Review: Action Comics #1000

The good:

The standout in this anniversary issue is "The Car," a story idea so simple it's amazing no one has thought about it before. We've seen hundreds of retcons, and reboots of the Superman mythology over the past 80 years, but this is the first story to ask, what exactly happened to that car Superman smashed on the cover of Action Comics #1?

Genius!

It could have been titled, "Action Comics #1: The Next Day." We find out what happened to the car, and by extension, what happened to the owner of the car who, as you remember, was kidnapping Lois Lane at the time he met up with Superman. The clever story is by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, with exceptional art by Olivier Coipel.

The whole book is an homage to Superman, but only "The Car" is an homage to Action Comics.

They brought some creative icons back and they're always welcome: Neal Adams! Jim Steranko! Jose Garcia Lopez! Jerry Ordway! Marv Wolfman! Paul Levitz! Any comic book with only one of these creators is worth picking up ... and studying.

There's an amazing greatest hits package by Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason who give us a quick 80-year history through a series of full page recreations. Beautiful.

It ends with a Brian Michael Bendis, Jim Lee cliffhanger which introduces a whole new villain and storyline to be carried out in the future. It's intriguing for now, let's see where it goes.

The head scratchers:


There are two stories where Superman and Lex Luthor stand around and chat. Really, two? Lex Luthor bores me for the same reason the Joker does. He is the default villain. Make a Superman movie, use Luthor as the villain. Make another Superman movie, use Luthor as the villain, make another Superman movie, Luthor. Reboot the franchise: Use Luthor, reboot the franchise again? Luthor, yet again.


And he's not that good a villain.

The other disappointment was the Curt Swan chapter. Yeah, I get it, he was the Superman artist for 20 years, but the unpublished art they use doesn't even have Superman (just his narration, what a cheat!), and secondly, they must have been working with some really rough pencils because after it was digitized and colorized and photoshopped, very little of it looks like Curt Swan's work, same for the full page of Superman by Swan and inked by Kurt Shaffenberger, these two had extremely distinctive styles, all washed out by the time Photoshop got finished with them. I would have been happy with a single page of Superman flying from Swan and Murphy Anderson.

Do they drag out the Superman Day celebration (where something evil is afoot) every anniversary issue. It just seemed very familiar.

Though it's Action Comics' landmark issue, it's all about Superman. Where are the homages to the heroes of its back-up features.  We have two cameos of the Justice League en masse, but no Zatara? Where's the Human Target, Tex Thompson, The Vigilante, the Atom, Green Arrow? When comics had substantial page counts, Superman didn't carry Action alone. I loved those backup features. If I wanted to read just all Superman  stories, I'd get Superman, if I wanted some variety, I'd get Action.

Review of 10-year-old comic book I've finally gotten around to reading, part1

Having kids didn't stop me from buying comics, it just kept me from reading them! So I've stumbled upon a couple books I finally got around to reading.



Action Comics Annual #10

This one's a head scratcher. The cover has the go-go checks, layout  and the '48pg giant' logo all from the 60s, which is supposed to evoke some feeling of nostalgia from old-timers like myself. I bit, I bought it, expecting a bunch of standalone Superman stories like the good old days, but no.

Instead it's a collection of unfinished stories, and Superman is hardly in it. My first clue should have been Superman not even being on the cover (he is featured prominently on the alternate cover, so those readers must have been really disappointed.)

OK, no Superman and unfinished stories. Oh, I get it, there had just been another reboot, and these were the introductory stories to upcoming interminable story arcs for the next issues of Action.

At least that's my theory, I hadn't bought too many Actions after this.

That, and I hate DC story arcs. They never finish. They spend more thought on setting up the arc than actually seeing it through.

The first story ..um no, not actually a story. Lex Luthor goes through a jungle imagining different ways to kills Superman. He finds some Kryptonite, and that's it. Four pages. Great Art Adams art though.

Second story is a retelling of the introduction of Mon-El. Why didn't they just reprint the original story from the 50s? The only difference is instead of stressing the cover tease of a brother from Krypton (not really), it stresses Clark Kent's loneliness. It does have a beginning, middle and end though, unlike everything else in the book. Eric Wight provides some indie-comic style art.

