Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Comic Books >

All-Star Superman

Page: 1 2 3(4)5 6 7 8 9... 56

17:58 / 19.11.05

I read this in the bathroom, while next door's cat padded softly by outside the dirty window, and the autumn leaves fell gently, sadly, sadly on the kitchen-garden.

Frankly, I read this while I was 'in the lav.'

18:13 / 19.11.05

Added my annotations. Feel free to re-format and add to them.

Issue #1

Mister Six, whom all the girls

19:59 / 19.11.05

Emily: "Quit living in the past, Six."

... um... and buy Superman comics?

... where's that delusional link?

22:19 / 19.11.05

I might have been half asleep when I was reading those posts but I got the impression you were hating things like All Star Batman or 7S or the Infinity Crisis stuff. Or dislike at least. Hate might have been a strong word.

Mister Six, whom all the girls

01:02 / 20.11.05

Oh, that... yeah, I hate those comics. Especially because they said they were doing x and performed y, but I'm getting my Phd in threadrot now so... I'll just stop.

I stopped by the store today, flipped through a copy and couldn't bring myself to buy it for some reason. But the art was nice.

13:47 / 20.11.05

I read this while I was performing my ablutions!

Is this fact of absolutely no significance to anyone else?!

At all?

(Grant, I know that you're reading this...

If you choose to remain silent, as is your right, as the most significant artiste of your generation, shall I take your silence as a massive high five!!!!

For my, er, y'know, ideas?)

14:28 / 20.11.05

Sorry Alex. I didn't really get what you were saying, but noticed that:

and the autumn leaves fell gently, sadly, sadly on the kitchen-garden

was the prettiest euphemism for defecation I'd ever read.

miss wonderstarr

16:22 / 20.11.05

I found this comic fun but forgettable.

ESOZONE : Oct 10 - 12 PDX 2008

20:30 / 20.11.05

Re: Superman being pretty okay with crazy mad science.

I think he was sort of taking it in good humor, and he isnt about to jump the gun on people who aren't really doing anything wrong, even if they have the means to, whether intentional or not. Superman doesnt have a place in stopping progress, even if it means making him replaceable.

...

I also wanted to just drop in here that I really liked how the part before "lois and clark" was cut off like it was a movie. It added to its comic drama as well as playing up the idea that this is Grants take on Reeve's Superman. Its almost like a slap in the face to "Superman Returns", like Grant might be making the comment, "You should'a let me handle it,... this is what you could be missing."

And yes, Quietly's Luthor looks like his Xavier, but I'll let it slide and say it might just be an archtypal look thing about bald know-it-alls.

Overall, a good read, esp. since I havent really had interest to read Superman since well, since he was dead. ;p

21:52 / 20.11.05

Back in the old Kirby issues of Jimmy Olsen, Superman fully supported the DNA Project. It wasn't until after Crisis that Cadmus became more questionable.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

22:02 / 20.11.05

Chao: Superman doesnt have a place in stopping progress, even if it means making him replaceable.

I like this idea, and I'm hoping this is made more clearly a part of his characterization; I like the more complicated Superman, but he should always hold certain ideals - and in this case it makes him stand out as part of humanity, rather than an alien watching over it - he is a part of the progress.

What was said upthread about more verbal meat being missing is to some extent true; I think part of it is that this is a Silver Age Superman story without a lot of the condescending exposition which was part and parcel of the time.

03:05 / 21.11.05

yeah... oh, yeah! thanks, Morrison and Quitely, you guys just *got* it.

condensed psychedelic 70s shiny Superman that works at any given time and make us feel like happy kids. that's what it's supposed to be about, isn't it? ALL-STAR SUPERMAN.

"bu-bu-but blablablah..." no, it's all there, please reread.

can't wait for #2. but I will anyway and it'll be worth it.

A

06:52 / 21.11.05

A couple of fairly insignificant points- All Star Supes doesn't seem to need breathing apparatus in space, and his cape can survive a trip to the sun, both of which are at odds with the post-Crisis portrayal of Superman (although the "bio-electric shield", or whatever is definitely post-Crisis).

