Against the Sun-Eater

Legion of Super-heroes: The Life and Death of Ferro Lad: written by Jim Shooter; illustrated by Curt Swan and George Klein (1966-67; collected 2010): Once upon a time in the 1950's, a group of 30th-century, super-powered teenagers invited the 20th century's Superboy to join their super-team, the Legion of Super-heroes. The rest was history. Future history.

The Legion quickly acquired a relatively vast number of heroes, especially for superhero comics of the time, reaching more than a dozen members by the early 1960's when new-born teams like the Avengers or the Justice League were puttering around with six or seven. Due to their roster size and the future milieu they inhabited, the Legion heroes soon also acquired a rogue's gallery that might have given any other team, teen-aged or adult, pause.

And then...well, and then, a 13-year-old kid decided in the mid-1960's that he could write comic books. So he sent off some stories to the editor of the Legion at DC Comics. And lo and behold, at the age of 14, Jim Shooter became the regular writer of the Legion in 1966. Marvel's surge in popularity among teenagers at the time probably contributed to the hiring decision -- certainly, Shooter's Legion was far and away DC's most Marvel-like book, except actually written by a teenager. Most refreshingly, it offered a surprisingly vulnerable Superboy. The enemies the Legion faced were so powerful that even the Boy of Steel needed help.

This volume collects most of the Legion stories that featured one of the characters Shooter created when he first took over the book, Ferro Lad. Like the later Colossus of the X-Men, Ferro Lad could turn into metal when the need arose -- in his case, solid iron that nonetheless remained mobile and super-strong. Perpetually masked because of a facial disfigurement that came along with his mutation (yes, Ferro Lad was a mutant -- one of DC's first so-named, as far as I remember), Ferro Lad fought the good fight for a year before the apocalyptic events that introduced both the members of the Fatal Five (the worst super-criminals of the 30th century) and the Sun-Eater (exactly what it sounds like) to the DC universe.

The depleted Legion's desperate battle against the Sun-Eater is just one of the pleasures of this volume. We also see Earth under siege by the villainous Khund empire, a glimpse into the Legion's future as adults, and a threat to the Legion from what seems to be the ghost of one of its fallen members. Shooter's writing is fun and pulpy and melodramatically epic.

Curt Swan's art is terrific, managing the difficult feat of portraying both the ridiculously over-scaled (the Sun-Eater can engulf entire suns, after all) and the intimate and human. His Legion actually look like teenagers, while the design of the members of the Fatal Five was instantly iconic and endured for decades. Swan was Superman's quintessential artist for decades, but he was also the defining artist for the Legion. No one was ever better than he was in the 1960's on this book. Highly recommended.

Ditkopalooza

The Steve Ditko Omnibus Volume 1 featuring Shade the Changing Man: all stories plotted and illustrated by Steve Ditko with additional writing by a cast of thousands (Collected 2010); The Steve Ditko Omnibus Volume 2 featuring Hawk and Dove: all stories plotted and illustrated by Steve Ditko with additional writing by a cast of thousands (Collected 2010):

Writer-artist Steve Ditko's quixotic nature was only amplified by the cruddy state of mainstream comic books for the people who actually created characters for the companies. His two most notable co-creations for Marvel Comics were Spider-man and Dr. Strange, though he also did character-defining work on Iron Man and the Hulk. Tired of Stan Lee's scripting and editing choices, Ditko left Marvel for more than a decade in the late 1960's. For the last 15 years, he's pretty much done his own, self-published thing, with very occasional short work for DC. He's famously reclusive.

Prior to his fame-creating Marvel superhero work, Ditko did thousands of pages of horror and monster work for many companies, honing his skills until he'd pretty much reached his impressive peak in the 1960's at Marvel and on B&W horror stories for Warren, and superhero work for DC and Charlton in the late 1960's.

These two omnibuses collect all of Ditko's output for DC other than his work on The Creeper in the 1960's and 1970's. In total, the collection spans several decades, offering the great, the good, and the very occasional indifferent sides of Ditko. He plotted many of the stories here (though not all), wrote a few, and either fully illustrated or pencilled the rest. It's a really great, broad look at one of the most important, influential, and fascinating American comic-book creators.

Ditko's unique ability to depict ordinary looking people in fantastical environments was at its best in Dr. Strange, but the Shade stories reprinted here are a very, very close second. They're utterly bizarre and engaging, and Ditko finds in dialogue-writer Michael Fleisher a kindred spirit when it comes to odd dialogue and description. Many of the pieces fully scripted by others take advantage of Ditko's strengths as well.

