For a change of pace...

I finished reading Superman: Birthright the other day and felt the need to write up a review. For those who don’t know, Birthright was an attempt to redo (or reboot) Superman’s origin. Part of the reasoning was to bring in elements from the very popular Smallville TV series into the current Superman mythos.

This isn’t the first time that Superman’s origin has been changed (or rebooted). The first time was in the late 1950’s, early 1960’s when at the beginning of what would become known as the Silver Age of Comics. The second and possibly most notable was the Man of Steel series published in 1986. This series was to be Superman’s new origin after Crisis on Infinite Earths (a series DC used to redo and simplify their universe). This series made some changes to the some standard elements of the Superman mythos but overall was a very good story and a great place for Superman to start anew.

Birthright is a 12 issue series that once again attempted to reboot Superman’s origins. This time they returned some of the traditional Superman mythos elements that we removed from MOS. The problem with Birthright is that the story was not necessary and only makes the continuity of the entire DC Universe more confusing. While the story itself is good as a stand alone of “what if” type of story, it does not hold up as Superman’s origin.


The Good
1) Mark Waid is an excellent writer and is great about getting into the heads of the characters he is writing.

2) Birthright tries to cover some time is Superman’s life that we haven’t seen before. Primarily the time after high school / college and before Clark becomes Superman.

3) Some of the things that scared me (Krypton attacks) ended up being kind of cool.

4) The overall story was fun to read and if it looked upon as a stand alone story is great, but as a reboot or recon of the Superman origin it is bad.


The Bad
1) The people of Metropolis act like they have never seen a super-hero before. Maybe I’m crazy but wasn’t Allan Scott from Metropolis?

2) The time line. Birthright is set in a post 9/11 world. This is physically impossible without completely rebooting the entire DCU. Here is a perfect example: Superman played a big part in COIE which for us (the reader) was 20 years ago and for them (the DCU characters) was somewhere between 10 – 20 years ago. Superman was a veteran super-hero during COIE. This makes Birthright’s placement in time impossible.

3) I understand that someone at DC thought it would be a good idea to take elements of the Smallville TV series (which is excellent) and integrate them into the comic but they were wrong. DC didn’t change Superman’s origin in 1978 after Superman The Movie was released did they? No, because it wasn’t necessary. Any interpretation of a comic book onto the big or small screen has nothing to do with the specifics of the current (or past) incarnations of the comic. They are different people’s interpretations of the stories and should stand alone.

4) Lex Luthor. Lex in Smallville = amazing. Lex in Birthright = stupid. Not only did they jack up Lex’s time line with Birthright, they also changed his post-COIE personality.

The Ugly
1) The artwork is TERRIBLE!


Other Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_Birthright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_of_Steel
http://www.dccomics.com/secret_files/pdfs/superman.pdf
http://www.dccomics.com/secret_files/
http://www.supermanhomepage.com/comics/comics.php?topic=articles/birthright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Age_of_Comic_Books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Age_of_Comic_Books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Comic_Books
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_on_Infinite_Earths
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elseworlds