Covers Action Comics #8, Superman #8

Action Comics # 8

 Well, Action looks great. Love Brainiac's design, as you know.

Superman#8

This is the first Superman cover that I have seen that makes me want to open the book.

Cover for Justice League # 7

Cover by Jim Lee. From #7 Jim takes a break from interiors and Gene Ha will be doing drawing duties. Lee is back on #9. This is when JL joins the present time-line. Is it me, but I like reading about the younger versions and wished we could stay in the past for a while longer.  The older versions of the heroes are all very serious or, as in Superman's case, on the mopey/bland side. I really want to see how Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns write Superman five years later.

Cover for Wonder Woman # 7

A powerful cover by Cliff Chiang.

Jim Lee T-shirt Design

 Coming in stores in May 2012. It's the new DCU JL. The team lined up and on an open page of the comic. Love that one of the panels is the one where Clark is staring distractedly at Diana.

Oh Clark

Yeah, ya big, dense Kryptonian lug. It's a question fans have been asking for damn decades!

by RobOsborne

How About That Beer, Babe?

Love this. Very funny. Bet many ladies can relate. Mind you, Clark Kent has been broken in and well trained by Ma Kent. He'd cook, mind the baby and have his honey sitting with her feet up at super speed. You gotta love Darkseid's head up  on that wall.

Merry Christmas 2011

by

FairyKitsch

Random Thoughts on Action #4 by NSW

by

NinjaSleepWalker

This is too hilarious! NSW's thoughts had me giggling. Love Kal's new t-shirt! Real men wear pink, you know. And little flowers too. ;) And her depiction of Brainiac in homage to my review of Action Comics # 4 is pure gold.

Krypto Loves Diana

Just fitting for the holiday season. Can you blame Krypto? Smart doggy!

by Franchesco

Action Comics # 4 Review

Well, this issue is all action. It's at break neck, heart pounding pace. All the characters are feeling it on these panels. From the start where Lex is trying to save his self-preserving hide from a rampaging Corben to Clark seeing the Terminauts and wisely suggesting to everyone outside the factory to "RUN!"

While the Terminauts call for Superman, and the mayor, Maxwell Minor, decide now is not a bad time to beg for the alien's help, we glimpse Professor Irons who has his own armored suit at home; it is waiting to be used should there be an alien invasion.

Superman battles the Terminauts and he's in a white t-shirt this time. And the police typically want to try to arrest him amid all this madness. Clark dares them to arrest him and if not, to just let him do his job. But it's a tough battle for young Superman. To compound matters, Lois and Jimmy get into the thick of things and, of course, the mandatory get into the line of fire just like the train and the elevator.

Corben faces off with Superman and we learn Lois broke his heart and he really is a wuss. The mustache he shaved did not do the trick and now he's possessed by an alien consciousness. Can't say I care nor do I believe this guy would listen to Red Hot Chilie Peppers. I just want Superman to kick his sorry ass.

Clark is overwhelmed and is about to be collected when Steel makes his appearance. And while he takes Corben down, Metropolis vanishes.

 

Brainiac has collected the city and the way he's drawn is awesome. The caterpillar/centipede design looks really creepy yet almost whimsical. I almost expect him to pull out a hubble bubble pipe and smoke it while he observes his collection. Of course Lois and company are part of the collection now and her father, General Lane, begs for Superman's help. He eats humble pie here but clearly he did not allow it to digest since he is hostile and rude to Superman in the other title five years later. Can't say I care for Sam Lane either.

Steel is awesome in his backup story. Superman needs a friend and the city could always do with another hero. A Steel Driving Man is just the guy for it.

This issue was entirely enjoyable. Rags owns the art in my opinion. I love his raw,mobile style. His action sequences just makes you breathless. And in the Steel backup feature Walker and Ramos' art is very beautiful.

I would give this 4.5 out of 5.

Best Panel : There were many to choose from (Clark in battle, Steel, that panel of Brainiac) but once more I am indulging myself. It's has to be this: a glimpse of Superman's sexy abs under that torn t-shirt. Rags just drew that for me, didn't he? Hee! Here is to him losing more t-shirts along the way!!!

SuperCharles Talks Lois/Clark Courtship

One of the accusations hurled at our Superman/Wonder Woman ship is that Clark is only meant for Lois and no one else can compete. That means even if writers put him with another woman , be it Lana Lang, Lori Lemaris, even our own Diana, Clark does not love them as he does Lois. They believe she alone is his one true love. Which, to me, is ridiculous for a long lived, essentially immortal character who had barely begun to live or had the chance to mature emotionally, physically and psychologically at the age he met,wooed and married Lois.

I believe in love. Love is something so vast and complex; it is simplistic to even claim we know what it feels like for someone else. We know how it might feel personally and for many of us, we do love more than once in our lifetime. I believe love and the person we love gives us what we need at that particular time in our life. I also believe love and life choices are dictated by circumstance. Love and relationships can be unhealthy and or uplifting. The best loves are those that help us evolve into better, stronger individuals.

