Absolute All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison

It’s not an accident that Calvin Ellis appeared in this volume of Action Comics (and it’s not an accident that he’s black, either): Morrison made a point of talking about how the young Superman of the New 52 was a throwback to his earlier days, hearkening back to the Depression-era Superman who fought inequality and corruption more than he fought Lex Luthor. Throughout his story, especially read like this, he uses alternate Supermen to illuminate specific aspects of the character, and Action Comics #9 is about Superman the superhero and science hero. This isn’t a bug of Morrison’s work: it’s the entire point of it. So of course it uses not Kal-El/Clark Kent, the gentle Kansas farmboy, but Kalel/Calvin Ellis, President Superman of Earth-23. We start super out of order with arguably the second best issue of any Superman comic Grant Morrison has written, because it is in large part a statement of purpose about Superman. This is the most convoluted middle finger to Man of Steelever written, and it took 20 years to get there.Ĭlick the orange links to buy the books on Amazon. So I threw my “one trade at a time” idea out and chopped it up to try and see if I couldn’t help articulate that point. But as I went along, it struck me: The Multiversity is essential to understanding what Morrison is trying to say with Superman, and a more cynical person might even see it as criticism of the way other divisions are handling the character. In that time, he told, out of order, a generational story about Superman: in Action Comics, the flagship Superman book after the New 52 relaunch, Morrison told “the first Superman story ” JLAand Final Crisis: Superman Beyond told of his middle years and All-Star Superman was designed to be “the last Superman story ever.”ĭoing that, The Multiversity came last: I had an eye towards writing this up as a suggested reading order for new Superman fans, and in an effort to be as new reader friendly as possible, I was trying to avoid jumping back and forth, one issue at a time, between multiple collected editions. The story Morrison told with Superman is far more intricate than the 12 issues of All-Star: he’s been working with Superman in one way or another for the better part of 20 years, going back to his Justice League relaunch in the ‘90s that first brought together DC’s “big guns:” Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Martian Manhunter.

Grant Morrison’s All Star Superman is routinely cited as one of the greatest Superman stories ever told, and after reading about a Superman sequel where the director feels it’s important to make Batman the one founding the Justice League, I felt like it was worth going back to someone whose vision of the character is more appealing to me.

Absolute All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison