Customer Reviews

Superman: Birthright

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am surprised by the other, less positive reviews, because I thought this book was superb. I am not a huge Superman fan, I don't get excited by "Smallville," and in general my comic book shopping cart is mostly filled with Marvel titles, but I think this has got to be the best Superman book I have ever read. It does a little of what Jeph Loeb did in "Superman For All Seasons" and picks up the clumsily discarded torch of "Smallville" to create a beautiful, modern Superman.

The art is definitely among the most striking Superman art ever drawn, taking the best elements of manga and American comics to make a brightly colored and appealing book. For those of you familiar with "Invincible," it has a similar look except with more sheen, and more primary colors.

This Superman is certainly a different Superman, and some people will take issue with the fact that he is, among other things, a vegetarian. This discrepancy Mark Waid makes up for it by his awesome portrayal of Clark, a confident and popular guy who has to hide his talents under the false guise of a wallflower in order to maintain his secret identity. Best of all is the ending, which is poignant, ironic, and will quite possibly make you cry.

When Mark Waid and the editors at DC Comics first announced their plans for Superman: Birthright, I was excited. From all accounts, it looked like it was going to be the continuation of the Smallville Superman, taken out of the TV show and moved forwards eight or ten years, and the story of how that Clark Kent first came to put on the costume. Which I was quite excited for; the tying in of this newest part of the legend back to its original format seemed like a very good idea. By the end of the first issue, it was somewhat obvious that it was more Ultimate Superman than Smallville; while taking elements from the TV show, it was clearly set in its own universe.

But then came the big news; the sources from on high had ruled that, after seventeen years, Superman's origin had grown stale and needed revision - and that Birthright would henceforth be the origin of the one, true Superman. For a while, it seemed like the entire Superman universe was in limbo; was the S-man about to be rebooted? Were nearly two decades of history about to be written over? Well, yes and no.

It ended up that this story was designed to be a sort of prequel to the current Superman's history, that they were rewriting his history from the present but that it was actually to take place in the past. Unfortunately, either someone forgot to get Waid the memo or the story was too far along to change, as the entire run seems more like the first 12 issues of a new continuum than the rewriting of Superman's past in a way that would make sense in today's continuity. For example, in the first issue, Lex Luthor is clearly shown as he is in Smallville, as the rich, bald young hotshot; however, when we finally learn the truth, he ends up being an alienated, whiny red-haired arrogant youth who Clark befriends out of sheer pity (and who in the future becomes a wisecracking evildoer straight out of a James Bond flick). In issue 3, Clark refers to Lana as if they had been together (which the picture he has seems to validate), but again when we see the flashback, Clark has been reduced to geeky waterboy and Lana to airhead cheerleader. Superman has retreated from his kind, Boy Scout attitude into a silent, cursing vigilante who could probably clear up a lot of the trouble about him if he would just take the time to act pleasant and let the world know that he's just there to help. Lois Lane is written as an arrogant hothead who seems ready to fly off the handle at any moment, while Perry White seems to have left said handle a loooooooong time ago. The only characters who recieve any improvement of their character are the Kents and Jimmy Olsen, who has finally shrugged his Howdy Doody persona for something more mature. These characters deserve far more than this. Clark Kent, Superman, Lana Lang, Lois Lane, and the rest of the cast are heroes and idols for people the world over; they deserve to be known as more than stereotypes.

In addition, if the story is supposed to take place before the entire current continuity, then why does Waid seem intent on beating us over the head with references to modern times? Superman is only 25 here, just beginning his career, and yet we have camera cell phones, yellow alerts, internet news organizations, instant messenging, the Department of Homeland Security, e-mail - heck, the year 2004 is even specifically mentioned on a very prominent newspaper! It's clear that Waid originally intended this to be something more along the lines of Marvel's Ultimates series, a seperate continuity to exist alongside but never meet with the regular books.