I doubt any of this is of any real importance.

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:42 / 21.11.05

Its almost like a slap in the face to "Superman Returns"

Is it? In what way?

08:59 / 21.11.05

In that before you've seen the movie way, I would imagine.

09:42 / 21.11.05

Adam:

Those are actually two good points, as they reiterate how Morrison is taking elements of both continuities (along with the movie, and a touch of Birthright)

yawn - thing's buddy

09:46 / 21.11.05

In terms of describing space, FQ’s art is improving.

A lot. After walking through ASS1, I went for a stroll around JLA: earth 2 - there was not as much room to run around.

Okay, sure, in the first few pages, we have that lovely crashed airliner to muck about in - there’s real ‘depth’ in the scenes portrayed, but after that, FQ goes flat, and do many of the scenes Grant writes for FQ to depict; basically there’s quite a lot of talking in heads to contend with in JLA: Earth 2. not so with ASS.

So, post We3, I think GM’s going down a certain route with FQ’s art. He’s describing more 3D-oriented scenes for him to draw. He’s getting spatial on DC’s ASS. (the world’s first 2.5D comic?)

And for those wondering who’s doing the better work: GM or FQ - which is best, writing or art? - I believe this misses the point. GM writes instructions for FQ on what to draw. He describes the scenes that FQ forges. GM’s writing is bound up in the exquisite lines of FQ’s layouts.

So, I think GM’s writing takes a different turn when he works with FQ, whose art allows GM to see and experiment with new possibilities in how to tell stories, particularly in the use of space as a ‘character’ or narrative driver.

Truly, GM’s and FQ’s ASS is a really spatial comic.

Hey - I enjoyed it. Was good fun.

Some of the colouring was shite tho, bit blurry. spesh quint’s wonka’s coat. also was a bit shite in the panels where we see the spaceship behind Superman as he drops the suicide bomb on the sun. Press office seemed a bit empty as well. bit of a theatrical, stage set feel with no extras. And Clark Kent, great, but the side-on trip up shtuff was not a good enough exploration of his physicality, espesh when we consider how Quitely might have interpreted it from a 3D perspective. Movement, time and space in relation to character was done brilliantly in We3 - I kinda want a similar hi-res approach to Clark’s fumblings (but only cos GM said that they would go to town on this and in issue one, I’d say that didn’t reality happen).

And its nice to see GM as Lex, isn’t it?

UUUUUIIIIII.

Ulysses Lazarus

12:30 / 21.11.05

And its nice to see GM as Lex, isn’t it?

Funny, I was going to post this. I was surprised that no one else brought it up. He also seems to have grown hair to play the charcter of Quintum.

13:31 / 21.11.05

>> UUUUUIIIIII.

It just wouldn't be a Grant Morrison comic without some hulking monsterlike thing going "EEEEUUUUU" or "UUUUIIIIUUUUU" or "AAAAUUUUUUUUU".

13:36 / 21.11.05

I was similarly surprised no-one commented on GM as the obvious visual reference for lead televisual characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Kojak.

14:05 / 21.11.05

Frank Quitely drew Kojak?

15:08 / 21.11.05

>> I read this while I was performing my ablutions!

Is this fact of absolutely no significance to anyone else?!
At all?

>> Sorry Alex. I didn't really get what you were saying,

I too did not understand the significance of Alex reading this comic on the lav. Surely many of us have read comics on the lav, what makes you reading All-Star Superman different in such a place different or significant in this respect?

15:20 / 21.11.05

Also, does Clark always wear button-down shirts that have snap-on buttons? If I were to be wearing a button-down shirt and pulled it off in the front like Clark always does, I'd end up with a lot of buttons coming off, or a ripped shirt, you know? The buttons on most button-down shirts are the kind where you have to button each button or undo each button, not just pull them off with a snap in one fluid motion for all the buttons.

