattered world. However, as the Justice League arrived to rescue the victims, Superman became increasing infuriated and unstable…

On our Earth, the Dark Trinity’s plan continued to unfold as Robin and Nightwing clashed with Primat in ‘Maybe She Doesn’t Like Concrete?’ and Oracle got an inkling of what the bizarre scavenger hunts were actually for…

‘Distinguished Visitor’ saw the battle in the Anti-Universe seesaw dramatically with each side gaining and loosing ground whilst ‘The Next Step’ (Busiek, Nicieza, Derenick & Faucher) found Hawkman and gangbuster seemingly lose a battle but win the war against Primat and her esoteric allies, after which ‘100101010’ added a new wrinkle to the inter-dimension struggle as GL Stewart was revealed to have been possessed by the devastating Void Hound, and back here reformed villain Edward Nigma investigated the Tarot thefts and found himself accused of being the man behind the mask in ‘Riddle Me This’ from Busiek, Nicieza, Norton & Karl Kesel…

‘That Was a Sonic Boom’ revealed the League’s secret weapon in their war against the CSA, whilst ‘Drop the Coffin and Surrender’ (illustrated by Derenick & Faucher) saw a showdown between Hawkman, Gangbuster and the odd squad turn into an all-out clash involving the Outsiders, Justice Society and Teen Titans which went catastrophically awry when the Ink Chaining the Sun was atomically disrupted…

In the Anti-Matter realm the JLA’s victory provoked global anarchy and chaos which their attempts to rectify only exacerbated. However, ‘So What Now?’ also forced the enigmatic Enigma to reveal some of his many secrets, but when the victorious heroes gratefully returned to their own world, Superman had been sigil-branded. Dark Trinity: 2, Heroes 0…

With Sun-Chained-in-Ink literally in meltdown, ‘Let the Burning Begin’ (Derenick & Faucher) almost saw Earth’s last sunrise until Supergirl and Geo-force managed to shift the threat into deep space, whilst half a world away Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman tracked down Morgaine, Despero and Enigma for a climactic confrontation in ‘And I Finally See It’ but, even with almost every hero on Earth beside them, things did not go according to plan in ‘A Bit of Overkill’ (Busiek, Nicieza, McDaniel & Owens) and

‘We’ll Finish Things Here’ saw the conniving plotters win the day…

Scattered to the Winds’ (art by Norton & Ordway) found the helpless Rita come into her terrifying dormant powers just as Morgaine was ultimately victorious, and the heroic Trinity who inadvertently dictated the Shape of Reality vanished in ‘But So No Longer’ by Busiek, Bagley & Thibert…

As the universe altered into a new and unknown configuration, the origins of Konvikt were revealed in ‘Honor and Justice’ from Busiek, Nicieza, McDaniel & Owens, and this first volume ends on the incredible sight of an impossible world where there never was was a Man of Tomorrow, Dark Knight or Amazon Avenger…

This convoluted but compelling collection also includes a vast selection of covers by Carlos Pacheco, Jesus Merino, Allen Passalaqua, Andy Kubert, Edgar Delgado, Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair and nine pages of sketches by Bagley and Shane Davis, but, despite being long, frantic and bombastically suspense-filled, it’s just the prologue for the really big story.

To Be Continued…
© 2008, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Superman and Philosophy – What Would the Man of Steel Do?


Essays by various, Edited by Mark D. White (Wiley-Blackwell)
ISBN: 978-1-118-01809-5

With the latest Superman movie set for a summer release there’s going to be a lot of ancillary material around, so here’s a comics-adjacent item that celebrates 75 years of the Man of Tomorrow whilst offering an interesting view askew of the merely expected…

Like organised religion, the discipline of Philosophy has had a hard time relating to modern people in the last half century and, just like innumerable vicars in pulpits everywhere, the greatest and most all-consuming preoccupation of the mind of Man has sought fresh ways to make its eternal questions and subjective verities understandable and palatable to us hoi-polloi and thickoes…

