I love Superman as much as anyone and hey I'm open to new versions of the character, so if a new Superman origin story has to happen in today's world with a twentyish Clark Kent moving out of small town Smallville to big town Metropolis, I'll go along for the ride. What people said to me about it was that this was an "emo" Superman but I didn't see that here. Sure Clark is 20 and wears a hoodie but so what? That doesn't make him emo.

No, what made me dislike this book was how booooring the story More...

This is a focus on Super Boy right after he leaves to “find himself” at Metropolis. He has a lot of options with his knowledge and isn't really interested in being any type of superhero. However, cataclysmic circumstances force him to become one and that really isn't much of a surprise so not a spoiler, people.

The story had its moment but it was a bit too predictable for my tastes and didn't have any interesting small moments. The artwork was absolutely beautiful and primarily done by Shane Davi More...

There are a lot of reboot origin stories of well-known superheroes both in the Marvel and DC camp. Some are faithful to the canon, some veer way off. Superman: Earth One is somewhere in between.

The premise:
The first part deals with a young Clark Kent looking for a job...looking for his identity..."My place in this world" crap—it's not the central theme that's crappy, it's how it developed that was. Somehow after all these superhero remakes both in comics and the movies, you begin to realize that More...

Folk, I give you Emo-man! Okay, not quite, but still. This is one in a countless number of retellings of Superman's origin story, although this one is much more grounded in modern reality than some previous attempts. The end result is a Superman story that we know, albeit with a Kal-El who is somewhere in between Mary Sue and Moping Teenager. That said, it's not actually horrible. Allow me to explain:

Straczynski is to be credited with writing the first Superman that I actually wanted to get to k More...

Any regular reader of DC titles will have seen the 'preview' for Superman Earth One Vol 2 in just about every title this month (other than the Before Watchmen titles) The first time I saw it I found it striking and artistic. By the time I was on my sixth dose of it I had met my quota of Superman for the year. With all this advertising it's no wonder my local Forbidden Planet store had a stack of the books on the shelf this morning.

Just like the Batman Earth One book it's high quality hard back g More...

Giving it 5 stars makes it seem equal, on my lists with DC: The New Frontier, Vol. 1, It's a Bird..., and Thor, Vol. 1. I don't know if that is accurate, but I think it's better than 4 stars, so there it is. Maybe it's as good as Thor, but it's just not in the same class as Bird and New Frontier. (Apparently I really like Straczynski.)

I like how this dealt with the becoming of superman and the acceptance that Clark has to come to for Superman to be. His shot at belonging, his chance to not have More...

I’m nearly at a loss for words.

I recently finished reading the trade paperback for Superman: Earth One and without a doubt, it’s one of the best Superman comics I’ve read in a LOOONG time. Regular followers of my blog will recall my prior complaints about Action Comics Vol 2 and how it had essentially “dumbed down” the story behind the man of steel; force-feeding insincere and contrived dialogue that just didn’t fit. Earth One is the complete opposite. It stands on it’s own as a near-perfect exa More...

Now this was an interesting idea. JMS present another Superman Origin story which I believe is the 3rd or 4th in the last 20 years. But the difference is that this one is not used for the mainstream Superman. This is suppose to be a different Superman then we know. And that is. This used elements of angsty Clark from Smallville, and while I hate that show with a passion, that is not a bad thing. It makes more sense for Superman not to know his place in the world when he is young and new to Metro More...

Superman: Earth One is roughly the 5000th version of Superman's origin that I have read. I put off checking this one out for quite some time because of the emo, Twilight-esque vibe I got from the cover ("Let's give Superman a hoodie! Kids today love hoodies!!"). The good news is the book isn't really as "emo" as I expected, the bad news is it's still really not all that engaging, either. It's another attempt at introspective-Superman, which seems to be all the rage these days (Superman Returns d More...

Don't listen to the reviews on this one. It's not terrible. From what I'd gathered, Straczynski and crew presented some emo-modernistic version of Superman with anger problems. There's nothing of the sort. Deep down there's not much different about our beloved Man of Steel. The changes to character and the origin story itself is very minor, with one significant change, which I enjoyed to tell the truth.

Clark Kent is newly arrived in Metropolis and looking for a job - a means to strike it out on More...

A fine update of the Superman mythos. But when I say Fine, I mean just that: fine. Superman: Earth One reads better than your ordinary superhero comic- better pacing, more engaging characters- but its action scenes are still tremendously cluttered and its villain still fundamentally generic. The opportunity to recreate the Superman legend for the 21st century *ought* to call on a creator's highest ideology, and instead JMS gives us a played out, largely predictable take on the Man of Steel.

What More...

Superman, the original and seminal superhero, has undergone a lot of reboots ever since he leaped off the pages of Action Comics number one in 1938. It is understandable that he needs to be re-imagined every time a new generation of comic book readers comes of age. Especially, the generation whose first exposure of the character came from the television show Smallville.

This project to revitalize the character had a lot going for it. It had a capable writer and artist team with proven track recor More...

A fun quick read. I'm not a big Superman fan, but I do like J. Michael Straczynski work. Having read his entire run on Spider-man and watching all of Babylon 5, I decide to give this a read. As graphic novels go, it was fine. The art is beautiful. The story is easy to follow. The thing is, it not really that new. It's the story of how Clark Kent becomes Superman. If you've read the comics there are like ten to twenty different retellings of this story. I could be wrong, there might be even more More...