I know it's a conceit of comics, just wanted to say it. There is a scene in Spider-Man 2 where Tobey does the same bit and it's clearly a snap-on button shirt.

15:31 / 21.11.05

Did you like it, Alex, or are you smearing ASS?

16:09 / 21.11.05

a superpowered alien being that can fly to the Sun and back to rescue a manned mission with his bioenergy field would have no problem with minor skills such as opening a shirt without ripping it or losing a single button. =P

it's like that King Missile song JESUS WAS WAY COOL:

He could've played guitar better than Hendrix
He could've told the future
He could've baked the most delicious cake in the world
He could've scored more goals than Wayne Gretzky
He could've danced better than Barishnikov
Jesus could have been funnier than any comedian you can think of
Jesus was way cool

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:43 / 21.11.05

About the only thing that I like script-wise was the super condensed version of Supes backstory. So, are the All-Star books supposed to be set in the second year of our heroes lives, or is that just AS Batman? Because it seems rather odd to have Superman and Luthor's emnity already established. Lovely visuals but the script doesn't really hang together for me, lots of disconnected scenes, plus it's effectively retelling old stories, at the moment them being the whole Clark tells Lois he's Superman and then the super-powered storyline between the Death of Superman and the Fall of Metropolis.

17:56 / 21.11.05

The "Year Two" thing is Miller's take, not the definition of the line. Morrison has suggested that this is "The Earth-1 Superman, after 20 more years of stories".

18:17 / 21.11.05

Which is an excellent pullquote to get people who don't read comics interested in this series!

yawn - thing's buddy

20:08 / 21.11.05

yup!

20:47 / 21.11.05

Jesus, baldie is genious... He just made a number 1 issue where the characters' relationships and qualities are open enough to go hand-to-hand with (it seems to me, since i don't read much supes) normal readers, people who have only vague memories of the films (at least the I and II), people who only watch smallville, and people who have only the vague information that resides in the mainstream culture of the iconic Supes. But it's not vague, that's the "Tchan". It's... (i really don't know a word for this... it'd be something like finnegans wake's method used for perfect marketing and perfect storytelling.

He made (at least at the beginning) the perfect beggining to a new Superman story. This is the one that should be on film, man...

Again, I feel blazingly sunshiny happy like the kid I never was. It had to be Morrison to rub our noses on the fact that imaginative and smiley dayglows doesn't mean stupid, naive, escapism or infantile. It had to be him to show how infantile are the self-'serious' self-proclaimed "Adult" comics nowadays... It had to be this lovely bald bastard to show us that Imagination is a reality's major feature.

Oh! I can take a few minutes of my day to let imagination blow through the roofs of such grim-grim-grim horizons... (it's weird these days where the demand for the reality principle comes from shows like c.s.i. and police comics).

shine on our myths!

21:11 / 21.11.05

I'd better dig up the actual quote then. I think I was paraphrasing slightly.

21:16 / 21.11.05

"I'm trying to think of it as the re-emergence of the original, pre-Crisis Superman but with 20 years of history we haven't seen."

I assume he means "publishing history".

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:22 / 22.11.05

[ rot ]
Oh you didn't say that did you?
[ /rot ]

10:04 / 22.11.05

Tt. Another sleazy potshot.

16:48 / 23.11.05

Just in case anyone was wondering what Warren Ellis thought of the comic and are wise enough to have unsubscribed from dad signal.

/SUPERMAN last night. Yards better
than the slightly embarrassing ALL-
STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE
GROOMED PAEDOPHILE VICTIM,
but still a bit emptier and more
efficient than I'd expected. Grant's
very much got his professional head
on. Lovely throwaway ideas cast
all through it, and Frank Quitely's
on top form. It's a very planned
work, thoroughly conceived down to
different speech patterns and body
languages for Superman and Clark.
But it's certainly Grant and Frank as
stadium-rock -- a very tight, very
professional U2 kind of gig as opposed
to the sort of crackling Velvet
Underground hail of new noise you
had in WE3./

Page: 1 2 3(4)5 6 7 8 9... 56