Batman & Superman in World's Finest: The Silver Age, Volume One - Edmond Hamilton, Bill Finger, et al.

When I was a kid I was a sporadic reader of the Superman and Batman team-ups in WORLD’S FINEST. I only had so much money to spend on comic books. Now there’s lots of stuff I never read back in the day that I can catch up on. For the past couple of months, I’ve been reading BATMAN & SUPERMAN IN WORLD’S FINEST: THE SILVER AGE, VOLUME ONE, which reprints the first meeting of Superman and Batman from SUPERMAN #76 in 1952 and then the regular Superman/Batman series from WORLD’S FINEST #71-94, from 1954 to 1958 . . . which was before I could read, so I couldn’t have read them anyway. Most of the stories were written by Edmond Hamilton. Several are by Bill Finger, the co-creator of Batman. The art is mostly by Dick Sprang, the regular Bat-artist in the Fifties. A few stories were drawn by the great Curt Swan, the iconic Superman artist as far as I’m concerned. It’s an entertaining volume, especially the story where Luthor and The Joker team up.

But . . . these short (12 pages), gimmicky, stand-alone stories don’t have much impact. The villains are mostly petty crooks with stupid schemes, and there’s never any real sense of danger for our heroes. I can understand why, after a steady diet of stories like this, the stuff that Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko came up with over at Marvel just a few years later was like a punch in the gut to the comics readers of the time. The difference is really stark (no pun intended). Despite that, I enjoyed this collection and already have the second one on my Kindle. For long-time comics fans, it’s worth reading. Available in paperback and e-book editions.

Forgotten Books: Superman in the Seventies - Elliot S! Maggin, Cary Bates, et al.

When I was reading comics as a kid, Superman was never one of my favorite characters, although I have fond memories of watching the Superman TV show with George Reeves every day after school. But there were other DC characters, such as Batman and Green Lantern, I liked better. Oh, I saw Superman in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and occasionally picked up an issue of SUPERMAN or ACTION COMICS, but my history with the character is spotty at best.

So out of the 13 stories in the trade paperback collection SUPERMAN IN THE SEVENTIES (published back in 2000), I had read only one, a story from Jack Kirby's great run on SUPERMAN'S PAL JIMMY OLSEN. The others were all new to me, and while they didn't quite make me feel like I had gone back to that era, I enjoyed them.

Many of the stories in this volume were written by Elliot S! Maggin (yes, that's the way he was credited), who was the most prominent Superman writer during the Seventies. Maggin's first script was for a Green Arrow back-up yarn in GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW that turned out to be a classic, and quite possibly the best thing he ever wrote. But his Superman stories were very good and added some depth to the character. At the time I thought the idea of making Clark Kent a TV reporter and adding "workplace humor" to the stories was a terrible idea, but looking back now I find the stuff somewhat charming, if a little clunky.

Other stories are by Cary Bates, also a very prolific scripter for DC during the Seventies, usually on Superman or The Flash, Len Wein, Paul Levitz, and Denny O'Neil, who contributed an important "turning point" story in which all the kryptonite on earth is destroyed, leaving Superman more invulnerable than ever...or is he? These are all good yarns, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, all in 17 to 22 pages, unlike today's endless story arcs and crossovers. Admittedly, sometimes the shorter lengths work against the stories, leading to deus ex machina endings or some that are just too rushed, but for the most part they're very enjoyable.

Not surprisingly, most of the art is by Curt Swan, who penciled hundreds of Superman stories during a career that lasted more than four decades, usually being inked by another legend, Murphy Anderson. Superman fan or not, I always liked Swan's art. The guys in those days were storytellers, something that's often lacking in today's comics.

Overall I found this to be a good, solid collection and really enjoyed reading it. There's a lot of DC stuff from the Sixties and Seventies I never got around to reading back then, since I was mostly a Marvel fan and had only so much money to spend on comics, so I'm trying to catch up on some of it now that I've given up reading most modern comics. For curmudgeons like me, collections like these are a nice trip into the past.

Superman: Secret Origin - Geoff Johns

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.

Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? - Alan Moore

As veteran comics writer and editor Paul Kupperberg points out in his introduction to this volume, by the mid-Eighties major changes were occurring in the comics industry, from the primary distribution method – comics shops had grown tremendously in importance in the past few years, and spinner racks full of comics were already disappearing from the usual venues such as grocery stores, drugstores, and convenience stores – to the creative, where at DC especially, decades worth of continuity were about to be wiped out.

I first heard about the landmark mini-series CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS when it was in the planning stages and thought that simplifying the DC Universe was a pretty good idea. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that for me, a lot of the charm of the DCU was its very clutteredness. I mean, Gardner Fox’s classic story “Flash of Two Worlds” was still one of my all-time favorites. Then when I found out that DC was planning to kill off some of its major characters in the mini-series and do a total reboot and relaunch of others, I liked the idea less and less.

Which brings us to Superman.

Now, I was never a huge Superman fan, although I read a bunch of comics featuring the character over the years. In fact, it’s safe to say that the first superhero comics I ever read featured Superman. But there were other DC characters I liked better, such as Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. Even so, when I heard that DC was starting over with the Superman franchise, starting with John Byrne’s MAN OF STEEL mini-series, I didn’t care for it and didn’t see the need for it. When I first read the stories reprinted in SUPERMAN: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW?, they just reinforced that feeling.

Alan Moore had already written a couple of Superman stories, one a team-up with the other major DC character he was writing at the time, Swamp Thing, when he was asked by editor Julius Schwartz to write the final two-parter that would close out the current Superman continuity. I had read and liked those earlier Superman stories written by Moore, and when I read “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, which was split up between SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS, I was more convinced than ever that excellent, relevant stories set in the current continuity could be written. Alan Moore had just proven that by turning out one of the best Superman stories I’d ever read.

But of course, nobody at DC listened to me (not that I actually shared those feelings with anybody there) and Byrne’s MAN OF STEEL reboot appeared on schedule, the first of many reboots that spread to Marvel in the Nineties and eventually had the effect of alienating me so much that I didn’t read a single comic book for years and years. Although I have no statistics to prove it, I’m convinced that a lot of fans who grew up reading comics in the Sixties and Seventies stopped reading in disgust and never came back. Eventually, of course, I did, and I’ve read and enjoyed some of the newer stuff. I still like the reprints of the older stuff better, though.

SUPERMAN: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW? reprints all four of Moore’s Superman stories. The title two-parter features art by Curt Swan, the classic Superman artist, and serves as a beautiful (if unnecessary) farewell to the classic Superman continuity. The other two stories are excellent as well. If you’re a long-time comics fan and didn’t read these back in the Eighties, you should pick up this volume to see what you missed. If you read them then, like I did, I think you’ll enjoy them all over again. They’ve aged well (unlike grumpy, reactionary old men such as myself).

Trinity - Matt Wagner

Over the years I’ve read and enjoyed a number of comics written by Matt Wagner, his long-running series SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE being the most notable. TRINITY is a fine trade paperback reprinting a three-issue miniseries written and drawn by Wagner and featuring DC’s three most iconic characters: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

Now, when I was a kid, I wasn’t a Wonder Woman fan. I suppose I was as sexist as any other ten or twelve year old boy in the Sixties. Plus I really didn’t like the art on the issues coming out then. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, DC tried to remold Wonder Woman into a Modesty Blaise sort of character, and while that was interesting, it never really worked for me, either. In the Eighties, though, there was another Wonder Woman relaunch with excellent stories and art by George Perez, and that one won me over. I’m still not a huge fan, but Wonder Woman is okay.

Throw her into an epic story with Superman and Batman, though, and you’ve got something. TRINITY is the story of Wonder Woman’s first meeting with them, and it involves an evil, globe-spanning conspiracy hatched by one of Batman’s arch-enemies, Ra’s Al Ghul, as well as one of Superman’s antagonists, Bizarro (who’s not really evil but still plenty dangerous anyway). Several things make TRINITY a fine piece of graphic novel entertainment. Wagner provides the art as well as the story, and it really works. He’s a good storyteller who uses classic layouts most of the time. His script is top-notch, capturing the personalities of Superman and Batman in all their complexity. There’s a sense of rivalry that’s always there, as well as a certain frustration and disapproval that each feels about the other’s methods, but above all, they’re friends. Then that sort of gets knocked cock-eyed by the arrival of Wonder Woman. No, there’s not any sense that they’re vying for her affections (although Batman is surprisingly interested in her). Wagner is too subtle a writer to take the easy, obvious route. But having Wonder Woman around does change the dynamic between Superman and Batman, at least a little.

This is one of the best comic book series I’ve read recently. If you’re a fan of the classic DC characters (another of whom makes a funny, unbilled cameo appearance), give TRINITY a try. I had a great time reading it.

Superman: Past and Future

SUPERMAN: PAST AND FUTURE is a collection with a sure-fire premise: time travel stories featuring Superman, who has probably done more time-traveling than any other character in the DC Universe. It delivers, too, with stories that originally appeared in various Superman titles from 1947 to 1983. The two earliest yarns were written by Jerry Siegel, one of the character’s co-creators, and other writers incude Edmond Hamilton, who had a long, prolific career in comics as well as his work as an SF author, and the oddly punctuated Elliot S! Maggin, who was one of my favorite Superman scripters (although to me his later work never lived up to his debut, a Green Arrow story called “What Can One Man Do?”). The art on many of the stories is by Curt Swan, the quintessential Superman artist, although there’s one story with art by Wayne Boring, the dominant Superman artist during the Fifties.

