Comic Book Review - Superman #678
Up for review: Superman #678
Writer: James Robinson
Penciler: Renato Guedes
Inker: Jose Wilson Magalhaés
Cover By: Alex Ross
This is a follow up to my review of Superman #677 that came out last month.
Nothing really happened in this issue. We see a little banter between members of the Metropolis Science Police. We are then shown the origin of the new Atlas character. Apparently he was once a mighty warrior in the “Lizard Kingdom”, but then became a corrupt king, and was trapped in a crystal by some witches. He was saved from the crystal many years later by a someone, who’s identity remains secret, to help him kill Superman. At the end of the story Superman launches himself at Atlas from the upper atmosphere.
That is about it, not really much to keep you reading for longer than 5 minutes. The origin story for Atlas was so cheesy and clichéd that it hurts my teeth to think about it. Lizard Kingdom? Corrupt King? Soul trapped in a crystal? It reads like something from a badly written AD&D paperback story. I know this is Superman and I shouldn’t be expecting the story to be groundbreaking, but DC have promoted the return of James Robinson as the greatest thing to happen in comics since Jack Kirby got his first box of Crayons! This just reads like any old Superman fill-in comic, nothing terrible, nothing exciting. Meh!
The artwork by Renato Guedes is absolutely wonderful. He uses three different styles in just this one issue: his regular, modern, style for the main tale; a Kirby-esque stlye for the Lizard Kingdom scenes; and, he does a photo realistic collage of lots of historical events. That is quite a lot of work for just one issue of Superman. The cover by Alex Ross is also very nice, done in Ross’ classic silver age style.
Well, the art is great, but the story was bad. Will it stay on my pull-list?? I have been buying Superman on a monthly basis for years now. I am loathe to drop it, but this wasn’t really worth my money….. I’ll have to think on it.
Grade: 4 out of 10
Art: 9 out of 10
Related posts:
- Comic Book Review - Superman #677
- Comic Book Review - Captain America: White #0
- Comic Book Review - Dark Tower: The long Road Home #5
- Comic Book Review - Fear Agent #22
- The Morning Review - Final Crisis: Requiem
Renato Guedes is a phenomenal artist — did you read his single issue story from Action Comics a while back where Clark takes his dad into space? best Superman issue so far this year, IMHO — but even Mr Guedes can’t make me spend more money on James Robinson’s Superman. One issue was more than enough!
I did, that was a good one. His art is the only thing that could keep me on this. What the heck happened to Robinson. Did he get Jeff Loeb syndrome?