Publishers Wiley-Blackwell have certainly succeeded in making their message relevant by repackaging key and core concepts of the never-ending debate. Their intriguing and imaginatively far-ranging Philosophy and Pop Culture Series includes more than 40 enticing titles such as Batman and Philosophy: the Dark Knight of the Soul, Downton Abbey: the Truth is Neither Here Nor There, The Avengers and Philosophy: Earth’s Mightiest Thinkers and Terminator: I’ll Be Back, Therefore I Am amongst others. These engaging tracts marry the product of millennia of deep thought to easily accessible and seductively shared contexts you and I know like the backs of our hairy hands.

That’s applied phenomenology, that is…

It doesn’t hurt either that all the essays, produced by a legion of very smart people possessing a vast degree of familiarity with both their academic subject and the impossibly convoluted minutiae of the Superman mythology in all its multifarious multimedia formats, keep their arguments and verbal illustrations short, sharp, sweet and joyously funny.

And, by the way, this is a grown-up book so don’t expect any pictures inside…

The immensely engaging and successfully thought-provoking journey begins with

Following ‘Introduction: It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane… It’s Philosophy!’ our rocket-ship ride to reason opens with a crash course in Utilitarianism, Deontology and Virtue Ethics.  Part One – The Big Blue Boy Scout: Ethics, Judgment, and Reason investigates the underpinnings and outcomes of doing good by scrutinised the powder-keg of “moral philosophy” (concerned primarily with questioning the best way to live) through the super-vision lenses of ‘Moral Judgment: The Power that Makes Superman Human’ by Mark D. White, ‘Action Comics! Superman and Practical Reason’ by Brian Feltham, ‘Can the Man of Tomorrow be the Journalist of Today?’  by Jason Southworth & Ruth Tallman and ‘Could Superman Have Joined the Third Reich? The Importance and Shortcomings of Moral Upbringing’ by Robert Sharp.

The conundrums continue in Part Two – Truth, Justice and the American Way: What Do They Mean? as Daniel P. Malloy posits ‘Clark Kent is Superman! The Ethics of Secrecy’ after which Christopher Robichaud investigates the true meaning of ‘Superman and Justice’ and Andrew Terjesen asks ‘Is Superman an American Icon?’

Part Three – The Will to Superpower: Nietzsche, the Ãœbermensch, and Existentialism goes a long way to cleaning up the cruelly tarnished reputation of the author of Thus Spake Zarathustra (inexplicably and unnecessarily retitled these days as Thus Spoke…) with ‘Rediscovering Nietzsche’s Ãœbermensch in Superman as a Heroic Ideal’ by Arno Bogaerts, ‘Superman or Last Man: the Ethics of Superpower’ by David Gordon, ‘Superman: From Anti-Christ to Christ-Type’ by Adam Barkman and the tantalising argument ‘Superman Must be Destroyed! Lex Luthor as Existentialist Anti-Hero’ by Sarah K. Donovan & Nicholas Richardson…

We get to the heart of the matter – for comicbook geeks like me anyway – with Part Four – The Ultimate Hero: What Do We Expect from Superman? Using some very specific canonical examples, we sift through ‘Superman’s Revelation: The Problem of Violence in Kingdom Come‘ by David Hatfield, ‘A World Without a Clark Kent?’ by Randall M. Jensen and close the case with ‘The Weight of the World: How Much is Superman Morally Responsible For?’ by Audrey L. Anton.

The review of the Big Picture continues with Part Five – Superman and Humanity: A Match Made on Krypton?, as Leonard Finkelman guesstimates ‘Superman and Man: What a Kryptonian Can Teach Us About Humanity’ whilst Terjesen returns to ask ‘Can the Man of Steel Feel Our Pain? Sympathy and Superman’ and Carsten Fogh Nielsen deliberates on ‘World’s Finest Philosophers: Superman and Batman on Human Nature’ before it all wraps up for now in Part Six – Of Superman and Superminds: Who Is Superman, Anyway? with the deepest levels of Persona examination in ‘“It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane… It’s Clark Kent” Superman and the Problem of Identity‘ by Nicholas Michaud, ‘Superman Family Resemblance’ from Dennis Knepp and ‘Why Superman Should Not Be Able to Read Minds’ by Mahesh Ananth.

