Where most Superman stories fail is the inability to make the hero human. “Superman Earth One: Volume 3” fully embodies that storytelling sin, and goes so far as making almost all characters involved wooden, empty, and devoid of character. Making the trade read more like the expository framework of a story, but never amounting to anything compelling in and of itself.
WRITTEN BY: J. Michael Straczynski
ART BY: Ardian Syaf, Sandra Hope
PUBLISHER: DC Comics
PRICE: $22.99
RELEASE: February 4, 2014
The story follows the contemporary Superman in a world that doesn’t trust him. Rightfully so, he deposed a dictator in another country and is the most powerful being on the planet. So Naturally people like Lex and Alexandra Luthor team with the military to find a way to take out the biggest threat to national security the world has ever seen. Enter Zod.
J Michael Straczynski understands how to make Superman modern. He takes contemporary fears and uses them against a god who walks amongst us. Sadly, he doesn’t treat this God like a human. Through stilted writing and extremely convenient plotting everything in this book feels alien.
Which is part of the charm with an Earth One Graphic Novel. It’s refreshing to see brand new takes on the age-old mythos. Lex Luthor and Alexandra Luthor provide a really compelling force of antagonism that is rooted in modern paranoia. Except their motivations crumble near the final act of the book, they act completely contrary to their established personalities, and somehow end in the same place these characters always do. I know that may seem hard to believe, but trust me Straczynski finds a way.
With Zod, the problems are only multiplied tenfold. Every single line of dialogue he utters is on the nose. After an introductory battle with Superman he outlines the strengths of his armor painstakingly. He never says anything other than what he is overtly thinking, and is often reduced to thinking outloud in order to convey his evil plan. “It looks like there’s something more powerful in the world than me… fear.” YAWN. Zod’s dialogue is horrificly cheesy and on the nose, often explaining everything with near precise precision, like how his suit works intimately, while expressly offering his thoughts to no one.
Most of the dialogue in the trade has little to no subtext. It’s all exactly what people are thinking seamlessly communicated out of their mouths. This makes everything feel alien. People don’t communicate like that, and certainly not when they’re trying to deceive one another. It’s a strange choice for the book, and one that really kills it before it achieves anything worth note.
Ardian Syaf is on art duties and he knocks his work out of the park. He adds his own distinctive lens to Clark, Zod and all the other iconic imagery of the Superman mythos. But, he seems to fail when it comes to packing far too much into action panels. Cramming more on the page isn’t always the answer, and the dynamic flow of good paneling feels disjointed and disrupted when it should flow with grace.
Ultimately “Superman Earth One: Volume 3” is a difficult read. It could have been so much more, but reduces itself to what we’ve seen before, and what has worked in the past. Except none of it works here. It feels lazy and uninspired, much more so than the two volumes that preceded it. Any contemporary issues that are explored are undercut by a all to convenient resolution to the story that ultimately brings the differences between Earth One Superman and New 52 Superman to a startling few. It’s a real shame.