Superman Earth One Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3 (spoilers)

I hope Vol. 3 is better than 2. I enjoyed things about 2, but I read it once and that's it. I read Vol. 1 three or four times. At least.

Apologist Puncher wrote:I hope Vol. 3 is better than 2. I enjoyed things about 2, but I read it once and that's it. I read Vol. 1 three or four times. At least.

The thing that pissed me off about vol. 2 is Superman basically started a revolution in a comparatively helpless country because he didn't like the way their head of state handled things.

The war, violence, murders, carnage... that's all on Superman. But of course you can't use a real country for that. Why, that'd be RACIST! So a fictional country is where Superman crossed a major ethical line.

Ugh...

thecolorsblend wrote:The thing that pissed me off about vol. 2 is Superman basically started a revolution in a comparatively helpless country because he didn't like the way their head of state handled things.

The war, violence, murders, carnage... that's all on Superman. But of course you can't use a real country for that. Why, that'd be RACIST! So a fictional country is where Superman crossed a major ethical line.

Ugh...

Honestly, the only thing I even really remember about it was the story about his cat.

Hit me right in my feels.

Read Vol. 3 last night. The quality just keeps right on sliding down like shit on a mountaintop.....

I'm going to make this short & sweet, so expect spoilers.

Starts out with Clark having dreams about Krypton before it blows up, then him dealing with his landlord due to the damage he causes, and apparently REPEATEDLY causes, from his reaction. Cut to the military trying to justify a reason to work on killing Superman with Alex & Alexa Luthor. *GROAN* They feel his involving himself in that 3rd World Countries issues shows he can do that to ANY country he chooses to. Oh, and Lois uses a "Supes Signal" to call Superman for a chat, because DC is NOT trying to turn Superman into Batman. No sir, no how!

Anyway, Zod shows up out of the blue, and he's Superman's uncle. Wearing some boring, generic outfit that looks like it took about 5 minutes to come up with. It's bad. He passes out from the reaction to our sun, wakes up, and decides to slaughter some soldiers who happened upon him and his ship. Because he's eeeevvvvviiiilllll, apparently.

Clark and Lisa from Vol. 2 are buddying it up, same as we saw previously. She drops earrings in Clark's couch as she leaves when Clark hears a job for his alter-ego. She convinces the landlord to let her in to get them, because they are bestest friends. Screw his responsibilities. So he does. And she finds his Superman suit just laying on the floor of his closet. Because reasons. So now she knows.

Superman saves some cars from a collapsing bridge, and soon realizes he can't save them all himself. Zod shows up and helps him, and they chat. Superman seems a little leery, but trusts him more than he should because Zod looks menacing as shit the entire time they talk. He has his hood up and face in shadow for absolutely no reason. Seriously, you would think there would be some sort of pay-off for him covering his face for almost the entire book. But no. Also, A & A Luthor deduce the gravity beam from Vol. 1 used red solar radiation, and inform the military of this. They decide to build a weapon for use on Superman. Just in case.

Right after he talks to Superman, Zod infiltrates the UN or some such, and offers to kill Superman. All he asks is that no one interferes. Even though Zod has shown NO REASON to be trusted, and STILL keeps his face shadowed, they agree. I mean, really?? This new guy with the exact same abilities shows up and offers to off the guy who has helped save the world TWICE, and they just say "Sounds good. Where do we sign?"?????

Zod attacks Superman. They wind up near Zod's ship, where Zod has a trunk full of kryptonite. Supes is dying, Zod is fine, and in a Bond-villain moment, explains that he has a suit that protects him from the effects. Such a stupid, cliche moment for Straczynski to include. Oh, and he makes sure to tell Supes it is heat-vision proof too, so Superman can crack it by hitting a water reservoir to flash cool the suit.

Superman runs, being depowered and all. He heads home as Clark, where Lisa is playing the "I know something, but I won't tell you what I know, but what do you think of someone knowing something someone doesn't know they know" routine, and Clark is too dense to read between the lines. Seriously, if you read it, tell me they don't have Kent come off as a simpleton to the 10th power in that scene.

So Superman heads to his, ice cave?, to talk to his spaceship. The spaceship shows him that Zod started a war, fled the planet when his side was losing, and gave the Kiss guy from Vol. 1 the intel on how to destroy Krypton. He only asks that they leave no survivors, and if ANYONE escapes, they track them down and destroy them. How the ship was able to record all this, I really don't know or even care at this point. He asks the ship to make an anti-kryptonite suit for him, but the ship tells him his only chance is to leave Earth for good and hope Zod doesn't destroy it. Supes says he won't, then realizes Zod is outside his apartment. Checking the place out with x-ray vision.

He flies to stop him, even though Zod already has mom's address in Smallville. They start to fight, wrecking Metropolis. The military has to convince Alex Luthor to use his red sun gun, and he of course uses it on Superman. Superman gets the shit beat out of him, broken bones and all. And just like in Vol. 1, he is saved by a woman hitting the villain with a truck. Yeah. Alex shows up to help Superman, and he hits Zod with a shot from the gun, but he doesn't get a full blast. It weakens him enough that Superman can fight back as he regains some of his strength. Luthor readies for another shot, when Zod hurls a metal rod at him, piercing him in the chest. Luthor got the shot off though, removing Zod's powers.

