expatNERD

Category: Blog

  • The Death of Superman

    The Death of Superman

    With the new Superman movie pretty much around the corner, I thought I would do some Superman centric recommendations.

    First up, is what I consider to probably be one of the best Superman storylines of all time: The Death of Superman.

    This one gets overlooked because when we talk about the Death of Superman, we then talk about the insane hype around it, as well as the comic book crash that occurred shortly thereafter. But let that not deter you, because when you get into this thing, it is an incredible story that is absolutely action packed.

    And when you look inside, every artist, and I do mean EVERY artist was flexing hard. Jon Bogdanove, inked by Dennis Janke; Dan Jurgen, inked by Rick Burchett (on Justice League America) and inked by Brett Breeding (on Superman); Tom Grummett inked by Doug Hazlewood; Jackson Guice inked by Denis Rodier. The whole thing is incredibly beautiful.

    And even though it is a Superman centric title and probably the most famous Superman events of all time, the impact of this would not have been possible without the other super-heroes who make an apperance.

    Doomsday basically destroys Justice League International. In particular he absolutely pummels Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, and Blue Beetle. It was the latter that made my heart skip a beat when I read it for the first time.

    With Doomsday wiping out the Justice League, you know he was a threat. And each artist could depict those epic punches and hits that were thrown by Superman and Doomsday. Jurgens made the windows on the Daily Planet shatter in the concluding issue, Superman #75. And I always cry when I reach the last page. Seriously. Every. Single. Time. This thing brought everyone’s A-game and it still holds up.

    As of today you can find literally thousands of iterations of this. The best way of course is to collect all 8 issues that also crossed over in Justice League America at the time. But you can also find tons of collected versions in both trade paperback and hardcover format.

    Seriously, I love this epic event and so far, in my honest opinion, it has yet to be faithfully adopted into television, movie, or video form.

    Tschüss,

    Franka

  • Captain America Omnibus Vol. 3

    This week’s recommendation is Captain America Omnibus Vol. 3, the big one when Steve Englehart jumped on and redefined Captain America to basically the iteration we have now. He contributed quite a few ‘forwards’ that were first printed in the Marvel Masterworks edition. But to sum it up, the sales for Cap’s mag were low at the time and Steve was tasked by Roy Thomas to bring them up. If he didn’t, then he was fired.

    So what did he do?

    For starters, the stories in the Omnibus run between the years 1972 – 1975. Americans were very much against the Vietnam war and since Captain America symbolized America, Cap was at odds with Marvel’s readership. Then Watergate happened, which was a time of Richard Nixon who was a very aggressive President and challenged US systems of government.

    Sound familiar?

    The result was that Englehart owned the situation and decided to bring Cap directly in conflict with the government. Cap does a whole lot of soul searching, continually analyzes his relationship with both Falcon and Sharon Carter, and basically tries to figure out who he is and what place he has in the world. Which was also what the readers were doing at the time.

    The result is an incredible run that is not only thought provoking but also very relevant for today. On one hand, it’s refreshing to see the creatives grappling with something that feels very familiar, while on the other it’s very frustrating because you wonder just how far we have come since then.

    And of course what really makes this Omnibus pop is we get Sal Buscema’s art almost the entire time. He had such a good handle on Cap and this whole Omnibus just rocks. Sal could really ratch up the action but also create those quiet moments as well as portray the inner turmoil that Cap experienced throughout. The art alone is definitely worth the price of admission. As a tribute to Sal Buscema, I created the above image that is directly taken from Captain America #156 right in the art-style of expatNERD.

    Tschüss,

    Franka