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Author Topic: Superman! - All-Star Superman #1  (Read 49042 times)
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Kuuga
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« Reply #40 on: November 20, 2005, 03:47:54 PM »

Quote from: "Captain Kal"
Despite my short finances and formerly 'adamant' stance not be sucked into buying yet another title, the extremely positive reviews convinced me to buy #1.

I was not disapointed.  I'm delighted with most of this book.  The art isn't all that bad and is a heckuva lot better than if they'd chosen Meglia or McGuinness.  Neither of those could have pulled this one off.

For the record, while I don't like McGuinness' art myself, and he himself calls himself a cartoonist, -- which goes splendidly with his cartoony art style -- Ed's style is appropriate for some kinds of Superman stories.  But I'd limit those to the goofy, silly ones and not the ones trying to tell a serious tale.  Can you imagine Ed screwing-up the Death of Superman by Doomsday or mangling Kingdom Come?  No way would those stories be taken seriously with McGuinness' art behind them.

My big dislike is the idea that Superman can be overloaded with solar power so he's dying from it.  But given how the rest of the book works so well, I can let that one go.  And those scientists could be wrong anyway as maybe Superman's body will have a belated adaptation to this new state of affairs.  C'mon, guys!  If this Superman becomes wildly popular, then no way is DC going to kill him off -- for good, that is.  One way or another, this Man of Steel is going to stay.

But that solar overload is a telling difference that confirms, amongst other things, that this isn't the mainstream Superman.  The current guy could take steam baths in the solar core without overloading like that.

FYI, a guy who can press 200 quintillion tons with one hand is wielding power on the order of 1% of the sun's power.  He's able to lift 2.7 x the weight of the Moon with one hand and 5.4 x that weight with both hands.  If they're claiming this is at least triple his old strength, then this Superman's normal strength levels could lift 1.8 x the Moon.

As for how that lab could withstand that tremendous weight machine?  They were working on genetically enhanced superhumans which obviously included superstrong types.  It would make sense that the lab had that facility for testing out their prototypes and either had suitable structural reinforcement for this purpose or they borrowed from the same principles behind those powers like Superman's to enhance that flooring.


That's part of the problem right there and what leads to this prejudice among american comicbook fans against a cartoonist approach. Basically the assumption that it can and should only be used for comedy. It's a BS preception rooted in the BS preception of what animation and cartoon art is in this country.

To limit Ed to just doing funny stories would be terrible. I think if anything anime and manga have proven that a cartoonist approach to art can convey a wide range of emotions and evoke all different kinds of imagery to tell many kinds of stories. Though to some extent I can understand your arguement.

For example, Eds art prolly might not be suited for Steve Seagles story about how he found the meaning of Superman in his own life. But Ed, would be perfect for stories that are a combination of action, drama, and humor which ideally is the kind of wonderfully mixed bag that superhero comics do best and ultimately what I think Grant Morrison is trying to do on this book.

As for Death of Superman that thing is nothing to write home about in the first place. Though the idea of getting both Ed McGuiness and Tom Grummett art just sounds like a total win to me.

This is why I never wanted to say that Quietly and Yu should *never* draw Superman. I just feel that they were wrong for the projects and their intended goals. They've been kicking around the idea of doing a version of Superman for Vertigo and I think Quietly or Yu would be right at home there.

Anyway, getting back to topic as Super Monkey requested and that I want to respect. It looks Lois will be playing a very pivotal role in this whole thing an so far Grant seems to have a good grasp on her character. As for DC, I don't put anything past them. The book being liked or having a well done version of the character by talented creators won't stop them from canceling it if they feel like it.
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BMK!
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« Reply #41 on: November 20, 2005, 05:20:43 PM »

Quote
Why is Metropolis the kind of unrelatable futuristic neo-city where Jimmy Olsen commutes to work with a JET-PACK and floating anti-gravity BUSES roam nearly deserted streets? (This kind of Metropolis is one of the things I hated most about the Cartoon Network version and the post-2000 Superman comics… despite being a fantasy figure, Superman should live in something closer to the real world!)


