Book Reviews: Last Days of Krypton; The Secret Six
Took me most of the week to get through book #16 for the year, then I finished off the weekend with a "quick" graphic novel, since I seem to be in this "super-hero" mode at the moment:
The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson, isbn # 9780061340741 412 pages, hardcover, HarperCollins, $25.95
That famous phrase, first uttered so chillingly by Terrance Stamp in Superman The Movie, doesn't show up until page 315 of Kevin Anderson's new novel, but you spend most of the book just waiting for it to appear. I don't think there's a Superman fan born after the mid-60s who doesn't equate that line with the fall of Superman's home planet.
Kevin J. Anderson has a tough job with this novel. He's got to work up a Krypton that will be palatable to long-time comics fans who remember the Krypton of DC's Silver Age (when the planet was lush, vibrant, alive) as well as fans who are more familiar with cold antiseptic frozen Krypton of the Christopher Reeves movies and the John Byrne Superman revamp of the 1980s. Mostly, Anderson does a good job. His Krypton has life but is still insulated from the rest of the 28 known galaxies (and with a good reason, or at least a reason that makes sense to the populace of Krypton; it reminded me of America's isolationist stance pre-WW2). I wished for a few more familiar names among the supporting cast, a few more faces familiar to we Silver Age fans, but that's a minor quibble.
Anderson gives us a Jor-El and Lara we can understand, and shows us their romance, from first meeting to marriage and the birth of their son Kal-El. He gives us a complex but strong connection between Jor-El and his younger brother Zor-El -- rather than set up a sibling rivalry (as they seem to have done on Smallville this season), we get a younger brother who is every bit as smart as the older, but who realizes he can't live in the older brother's shadow and so charts a different life-course, in the political arena. We even get a very strong version of Zor-El's wife Allura, a botanical scientist just as smart as her husband.
We also get strong portrayals of the villains. I can see Terrance Stamp playing this version of Zod, who starts out as a minor Kryptonian official barred from following in the footsteps of his more famous father, and slowly becomes the megalomaniac we're familiar with. Zod's lackeys from Superman The Movie are given full back-stories by Anderson that also make them more than just cardboard villain stereotypes (the willful woman and the mute henchman).
The book starts slow, unfortunately -- there's endless set-up of Jor-El's scientific brilliance and political naivete; Lara's life as an artist in the shadow of her more famous parents; Zor-El's attempts to run Argo City and research the problems at Krypton's core; Zod's power-hungry fantasies; and so on. The arrival of an alien on Krypton for the first time in several generations, breaking the planet's isolation, should be the point where the story picks up, but it isn't. Things stay slow for several more chapters -- until the arrival of a certain green-skinned city-napping android. That's when Zod's own plans kick into gear and the novel really picks up speed.
Where the first half of the book is strong on characterization (if slow in that development), the second half of the book is almost non-stop action, with an ending worthy of the origin of Superman.
I definitely recommend this, even for people only vaguely aware of the Superman mythos (and for those very much aware of DC Comics history, there are a few nice cameos and in-jokes).
Secret Six: Six Degrees of Devastation by Gail Simone, Brad Walker, Jimmy Palmiotti, etal, isbn # 9781401212315, 143 pages, softcover, DC Comics, $14.99
It's been a while since I read the DC Comics trade paperback of the "Villains United" mini-series, which introduced a band of second-string DC villains who did not want to go along with the plans of The Society (a network of most of DC's villains of all tiers these days), but I remember enjoying the story, especially the re-invention of Cat-Man (a third-string Batman enemy at best) into a strong character.
This trade paperback, which collects the first six issues of the Six's own on-going series, seems a bit too hectic and scattershot for its own good. The subplots all come together at the end, and there are some cliff-hangers of sorts running into whatever the next story arc is, but I got tired quickly of the endless "who's betraying who, who fathered who's child" thing. Seriously -- in the compressed time between the Villains United story and this, somehow Cheshire had the time to give birth to another child? Vandal Savage (easily THE most inconsistently written villain in the DCU for years now) suddenly wants his estranged daughter to give birth to an heir who will then turn around and kill him, after years of doing anything and everything to extend his already seemingly immortal life?
I want to like these characters -- I like the work they've done with Thomas Blake / Catman, and the work they're doing with Floyd Lawson / Deadshot harks back to one of my alltime favorite DC Comics series, Suicide Squad, from the late 80s. I'm intrigued at the Scandal-Knockout relationship and whether it'll be portrayed as being about more than just sex. But the book is almost too action-oriented and too interested in making sure it stays connected to as much of the rest of the DCU as possible, which could work against itself. I'll reserve judgement until the next trade paperback, if there is one.
