Week / Book 17: Superman: The Men of Tomorrow
Written by Geoff Johns
Pencils by: John Romita Jr.
Inks by: Klaus Janson
Colours by: Laura Martin
After leaving Iraq last week, we find ourselves back in the comfortable world of superheroes. With, arguably, the first and most popular superhero: Superman.
This book, from 2015, is another book that I had picked up at the dollar store - not judging. And while it doesn’t have a volume number on it, it is a trade paperback, and not a graphic novel. It collects issues #32-39 of the 2011-2016 Superman series, and acts sort of like a soft relaunch, post-New 52. Comic numbering is weird, so I won’t get into it.
Ok, synopsis time:
The powerful super-being Ulysses is the last son of a doomed planet. Our planet. Thinking Earth’s destruction was at hand, his parents used experimental science to send their son to another dimension. Now he has returned, and Superman has finally found a peer. But will Ulysses become the hero and partner that Superman wants him to be?
Writer Geoff Johns has taken the reigns in this new era of Superman, and he’s joined by superstar John Romita Jr. in his first ever work in DC Comics.
I’ve been a long-time fan of Johns, including his DC work on Aquaman, Batman: Earth One, Doomsday Clock, and his Image work in his creator owned Unnamed Universe, which includes Geiger, Junkyard Joe, Redcoat and more.
John Romita Jr, I’ve been a fan of …always, I think? His long-standing work on Spider-Man back in the day, and present, and Kick-Ass. He has an immediately recognizable style, and an eye for action shots.
THIS book starts “25 years ago” and see’s two scientists and their baby in a facility that appears to be going through somewhat of an emergency. The two parents don’t think they can quarantine and maintain a strange matter that they have gathered from another dimension, and now everything is in lockdown. They can’t save themselves or the world, but think they can save their baby, so they use their dimensional portal to send their baby to another world. A familiar origin story, no?
Cut to present day, and the world appears to be fine. But in Superman’s world, nothing stays fine. He’s summoned downtown Metropolis because there’s some creature or thing attacking, and he must always defend Metropolis. We get reintroduced to the baby, now grown; a man who calls himself Ulysses, who appears to be a super-man of sorts, with amazing powers. Superman and Ulysses team up to defeat this new monster, and then we get to learn about who Ulysses is, how he came from another dimension, a peaceful one. Superman thinks he might have a new ally.
Ulysses was always under the impression that he wouldn’t be able to return to his home world of Earth from his other dimension, but now that he’s back, he finds out his parents are still alive. Coming from a peaceful world, without weapons or fighting, he is amazed at how Earth appears to be so uncivilized. We haven’t cured famine or disease, but we continue to build weapons, which sole purpose is to kill other humans.
True to form, the eternally hopeful Superman tries to convince him otherwise. Superman hopes that people will always strive for good and follow the examples he leads by. Ulysses doesn’t agree and instead offers a chance at a new life; to bring six- million humans back to his world. Such a specific number…
He gets his volunteers, obviously - who wouldn’t volunteer to visit another world or dimension. But the plan turns out to be a little bit more devious. The humans will actually be turned into energy, to fill the planet’s core generator as fuel, and keep Ulysses’ world alive for another generation. Clearly Superman will have none of it. Reverses the ship’s destination and portals back to Earth. Gets in a big fight with Ulysses and goes atomic. Sort of like his heat vision, Superman basically turns into a solar flare. Destroying everything around him.
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Overall, a good book. Nothing surprising, and it doesn’t stray from the classic formula. But JRJR’s art is solid through-out, and feels like an open-close arc, with a few little hints at further stories down the road.
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Next read: Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser omnibus
Previous reads:
Week 16: The Sheriff of Babylon
Week 15: Injection Vol. 1-3
Week 14: Neverlanders / Justice League: No Justice
Week 13: Cover
Week 12: Something is Killing the Children – Vol. 1