This is not to suggest that I was completely unhappy with the story; far from it, it is actually quite enjoyable - so long as you make sure to take it on its own and not make anything more of it than it is. The relationship between Clark and his parents has been tightened, and many of the scenes between them are classic. Clark's efforts to divide his two identities are presented excellently, and the sense of isolationism that comes along with it is shown perfectly in the scene when...well, I don't want to give it away. Yu's artwork also delights at times, but his style is better suited to a smaller scale; while many of the scenes where two or three characters interact work well, many of the more complex action shots later in the book are slightly jumbled and confusing.

Overall, Superman: Birthright is an interesting take on the Superman mythos, one that is certainly worth reading. Get it, and form your own opinions about it - don't take what I have to say as gospel. It's a good story on its own, just not a necessary after-the-fact retelling of the "true" Superman's past. But certainly give it a try.

In 2004, with the success of SMALLVILLE and the forthcoming release of SUPERMAN RETURNS, the good folks at DC Comics decided it was time for Superman's origins to be re-invented for the first time since John Byrne's popular THE MAN OF STEEL series in the 1980's. Mark Waid was given the task of writing the new series and re-thinking the Superman legend; and re-think it he did. While the essential elements of the Superman mythos are left intact, much of Supes' history is re-written. In a wise move, Waid borrows from the SMALLVILLE storyline by having Clark Kent meet Lex Luthor while in high school. The Lex of this series, however, is very different from SMALLVILLE's version of the character; Lex is a heartless fiend even as a youth.

BIRTHRIGHT begins with Clark on a freelance writing assignment in Africa. The violence Clark witnesses while there lead him to wonder if there's a way he can use his powers to benefit mankind. So he returns to Smallville, where - with the help of his parents - he creates the Superman costume. From there, it's off to Metropolis.

Flashbacks show us a young Clark befriending Lex, but we see nothing more than that. The rest of the graphic novel is set in the present, where Clark searches for his place in the world while battling the evil Lex Luthor. Much is left out that could have enhanced the series; for example, Clark discovering his powers. Instead, we get an over-the-top storyline which is neither new nor exciting.

This series' redemption comes from Leinil Francis Yu's excellent artwork. It's strong and colorful, but rarely is it bright. It fits the story perfectly. For this reason I would recommend this comic. I found it interesting to see a writer attempt a new take on Superman's origins, but in the end I was left thinking, "That was okay", rather than, "Wow, that was great!"

Superman:Birthright is a great book that reimagins the origin of a great hero. Mark Waid, I think did a very good job in writing this book. Whe he said it was "a very Siegel and Shuster friendly story" he was not lying. This Superman is tougher than the average Superman but is still no Batman. He hates the evil that the person is doing and not the person. You kind of agree where he's coming from when his pushes a conspirator in a murder into an wall. Waid also writes him as a person who is concerned about people and how they see him. He wants to help the misguided people of Metropolis.

The people of Krypton are presented here in a MUCH different way than John Byrne portayed them. This Krypton exhibits pain and emotion. There is color to Waid's Krypton. There is a richness in this place that has never been seen. Also, these people mirror humans in the sense that they feel that they are the only beings with intelligence in the universe. They are also plagued by a sense of vanity and a sense of superiority but you feel bad for them because, like Jor-el said, Krypton achieved miracles and wonders no one will ever remember.

The setting that Mark Waid gave in the beginning mad so much sense when I read through it a few times. The setting is in Ghana, Africa for two issues. When I studied the history of Africa in Global History I began to understand why Waid chose to put Clark here. He put him there because, like Clark, Africa has problems with cultural identity. They have been ruled by so many people they have forgotten their true "birthright" just like Clark. He is an alien with human morals. Which heritage do you come to accept when both families love you so much. Which brings us into the costume. The costume design was very smart and the reason Jonathan kent was against it made sense. How would you feel when your adopted son from another planet, who you raised and loved like your own, left you to join his "real" family. It might seem selfish but it is the truth and Waid deals with this wonderfully.Lex luthor is also presented in a fun and sad way. It's fun because we don't see the business and the scientific Lex Luthor that much and it's sad because in this origin Lex Luthor and Clark Kent were portrayed as friends in Smallville who broke apart due to a tragic accident.

The only reason why I give this a 4 out of 5 is because the art was not great. It was good from issue 1-5 but dimmed in quality in the rest of the issues with the exception to #8 and #9.

