And in the end, he restarts the sun
Everybody's heard about All-Star Batman and Robin. The blatant fan-service. The insane violence. 'The God-damned Batman'. The comic was originally put forwards as a sort of DC equivalent to Marvel's Ultimates line, a 'back to basics' way to bring new readers into the line without the decades of background the main line carries. But since Frank Miller has apparently lost his godsdamned mind, it quite rapidly descended into absolute farce, now apparently serving as a prequel to Miller's The Dark Knight Returns/Strikes Again, because of course if you're trying to bring in new readers, the best thing to do is write a prequel to, respectfully, a twenty-four and a nine year old comic. Given how utterly abominable Strikes Again was (although Returns was quite good), this hasn't really given rise to a great piece of literature. The only thing that can be said for it, frankly, is that at least Miller's not doing the illustrations anymore.
The trainwreck-style interest ASBaR has attracted has vastly overshadowed All-Star Superman, which is absolutely tragic, because All-Star Superman is one of the best Superman stories I have ever seen. The twelve-volume series follows the Man of Tomorrow in the aftermath of a solar-probe rescue that poisons him, overwhelming him with the sheer power of the yellow sun at such an unbelievably close range. To its credit the series never allows itself to fall into maudlin tear-jerking, instead using Superman's approaching end to highlight the unrelenting nobility of the Last Son of Krypton, showing once more why Superman endures as much as an icon of the human spirit as he does as a character in his own right. And in terms of a Superman story, in its own right, it's excellent there, too. All-Star Superman nicely balances Silver Age madness, like a battle with Solaris, the Tyrant Sun and a visit to Bizarro world, with more meta elements, such as Superman's incredibly difficulty convincing Lois that yes, he is in fact Clark Kent (apparently, that disguise is even better than we thought). And in one of the comic's best moments Superman, faced with his own rapidly approaching demise and working on nothing more than half a phone conversation overheard at a busy train station, manages, well, this...
Seriously, that gets me every time.
All-Star Superman is, quite simply, as near to perfect a book as one could hope to find. Action, comedy, romance, drama, pathos, beautiful artwork, enough self-awareness to be amusing but not so much as to be pretentious, and all wrapped up in a perfectly self-contained story that touches equally on Superman's well-known past and the vast potentials of his future, his decades-old friends and enemies and new associates and antagonists, and all wrapped up in a nice, easy, approachable package, perfect for the casual newcomer or the hard-core Super-fan.
It is everything one could want in a Superman story, and I have only regret.
That it ends.
The trainwreck-style interest ASBaR has attracted has vastly overshadowed All-Star Superman, which is absolutely tragic, because All-Star Superman is one of the best Superman stories I have ever seen. The twelve-volume series follows the Man of Tomorrow in the aftermath of a solar-probe rescue that poisons him, overwhelming him with the sheer power of the yellow sun at such an unbelievably close range. To its credit the series never allows itself to fall into maudlin tear-jerking, instead using Superman's approaching end to highlight the unrelenting nobility of the Last Son of Krypton, showing once more why Superman endures as much as an icon of the human spirit as he does as a character in his own right. And in terms of a Superman story, in its own right, it's excellent there, too. All-Star Superman nicely balances Silver Age madness, like a battle with Solaris, the Tyrant Sun and a visit to Bizarro world, with more meta elements, such as Superman's incredibly difficulty convincing Lois that yes, he is in fact Clark Kent (apparently, that disguise is even better than we thought). And in one of the comic's best moments Superman, faced with his own rapidly approaching demise and working on nothing more than half a phone conversation overheard at a busy train station, manages, well, this...
Seriously, that gets me every time.
All-Star Superman is, quite simply, as near to perfect a book as one could hope to find. Action, comedy, romance, drama, pathos, beautiful artwork, enough self-awareness to be amusing but not so much as to be pretentious, and all wrapped up in a perfectly self-contained story that touches equally on Superman's well-known past and the vast potentials of his future, his decades-old friends and enemies and new associates and antagonists, and all wrapped up in a nice, easy, approachable package, perfect for the casual newcomer or the hard-core Super-fan.
It is everything one could want in a Superman story, and I have only regret.
That it ends.