I for one believe if Lois is not around, Superman can still exist and be a hero and he has always been one full of optimism and hope and full of vigor...if things get tough...Superman will, at some point, pick himself up, dust himself off and live his life. That to me is the gift of his humanity and what he would have learned from us-resilience. Or simply, good writing can make it so.

With the relaunch of the new 52 in 2011, and reboot of Superman as single, came the end of the married Superman's story. Many fans of the marriage strangely argued that DC could not do this and doing this was disrespecting evidence that Superman was always supposed to marry/be married to Lois. We know there was always some kind of Lois and Clark dynamic for decades, and Superman did not always end up with Lois in other stories. He romanced other women and ended up falling in love and even marrying them.

One fellow Superman fan, C.J. Charles,a well read and knowledgeable gentleman and published writer, decided to go on a journey of exploration and investigation. He is also known as SuperCharles and on tumblr as countryboylife. He decided to pick up Superman from the 1980ties. The genesis that led ( according to some) to Lois as the one true love and wife. His findings were very interesting and it seems that the eighties were distinctively flavored with Clark and Diana while there were even other women in Clark's life.

"Into the missions of what might be"

SuperCharles begins,


"I have to confess that I haven’t sat down and read Superman during the 80’s for a long time, and certainly not comprehensively ie issue by issue in chronological order. 
However that’s exactly what I’m doing.
One of the things I’m told by certain folks is that Clark and Lois relationship was changed after the reboot. That it’s fair to dismiss the pre 86 status quo & fifty years of canon unrequited love / doomed relationship on the basis of 3-4 years of books following 1986 reboot. 
So I approached the read through with the expectation to see some foreshadowing of the engagement/marriage. However the results are really surprising.
Apart from this first panel from the Man of Steel mini series in 1986 - there isn’t any romance. No steady build up - no real foreshadowing."

SuperCharles article continues here.

 Lois and Clark's romance pre-engagement and marriage

His conclusion was this:

"Simply in a few months November 89 to February 90 Lois has gone from not paying much attention to Clark and taking him for granted all this time to seeing through the glasses. As Batman might say. Pass the Jumping Shark repellent spray."


Much food for thought I would say and for many Superman readers ( who are not all Kal/Diana shippers, by the way) this reboot is another chapter in the book of Superman's life. Unabashedly we would love for Clark and Diana to find each other.We understand they are young in the current DCU and their iterations are slightly different. But this chemistry they share has been so evident for so long, it's about time DC really explore it this time around and no jumping the shark for us. We'd like it done organically please.

Thanks

Thanks for the follow jlo. :)

This Is Why The Undies Had to Go!

Truly priceless.A super-wedgie has got to hurt!

Superman and Diana Prince

Love their expressions. I bet she knows this is Clark Kent and he knows this is Wonder Woman. Seems like a cute thing our couple would do.

by mpr1m3

Superman's Red Briefs

Oh,boy, I love this. For those moaners who think he is less of a man/hero having lost his red underpants.

by

eolay

How Dare You Change A Classic?

Makes you really wonder when fanboys/girls whine if we really know what classic means? There is good and bad art/writing but really there is no such thing as a real/classic Superman or Wonder Woman who are decades old and have undergone so many changes. I-Ching and the boutique, anyone?

by tremary

Superman # 3 Review

Reading this book is a chore. I love to READ. I love George Perez. But this book is a chore to read. It's long winded, boring and repetitive. Issue number three might have well been number one and/or two. It follows a very old school formula that is very out of sync with a modern Superman. This is not the man of tomorrow. It's the man of yesterday. He does not feel like a young man of today. The dialogue is clunky and retro. Again. We get monster/freak of the month. Again. We get long winded exposition from the news team and Clark. Again. We get Superman acting like a slow top when it comes to his powers.

In a nut shell, the news-team wastes pages to recap Superman's early days and while they all realize he is on the side of good, the amount of death and destruction and bad guys he attracts...is he a Messiah or Menace? We see Heather Kelly and of course, we wonder about her role. She is set up predictably as a blond Lois-lite. But by story's end, we are not sure if she is friend or foe.

Superman fights an ice entity this time and let's say I cringed all the way through the battle at his inner monologue and his dialogue. Just shut up and do what you have to do for crying out loud!

Three things noted in this issue.

1. Superman likes to say repeatedly... "No!" or "Oh no!" or "Lois!" Along with his clunky speech/thoughts, it's like nails on a chalk board.

2. Lois and Heather have retinal issues. Yeah, DC , those purple eyes make Lois look weird like she's possessed.Least Heather is alien from the look of things..

3. Superman remains dense. He fought alien entities who mentioned Krypton and he says it's a mystery for later. Oh that advanced genius brain. When one said it, didn't he consider it was strange. When the second one said it, still it wasn't mysterious. Third time's a charm.

This book I give frustrating 1.5 out of 5.

Nicola Scott's art was nothing special. This is not her best work. She does not make the costume look any better than Merino. I would say Merino's Superman looks better by far.

Best Panel : I could not even decide on one really cause this book really did not make me care. The homage to Action Comics with him trying to stop the locomotive to me was the best.

Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign

When heroes can really make a difference. Remember, early detection is key.

by

Halfy

Thanks

Thanks NSW for the follow. :)