Amazing John Byrne Artwork
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Generations 2,
By Doc Tarantula "Doc Tarantula" (Tempe, AZ) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Superman & Batman: Generations 2, An Imaginary Tale (Elseworlds) (Paperback)
Summary: Generations 2 is John Byrne's follow-up series to Generations. It includes eight interrelated stories set eleven years apart involving the aging superheroes of the DC Universe in era-similar stories. While Generations followed the careers of Batman and Superman very closely, Generations 2 expands the scope of the series to include Green Lantern, the Flash, and Wonder Woman as well as the Justice Society/Justice League of America. The stories aren't as cohesive as those in Generations, but still fit together well in conjunction with the first series.
Writing: In Generations 2, John Byrne has the unenviable task of keeping track of many similar characters over eight stories and trying to keep their personalities straight. He does this, but none of the characters proves to be very inspiring and none of the dialogue is particularly clever. On the other hand, the script is deft in keeping the story flowing and explains what can't be seen on the page. It's vanilla, but it's homemade vanilla hand cranked by your grandfather. Since the stories are supposed to be era-similar, the plots might seem weak at times. I'll therefore try to discuss each chapter in turn. 1942: This chapter loosely connects two stories, a JSA story with Superman and a Batman. Neither is particularly complicated, and both insert the reader into the middle of the action. The JSA story is a Giant Nazi Robot story and the Batman story is a Nazi Conspirator story. Both are fun stories and together serve to connect the series to Generations, but neither is a full story on its own. 1953: This chapter has one main story and a lot of back story. The main story is Superman's fight to get off of a planet with a red sun. It also introduces a subplot that culminates in "1997" that is one of the most striking aspects of the series. The rest of the back story mainly deals with maternity issues. 1964: This is one of the three most cohesive chapters in the collection. Although there's some back story about Dick Grayson as the Batman and his fling with Batgirl, the story is mostly taken up with the formation of the JLA. I this series the sons and daughters of the original Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman join up with Wally West as Kid Flash in Infinity, Inc/Teen Titans style to form the Justice League while fighting Flash villains. 1975: This is another coherent story. This story is basically a team-up, a type of comic book common in the 70s. In this story Batman teams up with Dead Man to help solve the problem of a phantom that's stalking the Joker. There is a Green Lantern subplot connects this chapter to the rest of the series. 1986: This is a coherent Batman story. It involves Batman's deepening obsession with crime-fighting, his conflict with the Gotham police department, and what the JLA does about it. This chapter has a rationale giving the story the grittiness that infected Batman comic books in the eighties. In this chapter Batman pursues a super villainess and is in turn pursued by the JLA. It also ties in with the Green Lantern subplot. 1997: This, like 1942, is actually a chapter with two stories. One is the conclusion of the Green Lantern subplot and the other is a Knightwing (Superman's grandson, Batman's adopted grandson) story where he fights with a random guy in a Supervillain Combat Robot. 2008: Here, a random Kryptonite-powered robot attacks Metropolis and the JLA tries to stop it. This story mostly connects Generations 2 to Generations. 2019: This is a story about Superboy and the young Bruce Wayne teaming up against the villain of Generations and seems to be an alternate first meeting to the one included there. Generations 2 isn't well connected from story to story. Three of the individual stories are excellent and others are good, but the connections between them are the characters instead of the story. Most of the plot-based connections over time are actually Generations connections. I'm not sure if the series was designed to be read intermixed with the first series or not, but it certainly reads that way. I'd like to give Byrne three-quarters of a star for the script and one-half of a star for the plots, so the writing gets one star. Art: John Byrne is one of the premier superhero cartoonists today, and one of only a handful of really talented illustrators to continue to work on monthly comic books over several decades. Byrne has a cartoony style, but he can make very subtle distinctions between characters. In "1953" he has a panel, for example, with Wonder Woman as an adult talking to a "projection" of herself as a teenager, and they are recognizably the same person at different ages. He doesn't skimp on backgrounds, either. There are astoundingly intricate drawings of skyscrapers in Metropolis and elsewhere peppered throughout the collection. One place Byrne really shines here is in giving the separate chapters a feel distinctive to their era. This is rather difficult because he's much more technically proficient than the earliest illustrators and no one would buy a comic book drawn as poorly as many of the WWII era comic books were. However, especially in "1953," "1964," and "1975," he does a great job. The revenant Batman in 1975 reminds me of several stories in the 1970s, for example. The art earns both its stars. Conclusion: Generations 2 is a very enjoyable comic book on its own, even if it is a little fragmented. The three very cohesive chapters-1964, 1975, and 1986-are good enough on their own to justify the cost of this collection. Because the story relies on so much in Generations, I would read Generations before reading collection. The art is superb and the stories are good. Since there are no quarter-stars, I've only given John Byrne's Generations 2 four of them, but it's a large four.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Superman and Batman are Joined by Other Heroes,
By
This review is from: Superman & Batman: Generations 2, An Imaginary Tale (Elseworlds) (Paperback)
In this second volume of Generations, the stories jump ahead at eleven-year increments. While there is some additional information given about the Superman and Batman timelines from the first volume, most of the book actually concerns the lives of other DC heroes.Once again we see classic heroes in a universe where they age and breed at normal rates. This could have been very good, but there was just not enough space. Too many heroes are introduced with little or no explanation. Some are better fleshed out than others and some secrets of the universe are revealed. Generations was a wonderful book, but Generations II makes the reader feel that Byrne will have to fill in all of the years to make it work for the DC pantheon. But then that would eliminate the Generations idea. The adventures are entertaining, but we want to know more. Perhaps it would have been better to do a Flash Generations, Green Lantern Generations, Wonder Woman Generations, etc.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great follow up to the original,
By
This review is from: Superman & Batman: Generations 2, An Imaginary Tale (Elseworlds) (Paperback)
This sequel to Generations continues the concept of Superman and Batman aging over the years. Like the first one it starts in the 30s and proceeds to the 2000s this time with chapters set 11 years apart.
We get more glimpses of how Superman and Batman's lives (and that of their heirs) proceeded over nearly a century and get glimpses of multiple generations of Green Lanterns, Flashes and Wonder Women. As with the original there are some weak chapters but overall it presents an interesting glimpse into the sort of world mainstream comics avoid.
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