Review - Superman For All Seasons

Another update! I know, it's super exciting. Mainly though, I've got quite a lot of work to do this weekend and was worried I might forget about this under a pile of essays and revision if I don't review it now.

Not that that is an indictment of the story, which I really enjoyed. My knowledge of Superman is almost as limited as my knowledge of Spider-Man: I have seen episodes of Smallville, but in no order and I never really followed it. I've seen some of the cartoons but never a movie. Again, basically all I know is what is proliferated through pop culture: Daily Planet, kryptonite and Lois Lane.

This story made me fall in love with Superman. I think he has a reputation of being boring, but this brought all the mystery and the greatness back to him. There was subtlety in his emotions, mostly brought about from his silences and moments with loved ones. The fact that the story is narrated by four people, but never Superman himself, allows him to remain an icon while giving him depth through real human relationships.

But the best thing about this book is the art: nostalgic, detailed and tender, it makes the whole story dreamy and effecting. It's soft focus without ever being cheesy - and that is from both the sparsity of the dialogue and prose and the muted colouring. It makes a change from the usual bright colouring you associate with his character, while allowing his costume to still appropriately stand out from the generic yesteryear of his backdrop.

Each season was narrated by a different character. The first, narrated by his father, was very touching. I've never seen his parents look so old in any representation and that somehow added to the emotion. He seemed like the father everyone would want to adopt them if they fell from the sky in a rocket, and you can see where Superman got his stoicism from.

If his dad gave depth to Clark Kent, then the next chapter, narrated by Lois Lane, gave depth to the myth. We have references to him being an American imperialist, being selfish and self-involved (usual criticisms of the character) but it is through Lois's view of him we see how truly heroic he is. His goodness does not make him boring but an outcast in his selflessness. And unlike other selfless heroes, the lack of internal narration means we never get to hear any whining about having the weight of the world on his shoulders.

It's Lana Lang, who narrates the last chapter, who seems the most insightful into his emotional state, noticing that he may not be ready or able to handle that weight. But the message of the story seems to be that no one is able to carry their own weight, you just do it anyway. I was very impressed that both the female narrators are able to love him without it defining their characters: they are very different in their world view, refracted through Superman, and so they both had interest and depth while remaining insightful and calm.

But it is the third narration, by Lex Luthor, that I found the most insightful. His own justification for himself, that it is all motivated by his own love for his city, felt authentic and far from any kind of super-villian cliché. His misunderstanding, that Superman is all about his powers and not his humanity, never waivers and makes him all the more cold and intriguing. We get the usual 'bad father' stuff but it never feels like a platitude; it was simply giving him the depth that was afforded the other characters, personal relationships, and that is very commendable.

If you couldn't tell, I loved it. 9 out of 10. I wish there were 75 sequels but in some ways what makes it more amazing is its sparsity and self-containment.

Nest time - Batman: Year One

- Grace

Origin Stories

The structure of this blog is finally coming together in my mind and I thought I'd share it with you. I'm going to (try) to post a blog every Wednesday and Sunday. Sunday's are a review of whichever trade of whichever character I am reading that week, which means I might post more than once. And Wednesday's will be other comic book related blogging, like this one!

The first five trades I am going to review on a Sunday are all origin stories, of each of the named superheroes or superhero groups named at the top of this blog. They are as followed:

Spider-Man - Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1: Power and Responsibility
Batman - Batman: Year One
Superman - Superman for All Seasons
X-Men - Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 (not strictly an origin story but certainly a reworking)
The Avengers - The Ultimates Vol. 1: Superhuman

Not only are all the above titles origin stories, but they are all modern retellings of the origin stories of these superheroes. There are a couple of reasons why I choose to start this way. I do intend to go back to some of the early, original comics (I am currently investigating the Marvel Essentials series to go right to the start) but I thought it might be better to start from a more modern angle. I am sure the early work is good, but it is likely to have dated a little, and I think it is far more likely I will read them and find them charming if I have a least a little knowledge of what the characters evolve into.

The second reason is I have taken the advice of more knowledgeable people than myself: these are the books I have seen most often recommended for first timers into these characters, and who am I to argue? My specific reason for starting which each trade is how I will start each review so I won't go into too much detail here. But they are all now making there way to my front door so there's no going back now!

Where to start is possibly one of the most difficult aspects of this whole project: I could have agonised forever and never found the perfect trade to bring me into the fold. In the end I have jumped in here. All beginnings, I guess, are relatively arbitrary so it probably won't make a great difference in the grand scheme of things. If it's wrong, though, I'm not going to give up. I think that might be the key to a good comic book reading career: even if you hate one incarnation, there is always another.

This is one of the reasons the top of this blog looks the way it does: the 'big five' of the movie world are there because they're the characters I am most excited to follow. As they become a bigger part of popular culture, it becomes more important to educate yourself about where they come from and what the ideas at the heart of them are. Hollywood movies are great, some of the recent superhero ones have even been awesome, but they are not always credited for the strength of their ideas. In the same way I always try and read a novel before seeing the film, I am pleased to be able to read some of the sources of these huge movies.

This does not mean, however, that I only intend reading the 'big five'. Expect that top line to grow a lot over the coming months: I have very big plans for how wide ranging I want my knowledge to be. But I don't think you can start by reading everything: in fact, even five is a bit ambitious. I guess some will fall by the wayside and some will become my all time favourites. I'm going to read these five and decide which take priority and go from there.

So the first one to arrive will be the first one I read, and the first one I review on Sunday. See you then for my first ever review here on Starting From Splash.

- Grace