Comic Book Review – All-Star Superman

All-Star Superman (2011)
Reprints All-Star Superman #1-12
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frank Quitely

I’m not sure what I think of Superman these days. For anyone claiming to believe there is a single definitive version of him, it shows they don’t actually know the character’s history. The Superman who appeared in the pages of Action Comics #1 wasn’t even Siegel & Shuster’s first attempt to create a character with that name. Over the nearly 90 years that Superman has existed in the culture, he has undergone numerous reboots and minor tweaks. The Golden Age Superman is a different person from the Silver Age version who, in turn, is not the same as John Byrne’s rebooted Man of Steel. Even that iteration from 1985 was changed significantly by the end of the 20th century. In All-Star Superman, writer Grant Morrison is focused purely on the Superman of their youth. This was the Superman of the 1960s, a fatherly figure whose powers bordered on god-like, new ones manifesting as writers needed them. Morrison has chosen what is ironically the least human of Superman’s faces to tell a story about life & death, a Herculean postmodern myth.

Superman rushes to save a seemingly doomed mission to the sun. Lex Luthor has remotely sabotaged this landmark journey by Dr. Leo Quintim and his staff at PROJECT. Superman’s cells are blasted with excess solar radiation, boosting his powers and causing his body to decay. In one year, Superman will die. He keeps this news secret from the public and tries to tie up all his loose ends before the Grim Reaper arrives. He reveals his secret identity to Lois Lane and gifts her with a super serum that gives her his powers for one day, only to have the special outing ruined by the arrival of Hercules and Samson. The Man of Steel tames the great cosmic menace of Solaris and takes on a horde of Bizarros while eventually traveling to their backward universe and meeting their twisted counterpart to Bizarro #1, Zibarro. We even get a flashback just before Pa Kent dies, where a young Clark meets his future descendants. This is the story of the final year of Superman’s life and how his legacy continues forever.

All-Star Superman began as a pitch to DC editorial from Morrison, Mark Waid, Mark Millar, and Tom Peyer in 1998. The company wanted a fresh take on one of their flagship characters at the time, and they were given “Superman Now.” The story goes that Morrison encountered a Superman cosplayer outside the San Diego Comic-Con in the 1990s, where All-Star got its Superman sitting on a cloud pose. The cosplayer apparently was seated the same way on a concrete wall. Morrison claims this was a shamanic encounter; the cosplayer was channeling the creative spirit of what Superman is, so they interviewed the man as if he were the superhero. The cosplayer just went along with it and gave answers that helped illuminate the character of Morrison. 

The purpose of Superman Now was to stop the endless reboot cycle of the character and create a version that synthesized everything. It was very similar to what Morrison did on his Batman run, not ignoring the sillier periods of the hero but trying to fold everything into a single cohesive narrative that explained why he might be involved in strange adventures. Superman Now got the greenlight but turned it down later while Morrison went to Marvel to write his take on the X-Men. Years later, as Morrison returned to DC to write the Seven Soldiers mini-series, among other projects, they retooled the Superman Now pitch into All-Star Superman. 

All-Star Superman manages to do some things exceptionally well. What impresses me most is that the stories feel like your classic Silver Age tale, yet with modern twists. The art of Frank Quitely helps tremendously in this regard as it provides an aesthetic you would not have found in the Super books of that era. It’s a version of Superman that older readers would certainly remember but still be surprised by. Younger readers who had yet to tap into the Silver Age run were given something surprising and living up to the mythic ideas around the character.

One of the big takeaways from the book is how Morrison manages to capture individual characters’ voices. Superman feels confident and kind, Luthor is smarmy and arrogant, Jimmy is bumbling but well-meaning, and on and on. No one can ever doubt the depth of knowledge Morrison has of comics, not just the facts but a complete understanding of the themes and character traits that make these figures what they are. Morrison’s Luthor is one of the more interesting takes we’ve had in a long while. Stripped away is his modern portrayal as a cunning businessman, and it’s back to the mad scientist driven to jealousy over the abilities of Superman. We get more of a sense of motivation that Luthor has been driven slightly mad by years of defeat. 

One of the things Morrison does so well in all their work is worldbuilding. While knowing Superman’s mythos pretty well, I was still pleasantly surprised by the new twists and takes on familiar concepts. The introduction of Zibarro, the Bizarro World’s twisted version of their champion, was delightful. He speaks like a human from Earth and is basically a weaker version of Superman. To the Bizarros, that would be strange & alien. 

One of the things to know before going into this story is that there really isn’t a plot that runs through it all. The dying Superman thing is more of a plot device to tell several stand-alone or two-part stories outside the standard Superman continuity. If you are a reader searching for something tightly plotted like Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns, that’s not the case with this book. It’s more of a space for Morrison to play with ideas they have surrounding Superman and what he represents in the culture. 

In the past, I enjoyed this more than I do now. As with all things, as we grow, our tastes change or become more refined in one direction or another. I don’t hold Morrison up as some unassailable deity, so I feel comfortable saying All-Star isn’t perfect. This is more a comic for comic book fans, especially people with an extreme fondness for Superman and an older storytelling style. This is not the definitive Superman story, and I feel the same about people who try to make a claim about The Dark Knight Returns for Batman. 

The definitive story for a comic book character is whatever story you find speaks to you the strongest. That’s Knightfall for me when it comes to Batman, not the best-written Batman story, but the one that, when I was a kid, informed me on how relentless Batman can be and how he will eventually break. For Superman, I think The Death & Return storyline is definitive. Once again, not the best written yet. Using the four stand-in Supermen helped me understand what Superman is and isn’t. When it comes to Morrison, I find something like their run on JLA or Seven Soldiers to be definitive for me. These comics helped me understand the type of storyteller Morrison is, and they played better to the writer’s strengths.

I don’t mind that this will apparently serve as inspiration for James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy film. He will, of course, take full dramatic license, and that’s what he should do. None of these stories are holy; they are play-doh and should be shaped and reshaped based on an artist’s perspective. Some of them will click with me, some won’t, and the ones I like the best will always be waiting for me to revisit them. The need to label things as “the greatest of all time” is so silly to me because time hasn’t ended. Better things may come, and we can always return to what we love the most anyway.