Looking to Marvel’s Ultimate line, DC launches its Earth One series with a modernization of the world’s first superhero. With 72 years of various “imaginary stories” behind him, if you’re going to reimagine Superman again, you’d better distinguish yourself. It’s all quite recognizable: Lois, Jimmy, and the Daily Planet are all here, though the menace of Lex Luthor is replaced by an alien armada hunting the last son of Krypton. Torchbearer of the Todd McFarlane–Jim Lee aesthetic of modern comics art, Davis provides sleek figures, intense detail, and subtle integration of current hairstyles and fashions (including a nip and tuck to the old supersuit itself) that do the lion’s share of the contemporizing. Ultimately, though, it’s Straczynski who distinguishes the work, humanizing the dynamic between characters and adding a compelling twist of melancholy to young Clark Kent’s search for purpose. This is not a revelatory reexamination of a great American icon but the script and storyboards for a great Superman summer blockbuster, and one with a lot of heart, at that. Grades 9-12. --Jesse Karp
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Amazon.com Review
From Superman: Earth One
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Looking to Marvel’s Ultimate line, DC launches its Earth One series with a modernization of the world’s first superhero. With 72 years of various “imaginary stories” behind him, if you’re going to reimagine Superman again, you’d better distinguish yourself. It’s all quite recognizable: Lois, Jimmy, and the Daily Planet are all here, though the menace of Lex Luthor is replaced by an alien armada hunting the last son of Krypton. Torchbearer of the Todd McFarlane–Jim Lee aesthetic of modern comics art, Davis provides sleek figures, intense detail, and subtle integration of current hairstyles and fashions (including a nip and tuck to the old supersuit itself) that do the lion’s share of the contemporizing. Ultimately, though, it’s Straczynski who distinguishes the work, humanizing the dynamic between characters and adding a compelling twist of melancholy to young Clark Kent’s search for purpose. This is not a revelatory reexamination of a great American icon but the script and storyboards for a great Superman summer blockbuster, and one with a lot of heart, at that. Grades 9-12. --Jesse Karp