Zod grabs another rod to finish Luthor off, when he is shot from behind 3 times by Alexa. Zod's dead.  Superman gets up as she's tending to Alex, and she shoots him 3 times too. But the bullets don't penetrate. She then proceeds to blame Superman for her husband having a conscience, even though he showed it the entire book. And for his death, even though she knew Zod killed him. So Superman takes the red sun gun and leaves her. Alexa has a chat with the blonde military woman from all 3 books, and tells her Alexa died, not Alex. So call her "Lex". I know, I know. But it's true.

I want to get this over with, so the last part I'll mention is Superman addressing the UN, yelling at them "What the HELL were you THINKING". And then explaining that in the future, if they back the guy to bring him down, who is going to save them from HIM? Since common-sense is non existent in this universe, I guess.

The art is sometimes good, sometimes amatuer-ish. The writing and characterizations are mostly bland. If you are dead set on buying this, wait until it's $9.99 on Amazon or something.

2 out of 5.

I'll read your review at length after I've read the book. But the second sentence there doesn't fill me which much hope.

Good points and bad points.

Superman toppling the Borada regime was a bad bad fucking BAD idea. So I'm glad to see consequences to that.

Would the governments of Earth turn their backs on Superman and let him get pummeled to death? Honestly... how the fuck should I know? But I found their rationale for it to be relatively credible. Yeah, sure, Superman saved the world. Twice. But Borada. I mean, how can ANYBODY feel safe with a dude who can and possibly will topple their government if he decides he doesn't like where things are going?

I predicted that Jor-El would end up as Krypton's Judas. I call the revelation in this volume a near miss.

I predicted that Alexander would end up dead and the "Lex" of this universe would be Alexandra. I call the development in this volume a direct hit.

Zod? Honestly, I'm surprised JMS didn't use a different villain. I mean, Zod's been done to absolute fucking death lately. That was true before MOS came out but I think a lot of us let another iteration of Zod slide there because (A) reboot and (B) Michael Shannon.

But that's it. I'm kinda done with Zod now. I get that JMS can't be held responsible for goings on in either media when he's been working his way through this story for four years now but FUCKING COME ON.

Superman's big speech to the UN. Honestly, I get that moral outrage and sense of betrayal that he feels. Anybody would feel that way. But Superman LETS IT GO. He wouldn't gripe the delegates out and he sure as shit wouldn't make ambiguously threatening remarks. If he addressed the UN at all, it'd be to say in polite and humble terms "Hey, I fucked up with that whole Borada episode, I understand that now, I promise to never do anything like that ever again and I ask your forgiveness". Or something, fucked if I know. "Never do that again"? Sorry but there's more than one way to interpret that. And a lot of UN delegates are just paranoid enough to infer a threat in that.

Lisa is in on Clark's secret. Eh, whatever. My guess is JMS is playing the long game in this and wants to play with Clark having other love interests. I'm fine with it. Sure hope Clark's alien DNA means his immune to human STD's though. Because... yuck.

I can overlook Zod laying out his plan (I try to never say "monologuing" because hipsters have run that joke into the ground) because it exposited information that needed to be out there and there was no other time, place or method of doing it within the framework of this story.

Another thing that plays for me is how the book tackles the subject of how Superman can take Zod down. They're basically evenly matched in terms of firepower but Zod's got the edge as a trained killer. Smallville dealt with it (in season 05) by showing Clark sucker Zod. MOS dealt with it by showing Superman exploit Zod's lack of familiarity with superpowers (and, ultimately, Zod's own death wish). Superman II didn't deal with it at all. Earth One says that Clark got into a lot of fights as a kid so he's not totally raw and, let's face it, Zod underestimated him at key points during the fight. Plus, fuck it, Superman got lucky. But the reality of Zod's superiority is acknowledged and then overcome in a fairly believable way.

Ardian Syaf's art is competent but is he really the right guy for Superman? Tough to say. He line style comes off like a strange hybrid of one part Shane Davis and three parts John Romita, Jr. I probably would've been more receptive to the art except, as the Puncher says, there are points where it's really solid and points where it looks unfinished. Strange.

I missed Shane's art in this volume. There are some basics and fundamentals he needs to master but he's got a solid grasp on a lot of the core essentials of graphic storytelling. He needs a solid editor to kick him in the ass and tell him to get his act together but he's got what it takes already. He just needs better direction in many cases.

Syaf is strong where Davis is weak but it's simply not an improvement. Syaf is good, don't get me wrong, but I really wish Davis could've at least done this volume before moving on to other things. I get that the comic industry is "ships in the night" as never before but Shane's lack of participation ultimately hurts this volume in my eyes.

Overall, if you're a hardcore devotee of the first two volumes, this is a worthwhile conclusion for you. I'm not militantly opposed to the Earth One universe or imprint (although Batman- Earth One pretty much sucks balls so far). I just don't think this volume is everything it could've been.

You're a lot more open-minded to this shit than I am, that's for sure.

Thought it was terrible.

I see a bit more worth to it but ultimately I wasn't as fond of vol. 3 as I was previous ones.