A short one today. The problem with Superman having been in publication for so long is that, every now and again, you'll run across a really mediocre run of stories. The 90s, for the most part, are this. This is a part of the Zero Hour crossover, which was middling at best, but 90s Superman was trying way too hard to capitalize on the Image Comics successes, so his hair's long, and he's got that Image grimace going on there on the cover. Oooo...gritty.
My other bone of contention with this comic is that I'm not entirely certain how it's meant to link into the Zero Month crossovers. I've just read the Flash one, as I prepare for my long-delayed next part of "On the Run," and it actually functioned as an introductory piece for the hero. This one, rather, talks about someone Clark went to school with, and though it does show some of his past, it's more an origin story for Conduit than for Superman. But, again, 90s Superman stuff is really pretty bad.
I'd kicked around the idea of reading a bunch of Superman stuff for a while for this project, but for a long while it was impossible to follow a Superman story without reading every one of his monthly titles. You'll notice the triangle up in the top right corner, which indicates this issue's reading order for that year. Though it does allow for the telling of large-scale stories, it makes reading one issue every now and again a bit hard. The Bat-titles were doing this around the same time, and if must have worked for a while because this practice continued for most of the decade and part of the next. I'm glad, however, that the titles separated eventually. Joe Casey's Adventures of Superman is pretty fabulous, and, importantly, self-contained.
So, Superman fights this guy Conduit who's apparently secretly funded a covert intelligence agency, and how really has it in for Clark Kent.
Meh.
More tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment