Monday, February 09, 2004
NEVER ENDING BATTLE (FOR SANITY): Shows you how out of the four-color loop I am when it takes a whole month for me to find out the latest stunt they're pulling with Superman. And I quote (from All The Rage):
I'm told DC's new Superman revamp will be based on an event that alters the past and creates three separate timelines, giving the creators on each book complete freedom to write the stories they want without worrying about continuity.
My source says the Brian Azzarello and Jim Lee Superman will operate in a world without Lois Lane. She'll be dead, allowing for more violent and dark yarns. In the Chuck Austen and Ivan Reis Action Comics it will pretty much be the status quo. Lois is alive and she's married to Superman/Clark Kent. In Adventures of Superman written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Matthew Clark, Lois and Clark aren't married and she doesn't know about his secret identity. This book will apparently revive the love triangle concept.
All three Supermen will live in Metropolis simultaneously, but will have no knowledge of the alternate timelines. I hear this split will set up a big crossover at the end of 2004 pitting the three Supermen against each other.
I grew up on Superman; I got the book in the 70s that gave an aerial tour of the character's history, and read it repeatedly until the color pages started falling out. I jumped back into comics with both feet during the death and rebirth of Big Blue, stuck it out through Zero Hour and its fallout, and then...
AND THEN...??!!!
Well, then they whipped the pure energy Supes on us, the one with the lightning bolts for eyebrows, and I put the book down and backed the hell away. I stuck my head through the door for the Lois and Clark wedding issue, but all the comic shops in town closed not long after that, which made the "stay or go" decision for me. That was one of the many hazards of rejoining the ranks during the mid '90s, when the speculator scum ruined the hobby for everybody.
It makes a fella pine for the pre-Crisis days, when you could just make an alternate earth for an undertaker-grim Superman and people would get the picture. My first and favorite has taken too many body blows in recent years' battle of art vs. commerce, with the basic integrity of the character holding it all together. If they can get good stories out of this, that's fine, but if this is just another stunt to pop anemic sales, I'll wait for the trade paperback.
Oh yeah, and I'm glad they brought Krypto back in '01. A man who has been through that much deserves a dog.
(And now, to dig out my "Return of Barry Allen" issues...)
I'm told DC's new Superman revamp will be based on an event that alters the past and creates three separate timelines, giving the creators on each book complete freedom to write the stories they want without worrying about continuity.
My source says the Brian Azzarello and Jim Lee Superman will operate in a world without Lois Lane. She'll be dead, allowing for more violent and dark yarns. In the Chuck Austen and Ivan Reis Action Comics it will pretty much be the status quo. Lois is alive and she's married to Superman/Clark Kent. In Adventures of Superman written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Matthew Clark, Lois and Clark aren't married and she doesn't know about his secret identity. This book will apparently revive the love triangle concept.
All three Supermen will live in Metropolis simultaneously, but will have no knowledge of the alternate timelines. I hear this split will set up a big crossover at the end of 2004 pitting the three Supermen against each other.
I grew up on Superman; I got the book in the 70s that gave an aerial tour of the character's history, and read it repeatedly until the color pages started falling out. I jumped back into comics with both feet during the death and rebirth of Big Blue, stuck it out through Zero Hour and its fallout, and then...
AND THEN...??!!!
Well, then they whipped the pure energy Supes on us, the one with the lightning bolts for eyebrows, and I put the book down and backed the hell away. I stuck my head through the door for the Lois and Clark wedding issue, but all the comic shops in town closed not long after that, which made the "stay or go" decision for me. That was one of the many hazards of rejoining the ranks during the mid '90s, when the speculator scum ruined the hobby for everybody.
It makes a fella pine for the pre-Crisis days, when you could just make an alternate earth for an undertaker-grim Superman and people would get the picture. My first and favorite has taken too many body blows in recent years' battle of art vs. commerce, with the basic integrity of the character holding it all together. If they can get good stories out of this, that's fine, but if this is just another stunt to pop anemic sales, I'll wait for the trade paperback.
Oh yeah, and I'm glad they brought Krypto back in '01. A man who has been through that much deserves a dog.
(And now, to dig out my "Return of Barry Allen" issues...)
|| Eric 4:50 PM#