There are few characters in literature more quintessentially American than Superman and few more difficult to write. Just compare the number of five star Batman stories with the number for Superman. The problem is trying to come up with a compelling story featuring a character with godlike abilities. Not only is Superman nigh on omnipotent with his invulnerability, super speed and near limitless strength he is also essentially omniscient with his super vision, super hearing and x-ray vision (In Birthright Clark Kent uses all three to spy on his coworkers from blocks away). So how do you create a compelling story when the protagonist is invincible? The other problem is that his most frequent antagonist, Lex Luthor, is nothing more than a regular old human (albeit with an astounding intellect). Luthor taking on Superman is like a little league team taking on the Boston Red Sox AND NEARLY WINNING.

Writers have relied on three techniques to limit Superman. First is to have Superman conveniently forget his own powers in particular his near light speed movement. The second limitation is Superman's own Boy Scout morality and third is the annoyingly excessive use of Kryptonite. Mark Waid employs the second technique and is particularly egregious on the third. Luthor literally bathes the city in low level Kryptonite reducing Superman's powers to a more manageable Spider Manish strength. I think it's a testimonial to the skill of a writer if he/she can compose a Superman story and NOT employ Kryptonite. On the other hand Waid does an excellent job of establishing Luthor as a credible threat to Superman.

Despite the tweaking to Superman's origin which he establishes as occurring today, rather than in the 1930's or 1950's, the author really doesn't break any new ground. Luthor's scheme, if you can call it that, is so over the top that it reminds me of the Super Friends episode where The Toyman builds a robot planet to trap the heroes. I mean, if you can build an entire robot planet... uh well. Apparently aware of the absurd scale and unfeasibility of Luthor's plan the author tries (and fails) to rationalize and diminish what's going on. In the end I have to consider Birthright to be a mild failure. There are so many plot holes that it becomes a distraction. There is no explanation on how the faux Kryptonian Van-Gar was able to go toe to toe with Superman even if you account for Superman's diminished powers and why would Luthor compose such an extravagant plan only to leave the lynchpin of his scheme available for anyone to walk in and steal. The ending was meant to be poignant but it really made no sense. I mean nothing about it made sense. Birthright was also a case where the crimes of the villain are so heinous that they would undoubtedly merit the death penalty for the perpetrator yet it's implied that Luthor will get off on a legal technicality.

I have to wonder if there's any writer besides Alan Moore capable of writing a truly great Superman story.

At 54, I hadn't read a Superman comic for 42 years, though I have a fine collection of several hundred. I saw the movie, missed the TV show, missed all the updates etc. My (US) kids, all born in the 80s, devoured my collection of 10- and 12-cent comics.

Then a teenager from Ghana urged me to try this comic novel reconsideration of Mr. S. I found this to be very operatic and heart-rending. The artist/observer's POVs were fantastic and each panel seemed frameable, making the oldies I remember seem so quaint and camp. Operas get updated in similar ways, and it's risky, but this team pulled it off to one reader's complete satisfaction.

The process of updating/adaptation/re-imagining reminds me of the saying: ''If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.'' --Tancredi, the young aristocrat in Giuseppe di Lampedusa's novel, ''The Leopard"

I am a big fan of the Superman world but it was only during this summer that I shelled out money to buy Superman products after seeing the latest movie. Two dvds of the Reeves movies snowballed into seven comic books. This was one of the seven. Out of all of them this one really stood out. I just love the first few pages. It is a given that it talks about his parents and how they sent him to earth in a pod. How they drew and colored and placed the panels and used them as part of the title and credit page and then a time transition....wow. Its like a openning title sequence for film... so beautiful. I'm like YES!!! THIS IS WHY I LOVE COMIC BOOKS! This story talks about a part of Clark's life that is rarely if never addressed. Life after Smallvile but pre Daily Planet. I like it for its youthful hip energy and the addressing of problems in a different country. Lois Lane is a big reason I follow this franchise. Seeing the many incarnations of her is watching the evolution of the independent modern woman. Some depictions leave more to be desired than others. The way they introduced her was refreshing. Her intelligence and her courage has a slightly new flavor. I'd like to see a follow up of this story arc. I recomend everyone pick up a copy and take a good look. I don't regret buying this one. I enjoy looking at it over and over.

