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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A MORE AFFORDABLE RE-PRINT FORMAT, March 6, 2006
DC Comics re-printing of the earliest Superman adventures isn't a new idea. We've seen them numerous times over the years both in regular comic reprints, Famous First Editions Treasuries, as well as the Action Comics Archives. But in Superman Chronicles, DC gives readers a slight variation. Rather than just providing reprints of a particular title, the Chronicles will be re-printing Superman stories in chronological order as they first appeared beginning with Action Comics #1 back in 1938. Thus this volume goes in order of Action Comics numbers 1 through 12, then New York World's Fair #1, Action Comics #13, and finally concluding with Superman #1. Obviously the often re-printed Action Comics stories are at the front of the line in this first volume but that will change in the future editions.
If you haven't read these stories before this is a Superman who is very different in both powers and appearance than the one we know today. Early on Superman did not fly, but could merely leap up to an 1/8th of a mile. No real origin is presented other than a brief preface that Superman was found by some motorists and placed into an orphanage. No mention of ma & pa kent whatsoever... And it wasn't the Daily Planet where Clark Kent got his start as a reporter but the Daily Star. While Lois Lane was around from the beginning, to say her and Clark didn't quite get along at first is putting it mildly. Lois is downright nasty to Clark leading to a surprised exclamation by Clark when Lois actually says hello to him one day.
The villains early on are not exactly on the par of Lex Luthor, Brainiac, or Doomsday. Mostly Clark battles two-bit villains who are pretty indistinguishable from those that Batman may have fought. One may almost consider these early adventures mundane. In one, Clark goes up against a ruthless mine owner who refuses to improve the safety of his mines even after an accident traps several of his employees. Another story finds Clark impersonating a football player in order to bring down some gangsters who've hired thugs to purposely injure a rival teams best players.
One of the most humorous and most prophetic stories in the book is the one where a man shows up at the Daily Star claiming to be Superman's manager and saying he has the rights to license Superman's name for use in films or on products like bathing suits. One wonders if writer Jerry Siegel knew just how big Superman would become back in the late 30's, and how he would have to fight legal battles with DC over the character. Joe Shuster's art was a bit primitive even for the Golden Age and not on a par with others of the period like Kirby, Schomburg, Molduff, and Kubert. The real star, art-wise of these early issues of Action was cover artist Leo O' Mealia who contributes some dazzling covers. O' Mealia was an old pro who was perhaps best known for illustrating the Fu Manchu newspaper strip in the early 1930's. Kudos to DC for including all of these great covers.
One can question whether or not there's a need for these to be re-printed in chronological order. Continuity wasn't all that important back then and stories were rarely continued across different titles, but for those who have not read them it further preserves important comic book history. And on top of that, the soft cover format makes these far more affordable than the Archive editions.
Reviewed by Tim Janson
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage Superman, August 15, 2007
This is a collection of the earliest Superman comics, they are in color and affordable. I would consider these a must own for any Superman fan. Overall production value, although not flashy, is excellent and the stories are classics. This is where it all started.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An odd start to the Superman saga, November 16, 2008
There are virtually no supervillains to be seen; instead, Superman started out as a kind of progressive icon, fighting the good fight for the common man. He takes on unjust death sentences, the military-industrial complex, unsafe working conditions, torture in prisons, and lax enforcement of traffic safety laws. It's incredibly bizarre and clearly written for an era with a different set of ideas about how superhero comics worked. In fact, it takes until the final issue of this collection - Action Comics #13 - to introduce a recurring villain, and that makes for a lot of extremely forgettable stories.
A few of the details of the Superman mythos have yet to be worked out. For starters, he works for the Daily Star at this point, and the chief doesn't appear to be named Perry White yet. The Kents are dead (which is something that will be changed later) and there is no Lex Luthor to speak of. Lois is here, though, and the love "triangle" between her, Clark, and Superman is hammered into place with some extremely hilarious thought-bubbles (turns out Lois loves Superman for his strength and hates Clark for his weakness - feminist comics, these ain't).
The narrative is also kind of choppy. There are a few false starts, with the plot changing halfway through an issue. In other cases, the story will end abruptly and then be picked up again the next issue as if nothing changed. In a digest format, these issues are weird; in a serial I can imagine they would be downright jarring. And while there is less of the casual murder we see in early Batman, Superman is not exactly violence-averse. He is more than willing to destroy property (I'm not even sure how to justify his behavior in his fight for automobile safety), punch people out, and threaten the bad guys until they agree to confess their crimes. The 1930s were a simpler time for those who relied on forced confessions, and apparently for many other things as well.
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