He’s a much more difficult character to handle because unlike someone like Batman (billionaire playboy by day, brooding one-man-army by night) he isn’t cool. He’s a big blue boy scout and proud of it, but unfortunately for him, since Han Solo came around all the kids want to be Wolverine, not Cyclops. So what can you do? The solution most writers and artists found was to emphasize his god-like power. This meant gigantic alien fistfights and virtually no character development. Yes they’ve killed him, brought him back to life and turned him electric blue, but have we seen these creators truly push the limits of the man of tomorrow? Has anyone tapped his true potential? I didn’t think so until I read All Star Superman.

The series doesn’t really run along a singular narrative (something that the recent animated adaptation suffered from trying to force) but sufficient to say it features a super powered Lois Lane, an encounter with Black Kryptonite, an interview with an imprisoned Lex Luthor, an excursion to Bizarro World, an altercation with Kryptonian explorers and a sun eater among other things. The scale of the series is at once epic and intimate and it succeeds in crossing many subgenres within the realm of science fiction. Presumably taking his lead from Alan Moore, Morrison is hugely respectful of the character’s rich history and revels in the opportunity to turn many of the sillier or ‘goofy’ ideas from the Silver Age into some brilliantly cool components.

This is helped in no small part by the outstanding artwork of Frank Quitely whose style transcends decades of mythology to capture the essence of the character. His depiction of Superman perfectly encapsulates his power and humility; tall, broad and a little bit clumsy. Unlike Bill of Kill Bill fame, I don’t think that Clark Kent is Superman’s critique of the human race. To me they are one in the same sharing strengths and insecurities. Quitely finds the overlap and brings it out for all to see. Together this artist and writer have found the vulnerability in a seemingly indestructible character and proceed to strip him bare with each new adventure.

In the ninth issue, Superman describes himself as ‘a scientist’s son. It’s in my nature to observe and learn…’ This is a quality in the character that helps to anchor the tone of the series. It’s a celebration of life, the universe and everything. He is not humanity’s resident strong man, more a scatterbrained genius with one hundred plates spinning at once. He is an inspiration, a symbol of human potential. This comic put a fresh spin on an already iconic character and in my opinion it is the greatest Superman story ever told. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Joe Read.

In the immortal words of  Julie Andrews; Let’s start at the very beginning (I watched The Sound Of Music today, it gets awesome once the Nazi’s get involved doesn’t it?). For the first time machine, I’ll take a look at the most valuable comic book in the world, the very first appearance of Superman.

Here in the future, armed with hindsight and nostalgia, we’ll look at this legend of comics and hold him up to modern scrutiny. Is it good? Did Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel create the character we know today, or does evolution apply to fictional character biographies too? Find out here (or merely read my opinion).

This is invisible

Here it is…

Imagine that! The Superman origin has hardly changed at all, although a child lifting a car is INFINITELY more impressive than a child lifting a chair.

I think it’s funny that the Superman we all know and love today is probably less believable than the one found in this first issue, given that I always believed as audiences got more sophisticated then this kind of stuff became more realistic (like say, The Dark Knight).

If Superman could bend the laws of physics and fly rather than merely jump 1/8th of a mile, then that would’ve been plain silly. But of course, now he gets his powers from our yellow sun, that explains flight perfectly.

The little aside about ants and grasshoppers is great to see too, found again most blatantly in Spiderman, that jerk who has the same relative strength as a spider.

So the whole Clark Kent/Superman act hasn’t changed, but the most telling thing is that his first job as a vigilante is breaking up domestic violence. He beats up the perp too. These days, when Superman gets involved with drug abuse or domestic abuse, the people say ‘wow, it’s so brave and modern how comics are tackling real life problems’.

J Michael Straczynski’s current run on Superman reads exactly like this. In Superman #705, the guy restrains himself from killing an abusive husband and father. Nuts, the same thing happened in the very first issue.

Here, we see a sign of the times. Lois Lane, as a woman, is found working on ‘sob-stories’. The Lois Lane I know wouldn’t be caught dead working on sob-stories, rather risking her neck trying to break the latest war crime scandal or political cover up. It was probably unheard of for a woman to be anything higher than a secretary in the 30s, so the character we see here is definitely a victim of the era.

This is great, not only do we start getting a taste for Lois’s strong character, but we also see Clark Kent as the ‘act’. It’s almost impossible to identify Clark Kent as Superman, the glasses aren’t the disguise at all. This really reminds me of Grant Morrison’s Clark in All Star Superman, a completely spineless caricature of humanity, and it works from the start.

Don’t worry about Lois, she definitely gets her own back on Clark, by um, whipping him…

You may not have known this, but Joe Shuster was a perv! Well, upset and down on his luck after losing a battle for his copyright, he began drawing Lois and Clark in ‘adult’ situations. The pictures were published under the counter in magazines called Nights of Horror, and ultimately banned by the U.S. Senate.

You can find out and see more in: Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster.

Invisible

I’ll skip the issue ahead a couple couple of pages now…

And obviously, Superman breaks up some political conspirators and tortures someone, while giving them a lesson on electricity. Brilliant. Neil Adams’ Batman Odyssey had a similar science lesson, a lecture about why a hydrogen car doesn’t explode when shot because the tank was composed of a metal hydride. Comic books eh? Fun AND informative.

In my opinion there’s little difference between Superman then and now, though he’s obviously gotten a little more sophisticated. This issue does cement why he’s such a great character, and why he’s still popular after 73 years. The original super-guy, and probably the most iconic example of the genre. Good Stuff.

Oh, and the paper he works for used to be called The Daily Star. I think they changed it because the actual Daily Star sucks.

Joe Innes.

Smallville is a good example of this, some episodes of that show have been absolutely atrocious, but I’ve sat through them because it’s Superman, taking as much enjoyment from an appearance of Zatanna or J’onn J’onzz as I can. As much as I hate to admit it, this is how the latest run of Superman has made me feel.

Following from the ‘New Krypton’ saga, which had all the energy and epic of a classic Superman arc, Stracynski has slowed things down. It does make sense that Superman would want to reconnect with Earth after what took place (his absence, a war, mass deaths, planet explosions etc), and perhaps walking across America helping people with real life problems like domestic abuse is the way to do that, it’s just the execution has been so trite. It isn’t a new idea, Green Lantern and Green Arrow drove across America for ages in the 70s dealing with real life. Speedy turned out to be a heroin addict and Ollie was accused of not saving black guys… It was a big step for comics to take on subject matter of this nature and although severely dated, it’s a classic run. This unfortunately (for all the hype) is not.

The Superman portrayed in this arc is not the Superman I know. He’s preachy, sarcastic, harsh and judgmental. The supporting roles are clichéd and lack the depth needed to pull off the mushy stuff. There are some touching moments, but the lackluster character development makes it hard to care.

Another thing I don’t understand is Superman’s attitude. I always thought he would abstain from dealing with problems we should be able to solve by ourselves, but here we see him getting pissy because he had to step in over domestic abuse. It would have been nice to see him help the police force stamp down on drugs or social services step in on abuse. But no, he bypasses the rules that those organizations have to follow and solves our problems with a wave of his fist and a twinkle of his eye and then moans he’s the only one doing anything about anything. If you want to reconnect with the populace, that’s a bad attitude to have.

It wasn’t too surprising to hear Straczynski is leaving the project. If he won’t have time to finish the arc while doing the sequel to the Earth One graphic novel, then it seems to me he was preoccupied with the first one when he was writing this arc. Hopefully a new writer will be able to inject the time needed to flesh out these stories, and give us back the Superman we all know and love.

Joe Innes.