Customer Reviews

Superman: Coming of Atlas

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Lately Superman has become even more of an everyman hero in the hands of Geoff Johns and James Robinson. Superman/Clark Kent has his roots in Kansas farmland after all, and his core values aren't the same as Batman or Wonder Woman. Batman's personal tragedy propels him, and Wonder Woman's sense of duty keeps her motivated, plus that whole history of being raised among Amazons.

At the end of the day, though, Superman is the kind of guy you can sit down with and talk about family issues. And he'd have good advice and experiences he could share with you. Beyond the super powered stuff and being an alien from another planet, if those were your problems.

James Robinson really gets that about Superman as well, and his first scripting run on the character is fantastic. Okay, I'll admit that the villain plot of The Coming of Atlas is a bit simplistic and creaky, but that isn't the real story. The real story is even more basic and much deeper than villains trying to take a hero's head off.

The graphic novel is the story of a boy and his dog. From page 1 to the final page, that's what this book is about, and the dog lover and father in me was ecstatic about that. In fact, I'm pushing the book onto my 12 year old now, and I'm ranting to you about it as well.

I loved the argument Lois and Clark had over whether Clark should keep Krypto, and how that argument escalated into whether Clark loved her and why he should love her even though he could have probably had anyone. Clark certainly answered that question with more aplomb than most guys out there would have.

But the thing that really sold me on the tale was Superman's simple love for Krypto, and the way the dog returned that love. The scene with Superman playing fetch with Krypto out in space with Green Lantern watching was priceless. (Of course, it also made me wonder where GL was when Superman was getting the stuffing pounded out of him later.)

I wasn't really sold on Atlas as a villain. For one, he didn't really have an agenda against Superman, and I didn't really know what happened to him at the end. However, Renato Guedes's art is eye-popping. The battle scenes were terrific, and the black and white washed "memory" scenes of Lois and Clark were an absolute visual treat that really stood apart from the rest of the book.

One of Robinson's greatest strengths is his vision of the characters he writes about. He can touch the core of their values, hopes, and fears like few other writers can. Even with the story isn't particularly strong, Robinson's portrayal of the heroes/characters will be. Highly recommended for the last scenes especially.

Without giving any of the story away, it was a dissapointment to see who Atlas actually was. Even worse, the story tended to drag and for some reason, poor editing perhaps, events would occur and without any explanation or conclusion, switch to something else. Even the ending was subpar. Might as well have switched Superman with Krypto on the cover. Even a big Superman fan need not worry about picking this up, your not missing anything.

I picked this up at a comic shop because it promised a new villain, Atlas, who could fight toe-to-toe with Superman. I was expecting something reminiscent of Superman's original clash with Doomsday, boy was I disappointed. Atlas' origin story is interesting enough, but his debut isn't handled well enough to carry the story. The fight with Superman and Atlas is pretty mediocre, bringing nothing new to the table (despite promises of doing just that). Superman is unusually slow in his detective work and his solution to defeating Atlas is a big, unoriginal, and unexciting "duh". Krypto self-sacrificially joins the fray, and Superman makes one of the dumbest congratulatory speeches ever. "This is my dog, Metropolis! And now he's your dog too!" I like Superman, I like Krypto, but come on... I've never before returned or traded in a TPB, but I'm seriously considering doing so with this one.

Beautiful artwork, and some awesome moments that define Clark as the most hopefully naive and greatest hero in the universe. However the story, particularly the ending, feels really abrupt. Still, it's short, it's sweet, and it's vaguely reminiscent, at moments, of the Death of Superman. A super-powerful foe comes out of nowhere to confront and kill the Man of Steel and destroy half of Metropolis in the meantime, blah, blah, blah. This story is more about the Superman's supporting cast than about him, particularly Krypto. Good boy.

I was really excited when I got this book, I had been craving a Superman story for so long but, this story didn't only fail to satisfy that, it made me want to stop reading superman for at least while.

The art isn't bad but, it isn't anything special either. That's the closest thing to a redeeming quality this story has.

The dialogue is pretty terrible for several reasons, the first of which is none of its interesting. To put it simply there is absolutely no character development (unless you count the dog, which could count just barley) or any interesting references to the history of the DC universe, back stories, or science fiction. Even the narration is terrible, it constantly switches from the first to the third person, and I know this will sound stupid but, it's like there is a narrator narrating the narrators, it's just annoying.

Even if you get past the dialoged the story just leaves everything to be desired. Motives are discussed in this story but it's the same old, plain and simple "guy wants Superman dead so he send a crazy destructive force in his face that doesn't know how to do anything but punch." It'd be like the Death of Superman if its plot had any significant effects other than what the title entails, the coming of Atlas. Also this story is more about Krypto than Superman and in my opinion, Krypto is the corniest character in the DC universe. In this story, Krypto operates the same way as atlas, he fights and all he say, or thinks in this case, I fight enemy, I need to win. The book also took me no time at all to read, it's far too short.

I'm not reading another story involving Atlas unless I know it contains his death.