Duncan RouleauRecensioni

584

• [Untitled - "My palms sweat."] / John Ridley, writer; Clayton Henry, artist
~ 2 stars ~
In an epilogue to World's Finest #192-193 from 1970, Clark Kent is anxious when he has to interview a man who tortured him years earlier when he was in a powerless state as Superman. A realistic downer.

• The Measure of Hope / Brandon Easton, writer; Steve Lieber, artist
~ 2 stars ~
A dead mom? More depressing mopiness about the limits of Superman's powers.

• The Boy Who Saved Superman / Wes Craig, story & art
~ 3 stars ~
So powerlessness is definitely a theme here. When Superman is down and out, it's up to a young immigrant to get him back into the fray. The right kind of inspiring.

• Human Colors / Dan Watters, script; Dani, art
~ 2 stars ~
A silly, if well-intentioned parable about the importance of color to humanity.

• The School of Hard Knock-Knock Jokes / Marguerite Bennett, writer; Jill Thompson, artist
~ 2 stars ~
Kindergartener Clark Kent stars in a heavy-handed afterschool special about shunning and friendship.

• Own / Steven T. Seagle, writer; Duncan Rouleau, art
~ 2 stars ~
Martha Kent rips her coffee clique when they make a slight about adoption.

• Into the Ghost Zone / Chuck Brown, writer; Denys Cowan, pencils; John Stanisci, inks
~ 2 stars ~
I'm not familiar with the Earth-2 Superman, Val-Zod, and this silly action piece does little to properly introduce him.

• Patience / Dan Panosian, story & art
~ 2 stars ~
Lex Luthor futilely attacks Superman with some new red kryptonite, including a boxing match. I grew up with Muhammad Ali clobbering Supes in glorious, full-color, treasury-sized Neal Adams art, and, friend, that is not a comparison you want to invite.

• My Best Friend, Superman / Stephanie Phillips, script; Marley Zarcone, art
~ 2 stars ~
Another obvious and heavy-handed afterschool special set on a playground. Or maybe it would be more at home on the corny old Superfriends TV show.

• S Is for Cyborg / Jason Howard, art & story
~ 2 stars ~
Cyborg Superman Hank Henshaw needs to be forgotten forever by everyone. Just stop with him already, DC.

• Deadline / Jesse J. Holland, writer; Laura Braga, artist
~ 3 stars ~
It's a little awkward, but I like this story of Bruce Wayne and Diana musing whether or not a busy and constantly distracted Clark Kent will make his newspaper deadline and their dinner date.

• Kilg%re City / Michel Fiffe, writer & artist
~ 2 stars ~
Nearly unreadable nonsense, but the art is sort of fun.

• A Man Most Saved / Brandon Thomas, writer; Berat Pekmezci, art
~ 2 stars ~
I like the premise of a man who has been saved by Superman repeatedly getting the chance to pay him back, but it felt like it needed a few more pages or a slightly different angle of attack to succeed.

• Something to Hold on to / Nick Spencer, writer; Christian Ward, art
~ 2 stars ~
Superman invites the kids from a group home to his Fortress of Solitude for a field trip. Toyman crashes. I zone out.

• Little Star / James Stokoe, story & art
~ 2 stars ~
I like the concept of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth hiding a special little mystery, but the end left me cold. That's not how Supes would've handled it.

• Namrepus / Mark Waid, writer; Audrey Mok, artist
~ 3 stars ~
A classic throwback sort of tale with Superman deciding to show up in the Fifth Dimension and prank Mr. Mxyzptlk. Funny and clever.

• Prospect of Tomorrow / Francis Manapul, writer & artist
~ 2 stars ~
Superman goes to Mars to play matchmaker with exploration drones? Bizarre.

• A Little Is a Lot / Robert Venditti, writer; Alitha Martinez, artist
~ 3 stars ~
A simple story of everyday heroism being a match for Superman's extraordinary abilities.

• For the Man Who Has Nothing / Michael W. Conrad, writer; Cully Hamner, artist
~ 2 stars ~
Oh, no, another bad Bizarro story.

• #SavedBySuperman / Rich Douek, writer; Joe Quinones, art
~ 2 stars ~
A cool concept wherein social media idiots start throwing themselves off things as part of a viral challenge to have Superman save them. But it goes for a preachy ending instead of something realistic or clever.

• Fetch / Judd Winick, writer; Ibrahim Moustafa, artist
~ 2 stars ~
Krypto arrives on Earth and makes Clark Kent happy. Ho-hum.

