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.
Batman: The Dark Knight Archives Volume 4 (Collecting Batman Issues 13-16, 1942-43/Collected 2003): written by Bill Finger, Don Cameron, Jack Schiff, and Ruth Lyons Kaufman; illustrated by Bob Kane, Jerry Robinson, Jack Burnley, Ray Burnley, and George Roussos:
Batman's co-creator Bob Kane leaves most of the art chores to other people in this volume of Batman stories from 1942-1943. And the prolific Don Cameron writes the majority of the stories, with an assist from Batman co-creator Bill Finger, who was otherwise writing most of the Batman stories in Detective Comics while Cameron handled Batman in Batman.
One of the pleasant surprises here, other than Cameron, is the art of Jack Burnley. He's not as good at the comic grotesques of those stories with artist Jerry Robinson on them, but he supplies a very straightforward, cleanly rendered adventure version of Batman.
The Batman Mythos was rapidly coming together by this point, barely three years after the Caped Crusader's first appearance. Robin is fully entrenched as Batman's sidekick, and villains such as Catwoman, the Joker, and the Penguin are already making repeat appearances.
Standouts in this volume include the following stories:
"Here Comes Alfred" by Don Cameron, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson introduces the (initially fat) butler to the Batman saga.
"The Grade 'A' Crimes by Ruth Lyons Kaufman and Jack Burnley features a rare Golden Age story written by a woman.
"The Boy Who Wanted To Be Robin" by Cameron and Burnley introduces the idea of a criminal training himself to be a sort of 'anti-Batman.'
"The Two Futures" by Finger and Burnley offers a grim vision of an Axis victory in WWII.
"Swastika Over the White House" by Cameron and Burnley is a rare WWII story in which Batman actually battles Nazi saboteurs.
"The Adventure of the Branded Tree" by Cameron and Burnley may be the first example of a strange sub-genre of DC superhero stories, those that are narrated by an inanimate object, in this case a roll of paper. It's also part of a fairly widespread tradition of showing superheroes reading about their own exploits in the comic book that they're appearing in. You'd be amazed how often this sort of meta-fiction shows up in comics of the 1940's.
In all, an enjoyable and surprisingly dense read. The comics of the 1940's often had crude art, but they generally offered a surprisingly generous amount of prose along with that art. They certainly weren't for the illiterate as they were so often accused of being. Recommended.
The Superman Chronicles Volume 9: (Collecting Action Comics 47-52, World's Finest 6-7, and Superman 16-17, 1942/Collected 2011): written by Jerry Siegel; illustrated by Joe Shuster, John Sikela, Fred Ray, Leo Nowak, and Ed Dobrotka:
The chronological reprinting of Superman stories from the beginning, regardless of what title the stories appeared in, continues here with an offering from several months of 1942. America has just gone to war, and while the covers reflect this -- Superman doles out punishment to Hitler on one cover, for instance -- the stories have not yet caught up to reality.
We do get some great battles with super-villains, however, and a not-yet-omnipotent Superman. The Man of Steel's powers are still developing four years after his first appearance. He still seems to be vulnerable to poison gas, for instance, and he still needs to push off from something to fly.
The gems of the volume are two linked stories pitting Superman against Lex Luthor, previously a red-headed evil scientist who has now mysteriously gone bald like another early Superman foe, the Ultra-Humanite. "Powerstone" and "When Titans Clash" see Luthor gain powers greater than Superman's from the mysterious, titular Powerstone. For once, Superman's wits and knowledge of Luthor's psychology must save the world, not his strength.
One bizarre story all but recreates the story of The Natural, as Lois Lane and Clark Kent discover a baseball prodigy while on a train ride to MLB spring training. Did Bernard Malamud read Superman comics? Annoying unpowered foes The Prankster and The Puzzler also make their first appearances. They really seem like rejects from Batman's Rogues' Gallery.
The volume also offers a battle against a mind-controlling tyrant self-dubbed The Emperor of America and a battle against the first iteration of long-time Superman foe Metal[l]o, here a guy who's taken "super-serum" and dressed in a suit of impregnable metal, but later to become the Man with the Kryptonite Heart.
Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel keeps the ideas cracking. This Superman is a bit more Establishment than Siegel's original version, though still much less authoritative and pompous than he would become in the 1950's. And he still seems to operate in a world where he's at least partially an Urban Legend -- many criminals don't know who he is, thus leading to much fruitless gun-play and fisticuffs.
Superman's artistic father Joe Shuster only illustrates one story here, "Man or Superman?," and parts of it seem to be traced from his previous work. Even this early in the game, Shuster was being undone by his declining eyesight. John Sikela and Leo Nowak do solid work as Shuster's ghosts. Sikela is perhaps the closest to Shuster's style of all the ghosts, though he's more polished and less pleasingly raw than Shuster. Nowak gets more of Shuster's cartooniness in his art, but even less of that raw power and dynamism. In all, recommended.
Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark (pen-name of Donald E. Westlake) (1971): Alan Grofield, occasional co-thief with Westlake/Stark's anti-hero Parker, gets one of his own adventures here, an often grim series of events clumsily but murderously orchestrated by a sociopathic heist planner with no idea how to successfully set up a big heist. Grofield, who needs money for his summer theatre company (!), turns down the seemingly incompetent Myers' offer to join his gang for a brewery heist, thus setting off a country-hopping series of criminal events. Details of the planning and execution of a competent heist not involving Myers are especially fascinating. Recommended.
Neighbors: written by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien; directed by Nicholas Stoller; starring Seth Rogen (Mac Radner), Rose Byrne (Kelly Radner), Zac Efron (Teddy Sanders) and Dave Franco (Pete) (2014): Amusing, raunchy tale of a battle between a fraternity run by Zac Efron and young couple Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen, who've just had a baby and now face the horrors of having a frat move in next to them. Could be sharper, but it passes the time. Lightly recommended.
The Giver: adapted from the novel by Lois Lowry by Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide; directed by Philip Noyce; starring Brenton Thwaites (Jonas), Odeya Rush (Fiona), Cameron Monaghan (Asher), Jeff Bridges (The Giver), Meryl Streep (Chief Elder), Katie Holmes (Mother), and Alexander Skarsgard (Father) (2014): Film adaptation plays fairly freely with Lowry's award-winning novel, but nonetheless remains a fairly enjoyable tale of a future dystopia. Jeff Bridges is solid as usual as the literal keeper of memories for a post-apocalyptic society which carefully regulates emotions and emotional attachments. Recommended.
The Superman Chronicles Volume 8: written by Jerry Siegel; illustrated by Joe Shuster, Fred Ray, Leo Nowak, Jack Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Paul Cassidy, and others (1941-42; this collection 2010): Superman battles an unfrozen caveman and an electrically super-charged Lex Luthor in this volume of his early adventures. Jerry Siegel's interest in science-fiction tropes also manifests in a battle between the Man of Steel and an army of evil mermen, a ray that can age or de-age people, and the electricity-wielding threat of the Lightning Master. Stories written just before the United States entered World War Two feature the Man of Tomorrow battling saboteurs from Napkan (a thinly veiled Japan) and defeating the forces of aggressive European country Oxnalia (an even more thinly veiled Nazi Germany, complete with an Adolf Hitler lookalike as leader). Recommended.
The Superman Chronicles Volume 3: written by Jerry Siegel; illustrated by Joe Shuster, Wayne Boring, Jack Burnley, and others (1939-1940; this collection 2007): The third chronological volume of Superman's adventures sees the art chores shifting away from co-creator Joe Shuster, whose eyesight was already failing, and onto the artists of the Shuster studio. It's a mostly clean transition. Though Shuster's successors would often be far better artists than him, none would bring the sketchy, restless energy to the adventures of Superman that Shuster did.
Co-creator Jerry Siegel writes all the stories included here. They're a pretty good representation of Siegel's interests in politics and pulp science fiction. Superman stops a war in Europe between two fictional countries and cleans up the crooked slot machine racket in Metropolis. Don't gamble, kids!