The "Mystery of the Blue Sun" story is the real head scratcher. Thanagarian space police cruisers investigating destroyed cruisers come upon some Bizarro Supermen. Once again, that's it. Two pages! At first I thought it was a production error because the "story" ends abruptly and it goes to a two-page spread of the "Secrets of the Fortress of Solitude," ... then a two-page comic about the Wii, you keep flipping pages looking for the Bizarro story to continue, and it never does! It's always great to see Joe Kubert, especially in the 2000's when he was nearing retirement, but still. There's no there there.

"The Criminals of Krypton" is the closest we get to a story with some interesting concepts. It's based on the deleted scenes from the first Superman movie where the Kryptonian council sends its storm troopers to take out Jor-El. OK, great idea, tell me more. We get some background on the Phantom Zone villains (they weren't evil, just misunderstood -- or lobotomized) -- and more background on Jor-El. OK, a good story, with beautiful art by Rags Morales.

By then though it's too little, too late, because it closes with the continuation of Lex Luthor unveiling the new and improved Metallo

It's all a big tease and big cheat, DC is essentially saying: Here's a bunch of unfinished ideas we may or may not get back to, thanks for your $3.99 though.

I used to think I stopped buying comics books because I had kids and no time to read them, now I'm thinking it's because I kept feeling like I'm getting cheated.

Review: Supergirl (pilot)

OK, it's the pilot, even the best TV shows started off with clunky, exposition-laden pilots.

Some points:

They borrowed a lot from the first Superman film: First rescue that of being a loved one on an aircraft, the scene where everyone gets chewed out by the boss who says: Get me an interview!, the villain using high frequency radio signals to contact the hero. But, fine, the airplane rescue was worth the price of admission. (I love the part where she's flying upside down, carrying the plane and she sees an approaching bridge, and grumbles, "Oh come on!" The pilot needed more moments like that.

It's what  happened after the rescue when things got dodgy: Her sister comes to scold her for saving her life, and to not do it anymore? It's explained later the sister is part of a top-secret alien-hunting task force, which makes it only slightly less hard to swallow. And the sister's boss scolds her too, telling her to knock it off. There's a lot of scolding going on.

She's as powerful as the sun, and no one thinks she's capable???!! A big stretch.

It needs to be a little more like the Flash, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, their support teams like the hero .. and furthermore are a lot of fun to hang out with. There was little fun with this crowd.

Especially Jimmy Olsen whose job it is is to be dreamy looking and tell her what her cousin would say if he were here. Do we need that? If it were so important let him tell her himself!

This was a problem with the Supergirl film, also. They always talked about Superman in reverent tones, but unless he actually shows up, who cares? That's what I liked about Power Girl, when she was introduced she wanted to distance herself from her cousin. (They borrowed the Kara-getting delayed-for-decades-on-her-way-to-earth conceit from Power Girl, which was a good thing, as well as the concept of Kara being tasked with being Kal-El's babysitter. Great idea.) Not such a great idea: Pep talks from hologram mom.

I'm not sure we need Calista Flockhart. The outright theft from "The Devil Wears Prada," is too incompatible with the long-underwear aspects of the show. Jackie Cooper was probably the best at being the unhinged boss.

The overall concept: We got lots of intergalactic prison escapees! That could work in a Buffy-in-the-Hellmouth way. I'm not sure about their leader being her aunt. Why?

I'm sure we'll see more of Dean Cain and Helen Slater as her earth parents. In the comics, Superman just dropped Kara off at an orphanage. That Superman is cold!

Bottom line: This could be a lot of fun, like the Flash, if they could tone the scolding down a little.

Addendum: As my 8-year-old pointed out: "National City? That's not even in the DC Universe. And he's right, I was thinking such an unusual name for a city, especially one made up for a TV show that is not in the original DC Comics. Then later I realized my answer was in the question: National was DC's name through the 40s to late 70s. Doh! Very clever Supergirl producers!

Film Review: Fantastic Four

Is it the colossal train wreck everyone on the Internet says it is?

No.

Is it good?

No.

If Joss Whedon's Avengers movies taught us anything,  it's you have to  litter your movie with  action sequences. Seemingly every fifteen minutes the Avengers individually or together are pummeling someone or being pummeled.

Toward the end of The Fantastic Four, someone says, "He's going to create a black hole and destroy the world!" (there's a lot of clunky exposition in this film). I'm thinking, "What, it's the big finale already? There hasn't been any action sequences."