• Deescalation / G. Willow Wilson, writer; Valentine De Landro, artist
~ 3 stars ~
A crime is committed, and Clark Kent gets to save the day for once. Nice.

• Your Favorite / Josh Williamson, writer; Chris Sprouse, pencils; Karl Story, inks
~ 2 stars ~
Jimmy Olsen is a screw-up, and a pretty boring one at that.

• Red Sun . . . Blue Dot / Mark Buckingham, story & art
~ 2 stars ~
Baby Supes flies in a rocket while his Kryptonian parents have a morose voice-over dialogue.

• [Untitled - "Matthew 3:17"] / Daniel Warren Johnson, writer & artist
~ 2 stars ~
Jonathan Kent's a good dad. Yup.

• Streaky the Supercat in: Hissy Fit / Sophie Campbell, story & art
~ 3 stars ~
Cats, amiright? Hee.

• Scoop / Matt Wagner, story & art
~ 3 stars ~
Clark Kent's a damn good reporter.

• The Special / Tom King, writer; Paolo Rivera, artist
~ 3 stars ~
Clark Kent's a good man too. Yup.

• Son of Farmers / Darcie Little Badger, writer; Steve Pugh, art
~ 2 stars ~
I was a son of a maize farmer too. Didn't find any of these lessons shaping my life.

• "Ally" / Rex Ogle, writer; Mike Norton, artist
~ 2 stars ~
Nice, but really?

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents:
• Superman Red & Blue #1 Cover / Gary Frank, illustrator
• [Untitled - "My palms sweat."] / John Ridley, writer; Clayton Henry, artist
• The Measure of Hope / Brandon Easton, writer; Steve Lieber, artist
• The Boy Who Saved Superman / Wes Craig, story & art
• Human Colors / Dan Watters, script; Dani, art
• The School of Hard Knock-Knock Jokes / Marguerite Bennett, writer; Jill Thompson, artist
• Superman Red & Blue #2 Cover / Nicola Scott, illustrator
• Own / Steven T. Seagle, writer; Duncan Rouleau, art
• Into the Ghost Zone / Chuck Brown, writer; Denys Cowan, pencils; John Stanisci, inks
• Patience / Dan Panosian, story & art
• My Best Friend, Superman / Stephanie Phillips, script; Marley Zarcone, art
• S Is for Cyborg / Jason Howard, art & story;
• Superman Red & Blue #3 Cover / Paul Pope, illustrator
• Deadline / Jesse J. Holland, writer; Laura Braga, artist
• Kilg%re City / Michel Fiffe, writer & artist
• A Man Most Saved / Brandon Thomas, writer; Berat Pekmezci, art
• Something to Hold on to / Nick Spencer, writer; Christian Ward, art
• Little Star / James Stokoe, story & art
• Superman Red & Blue #4 Cover /John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson, illustrators
• Namrepus / Mark Waid, writer; Audrey Mok, artist
• Prospect of Tomorrow / Francis Manapul, writer & artist
• A Little Is a Lot / Robert Venditti, writer; Alitha Martinez, artist
• For the Man Who Has Nothing / Michael W. Conrad, writer; Cully Hamner, artist
• #SavedBySuperman / Rich Douek, writer; Joe Quinones, art
• Superman Red & Blue #5 Cover / Amanda Conner, illustrator
• Fetch / Judd Winick, writer; Ibrahim Moustafa, artist
• Deescalation / G. Willow Wilson, writer; Valentine De Landro, artist
• Your Favorite / Josh Williamson, writer; Chris Sprouse, pencils; Karl Story, inks
• Red Sun . . . Blue Dot / Mark Buckingham, story & art
• [Untitled - "Matthew 3:17"] / Daniel Warren Johnson, writer & artist
• Superman Red & Blue #6 Cover / Evan "Doc" Shaner, illustrator
• Streaky the Supercat in: Hissy Fit / Sophie Campbell, story & art
• Scoop / Matt Wagner, story & art
• The Special / Tom King, writer; Paolo Rivera, artist
• Son of Farmers / Darcie Little Badger, writer; Steve Pugh, art
• "Ally" / Rex Ogle, writer; Mike Norton, artist
• Variant Cover Gallery / Lee Bermejo (#1), Yoshitaka Amano(#1), David Choe (#2), Brian Bolland (#2), Derrick Chew (#3), John Paul Leon (#3), Alexander Lozano (#4), Walter Simonson (#4), Arthur Adams (#5), Miguel Mercado (#5), Gabriele Dell'Otto (#6), and Kevin Eastman (#6), illustrators
• Cover Process / Gary Frank, Nicola Scott, Amanda Conner, Evan "Doc" Shaner, and John Paul Leon, illustrators

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the art in this series. Unfortunately the story was so twisted with time travel that I almost never understood what was going on. It reminds me of the Steampunk comic, Chris Bachalo is probably my favorite comicbook artist, but I was lost a bunch of the time and sometimes his frames are so full and dark it's hard to tell what's actually happening. The same thing is happening here with Mr. Rouleau.

