Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman (2018)

Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman: The Deluxe edition (2018): edited by Paul Levitz: Not Action Comics 1000 but a companion volume. With Action Comics the first mainstream American comic book to reach 1000 issues, DC released both a special anniversary issue and this thick volume of reprints, the latter containing one never-before-published story from the Shuster studio, and a new story by editor Paul Levitz and legendary artist Neal Adams.

Created by Cleveland teenagers Jerry Siegel and Canadian ex-pat Joe Shuster (cousin of Frank Shuster of Wayne and Shuster), Superman came to life in 1932 and was then met by complete indifference from the comic strip syndicates for the next 6 years. 

Finally, what would become DC Comics bought Superman from Siegel and Shuster for less than a thousand dollars in 1938. In Action Comics 1, cover-dated June 1938, Superman ignited the superhero genre. Everything with American superheroes springs from that moment, this creation of Siegel and Shuster.

Neal Adams (him again!) led the battle in the 1970's to get more compensation for Siegel and Shuster beyond that initially paltry sum. Time Warner, DC's corporate overlord, caved to a certain extent, granting the Cleveland duo a pension. More lawsuits and settlements would follow over the years.

Here we are, 80 years later. Action Comics has reached 1000 issues, though recently it wasn't always numbered that way as DC restarted the numbering in 2012 for reasons I won't bother explaining before returning to the original numbering (folding the new numbering in as well). Detective Comics should have gotten here first, but Action Comics was a weekly for a year back in the 1980's. Thanks, Action Comics Weekly!

Paul Levitz has assembled 300+ pages of stories, essays, and covers. It's solid work -- and I don't think this type of anniversary volume is easy to assemble, as Levitz had to serve history as well as artistic achievement. Thus, this isn't The Best of Superman.

For one thing, Levitz was charged with presenting the other recurring DC heroes who first appeared in the pages of Action Comics (Vigilante, Zatara the Magician, Supergirl, Human Target). For another, the book emphasizes Firsts and Anniversaries along with major stories. That still leaves lots of material.

So pretty much all the great writers and artists are here, though some are by necessity omitted. The raw power of the first two Superman adventures by Siegel and Shuster still compels, to the extent that one wishes Superman would return to his left-wing, agit-prop roots, when stopping a domestic abuser and saving a wrongly convicted woman from the electric chair were more common moments for the Man of Steel than punching it out with some angry-ass super-villain or another.

Oddly, the book doesn't present any of the two-page Superman stories from Action Comics Weekly, I assume because they presented a serialized story in emulation of the Sunday full-page comic strips.

In any case, there's a lot here to delight both a Superman aficionado and a casual reader. The reproduction of the art is generally good, not always easy when the originals don't exist (the muddiest looking reprint comes from 1978, which is a shame because the story is a humdinger of a 40th anniversary issue). A Joe Kelly-penned, many-artist-illustrated anniversary story from the oughts is excellent. A never-before-printed story from the Shuster Studio is a rare find, as is Marv Wolfman's tale of how he rescued it from the garbage. Paul Levitz pens an original story to end the volume, illustrated by comic-book-art Titan Neal Adams.

The essays are fine, too -- none match Ray Bradbury's text piece from Superman 400, but that's a pretty high standard to meet. So all in all, a satisfying volume that I'd be happy to read at twice the length. Long may the Reign of the Superman continue! Highly recommended.

Everybody Loves Kryptonite

Yes, the original is in here.

Showcase Presents World's Finest featuring Superman and Batman Volume 3: written by Edmond Hamilton, Jim Shooter, Leo Dorfman, Cary Bates, and Bill Finger; illustrated by Curt Swan, George Klein, and Al Plastino (1965-67; collected 2010): An often gloriously loopy example of DC's superheroes in the late Silver Age. Superman and Batman team up, often with Robin and Jimmy Olsen along, to face a variety of menaces that range from the sinister to the ridiculous.

The great Curt Swan, for many people The Superman Artist, draws all but one of the stories collected here, giving even the craziest of events a grounding in reality. Edmond Hamilton, a science-fiction writer who started his career in the 1930's but also wrote a ton of comics for DC in the 1950's and 1960's, writes about the first half of the book. It's Silver Agey super-science and sketchy characterization throughout. And comics were for kids, so that's fine.

Superman and Batman get a little more psychologically complex once the young, Marvelesque Jim Shooter starts contributing scripts, along with long-time-to-be Superman scribe Cary Bates and Leo Dorfman. The heroes show more doubt and have more problems, sometimes to a ridiculous extent. The final story in the volume features an astonishingly underwhelming villain who nonetheless figures out the location of the Bat-cave in about two minutes...and gets inside. It also features Batman and Superman telling a Q&A group what villains they most fear and why. Really? This is not a particularly good thing to get all carey and sharey about!

