SUPERMAN EARTH ONE VOLUME 3
Writer: J. Michael Straczynski
Artist: Adrian Syaf
Publisher: DC
Reviewer: Optimous Douche (Rob Patey by birth and stuff)
For fast feasters who want the slugline before their lunchtime grab and quick gab store run, this quips for you:
“While the loss of Shane Davis for the more “grounded” (ZING) Syaf pencil of realism over hyper realism, it’s an exact match of tonality for the plot of Straczynski’s third foray into the hardbound full-arc world of Earth One.
About a year after the close of Volume 2 (comic time), Clark is still;
- Career setting with the shit hours and anemic salary of a cub reporte
- Juggling the jealousy of the twenty-something love triangle with Lois and himself in underarmor
- Desperately seeking to dull his Kryptonian awesome so humanity isn’t a foreign species…
- The object of affliction for Team Luthor (now man and wife instead of traditional bro and sis). These were the good villains this time, the ones driving sense, reason and pragmatic world mechanics I need to make the entire landscape worth of abandoning my aesthetic distance. Their love is hawt, their genius total science-fiction bullshit plausible (only Neil Tyson would get assed up) and motivation for going after Supes appropriately new age sociopath induced. Shame we end the book with only one left alive. Pretty baller though it was the one I wanted for fun in Volume 4. After all the female of the species is more deadly than the male. Said Rudyard Kipling, lead singer of the one hit wonder group “Space.” (little lesson how the class of 2030 will actually search engine cull answers with that joke).
New threats come with:
- Zod. Not a fan here. I will admit I am suffering from Wilfred Brimley levels of home delivery insulin for Zodabetes thanks to all the damn resets over the past decade. He’s bad, he always will be bad, for fucks’ sake why Zod why are you a boomerang. Outside of Terrence Stamp chewing the scenery in pleather parachute pants I have always been tepid to the oneness of him. JMS sweetens the well to deliver my #2 favorite rendition of this 2-D staple by making him an active participant in the E1 deliberate destruction of Krypton versus the standard natural disaster. Zod was in bed with Tyrel. Joe wrapped it in pretty prose, but given my girlish squeals towards other Zod can basically go fuck himself, glad he’s gone too.
- World government cabal. Good call on taking a tip from New 52 Earth 2 on the inception of this pragmatic approach to governance with a populace that can cross borders literally by jumping. From the bible to Star Trek global unity will present itself when there is a sentient species different from us beyond skin color or proclivity towards hummus, weed, absinthe, communion wine or abstinence. A species gots to hate and Superman is a realistic target. Their use of the Luthors to devise a Superman stopper used the confrontation from volume one in well played comic continuity fashion (also Joe threw in some suggestive swinger ideas that were lady lady guy hawt). Only their acceptance of Zod when he offers a team-up made me lose respect. I really think he was an editorial force with the way the IQ points plummeted at the blind acceptance of an offer to side with a devil you don’t know versus a clearly powerful but innocent fresh doe. Yeah, Supes trashed Metropolis in Vol 1, but he was also grabbing kittens from trees and other good deeds soon after.
- I like Lisa, I really do. Awesome Clark found the Pretty Woman who is more attractive and less grating than Julia Roberts in ever way. I can live with the slow burn Lois build. I totally dig Rumspringa, ask my parents about me taking the 90s to ‘matriculate” college. I…swear I am not a prude. I am also not a complete romantic like Clark and I have had my heart properly weathered by the sharper sex. He and Lisa cross past the friend zone, a task made much easier when Lisa discovers Clark’s work clothes. Sorry, I just can’t imagine a world where I could sit there and hear my significant other blowing a guy for rent and not feel inadequate over I may not be tipping as much as he does.
Notice my ordering there? My narcissism always puts random orders in the control of what resonates and affects me most. I played slapsies above and bitch “slapsies” with my actual review of “grounded” in SUPERMAN, but faults with that series were editorial and timing – not execution. Editorial knew the end was nigh so “rock out with your cock out” trumped a planned out schedule. SUPERMAN EARTH ONE has all of those great elements of Clark exploring his feelings for Lois without the editorial dive bombs of, “Hey Joe, can you have Supes skip over to Max Lord’s secret lair pick up Ted Cord’s brain and then do a vertical lift up to the Tower for a very special bedtime story about how Sue Dibney was whacked because Dr. Light perpetrated a crime of unspeakable assault on the soul.” All my words, not Joe’s in any interviews we’ve done.