I like the Superman stories from the Golden Age and the Silver Age, but I’m less fond of the ones from the pre-Silver Age Fifties, even though they’re some of the first comics I ever read. Wayne Boring’s art never appealed to me, and the stories, while they have a charming silliness to them, still come across as too silly for my taste. Luckily, there’s only one story from that era in this collection – although some might feel that the Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen stories from the Sixties are pretty silly, too. But I enjoyed them anyway, and the three stories written by Maggin are all fine yarns. I wouldn’t put SUPERMAN: PAST AND FUTURE in the top rank of Superman collections, but it’s solidly entertaining and well worth reading.

Superman: The Third Kryptonian

I was a big Superman fan when I was a little kid, probably because some of the first comic books I ever read had Superman in them. Then, for a long time, I didn’t have much interest in the character. Now, though, I kind of like old Supes again.

The trade paperback THE THIRD KRYPTONIAN reprints a three-issue story arc and a couple of stand-alone stories from last year, and they’re pretty darned good. I’m not really up to speed on current continuity, so a few things took me by surprise (Clark and Lois have a foster son now? First I’ve heard of it!), but I didn’t have any trouble following the stories. I kind of like the kid, too. He’s a Kryptonian, from either the bottle city of Kandor or the Phantom Zone, I don’t remember which, but he’s not the Third Kryptonian of the title. That’s a whole other character who gets Superman involved in a fairly complicated yarn about deserters from the Kryptonian navy, space pirates, wholesale destruction of worlds, cosmic vengeance, and assorted good stuff like that. There’s plenty of action in this story arc. As if to balance that out, the two stand-alones are much quieter and reflective, and I liked them quite a bit, too.

I’m not surprised I enjoyed the stories, because the primary writer on them is Kurt Busiek, one of my favorite writers working in comics today. If you like comics and haven’t tried his work, you need to run out and find copies of MARVELS and the various ASTRO CITY books. Wonderful stuff, especially for long-time comics fans (*cough* geezers *cough*) like me.

Superman/Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told

As DC’s best-known characters, Superman and Batman have been teaming up to battle various super-villains for more than fifty years. Since I like both characters, it makes sense that I’d enjoy SUPERMAN/BATMAN: THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD.

Most of the stories in this trade paperback are from WORLD’S FINEST, the comic book that featured Superman/Batman team-ups for most of its run. The first story, though, comes from a 1952 issue of SUPERMAN and tells how Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne learned each other’s secret identities. Up until that time, they had worked together a few times as Superman and Batman but neither knew who was really behind the other mask. From that point until the first reboot of the DC Universe in the Eighties (a move that I still disagree with, but that’s beside the point), Clark and Bruce not only work together to combat the bad guys but also form a lasting friendship. To tell the truth, that sense of friendship is the most appealing thing about many of these stories, which tend toward mild little puzzle yarns with no real sense of danger or adventure. Later, of course, in the stories from the past twenty years or so [Curmudgeon Alert!], things get a lot more grim and angsty, and the art gets more manga-influenced and hard to follow. But they’re still fairly entertaining.

Science-fiction author Edmond Hamilton, who also had a long career in comics, wrote about half the stories in this volume. Curt Swan, the quintessential Superman artist, provided the art for several of them. One short-short about a near-meeting between Clark and Bruce when they were children was written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Tim Sale, two of my favorite modern comics creators. When I was a kid reading comics, I always regarded WORLD’S FINEST as one of DC’s second-tier titles. Actually, back then I wasn’t all that fond of any of the team-up books, like THE BRAVE & THE BOLD or over at Marvel, MARVEL TEAM-UP. Reading the stories now, though, I find them pretty enjoyable and a nice shot of nostalgia, as well as being well-crafted in their own right. If you like Superman and Batman, you’ll definitely like this volume.

Superman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, Volume Two

When I was reading comics as a kid, I never was as big a fan of Superman as I was of some of the other DC characters, like Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. But over the years I’ve come to appreciate the character more, so I really enjoy a volume like this that reprints a variety of Superman stories from the eight decades (!) he’s been around.

This collection is book-ended by a pair of stories featuring Mr. Mxyztplk, the mischief-making imp from another dimension, ranging from his introduction in a 1944 story written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel to a story published in 2005 and written by well-known mystery novelist Greg Rucka. In between are a couple of returns to Krypton, tussles with famous Superman villains such as Lex Luthor and Brainiac, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen getting into the usual jams, an attempt from the Seventies to modernize the character a little, and a tale from the stretch during the Nineties when Superman was dead, killed by the villain Doomsday. (He got better.) In addition to Siegel and Rucka, writers who contributed stories include science-fiction authors Edmond Hamilton and Otto Binder, and a couple of my favorite comics writers, Denny O’Neil and Elliot S. Maggin. Artists include Wayne Boring, who was the regular artist on Superman stories when I first started reading them in the late Fifties, and Curt Swan, the classic Superman artist who had the longest run on the character. All of this is great fun, and if you’re a Superman fan, this collection is highly recommended.