Superman! - All-Star Superman #1

[Great Rao]

After all the talk, all the excitement, the criticism, the worries, the hoopla, and the waiting, I'm completely amazed that no one has yet raised the subject of All-Star Superman #1.

I picked up my copy this afternoon.  Absolutely brilliant.  Completely exciting.  Spot-on characterization. The best Superman I've read in a long time; and the best cliff-hanger I've ever seen in a comic book.  And when I say "ever", I mean "ever."

[Kuuga]

I'm not feeling Quietlys art, but I will say I like his layouts and Grant has turned in something that feels like a genuine Superman story. Complete with comicbook science which has been sorely missed.

My misgivings about the art aside, a darn fine read and it helps wash off the stink of All Star Batman and Robin leaving a fresh clean scent.

[Klar Ken T5477]

Thats on sale? Must BUY MINE TOMORROW

[Great Rao]

Must BUY MINE TOMORROW

That must be why you're called "The Man of Tomorrow." :wink:

[King Krypton]

OK, All-Star Superman…

Let me just say I originally had no intention whatsoever of buying this. None. Nada. Zilch. The Wzard preview was sluggish and felt drawn out. Frank Quitely’s sketches of Clark Kent as a bespectacled Gerard Depardieu were pretty off-putting, which didn’t encourage me as someone who doesn’t really care for his art to begin with. The much-touted S-shield redesign Morrison was pimping looked better in theory than in practice. And after the epic atrocity of the Batman & Robin book, my faith in the All-Stars line…well, I had none. Still don’t. But then DC restored the classic S-shield. Neal Adams signed on to do variant covers. And with all the hubbub over whether or not the E-2 Superman is the villain of Infinite Crisis, I caved in, deciding I might as well give All-Star Superman a try, since it seems to be the only place where a genuinely heroic Superman can be found these days outside of reprints and back issues.

The verdict: The story itself is a lot better than the Wizard preview indicated. Huge sections of story revealing that Lex Luthor faked reformation to set up yet another profit-in-the-face-of-man-made-apocalypse scheme had been left out of the Wizard preview, and their presence in the completed issue got rid of most of the pacing issues I had said preview. Instead of being drawn out, and thin, the story moved nicely and had a good amount of substance to it. And it was refreshing to have the characters behaving in character for once. Lois Lane, assertive and forthright without being a rampaging harpy. Lex Luthor, a genuinely scary and psychotic lunatic who actually poses a legitimate threat. Clark Kent, mild-mannered nerd who isn’t just Superman in different clothes. And a Superman who takes action without whining, accepts tragedy without moping or doubting himself every ten seconds, and actually acts like a man. Faced with the possibility that he could be dying, the regular DCU Superman would be a whinging, crying, spineless wreck. This Superman takes the news, accepts it, and deals with it accordingly. This feels right. It is right. I think I owe Morrison an apology for second-guessing him after Miller’s latest act of bat-butchery. Instead of taking the opportunity to gut Superman like so many other writers would have, he took the harder and less popular road to rebuilding him to his old self, just as Matt Wagner and Mark Waid did before him (he's also taking the same level of abuse from the Iron Age fans that Wagner and Waid did). I also appreciate the depiction of Krypton as a noble planet of caring people. The cold, inhuman “Krypton that deserved to explode” of Byrne’s day never really worked, and I’m glad to see DC slowly returning to the original idea that Krypton was a nice place. (And yes, I noticed Steve Lombard was back and still macking on Lois. Nice of Morrison to slide that in there.)

Art-wise…I still have a lot of the same problems with Frank Quitely. The buildings and gadgets look fine, but his people suck. His women still have legs that are WAY too long for their already reedy bodies, and their faces still look inappropriately aged. And while I have no problems with Superman being depicted a little older, Quitely makes him look like a long-faced grandpa with a beer belly. (The super-short cape on Superman doesn’t look good, either, especially with the body type Quitely gives him. A much longer cape would look a lot better.) Stylization is all well and good, but Quitely’s people have a tendency to all look really ugly. But I will grant him this much: at least he got rid of the Gerard Depardieu look for Clark. Instead of being a a tub of lard with six chins as he was in the original sketches, Clark’s just a tall, big guy with messy hair and baggy clothes. That much I’m glad to see. All the same, I feel the same way about Quitely on this book that I did about Leinil Francis Yu on Birthright; the hyperstylized art works against the story, and in some cases is off-putting. With Birthright and All-Star Superman, the writing edges toward the old-school approach, and as such a more traditional art style would suit the story better.

Still…I don’t have it in me to begrudge this book. The writing is definitely on the right track in spite of the artwork (not the first time this has happened on Superman), and there’s been a serious dearth of good Superman material outside of The Superman-Madman Hullabaloo, Trinity, Birthright, and New Frontier, so I owe this book a fair chance. Any time a writer sticks his neck out and tries to do right by this character, he deserves my support.

[bizarromark]

Let it be said that when this title was first announced, it became a sort of anticipated "Knight in Shining Armor", the title that was finally going to restore the Superman character to some semblance of high adventure and unambiguous, charismatic heroism. Sight unseen, just knowing Grant Morrison was to be at the helm of this new title made tolerating the disappointments of the regular Superman titles a bit more bearable...knowing relief was "on the horizon".

However, since that time, DC's Infinite Crisis hype-machine seems to have stolen alot of the All-Star line's thunder, to the point where All-Star Superman's debut seems to have quietly snuck in through the back door amongst all of the flash and thunder of "Crisis".

That said, it was still a great feeling to finally get to read Morrison's All-Star Superman. I've always believed the scale of Superman stories should be bigger than any comic book character's. Of course, the last several years' worth of Superman stories have been small-scale, almost claustrophobic ant farms of Oprah-fied navel-gazing....so Morrison flinging open the shutters to big ideas was a real Mormon Tabernacle Choir "Halleluja" moment. From Superman's rescue in the heart of the sun to the bioengineered "Photosynthetic Giants", a sense of epic adventure and sci-fi spectacle was undeniably back.

Though I'm typically not a fan of Frank Quitely's art, I thought he delivered pretty well. Yeah, the faces of his people still put me off, but I have to say his unique version of Clark Kent was inspired. After nearly twenty years of a cool, sophisticated Clark in the comics, it was fun to see a return to a much more humble and harried interpretation.

And...what's this? A Luthor who's a dangerous genius relying on his own wits and not a company of lackies? A Luthor who straight-up wants to kill Superman, and doesn't care who knows? Ahhh.....that's Lex Luthor, folks. Welcome back, Lex.

Were there examples of "Morrison Excess"? Oh, I suppose there were....here and there. But, on the whole, I found the debut issue of All-Star Superman a wonderful and welcome return to form for a character that had grown remote and unfamiliar to me over the past decade or so. I look forward to more wonder from a team that instinctually and entusiastically seems to "get it" when it comes to my favorite character.

 Grade: A




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[Kuuga]

Why the hell is it so hard for them to match up a good writer with a good artist? I mean what the heck are the editors doing all day besides throwing darts at their handy-dandy character deathlist?

I know that both Yu and Quietly were hand picked by the writers themselves but those guys can't be the only aritsts out there those writers want to work with.

[TELLE]

Why the hell is it so hard for them to match up a good writer with a good artist?

Brother, that's the billion dollar question!