DC Round-Up: ABSOLUTE SUPERMAN #1 has now landed

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THIS WEEK: Absolute Superman #1 crashes into shops, marking the full trinity for the publishers new line of Absolute books. Plus, we have our usual round-up of blurbs about other DC books hitting shops!

Absolute Superman #1

Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Rafa Sandoval
Colorist: Ulises Arreola
Letterer: Becca Carey

This week we get Absolute Superman #1, which was preceded by Absolute Batman and Absolute Wonder Woman last month. In some ways, I think this comic has the hardest job of any of DC’s trinity. While there’s not (to my knowledge) a publicly-stated mission for these Absolute books, it certainly feels like updating character origins is part of their reason for being. Batman, I think, does this really ingeniously, having Thomas Wayne be a public school teacher who is killed in a mass shooting on field trip. Wonder Woman, meanwhile, has to me always had a less pristine origin than the other two in the Trinity (with the subversive behind-the-scenes creation story feeling like the true origin of the character, but that’s a conversation for another time…), making it easier to do new things with her beginnings.

Superman, however, has an origin that has been revisited and tweaked several times with varying levels of success, perhaps even more than Batman. Or at least that’s the way it seems to me. I feel as if to really standout with your Superman origin redux, there’s a higher bar. The tendency is often to make Superman evil (yawn) or put him in a hoodie (I’m okay with that). Absolute Superman #1 does the latter, and works hard to explain why Superman is in that hoodie, tying it all intricately to Krypton in a way that I liked quite a bit (more on that below).

And I think Krypton is the most interesting part of this first issue. I’m specifically interested in the way this comic imagines Krypton as a hyper-classist society. This subtext has maybe always been there, but here it’s tied right to the essence of the character. On this Krypton, Superman’s parents are in the worker class, because one of them dared to suggest the government should spend more on space exploration and the other made public comments about Kryptonian society being environmentally reckless.

For this, they are consigned to being not just laborers, but kindly farmers, the way Superman’s adoptive parents are portrayed in the vast majority of other Superman origins. They are oppressed, and it fuels their desire to help and contribute. The book really establishes this new take on Superman as being overtly pro-labor, which is both timely and also in keeping with the earliest depictions of Superman in the 1930s. This is a big part of why I enjoyed Absolute Superman #1.

There’s more to this reimagining than that, of course. Superman spent more years on his home planet in this book, to the point he surely remembers it. He also has living armor that talks to him. And the Kent Farm does not seem to be part of his origin, instead it has been ravaged by a possibly-galactic evil corporation that is abusing workers and keeping them reigned in with some kind of cosmic tech. I’ll bet you that said corporation is part of what happened on Krypton, too, because my money is definitely on profiteering being the big bad of this run, or at least of this first story arc.

Our new Superman here is using his powers to do the laborers’ work for them, so they stay safe and are not exploited. Trouble (and the usual superhero fisticuffs) come when doing this angers the private security of the corporation enough that they start beating on workers. Those are the most important strokes of this first issue.

Overall, I think it’s a great start. It’s not the conversation piece necessarily that Absolute Batman #1 was, and it doesn’t have the bold artwork that Absolute Wonder Woman #1 did. The art is quite good — credit to artist Daniel Sampere and colorist Ulises Arreola — but it’s more traditional than either of the other Absolute books. That’s fine, and you could certainly argue that befits the character. And, again, it’s still a great-looking comic.

Jason Aaron’s script is also strong, with one especially clever idea. See, being part of the laborer class is sort of branded on you with — you guessed it — the Superman S. Personally, I’ve never really felt strongly about that S standing for anything other than just ‘super’, but this won me over by being A. clever and B. inextricably linked to Superman’s mission. It was the origin of his shirt AND his reason for wearing it on his new planet.

The choice I took a little issue with here was affiliating Lois Lane with the evil corporation. Now, Lois only appears on two pages of this first issue, so I’m willing to hear them out with this (and hope for some surprises), but if they’ve essentially made Lois into a violent corporate cop, that feels to me like an abdication of finding a new, modern take on her role as a journalist for 2024. It’s definitely not easy to square being a newspaper reporter up with the world these days, but I’d have liked to see a take on that woven into what is otherwise a very interesting new interpretation of so much of Superman’s origin story.

But there will be plenty of time to win me over on that point in the issues ahead, which I will most certainly be reading.

The Round-Up

First things first, are you reading Plastic Man No More? You should be. I talked about this week’s third issue yesterday in my Top Comics to Buy column.
One of my favorite books this week was Batgirl #1 by writer Tate Brombal, artist Takeshi Miyazawa, colorist Mike Spicer, and letterer Tom Napolitano. I’ll be succinct like Cassandra Cain herself … do you want to see Cassandra Cain as Batgirl karate fighting ninjas while bantering through her complex relationship with her mother? Hell yeah you do, and that’s what the start of this new run delivers.
Another highlight of the week was Green Arrow 2024 Annual #1. This issue wraps up the run by writer Joshua Williamson and artist Sean Izaakse, while also featuring art by Amancay Nahuelpan, colors by Romulo Fajardo Jr., and letterer Troy Peteri. But this is a fun single issue comic even if you hadn’t read the entirety of the run. It’s a story told through the various eras of Green Arrow, unified by a sweet future-facing frame, and a single villain that has eluded Oliver Queen over the years, in between his more noteworthy eras and adventures. It does a nice job of bouncing between the previous eras long-time readers know, without that ever feeling gratuitous. And in that way it’s also a fitting capstone for this run. This run felt to me like the creative team set out with a mission of re-assembling the large cast of Green Arrow characters over the years without it feeling rushed or forced — and then they did just that. Good stuff all around.
Just a quick note but Poison Ivy #27 is another excellent issue in what is the best long run at DC. I’m so impressed that this run has found enough commercial success to keep going while also keeping its creative team intact (writer G. Willow Wilson, artist Marcio Takara, colorist Arif Prianto, and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou). If you’ve read this deep into a superhero publisher-specific column, you probably already know how rare a long run on a non-marquee character with an intact creative team is these days. But I think it bears typing out all the same. We should appreciate what we’re getting with this run.
Finally, I didn’t know what to make of JSA #1 this week, which felt to me like unfocused continuity soup. I know these are convoluted characters within continuity, but also was hoping a new #1 might be a little friendlier to understanding them better. Maybe the full story arc will do that a little better. This was was written by Jeff Lemire, with art by Diego Olortegui, colors by Luis Guerrero, and letters by Steve Wands.