Gint's 9-30-15 Pull-List Review

A couple DC books on the Pull-List. One gets it all right and the other gets it all wrong.

Second Place:

Superman #44

This will be my last issue of Superman. That's no indictment of Gene Yang or John Romita, Jr., I think they're doing as good a job they can with what's been laid out before them. But they don't have a lot of great stuff to work with.

Superman has been depowered. Each issue, he loses some more of his power and eludes in this issue that soon it may be gone for good. That's not the Superman I want to read. When you pick up a Superman book you expect to get Superman – super strength, flight, heat vision... the whole nine yards. DC has gone to great lengths to make him unrecognizable in every way. Not just with the buzz cut and t-shirt and jeans, but with taking his powers from him.

The old "no powers" trick is fun for a quick arc here or an arc there, but it shouldn't be the status quo. It screams "we don't know how to make this character popular." Maybe you can't. Maybe Superman is like the Fantastic Four in that for as huge a place in comic book history as they have, maybe its time to concede that this just isn't going to be a top selling character.

In that case, just write fucking Superman stories. That's SUPERman, not DEPOWEREDman.

First Place:

Justice League #44

Night and day this week going from a book that was disappointing to a book that's 100% satisfying. Geoff Johns just gets the DC characters. Even the characters that have small moments in this issue shine in a way that's true to themselves. Why Johns isn't put in charge of the entire DC stable, I don't know.

Fabok continues to annihilate the art. Annihilate in a good way. He's fucking killing it. One beef: I think using the inverse color to denote Apokolips-fueled Superman is sort of lame. There's a more interesting way to denote his change in personality that just inversing the blacks and whites. But that is such small potatoes for the best looking book on the shelves.

This book has been so good it incenses me that books like Superman happen. Johns and Fabok are killing it. Its possible to write really good comics. Why then are the majority of DC's books lately so disappointing? They don't have to be.

Spread of the Week:

Jason Fabok doing the Lord's work.

-Gint