Read Death of Superman yesterday, Doomsday was broken as fuck.
My favorite “Bat Hat” picture is actually in the sketch pages in the back of the book. There’s one of Bats looking really stern, and there’s an arrow pointing at his head with a caption that reads “with hat!” It cracks me the fuck up for some reason.
oh man that is good stuff. that hat honestly diserves it’s own thread, probably.
I never really liked supes i don’t hate him it’s just the idea of a nearly omnipotent being with the 100% boyscout mentality always made him seem a bit too two-dimensional and boring for my taste.
Can anyone reccommend any supes hardcovers/tpb’s worth reading? Preferably an origin story detailing more then just “his parents sent him on a rocket n krypton exploded” like batman year one or anything taking place in normal DC continuity cuz elsewhere tales usually turn me off unless there really well written like DKR .
My old manager at gamestop said there was a really good story bout how supes failed to save louis lane or something n it made him into some badass not afraid to unleash his full power n then metallo showed up n got fuckedup royally see now THAT would be cool to see supes the “boyscout” play a not so heroic role.
Whats the deal with darkseid he sounds too badass to be thrown int othe edge of the universe by supes but i guess the goodguy always has to win anyways are there any good darkseid stories?
Honestly, if you want the best Supes origin ever told, it’s not going to be in comic form. So far, every comic that has tackled it and attempted to resolve all the different versions into a satisfying whole has either failed or done a mediocre job of it.
Rent Superman: TAS, Volume One. The first episode is your Superman origin.
The best handling of it in the comics, for my money, is page one of All Star Supes #1: four panels, four captions. It takes care of the basic details in one fell swoop, which is really all you need in this day and age.
A couple of Superman TPBs/HCs to start you off: All Star Supes vol. 1, The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore (includes two landmark Supes stories from the 80s), Superman in the 60s (some important primer material for the Weisinger era), Superman: Red Son (the Elseworlds story that we’ve been nattering on about here).
Darkseid is cool, but he’s really not a Superman character, even though he is often associated with Superman. He originally comes from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, and has since become one of the all-around baddest villains of the DC universe.
I gotta be honest. Superman TAS really educated me on the character. I always loved the character as a kid but when I started watching STAS years ago, it really was surprising how little I knew about him. If not for STAS, I’d still be a stranger to some of Supe’s foes like Brainiac, Parasite, and Darkseid.
What the hell…?
if you do not understand batman’s hat, read superman red son.
I’ve been meaning to read the first issues that Darksied & the New Gods first appeared in; which one should I start with?
I can’t vouch for their quality, but New Gods and the rest of Kirby’s Fourth World books have been collected into omnibuses. They’re supposed to be nice.
i like the 4th world and it’s intereaction between the first? well, whatever world it is that all the people who love and hate, chill.
speaking of hate, i hate jim starlin captaining possibly one of the worst series ever, called simply, “Death of the New Gods”.
I have been slowly working my way through Kirby’s Fourth World stuff over the past couple weeks. I don’t have the Omnibuses, but I am sure those are great. I just have the black and white TPBs. (The Jimmy Olsen stuff is in color.)
I think these comics haven’t aged badly. The dialogue is kind of hokey, but at least it’s not overly repetitive and wordy. The plots are fantastic and there’s just new ideas in every issue. I could imagine being a young man when this stuff first came out and just getting my mind blown, like a Morrison or Milligan comic today. Even if you can’t stand old-school dialogue, I think the storytelling more than makes up for any deficiencies. There is just a passion in the artwork that brings the stories to life. The technical mastery of the craft is something that just keeps me fascinated and reading.
So far I’ve read all of the Jimmy Olsen, all of The Forever People, the first 10 issues of Mister Miracle, and about 6 or 8 issues of New Gods. All are awesome, but I think so far my personal fave is Mister Miracle. I got a new mancrush on that character. There’s definitely a thrilling sense of action and adventure in in all of these Kirby comics that just makes them great reads. I can only imagine that the Omnibus magnifies that feeling hundredfold due to superior paper and remastered coloring.
actually the paper in the omniboo is not superior (cheap newsprint) but the color is awesome, as is the experience reading them in the exact order they were released. Plus very nice intros from Grant Morrison among others.
Variety Magazine has reported that Bryan Singer may not be doing a Superman sequel after all. They did not give a specific reason, but pointed out that his work on Valkyrie, plus his prepping of another film in the meantime, make it appear as though he is not making time in his schedule for Man of Steel.
That, and the next Superman was scheduled to start shooting in a few months and they don’t even have a script yet, as his writing team recently left the project.
Looks like Warners got what they want: a Justice League movie bum-rushed into production, and plenty of room for it with Superman on the back-burner. Big Blue’s seat on the sidelines probably hasn’t even had a chance to cool off yet.
Anyone has more info on Curt Swan IMO The Best Superman Artist of all time… he doesn’t seem to have an autobiography book…
as well as Elliot S! Maggin (which I had the privilege to talk to)
Are you … Super Monkey from Great Rao’s Defunct Superman Through The Ages site???
BTW I picked up the Kryptonian Kompanion, IMO the best resource for Pre-Crisis Supes.
Finally got around to reading my copy of All-Star Superman #9. Another great issue. Guess now I’ll build a bomb shelter while I wait for issue 10 to drop.
Well, the bimonthly deadline approaches in only a week or so… so that means we probably only have three or four months left to wait.
EDIT:
Ish 10 is currently set for a March arrival. So expect it by summer.
Superman was indeed the first Anti-Hero if we’re reffering to the early Siegel and Shuster Days, he even KILLS Ultra Humanite in one issue, tosses some hijackers off of a plane in another, destroys illegal slum dwellers in yet another, doesn’t have any qualms about intimidating and taking money from other people (for the greater good)
He was IMO like Spider-man was in the 60’s or how Stold Cold Steve Austin was during the Boom of the attitude era in wrestling, he was a revolutionizer. SOMEONE who we could either relate to or/and be an escapist that does something we wish we could do remember Supes was indeed created during the depression era, so unlike Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, S&S they had no other basis except for hardness of life and experience in the Fan-zine/Sci-fi field.
Of course this all changed when the Demographics catered more towards children, Although Steranko stated in his “History of comics” that this transitional era was the WORST pf all the superman eras, you can simply call this the Science-fictionization of superman… more aliens, more villains etc.
Fast forward to the Reboot, it’s unfair to Write-off the post crisis era by Byrne since that’s the superman most of this genration (including myself) grown up with…
although IT’S TRUE that the post-crisis era all the way into the 90’s presented superman as someone who actually FAILS to cause change, and inspire quality of life like his previous incarnation did, you have to look at the direction of comic books in general, so it’s almost understandable why he is then was a frustrated crusader failing and failing at every turn. That was an era where rebelliousness was at it’s highest and in today’s pessimistic world people LOVE (subconsiously) to see heroes fall.
In the future I will be posting here some workings of both Pre and Post crisis, I’m not surprised though that names like
Wayne Boring
Curt Swan
E Nelson Bridwell
Julius Schwartz
and yes even Mort Weisinger haven’t been mentioned in this thread yet but i’m about to fix that…
Supes unlike every other Superhero out in the market today isn’t just about his “personality” (arguable to people whether he has one or not), Supporting characters and rogues Gallery.
Superman’s Appeal is his entire Mythos which transcends all of thos written above which I will also get into more dtail later
I seem to be the only Comic book-historian here, although goodm0urning also has done his homework on supes here.