As I wrote in my previous review for "The Kingdom", Mark Waid is THE child of the Silver Age. There is an obvious love for the imaginative, dream-like and child-like stories of heroism from the Silver Age in all of Waid's writings. That's the reason Grant Morrison credits Waid for ending the all-pervasive grim-and-gritty mood that dominated comics since the mid-1980s. "Kingdom Come" (and "The Kingdom") is very much the last word on the Silver Age. In "JLA: Year One" and "The Brave and the Bold", Waid takes us back to the Silver Age to revisit that era one more time and to be inspired once more by the heroic spirit of John Broome and Gardner Fox one more time. And if you're looking for more of that here in "Superman: Birthright", you'll be sorely disappointed...

Waid does with "Birthright" in 2003/4 what Frank Miller did with "Dark Knight Returns" in 1986. It's a statement about an icon to fit the times. And we all know that Silver Age is really in the past. We live in different times altogether. Miller told us that in the late 1980s. Waid is trying to do that for today. I can't read "Dark Knight" these days without a backward glance to 1986. In the same way, I think future readers will say that "Birthright" is really a product of the early 21st century, the post-9/11 world of camera-phones and real-time news media.

Therefore, like Miller's "Dark Knight" it shares many of its strengths - "Birthright" attempts to be the DEFINITIVE statement on "who Superman is and why he does what he does". The whole thing reads like a philosophical inquiry into the Superman-mythos and is much like an amalgamation of everything that makes Superman great (from the Siegel/Shuster activist to the Fleischer animated champion of humanity to the Mort Weisinger sci-fi Kryptonian to Christopher Reeve and, of course John Byrne's "Man of Steel" and the current "Smallville").

However, the book also share many of the flaws of "Dark Knight" - it comes off more as a definitive VERSION of the character than a true representation of the timelessness of the original myth. Like I said in the above, "Dark Knight" is so '80s and in the same way, this work is sooooo 2003/4! Also, there is also the feeling that "Birthright" at times tries too hard to be great - even at the expanse of the story!

All in all, despite its flaws, the work is noteworthy for its sharper redefinition of the young Superman trying to find his place in the universe (for can "our" world, whether it be Smallville or Metropolis, truly contain him?). It gives us a Kal-El who honors his Kryptonian heritage as much as it gives us a Clark Kent who believes in his Smallville upbringing. Much has been made about how Waid ignores established continuity as well as accusations of trying to plagiarise the "Smallville" Lex Luthor. My opinion? Sometimes a comic work comes along that's so big that it transcends "smaller" (I say that as a continuity-freak myself) things like "continuity". After all, the Superman myth is more than the comics. Heck, it's more than the movies and action figures and TV shows. It's pop-culture. It's mythology-for-the-masses. It's truth-and-justice-and-humor-and-romance. It's science fiction and the world of tomorrow. And you'll find it all here in "Superman: Birthright".

I read all of the bad reviews before picking up this trade, believing that it would pale in comparison to the John Byrne modern-age revamp of the character back in the 80s. I was almost tempted to tell the clerk at the store as she was ringing up the trade that I had changed my mind on buying it, thinking it might be a waste of $20. I sat down for a couple hours and read it front ot back, which is something I usually don't do for something 12 (comic) issues in length, and I found this instantly became my definitive origin for the Man of Steel, despite my love for Jeph Loeb's interpretation in his "Superman: For All Seasons." He wasn't instantly accepted by society as a savior, instead having to prove himself the hard way, against the machinations of a (for once) truly menacing Lex Luthor. This was the first trade in a while that I felt compelled to pick up again to flip through on the same day I read it. I'm generally a Marvel fan, but in these handful of instances such as with "Birthright" and "Batman: Year One" where DC publishes a gem that shines above the rest, at least within my opinion.