After all that I'd heard about this book from friends and fellow Superman fans, I really was reluctant to give it a shot. I'm glad I got over that. Straczynski has taken a story I never tire of, the origin of Superman, and done some intriguing things with it. Clark's path to his choice of career, the origin of the "S" symbol, and the cause of Krypton's destruction are all very different than they ever were before. But they are different in ways that actually work, and do not feel forced.
In the More...

Straczynski did a fabulous job taking a classic idea of "what do I do with my talent?" and applying it to someone who is constantly having to consider the consequences of his actions--with respect to his own outward appearance of success, to the safety/security of his family, to the feeding of his vanity, his ego, or his altruism. The artwork by Shane Davis is beautiful. One thing stood out -- the cool re-vamp of Jimmy Olsen (BTW, 'olsun' has meaning in Turkish) who is questioned by an alien pre More...

JMS has breathed new life into the Original Graphic Novel (OGN) market with this refreshing take on the man of steel on the new Earth One in this post-Infinite Crisis DC Universe. That is not to say that I would not have enjoyed this story if it was told in a four part issue mini series, but in this age of digital comics, it's refreshing to see one of the "Big Two" attempt to bring some of the bookstore audience into comics.

I'm also unconvinced that this was the right story to bring new readers More...

Although I was hoping for something more epic in scale both in its narrative prose as well as visually, Superman: Earth One is decent retelling – or updating, rather – of the Superman origin mythos. Straczynski ditches some elements that have become canonic since John Byrne’s reworking of the Man of Steel’s mythos back in the mid-80s. For instance, he removes Jonathan Kent from the picture, leaving Clark with only a mother by the time he moves to Metropolis. Personally, I’ve always liked that ve More...

I've been around long enough to see a half-dozen re-boots and upgrades of the Superman origin story, from John Byrne's mythos-heavy updating in the 1980's to the tedious cock-tease of "Smallville." This is the latest entry in the "let's make Superman relevant again" sweepstakes, and is not half-bad, as these things go. Straczynski retains enough elements of the classic origin story to please old-timers like me (Martha Kent advising the young Clark, Perry White's outbursts, a general sense of do- More...

Let's be totally clear here: I am a HUGE Superman nerd. I'll read/watch anything with that shield on it. So when DC came out with a new graphic novel written by J. Michael Straczynski that let him start over from scratch, I was all over it.

This book is essentially an origin story. And in that respect, it's not bad. Straczynski picks and chooses from various depictions of Superman that we've all seen before. You'll recognize events from the comics and the Richard Donner movies here, but it's all More...

Well, J. Michael Straczynski is certainly better a writing Superman than he is at writing Wonder Woman. Advertised as "the Superman for the Twilight generation", I had definitely lowered my initial expectations, but this wasn't bad. Nowhere near as good as All-Star Superman, but then again, I think it would be hard to top that one.

Here, you have Clark Kent arriving in Metropolis. He's a young man trying to figure out what to do with his life - and he could literally do *anything*. Become a foot More...

I don’t usually discuss pricing, but twenty bucks for little over a hundred pages is outrageous. There is nothing about this story that warrants premium pricing. That’s half the price of most thin paper trades, and you’re better served picking up Straczynski’s Grounded trade on Superman itself in a couple months. That tale is novel not by rebooting the character, but giving him the novel premise of not flying - he'll walk amongst us for a month, see what we see, and be forced to deal with conseq More...

*Yawn* Here's yet another "re-imagining" of an established superhero. You know what I mean. DC (or Marvel) fears that their heroes are too continuity-laden for new readers to want to pick up on, and so decide to give them a restart while jettisoning decades of baggage. In theory, this can be a good thing. Marvel has done a great job with its Ultimate line, which uses this approach, especially with Ultimate Spider-Man and The Ultimates (read Avengers). The Marvel Ultimate line takes place in its More...

Everyone know Supes' origin. He's a icon. Hundreds of writers and artists have had their piece to add to the mythos. However, nobody writes Superman like J. Michael Straczynski, and Shane Davis' art is nothing short of amazing.

Now, this isn't necessarily the Superman that you're used to. This isn't the Superman who faces apocalyptic dangers with a silent, confident smile before wading into the fray and confronts New Gods before breakfast. Really, it's more about the man than the "super". This is More...

Library copy. Story was fine, although I had expected better due to the hype. I'd rank the the artwork so-so as a lot of it was noticably swiped imagery from other media. It seemed almost like half the book was drawn by someone's imagination, someone else, or was traced using a light board from TV/movie stills and celebrity magazines. Lois Lane was basically drawn to look like Deborah from Dexter. I had seen an actual Dexter photograph juxtasposed with a S.E.O. art panel on the internet (Bleedin More...

It's interesting, comic book writers never really seem to want to tell Batman's origin story. With the exception of Year One and a few other books, it seems everyone recognizes that the most interesting part of Batman's character occurs when he's well into his crimefighting career, so most of the good stories focus on a well-established Batman. Hell, before Batman Begins, even the movies largely ignored his origins.

Superman is another story. Almost every comic book writer seems to want to re-tel More...

This is a refreshing take on what I believe to be a tired and cliched character. Not since Kingdom Come and All Star Superman have I enjoyed a Supes title. All the little homages to iconic Superman ideals (the colors, the "S", quotes from the Reeve movies, the suit, etc.) was a nice treat. The only glaring omission I thought was truth, justice, and the well, you know it's not PC to say that anymore. However, Superman does share that he will stick by the country he was raised in.

Another interest More...