Totally bogus.
Well, since I can't contribute to the reviews and discussion of current comics, I figured I'd go into the old books. Don't worry, there are no words. Pictures say it all. From
Superman and Legion of Super-Heroes, art by Gary Frank:
translation:
HURR DURR DURR
OH NOES I DON'T LIKE HOW DRAWS PEOPLE
HE SUCKX.
Let me guess you think Frank Quitely is a shit artist because of his clay people right?
I'd be happy to give Frank the speckt for a lot of things. I observed once--but maybe that was somewhere else--that there's no one in American comics closer to being a really good artist and just not doing it for me than Gary Frank. And it all comes down to bizarre facial expressions. All of the other fundamentals are very strong--clear storytelling, design, blocking, and so forth.
Quitely's a difficult case. On one hand, he has produced amazing pages. On the other, sometimes his perpetual sneers and occasional ventures into off-model territory do weary the soul. And you know who the real hero is? Jamie Grant. That man made Quitely beautiful, and no one cares. Where's his parade?
I mean, I can talk shit about J.H. Williams III if you want me to. It's hard, but I can do it. "Sometimes it's preferable to be able to actually read a comic, rather than just appreciate that it's vacuously pretty." Oh, that hurt. That hurt a lot. Don't make me do it again.
...At least J.H. Williams III can reliably draw human faces registering appropriate reactions to what's happening around them...
That said:
I liked both of these very much. Brainiac's adorable!
Oh, and he drew Wildfire right every time.
...
And since I've decided to expend 1000 words on this shit, I guess I'll go ahead and capsulize the story: it starts out on the wrongest foot with about every terrible Superman trope I hate. Clark Kent is a weenie loner who has no friends, and in fact has never had friends. Superman is called to the future by his Legionnaire sort-of-friends and the sun is red and he loses his powers before he even steps out of the building he arrives in. Ugh.
However, it goes on from there and it's basically a pretty good, less depressing riff on Days of Future Past. Beyond those initial, personal annoyances, I think it may have been my favorite Geoff Johns comic ever--with the one caveat that Earth Man (Space Nazi seen in the image above) and his Justice League of Earth are fucking pathetic. And I don't mean they "generate pathos," I mean they suck and are lazily written.
It would've been a far superior story had Earth Man actually believed in his monstrous spiel, unable to see that Superman was real and uncomprehending of Superman's core message of hope/understanding/breaking shit because of his pain and self-delusion.
Instead, he's a neurotic
who knows he's neurotic, and Johns, with a brutally on-the-nose portrayal of a reject's psychology that makes Hal Jordan's impression of Tucker from
Red vs. Blue look nuanced, fails to convince. He's Anakin Skywalker, and it's
lame. People like that cannot hold it together long enough to inspire people to give them handjobs out of pity, let alone join mass movements devoted to killin' foreigners.
Cool power set, though.
