Superman Unchained #1

I actually spent extra cash on this cover because I can't fucking stand the normal one. Perhaps it's just that I was sick to death of turning a page in every comic book I was reading and being interrupted by that double page spread Superman Unchained advert. Also, this cover is by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez who did a good chunk of the Superman art in DC Comics Presents which I've been reading lately!

First off, I was sick to death of everything being "unleashed" and "unchained" and now I have to see it on the cover of this comic every fucking month. What does it even mean? Why would Superman have to be unchained? Does that just mean he's less polite than usual? Maybe he's actually a sarcastic son of a bitch and this comic book will reveal his normal personality when he's finally thrown off the shackles of polite deportment locked onto him by the Kents! Perhaps I'll find the answers to all of my questions (and more!) in the pages of the comic book!

The issue begins with possibly the best reinterpretation of the "It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Superman!" I've yet to read. I know people play with that all the time and it can be cute or smart or interesting. But this one was terrible and horrible and just fucking brilliant. It's Nagasaki and the bomb is being dropped. Although it's a bit Watchmenesque on the history of things because the Bomb houses something other than Plutonium.

I don't know. This guy doesn't seem that fat.

Fat Man explodes over Nagasaki and propels the narrative into the present where Superman is trying to keep a huge space station called The Lighthouse from crashing to the Earth. A good portion of this action takes place across a poster sized insert because Jim Lee seems to think his art is so spectacular that it can only be appreciated at four times the normal size. It does help a person see how much his awesomely kinetic poses rely on half-assed crosshatching and poor shading via sketchy lines. I know I'm in the minority on this one but I'm really not much of a Jim Lee fan. I'd enjoy the poster more if Jim Lee had twisted the perspective just a bit more because Superman is definitely doing a Boobs and Butt Showcase. It's just that the viewer isn't in the optimal position to get a nice look at the butt.

Superman averts disaster and saves the two astronauts who were on board The Lighthouse. It's a really nice bit showing Superman dealing with the technical side of saving the day while basically ignoring the physical threats thrown at his body. Obviously they're just a mere inconvenience being that he's invulnerable and I like when a comic book isn't afraid to show that Superman really can't be hurt by the thing he's up against. The only real problem Superman has to solve is keeping anybody from dying and most of that work is mental. And then after all is said and done, nobody is standing around pointing out what a scary threat Superman is!

For once they're appropriately dirty. But I get the feeling that Jim Lee and David Finch would have drawn these same faces exactly like this even if they were dressed in tuxedos and ready for the ball. Also, I don't think Guiness approves records made with Superman's assistance. Just guessing.

Clark gets a message from Jimmy Olsen that Superman just stopped The Lighthouse so I guess we still get to enjoy the moment when Clark tells Jimmy who he really is. Jimmy Olsen seems to think The Lighthouse was pulled from orbit by a terrorist group called Ascension. Weird. I thought that was a Black Ops group working for the United States of America. Black Orchid is connected to that group as well as the Hunters from Animal Man. Maybe it's two different things! I wouldn't put it past DC's editorial to not realize things are getting too confusing.

Superman decides to investigate Lex Luthor's part in this because Superman has a Lex Luthor issue. He sees Luthor's mind in every conceivable plot. But Luthor is currently reading The Iliad in a helicopter undergoing a mutiny and crashing on its way to The Maw. I suppose The Maw is the Alcatraz of Metropolis. Superman arrives in time to stop the helicopter from crashing. Probably just as Luthor planned!

I have a feeling I'm going to be ending a lot of paragraphs with the phrase, "Just as Luthor planned!"

I know Lex Luthor could build some really incredible things to help mankind, but how can anybody trust using anything he designed?! Even if other people built it, he's too smart to not suspect some malicious possibility to anything with his taint on it! I don't mean that taint, you disgusting perverts!

Afterward, Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen spend some down time together. I'd really like more of this kind of thing. The New 52 needs to back off from super exciting action packed Trinity Wars and Rotworlds and Possible Destructions of Omnithing and let us spend some time getting to know everyone! I need to be reacquainted with Jimmy Olsen and Clark Kent's friendship. Just a little at a time! It's The New 52, after all, and the Silver Age didn't build up their relationship with a couple pages of back story. But if the writers forget to add a few pages of inconsequential banter here and there, we'll never grow to love these characters. I'd already forgotten how much I liked some of the Jimmy Olsen bits in Grant Morrison's Action Comics now that I've been punched in the teeth with Lobdell's Jimmy Olsen who thinks it's appropriate to tell Wonder Woman he wants to fuck her upon their first meeting.

The only part I don't like is Clark Kent being into human interest stories. Pussy.

I find it funny that I just asked for more character development but then I shit all over the idea of human interest stories. But that's because fiction and news are two different entities and I'm sick to fucking death of hearing about some twat and her twat-possum husband who lost their twenty-three thousand dollar wedding ring in a garage sale mishap. Oh you poor fucking thing! The horrors of this world! The injustice of it all!

Lois decides to call up Clark and tell him how awful he is at reporting. She does point out that the object Superman was going to allow to crash into an abandoned army base actually hit the water, so it seems somebody other than Superman deflected it. Or Superman miscalculated where it was going to land and then Clark reported that it hit where Superman thought it was going to hit and never bothered to research what happened! So I think Lois is actually on to something about Clark being a shitty reporter.

Superman investigates underwater and finds a hand-print on the side of the crashed satellite. And then he's fired on by the American military! Imagine that! The American Military shooting first and then shitting their pants afterward when they realized who they just tried to kill!

My bias is showing because even though I considered the possibility that they were just trying to destroy the downed satellite, like Superman confronting Lex Luthor, I ignored the obvious simply to push my anti-military agenda! Although as agendas go, being anti-military is actually one of the better ones. That doesn't mean I want soldiers to die! It means I don't want soldiers put in harms way to fucking begin with! Especially over political and corporate nonsense where the people behind the decisions to go to war are only concerned with profits and the size of their own dicks.

What I was trying to say is, the sub accidentally shot Superman in the face with a couple of torpedoes. The sub reports back to Lois's father, General Lane. He's currently in a secret facility in the American Southwest where they're housing a huge secret. A secret that was almost spoiled because they used it to deflect that satellite. Which means that they didn't want that satellite hitting that abandoned base! Which means Superman had better investigate that abandoned base next! Oh yeah! Also, the big secret:

Meet Fat Man! I'm just going to assume he has a sidekick named Little Boy.

The epilogue features a group of fishermen pulling a still living body up from the sea floor. His eyes are burned away and he asks for Lois Lane. Also, Perry White has the binoculars of the little kid from the opening scene in Nagasaki with an image of Fat Man burned into the lenses.

Superman Unchained #1 Rating: Holy fuck! Once again, a well-written Superman book! It seems so long since Grant Morrison's Action Comics run ended since I've had to wade through the so-called Andy Diggle issues (so-called since who knows who the fuck is actually responsible for them. Fucking DC and its so-hands-on-that-someone's-going-to-get-pregnant editorial staff). And Superman hasn't been good since Issue #1, really! That thing fell apart so fast and, once again, it was due to the editors groping and grabbing George Perez! I like this a lot but it's brand new, so it'll have to earn a top ten rank. I'll place it just under Batwoman which is a place Superman is never likely to find himself ever.