Review: All-Star Superman

All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While the ending isn’t the best ending to a Superman story this book is one of the best ever written. It has its corny moments but overall this is one the best books Morrison ever wrote. While the individual parts may lack in some areas it makes up for them in overall quality. There are very few books that have ever come close to being as good as this one was about Superman.

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Review: Superman: For Tomorrow

Superman: For Tomorrow (Superman by Brian Azzarello
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Still didn't work

I remember reading this the first time and thinking that the writer did a bad job on this story. Reading it again I see that my opinion was still correct. The art is fine but the story still doesn't work. This was the story that showcased the worst of Azzarello. There's lots of fluff but no stuff. While he writes a decent Batman he can't write any other super powered character. Later on he would try Wonder Woman and that didn't work either. This book was the first unfortunately but the art by Lee carries the reader through the book. By the end nothing made sense or would even matter years later so in that sense For Tomorrow sucked today like it did so many yesterdays ago.

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Review: Superman Unchained

Superman Unchained by Scott Snyder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This story doesn’t do itself any favors. It makes me think that anyone named Synder should stay away from creating any Superman stories. It starts off well but soon it devolves into silly nonsense. This was a better story for Jim Lee to work on then For Tomorrow was but not by much. There’s a lot of, ‘I’m mad at Superman because…’ and that just repeats over and over again. Each opponent never has a concrete reason to oppose Superman. In the end all of that meant nothing as Superman tries to do the right but gets lucky at the end. Overall this is just good but also skippable on the list of Superman stories.

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Review: Superman: Birthright

Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read this book twice now. I've posted both reviews below. 

 1) A modern origin story for Superman that makes sense. I've read many of these origin type of books. The majority of them suck. This is one of the good ones. It keeps a good pace while not getting away from what makes Superman a super man. The writing and art work well together so that you wonder why these two didn't work together more often.

2) This is a well done version of Superman’s origin story. It has a good flow to it and it pairs well for folks who grew up watching Smallville. The art is the weakest part of the book but it doesn’t hurt the book. While it doesn’t have the element of danger that other stories have it does keep moving at a steady pace. The book is more of a grounded story that ties the present with past events. The dynamic of Superman versus Luthor is done very well. This is a solid version to read for any fan of Superman.

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Review: Superman: Secret Origin

Superman: Secret Origin by Geoff Johns
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The creative team of Johns & Frank have done a better job on other Superman stories. This is supposed to be some form of screenplay for a Superman movie but the second half of the book sucked. It was as if Johns tried to create a Superman movie with Christopher Reeves Superman in todays environment. It comes across as very corny by the end of it. While the art is good the story is so bland that you see how badly they missed out on making a good book. Instead of trying to make Superman V they should have tried to make a good comic book.

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Review: Doomsday Clock The Complete Collection

Doomsday Clock The Complete Collection by Geoff Johns
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Nice try but misses the mark

If there was anyone who I think could possibly create a worthy successor to Watchmen it would be, Warren Ellis. I would have Mark Millar as a second option. I enjoy Geoff Johns other works greatly but he’s not the person who could do a sequel to Watchmen justice. With that said his best shot at doing a Watchmen sequel would be if he somehow combined it with the DC universe. That is what this book tries to do.

It fails but at least it tried.

The problem is that Geoff understands Watchmen from the point of the original source material. That is the characters that inspired Watchmen that Alan Moore used as the template for his story. Geoff knows those characters very well but doesn’t know them in the form that they are in during the Watchmen story. He does try to build on what Moore did by adding MiracleMans Kid MiralceMan in the form of Black Adam but it doesn’t work. In the end he tries to keep the Watchmen universe going but in a more Hopeful manner. Unfortunately he doesn’t get that the Watchmen aren’t built off Hope. That universe is built off pure possibility with Hope being just one of many possible outcomes. That’s why the ending of Watchmen is so ambiguous. Geoff trying to only leave that world with Hope goes against the grain of what made that world such an amazing book to read.

That’s why Ellis or Millar would have done a better job if this was a follow-up to Watchmen. It is better then that terrible HBO adaptation but it’s far from what it could have been. Even if you look at it like s Superman story, which is what it really is, it’s still just a nice try. I don’t think Geoff was trying to imitate Alan Moore but he did try to maintain some of the tone that Moore used in Watchmen. It didn’t work out well for Johns. It just points out how different he is from Moore. I appreciate that about Johns. His work is more aspirational then Moores is. I just hope that next time everyone just stays in their own wheelhouse. So for now this version of a Watchmen sequel falls short of what came before it but that was always a possibility.

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