In proper, rigorous academic manner there are also biographies in Contributors: Trapped in the Philosophy Zone, plenty of notes and attributions and a full Index: From Brainiac’s Files to aid you if your interests are piqued and your enquiring mind wants to know more…

Philosophy doesn’t exist in a vacuum: its primary purpose, whatever substrate espoused (Aesthetics, Epistemology, Ethics, Logic, Metaphysics, Social theory, Politics or any other field concerned with understanding reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind or language), is to promote discourse and debate. The whole point is to get you thinking too…

And this delightfully appealing tome does exactly that…

© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Superman and Philosophy – What Would the Man of Steel Do? is set for publication on May 16th 2013.

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Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder

New, Revised Review

By Judd Winick & Joshua Middleton (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0923-0

At their most impressive, superhero comics combine all the gravitas of mythology with all the sheer child-like fun and exuberance of a first rollercoaster ride. A perfect example of this is the 4-issue miniseries from November – February of 2006 collected as Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder.

One of the most venerated and loved characters in American comics, (the original) Captain Marvel was created by Bill Parker and Charles Clarence Beck as part of the wave of opportunistic creativity that followed the successful launch of Superman in 1938. Although there were many similarities in the early years, the Fawcett character moved solidly into the area of light entertainment and even comedy, whilst as the 1940s progressed the Man of Steel increasingly left whimsy behind in favour of action and drama.

At the height of his popularity the World’s Mightiest Mortal outsold the Man of Steel by a wide margin and was even published twice-monthly, but as the Furious Forties closed tastes changed, sales slowed and Fawcett saw the way the wind was blowing. They settled an infamous long-running copyright infringement case instigated by DC/National in 1940 and the Big Red Cheese vanished – as did so many superheroes – becoming little more than a fond memory for older fans.

As America lived through another superhero boom-and-bust from 1956-1968, the 1970s dawned with a shrinking industry and a wide variety of comics genres servicing a base that was increasingly founded on collector/fans and not casual or impulse buys. DC Comics needed sales and were prepared to look for them in unusual places.

After the settlement with Fawcett in 1953 they had secured the rights to Captain Marvel and Family, and even though the name itself had been taken up by Marvel Comics (via a circuitous and quirky robotic character published by Carl Burgos and M.F. Publications in 1967) decided to tap into that discriminating older, nostalgia fuelled fan-base, even as the entire entertainment world began looking back in time for fresh entertainments such as The Waltons or Little House on the Prairie…

In 1973, riding that burgeoning wave of nostalgia, DC brought back the entire beloved cast of the Captain Marvel strips: restored to their own kinder, weirder universe. To circumvent an intellectual property clash, they entitled the new comic book Shazam! (‘With One Magic Word…’; the trigger phrase used by the Marvels to transform to and from mortal form and a word that had already entered the American language due to the success of the franchise the first time around.

You know what comics fans are like: they had been arguing for decades – and still do – over who was best (for which read “who would win if they fought?”) out of Superman or Captain Marvel. Eventually, though excised from the regular DCU and stuck on a parallel universe, the old commercial rivals met and clashed a number of times, but until the landmark Crisis on Infinite Earths subsumed all those myriad worlds into one overarching continuity, the most powerful heroes in existence maintained the status of “equal but separate”.

In that new reality everything happened in one cosmos and Captain Marvel was fully rebooted and integrated. The basics remained untouched: homeless orphan and good kid Billy Batson was selected by an ancient wizard to be given the powers of six gods and heroes to battle injustice. He is given the ability to transform from scrawny precocious kid to brawny (adult) hero by speaking aloud the wizard’s acronymic name – invoking the powers of legendary patrons Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury.