I can certainly see what you are saying. Personally, I do not mind. It looks to me (so far) that Metropolis is only on the cusp of newer technologies being utilized. There is enough to suggest that it's still an early 21st Century city (i.e., cars & trucks on the road w/ tires as opposed to hover-cars) Perhaps Metropolis is the only city to have these latest breakthroughs and modern marvels, while somewhere like Gotham City would not.



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Why is Steve Lombard working at the Daily Planet? In the old days, he was a sportsCASTER, never a writer, and he had no actual talents outside of playing football, engaging in sexual harassment and partying.


In this All-Star version, the Daily Planet is Morrison's workplace of choice and he probably felt that adding Lombard (as pathetic an individual as you can get) would be a quirky one for the more straight-laced supporting cast complete with mullet and 70's style thick moustache. Making him a sports writer as opposed to sportscaster is not that much of a stretch, in my opinion.



Quote
It was convenient that the Doctor Whowilly Wonka billionaire guy had a tiny little piledriver capable of exerting 200 quintillion tons worth of force, but WHY would he have such a thing available, and WHAT could he have previously needed it for? Superman has his flying power to keep from being simply driven through the floor by that much pressure, but anything else WOULD be, no?


Most likely that sort of equipment would be used to test the upper strength levels of certain creations of his, to test them properly for the rigors that they were made to endure.



Quote
Why would a U.S. army general, who must have more combat experience than you can shake a stick at, stand there lazily and allow Luthor to choke him?


Well, perhaps he did off panel...we do see that later on that workers are taking down all of Luthor's notes and equipment as the police arrive to cart him away. Perhaps General Lane broke off from Luthor's grip and called for back-up to send Luthor packing.



Quote
Why are Willy Wonka… I mean Quintus… and his DNA Chocolate Factory using Solomon Grundy and Bizarro as models for their bio-engineered Oompa Loompas, when such creatures have a history of going on the rampage?


A creature like Bizarro had generally been created by accident. A creature like Solomon Grundy was created by forces we don't quite fully understand. Quintum had created such workers under a controlled environment, and therefore had greater success for creating individuals that would not rampage.



Quote
WHY wouldn’t a better chosen “All-Star Superman” team be, oh, perhaps Elliot S! Maggin and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez?


Who's to say that they wouldn't be a future creative team on All-Star Superman? As much as I would enjoy to see Morrison & Quitely stay on indefinitely, alas I don't believe that it is in the cards.



Quote
Confidence, minus arrogance, plus a way of just OOZING benevolence, WITHOUT being a naïve man-child, IS Superman to me. Morrison nailed it precisely.

Best of all, Morrison chose a (sort of) endearing clumsiness, instead of an annoying cowardice, to make the Clark personality an effective disguise.


I agree whole-heartedly.



Quote
So you see my feelings are somewhat mixed. Maybe they will change as the next issues gradually come out and I get more used to the Morrison / Quitley approach.



Perhaps it will, time will tell.   :wink:


Please use quote tags next time, so that we can tell who wrote what. -SM
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Great Rao
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« Reply #42 on: November 20, 2005, 05:49:59 PM »

Quote from: "BMK!"
Quote
Why is Metropolis the kind of unrelatable futuristic neo-city where Jimmy Olsen commutes to work with a JET-PACK and floating anti-gravity BUSES roam nearly deserted streets? (This kind of Metropolis is one of the things I hated most about the Cartoon Network version and the post-2000 Superman comics… despite being a fantasy figure, Superman should live in something closer to the real world!)

I can certainly see what you are saying. Personally, I do not mind. It looks to me (so far) that Metropolis is only on the cusp of newer technologies being utilized. There is enough to suggest that it's still an early 21st Century city (i.e., cars & trucks on the road w/ tires as opposed to hover-cars) Perhaps Metropolis is the only city to have these latest breakthroughs and modern marvels, while somewhere like Gotham City would not.

I feel this is an important point and one worth addressing.

All-Star Superman reads to me like a sort-of "What if the Byrne-Reboot Never Happened?" approach to the character.  This means that there's about 20-years of back story (1986-2005) that we've never read, but that can be assumed to have taken place.

