Chronic Review: Superman # 700!

Superman # 700
DC Comics
Scripts: James Robinson, Dan Jurgens, JM Straczynski
Pencils: Bernard Chang, Jurgens/Rapmund, Eddy Barrows
42 pages for $4.99

Is it a bad sign when the best element your epic Superman launch by superstar JM Straczynski is a Robin story by Dan Jurgens?

Probably.

Superman # 700 is actually three different stories. The first is a disgustingly sappy little number where James Robinson chokes us to death with tired emotional cliches.

Clark's been away for awhile dealing with New Krypton stuff, and we get a peek the lovers' reunion. Maybe it's just my return to "Ryan the Robot" mode, but I doubt it. I'm not the problem. This is the problem:


We've heard all of this before from dime store novels and the Lifetime network. Didn't work for me then, doesn't work for me now. What is ultimately more disappointing about it is that these kind of scenes used to be in Robinson's wheelhouse in Starman. Interpersonal relationships were the life's blood of that book; always fresh, always interesting. I don't know what this is, but it's beneath James Robinson. NEXT!

The second installment is a Robin story by Dan Jurgens. Yeah, I know that Superman appears in the tale, and that this is Superman's book. This is a Robin story.

And it's a pretty darned good one. Batman decides that Bruce Wayne needs to make a public appearance to maintain the illusion, so he hangs up the cowl for the evening and tells Robin that he's to take the night off as well on pain of blood. He's instructed to do his geometry homework and relax.

Of course crime doesn't ever take a vacation, and when young Dick Grayson sees trouble brewing, he sneaks out of the house and bites off a little more than he can chew. Cue the man of steel for a quick save from the gun runners, and then cue him again to save his unfinished math homework!

That's right, folks, Superman helps Dick Grayson cheat on his school work. Awesome! That was worth the price of admission right there. The story ends with Batman sending Clark an adorable little "I know what you did" letter. This was an entertaining, done-in-one tale that reminded a little of Straczynski's Brave & The Bold. And that's a good thing.

Speaking of Straczynski, you may have heard something about him taking over Superman. Straczyinski's life long dream begins right here, with spotty results.

It's bee well spoiled at this point that his plan is to send Superman on a walkabout journey across America to re-connect with us normal folks. Kind of a ballsy idea, and not without some danger. In fact, Straczynski warned Didio and the DC brass that they would need " cojones the size of Stonehenge for any publisher to go along with this, because the odds of failure are freaking immense."

Telling more human and personal Superman stories isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it does a feel a little strange. He just got done spending a great deal of time away from his wife and Metropolis, and now he rushes out to leave it all behind and pull a Kwai Chang Kent? It feels false at first blush.

There's nothing inside this issue that would to alter that opinion, either. What massive epiphany sets Clark on his new wandering journey? Well, a grieving Stamford survivor....err...I mean, random woman off the street interrupts his press interview, cracks him across the grill like a pimp and then blames her husband's death on Superman's absence.

It's very weird. What's super extra weird is that Straczynski writes bystanders remarking on how bizarre her complaint really is. How is her husband's medical condition Clark's fault? He's busy saving the planet, a couple of guys with brain tumors are going to slip through the cracks, OK lady??

Rather than just recognize that bad things happen to good people and you can't possibly solve everyone's problem every time, this nonsense starts Clark soul searching about his role in the universe.

He talks to Batman, he talks to the Flash, he remembers some old chestnuts from Pa Kent. Again, maybe this is Ryan the Robot but I found nothing that felt emotionally correct in any of that stuff. It felt like an assembly line conveyor belt toward his "Superman does the Bill Bixby thing" goal he had in mind, come hell or high water.

Before I get accused of reactionary histrionics, it's possible that these wandering monk stories might end up being good. This is just set-up. What I'm saying is, the set-up feels false and poorly rendered. This is not a denouncement of the "grounded" concept, but neither is it a good omen. I'm going into these stories not buying into the motivation even a whisker, and that's hardly ideal.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing in the book is the very back end where DC allowed the other writers in the Superman family to pitch reader's the next year's worth of stories. Cornell's Action Comics pitch sounds pretty interesting, actually. Obviously some eyes are going to fall on this anniversary issue, and I think it was a sound marketing idea.

Bottom line? If you were expecting to be wowed by the new Superman, I think you're walking away disappointed. You've got two warm up acts with varying quality, but neither of which have anything to do with the bold new direction or will be remembered as key pieces of the mythos. The Straczynski material feels forced and emotionally off-key. Welcome the new era!

- Ryan

Chronic Review: Justice League of America # 42

Justice League of America # 42
DC Comics
Script: James Robinson
Pencils: Mark Bagley
30 pages for $3.99


Last week was devoted to experimenting with books that smelled faintly of excrement to see what was actually inside. I ended up choosing three Marvel books for that exercise, and in full disclosure there was nothing conscious or intentional about that.

I tend to read a good deal more Marvel than DC, although I don't consider myself a "Marvel" guy. Like many of you, I tend to follow particular writers rather than slavishly stick to a corporate brand. So this week I'll be profiling comics published by DC, because I don't really have my thumb on the DC pulse. This fact came into play quite often as I twirled through the latest adventure of "The World's Greatest Superheroes!"

