"I'm Superman and I have feelings! Where's my Fallout Boy CD and kryptonite razor! Waaah!"
The rest of Wednesday comics ranges from good to excellent, by the way. You should go get it.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
SIB Reviews: The Wednesday Comics Superman strip
You can read the whole thing for yourself here, or I can summarize for you.
"I'm Superman and I have feelings! Where's my Fallout Boy CD and kryptonite razor! Waaah!"
The rest of Wednesday comics ranges from good to excellent, by the way. You should go get it.
"I'm Superman and I have feelings! Where's my Fallout Boy CD and kryptonite razor! Waaah!"
The rest of Wednesday comics ranges from good to excellent, by the way. You should go get it.
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8 comments:
Yeah, I have to say the Superman has been a little underwhelming so far. It looks good, however.
I did get a little excited with the last panel from this weeks installment.
Hopefully we can start to go somewhere now.
I haven't read #4 yet. Superman doesn't punch anyone or anything in two out of the three I've read. How hard is it to write "Superman punches X"?
I'm really disappointed in everyone who is complaining about this story.
If you just want mindless fighting I've got numerous longboxes FULL of lousy old Image comics and 90s dreck you can have for free.
I'm not saying it is thrilling to watch Superman eat a corndog, but Superman didn't punch anyone in "Superman : The Movie". Did it hurt that movie at all? I would say that it did not.
He didn't even put the suit on until like 45 minutes into that movie, and even then it was just for a second, and then it was another 20 minutes or so before he actually did anything as Superman.
More importantly, I feel like complaining that Superman isn't fighting or punching enough in a story really does a disservice to the character, because it's pretty much saying Superman (as a character) is only good for punching things.
Superman is not Mike Tyson.
For my money, the most powerful and memorable moments in All Star Superman didn't have anything to do with how hard he could punch someone, but with how what really makes him "super" is the content and quality of his character.
What I'm saying is Superman's heart is way more super than his fists are, and as cool as it was to see him punch out a tyrant sun, the scenes with him visiting the sick children, convincing the teenage girl not to commit suicide, and delivering the eulogy at his father's funeral are the scenes that will stay with me forever.
Wednesday Comics is a really interesting experiment with some amazingly talented people, and I think that if it was all just "Biff! Bang! Pow!" Guy-In-Tights #1 punches Guy-In-Tights #2 comics, that would really be selling the creators, the characters, and comics as a whole short.
Having said all of that, I do still hope that he gets to do a little more superhero-y things soon.
My chief complaint isn't with the fact that Superman's not punching things in WC. It's that's he's not doing anythign but whining. Literally 3/4 of the strip so far has been him whining. My favorite parts of All Star and Birthright were about him, not the punches, same with the movie. But my thing is this, those things were never about despair. They were about superman finding hope in dark times. This isn't. This is about him feeling sorry for himself, and Superman doesn't do that.
What Thomas said. When I say Superman doesn't punch anything, it's usually shorthand for Superman doesn't do ANYTHING especially interesting.
Chris, you mention All-Star Superman (which is, in my opinion, the best Superman comic ever published). And, yes, it is about what makes Superman "super" (often having little or nothing to do with his punching anything). The problem with Wednesday Comics is that we have a 12 page Superman story that doesn't seem to be about how super he is, but instead is about how he doesn't fit in. Now, there are plenty of characters for whom that would be the excellent basis for a story (Spider-Man, for example, though he's not DC). That's a character whose strengths are geared toward angsty self-reflection. This is much less "Superman: The Movie" and much more "Superman Returns", minus the stuff that I actually liked about that movie.
If the story were about Superman inspiring people, saving people, or, yes, punching people, I think it would be far more interesting, and far better-suited for the character than a story about Superman not fitting in.
None of which is a reflection on Wednesday Comics as a whole, which I think is one of the best comics out there at the moment.
Plus, I like EVERYTHING (which Thomas can confirm), so if I'm not liking it, it HAS to be bad. :)
I'm pretty much in agreement with Matt, there. It's not that it's lacking in action, it's lacking in compelling drama. "But it's only four pages in!" the hypothetical "you" says. But four pages in what will be twelve, where each page should carry far more story than a normal comics page.
That said, we're a third of the way through the story. A character needs to face some kind of obstacles, and maybe the self-doubt (with a down-home helping of Ma & Pa and the County Fair) will find a balance in the remaining two-thirds of the tale. Let's all of us keep some hope alive.
Next week maybe he'll eat some cotton candy, too. That'd be rad.
I think part of the problem, too, is that there's no good reason given for why Superman is feeling the way he's feeling. It's literally the alien he's punching saying, "Kryptonian. You don't belong. Do you?" and suddenly he's having an existential crisis.
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