Yes, Jor-El and Lara look different in All-Star than they did in the 1980s, but they also looked different in the 1940s.  I ascribe this to Superman's ever-evolving past.  Such change here is consistent with his 1938 to 1986 chronicles, and implies that his continuity continued to evolve in similar ways from 1986 to 2005.

Remember those wild stories from the 1950s where Superman would do something like build a complete underground city from scratch in just a few seconds?  We have also seen him assist scientists with their discoveries and inventions, in stories from the 1950s all the way through to assisting "The Project" in Jack Kirby's Jimmy Olsen run.   This was shown very well in Jim Starlin's story from Superman #400 (and in the rest of the stories from that issue) where we saw how the very presence of Superman on Earth would have an incredible effect on the development and ultimate destiny of science, civilization, and the human race.

The "flying buses" in All-Star Superman is an example of seeing such development starting.  Humanity on that earth is just beginning to advance further than it is on our earth because of the continued presence of Superman.   I think that many Superman comics in the past had been crippling themselves in a way that All-Star isn't.  Other Superman comics have always had a "present" that had to be a direct mirror our own - but on a world where Superman has existed for a while, the planet couldn't be like ours.  Here, we're finally seeing scientific, technological, and societal advances that have taken place as a result, either directly or indirectly, of Superman.

This is not the same as the Brainiac 13 (or whatever it was) Metropolis from those old triangle titles.  In that case, the advanced Metropolis was a villain that Superman was powerless against and its creation was the result of a villain's actions.

Here, anti-gravity and rocket packs and who-knows-what-else are optimistic illustrations of some of the many ways that Superman is helping to guide us into a bright future.  They exist because of him.

These two different approaches, although they both present a "futuristic" Metropolis, have underlying philosphies that are diametrically opposed.

S!
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NotSuper
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« Reply #43 on: November 20, 2005, 09:34:32 PM »

It is nice to see technological advancement presented as something positive rather than as a Luddite bogeyman. That's not to say that I don't enjoy dysopian fiction (I like it very much), but it seems to me that the horrors of technology are overdone in comics.

I've always liked the idea of Metropolis being quasi-futuristic; not as much as the B13 Metropolis, obviously, but instead being the most advanced city on Earth.
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BMK!
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« Reply #44 on: November 21, 2005, 12:04:46 AM »

Quote
Here, anti-gravity and rocket packs and who-knows-what-else are optimistic illustrations of some of the many ways that Superman is helping to guide us into a bright future.  They exist because of him






"We're building outposts of tomorrow right here, in the now. You inspired it, Superman, all of this..."
-Leo Quintum

"You don't need a Superman! What you really need is a super-will to be guardians of your own destiny! "
-Superman in "Must There Be A Superman?" from Superman #247 (1972)

"They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you...my only son."
-Jor-El in Superman: The Movie

Which is how I believe it to be so.  Even in All-Star Superman #1, Quintum shows Superman that all of his life's work is inspired by Superman, perhaps it is the same with the people of Earth. They look towards the Man of Steel as an example and they see the possibilities of how they can improve their own lives and the world around them.
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The Spider
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« Reply #45 on: November 21, 2005, 02:30:30 AM »

Quote from: "Continental Op"


Why does Jimmy have that weird tall, spiky hairstyle?


Possible theory according to the annotations link I posted:  They're having Jimmy loosely emulate Tintin's look:



if Quintum looks like he's based on Willy Wonka with a modern-day Technicolor Dreamcoat...

Quote
Why is Steve Lombard working at the Daily Planet? In the old days, he was a sportsCASTER, never a writer, and he had no actual talents outside of playing football, engaging in sexual harassment and partying.


Bringing up the annotations again, It looks as though this is an amalgamation of various Superman continuities.

Quote
WHY wouldn’t a better chosen “All-Star Superman” team be, oh, perhaps Elliot S! Maggin and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez?


It might be more of putting the biggest, popular names today in order to launch the book (ie Frank Miller on basis of SIN CITY film being out and YEAR ONE. DKR, etc; Jim Lee coming off the heavily ordered HUSH and FOR TOMORROW arcs).  It's a possibility that DC would feel a Maggin/Garcia-Lopez might not be quite as high profile enough.

