The Bum’s Rush #31

This week’s Bum’s Rush was supposed to be about the best comics for kids. And I wrote it too. In fact I just got done writing it. But you know what? It sucked. It was tripe. Personally I would have been embarrassed to have it posted up here in it’s current form. Because it’s not an article I just want to bang out in order to avoid missing a week. That wouldn’t be right for me as a writer or fair to you, the reader. So I put it aside. I’m going to work on it a bit more, do a little more research and tweak the language until it’s something I can actually feel good about putting my name on.

But still, I don’t want to miss a week of The Bum’s Rush. I’ve made a promise to myself to keep this article going, week in, week out. It’s a commitment, to you and to myself that I fully intend to honor. Barring, of course, any unforeseen events such as losing both my hands in a bizarre gardening accident or being abducted by creatures from that terrible Planet of the Apes or the world ending or some such.

So this week, instead of my planned “Best Comics for Kids” article, I’ve decided to do a review for a book I’ve been waiting for since before I was even born (what?), the first issue of All-Star Superman!
Or should I say …

All-Star Super-Friggin-Awesome!

Imagine if you will, that every five or ten years since 1985, Superman hadn’t been reimagined or revamped or restructured for “a new generation of readers.” Imagine if his story had been one long continuous adventure, a true never-ending battle, from 1939 until today. Pretend that the only things you need to know about him are the things that everyone in the world already knows about him. No baggage. No continuity. No mess. If you can picture that, then you can almost picture what reading All-Star Superman is like.

Grant Morrison, quite obviously a fan of the character, has ejected everything unimportant about the Man of Steel, focusing instead on all the most basic elements that make Superman what he is, the first and greatest superhero of them all. Cutting out the fat, only including the best parts of the character from the comics, the movies and the cartoons, Morrison basically hands you a comic and says, “This is Superman.” Instead of spending six to eight issues retelling the origin of the character, he puts everything you need to know about Superman’s story on the very first page, thus freeing the character up to go out and be who he is.

It’s Superman saving people that can’t be saved, doing the impossible despite the odds and damning the consequences. It’s Superman shrugging off those consequences, accepting his fate and thinking of the world at large rather than himself as he’s faced with his own mortality. It’s Lois Lane writing “Superman Saves The Day” even before he does, she’s that confident in him. And it’s Lex Luthor being the most evil, manipulative and self-centered man on the planet, the absolute perfect antithesis to the Man of Steel, the exact opposite of everything Superman is. But perhaps my favorite thing of all from this comic, it’s Superman being Superman every single second, whether he’s saving astronauts from crashing into the sun or, as Clark Kent, bumbling into a man on the street, an act of seemingly pure clumsiness that in turn saves the man from being crushed by falling debris. It’s everything that made Superman my absolute favorite character, in any genre, in any medium, all in one beautiful comic.

As if that wasn’t enough, Frank Quietly manages to make this comic even better, drawing one of the finest looking books I’ve ever seen. Each reading of this comic (which I’ve read three times already) reveals new details in the artwork that I’d missed before. Whether you’re watching as Superman skids across the surface of the sun in a glorious two-page spread or following Lois and Clark as they casually stroll to her apartment, each panel is a story unto itself. God bless the man, I know he’s slow, but this first issue is the perfect example of just how much work he puts into a comic. If he were any faster his art wouldn’t be any fun to look at.

Now I know it may sound like I’m gushing or possibly exaggerating just a little, but this is honestly one of the best mainstream comics, and certainly the best Superman comic, I have read in years. If you only ever buy one Superman comic, make it All-Star Superman #1! It’s everything the All-Star line was promised to be and everything the atrocious All-Star Batman and Robin isn’t. It’s fun, it’s pretty, and it’s true. And the best part is, it’s only just begun!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

(Special thanks to Dana Place for helping me get past a crippling case of writer’s block so I could write a review I am actually happy with!)

Quick Bits

1. Superman Returns Teaser Trailer!! I think I’m having a geek stroke!
2. If the first three pages are any indication the Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine comic is going to be awesome!
3. Thank you, Hollywood, for continuing to ruin movie after movie for me by putting out trailers that give away EVERYTHING before a film even comes out. No wonder people hate you.
4. Jeph Loeb has become the second comic book veteran to join the Lost writing team, the first being Paul Dini.
5. What? An X-Men comic I actually liked?! Yep, X-Men: Deadly Genesis was actually pretty damn cool.
6. That Barbarian Comic I mentioned a few weeks ago that Warren Ellis is doing through Avatar? It’s called Wolfskin, it’ll be three issues long and will be drawn by Juan Jose Ryp, whose artwork, what little I’ve seen of it, is amazing. As Ellis describes it, the book is “actual Barbarian Fantasy. Big blokes with swords. Except it also contains my love of Norse culture, samurai drama, history and what is now called entheobotany.”
7. Image Solicitations for February can be found here.

NEXT WEEK: The best comics for kids! For serious this time!

Send me hate mail at thesuperleezard@yahoo.com

Read more stupid crap I write at www.livejournal.com/users/superleezard

Check out my (semi) daily comic, Der Wundervolle Bean, at www.livejournal.com/users/der_magic_bean

End of Line