Morning Ramble 355: Superman, Supplies, and Birds

In today’s Morning Ramble, I take the dive into DC’s Rebirth, try to find drugs at the pharmacy, and discuss my disappointment in my recent reading.

Superman #32: The Man of Tomorrow: Part 1

I finally found what looks to be a decent guide to reading DC comics and it’s focused on the current Rebirth event that basically resets the universe that was messed up by the New 52. Now I’m not familiar with much about the New 52, but I heard that even though there were some good story arcs, it was not well received by most long time DC fans. I’m pretty much only knowledgeable about DC movies so I really don’t have an opinion one way or the other on the New 52, but I am glad to have found a reading order that I can jump on.

This reading order for Rebirth is ongoing but it starts back in the world of the New 52 and Superman #32, and I’m hoping it just becomes the reading order for DC in general. In any case, I picked up Superman #32 to get started and learned that it’s the start of a new creative team – Geoff Johns, John Romita Jr., and Klaus Janson. Since this is my first foray into Superman, I don’t have anything to really compare it to, but the art is pretty cool. It’s definitely different and more “modern” than the Silver Age Marvel I’ve been reading from 1962, and from my understanding, John Romita Jr. was a long time Marvel artist who just moved to DC. In comparison to the older Marvel books I’ve read, backgrounds are much more populated and there are more details all around, but I think that’s partially because of different printing methods and the digital nature of everything today verses 50 years ago.

Aside from the art, the story is pretty good too. Basically, we are treated to a story similar to the origin of Superman, but this is for a stranger named Ulysses. He is born on a planet that is dying and where his parents send him off to another ‘dimension’ before the planet is destroyed…all Supermanesque. We then jump to Superman fighting a big robot gorilla we later learn is named Titano. The fight is cool, but brief as we show up at the end, but I think the idea is to make sure we know this is a Superman story, even though we started with this strange child. Once the fight is over, we jump to the Daily Planet where Jimmy Olsen is selling Perry White pictures and White is trying to entice Clark to come back to work at the newspaper. Apparently Clark is a loner in this New 52 world and is not in a relationship with Lois, but instead tries to talk to Wonder Woman and Batman on the phone so I guess his only friends are other heroes.

After dinner, loner Clark super-hears someone calling for help and he’s off to fight some alien. This guy is pretty tough and while some reaper type dude watches, Superman turns on his eye beams. Somehow this new alien sends the beams as feedback at Clark and fries his eyes – he turns the attack on Superman. But outta nowhere, someone shows up and tackles the bad guy. It turns out it’s the Ulysses guy we learned about at the start of the comic. He seems much better prepared to fight this alien than Superman and between the two of them, they take him down – Superman looks pretty wiped out though.

I think the big highlights I took away from this issue are:

• Clark Kent is a loner and Perry White encourages him to socialize
• Ulysses has a similar origin to Superman and has similar strength
• Ulysses seems to think this is the Earth he was born on that he previously thought someone named Klerik destroyed
• The reaper type dude is up to something and he claims to have taught Superman (who he also knows as Clark) to “always get up when you get knocked down”
• John Romita Jr. draws some incredible full page art

On the whole, I enjoyed the issue. It was drawn well and sets up what looks to be a good storyline called The Men of Tomorrow. Not being a DC reader, this is the first time I’ve seen Titano, Ulysses, the alien, and the reaper type dude.

I’ll rate this issue an B+ leaving some room for improvement.

The Secret World

This morning I ran around Kingsmouth looking for medical supplies.

You’d think the pharmacy would have some, but it was all locked up and looked like the shelves were picked clean. Guess I’ll have to look elsewhere.

All The Birds in the Sky

The idea of this book turned out to be so much better than the reality. I really wanted this book to fulfill the promises I felt it made – the battle of magic verses technology and the epic nature that such a battle would take seems to have been started but then left to the side. Sure, there was a Doomsday machine and a Superstorm, but neither contributed to the ultimate resolution of the novel. Actually, the Superstorm just sorta happened and we heard about it as news stories and the Doomsday machine never got completely built before it was destroyed. I really got the sense that we spent so much time dealing with hipster millennials hanging out in San Francisco that the action I expected in a magic verses science story was just rushed through. The ending does flow from the entire story in a nice way and the foreshadowing was not blatant but did allow me to figure out how things would probably be resolved well ahead of time, but I feel like I wanted more. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought this before, but I feel like I was not in the demographic this story was targeted at, and I’m a huge fan of both SciFi and Fantasy.

While I enjoyed the characters and the overall story, I give this a C+ which turns out to be my lowest rating this year…except for the last book I tried to read – The Day I Died, which I guess would have gotten a DNF since I couldn’t get through it. Two bummers in a row is not fun. Hopefully I’ll pick a winner next time.