And this is true, it's a superhero movie with one action sequence.

Just one.

Come late because it's at the end.

Another thing we've learned from Whedon is, if you're making a superhero movie, you better have a sense of humor. Ant Man knew this, it was hilarious.

Fantastic Four, not so much.

The theater I saw this in just installed recliners. Instead of sitting on the edge of my seat, I was reclined the whole film.

This is a good opportunity to discuss organic storytelling: I believe an inherent problem with the Fantastic Four in movies is its lack of organic structure.

Let's go back in time a little. All-American Comics didn't create the Justice Society of America out of the blue. No, Flash had his own title, Hawkman was featured in his own stories in Flash Comics, Green Lantern had his solo stories in All-American Comics, Hourman, the Atom, Dr. Mid-Nite, Dr. Fate, all solo stars brought together in an All-Star team up.

Decades later this was repeated with the Justice League: Every member had his own title, or at least solo stories before forming the JLA.

Decades later Marvel had the genius idea of giving Iron Man, The Hulk and Captain America solo movies before getting them together. And after owning the DC line-up for 50 years, Warner Bros. is finally thinking, hey, let's do what Marvel is doing with our JLA film.

Now -- according to legend, the publishers of Marvel and DC comics were playing golf when the DC boss mentioned casually to the Marvel guy that DC's biggest seller was the Justice League. The Marvel guy then ordered Stan Lee to make a super-team title.

Hence the Fantastic Four. Assembled all at once, not from solo characters, just out of the blue.

This gives everyone who ever tried to make a Fantastic Four film a problem. He'd have to spend the first two-thirds of any film telling the origin of four different super heroes ... and Doctor Doom!

Richard Donner was somehow able to spend the first two acts of the first Superman film as origin story. The first act on Krypton, the second act in Smallville. Superman doesn't even show up until almost an hour into the film.

Yet, those first two thirds were exciting, and funny and emotional, and jaw-dropping and everything the first two-thirds of the Fantastic Four were not.

 As long as Ant-Man and Age of Ultron and Mission: Impossible are out there this summer, I really can't recommend Fantastic Four. Maybe wait til Marvel gets the rights back and reboots it again.

Nick Cardy RIP

Just an amazing artist. The first dozen comics I ever bought had his covers, so I do have this nostalgic love for his work. But still,. beautiful women, beautiful design. Imagine my disappointment when he was replaced as DC cover artist by Mike Grell, Ernie Chan, and Jose Garcia Lopez. All great artists, but...when it came to covers, Cardy is still the best.

DC Comics Presents #56

And what makes this book so special? The story is OK, (Superman, Power Girl meet, pre-Crisis, without crossing over dimensional border!), art is not spectacular, yet it makes two little moments of history.
a) the cover will parallel the cover for Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (the only difference being Supergirl would stay dead longer.)
b) It's the first/only time Power Girl would be drawn by Curt Swan, making her officially a member of the Superman family. Now, if they could only have gotten Kurt Shaffenberger and Jim Mooney to draw some Power Girl stories, how cool would that have been?

Best Curt Swan Inker

This is a post for the true comic book geeks. Who was Curt Swan's best inker? Swan was of course the Superman artist from the '60s to the '80s. The question is who was his best inker. If you're a baby boomer and read Superman in the '60s, the answer is probably George Klein. Clean lines, a massive chest, a 'Mad Men'-era haircut. Truly manly.

Then the '70s came along and Murphy Anderson started inking, and everything changed. The lines were feathered, and Superman was dragged out of the '50s. Sideburns! Anderson would be my favorite inker and though most of his work on Swan was from the early '70s, he'd still pop up through the '80s on one-shots. DC definitely needs to put out a Swanderson trade paperback.

The late '70s also gave us Bob Oksner, Dave Hunt and Kurt Shaffenberger. Oksner was probably the most true to Swan's pencils. Not a lot of flair, but a real solid Klein-like consistency. Shaffenberger could make any penciller look like Shaffenberger. Compare his work on Swan to his work on his own pencils and you'll see little difference. Shaffenberger did make the most perfect S insignia though.

When asked, Swan said his favorite was Al Williamson, an EC Comics veteran who, once again, put his own imprint on Swan's pencils. It is an interesting look.

When Nick Cardy ruled the world

How could you be 10 and *not* buy these books?