All-Star Superman Discussion Thread (Spoilers)

Probably either John Byrne or Curt Swan. Their overall art definitely isn't better than Quitely's, but I just like how they draw Superman. Tall, muscular (but not musclebound) and dynamic. Quitely draws him as sort of beefcake-style (so does Tim Sale) and I don't really dig that.

Although I will say that Quitely is easily my favourite Batman artist of the past ten years and I can't wait to see him tackle the revived Bruce Wayne. He's also my favourite Luthor artist.
 
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Secrets revealed:

In response to a question about professional disappointments, Pope revealed he was on board for a "third year of 'All-Star Superman'" that would have seen him "share art duties with J. H. Williams III and Richard Corben."

I wonder if they would have been on the three specials Morrison was planning? All Star Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, All Star Superman and Batman and something else?
 
Anyone else able to get the Absolute All-Star Superman? It's absolutely gorgeous - lots of cool goodies in the back. Notes on characters, additional art, etc.

This series is so good. I wish more comics were this good.
 
Anyone else able to get the Absolute All-Star Superman? It's absolutely gorgeous - lots of cool goodies in the back. Notes on characters, additional art, etc.

This series is so good. I wish more comics were this good.


Mine's been stuck in Allentown, PA for like a week, it finally hit Ohio this morning, I *should* have it tomorrow.
 
I wonder if they would have been on the three specials Morrison was planning? All Star Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, All Star Superman and Batman and something else?

Ooh, the thought of Morrison doing an All-Star Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes book makes my mouth water.
 
Woohoo!!

Mine FINALLY showed up. My only complaint, the slipcase is a little too bit of a tight fit.
 
Woohoo!!

Mine FINALLY showed up. My only complaint, the slipcase is a little too bit of a tight fit.

Yeah, none of the other Absolute books I have are that hard to get back into the slipcase.
 
I found my earlier comments interesting.

I didn't like it when I read them all in singles.

But reading it together, I liked it.

To me, Solaris is really the only part that comes from nowhere.
 
Agreed. It really started to feel like the entire gimmick of using time-travelling references to Superman's Twelve Labours early on was to trick readers into thinking Solaris had been properly set up at all.

That said, I've developed a real appreciation for All-Star Superman. I feel like, way back, I got off on sort of the wrong foot with this book. My first exposure to it was in eight preview pages for the first issue, years ago on the SupermanHomepage. I mentioned that I thought the S looked dumb needlessly simplified and why can't artists just draw it normally for once. It looked like this:
allstarsuperman_s02.jpg

I got a bunch of flack for that and people talking about how Quitely's S looked so this and that and worked on aesthetic theories and was a better choice for this story and so on. Later the actual issue comes out:
allstarsuperman_s01.jpg

.... so somebody working on the book apparently agreed with me. Not that I saw any complaints when the change happened.

That kind of set the tone for what seemed to me like a strange trend of fans giving EVERYTHING about the book blind, total praise, and since there are so many things about it that reflexively rubbed me the wrong way, this put me on the defensive(or offensive, or whatever).

I was never crazy about the more ridiculous Silver-Age Superman and felt a regression into that stuff - specifically right after Superman Returns had blown a vast opportunity to tell a realistic, relevant Supes story - was the wrong way to go, but I worked to overcome that when reading it.

What really got me was the way that so many people online were insisting, well before the brilliance and heroism of the series' latter half, that this book was the perfect, continuity-less timeless story that anybody could pick up and learn everything that was great about Superman. Aside from the fact that "He broke both the Greek god Atlas' arms on the front page of the Daily Planet because Atlas called him a coward!" is soooo not a part of "everything you should know about Superman and why he's great", the continuity-less jump-right-in-stuff is bull****. Bull****. In real life, I've had to explain to every non-Superman geek I meet who looks at the book that "This isn't retarded, it's an homage to [x] from the "Silver Age" where stories were sillier and Jimmy Olsen would morph into different creatures and Superman knew Hercules" and so on and so forth to get them to make any effort towards respecting the story and taking it seriously. In fact, if you read back through this very thread, people have to post stuff like this dozens of times, and we're the geeks who should've understood the angle in the first place. There's also stuff like Jimmy Olsen turning into Doomsday to stop Evil Superman, whose gravity you simply cannot appreciate the way it's intended if you don't know who Jimmy and Doomsday traditionally are. But the internet is still full of people who insist the opposite. It drives me crazy that online, it always feels like I'm the detractor of the book while off line I'm defending it.

There's also Quitely's artwork. I can see now why people love it, I really can, and another artist would've changed the entire flavour of the story, but I still find it riddled with flaw. After that first, horrifying picture of Superman up there, he proceeds to draw him looking virtually identical to Samson, who is in turn extremely similar to Lex Luthor(even in details like the shape of the nose). It's the same exact thing I see Jim Lee get the most criticism for. Furthermore, a couple panels are just outright, can't-believe-this-made-it-to-print, Liefield-bad. Look at Superman's reaction to the Ultrasphinx grabbing Lois and explain to me how that isn't a repulsive error of a drawing.

That said, his Lex-drawing is spot on. Everything about Lex in the book is spot-on. For my money, it's the Lex Luthor depiction, and always has been since I read Issue #5 the first time back when I didn't like 1,2,3,4 or 6(to be honest, I still don't like 6).

I feel like I should do a second post soon highlighting the stuff I think is great about the story. If anyone actually read this essay of a post, I appreciate it.
 
Not true. I'd like to see it told, in a slightly different way, but still stay true to the character. Sort of like the Ultimates, I suppose. Again, it would be a rip-off, but it would sell, and if its written by a worthy scribe also garner critical acclaim. Once that happens very few will be focusing on the rip-off aspect.

Besides, I'm sure you knew the stories of Spider-Man, the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Avengers, yet that didn't deter you from buying the Ultimate versions, did it?

Read Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid. There's your Ultimate Superman.
 

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