Man of Steel: Getting into Superman

DharmaBum

So earlier this year I bought Kingdom Come. And fell in love with it. So I decided that I wanted to get more into some in-continuity Superman Stories.

Clearly the place to start is with Birthright. But my question is where do I go after that? Is infinite Crisis even worth reading?

Crayon

Crisis on Infinite Earths is a superb story all around.

Bad Karma

DharmaBum wrote: »

So earlier this year I bought Kingdom Come. And fell in love with it. So I decided that I wanted to get more into some in-continuity Superman Stories.

Clearly the place to start is with Birthright. But my question is where do I go after that? Is infinite Crisis even worth reading?

You need to read a lot more to really get the gist of Infinite Crisis, not just the main book.

Try Up, Up, and Away!, the first arc to come from the One Year Later jump, and it's a good one. I believe there is a trade of it out now, or coming soon.

Edit - Here ya go.. Again, pick up the trade or the individual issues.


Are you sure you want to just limit yourself to in continuity stories though? I mean, we're talking Superman here. 60+ years of stories...many of which are collected in some sort of format.

Hardtarget

my fav Supes stories -
For All Seasons
Birthright
What Ever Happened to the Man of Tommorow
Red Son
JLA: The Nail

Bad Karma

All-Star Superman if you decide not to just stick with in continuity stories.

You'll thank me for it later.

DharmaBum

Bad Karma wrote: »

Are you sure you want to just limit yourself to in continuity stories though? I mean, we're talking Superman here. 60+ years of stories...many of which are collected in some sort of format.

I don't want to JUST read in-continuity stories but I kinda wanna get into the DCU more than just reading Kingdom Come and Red Son and the like.

Don't get me wrong I wanna read out of continuity stuff as well. But for some reason the in-continuity stuff seems a bit more daunting for me.

Feel free to recomend me any Superman book.

Zavian

lex luthor: man of steel is another great one, along with the previously mentioned For All Seasons. The first trade of All Star Superman is out (although just in HC format at the moment I think), and is well worth picking up (or just get the single issues, either way)

valiance

Red Son (non-continuity)
Birthright (continuity I think)
Secret Identity (non-continuity)
All-Star Superman (non-continuity)

Servo

this might just be me, but i really enjoy the showcase superman collections. they're just insane. plus, the first one's only 10 bucks for like five hundred pages of superman comics that may have been written by crazy people. it's like that book chicken soup for the soul, except superman uses superspeed to change all of perry white's clothes really fast and make the poor guy think he's going senile.

Htown

For in-continuity stuff, grab Birthright, Superman for All Seasons, and Up, Up, and Away.

Is For the Man Who Has Everything canon? That was awesome, too.

Dondums

The first two arcs of Superman/Batman were enjoyable for me.
I haven't read anything past that, though. So, uh, yeah.

Tylerbroor

All the Alan Moore superman that's included in his 'The Stories of Alan Moore' are really good. Whatever Happened to Superman really got me.

Bloods End

Kurt Busiek's run so far has been pretty tops. The first part of Camelot falls is out in trade I think.

Wildcat

My LCS has quite a few copies of a two-part trade called 'Our Worlds at War'. Is it any good?

Jacobkosh

Pretty much anything Grant Morrison has written with Superman, notably JLA: New World Order and the DC One Million megacrossover - but especially, especially All-Star Superman. It is, I think, the best comic currently on shelves. Here's something I wrote about it elsewhere:

some awesome guy wrote:

What All-Star Superman has done is really crystallized in my head what had previously been vague, hard-to-pin-down notions of what Superman should be and why it so rarely feels like his books do him justice. Morrison's big insight, which should have been utterly obvious all along, is simply that Superman is intelligent. I mean, Clark Kent is supposed to be a Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter, but too many writers (even the ones on the otherwise superb Dini/Timm cartoons) turn Superman into some steroidal charge-in-first dope or a gullible government stooge. That never felt right to me and now I know why.

What I feel like Morrison's showing us is that while Batman's mission is to punish criminals, Superman is a seeker after truth - stopping muggers or catching falling airplanes or whatever is just his 'day job', as it were, and what he really lives for is the discovery and exploration, working on science projects in the Fortress and trying to help advance humanity in the long term. It seems so obvious now: if he's too powerful to tell traditional superhero stories with, the solution is to find new sorts of stories - not just bigger bad guys, but different concepts altogether.

And you're right about Quitely and about the pitch-perfect expressions he draws. To me, the whole series is summed up by that first cover: he's relaxed, not fighting anyone, and his smile isn't dopey or macho or arrogant but calm and knowing, inviting the reader to join him and share his unique perspective on the world.

sullijo

some awesome guy wrote:

What All-Star Superman has done is really crystallized in my head what had previously been vague, hard-to-pin-down notions of what Superman should be and why it so rarely feels like his books do him justice. Morrison's big insight, which should have been utterly obvious all along, is simply that Superman is intelligent. I mean, Clark Kent is supposed to be a Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter, but too many writers (even the ones on the otherwise superb Dini/Timm cartoons) turn Superman into some steroidal charge-in-first dope or a gullible government stooge. That never felt right to me and now I know why.

What I feel like Morrison's showing us is that while Batman's mission is to punish criminals, Superman is a seeker after truth - stopping muggers or catching falling airplanes or whatever is just his 'day job', as it were, and what he really lives for is the discovery and exploration, working on science projects in the Fortress and trying to help advance humanity in the long term. It seems so obvious now: if he's too powerful to tell traditional superhero stories with, the solution is to find new sorts of stories - not just bigger bad guys, but different concepts altogether.

And you're right about Quitely and about the pitch-perfect expressions he draws. To me, the whole series is summed up by that first cover: he's relaxed, not fighting anyone, and his smile isn't dopey or macho or arrogant but calm and knowing, inviting the reader to join him and share his unique perspective on the world.

I never thought I would say this on an internet forum, but that is really insightful and absolutely true. I applaud you, sir.

Bogart

I seem to remember a story about Morrison's inspirations for his take on Superman. Morrison's at a convention and some guy dressed as Superman walks up. He sits and talks to Grant in character for a while, and Morrison realises that this guy has absolutely nailed Superman in a way he's never seen before. He's utterly relaxed, calm, and the most self-possessed man in the world: because he's Superman. Absolute self-assurance without a trace of arrogance.

Unco-ordinated

Neliwood wrote: »

The first two arcs of Superman/Batman were enjoyable for me.
I haven't read anything past that, though. So, uh, yeah.

Yeah, I like those two arcs as well. The next two were pretty average and then after Loeb left... Mark Verheiden turned the series into garbage. On the plus side, Greg Rucka's meant to be doing a Superman/Batman arc at some point.

Outside of Superman/Batman, I'd recommend pretty much all the OYL stuff. Busiek, Johns and Donner have all been doing some great stuff. Morrison's All Star Superman has also been fantastic.

After you get a handle on things, I guess you can go back and read Infinite Crisis. I liked it but others don't.

Algertman

Tylerbroor wrote: »

All the Alan Moore superman that's included in his 'The Stories of Alan Moore' are really good. Whatever Happened to Superman really got me.

Indeed, great book all around

also All-Star Superman

SalmonOfDoubt

Red Son is the best Superman story.

Why don't you just put the whole WORLD in a bottle, Superman?

Cubicle Captive

The biggest problem when it comes to in-continuity stories is that the writers really don't know what to do with Supes. The corporate side of DC doesn't want to introduce major changes in the character's life because it could jeopardize their profits. So most of the time, Superman encounters a strong guy or space invasion, and completely decimates the bastards without breaking a sweat.

The best Superman stories are Elseworlds titles (Kingdom Come, Red Son, The Nail, Last Son of Earth) that put Supes out of his normal routine and use the extraordinary situation to explore what it really means to be Superman. Try out Trinity, and New Frontier. These GNs go back to the early period of Superman's life, when he's just meeting Batman and Wonder Woman.

Then there's what I like to refer to as "Silver Age Style Dementia" stories, where Superman turns into a lion, or Lois accidentally marries Satan. The latter are just empty fun if you can handle the fact that none of it makes a damn bit of sense. All-Star Superman kind of fits into this mold, but it's awesome. Why? Cause Grant Morrison, that's why.

As for in-continuity, serious stuff: Crisis on Infinite Earths is great, as is the first 12 or so issues of John Byrne's Man of Steel reboot. Superman: Man for All Seasons is a great story (not sure if it's canon), and I agree that Up, Up, and Away is great as well.

Jacobkosh

Servo wrote: »

this might just be me, but i really enjoy the showcase superman collections. they're just insane. plus, the first one's only 10 bucks for like five hundred pages of superman comics that may have been written by crazy people. it's like that book chicken soup for the soul, except superman uses superspeed to change all of perry white's clothes really fast and make the poor guy think he's going senile.

You know how they did those, right? Julie Schwartz or one of the other editors would come up with a cover idea ("Great Krypton! Lex Luthor has stolen my hair!") and tell the writers to make a story around it.

Looking back, maybe this wasn't such a bad way to do things. You got a memorable cover and a crazy-ass story to go with it every month. What do you get these days? A bunch of people standing around in a generic team pose and the story is part one of sixteen, and part sixteen won't be solicited until your grandkids are ready for college.

EDIT: Not that I seriously think the 50s stuff is like, timeless genius. It certainly takes a very open mind to read some of those old Showcases for anything but novelty value. It's just we could stand to get some of that lunacy back - for which again, I look to Morrison.

sullijo

Bogart wrote: »

I seem to remember a story about Morrison's inspirations for his take on Superman. Morrison's at a convention and some guy dressed as Superman walks up. He sits and talks to Grant in character for a while, and Morrison realises that this guy has absolutely nailed Superman in a way he's never seen before. He's utterly relaxed, calm, and the most self-possessed man in the world: because he's Superman. Absolute self-assurance without a trace of arrogance.

Here's an article where he recounts that story, along with a picture of Morrison and the Superman in question.

Servo

that's actually one of my all time favorite interviews. i think he gets superman like pretty much nobody else

edit- maybe alan moore. that intro to his issues is so effing good

This is an IMAGINARY STORY (which may never happen, but then again may) about a perfect man who came from the sky and did only good. It tells of his twilight, when the great battles were over and the great miracles long since performed; of how his enemies conspired against him and of that final war in the snowblind wastes beneath the Northern Lights; of the women he loved and of the choice he made between them; of how he broke his most sacred oath, and how finally all the things he had were taken from him save one. It ends with a wink….This is an IMAGINARY STORY … Aren’t they all?

Dex Dynamo

That moore intro is the greatest description of Superman I've ever heard. I think I like that superman better than the superman we see more- the calm perfect man who does only good. I also like Quitely's drawings of Absolute Superman- he isn't buff, he isn't ripped, you can't see every muscle- he's just powerful, and he knows it, but he also knows he's the good guy.

Tylerbroor

That for me is why Christopher Reeve was so damn appropriate for the role. It's all in the face and the eyes, not in the raging, bulging biceps and pecs. Not all Kryptonians were ripped and rediculous, right? And isn't he essentially just a normal Kryptonian? I like a fit superman, but not a beefcake. It detracts from his sensitivity and intelligence.

Scrumtrulescent

I'm going to go ahead and reccomend All Star Supes and Red Son.

Both are fantastic.