The pieces penciled but not inked by Ditko offer a fascinating look at how different artists approached Ditko's art. Romeo Tanghal, an excellent inker of George Perez on New Teen Titans in the 1980's, does a really solid job on the Starman adventures reprinted herein. The masterful Wally Wood doesn't always completely work on the four issues of Stalker he and Ditko did together, sometimes overpowering Ditko's distinctive faces, but it's still worth looking at.

There are a few duds in the inking department, but they're few and far between. And while Ditko's Legion of Super-heroes stories aren't an artistic high-point for him, they do accomplish something that a lot of artists on LSH failed at: they make the characters look like teen-agers.

The peaks collected here are really high, and the valleys (mostly horror shorts) still offer some of that Ditko magic. One also gets the only time Ditko drew Batman in a comic-book story (albeit as a guest-star in the first issue of the short-lived Manbat series), and Ditko's crouching, weirdly endearing take on Jack Kirby's Demon. Highly recommended.

Justice League of Amnesia

Justice League of America: The Greatest Stories Ever Told: written by Gardner Fox, Denny O'Neil, Martin Pasko, Gerry Conway, J.M. DeMatteis, Keith Giffen, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, and Joe Casey; illustrated by Mike Sekowsky, Dick Dillin, Kevin Maguire, Doug Mahnke, Howard Porter, Terry Austin, and others (1962-2005; collected 2006): Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales' popular and controversial Justice League miniseries Identity Crisis had just come out when this volume was assembled. The selection criteria for this 'Best-of' collection thus became slanted to earlier Justice League stories that led somehow into Identity Crisis. It would have been a much better idea to create some sort of Justice League: Prelude to Identity Crisis volume, but no one ever accused DC of being sensible.

This assortment of Justice League stories is enjoyable, but very, very, very heavy on the Identity Swap trope that Identity Crisis would explore. And the first story seems to have been included because it introduces the handy element Amnesium to the Justice League (the memory-erasing substance had previously appeared several times in Superboy and Superman comics). Good old Amnesium. Lightly recommended.

Superboy: The Greatest Team-up Stories Ever Told: written by Leo Dorfman, Frank Robbins, Cary Bates, and others; illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger, Dave Hunt, Bob Brown, Murphy Anderson, and others (1951-1981; collected 2011): Herein lies the template for Smallville and Arrow: early stories of a hero's career in which he meets pretty much everyone we thought he met much later. Aquaboy! Green Arrow, Green Lantern, and Batman before they were Green Arrow, Green Lantern, and Batman! Young Lex Luthor! Young Jor-El! Young Lori Lemaris! Time-travelling Jimmy Olsen!

The 1950's and 1960's material is especially breezy and occasionally very, very odd as it attempts to have its earlier meet-up cake and eat it too, or whatever. So teen-aged Jor-El gets his memory erased by Amnesium so that he doesn't remember meeting his own son on Earth. Superboy gets his memory erased so that he doesn't remember Supergirl's visit, a story which seems to also have a disquieting level of protosexual longing by Superboy for (first) cousin Supergirl. Lori Lemaris, Lana Lang, and Superboy all get their memories erased by Atlantean super-hypnosis so that none of them remember their earlier meeting. DC really should do a volume of the greatest memory-erasure stories ever told! Recommended.

Prime Numbers

Superman: Secret Identity: written by Kurt Busiek; illustrated by Stuart Immonen (2004): Busiek takes a decidely Meta concept inspired by a Superman comic book of the 1980's and extrapolates it into a moving tale about the Man of Steel. In a weird way, OUR Man of Steel.

The Superman team-up series DC Comics Presents offered an odd story towards the end of its run in the 1980's. In it, the Superman of DC's main Earth, Earth-1, met the Superboy of Earth-Prime. But the thing was, Earth-Prime was, in DC's multiverse, 'our' Earth, one without superheroes, one upon which all of DC's heroes were simply characters in comic books. That included Superboy and Superman. So Superboy of Earth-Prime found himself with superpowers on an Earth where he was already a fictional character.

Borges, eat your heart out!

Busiek takes this initial concept and, not in a situation to write an ongoing, in-continuity series about Superboy-Prime, instead writes a non-continuity story that follows a Superboy from a world where he's a fictional character through the course of the super-powered portion of his lifetime.

This Superboy has been teased for years because his parents thought it would be cool to name a male baby with the last name Kent who hails from a small town in Kansas (Pickettsville, not Smallville)...Clark. And one night, when he's 13, Clark suddenly wakes up with a pretty fair approximation of all of Superman's powers.

