Category: Superman

 

By Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-259-2

A welcome soft-cover collection of the earliest stories of the Man of Steel and quite literally the birth of a genre if not an actual art form. Here is the crude, rough, uncontrollable wish-fulfilling exuberance of a righteous and superior man dealing out summary justice to wife-beaters, reckless drivers and exploitative capitalists, as well as thugs and ne’er-do-wells which captured the imagination of a generation. Here they are presented in totality and chronological order from Action Comics #1 (June 1938) through #13 (June 1939), his appearance from New York’s World Fair No. 1 (also from June 1939) and culminating with the landmark first issue of his own solo title from July of that year.

As well as cheap price and no-nonsense design and presentation, and not withstanding the historical significance of the material presented within, there is a magnificent bonus for any one who hasn’t read some or all of these tales before. They are astonishingly well-told and engrossing mini-epics that can still 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 the next Bond movie, the dress, manner and idiom in these near-seventy year old stories can’t jar or confuse. They are simply timeless, enthralling, and great.

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns, Matthew Clark & Rags Morales (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-196-0

A character that has been continuously published for nearly seventy years can have some fairly extreme highs and lows. More often than not the lows are the real killer, as that’s when fans jump ship. Sometimes that’s nothing more than a portion of the audience being out of step with editorial thinking. Sometime the product is just not good enough. I’m not going to say which I think is the blame for my belief here, that after a woefully poor period recently, an element of reasonable quality is creeping back into Superman’s adventures.

That Healing Touch (reprinting Adventures of Superman #633-638 and Superman Secret Files 2004) moves once again towards an element of closer continuity between tales as it tells of an ongoing duel between our hero and the despicable villain Ruin who seems hell-bent on testing Superman by attacking all his friends.

Also welcome after so many months of testosterone drenched agony and angst are a few lighter – if somewhat portentous – moments signalled by the carefully handled appearances of the interdimensional sprite and long-time gadfly Mr Mxyzptlk (it’s a measure of my inherent Comic Guy Sadness that I typed that last word without having to look it up, and despite the sirens, steam and funny little croaking, pleading noises emanating from my spell-checker, I’m just not going to ‘Add To Dictionary’).

If the impetus continues to be “back” toward story and characterisation over torn S-shirts and snarling we could be in for a veritable reading renaissance.

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Brian Azzarello & Lee Bermejo (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-211-8

A dark and brooding look into the heart and soul of Superman’s ultimate and eternal foe tries to add gravitas to villainy by explaining Lex Luthor’s actions in terms of his belief that the heroic Kryptonian is a real and permanent danger to the spirit of humanity.

Using the business and social – not to say criminal – machinations undertaken by the billionaire (believed by the world at large to be nothing more than a sharp and philanthropic industrial mogul) to get a monolithic skyscraper built in Metropolis and the necessary depths sunk to in order to achieve this ambition is a strong metaphor, but the semi-philosophical mutterings, so very reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, although flavoursome, don’t really add anything to Luthor’s character and even serve to dilute much of the pure evil force of his character.

Flawed characters truly make more believable reading, especially in today’s cynical and sophisticated world, but such renovations shouldn’t be undertaken at the expense of the character’s heart. At the end Luthor is again defeated, this book’s protagonist is diminished without travail and nothing has been risked, won or lost. The order restored is of an unsatisfactory and unstable kind, and our look into the villain’s soul has made him smaller, not more understandable.

Lee Bermejo’s art, however, goes from strength to strength and fans of drawing should consider buying this simply to stare in wonder at the pages of beauty and power that he’s produced here.

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely with Jamie Grant (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-326-2

Older readers of the Man of Steel remember an age of weirdness, wonder, charm, hope and above all, unparalled imagination. Grant Morrison obviously remembers them too, and must miss them as much as we do.

When dwindling sales forced comics down certain editorial paths, the US mainstream went for darker, grittier tales and heroes, and a policy of following trends became mandatory. Ninjas, cyborgs, younger incarnations – all the old heroes put on new clothes as fashion dictated, abandoning their own mythologies whenever it seemed most expedient. The saddest thing is that sales kept falling anyway, and by recanting all the appurtenances of a long-lived character, they removed points of reference for any older readers who might contemplate a return.

So ‘well done’ to those companies that have repackaged their classics (such as DC’s ‘Greatest Stories’ line) for the nostalgia market, and especially for those editors that have eschewed slavish continuity as the only option and opened up key characters to broader interpretation.

When I was a nipper, Superman had outlandish adventures and was still a decent bloke. His head could be replaced by a lion’s or an ant’s and he loved playing jokes on his friends. His exploits were routinely mind-boggling and he kept a quiet dignity about him. He only shouted to shatter concrete, and not to bully villains. He was cool.

