Overall despite the lack of support from my friends, I’ve really enjoyed the (long fucking) journey here. So I might do another one of these and soon. Maybe a Batman comic next time, so then I’ve done a review headlining both of the DC giants. Then I’ll need to get onto my favourites, Captain Marvel and Green Lantern... Anyway, without further ado, here is the final part, enjoy!
Part 10 opens with an advert of a fake mobile phone network! So modern, and stay classy, Superman.
The giant spider robot thing is levelling Metropolis and the artwork here is truly incredible. While clearly fighting the robot spider thing and trying to help people, the police still assume Superman is a badguy cuz Luthor said he is and shoot at him, while Superman is fucking saving them. This is either social commentary or the citizens of Metropolis are fucking retards. Lois is the only one who can see Supes is trying to help, what a surprise.
More fighting ensues as Krypton soldiers arrive and attack Superman, Luthor then releases a city wide Krypton wave web…thing taking down Superman again and allowing the invaders to pummel him. The spider robot thing kicks Superman into the street where the cops open fire before Superman can get a word in edgeways and this time, the bullets actually provide a limited level of threat due to him being weakened by the Kryptonite.
He escapes the police, barely, reappearing as Kent and no one seems to care or notice that he’s bleeding pretty severely from the neck. Clark then takes a walk through the chaos erupted streets and takes a long, sad look at the destroyed remnants of his memorabilia in a shop window. The gloomy Clark arrives at the Planet and gets bollocked multiple times in a row. He hits up his Mum on AIM and we have some more exposition done via a fucking chat client. This ultimately leads to Clark deciding to run away and abandon the whole Superman project, to let Luthor just have his glory and this in turn causes him to have an argument with Lois.
We are then introduced to someone I guess is meant to be a significant villain, Van-Gar. A Kryptonian Commander and self imposed new Government of Earth. He reiterates the lie of Superman being a scout to help his people invade and cuts to a dramatic image of the S being burned into the ground. Meanwhile, Clark watches all this, changes into Superman and decides he isn’t running, he’s going back for round two!
Part 11 is basically one long action sequence so don’t expect much commentary on this issue. But what I can and will say is this, so far, despite some ugly/inconsistent art, the action sequences consistently looked great. And I don’t know if it’s because it’s basically a whole issue of action as apposed to the usual panel or two or double page spread but the quality of the art plummets here. For most of the issue the art is like a big sketch, the first outlines of the drawings for the details to be pencilled in later. Like the unfinished template for the issue, just coloured in. It becomes even more unforgivable when it appears they tried their hardest to hide this with motion blurs. Horrible.
Anyway we learn that surprise surprise, the invasion is a hoax, a giant hologram caused by the Kryptonite web, apparently harming Superman was just a convenient byproduct of the web. Luthor attempts to concrete the illusion by recreating some Kryptonian tech for goons to wear, so not all of it is fake but of course, there’s no way he’d pay to recreate a full Kryptonian army, apparently. (Well the comic says so!)
Thankfully this is the issue where everyone finally gets on Superman’s fucking side. Fucking finally! You know, one issue from the final issue. Fuck. It does make for a rather dramatic, moving scene though.
By the end of the issue, it seems Superman and co. are on the verge of victory, but it would seem Luthor has something planned, it isn’t over yet…(well we knew that since we have one more issue left but anyway…).
The final part is actually a brilliant conclusion. I guess all the…budget cuts(?) in the last issue were done to make this issue as spectacular as it was and it really is a fucking spectacle.
Superman takes down Van-Gar and saves the people who stood up for him before we cut to a fight between Lois and Luthor (roll with it). Superman helped Lois break into Luthor’s lab and unplug the Kyrptonite, revealing to everyone in the city that most of the ‘invasion’ was just an illusion. Together Lois and Superman destroy Luthor’s every attempt to turn the tide back into his favour again.
Superman gets his S back and fuses it to his clothes with his infrared heat vision thingy…somehow. Roll with it? Yeah I keep forgetting to mention it (professional!) but the Superman S is really important to the story…somehow. I mean the story treats it like it’s important, but I’ve left out mentioning it for the whole review and it’s made no fucking difference. It’s just SYMBOLISM bullshit.
Luthor then begins to detonate all his goons, after hiding small bits of modified Kryptonite in their suits in the hope of catching Superman in one of the explosions. This goes nowhere… other than to have Superman show how much of a hero he is by saving Van-Gar after he murdered loads of innocent civilians… this still seems somehow not all that heroic, I mean letting him die wouldn’t have been good either…but it would have been more justice than Superman saving his ass.
Oh yeah, we also get like some fanservice with Lois which I also forgot to mention before, in nearly all of her appearances she’s wearing an extremely short skirt and she’s always caught or angled in situations where she may as well not be wearing one. Shame she looks so ugly in this art style, or this’d be pretty hot.