On the bright side though, Garcia-Lopez came back to drawing comics with the RETURN OF DONNA TROY comic, and his upcoming work is a JLA CLASSIFIED arc written by Gail Simone, so hopefully more people will take notice.
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Kuuga
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« Reply #46 on: November 21, 2005, 04:59:12 AM »

His JLA stuff would be great but they picked Klaus Janson of all people to ink him. His tuff ends up looking almost like Ron Garney because Klaus is so agressively scratchy.
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JulianPerez
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« Reply #47 on: November 21, 2005, 07:02:30 AM »

Overall, I'd say I liked it, although I thought it was flawed in several key ways. There were many doubters of Quietly's art and many praisers of Grant Morrison, however, I saw a reversal of the expectation: Quietly's art astounded me, while Morrison's plot and dialogue detracted from the story.

First, what the comic did right:

Boy, did it ever move quickly! Unlike some other feet-dragging writers I could name who indulged in decompressed storytelling to kill pages (*cough* BENDIS *cough*) despite the fact this comic indulges in an unecessary splash page or two, it introduces us to a new concept, spends a moment on a character, and in general speeds things up.

Dr. Quantum (and the surreal world around him) is a fabulous character and a wonderful addition to the Super-Mythos. Here's where Quietly's art delivers: the good Doctor is given fabulous dress sense that nails the character and his personality, a cross between Ziggy Stardust and Willy Wonka. Morrison's wooden characterization-free dialogue that he puts in the mouth of Dr. Quantum could belong to ANYBODY, but if you just look at the pictures, you get the character, in an embarassing case of the artist doing the writers' job. It would be wonderful to see what a writer who is skilled at characterization and dialogue would DO with a character as zany and surreal as Dr. Quantum.

Lex Luthor has a degree of menace in this story with a suitably grandiose scheme. Most impressive is the fact that he's able to accomplish something.

Wow, can Quietly ever draw a good Lois. And my heart is filled with local pride that Quietly chose to draw Steve Lombardi as closely resembling ex-Miami Dolphin Larry Csonka.

My breath was taken away by the astonishing rescue at the beginning: Morrison is actually able to create nail-biting tension here, by a crew that faces death on an environment as frightening as the Sun. A manned expedition to the Sun is an amazing concept. However, Morrison plagiarized the idea of an intelligent bomb whose philosophical purpose in existence is to explode from John Carpenter's first film, DARK STAR.

Most importantly of all, Grant Morrison has "got" Superman's confident, selfless characterization. Superman discovers he's dying, and what does he do? He doesn't make a single angst as he would have in recent days (though maybe he went through the seven phases of grief at superspeed so that he was already at "acceptance" in a picosecond). No, what does he do instead? Superman works to make arrangements that the universe is protected if something happens to him. "There's ALWAYS a way." He says.

Now THAT'S the Superman we all know and love! My friends, Superman has RETURNED!

Quietly and Morrison aren't perfect, but they've sure got me excited about Superman again.


What it did wrong:

Morrison's infuriating pretention shows up here. "If only we hadn't tried to steal fire from the sun, this wouldn't have happened." I GROANED so loudly I think the entire neighborhood could hear. These shallow, pretentious references to mythology that make very dumb people think they're reading something intelligent poisoned the latter half of Morrison's JLA for me. Note to Morrison: before you name a character "Prometheus," it helps if you find out who Prometheus ACTUALLY IS. Here's why Morrison's pseudo-intellectual comparison to myth doesn't work: Superman isn't "cursed by his own hubris." He was flying to save a crew of astronauts. He is entirely innocent. The comparison doesn't make any kind of sense. Is it that they went "where man was not meant to go" and they were punished for their hubris? Uh, no - nobody's punished except the innocent Superman.

Morrison, as always, just doesn't think through his plots. How did a genetically engineered suicide bomb get on a mission to the sun? Man, Dr. Quantum must have the slackest testing process ever. Presumably, a MISSION TO THE SUN isn't like a bus station where anybody can just get on or off. I'm not saying it doesn't have an explanation, I'm just saying that something that important was left unexplained.
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