I'm a longtime J Mike fan, having enjoyed his work on Real Ghostbusters, Babylon 5, Rising Stars, Squadron Supreme, Thor. . .and I'm a longtime Superman fan, too. I had high hopes for this book, thinking it'd be a case of two great tastes that taste great together. Imagine my surprise after reading it this morning and discovering that, no, J Mike fundamentally doesn't understand the character of Superman.
I know he loves the character, I know he's a longtime fan (longer than me, given the difference in our ages). But reading this comic, I got no sense that J Mike knew what that special magic is that makes Superman so very different from all the other comic book superheroes on the market today.
Absolute All Star Superman did a much better job with Superman than J Mike is doing, and Grant Morrison is really much better as a Batman writer.
Overall I have to say this book is "good enough. . .I guess." The scenes involving the Daily Planet and its cast are top-notch material. Much of the rest of the story is recycled from other, often better stories into a patchwork quilt of Superman-like ideas without Superman-like heart. The art is very good, though in some places the artist trips over himself.
So what specifically went wrong with this book? (SPOILERS AHEAD)
...
There are a lot of great touches in Superman: Earth One. There is a scene wherein Clark buys a newspaper even though the newspaper machine is broken and he could have simply taken a Daily Planet without paying for it. The scenes with Perry White, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen working at a dessicated husk of a Daily Planet are no short of brilliant.
But Clark/Superman himself. . .and the morality that makes him. . .are the problems here. We're confronted with a Superman that doesn't WANT to be Superman. His parents tried to push him into being a superhero--his mother sewed his suit, a holdover from John Byrne's
Superman: The Man of Steel, Vol. 1, but in this story the "S" stands alternately for "Son (of another world)" from Martha's perspective or "Superman" from Jonathan's perspective. After Jonathan Kent's death, all Clark wants to do is find a great job with gobs of pay so he can help support his mother. . .he's not interested in truth, or justice, or any of that nonsense. This entire story shows us a Clark/Superman coming to terms with who he is, who he wants to be, and who he SHOULD be.
And that would be a great story, except that almost all the dialogue outside of the Daily Planet reads like actors who know their lines but don't understand them. They ring false and hollow, like a poorly-executed stage play or a high school production of Shakespeare. Clark walks around with a slouch and his hoodie up, like some kind of street punk. He has a fantastically emo speech while sitting on his father's grave in the wee hours before dawn. Beyond that, he has very little to say--much of what it means to be Superman comes in pointed sermons from his father and mother in flashbacks throughout the book that serve as underscores to what is happening to Clark at that moment in the story--a "See, this is what they were talking about" sort of narrative structure. I suppose I would like it more if I weren't so familiar with J Mike's writing, but I am, and at this point the technique just feels tired.
J Mike also isn't above cannibalizing his own ideas from other books he's written. After the Kents take baby Clark away from the mountainside spaceship crash (I think J Mike or Shane Davis, the illustrator, needs to bone up on his geography if he thinks mountains are in Kansas), the government arrives in "black helicopters" and captures the spaceship. . .and proceeds to experiment on it in secret for the next 20 years. An idea last seen in
Supreme Power Vol. 1: Contact by none other than J Mike Straczynski.
So, cutting to the chase, an alien dressed like a member of Insane Clown Posse. . .but with metal-and-energy wings. . .that he doesn't need to fly, he just has them because they're cosmetic, I guess?. . .arrives with a bunch of spacecraft and starts tearing the planet apart. Turns out he and his people. . .planetary neighbors of Krypton. . .blew up Krypton 20 years ago and they've been on the hunt for the last remaining Kryptonian ever since. Why did they hate Krypton and go to war with them? Because the plot compelled them to! So these aliens show up to find the last Kryptonian and, whether he shows or not, they're going to kill a lot of people just cuz. And with that, Clark actually has (an albeit brief) debate with himself on whether he should reveal himself.
But of course he does, and they fight and fight and it's all supposed to be very epic. . .except that Mark Waid did it better in
Superman: Birthright. And while they fight, the people of Earth aren't really interested in helping Superman and aren't really inspired by him--the way they see it, this is all his fault anyway. Only Lois and Jimmy seem to really give a hoot, and help rescue Superman from the anti-Superman-weapon-du-jour, a red sunlight energy beam. Meanwhile, the ship that brought Superman to Earth, the one in the custody of the government, self-repairs, joins him in the battle to free Earth, and he climbs aboard and uses it to attack the alien capital ship.
Yes, that is correct. SUPERMAN doesn't defeat the enemies with his own powers and abilities. He climbs into his interplanetary baby carriage and lets it do all the work for him.
And after the end of the battle, in a recording from his spaceship, he is told that part of his purpose in life is to "Avenge the murder of Krypton."
Now, there are a lot of problems with this as a Superman book. The feel and flavor of it are all wrong for these reasons:
First, Superman is an inspirational figure. That is one of the things that makes Superman, among all the superheroes in comics, unique. People (in the comic universe) look at him and are inspired to be better people or do greater things because of him. People LIKE him. By taking that away from Superman, you're left with another "big strong guy who does property damage." I suppose you could say that this is the story of proto-Superman, of Superman before he's learned to be an inspirational figure, but in that case this is the story of Superman BEFORE THERE WAS A SUPERMAN. Not really an interesting or engaging story there, more of a "oh, we've seen this before in
Batman Begins [Blu-ray]."
Which leads to another problem--Superman's previous raison d'ętre was to help people. To fight for truth, justice, and (originally) the American way. He was the Boy Scout. I would argue that to change that aspect of the character is to make him into a completely DIFFERENT character. . .in which case, why don't you just make that completely different character? (Answer: J Mike already has, in the aforementioned Squadron Supreme. . .itself a Marvel take on a more "realistic" backstory for Superman). Now, in this book, we're presented with a Superman who must avenge the murder of his world. Sound familiar? It should. That's Batman's backstory.
So in this book, J Mike successfully both removes the flavor of Superman stories and transforms Superman into Batman with a different power set. Which is done specifically to try and make Superman more engaging for a modern audience. The problem is, when you change Superman into a completely different character to make him interesting for a modern audience, you're not presenting the modern audience with Superman. . .you're giving them something, oddly enough, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
The art in this book is, like the writing, satisfying but occasionally clumsy. Shane Davis suffers somewhat from that mid-90s tendency to shove as many superfluous lines in his artwork as possible. Not as clumsy as Rob Liefeld, not as skilled as Jim Lee. The overall look for the book is fantastic, very moody, with a 30s vibe to the buildings of Metropolis that I think works really well.
That said. . .I do not understand why he felt the need to redesign Superman's costume. It's very much like Superman's normal costume. . .but there's a gold edging around the S-shield (that, I'll admit, bothered me probably way more than it should have), there appears to be some kind of extra padding around the sides of his torso and inner thigh (and I can't help but wonder if the costume sounds like corduroy pants when he walks as a result), and his (stirrup) boots are flared at the top. He also has enormous Beltloops of Power that were large enough to be distracting.
I wish I had been able to love this book. But this is not the best work of its writer, or of its lead character. And the freshest Superman of recent memory remains All-Star Superman, with its wacky--but absolutely SUPERMANy--oddity.
