Selected and introduced by Jenette Kahn
Foreword by Marjorie Liu
Published by The Folio Society
The Folio Society always produced books that have high quality reproductions of classic comics and the presentation is always top notch. I do love seeing the comics that they choose to include in their collections presented this way. It is a great thing to see the stories that I remember reading given the deluxe format.
The only frustrating thing that they always do, however, is only including one chapter of a certain story and not the other chapters. This leads to confusion, and a question of “why was this included in this way?” They do it every time and it starts to get torturous, especially if you want the full story picture.
It is really great to see two of the great Superman stories from the 1940’s start off the book. I have never seen these reprinted at this size before so it really is a big treat.
Action Comics #36 from May of 1941 starts off the book and it is a nice reproduction. The story by Jerry Siegel is classic Superman and has art by Wayne Boring and Joe Shuster.
Likewise, the story reprinted from Superman #30 in October of 1944 is a strong reproduction as well. It feels like you are finding an artifact when you read these stories. Both stories have been cleaned up pretty well, and it is probably the best presentation that anyone will ever be done. The latter story is Mr. Mxyztplk‘s first appearance and we get to see how he came to be. It was a real cool thing for me because I had never read that before.
The next story in the collection is from Superman #96. This one is significant because it is actually written by Bill Finger and it is about a girl who didn’t believe that there actually is a Superman. It is a strong story especially from that time period.
Following that is a story from Superman #149 which is a “Death of Superman” story, written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Curt Swan. This is significant because it is the first story of its kind and it precedes the story from the early 90’s, more than three decades prior (but arguably less compelling).
Superman #400 is next and it was one I had read before but always absolutely loved. It has a bunch of people who were popular at the time (1984…and some are still popular today) coming together to make a cool anniversary book. It reminded me that there used to be a time when anniversary books celebrated the character and meant something. This certainly does that and it has so many talented people on this book.
That’s when we have Action Comics #583 appear, the Alan Moore story “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” And that is where this collection really started to lose me.
This is Part Two of the storyline. It is beautiful, the best rendition of the story that I have ever seen, or that everyone may ever seen.
But where is Part One? I feel almost cheated getting the second half of the story. I even had a hard time trying to get through it. I felt like I came in the middle of my favorite movie and it was already playing for an hour. This is a theme that pretty much repeated sadly with the rest of the book, and it starts to get truly frustrating.
Most of the other stories (except for wonderful Peace on Earth by Alex Ross and Paul Dini) are all part of bigger stories. I would even say Superman #2 by John Byrne fits into that as does The Adventures of Superman #462. That comes at a time when they were trying to cross over and cross pollinate the books. And it shows, almost painfully here.
The Superman Annual #2 is a hard one to focus on. And the Superman #75 reprint here is understandable historically but is hard to get into knowing that it is part of a bigger whole.
It doesn’t even have the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons story from Superman Annual #11, “For the Man who has Everything.” Boo.
Overall, it is a good book, but man I wish it had better choices included in this format/ volume.
RATING: A-
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