All-Star Superman #10 Review

ALL STAR SUPERMAN #10
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant

This might just be my favourite issue of All-Star Superman, to date, and that's a hard thing to be with pretty much nine straight issues of greatness under its belt.

There isn't any battle with Kryptonian explorers or an adventure in Bizarro World or any major threat or definite focus in this issue. Based on the various time stamps on the panels, this is just an issue that goes through random moments in Superman's remaining few weeks to live with a general focus on his writing of his last will and testament interspaced throughout.

Seeing as this is All-Star Superman, you can probably already guess that Superman's 'regular' days in this comic are going to be far from boring. See the cover? Notice the Earth? That's not some form of symbology (bonus points for anyone that gets the joke). Superman actually plays god this issue and creates a new universe and, in particular, a new Earth in his lab just to see how the world would evolve without a Superman there to hold their hand. We see the evolution of this Earth throughout the issue where, at the end, we see a comic creator drawing the original Superman concept design. This is just something we see over the course of several pages and it isn't even a major focus and it's better than just about anything the regular Superman books have done in ages.

Taking the godhood a little further, Superman puts some other affairs in order by releasing the bottle city of Kandor on Mars. He can't rebigulate (no that's not a word) them, but they'll be safe from human interferrance there and the yellow sunlight will make their lives easier as well as let them be free of their prison, prompting Superman to ask why he never thought about doing this before. Exactly my thoughts in regards to the regular DCU Superman's sticking Kandor on the shelf for 60 years.

Oh ya, the godhood comment. Superman enlists a few Kandorians to be, for lack of a better term, super anti-bodies and uses them to cure children in a hospital. It didn't show the aftermath of that, but to onlookers, it must have looked like Superman stuck out his arms and did the whole "you are healed!" evangelist bit as the micro-sized Kandorians went to work in their bodies.

This review is getting long and I've only really described a couple pages of the issue. There's dozens of this little moments scattered throughout this slice of life issue. Whether it's Superman admitting defeat to Lex Luthor and asking him to try and make the world a better place now that he's beaten Superman or just the single page where Superman stops a girl from committing suicide when her doctor didn't show up, whom we saw throughout the issue talking to her on the phone and getting caught up in traffic during Superman's brief battle with Toyman.

There's even some kind of time capsule from the 24th century where the internet has apparently destroyed the English language, reducing it to "l33t-speak" or retarded 13 year old girl instant messaging dialogue consisting of no vowels and as many abbreviations and acronyms as possible. Superman seemed to garner something from the garbled text about Solar Intelligent Systems, but I have no clue as to what it means or if it's a clue to saving him from dying or some threat for his twelve trials.

My only complaint, and it's a minor one, is that Quitely's art is lacking in the backgrounds department. It's like he's so far behind, he can't be bothered drawing them anymore and, if the background is even included in a scene, they are crudely drawn or consist of a sky or shot of the horizon so he doesn't have to draw anything major. I don't really focus on it that much and the characters and composition is still fantastic, but it's definitely noticeable and worth commenting on.

Verdict - Must Read. Seriously, I could go on about at least a dozen more single panel or one off things that happen in this issue that I didn't list in the overly long review as it is. Hell, one panel randomly has Superman counting off his DNA strands that ties in later to his developing a means to possibly clone himself. Sorry, this closing remark will go on forever if I start listing random things again. For Christ's sake, Superman makes his own universe in this issue! Buy it!

Related Posts