The 1950's and 1960's were also a period when everyone on the planet seemed to have several pounds of Kryptonite lying around the house. It's a good thing these were stories for children -- otherwise, Superman would have died a thousand times over. One can see by the rote use of Kryptonite by every bloody criminal on the planet why the editors tried to wipe the Kryptonian menace out during the soft Superman reboot of 1970.

Or John Byrne's hard Superman reboot of 1986, for that matter, which initially reduced the amount of Kryptonite on Earth to one fist-sized chunk. Having learned nothing from 63 years of Superman history, the producers of Smallville re-introduced Kryptonite in mass quantities and upped the ante by having it give human beings super-powers as well. Because as Bizarro-Superman (who also appears here) would say, Hollywood am smart!

In order to introduce non-Kryptonite-centric drama, the creators of World's Finest resorted several times in the three years spanned by this collection to two recurring story models. One is the 'Imaginary Story', in which out-of-continuity events such as Bruce Wayne being adopted by Jonathan and Martha Kent and being raised as Clark Kent's brother could occur. These Imaginary Stories often represented the best DC stories (for adult readers, anyway) of the 1950's and 1960's, as people could actually change and even die in them.

The other old stand-by involved the magical pair of transdimensional tricksters Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite getting up to magical shenanigans to test the character of Superman and Batman. Because the effects of their magic -- up to and including mass death -- would cease to exist once they were banished back to their magical other-dimensional worlds, their stories could also involve a lot of danger and humiliation for the World's Finest team. Cartoonist Evan Dorkin took the Bat-Mite/Mxyzptlk stories to their logical conclusion in 2001's World's Funniest, which I thought was pretty funny.

All in all, this volume is a weird delight. Is it sophisticated graphic entertainment for adults? No. But it's more fun than a barrel of Kryptonite. And barrels of Kryptonite must be fun because everyone's got one! Also, King Arthur and his knights had super-powers in the DC Universe at this point! And the Superman of the 30th century can be brought low by... sea water, all of which is now deadly radioactive! Because Kryptonite wasn't pervasive enough! Highly recommended.

Disco Apocalypse Now

Superman in the Seventies, Introduction by Christopher Reeve; featuring stories written by Jack Kirby, Paul Levitz, Elliot S. Maggin, Martin Pasko, Cary Bates, Denny O'Neil, and others; illustrated by Curt Swan, Murphy Anderson, Dick Dillin, Dick Giordano, Bob Oksner, Werner Roth, Jack Kirby, and others (1970-79; collected 2000):

Solid collection of mostly stand-alone adventures of the Man of Steel from the Me Decade. Arranged thematically with one-page essays introducing each section, the book covers a broad range of treatments of the Man of Tomorrow.

Stand-outs include "Make Way for Captain Thunder!", in which Superman and a thinly disguised Captain Marvel do battle (Superman would meet the real deal a few years later); "I am Curious (Black)", a Lois Lane story that aims at racism and social issues; and a couple of sympathetic treatments of Lex Luthor, never more interesting a character than he was here, willing to save Superman's life if he wasn't going to be the one who defeated him. The Jack Kirby Jimmy Olsen story is a bit of a peculiar inclusion, as it ends on a cliffhanger -- there are several other Kirby Superman stories that might have better served this collection.

Classic Superman penciller Curt Swan works on a lot of the stories included here, to great effect. He's terrific on the Captain Thunder story, and on "Kryptonite Nevermore!," the early 1970's story that attempted to modernize (and Marvelize) the Man of Steel. That latter story also ends without complete resolution, as the storyline would play out over the course of a year.

The 1970's Superman stories often move into uncharted territory for the character. Clark Kent gets moved to television and now answers to media mogul Morgan Edge for several years. He also loses his perennial blue suits for some occasionally funky 1970's business attire. New additions to the Superman cast include annoying sports broadcaster Steve Lombard, the somewhat bizarre space-cowboy Terra-Man, the ultra-powerful Galactic Golem, and a host of other new friends and enemies.

Throughout, we see attention given to making Superman and his Clark Kent alter-ego more fallible and occasionally troubled, though he soldiers through regardless. The volume also includes a nice array of classic covers from the era, including the Neal Adams gem that kicked off the "Kryptonite Nevermore!" arc and a number of great pieces from Nick Cardy when he was DC's line-wide cover artist. All in all, a nice piece of work. Recommended.

Superman and...

Showcase Presents DC Comics Presents Superman Team-ups Volume 1: written by Martin Pasko, Cary Bates, Len Wein, Paul Levitz, Denny O'Neil, Gerry Conway and others; illustrated by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Joe Staton, Ross Andru, Murphy Anderson, Dick Dillin, Jim Starlin, and others (1978-1980; collected 2011): Back in the Bronze, Pre-Crisis Age of DC Comics, this was the first new regular Superman title to be released in about 30 years.

As heroes still didn't cross willy-nilly over into one another's books all the time (even over at Marvel), the team-up book was still a viable concept. Indeed, long-running Superman/Batman team-up book World's Finest had briefly turned into a Superman/everyone-else book in the early 1970's.