Five-six years ago I was bored and went to the local Barnes & Noble. I found this, sat down, and was unable to walk away from it until I finished it. (No, I didn't BUY it! What do you take me for?) Recently, I've had the opportunity to take full advantage of my local library and, in between actual books, I've read something like 25 graphic novels over the last three months. Many of them are Superman stories. And nearly all of them were gawd-awful, and for mostly the same reasons: they relied on boring staples such as destroying the Fortress of Solitude or bringing some Kryptonians into play; they made Superman into a whiny wimp who cries all the time about how no one understands him; and/or they stretched reality farther than they reasonably should in a story about a human-looking alien who is bullet proof and can fly and completely destroy any chance of me taking it seriously. I began to wonder if that "retold Superman origin story" I had read all those years ago was nearly as good as I remembered it, in light of the awfulness of its peers.

Well, it absolutely was.

The ONLY issue like that I have in this is (spoiler!) that it doesn't easily make sense how Luthor has the resources to create a mechanical spider-like monster that is taller than most buildings in Metropolis. The whole fake-kryptonian invasion thing would have worked a lot better (with the hired thugs and reliance on holograms) without that. But that's the ONE flaw that I've found in this and the rest is so good it's hard to hold it against them.

If ever there was something in Superman's origin that made you roll your eyes or just didn't make sense, THIS one gets it right.

* His reason for doing what he does makes sense. He's a good soul with good intentions, nurtured correctly by his upbringing from the Kents, but also sees and recognizes his place in an honorable family line, as viewed through the Kryptonian . . . iPad . . . that was stored in the rocket with him when he was a baby. This, by the way, is where the title "Birthright" comes from--he's mostly driven by his deep understanding that he has a valuable role to play in the world that is not about his personal gain.

* His disguise as the bespectacled Clark Kent makes sense. We see that he has a difficult time in getting people to trust him once they find out what he can do. This makes him understand that he needs a secret identity, but the trust issue makes him shun the idea of a mask, so he has to make Clark the mask, resulting in a squirrelish demeanor, different hairstyle, baggy clothes, poor posture, and unattractive eye ware. I'm still not convinced it would work in real life, but they at least go beyond the minimum in justifying it.

* His feelings for Lois seem real, and Lois falling for Superman is convincing. Over the decades, justifying the Lois and Superman/Clark relationship has seemingly been difficult, and lots of times writers tend to assume it rather than show it. Here, they really establish it. Clark is interested in her via her writing, and then clearly smitten when he meets her in person. She is intrigued by Superman and has followed his pre-Metropolis appearances with great zeal, even to the point of nearly damaging her career for chasing "alien stories," therefore meeting HIM in person makes her schoolgirl-like weak knees all the more believable. Their spark is solidly established. His sense of satisfaction of impressing her via the cape really comes across, too, so that you get easily that he doesn't mind Superman getting the attention over Clark.

* Lex Luthor's motivations are made crystal clear. I'll even quote the line where, if you hadn't picked it up before, he lays it out for you. Page 215. " . . . You deliberately humiliated me. You looked at ME like *I* look at the ANTS. You don't get to do that. Period." He's a genius, he's rich, and he's a complete, self-absorbed egomaniac. This also brilliantly helps establish how Lex can't recognize Superman as the only boy he was friends with in Smallville--his ego gets in the way.

* He's confident. One of the problems I've had with so many incarnations of Superman is that in an attempt to make him more human and relate-able, they make him wimpy and whiny. Well, relate-able and "human" are great traits to give to him, especially when he's starting out in the blue suit and red cape, but at the same time Superman should be SuperMAN, and he should have a maturity, intelligence, and confidence that is noticeable and likeable. I wish I could easily put my finger on exactly what it was that the writers of Birthright did to get this right, but I can't. It's subtle--he's clearly not Super-Emo-Man, but he's also not coming across like he's compensating for anything.

It breaks my heart that this great origin story has been put on the shelf in favor of one that involves Superboy (sigh . . .), and has further convinced me that as much as I like Superman's potential (fully realized in this graphic novel/collection), those who write the character refuse to let it be any good.

I certainly hope that those behind the upcoming Superman movie draw from this graphic novel a lot . . .