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| Friday, January 19, 2007 10:13 PM |
| Graphic Novels Galore, Part 3 |
 by Fëanor |
I told you it would be soon! Here's the final volume of reviews from the haul of graphic novels I snagged from the library. This edition is even illustrated!
Superman Chronicles Volume 1 - I don't know why, but I'm really getting quite fond of the big blue guy these days. Used to be I thought he was a dull character, a big boy scout, nothing interesting, nowhere near as cool as Batman. But he has his own complexities - especially if the right author gets a hold of him - and his story is such a deeply ingrained epic myth of popular culture that it's hard not to be at least a little interested.
All of which means, it was time for me to start at the beginning, as I love to do, with Superman. So I was very pleased to find this book, which collects reprints of the first 13 issues or so of Action Comics, as well as a special issue of New York World's Fair Comics that featured Superman, and finally the first issue of Superman. It's interesting first of all as an historical document - just seeing the first appearance of these things, reading the neat little ads in the back pages of the comics - "Fill out this form and send it in to get Superman comic strips to appear in your paper!" "Check out the adventures of a new hero named Batman in Detective Comics!" And then there are the incredibly dangerous great tips for getting strong like Superman - keep lifting heavier weights and eventually you'll be able to pick up your Dad's recliner single-handed, etc.
I had read Action Comics #1 online a while back, but was struck again here at how different this early Superman is from the Superman we've come to know. There are the superficial differences - the "S" logo on his suit isn't as stylized yet, and they didn't settle on red as the color of his boots until around issue 6 or 7 - but then there are also the big story and character differences.
Action Comics was actually a collection of a number of different strips, one of which happened to be Superman (in fact, he only appears on the cover of around 4 of those first 13 issues), which meant that Superman's stories had to be relatively short and concise. They handle his origin story in the first page - really in about the first couple of panels. His planet was dying, his father shot him in a rocket to Earth, he was found by a motorist, raised in an orphanage where he showed off his incredible strength, and then he went and became a reporter. The Kents and Smallville don't show up at all in this story, and Superman's powers are basically only that he's incredibly strong and nigh invulnerable, and he gets them from the fact that people from his planet are far advanced physically from us, not from the yellow sun. (A better explanation for his powers - that his home planet was more massive, and thus had far stronger gravity, than Earth's, so the people there had to be tougher and stronger to survive it - doesn't come until the retold origin story in Superman #1 - which is also where the Kents are introduced, and promptly killed off before Clark even becomes Superman.) He can't fly (he just jumps really far and runs really fast), he has no heat vision, and X-ray vision only gets added around issue 13.
I'm also pretty certain the city is never called Metropolis (it's just "a metropolitan city"). And the paper he works for is the Daily Star, not the Daily Planet. Lois is still there, but she actively and loudly despises Clark for being a terrible coward. There's no Lex Luthor or, indeed, any super villains of any kind (with the exception of "the ultra-humanite," a crippled and evil criminal super genius who gets introduced at the very end of this volume); almost all of the crime Superman fights could be described as petty crime.
And Superman himself is...well, he's kind of...psychopathic. That famous iconic cover of the first issue of Action Comics actually sums his character up well. His solutions to problems are always rather naive, childish, and simplistic, and they always involve hurting people and breaking things. In fact, I would be tempted read it as a characterization of him as an alien with no concept of how our world works, if it weren't for the fact the entire world depicted in the comic is childish and simplistic, and Superman's solutions always work.
Let me give you some examples: in a very early story, Superman discovers that a munitions magnate is essentially helping to foment war so he can sell weapons and make lots of money. Superman's solution is to threaten the guy into enlisting in the army; he ultimately is so freaked out he promises never to manufacture weapons again. Superman then ends the war by grabbing the two military commanders, putting them in a room together, and demanding they fight it out one on one. They realize they don't even know why they're fighting the war, so they shake hands and make up, and the war ends.
Another of my favorite stories is when Superman randomly stumbles on a plot by a crooked coach to fix a college football game. To fix the fix, he finds somebody on the opposing team that looks sort of like him - a guy named Burke - gets himself made-up to look even more like him, then drugs the guy and keeps him imprisoned in his own apartment while he takes his place! Thugs working for the crooked coach get wind of Burke's surprising new skills and decide to kidnap him. So they go to the apartment and kidnap the real guy that Superman has left there, drugged. Superman sees it happening, and says, "Fine! They've taken him off my hands - and they mean him no physical harm!" So he just leaves him there, then tells the crooked coach he'll expose him if he doesn't fire his thugs and resign his position. At the half of the big game, after his thugs have attempted to get Superman but failed miserably, that's just what the coach does. Meanwhile, the real Burke has escaped the house where the thugs left him tied up, and arrives at the game only to see Superman playing in his place. Burke's girlfriend, who dumped him at the beginning of the story for being too much of a failure at sports, is watching from the stands and is finally impressed with Burke/Superman's physical prowess. Superman changes places back with the real Burke and lets him play the rest of the game. Burke gets beat up, but gets his girlfriend back anyway. Awesome.
In another story, after saving some kids from the police, who were part of an Oliver Twist-type of gang, he decides they aren't to blame, but their environment is - the horrible slums they live in make them criminals. Realizing that the government rebuilds disaster areas, Superman single-handedly destroys the entire slum area of the city, which is replaced with beautiful new apartment projects only weeks later, and all is well.
In another truly astounding story, Kent sees someone he knows killed by a "hit-skip" driver (apparently that's what they called hit-and-run drivers back then), and decides to declare war on reckless drivers! He announces his war by crashing through the window of the radio station, busting down the door of the recording studio, shoving the announcer out of the way, and threatening everybody on-air. Then he leaves - through the wall. He destroys all the cars in the impound lot, destroys all the junky cars in a used car lot, then starts destroying the cars of random people he doesn't like, destroying the machinery at a manufacturing plant that makes dangerous cars, and scaring the crap out of bad drivers in general by throwing them around or pretending he's the spirit of someone they ran over (that was one of my favorite parts). Eventually he scares the Mayor straight and convinces him to make sure the traffic laws are enforced properly.
So yes, Superman is essentially an insane vigilante, hell bent on everyone following the rules - and the ends justify the means as far as he's concerned. In fact, his most often used tactic is to beat and hurt people, and then threaten them with further beatings if they don't do what he says. He's a very different character from the Superman we know later, but an interesting one, and I loved reading this book. I would definitely continue reading this series.
So in conclusion...look out for mysterious gas!! |
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