Category: Superman

 

By Brian Azzarello, Jim Lee & Scott Williams (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-4012-0351-5 hardcover 1-84576-145-6 softcover Volume 1
ISBN 1-4012-0715-4 hardcover 1-4012-0448-1 softcover Volume 2

A major part of modern comic publishing is publicity-seeking and — hopefully — sales enhancing “events”. These are either braided mega-crossovers that involve a large number of individual titles in one big story (Gotta get ’em all!) or extended storylines by celebrity creators. Occasionally you get both at once. Occasionally you strike gold.

Hot from his success with Batman in Hush, Jim Lee teamed with writer Brian Azzarello for just such an event with For Tomorrow which ran in Superman issues #204-215 in 2004 and 2005. For one year these star creators got to play with DC’s biggest gun.

Set notionally apart from the rest of the company’s continuity, although still packed with enough guest stars to sink a battleship, this story sees a Superman at odds with himself and looking for all kinds of answers as he consults a priest following the world wide catastrophe dubbed ‘The Vanishing’. Whilst the Man of Steel is away on a space mission a wave of energy washes over the Earth causing the evaporation of one million souls. As if that’s not tragedy enough, one of them was his beloved wife Lois.

Increasingly isolated, guilty and fixated, he becomes involved in a civil war, and by disarming the combatants causes an escalation to genocide. His quest becoming ever more desperate, he alienates his Justice League colleagues and discovers that governmental super-spooks are behind some if not all of his problems. Everywhere he turns there’s someone – or thing – itching for a fight. By the end of volume 1 he is aloof, stressed, almost monomaniacal in his determination to solve the riddle. But he does now possess the mysterious device that caused the Vanishing…

Ramping up the action, the second book sees Superman find the missing humans by ‘vanishing’ himself. This only deepens the mystery, and his struggle to regain perspective and return the victims to Earth leads to a catastrophic battle with a dreaded foe and the destruction of a virtual paradise. Meanwhile in Metropolis, the unlucky priest has fallen to technological temptation courtesy of those super-spooks and he must pay a heavy price before he can find his own peace.

This is not a terrible Superman story and it is always good to see creators try something ambitious, but as is often the case with these event spectaculars, the result just can’t live up to the intent or the hype. And there are so many unanswered questions.

Why didn’t the entire planet go bonkers when a million citizens vanished in an eye-blink? Surely Superman isn’t the only one to notice or care? Wouldn’t even American media still be talking about it one year later? Wouldn’t some Governments mobilise, or at least form a committee?

Our hero is by turns smug and hapless, and his aggression towards his friends can’t be rationalised by his loss. Why would he turn to a priest when he has access to so many different sorts of spiritual and indeed supernatural guides? Where are his parents in all this? And why even bother with the clichéd war of liberation/government interventionists if you’re not going to deal with them coherently? Plot foibles aside, there’s also too much dependence on the well drawn and ubiquitous fight scenes to carry the narrative, but if you can swallow all that and simply want a gratuitous –if perhaps flawed – rollercoaster ride, these two books are a solid bronze read.

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Howard Chaykin, David Tischman, J.H. Williams III & Mick Gray (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-56389-595-1

2017AD. In an overwhelmingly conservative and corporate America, Superman has been missing since 2000, the Justice League has become an arm of Federal Government, and the biggest threat to security is the terrorist organisation “The Supermen” led by the vanished hero’s oldest friends Pete Ross and Lana Lang. Ruthless and unscrupulous Lex Luthor owns most of the planet.

Jon Kent is a smart mouthed high school kid and his mother, Lois, is a Hollywood screen writer. Their lives are pretty normal (for rich Americans) until the worst solar storm in history triggers young Jon’s superpowers and mom has to reveal that his long dead dad was in fact the world’s greatest hero. From having to deal with girls, grades and puberty John Kent suddenly finds himself the focus of all manner of bad attention, heroes and villains, the Feds, and his own budding conscience.

How this new hero saves the world, busts the bad guys, and solves the mystery of his missing father makes for a good old-fashioned “never trust anyone over the age of 30” romp, full of thrills and spills thanks to the scripting skills of arch-nonconformist Howard Chaykin and writing partner David Tischman, with spectacular artwork from J.H. Williams III (of Starman and Promethea fame) and Mick Gray.

This surprisingly enjoyable if unchallenging alternative tale of the Man of Steel comes courtesy of the much missed ‘Elseworlds’ imprint, which was designed by DC as a classy vehicle for what used to be called ‘Imaginary stories’ – for which read using branded characters in stories that refute, contradict or ignore established monthly continuities. Although often a guaranteed recipe for disaster, every so often the magic of unbridled creativity brought forth gems. This is one of the latter. Ooh, Shiny!

© 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By various

(DC Comics)  ISBN 1-84576-243-6

Rather humdrum conclusion to one of the major plot-lines of the Infinite Crisis event as Superman, mind-controlled by Maxwell Lord, architect of the plan to remove all super-beings from humanity, is compelled to attack his fellow heroes.