What follows is a really charming story which allows Busiek to explore the aging of a superhero. Most 'adult' superhero books explore either the beginning or the end of their hero's career. Busiek's best work lies here in exploring the middle -- adulthood, parenthood, grandparenthood. His Superman, who consciously adopts the classic costume in part because it means people who see him won't be believed, operates in secrecy, leery of a U.S. government that apparently wants to dissect him.

But as a fundamentally decent person, Clark continues to help people, despite the risk of being followed home. His powers aren't great enough to always protect him from being knocked unconscious, but he keeps going anyway. And perhaps the government will eventually decide that he's not a threat -- or develop superheroes of its own.

Busiek and artists Immonen, who's never done better work than he does here, do a lovely job of pointing out the ways in which it would be great to be Superman, both through the soaring, two-page vistas that periodically appear to show the world as Superman sees it, and through the little things that he takes for normal, such as being able to go to any restaurant in the world whenever he wants to. It's a great take on Superman, wonderfully told, with expressive character work by Immonen. Recommended.

The Future Begins Again

Legion: Secret Origin: written by Paul Levitz; illustrated by Chris Batista and Marc Deering (2011-2012): This expanded origin story for the 'New 52' Legion of Super-heroes features the scripting of long-time (as in, on and off again since the early 1980's) LSH writer Paul Levitz and the appropriately clean, crisp artwork of Chris Batista and Marc Deering. The Legion, super-powered humans and aliens from worlds throughout the Milky Way galaxy in the 31st century, are back once again. There may be problems in the 31st century, but the Legion has always worked best against the backdrop of an at-least-partially utopian future Earth beset by problems from without and within, and not, as in the dismal late 1980's '5 Years Later' LSH universe, a ruined world being fixed by an almost equally broken Legion.

Levitz sticks with the decades-old framework of the Legion's origin (the three teenaged founding members save multi-zillionaire R.J. Brande from an assassination attempt; their efforts cause him to suggest they form a superhero team with his financial backing). Additional complexities, political intrigues, and schemes are added. The heroes learn to work together and show their worth to the United Federation of Planets. Both Brande and the young heroes plan to recruit Superboy from the past, though this doesn't happen in the origin. An ancient (in more ways than one) Legion enemy makes its first appearance (again).

I'm not sure how this introduction would play with someone who's never read a Legion adventure before. I thought it was a solid version of the origin, comprehensive without being overburdened with continuity. The Legion has almost always seemed to suffer most after a DC reboot or partial reboot (1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths and 1994's Zero Hour were especially destructive to Legion continuity and, ultimately, popularity), so it's nice to see that they've emerged from September 2011's Flashpoint reboot as perhaps the least affected DC book. And they get to keep Superboy as a member. Recommended.

Reboot Attacks

Superboy: Smallville Attacks: written by Jeff Lemire; illustrated by Pier Gallo, Marco Rudy, Pete Woods, Cafu and others (2010-2011; collected 2011): Canadian indy comics writer-artist Lemire (Essex County, Sweet Tooth) moved further into the mainstream with his work on DC's Superboy comic book in 2010. Like William Messner-Loebs's similar move to DC back in the 1980's, Lemire's move came while maintaining his unique perspective and sensibilities. The result was the best Superboy comic I can think of for...decades? Since he was teaming up regularly with the Legion of Superheroes, anyway (whoops -- wrong Superboy!).

This Superboy is the, um, genetic love-child of Luthor and Superman, whipped up in a test tube from Luthor and Superman's DNA and revealed to the world nearly 20 years ago in the aftermath of 1992's Death of Superman storyline. Kon-El, or Connor Kent, or Superboy, now lives in Smallville with Ma Kent and Superdog Krypto, having recovered from a serious case of death in 2005-2006's Infinite Crisis event.

Lemire cleverly brings the supernatural into the storyline, a relative rarity in the Superman family of books, with "The Hollow Men" arc running throughout these 11 collected issues. DC's go-to guy for supernatural mystery, the Phantom Stranger, guest-stars, as does Batman villain Poison Ivy and grotesque Superman foe the Parasite. Lemire also has fun with Superboy's supporting cast. Pier Gallo's art is clean and straightforward, suiting the material perfectly.

Unfortunately, DC's line-wide reboot ended this comic with issue 11, resulting in a 'new' (or at least differently written) Superboy on the stands right now. Lemire moved on to Animal Man and Frankenstein in the normal DC universe, both fine and weird books, but I'll miss his take on Superboy -- it, like several other pre-reboot DC superhero comics, was a baby thrown out with the continuity-contaminated bathwater. Recommended.