June 12, 2013
Five Superman Publications I Like Better Than The Movies 03: All Star Superman #10
I have to admit I'm not the biggest fan of the
All Star Superman series. I like it fine, but it ranks modestly in my overall superhero pantheon, such as it is. I thought
All Star generally over-analytical and the drive through various major narrative themes a bit forced. Also, while Frank Quitely's flair for pneumatic figure drawing and ability to create weird landscapes is awesome to behold, I never got the sense that his Metropolis was much more than an empty backdrop against which these characters can pose.
All Star strikes me as a series for fans of the Superman character as an idea more than it is for fans of the character as a narrative construct. In my reading it is more exercise than story. I'm not sure I can tell you how it ends without looking.
There are beautiful moments in
All Star Superman, though. This issue, one of that series' three best, has a one-page scene in it where Superman engages with a depressed teenager and convinces her she's strong enough to deal with her problems. It's a lovely little scene, largely and widely praised, although I suppose it'd be easy to hate on it as a push-back against those plaudits. For me it's affecting, though, perhaps moreso in that when I step back and look at it, it's kind of a mess as component parts: the teenager looks like she's from some alternate universe where Tim Burton got to design bodies, and the backdrop doesn't look even half as real as that building from which Chris Ware's wonderful Superman bought the farm near the beginning of
Jimmy Corrigan. And yet the moment remains. It's sort of like watching kids do Shakespeare: something about the truth of it always bleeds through, and ditto here the power of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's creation: the better part of us.
*****
*
All Star Superman #10, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant, DC Comics, comic book, 36 pages, May 2008, $2.99
*****
*****
*****
posted 3:00 am PST |
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