Superman Week Part 6: Adventures of Superman #627
Originally Presented at Comixtreme.com
Quick Rating: Very Good
Title: Battery Part One
On Clark’s first day covering the Daily Planet crime beat, a new threat rears its head.
Writer: Greg Rucka
Pencils: Matthew Clark
Inks: Nelson
Colors: Tanya and Richard Horie
Letters: Rob Leigh
Editor: Eddie Berganza
Cover Art: Gene Ha
Publisher: DC Comics
Review: The reimagining of the Superman line continues, and thank Heavens this issue works better than last week’s Action Comics. Clark Kent has been booted down to the crime beat and on the first night on the job he’s picked for a helicopter ride-along with the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit, an assignment that can be a hindrance for a reporter who needs to be free to move about as Superman. The night gets rougher when the SCU runs across Replikon, an old enemy with all the power of the combined Justice League.
Rucka does a good Clark, making him nondescript but not the spineless wimp he came across as last week, and his Superman is bold and confidant, charging into battle as soon as he finds a window. Perhaps the best thing in this issue, however, is the addition of SCU Officer Lupe Leocadio to the supporting cast. Rucka does crime fiction better than anything else, and between Clark on the crime beat and having such a dynamic police officer character in the cast, he seems to have set things up to do what he does best.
Turning the title into something of a police procedural, along with some reporter-style drama with Lois Lane. I frequently get frustrated with depictions of journalists in comic books, because most of the time it is clear that the writers don’t know anything about journalism that they didn’t see on television. Rucka still gets in a little more drama than you really see in a newspaper office, but not so much to seriously disturb me.
Matthew Clark and Nelson do a stellar job on the art chores. Aside from a tough, yet bright Superman, they draw bold, distinctive and beautiful female characters in a style that harkens back to Phil Jimenez’s run on Wonder Woman. Sandwiching this book between the work of Ivan Reis and Jim Lee pretty much ensures that the Superman titles will look very good for the next year.
Superman reload month is two-thirds over, and so far editor Eddie Berganza is batting 1000 for artists and 500 for writers. Time to see what Azzarello can do.
Rating: 4/5
NOTE: This book came out a few years ago when DC put new creative teams on all of the three Superman titles at once. The other two were Chuck Austen and Ivan Reis on Action Comics and Brian Azzarello and Jim Lee on Superman. All three of them looked pretty, but this is the only one of the titles that was really worth a damn.