After twenty years in this iteration, Captain Marvel’s early days were re-explored in this canny, big-hearted thriller which reveals the details of the first shared case of paragons of power.

Written by Judd Winick and illustrated by Joshua Middleton in a painterly style gloriously reminiscent of the old Fleischer Studio Superman cartoons, this magical treat is chronologically set just after Superman: Man of Steel volume 1 and The Power of Shazam! original graphic novel, and opens with ‘A Face in the Crowd’ as a new hero begins saving lives in West Coast Fawcett City, whilst a continent eastwards in Metropolis, Superman stumbles onto a museum robbery and is surprisingly beaten by thieves employing magic. The robbers belong to a cult – the Temple of Bagdan – and are on a nationwide spree to collect ancient Russian relics for some sinister master-plan…

In Fawcett, Marvel destroys giant robots attacking a new solar powered construction site designed by Doctor Bruce Gordon, unexpectedly inspiring the enmity of billionaire industrialist Thaddeus Sivana. Although the owner of the Solar Center project, Sivana has huge petrochemical interests and only intended his eco-friendly enterprise as a tax-shelter. He certainly has no intention of supplying cheap, clean energy to the proles of “his” city…

In a make-shift shelter, homeless kid Billy Batson talks his day over with Scoot Cooper, another hard-luck kid and the only person who knows his secret, even as Sivana deals with his hated East Coast rival Lex Luthor. The arrogant Metropolis financier has experience with super-powered meddlers and resources to combat their interference. It’s time to make a deal with a devil…

Later when the Bagdan cultists raid Fawcett’s McKeon History Museum, Marvel is waiting for them but is also overmatched by the magical Mallus Trolls employed by the thieves. At least until Superman shows up…

The team-up explodes into action in ‘Odd Couples’ with the heroes battling together, discovering their similarities and major differences even as in Metropolis Luthor sells Sivana the answer to all his superhero problems: an exemplary operative dubbed Spec…

The cultists have again escaped however and are in the final stage of their plan. Having secured the mystic paraphernalia to summon consummate evil they then force disturbed kidnap victim Timothy Barnes to become host to six infernal fiends. Sabbac is the antithesis of Shazam’s agent: a supernatural super-being sponsored by devil-lords Satan, Aym, Belial, Beeelzebub, Asmodeus and Createis in the way the ancient gods and heroes empower Captain Marvel, and he is free to wreak havoc and destruction upon the world.

To make matters worse, at that very moment Bruce Gordon succumbs to his own twilight curse at the Solar Centre as a lunar eclipse allows the diabolical Spirit of Vengeance to escape from his fleshy prison…

‘Titans’ finds Captain Marvel furious battling his dark counterpart as Superman struggles against not only the evil Eclipso but also his possessed army of innocents enslaved by the dark destroyer’s black diamond. When Sivana secretly funded the cultists he intended their tool to simply destroy Gordon and his power plant but now events have spiralled beyond anyone’s control. Even as the hated heroes inadvertently fix both of Sivana’s awry schemes, Spec is hunting through Fawcett. Soon his astounding abilities have ferreted out Billy Batson’s secret and arranged a permanent solution…

The drama roars to a terrific conclusion in ‘Men and Boys! Gods and Thunder!’ as a paramilitary hit squad attempts to gun down the merely human Billy but only hits his best friend instead, leaving Sivana to face the wrath of a lonely, bitter 10-year old boy, amok and enraged with righteous fury in the body of one of the most powerful creatures in the universe…

In the awesome aftermath Superman decides to deal with the shell-shocked Marvel in a way that will change both of their lives forever…

This is a big, bold, grand old fashioned comicbook romp full of big fights, dastardly villains, giant monsters, big robots and lasting camaraderie that will delight all lovers of Fights ‘n’ Tights fiction, and whilst not a breakthrough classic like Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns, is an equally mythic retelling of superhero mythology which ranks amongst the very best of the genre.
© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.