Anyway, Superman saves Lois after Luthor throws her out of a building. And this segways into Supes and Luthor’s final battle and although short, this fight is pretty fucking epic. Luthor manages to contact Krypton backwards in time to moments before it explodes, meanwhile having the Kryptonite flowing through him. All this because he’s lonely? What a dick.
Anyway this gives the plot an excuse to have Luthor and Superman have a fist fight. They
could have done something so much cooler and ultimately this makes it pointless that they kept emphasising how smart he is, why even bother if it all boils down to fist fight? Oh well, it’s still pretty cool to see Superman and Luthor wailing on each other pretty equally. And with the Krypton videocall going on in the background, the artist going all out and some dramatic lighting, it’s at least an artsy and dramatic punchup, making it more epic than it probably deserves to be.
Since the last one on one fight with Van-Gar, he just got the upper-hand by putting civilians in danger, so Superman would abandon the fight to save them and Van-Gar would attack him from behind, it was a wasted opportunity for a classic Superhuman on Superhuman battle with them shooting lasers and throwing each other through buildings. You know, the shit we geeks love!
Luthor manages to gain the upper-hand however, as the Krypton videocall switches to Superman’s parents and Superman learns who they are and what his true name is. Despite the distraction allowing Luthor to get in a few sneaky Super Kryptonite Punches in. Superman still manages to give a message to his parents just before taking down Luthor, the ending of this is a bit of a deflation really. But what do you expect when they had to make up a whole plot device just to have Luthor punch Supes a few times?
A newspaper clipping concludes the story with Luthor and it then leads to a more lighthearted scene with some banter between Clark and Lois and Jimmy, with Clark asking Lois out. We get some more bullshit about the S and then a truly beautiful closing scene, as Superman’s message reaches his parents, backwards through time right before Krypton explodes, allowing them to die happy.
The end. Few, it only took four fucking reviews and three days!
So do I recommend this miniseries? I really really wanted to read and review a brilliant comic for my first ever comicbook review and be really excited to recommend you something. I mean I know he’s stupidly overpowered, but I love Superman, he’s one of my favourite heroes ever. So it makes me sad when he gets given such a mediocre origin story like this. Superman deserves big, dramatic and larger than life. He at least deserves more than this. So I guess an obsolete origin story being used by Zack Snyder shoulda been a sign to avoid… but oh well, too late to go back now.
Ultimately this isn’t HORRIBLE, there is some great dialogue and action scattered around in the 12 issues with some truly dramatic and beautiful scenes between those. When a scene is good, it’s truly brilliant but this only accentuates just how mediocre everything else is. And that’s just it, the main reason I don’t recommend this, is that it’s just so inconsistent. Some issues skimp so much on the explanations it barely makes sense, others spend so much time explaining one thing they’re forced to just pad the remaining pages. And this just makes the pacing feel nonexistent. And the art for the most part is just plain horrible and this is possibly the most important thing since this isn’t a novel, a comic is a VISUAL medium.
Further still, the attempt to ‘modernise’ Superman. Yeah, it fucking fails on that completely. The Superman in this story doesn’t capture any sense of the character. There’s a difference between modernising a character and changing the whole fucking character completely. About the only modernising here is the inclusion of some MSN scenes and a camera phone. Superman of the 21st century? No wonder it was retconned.
Think About It!
-Locke.
2 comments:
As someone who has never read this comic nor has any interest in comics, the review read very nicely; looking at everything chronologically (deliberate or not) made everything very easy to follow.
I guess this could have been an issue if I was an avid reader of the comic looking for others' opinions, but I couldn't possibly comment there.
What could have improved it might have been going deeper into the significance of any context surrounding the comic. Like, say, the Schwarzenegger films after the Cold War to re-assert American Masculinity/whatever.
In this review you mention the artwork being naff in places but you dismiss this as being due to a lack of effort/money/etc on the comic's part.
You could be right but I think, as you described, comics are very much a visual medium, and as such, this would just be appalling for the producers to just let it slide with a "that'll do".
Maybe the artwork is different for a reason?
Anyway, as I said: I know nothing about comics so I could be expecting too much from this unknown media :(
Anyway, good read :)
Issue by issue seemed the most logical way to do it and of course it was the biggest pain in the arse. Haha. But thank you :D
I do do a tiny bit of research before I review each thing, but as a connoisseur of pop culture, I already know a lot about the product before going into it. A project like this would have had a lot of money behind it and the failings in art, are normally down to just the artists themselves and the style they choose. Like check out Rob Liefeld for example, his comics aren't low budget, he just can't draw.
But true, I should probably do more extensive research into my reviews just in case. I mean I did say they wanted to modernise Superman but I never said why and that should probably have been included.
Thank you!
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