And in All Star Superman he is again. Morrison and Quitely have produced a delightful evocation of those simpler, gentler times with a guided tour of the past redolent with classic mile-markers. Superman is the world’s boy scout, Lois has spent years trying to prove Clark is the Man of Steel, Jimmy Olsen is a competent young reporter dating Lucy Lane and all of time and space know they can count on the Man of Tomorrow.

But don’t believe this is just a pastiche of past glories. Kids of all ages are better informed than we were, and there’s a strong narrative thread and sharp, witty dialogue, backed up by the best 21st century technobabble to keep our attention. A plot to kill Superman carries this tale along and there is drama and tension aplenty to season the wonderment. I can’t wait for the next volume, and that’s how it should be. It’s how I felt at the end of each issue all those years ago.

© 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Waid, Yu & Alanguilan (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-013-1

This wonderfully user-friendly re-tooling of the most rewritten origin in the history of comics pays loads of lip service to the most common modern conception of the first super-hero – that of the Smallville TV show – whilst still managing to hew closely to many of the fan-favourite idiosyncrasies that keep old duffers like me coming back for more.

Beginning with Clark Kent’s protracted “gap-year” when he wandered the planet, secretly doing good, through his early moments with Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, et. al., and ending with the saving of Metropolis, the calamitous – albeit temporary – downfall of Lex Luthor and the public acceptance of this “strange visitor from another world”, Mark Waid and Lenil Yu have produced a feisty reworking that shouldn’t offend the faithful whilst providing an efficient jump-on guide for any late-comers and potential converts. And it’s much more fun to read than this review, too.

© 2003, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Chuck Austen, Ivan Reis & Marc Campos
ISBN 1-84576-066-2

Over the course of too many years I’ve followed the Man of Steel’s adventures, and realised that as well as being the absolute progenitor of the superhero industry, he’s probably the most re-worked character in it. I’ve seen a champion of the poor become a social redeemer, a boy scout, an interstellar policeman and even a grim ‘n’ gritty caped Rambo. Surely to keep following him through all those changes I must be some kind of fan, right?

Then why does the current incarnation leave me so cold?

Even when produced by – as was ever the case – some of the best contemporary creators around, the recent stories just seem to be lacking a certain something. This particular excursion, Wrath of Gog (reprinting Action Comics issues #812-819), rattles along and it’s competently illustrated, but it’s a superficial, slick kind of modern pick and mix of fight scenes.

After a brief, violent interlude with Darkseid and Co, Gog, yet another time-travelling villain (springing this time from the pages of Kingdom Come), attacks Smallville and not even the Teen Titans can stop him. When Superman appears, he is seriously wounded, leading to a mass attack by glory-hungry super-villains, and only Wonder Woman can protect him, until he recovers and wipes the floor with everybody.

To his credit, Austen does try to inject some depth with the return of extended sub-plots and these stories weren’t originally designed as a cohesive epic, but simply periodical publishing. The last tale, a Memento-esque parable, contrasts the relationship of husband and wife criminals trying to kill the Man of Tomorrow with the looming romantic triangle of Clark Kent, his wife Lois and the newly divorced Lana Lang. Although forced, it does have something more than a big, arrogant charmless ruffian hitting everything all the time, and the competing flashback technique does keep the attention.

Wait, perhaps that’s it? Maybe today’s superheroes don’t get to have charm anymore. The glorious sense of wonder, once present even in the darkest Superman tales, just isn’t there anymore. Is it all about tights, boots and hitting now?

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Greg Rucka & Various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-026-3

I have some difficulty with the superficiality of many modern takes on classic comic characters. It’s probably because I’m old but it often feels that rather than write something new, creators simply get told to put a modern spin on the old stuff and keep it circling in a holding pattern until the current audience have grown up and moved away. I’d love to see some sales figures on retention of new readers as compared to people my age who keep buying out of love and inertia. I don’t care how much red paint you slap on a Fiesta, it won’t never be no Porsche.

But I digress. The latest Superman collection tells of yet another conspiracy to destroy the Man of Steel produced against the real world backdrop of America preparing to invade a Middle Eastern nation – in this case the oddly reminiscent “terrorist state of Umec”. Clark Kent is in the doghouse with his bosses and is trying to rebuild his career, so Lois Lane – or is it Kent, or Lane-Kent – is covering the story on her own. So what with job worries and a new super villain showing up every twenty pages, Superman is not there when his wife is shot by a sniper.

Normally I try to avoid spoiling the story, but no-one in their right mind believes a major character is going to stay dead at a company that has enough resurrected people in its stable to form their own football league. The point here is that writer Rucka has been able to rise above these woeful predictabilities and engage the reader by sheer quality of writing. Here is an instance of how it happens actually superseding what’s happening. Here is a classic character being treated with a little thought and a lot of respect.

It’s very well drawn too. You should read it yourself.

© 2005 DC Comics