Sunday, October 10, 2004

Superman--A Review of Issues #206-208

First of all, I need to say that I hate when my favorite book is the hottest thing out there. Jim Lee's art deserves all the credit and it is wonderful to see Superman taken seriously. The only downfall for me is that the book becomes hard to get--you have to have a subscription or have it put up by your comic shop. This just kind of ruins the weekly "discovery" of new comics. I find that my comic shop barely orders any copies over those to be put aside. I have missed other books because of this. Luckily, I collect Superman every week anyway.

Issues #206-208 are interesting for what they are going to set up in the future. I really like the undercover "Orr" character. I hope this confession to the priest really leads to something. But shouldn't he maybe using Lois to confess to--or Diana? I swear, Superman's marriage is pretty screwed up--I honestly think it would end in divorce right now with what is all going on.

One of my faults with it all, however, is that the universe of comics only ties itself in together when it is convenient for them. If this story were in the pages of JLA, I think that Batman would have said, "This is why I had protocols for bad heroes." In JLA, for many issues, the heroes brooded on that subject. I miss the comics growing up where every issue was "asterisked" to tell you where all this stuff came from previously, and in what order to read a hero's exploits.Now we have individual stories running right on top of each other in the many Superman books with JLA.

And one more nitpicky thing--if Equus' claws were that sharp that they could cut the skin of Superman, wouldn't you cover the whole freaking guy in the stuff? It's always amazing how convenient things can be. (But then again, if Flash and Superman are really that fast--fast enough to walk on water--wouldn't they be unstoppable? Punches fast enough to hit the guy without ever seeing them, flying to the other side of the world to grab a tank and hit the guy over the head with it before he realized you left----and this is not a stretch: first issue of Justice Society of America in 1992 or so had their fast guy speed several states away in the spot of a heartbeat or two just to bring back a newspaper. Superman could grab the Phantom Zone projector every time he needed it. And one last little nitpicky thing--and sometimes this makes me think about stopping comics altogether--if you can life Equus up like on the cover of Superman #206, why couldn't you fly him up into space superfast and throw him into deep space?)

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