Action Comics #836
Superman: This Is Your Life Part Two
I’ve never been a big fan of Superman. Mostly, that’s because he’s always seemed too powerful. Except in the hands of an exceptional writer, Superman stories tend to bore me. Still, I’ve added the Superman titles because the post-Infinite Crisis creative teams are people whose works I tend to enjoy. Crisis isn’t over yet, but I’ve still picked up a couple of the crossover issues, including parts of the “This Is Your Life” storyline. (Unless I’m mistaken, Adventures of Superman has John Byrne on the creative team; if so, I won’t be getting the third part of the story.)
The Superman of the “main” DC Universe (Kal-El/Clark Kent) is fighting his Earth-2 Counterpart, Kal-L. With every punch, we see glimpses of various bits of Superman’s history from the various timelines. By the end of the fight, we’re seeing Kal-L’s interpretation of “where it all went wrong”, and what he would’ve done to make things better.
I only started seriously collecting comics when I started college, and I’ve very rarely read any Superman comics. Other than the glimpses at the beginning of this issue of his actual origin, most of this stuff is only vaguely familiar to me. I don’t know exactly how his original debut in Metropolis went, or whether the version shown here is Kal-L’s history, or Kal-El’s, or some other version that’s long been retconned out of existence. Some of the other things we see, from his first meeting with Batman to the revelation of his identity to Lois Lane, might be from any version of the DCU, and I wouldn’t know the difference. Despite that, I find myself really enjoying the story here. I love alternate reality stuff, in general (though when it’s overdone, it gets tiring), and seeing different versions of various “historical events”, with commentary from Kal-L, is pretty entertaining to me.
On the other hand, I’m not particularly keen on the art. Don’t get me wrong; I like most of the artists who worked on this issue, but they all have differing styles, and the transition from one style to another is jarring to me, even when I understand perfectly well why they’re doing it. The transition in art style is helpful in understanding that you’re seeing a different “universe”, but it’s still annoying.
I had fun reading this one, but it’s not one I can particularly recommend. This whole story seems like just a means to an end so they can start telling the story set “One Year Later”, and with that in mind, it seems kind of pointless. I can’t imagine you’d miss anything if you simply waited until the One Year Later stuff actually started coming out.