I meander because I know JMS cares about this craft, and really any fan of Superman has all they need with the concept of EARTH ONE: A-Listers running free. Quality is assured and if you have a modicum of fandom for the creators, the characters and/or faithful and clever refreshing of nostalgia any EARTH ONE title is a no brainer on a solitary read level. Light commitment so that the friend or co-worker who always goes, “wellll, I loved comics, but there’s so many, I don’t know where to start, my co-worker sits next to me and mumbles all day about mobile security and how his email box keeps flooding with poorly formatted emails every Tuesday at 4PM heralding marginal comic news for the next day…” Fine, parts of that are the poor data dude who sits near me, but any casual naysaying on commitment or confusion of continuity can be bludgeoned with EARTH ONES’ thick binding. SUPERMAN like BATMAN and TEEN TITANS also pays no lip service to its universal counterparts, so grab a Bat, Cape or Titan and don’t worry about missing any vital beats cause or cross sell performance objectives to feed larger KPIs.
Now let’s talk about EARTH ONE and CONVERGENCE
If you didn’t read MULTIVERSITY GUIDE BOOK go now. Convergence I believe will bring forth a world of 52 comics wherein the New 52 merely exists as the larger whole. EARTH ONE for the correlation challenged will be another sliver. Insert etc here for likewise on Capt. Carrot, tiny robot corpse toons, Batman Beyond and the Nazis triumphant universes.
We have all been led to believe a “sort of” lie in that the New 52’s mentally handicapped heroes were supposed to be granted the closest parking spot as main continuity because they are what being reborn a hero is all about. I can now appreciate its existence as the guidebook describes it for heroes in their prime, but not beyond the definition of puberty. Sorry, but there are no fine lines between inexperience and incompetence. Awakening does not absolve being an asshole. Danger from within is sometimes more palpable than from galactic Giants. Also, get your upsells to trades, cartoons, movies and paying the salaries for unimaginative minds in WB Frog Tux’s to gobble market demographic reporting out of my comic universe damn it.
I’ve known these “truths” for awhile now because I read a
Fuckton of comics and I work in marketing (The devil’s second favorite profession behind my second career choice of lawyer). Your lexicons to this revelation have been laid before you. There has been a multi demographic play at multiple wallets since Batman Beyond told kids to come back, we have a world where BATMAN’s back got better and Superman is not in an extended coma. Yay, some more revenue until Superman wakes up and the rest of the world thinks we don’t know the definition of dead…kind of like a child…kind of like rest of 90s world sees comic books.
I don’t hate the New 52, but it is an arid play at introducing super-heroics when held against the weightiness afforded Earth One titles because of instant arc gratification and being able to deliver whenever your artistic big guns damn well say it has reached perfection (and puny editors actually can cower in fear without loss of share holder value). SUPERMAN, BATMAN and TEEN TITANS are all true awakenings and we can grow with them in real time as I once did with Kevin Arnold on the Wonder Years. Earth One can pace slow burn because it is not the testing ground for the best selling monthly<Trade<Cartoon<TV Show<Movie Fodder formula or da cheddar as douche bags would call the ultimate goal of money. Ultron went from comic to movie fast, go look at sales charts of comics than my fellow fools of non-paid focus grouping to see why so much expedience up the revenue chain. Good businessmen, even businessmice always double down.
Finally, with CONVERGENCE and now Marvel awakening to the continuity conundrum of forever people, we are blatantly being told instead of absolute certainty of pivotal numbered issue consequence, “just go pick a fucking continuity and we’ll fill it with titles based on eeny-meenie-miney-mo of gun shy retail preview picks based on zero information unless you buy into a value-add marketing program with the distributor (I’ll write a separate post on that cardboard news-stand revenue tie to premium order placement and ultimate sales, let me know if you want to hear it).
Well, maybe Marvel will be safe since this is their first time letting the universe asshole completely prolapse before trying to shove it back in. The first repack is usually factory seal fresh like CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. It gets loser with each repack though and slips out more quickly and more often when abused. See how quickly we needed to have a CONVERGENCE tuck after the FLASHPOINT PROLAPSE. In
20 years Marvel too will just tell you to go read this new Earth 617 where X-Men now wheel chair race at the Xavier 55+ Community for Broke Ass Mutants.
Sorry for the rambling, but please see we are not only seeing story shifts we are seeing a dynamic sales shift affecting stories. The EARTH ONE in description in the guidebook is some nebulas shit about a newly forming earth that will cool with heroes who are new. In my mind this means they are amoebas waiting to become a multicellular organism…excuse me…a SUPER multicellular organism…or it’s a world every time Superman evolves Vandal Savage has already evolved and merely urinates in the life pool and keeps it all FOREVS EVIL by issue after issue of drinking and then eviling with his golden weapon of PH level off-setting.
See folks, when I can write that sort of off putting mental imagery about a story vehicle I adore at 3:00 AM in the morning when I have a 7:00 AM with APAC and I am still ready to hit the story in a zombie caffeinated fugue state, we and the companies have taken the demand for universal cross continuity beyond reality. Kennedy woke up America from la-la-land and WATCHMEN was our book repository of decloaking the tropes with too much clever irony to back to being able to ever believe in golden age ideals. Let’s remember simpler times in this new a la carte world before us instead of wishing for something we really can’t ever have again and probably wouldn’t want anyway. You know the shit would be polybagged with a cover where the artist can’t draw feet.