Would definitely love to collect all his work to look at, just not sure I would enjoy reading it.½

I thought I really enjoyed this series when I read the original comics years ago, but this time I found it completely incoherent. Maybe it felt less overwhelming broken down into monthly installments? There are good bits in it, and I really liked the art, but I couldn't follow the plot at all.

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog in two parts here and here.

In the first story here, Return to Krypton, the sterile Krypton of John Byrne's Man of Steel reboot is revealed to be an illusion, and the "true" Krypton is something closer to the Krypton that we saw in the comics of the Silver Age; Jor-El created fake data about Krypton for Kal-El so that he wouldn't miss his home. It's a little convoluted-- retconning a retcon always is, I suppose-- and probably doesn't really track with the details of Man of Steel, which I remember really liking, though it's been over a decade since I've read it. In that story, people on Krypton no longer bore children, so baby Kal-El was sent to Earth in a "birthing matrix," and thus literally born in Kansas. Return to Krypton makes it clear that Lara bore Kal-El in her body, and then he was placed in the birthing matrix to be sent to Earth, so the story maintains some details of Man of Steel while ignoring its spirit.

Superman learns much of this from a message Jor-El left in his rocket in a crystal. Then, with the help of Professor Hamilton and John Henry Irons, he is able to use thought projection to make an image of Krypton in the Phantom Zone, into which he and Lois travel to see what the planet was "really" like before it was destroyed; the story is ambiguous about whether Clark and Lois actually traveled to Krypton of the past, or if only to a recreation of it. Clark is able to hang out with his parents briefly, but soon events get crazy: he helps Jor-El adjust Krypton's orbit so it won't be destroyed, but this drains his powers so Lara has to rescue him in a rocket, but space travel is against the law, so General Zod comes to arrest Jor-El and Lara, but they all go on the run, and Zod gets angry and deposes the Kryptonian leadership because he blames their complacency for the crisis, and then all of a sudden Jor-El has been made president in a counter-revolution. Whoa.

It's action-packed (particularly part three, Man of Steel #111), which is the big weakness of it all: I feel like this story should have had more emotional weight. This is momentous! But most of the story is spent 1) massaging the continuity to the preferred form of the 2000s writers, and 2) making things explode again and again. The human story gets lost in the middle of it all. I know this is a superhero comic, but I feel like there must have been a way to balance them better than they were.

One thing I do like about these comics is their emphasis on narration. Three of the five issues use narration: the prologue is Pa Kent, while parts one and three are narrated by Lois. This keeps some emphasis on character, and I particularly liked the focus on Lois, who I think could otherwise have very easily gotten lost in the shuffle.

As for the retcons... I dunno. The Stevil2001 criterion for judging retcons is that The new thing must be at least as interesting, if not more interesting, as the old thing being replaced. I did like Byrne's Man of Steel, especially its vision of Krypton, but I'm open to stories about other forms of Krypton being told. But based on this tale, this new old version of Krypton doesn't have more to offer, but I also believe it could. Weirdly, the story indicates Superman might actually have changed Kryptonian history (wouldn't that have wiped him from existence) and kind of hints that the Man of Steel Krypton still exists. I guess I'll see if either of these ideas are picked up in Adventures going forward.

My feelings about the sequel, Return to Krypton II, are more straightforwardly negative. It seems to me that both of these storylines threw away a potentially emotionally powerful premise in favor of a combination of empty action sequences and unnecessarily complicated continuity "fixes." In this story, the Jor-El of the Phantom Zone duplicate of Krypton manages to travel from the Zone into the real world, seeking Superman's help in pushing back against a tide of fundamentalist Kryptonian zealots who don't like Jor-El's new enlightened age. Honestly, for a supposed utopia, Krypton seems like a giant shithole, perpetually on the verge of complete social collapse at the drop of a hat. They ally themselves with General Zod's lackies against the zealots, trying to save Jor-El's wife and baby Kal-El before it's too late. It just all seems like pointless action sequences.

