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HITS |
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Copyright © 2006-2007 onlybooks.110mb.com Goldie |
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Superman Comics Collection |
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The five teenagers of Gen 13 get another weekend field-trip, this time chosen by Caitlin Fairchild, and she picks Metropolis due to her mooning over Superman as a kid. Wouldn't you know that they almost immediately bump into him, literally in her case, and when she wakes with Supe's cloak on her amnesia kicks in until she realises she must be ... Supergirl! It doesn't matter that she can't fly, doesn't have super-hearing and has orange hair - that's because of red kryptonite of course. Things go from bad to worse for the new Supergirl, whilst the rest of Gen 13 enlist Supes to try to find her...and what happens when the real Supergirl turns up? Curiously this isn't an Elseworlds book, which seems to imply that now Wildstorm the company is owned by DC, the Wildstorm characters can almost be deemed to reside in the DC Universe in general. More power to DC is this is the case, as Adam Hughes downs his drawing pens in favour of the typewriter and puts together a fantastic book in the process. Drawing on his familiarity with the Gen 13 characters and personalities, the insertion of such into Metropolis is not a bad fit at all, and it takes Superman until the last few pages to really reassert himself as the premier hero in the DC pantheon. As is typical with Gen 13 stories, the keyword is humour, and in this particular case, humour done exceedingly well. The Gen 13 teens hold Superman in suitable contempt for the most part - after all, he's just an over-grown boy scout, the old man of the superhero universe, and not at all relevant to today's kids, and reading their opinions (specifically Grunge's) seems uncomfortably like DC acknowledging their problems with attracting kids to the Superman titles. Maybe that is part of what this book is intended to achieve, to inject a little of the "cool" surrounding Gen 13 into the moribund Superman fanbase and general perception? In any event, Hughes tears the Superman's own perceptions of himself down with ease; the sparkling dialogue makes this book a real treat. The excellence of the art in this book is highlighted nowhere more than in the three alternate covers shown in the last few pages of the book - J. Scott Campbell's good girl art versions are just so cartoony and cliched compared to the almost realistic version inside by Bermejo and Nyberg. Their story-telling is faultless, there's not much in the way of special tricks but that doesn't really matter - the point of the book come across very well, the art supports the script without glossing over it, yet it's not simple cartoony figures on bland backgrounds. Well, maybe the backgrounds are a little staid, certainly some more variety wouldn't've gone amiss, but that's a minor point given the art package as a whole. |
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Superman And Gen 13 |