The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson, isbn # 9780061340741 412 pages, hardcover, HarperCollins, $25.95
That famous phrase, first uttered so chillingly by Terrance Stamp in Superman The Movie, doesn't show up until page 315 of Kevin Anderson's new novel, but you spend most of the book just waiting for it to appear. I don't think there's a Superman fan born after the mid-60s who doesn't equate that line with the fall of Superman's home planet.
Kevin J. Anderson has a tough job with this novel. He's got to work up a Krypton that will be palatable to long-time comics fans who remember the Krypton of DC's Silver Age (when the planet was lush, vibrant, alive) as well as fans who are more familiar with cold antiseptic frozen Krypton of the Christopher Reeves movies and the John Byrne Superman revamp of the 1980s. Mostly, Anderson does a good job. His Krypton has life but is still insulated from the rest of the 28 known galaxies (and with a good reason, or at least a reason that makes sense to the populace of Krypton; it reminded me of America's isolationist stance pre-WW2). I wished for a few more familiar names among the supporting cast, a few more faces familiar to we Silver Age fans, but that's a minor quibble.
Anderson gives us a Jor-El and Lara we can understand, and shows us their romance, from first meeting to marriage and the birth of their son Kal-El. He gives us a complex but strong connection between Jor-El and his younger brother Zor-El -- rather than set up a sibling rivalry (as they seem to have done on Smallville this season), we get a younger brother who is every bit as smart as the older, but who realizes he can't live in the older brother's shadow and so charts a different life-course, in the political arena. We even get a very strong version of Zor-El's wife Allura, a botanical scientist just as smart as her husband.
We also get strong portrayals of the villains. I can see Terrance Stamp playing this version of Zod, who starts out as a minor Kryptonian official barred from following in the footsteps of his more famous father, and slowly becomes the megalomaniac we're familiar with. Zod's lackeys from Superman The Movie are given full back-stories by Anderson that also make them more than just cardboard villain stereotypes (the willful woman and the mute henchman).
The book starts slow, unfortunately -- there's endless set-up of Jor-El's scientific brilliance and political naivete; Lara's life as an artist in the shadow of her more famous parents; Zor-El's attempts to run Argo City and research the problems at Krypton's core; Zod's power-hungry fantasies; and so on. The arrival of an alien on Krypton for the first time in several generations, breaking the planet's isolation, should be the point where the story picks up, but it isn't. Things stay slow for several more chapters -- until the arrival of a certain green-skinned city-napping android. That's when Zod's own plans kick into gear and the novel really picks up speed.
Where the first half of the book is strong on characterization (if slow in that development), the second half of the book is almost non-stop action, with an ending worthy of the origin of Superman.
I definitely recommend this, even for people only vaguely aware of the Superman mythos (and for those very much aware of DC Comics history, there are a few nice cameos and in-jokes).
Secret Six: Six Degrees of Devastation by Gail Simone, Brad Walker, Jimmy Palmiotti, etal, isbn # 9781401212315, 143 pages, softcover, DC Comics, $14.99
It's been a while since I read the DC Comics trade paperback of the "Villains United" mini-series, which introduced a band of second-string DC villains who did not want to go along with the plans of The Society (a network of most of DC's villains of all tiers these days), but I remember enjoying the story, especially the re-invention of Cat-Man (a third-string Batman enemy at best) into a strong character.
This trade paperback, which collects the first six issues of the Six's own on-going series, seems a bit too hectic and scattershot for its own good. The subplots all come together at the end, and there are some cliff-hangers of sorts running into whatever the next story arc is, but I got tired quickly of the endless "who's betraying who, who fathered who's child" thing. Seriously -- in the compressed time between the Villains United story and this, somehow Cheshire had the time to give birth to another child? Vandal Savage (easily THE most inconsistently written villain in the DCU for years now) suddenly wants his estranged daughter to give birth to an heir who will then turn around and kill him, after years of doing anything and everything to extend his already seemingly immortal life?
I want to like these characters -- I like the work they've done with Thomas Blake / Catman, and the work they're doing with Floyd Lawson / Deadshot harks back to one of my alltime favorite DC Comics series, Suicide Squad, from the late 80s. I'm intrigued at the Scandal-Knockout relationship and whether it'll be portrayed as being about more than just sex. But the book is almost too action-oriented and too interested in making sure it stays connected to as much of the rest of the DCU as possible, which could work against itself. I'll reserve judgement until the next trade paperback, if there is one.