Reprinting Superman issues # 218-220, Adventures of Superman #442-443, Action Comics #829 and Wonder Woman #219-220, and featuring the efforts of nearly three dozen creators, this is still little more than a glossy but extended punch-up, culminating in what has been touted as an irreconcilable break-up between the DC Universe’s Big Three. As the volume ends – and I’m not being a spoiler by revealing this – those best of friends Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are alienated and apart – seemingly forever. Or at least until the next times sales dictate a team-up…

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Gail Simone, John Byrne & Nelson

(DC Comics)  ISBN 1-84576-249-5

Here’s a Superman collection that’s tailored to the fight fan, as the mighty Man of Steel takes on a bevy of baddies in short, terse tales designed as an antidote to all those multi-chapter epics. First up is a battle against the incredibly mad Master of Magnetism, Dr Polaris, aided, if not abetted, by the Egyptian super-being Black Adam. The original run of these stories was interrupted for the “Sacrifice” storyline (collected as a Graphic Novel of the same name), so this volume reconvenes with the episode after.

Dr. Psycho is an old Wonder Woman villain, an evil, sadistic dwarf with the power to control minds. When he arrives in Metropolis intent on mischief, Superman finds that every citizen is a foe and hostage at the same time. Once again, Black Adam is on hand to render ambivalent assistance, before it all devolves into the obligatory fist fight. Devil-surrogate Lord Satanus and the Spectre use the city as a phantasmal Ground Zero next, and, after refereeing that little cataclysm, Superman finds himself the target of a psychic and spiritual assault from old JLA foe The Queen of Fables. The fun concludes in a duel with Livewire, that perky punkette with absolute control of all things electrical.

Originally published as Action Comics #827-828 and #830-835, these yarns from Gail Simone and returning veteran John Byrne more than live up to that promise. Not overly complicated, concentrating on exhilaration and excitement, but still managing to sustain some tense sub-plots involving Lois and the venerable supporting cast, these stories are just plain fun. Let’s hope the fashion experiment catches on.

© 2005, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved

 

By Kurt Busiek, Geoff Johns, Pete Woods & Renato Guedes

(DC Comics)  ISBN 1-84576-348-3

After the never-ending calamity of the DC Infinite Crisis event, the company re-set the time line of all their publications to begin one year later. This enabled them to refit their characters as they saw fit, provide a jumping on point for new converts and also gave themselves some narrative wiggle-room.

During that missing year, Superman vanished and Supergirl became the guardian of Metropolis. Clark Kent and his wife lived a normal, happy and successful life. Clark had adapted to a human scale of operation, but now that’s all about to change.

Lex Luthor is freed from prison – corporate lawyers never lose their powers – and moves to retake ‘his city’, the ex-Man of Steel still consorts with the likes of Green Lantern and Hawkgirl, but chooses to fight evil with a typewriter and a press pass. So when a plague of villains attacks, he’s helpless to resist the assault. Luckily that’s when his powers start to return, just as Luthor takes control of an ancient Kryptonian warship and moves to conquer the world. Can a gradually recovering but markedly under par Superman defeat the limitless power of the Kryptonite warship and regain his pre-eminent status as Earth’s greatest hero?

Of course he can. There’s no suspense here, and I suspect no attempt was made to create any. Everybody knows how this will end and the creators have wisely concentrated on spectacle rather than narrative. After the establishing set-ups there is a dogged trudge to the inevitable triumph and then the board is cleared for new adventures. This is not a great start for the rebooted Man of Tomorrow but it is a necessary one, although I do wonder how this story would have evolved if the movie Superman Returns had been released in a different year…

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved

 

By various

(DC Comics)  ISBN 1-84576-433-1

The night is broken with hideous screams. Every night. A black-clad superhuman smashes out of Arkham only to be subdued by the warped Superman clone called Bizarro before daybreak. Every night. A diminutive pixie of a man dashes to an appointment only to be hit by a train, or a giant weight or… In a sky that rains custard pies hangs a moon that has the Joker’s face. What is going on and when will it all end?

Although not a new plot, and despite being the product of more than two dozen creators, this tale of a time when the Joker steals the power of the Fifth dimensional Mr. Mxyzptlk and literally remakes creation in his own image just so he can torture the heroes who have so often thwarted him, actually works. Keeping up a breakneck pace and peppering the action with in-jokes and sly asides, the narrative of Superman under terminal pressure to save the universe is gripping and the eventual denouement actually works in context. This is a marvellous piece of comic eye-candy.

Although taken from a particularly grim and humourless period in recent Superman history, this thinly disguised tribute to the zany genius of Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and those wacky Warner Brothers cartoons reads like a breath of fresh air when gathered together in one collection.

Originally published in Superman #160-161, Adventures of Superman #582-583, Superman: The Man of Steel #104-105, Action Comics #769-770 and Emperor Joker #1. Written by Jeph Loeb, J.M. DeMatteis, Mark Schultz and Joe Kelly, with art by Ed McGuinness, Can Smith, Mike Miller, José Marzan Jr., Doug Mahnke, Tom Nguyen, John McCrea, Kano, Marlo Alquiza, Duncan Rouleau, Todd Nauck, Carlo Barberi, Scott McDaniel, Jaime Mendoza, Richard Bonk, and Armando Durruthy

© 2000, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.