To begin with, I really like James Robinson, or I guess to be more accurate, I REALLY liked his run on Starman. What he did with Starman was take everything silly, overly macho, simple, and boring about superheroes and throw them in the trash. Starman was more about Jack Knight than his alter ego, and maybe more about Opal City than just Jack. That comic was deep and poignant, and like any great story made you feel as though you were privy to the most intimate details of a living, breathing world.

So I was particularly interested in seeing how Mr. Robinson might tackle something like the Justice League, which doesn't seem like a good fit for his best attributes as I understand them. This is a tent pole action book with a catalog of over-the-top characters. Maybe that's why he took the book, as a change of pace, a place to flex his artistic muscle and maybe add a bit of his sophistication to a lowest common denominator affair. I don't really know why was offered the book or accepted it, but I was intrigued enough by the prospect to choose this as my first book for "DC week."



The story opens with the Shade (I guess he didn't leave Opal City behind after all) offering Green Arrow a trip into the same sort of "Moment of Trepidation" cave that Yoda pushed Luke into during Empire Strikes Back. Which isn't exactly a new idea, but one that can still pay off if you're clever about it. My issue was that I had no clue about how the Shade got involved at all, or what Green Arrow's motivations are for wanting to do such a thing.

To be fair, I'm jumping in smack in the middle of an arc, not at the beginning. But this is part of why we have difficulty bringing in new readers; it was difficult for me to feel invested in this decision of Ollie's to brave the "dragon" cave.

We then cut to the Justice League pounding the crap out of Atlas. And this is the sort of thing that bores me to tears, but what Robinson does to add depth is give access to the team members internal monologues as they fight. Batman is thinking about how strange it is to be giving orders to Green Lantern. Green Lantern is thinking about how strange it is to take orders from a Batman, particularly one he can sort of tolerate. Starfire is thinking about Dick. (insert joke here)

The point is that here is where the Robinson influence will show through; he just can't help but get at the core of the people he's writing about, and god bless him for that. It was an interesting flair that made a mindless battle into something that reveals character.

The question then becomes; what caused Atlas to go ape shit? The answer is connected to a strange device that can manipulate strong emotions with a simple touch. One of these devices is stored at S.T.A.R. labs, our next cut scene, where more super-powered over emotional people pound the crap out of each other. Again, I'm a bit lost here, because I don't know who these characters are, or their connection (if any) to the Justice League. I'm lost.

We then segue into the Watchtower, where The Atom declares that this device that makes people go bat-shit psycho is based on "New Genesis" technology. This obviously means something to the League...but it meant nothing to me. I was more interested in the side conversation (more Robinsonian bread and butter) between Hal Jordan and the Canary about Green Arrow. But again, the problem is that an obviously distressed Canary tells Hal about what happened with Roy and Star City.....and I don't know any of that. So it just lands flat.


Meanwhile, outside of the main meeting room we see Cyborg working on his computer while the head of Red Tornado tries to converse with him from behind. This was my favorite moment in the story, because we find out that Tornado's poor head had been sitting around fully conscious with his speech capacity turned off. So he's been sitting there absorbing everything, but everyone has been treating him like a paper weight because he couldn't talk and they weren't recognizing his sentience.

So Cyborg took the time to get him talking again, and is working on building him a new, supposedly indestructible body. And this is the humanizing stuff that Robinson does so well. Cyborg's research turns up another "crazy machine" in the Justice League archives, and alerts the team that the device was stored on Blackhawk Island.

So the next step is for the team to zip over there, where they find another group of super-powered people I don't recognize knocking the stuffing out of each other. And while that's going on at Blackhawk island, some of those big bads that were fighting at S.T.A.R. labs teleport onto the now empty Watchtower to do God knows what. Except the Watchtower isn't completely empty, because Ollie ends up stepping out of his Empire Strikes Back trepidation and directly into this new danger. Cue hijinx for next issue!


It's hard for me to grade this, because there's so much that is lost on me. I can definitely detect all the best humanizing elements of Robinson's writing in this "blockbuster" type story, and I think it works. My guess is that long time DC/Justice League readers are being polarized by this; some will embrace the Starmanization of their action book, and some will wonder who wussified it. But at least they'll understand it.

It's very possible that if I got the full ramifications of what was going on with Green Arrow, or if I could absorb the impact of what "New Genesis" tech implies, I might think this was the height of drama. But alas, I cannot.

Were I new reader, I don't think I would be intrigued enough by this to want to suffer through it further or backtrack. I think I'd find something else that I could pick up from the beginning. And I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with DC or Robinson taking the approach that they did. At this point, the hard core folks are your last vestige, and this is what I'm assuming they want. I think it's well written, but it was not written to invite me in. I'm not crying about it, I'm just sayin'.

Oh, by the way.....Mark Bagley rules. One of the best pure comic book style comic book artists that ever lived. And he does it on time, like a goddamned professional. I wish there were more Mark Bagleys in this world.

- Ryan