Look! Up In The Sky! Run For Your Life!: Superman #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: It is new comics day, which means that – wait! Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! I normally get this excited, scream and bother passers-by when I see a bird! Oh, no; it’s one last comic review before the comic stores open, forget it.

Superman #7 is the first issue with the new creative team of co-writers Keith Giffen and Dan Jurgens and art by Jesus Merino and, well, Dan Jurgens. These are a couple of old-school comics writers working on a brand new Superman, which arguably is what this book has been needing, and the classic flavor they bring to certain sequences of this book makes it somewhat endearing, but I’m guessing how you feel about it will likely depend on how much you’re digging  the new, cocky, armored Superman, and how you feel about a villain with a classic feel… that feel being that of a Republic Serial villain chewing scenery like Robin Williams teething in the midst of a heroic Ritalin bender.

This book starts off with an definitive statement of “Bang!” by the new team, dropping us in the middle of a battle between Superman and some robot right on the streets of Metropolis. It’s an action-packed sequence with a visually satisfying amount of collateral property damage, while Superman internally soliloquizes about how the battle seems like merely an attempt to call him out… which would be an interesting plot point if this weren’t Superman, who, thanks to super hearing, can be called out by whispering, “Hey Superman! I’m on the corner of Weisinger and Swan, on my way to fuck yer moms!”

Interestingly, the best part of the battle for me was the bystanders, milling about the destruction snapping cell phone pictures and marveling at the spectacle. They gave Metropolis a feeling of a real, populated place, and it gave the scene a sense of realism. Oh, I can hear you now: “But Rob! Real people wouldn’t stand around something that dangerous! They’d run!” To which I will reply that last summer, when the Boston earthquake hit, I was at work, standing on the third floor of a 150-year-old brick building. You know how many people ran for the stairs when the building started shaking? Two. Being one of them, I counted. People aren’t as smart as you think, and my opinion of them didn’t start all that high to begin with. So yes; the bystanders risking death for a cool picture for their Facebook wall rang true for me.

In fact, it’s the grounded, realistic sequences that are the best part of this comic. There is a killer sequence of the Daily Planet office gang that hits all the classic character beats you expect from a classic Superman book: Lois asking for a favor while running for a story, Perry complaining that he wants more Superman in the paper, with Clark being put upon by each of them. However, considering the post-New 52 Clark is depicted as generally more assertive, Giffen and Jurgens accomplish the Clark abuse through misunderstanding rather than Clark acting like a simp, which gives the scene a classic, Superman The Movie feel while remaining true to the newly-imagined character. It is skillful, and if you’re remotely a fan of old-school Superman, it’ll put a smile on your face.

I also enjoyed the introduction of characters whose job it is to clean up the aftermath of superhero battles. How cities would respond to the destruction following a good old superhero punch-up is something that is rarely touched upon in comics, and I like to imagine it would be handled like this: a city department filled with jaded, blue-collar joes, bitching, “Yeah, it’s another one of his,” and, while filling out routine paperwork about a giant green horned robot, “Aww, fer the luvva… how’m I supposed to describe this in ten words or less?” It’s another grounding touch that gave Metropolis the feeling of a real place, and my only complaint was that Jurgens and Giffen didn’t give them names or show their faces; I want to get to know these guys.

Now let’s get to what didn’t work for me: Superman.

Eight months into the New 52, I’m just not on board with the new Superman. I get that DC editorial has decided to make Superman more confident and assertive, but we open this book with Superman fighting a powered villain out on a crowded street, ripping up sidewalks and causing a lot of collateral damage. It felt like Supes was putting the people of Metropolis and their property at unnecessary risk – why rip up a sidewalk to block energy blasts when we just saw them bounce off you, Superman? – which doesn’t feel like, y’know… Superman. The Superman I grew up with would take the battle out of the city, not blow up enough shit to guarantee that the people of Metropolis wind up paying a 100% property tax rate to fix the streets.

And then there’s Helspont, the villain behind all the shenanigans. Let’s be blunt: he’s a bust. First, that name: Helspont? Really? What, was Dooshbaag taken? And the guy talks like Ming the Merciless after horking up a couple of power rails:

Allow me to introduce myself… Helspont! Firstborn of Daemonite overcaste Helspire… permanent overlord of the Daemonite Empire, and High Skyr of the Second Dominion. You may address me as “Master” until circumstances dictate otherwise.

…you’re shitting me. Dialogue like that might fit in a Silver Age Superman book, but they stick out badly in 2012. It feels like the artists drew him with a flaming head because they couldn’t be bothered to give him a moustache to twirl. The character comes off more irritating than menacing, and the dialogue feels like the only things it’s missing are a big, “Bwah-hah-hah-ha!” and an 80s Justice League book to be a punchline in. It’s a big misfire.

The art by Jurgens and Merino (With Jurgens listed as having done “pencil art” with Merino on “finished art”) is generally a pretty good match for Superman. It is clean, straight-ahead superhero art with realistic figures, reasonable facial expressions – provided you like parted-lipped determination, which Superman seems to wear in almost every panel – and clean lines with finely-inked detail without being too busy.

That said, there are some storytelling problems here. There’s a panel where Superman is just standing there, and in the next he’s holding a giant chunk of sidewalk with no explanation as to how or where he got it. In another we’re told that Superman has determined the robot’s a robot, but the only visual cue that he’s used his x-ray vision is a subtle background flare effect that took me a couple reads to figure out. They aren’t terrible mistakes, but they’ll take you out of the story.

In the final analysis, this is a pretty damn solid comic book about the people of Metropolis. However, as a Superman story, it has some problems. The antagonist is a bad cartoon, and Superman’s characterization tells me that, if I lived in Metropolis, I’d be the guy screaming, “Look! Up in the sky! Run for your life!” It’s about a guy in a Superman suit, but it doesn’t quite feel like Superman.