Then in the end, we finally get an explanation for this Krypton. I thought when reading the original Return to Krypton that all this was intended to retcon away John Byrne's Man of Steel vision of a sterile Krypton; that story claimed Jor-El presented a lie of a sterile Krypton to Kal-El so that he wouldn't feel so sad about his dead homeworld. This story rewrites that, so that we learn that after the Imperiex War (I think), Brainiac 13 time-travelled to pre-destruction Krypton (which really was the sterile world John Bryne showed us) and tried to kill Jor-El to stop Superman from being born. He failed, but made off with Jor-El's diaries and the Eradicator Matrix (I guess this is related to one-time Superman villain "the Eradicator," a.k.a. the Cyborg Superman, but I don't know enough to know), which he used in concert to make a fake Krypton as a trap for Superman. Only since Jor-El was a weirdo, his diaries recorded not the actuality of Krypton, but his dreamed, ideal Krypton. So this Krypton is a real place, a planet in the Phantom Zone, but it is not the real Krypton. Phew.

It's not an explanation that convinces. Why would Jor-El dream up a Krypton where the government is a fascist dictatorship that suppresses dissent with lethal force, and where psychotic fundamentalists lurk in every corner? Like, dream up an actual utopia, dude!

And why did Return II even need to retcon the retcon? This was published in Sept. 2002; exactly one year later, Superman: Birthright would begin publication, removing Byrne inventions like the birthing matrix from continuity just as the first Return seemed like it was going to. By the time Return II came out, editor Eddie Berganza had to have known those changes were coming, so I just don't even get why this story-- which retcons the retcon of a retcon-- even exists.

And if you subtract the continuity jiggery-pokery, there's nothing here worth discussing. None of the five Super title crossovers published during Joe Casey's run on Adventures were exactly great, but Return to Krypton II is definitely the worst of them.

(Incidentally, all of these retcons would themselves be retconned! In Superman: Infinite Crisis we're told that Kal-El's backstory changed because of Superboy-Prime punching at the edge of reality, and thus not because of any of these shenanigans.)

I did like that Krypto was in it, I guess, but Superman is not always a good dog-owner.

En la metrópolis de San Fransokyo (cruce de San Francisco y Tokio), vive Hiro Hamada, quien aprende a sacar provecho de su capacidad gracias a su brillante hermano Tadashi y sus también brillantes amigos: la buscadora de adrenalina GoGo Tamago, el meticuloso de la limpieza Wasabi-No-Ginger, la genia de la química Honey Lemon y el fanático de los cómics Fred. Cuando tras un devastador giro de los acontecimientos, se ven envueltos en una peligrosa conspiración que tiene lugar en las calles de San Fransokyo, Hiro recurre a su amigo más íntimo: un robot llamado Baymax, y transforma al grupo en una banda de héroes de última tecnología decididos a resolver el misterio. (FILMAFFINITY)

I am so wishing that I actually saw this at the cinemas but I didn't. I saw it at home.

Hiro Hamada on 14-vuotias lapsinero, joka asuu futuristisessa kaupungissa San Fransokyossa ja aloittaa opiskelun paikallisessa teknisessä korkeakoulussa tehtyään vaikutuksen koulun professoriin ainutlaatuisella keksinnöllään. Kaikki kuitenkin muuttuu, kun Tadashi, Hiron kannustava ja avulias isoveli, menehtyy tulipalossa, ja Hiro on murheen murtama. Tadashin keksintö, hoitorobotti Baymax herää ja yrittää hoitaa masentunutta Hiroa. Samalla joku salaperäinen henkilö naamion kanssa aiheuttaa hankaluuksia Hiron keksintöä hyödyntäen. Hiro päättää pysäyttää naamiomiehen ja saa avukseen vauhdikkaan GoGo Tomagon, kemistineron Honey Lemonin, omaperäsen Wasabin ja sarjakuvafanin Fredin. Big Hero 6 on viihdyttävä ja samalla tunteellinen elokuvaelämys, jonka parissa aika ei käy pitkäksi.

A boy genius creates a team of superheros.

Fun. The story arc is a paint-by-numbers superhero movie, but other than that there are no real faults with it.

Concept: C
Story: C
Characters: B
Dialog: B
Pacing: B
Cinematography: B
Special effects/design: A
Acting: C
Music: B

Enjoyment: B

GPA: 2.8/4½

Joe Kelly rocks. I really never thought I would enjoy a comic with Wonder Woman or Superman in it but he consistently delivers. The art is great (although I like Nyugen less than the other guy). The writing has current topics like torturing enemy combatants to save lives etc... I started somewhere in the middle with JLA so I'm also excited about seeing how much I like the Grant Morrison stories.½