Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Superman: Earth One

By Zak Edwards
November 9, 2010 - 19:15

Be sure to check out Leroy Douresseaux's very different review, listed at the end of this article in red!

While the Ultimate Universe, save for Ultimate Spider-Man, has really done nothing interesting in almost five years, the initial stories of Marvel’s attempt to wash away continuity in favour of some original storytelling was compelling and certainly helped bring me into comic books more regularly.  In fact, Ultimate Spider-Man is mostly the reason I read so many of these things nowadays (well, and Young Justice, but that was earlier in my life).  But what Superman: Earth One, which is a very thinly veiled “Ultimate” Superman, seems to miss about the success of Marvel Comics’ Ultimate line was beyond the aesthetics.  Even if Ultimate X-Men rehashed storylines, eventually diminishing into stupidity during Robert Kirkman’s run, it started out using the X-Men tropes in fresh ways in conjunction with a new look, new politics, and a new way at looking at old characters.  Superman: Earth One, by contrast, is just another Superman story with nothing to it, and it was something I was really ready to fall in love with.

Fall in love because I hate how, for the most part, Superman is completely uninteresting because of his lame moral considerations (the Boy Scout crap he seems to deal with) coupled with his stupid power level, which makes an entire story have to focus on the threat.  Superman books continually have to justify the actual threat the enemy poses to a creature so powerful (but then he just picks up the continent made mostly of Kryptonite and throws it into the sun before falling back to Earth in a crucifix position.  I get it, in the words of Alan Moore: God exists, and he’s American).  Still, for some reason I have consumed much more Superman material in the past two weeks than ever before, reading three Superman graphic novels and the first issue of Superboy.  Earth One was, by far, the weakest.  The other two, Luthor: Man of Steel and Superman: Red Son, did something different and compelling.  Earth One, by contrast, did something I expected and I was thus completely disinterested.  It was like watching an episode of Friends after they became terrible cliches of themselves in the later seasons, not that Friends is really a show I enjoyed anyways, but this was in the days before PVR and TV on DVD being so readily available.

Essentially, the story is about a young Clark Kent on his first excursion into Metropolis from Smallville, attempting to find his place in the world.  He solves some problem an uber-capitalist corporate science place has been working on for years instantaneously, then tries out for a football team blatantly using his powers, and then goes to try to be a reporter, the one he is clearly the least suited for.  Of course, this is where he meets Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, and, while Lois Lane occupies this ball-busting cliche she is sometimes put up as, Jimmy Olsen may be the only character I found interesting.  He’s a hip and stupidly courageous photographer willing to get the craziest shots because of how much of an idealist he is.  The character resonated with me, mostly because of Clark's melancholy musings over life, culminating at the beginning with him saying he won’t fly to Metropolis because these things “are supposed to take their time,” really never elevate beyond terrible material rehashed thousands of times.  The story moves forward and becomes all the terrible elements of Superman stories I hate:  The villain is ridiculously powerful (and filled with terrible, obvious symbolism about Clark's status as an outsider orphan) to the point that everything stops making sense, Clark solves his problems by punching things really hard, and the story ends with everyone bewildered, audience included, at just what the hell just happened.  And as a last complaint about the story, Straczynski has obviously read some early Ultimate books and found out that harsher, less morally absolute characters were something which really resonated with contemporary audiences, especially after 9/11, and so he injects a scene in where Clark gets mugged.  He threatens the man and eventually hurts him slightly, but this is the closest we get to a character who isn’t completely flat.  Unfortunately, Straczynski takes this all away through a few scenes in which establish Superman as he has always been, and I am left to yawn.

By contrast, artist Shane Davis does an exceptional job on the art.  Detailed, crisp, a hint of Jim Lee minus the gross anatomical exaggeration, the art fits the book more than the script does.  My only complaint is the costumes.  While the Ultimate books did get criticized for the over-abundance of black leather costumes, lacking the colourful costumes they abandoned, the books looked different and the idea worked.  Earth One looks like a normal Superman book.  The costume is a little less colourful, but is more washed out than colourless.  Similarly, the hoodie/ jacket combo just puts Clark in his costume constantly as the colours are always the same and he really never changes outfits.  The fact Superman has pretty much the same costume seems like a waste of creative potential, but makes sense when considering the disappointing adherence to cliche anyways.  Like the characters themselves, only Jimmy Olsen really gets a makeover of any significance, the rest continue on as they were and I am left unconvinced of Superman's viability in a contemporary world.

Grade: D     Jimmy Olsen and some good penciling is all this book amounts to.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12