Reading Superman comics from the late 1970's and early 1980's, I'm struck by what a beating the Man of Steel takes during what revisionist comic-book history has portrayed as his 'too powerful to be interesting' phase, a phase which supposedly led to the John Byrne reboot of Superman in 1986, a reboot that radically depowered the Man of Steel. He's still very powerful in these stories, but he can be knocked out, chained up, and even frozen. And this is a good thing -- there should be a sense of peril, especially when one needs two superheroes to solve a problem.

A lot of the art contained herein is terrific, especially those issues illustrated by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, an artist's artist whose work seems to be more famous among fellow comic-book artists (the aforementioned Byrne is a big fan) than among fans. It's fine-lined, detailed, exquisitely composed art (DC is releasing an all-Garcia-Lopez Superman reprint volume in the next month or so, a great idea). He's also the sort of artist whose work looks incredibly good in the black-and-white Showcase format.

The only reason he didn't draw more comics was that Warner made him the main Superman artist for non-comic-book material, which is to say everything from Superman lunchbox art to Superman French Fries (!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

There's other solid work here from Jim Starlin, Joe Staton, and others, and the writing is generally solid as well, with most of the writers having a firm grasp on Superman's personality and morals. The only real misfire collected here is a Superman/Swamp Thing team-up written by Steve Engelhart and illustrated by Hawkman and Superman veteran Murphy Anderson. Engelhart makes Superman terribly dense, while Anderson simply cannot draw Swamp Thing. But other than that issue, the book is very enjoyable, maybe never moreso than when an amnesiac Superman teams up with Sgt. Rock and East Company. Recommended.

The Last Race

Showcase Presents: The Trial of the Flash, written by Cary Bates and Joey Cavalieri, illustrated by Carmine Infantino, Dennis Jensen, Frank McLaughlin, Klaus Janson and others (1983-85; collected 2011): I can't think of a major superhero who became tragedy's punching bag more than DC's Flash did in the late 1970's and early 1980's. And I'm not sure why this was allowed to happen. But happen it did. His greatest villain killed his wife, and that was just the beginning. A couple of years later that same villain -- 25th-century speedster Professor Zoom, aka The Reverse-Flash -- tried to kill the Flash's fiancee on their wedding day. In the ensuing super-speed struggle, the Flash breaks Zoom's neck, killing him.

And so begins one of the longest storylines ever contained in a single DC title, The Trial of the Flash, which would ultimately span nearly three years and end with the cancellation of that title. It was a story so long that several peripheral issues of the title are omitted here to allow the collection (still the longest in the Showcase reprint series) to avoid requiring two volumes. It's still enough, and maybe too much.

By 1985, DC had decided to reboot its entire line of superheroes, beginning with a massive crossover event/line-wide reboot and purge called Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Flash would play a pivotal but heroically self-sacrificing role in that event. After the Crisis, his nephew Wally West would take over as the Flash in the brave new post-Crisis world. Ultimately, this is The Last Flash Story But One. Sort of. To paraphrase Algis Budrys, in comic books death is always conditional.

The Barry Allen version of the Flash helped usher in DC's Silver Age in the 1950's, as new characters were given the names of cancelled heroes of the 1940's, most prominently the Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom and Hawkman. They apparently lived on a different Earth than their 1940's forebears (in the first appearance of the Barry Allen Flash, Barry is seen reading a comic-book issue of the 1940's Flash from whom, after gaining his super-speed powers, Barry ultimately takes his superhero name).

Writer John Broome and penciller Carmine Infantino made the Flash a zippy, fun, quasi-super-scientific thrill ride over the character's first decade. (In-story 'Flash Facts' gave explanations of certain speed and scientific effects seen in the story, such as how a boomerang works). In The Trial of the Flash, Infantino has returned to the character after nearly 20 years away, staying with him to the end with pencils that are much more stylized and 'loose' than his Silver Age work, but still often possessed of a quality of speed and quickness and time-bending simultaneity that most other Flash artists have lacked.

Longtime Flash writer Cary Bates puts the Scarlet Speedster through quite a wringer here, as various parties try to wipe out the Flash's defense lawyers, kill him before the trial, or just do the usual super-villain thing of mayhem and thievery. It's a surprisingly harrowing and often downbeat ride, though it does have a conditional happy ending -- conditional because the Flash's fate in Crisis will supercede any ending in his own title and, indeed, that fate had already been published before the storyline herein ended.

It would take more than 20 years for the Barry Allen Flash to return from the dead -- several eternities in superhero comics -- and his history has recently been purged and restarted once again. There are some absurdities here, and one major annoyance (that would be the frankly ridiculous mental health issues of Flash's fiancee Fiona), but overall this is a lot of melodramatic fun. It would have been interesting to see what occasional cover inker Klaus Janson (so integral to Frank Miller's art on Daredevil and The Dark Knight Returns) could have done with Infantino's interior pencils -- the Infantino covers Janson inks are terrific -- but the interior art remains solid and sometimes startling. Recommended.