Despite the title, there's not really much that's new in
SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN, a hardback reprinting of a mini-series from several
years ago, before DC's latest reboot. For a curmudgeonly old purist like me,
that's not a bad thing. Instead, this story is a retelling/slight expansion of
the basic Superman mythos we've all known for many, many years (some of us for
longer than we like to think about). Writer Geoff Johns has taken elements from
several different incarnations of the Man of Steel, thrown them together with a
little influence from the SMALLVILLE TV series, rearranged a few things, most
notably the introductions of supervillains The Parasite and Metallo, and
produced a comfortably familiar tale that has a lot of nostalgic appeal to it.
The script by Johns strikes the right notes for the most part, capturing the personalities of Clark Kent/Superman and the rest of the supporting cast and moving the action along at a nice pace. The artwork by Gary Frank (pencils) and Jon Sibal (inks) is excellent with its crisp look and old-style storytelling. It really fits this sort of yarn.
While I've been primarily a Marvel fan for the past fifty years, I've read and enjoyed many, many DC comics during that time, too, especially during the Sixties and Seventies. I still enjoy reading reprints of the best work from those eras, and from time to time I try out some of the newer stuff, too, and enjoy a lot of it. SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN definitely falls into that category. I had a fine time reading it, and if you're a comics fan, you should check it out.
The script by Johns strikes the right notes for the most part, capturing the personalities of Clark Kent/Superman and the rest of the supporting cast and moving the action along at a nice pace. The artwork by Gary Frank (pencils) and Jon Sibal (inks) is excellent with its crisp look and old-style storytelling. It really fits this sort of yarn.
While I've been primarily a Marvel fan for the past fifty years, I've read and enjoyed many, many DC comics during that time, too, especially during the Sixties and Seventies. I still enjoy reading reprints of the best work from those eras, and from time to time I try out some of the newer stuff, too, and enjoy a lot of it. SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGIN definitely falls into that category. I had a fine time reading it, and if you're a comics fan, you should check it out.
