Tag: Superman

Superman — Action Comics — Vol. 1 — Superman and the Men of Steel

Dinh Leave a comment

Fol­low­ing my Jus­tice League Vol. 1 write-up, Super­man — Action Comics Vol. 1 is up on the read list. Tech­ni­cal­ly, it takes place before the events of Jus­tice League Vol. 1, but was pub­lished slight­ly after­wards.

Action Comics Vol. 1

Grant Mor­rison — Writer
Rags Morales — Pen­ciller
Andy Kubert — Pen­ciller

Pub­lished 1 Aug 2012
Col­lects Super­man — Action Comics 1 – 8 (7 Sep 2011 — 4 Apr 2012)

Art
Sto­ry
Aver­age

Art

For Art, I real­ly like Morales’ mus­cu­la­ture, but his faces are so incon­sis­tent. Kubert’s style is great, but it’s eas­ier since it’s all futur­is­tic cos­tumes.

Story

As for Sto­ry, usu­al­ly Mor­rison is known for more… high-brow plot­li­nes, but this open­ing arc was very approach­able. I like that, much like Bat­man Year One, Super­man starts with a sim­pler cos­tume and fights human cor­rup­tion. The reviews are pret­ty much unan­i­mous in say­ing this is the most relat­able Super­man in a long time, and I agree. Clark Kent’s jour­nal­ism on behalf of the the down­trod­den ordi­nary cit­i­zens of Metrop­o­lis is a great bal­ance to punch­ing the bad guys when oth­er avenues are exhaust­ed. The inter­galac­tic col­lec­tor bit, while a trope at this point, was a great device for giv­ing Super­man both addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about his orig­in and some nice tech upgrades.

Connections

This book intro­duces Glen “Mr. Metrop­o­lis” Glen­mor­gan, Vyn­d­k­tvx, Blake, Zoft, Mar­tinez, Casey, Lex Luthor, Sam Lane, Lois Lane, Inter­gang, Mrs. Nyx­ly, Jim­my Olsen, Angus “Guns” Grundig, Braini­ac, John Hen­ry Irons (Steel), John Cor­ben (Met­al­lo), Emmett Vale, Lana Lor-Van, Zar-La, Zora Lor-Van, Van-Da, Lon-Zo, Jor-El, Lyla Ler­rol, Dal-Vo, Kryp­to, George Tay­lor, Lucy Lane, Jon­than Kent, Martha Kent, Max­im Zarov (Nim­rod), Zod, Xa-Du, Ursa, Non, Jax-Ur, Ras-Krom, Ak-Var, Vak-Ox, Kry­ponite Men, Drekken, Light­ning Man, Cos­mic Man, Sat­urn Wom­an, Natasha Irons, Lana Lang, and Pete Ross. Pan­do­ra makes her one-frame cameo on the run­away train Jim­my and Lana are on.

The wrap-up left plen­ty of bread­crumbs for future con­flicts, both as Clark and as Super­man.

Next up, Green Arrow Vol. 1.

Justice League — Vol. 1 — Origin

Dinh Leave a comment

I start­ed a re-read of DC’s New 52 when I moved to LA as a way to orga­nize my book­shelves since they got jum­bled up in the pack­ing and unpack­ing process. In hon­or of DC’s Rebirth event and the restart of this blog, though, I thought this would be a good time to put some thoughts down. Orig­in is the offi­cial DC launch point for the New 52 sto­ry­line, so I will start here and mean­der on fol­low­ing in-uni­verse chronol­o­gy as best I can.

justice-league-1

Geoff Johns — Writer
Jim Lee — Pen­ciller
Scott Williams — Inker

Pub­lished 2 May 2012
Col­lects Jus­tice League 1 – 6 (31 Aug 2011 — 29 Feb 2012)

Art
Sto­ry
Aver­age

Art

Jim Lee is a god to me so Art is pret­ty much an auto­mat­ic 5 out of 5.

Story/Connections

Sto­ry, I liked a lot, too. I was not sure what to expect from the New 52 reboot, but I appre­ci­at­ed how Geoff Johns pulled this off. The super­heros are estab­lished (so there is no need to rehash all their orig­in sto­ries), but not pub­lic, so the world still does not know much about them and they do not know each oth­er (giv­ing a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell each oth­er about their abil­i­ties).

Darkseid’s prob­ing attack serves as the world’s first extinc­tion-lev­el threat and the cat­a­lyst for Bruce Wayne (Bat­man), Hal Jor­dan (Green Lantern), Clark Kent (Super­man), Bar­ry Allen (Flash), Diana Prince (Won­der Wom­an), Arthur Cur­ry (Aqua­man) get togeth­er, as well as the orig­in for Vic­tor Stone’s (Cyborg) pow­ers.

It also intro­duces sev­er­al sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, such as Silas Stone, David Singh, Steve Trevor, Antho­ny Ivo, Sarah Charles, Thomas Oscar Mor­row, David Graves, Grail, DeSaad, Step­pen­wolf, Pan­do­ra, Phan­tom Stranger, Spec­tre, and Ques­tion. More are men­tioned, like Guardians, Goril­la Grodd, Lex Luthor, William Mag­nus, Ryan Choi, Oliv­er Queen (Green Arrow), Zatan­na Zatara, and Carter Hall (Hawk­man). And the stage is per­fect­ly set for the less-than-per­fect team dynam­ic.

A few rela­tion­ships have already been formed. Bat­man has files on every­one, of course. Green Lantern and Flash fought Goril­la Grodd togeth­er. Super­man dis­likes Lex Luthor. Steve Trevor is Won­der Woman’s liaison.

Over­all, it is action-packed and full of laughs. I tell every­one who lis­tens that DC had a blue­print right new here for launch­ing their answer to the MCU, but no, they had to start with Bat­man v Super­man: Dawn of Jus­tice, loose­ly based on The Dark Knight Returns, which is not even in the main con­ti­nu­ity.

Next up, Super­man — Action Comics Vol. 1.