Superman #75 is one of the most important stories in comics, and of course it means attempts to emulate it have been far and wide. Not only with Superman himself in two separate animated movies, one of which has a sequel, but in the recent Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Injustice Against Characters You Love And Grew Up With. Superman’s death at the hands of Doomsday was big news. At the time Superman was still DC’s flagship and most popular character. Now they use some dark and broody version of Batman but even now Superman is usually the superhero standard. He’s the highest we can achieve as being not because of “powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men” but because of his love for people, his courage to press, his desire to instill hope and justice in others, and other things that come from his heart instead of a yellow sun. That’s why those of us who are Superman fans love him so much and wish we were him.
Granted, being able to fly through space and shove planets around helps. 🙂
I don’t think anybody actually believed Superman was going to stay dead even outside of comics fandom. Superman meant way too much back then. It was a marketing gimmick, but really what story isn’t? It’s all about coming up with a story that will draw in readers. “The Death Of Superman” was in turn followed by “Funeral For A Friend” and “Reign Of The Supermen”, the latter indeed finding a way to bring back the original Man Of Steel while also introducing three new character: a heroic version of The Eradicator, Steel, and a new take on Superboy, this time a teenage clone with telekinetic powers instead of typical Kryptonian ones. It drew a lot of attention…which sounds just wonderful to modern writers. They want the praise and adulation. They want to be able to say “I wrote the big life-changing event that everyone loved and changed comics forever”. The problem is they and their editors don’t understand what made the “Death & Return Of Superman” storyline work. Let me see if I can explain it.
I have mixed feelings about Crisis On Infinite Earths. I’ve never read the full thing but it looks like an amazing story with long-reaching consequences. It’s a lot of those consequences I take issue with. But it could have been so much worse had Marv Wolfman gotten to write the story the way he wanted. Ignore the social justice commentary by Ari Green if you want but it shows that there were writers trying to turn DC into Marvel long before Dan DiDio showed up. He also goes into why he killed off the villain universe. It is at least an interesting read, and I agree with a lot of what Green says in his commentary.
Although since I’ve reviewed him before it would be fair.
With my own ten year anniversary coming up in November I wanted to give a shoutout to Lewis Lovhaug, aka Linkara, on his 10th anniversary of making his web series. I’m assuming he’s not including text reviews but it’s still 10 years of making bad comics burn, fighting eldritch horrors, and fighting YouTube’s content ID system once all his other hosting choices collapsed when it comes to History Of Power Rangers, which he’s allowed me to post here and I do have to fix the embeds and hope he doesn’t have those videos taken down. Also I’m a bit behind on my end since I also discuss my thoughts on the shows. I look forward to his show every week, and as Jake noted he’s one of the few creators whose work I’ve reviewed to actually comment. Not the first, but one of the earliest. Granted I don’t think he’s read the site since but it’s still an early badge of honor for me. Since then he’s popped up quite often, including appearing in Jake & Leon.
I also met his future wife Viga a few times at ConnectiCon. She was the title card artist for one of my Reviewers Unknown colleagues and had a webcomic at the time so I thought it would be interesting to meet her. We got along okay and the last ConnectiCon video I need to edit features me joining her and other more popular than me reviewers (including two other RU alums) playing a Japanese video game called Super Table Flip. So I have some odd connections to someone I’ve never met. 😀
However one of the missions of this site is promoting stuff I like. Atop The Fourth Wall and his other projects always brings fun reviews and suspenseful science fantasy and even on those rare occasions we disagree (Adventures Of Kool-Aid Man comes to mind) he is entertaining and humorous. He enjoys what he does and is always respectful of fans and detractors alike. He’s a good storyteller and that’s what brings me to his shows as much as his reviews. So congratulations again on ten years of reviews and adventures, and here’s hoping for many more.
(I’m also considering adding reviewing one of the “Angel Armor” novels he wrote as a teenager for Chapter By Chapter as a milestone when I revamp my Patreon. Not sure it will help though. I have reviewed some of the comics he worked on like Lightbringer and Revolution Of The Mask.)
Speaking of Chapter By Chapter, this week I’m going to wrap up my look at The Death And Return Of Superman by going over the whole three arc storyline before we introduce the new book in two weeks. Meanwhile, over at The Clutter Reports, I have my final book report on the novelization. I hope you like the book I have planned next. For that matter I hope I like the book too. 🙂 I’ll also be checking out the Crusher family in my ongoing look at the story bible for Star Trek: The Next Generation season one. I haven’t decided what the other articles will be about this week.
As far as my own comic reviews we’re finishing Green Lantern/Sentinel: Heart Of Darkness and beginning the adaptation of the first Michael Bay Transformers movie. And now I’m wondering if I should do a Transformers movieverse novel with Bumblebee toys coming out. And yes, seeing a toyline called Transformers: Bumblebee is making my inner child dance with joy, while my adult self is reminding I have no money coming in. 😦 Finally, This month will begin the month of November, and longtime readers knows what that means!
Yep, we’re doing the Art Soundoff Challenge again! Started by Jerzy Drozd and Rob Stenzinger of Lean Into Art and the Lean Into Artcast, it’s a challenge for comic creators to take 15 minutes to do a quick micro-podcast about their comic making day or other thoughts on comic creation. I will discuss the Worldbuilding Project and where that stands as well as other thoughts from a minor creator and media critic. Mine will be in v-log format and will only go weekdays and hopefully I’ll be able to do the full month this year. Morning Article Links will disappear for November but if something interesting pops up I’ll post it somehow. Well, this will be a full week so I better get started!
October 25th, 2009 was the debut of Jake & Leon, the result of me messing with drawing and needing to open my Sunday comic reviews. When the reviews went daily I tried a collection of articles, and when that was also time-consuming the comic took over Sunday completely, with an update of what’s planned for the week. This is the ninth year I’ve been doing this comic. The art has gotten better since then, but the jokes really haven’t. 🙂
For those of you new, Jake & Leon stars the title character–cartoonist Jake and his best friend Leon–hosting a skit show and sometimes doing skits themselves. In time they were joined by stage director Bill, his wife Meredith the set designer, their daughter Beth, Jake’s art buddy and marketing misfit Max, and Fizzbin the alien from planet France. The skits are sometimes done in alternate styles, with Jake, Leon, and the others commenting on the dumb ideas the entertainment industry often employs or just having fun with some trope or silliness.
A day late, but as the anniversary of the comic I’m going over this year’s offerings to find my favorites of the comics I’ve created. I hope they’re some of yours too, or at least that you find it amusing.
Thanks to a messed up schedule this week and for some reason that episode I still need to watch still eluding me (it’s like BBC America doesn’t want me to review the new Doctor correctly) we’ll just put this in the regular slot.
I don’t want to diminish the importance of Security Chief Tasha Yar or Ensign Geordi LaForge by calling them “the other two” but I couldn’t think of a good category for them and they don’t really go together. Geordi flies the ship, at least in the first season, and Tasha is the chief of security on a ship that gets invaded every other Saturday, who didn’t even make it through the first season before being bitch slapped to death by a living tar pit. More on that later. We still have two more characters after this (since again Worf was not even created when the season one guide was written), but they’re family so they go together.
These last four entries are shorter than the rest. While the others took up more than one page these last four profiles are one page each. There should be less to go over, but does that mean there is less to discuss?
