normalman 40th Anniversary Omnibus

normalman (Single Issues) #1-15

by Jim Valentino

Superman in reverse!

Rocketed into space by his junior CPA father, who was convinced his home world was going to explode (it didn’t). He landed on the planet LEVRAM (read it backwards) where everyone, except him, had super-powers! Making him the world’s only normal man. Befriended by the guileless, yet brainless CAPTAIN EVERYTHING normalman’s only goal in life is to escape this mad world!

Collects normalman #1-12, normalman annual #1, normalman-Megaton Man Special, normalman 20th Anniversary Special, Journey #13, material from Cerebus #56-57, AV in 3-D #1, Epic Lite #1 plus extras.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

432 pages, Hardcover

First published July 19, 2007

About the author

Jim Valentino is an American writer, penciler, editor and publisher of comic books. He is a co-founder of Image Comics and served as the company's publisher from 1999-2004. Jim created such diverse series as normalman, A Touch of Silver, Vignettes and ShadowHawk. He also wrote and drew Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel Comcs.

He currently heads his own imprint at Image called Shadowline which publishes Rat Queens, Faster Than Light, Jimmie Robinson, Ted McKeever and more.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read this as a twenty something

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well this takes me back. Brilliant but dated. More the first than the latter.

[RunningRed NightBringer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The complete collection of Valentino's normalman comics (lowercase deliberate).

normalman's father was a CPA who thought their home planet of Arnold was going to explode so he put his son in a rocket and sent him into space. After drifting for twenty years, the rocket lands on Levram, a planet where everyone has super powers, except normalman. Oh, and Arnold never exploded. His dad was an accountant, not a scientist. norm just wants to get off this planet of mutjobs and return to Arnold but ends up in various adventures and setbacks.

The whole thing is a parody of comic book cliches and tropes and never had a fourth wall. It started in the 80s so some of the references may be dated a confusing to readers who aren't familiar with a lot of comic book lore of the last couple of decades.

I only gave it 4 stars cause some of the bits felt like they went on a little too long, like early Family Guy jokes.

Still, it's a fun read, if you like self-aware meta comics.

[Jerry Chavis · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read through hundreds of comic books. I've read through thousands of pages. Out of all the books that I've ever read through, this book is by FAR the worst book that I have ever read in terms of proofreading. The story is all right but there were grammatical errors, incorrect homonyms, misspellings and many more problems for almost every single page. I couldn't even finish the book, it was so bad. If you don't know how to spell and you also don't have a proper understanding of the English language, this book would be perfect for you. Otherwise, don't buy this book. The constant errors and typos just kept taking me out of the story. Avoid at all costs