But he also battles early mad-scientist-nemesis the Ultra-Humanite, once a bald man but now with his brain transplanted into that of a Hollywood starlet. Seriously. Lex Luthor also begins his run here, not yet bald but instead red-headed. Nonetheless, he's a malevolent foe who unleashes super-science on The Man of Steel, including a heavily armed Undersea City. The Ultra-Humanite brings the atomic disintegrator. Sometimes you're fighting the gambling schemes of mobsters, sometimes you're punching out sharks and robots.
Even early in his career, the Man of Steel led a rich, full life. But he's less powerful than later iterations, less concerned with preserving the lives of his enemies if they themselves are murderers, and a whole lot punchier. It's a characterization of Superman that would probably be a lot more popular now than all the other iterations people have been trying in comics and on the big and small screens for decades. Why someone doesn't go back to the beginning is beyond me. He wisecracks like Spider-man and has only slightly more regard for the lives of his enemies than Wolverine. And he's left-wing. What's not to love? Recommended.
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| Art by Fred Ray |
The Superman Chronicles Volume 9: written by Jerry Siegel; illustrated by Joe Shuster, John Sikela, Ed Dobrotka, Leo Nowak, and Fred Ray (1942; collected 2011): Co-creator Joe Shuster's rapidly failing eyesight and other factors saw him pushed to the margins of the Superman comic books as early as 1942, just four years after the Man of Steel forever altered American comic books. Thankfully, Shuster's rough-hewn style was still considered the gold standard for depicting Superman, so these adventures still look a lot like Shuster's work, though only one story actually was drawn by him.
Superman's other co-creator, Jerry Siegel, was still writing the Man of Steel: his entry into World War Two (and into ever-expanding degrees of getting screwed over by what would eventually be re-named as DC Comics) was still in the (near) future. There are still some traces of that muscular, socialist, agit-prop Superman in evidence here, though very muted. For the most part, Superman fights either non-powered gangster-types (The Prankster, The Puzzler, Talon) or people who've somehow developed powers as great or greater than his (Luthor, Mister Sinister, Metalo).
The Luthor story is a wild one, mysteriously absent from most 'Best of' Superman collections. In it, having already harnessed electricity to make himself nearly as strong as Superman (guess what happens when the authorities give Luthor the electric chair!), Luthor gets control of a magical artifact that makes him nigh-omnipotent...and then he makes Superman into a normal human being!
I really like John Sikela's art on many of the stories. He's very Shusteresque, though much more polished than Shuster (and thus somehow also much less bursting with nearly uncontrolled energy). Fred Ray also does lovely, polished work on the various covers (Ray would only draw one interior Superman story in his career, but he drew dozens of covers for the Man of Steel, several of them often-imitated and iconic).
It's actually fascinating to see how much reading the average comic-book consumer was expected to do in 1942. This volume takes about three to five times longer to read than a similar-sized volume of most superhero comics would take today. No wonder people were more literate. They actually had to READ comic books. Highly recommended.
Superman: The Dailies 1941-42: written by Jerry Siegel, illustrated by Joe Shuster and Jack Burnley (1941-42; collected 1999): Fun, brisk year of dailies from the syndicated Superman newspaper strip. By this time, Joe Shuster's eyesight made drawing on a regular basis nearly impossible. The capable Jack Burnley ghosts much of this volume. He's one of the best, if not the best, of the early Shuster fill-ins.
Superman faces a bounty on his head of...one million dollars! A vengeful real-estate scam artist offers $1 million to anyone who can kill Superman. Mad scientists and assorted other riffraff come out nof the woodwork to attempt to collect the money. As Superman wasn't as god-like then as he would soon be, some of the death traps actually hold at least the potential of killing him. Much fun is had by all. Oh, and Superman has to beat a murder rap as well.
Of course, Superman lived in a pretty violent world at the time. The death rate among his enemies, most if not all of them hoist of their own petard, is nearly 100%. This is what happens when you put a bounty on Superman's head! The Man of Steel also visits Hollywood, where Clark Kent inadvertantly ends up playing Superman in a movie. Those eyeglasses can disguise anything!
Siegel's scripting is breezy and fun, his Superman a far cry from the stuffed shirt father figure of the 1950's. Burnley's art really is solid -- he's one of my favourite Golden Age artists. Recommended.
