After Awesome Part 4: All-Star Superman and the Fortress of Solidarity

(Welcome to After Awesome, where I take a look at all the subsequent series having to do with the characters from Moore's Awesome Universe.)

Something a little different this time. This doesn't have as much to do with Moore or the characters from the Awesome Universe. Instead, we get a different look at what inspired Moore from the beginning.

In the long gap between Supreme: The Return #6 and Supreme #63, a new retro-inspired Superman story was published to great fanfare. If Supreme was how DC Comics should be doing Superman stories in the late 1990s, DC Comics figured out how they should be doing Superman in the mid-2000s with Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman. Existing outside the established continuity (does DC have such a thing?), Morrison used elements of the golden-age, silver-age and modern Superman. As he said, he planned to "strip down the Man of Steel to his timeless, essential elements."

For 12 issues, released sporadically between 2005 and 2008, Morrison's Superman confronted his mortality as Lex Luther successfully used the sun to overcharge Superman to the point that his body can't handle it. However, in the meantime, Superman has various standalone adventures with characters from different points in Superman's publishing history. But they pay no allegiance to previous continuity.

Ultimately (spoilers) Superman defeats Luthor and flies into the sun to work on repairing it from within from the damage Luthor did to it, becoming a true all-star Superman (end spoilers).

Since it was published, fans have compared it to Moore's timeless take on Superman in Supreme. Then they get into the tangled relationship between Moore and Morrison, debate who had the idea first, who stole what from whom and basically pick sides. And that's a shame because they both have different strengths.

You already know that I think Supreme is one of Moore's best works and deserves to be held in higher esteem, so let's take a look at Morrison's take here.

I haven't read enough of Morrison's other works to know if his storytelling style in All-Star Superman is significantly different from all of his stories, but here it is very stylized with an overdose of whimsy. It almost feels like the comic version of a Wes Anderson movie. Too often, that style gets in the way of standard storytelling, making it hard for me to follow exactly what's happening.

For example, in issue 9, Superman is fighting Bar-El and Lilo, two of the last survivors of Krypton, who have come to the Earth in Superman's prolonged absence and strive to remake the Earth in Krypton's image. They're smug and aggravating, perfect foils for the modest Superman.

 

 

After more fighting, as things look at their worst for Superman, completely randomly, without any setup, the Kryptonians' powers fade:

 

   

Morrison creates a random Deus Ex Machina to let Superman win. It's so cheap and unearned. It's weird because this is storytelling 101 that Morrison is getting wrong. It almost seems as though there's a panel or a page missing that makes everything click into place. And that's a shame because Morrison gets so many little details so wonderfully right. 

Perhaps the best detail is how Morrison and his artist, Frank Quietly, present Clark Kent so perfectly. Quietly shifts Superman's posture to create a lumpy Kent, a large midwestern boy too big for the little boxes of Metropolis.

 

And if Kent is awkward and shuffling, it's all a wonderful act that allows Kent to save the day without anyone knowing:

 

I could have read 12 issues of just Kent saving people with no one noticing, it's so good.

There's also Superman's "pal" Jimmy Olsen. He's smart and capable, nerdy but cool. It's another amazing bit of characterization, getting a character so easy to get wrong so right. One of the more fun issues is following Olsen as he does his "I was a XXXX" columns, basically willing to do anything for a story.

For one column, he becomes director of P.R.O.J.E.C.T., a scientific community on the moon designed to pioneering research. When Superman gets infected by black kryptonite, it's up to Olsen to save the world.

 

  

 

 

It's wonderful the way Morrison uses the idea of Doomsday without the aggravating history that goes with it, but the storytelling is problematic again. So did Superman just wear out? Did the black Kryptonite just fade away? Did I miss a page? Seriously, how hard is it to write so that readers can put together for themselves what is happening and why?   

Even as Morrison gets these characters right, his Lois Lane is pretty bland and doesn't stand out and his Lex Luthor is too quirky to take seriously. 

 

And when Superman, as Clark Kent, has to rescue Luthor during a prison riot, it just diminishes the character further:

 

By undermining the character's basic intelligence and common sense, he makes Luthor too ineffectual. Luthor never feels like a threat. He never feels like a menace that Superman should fear.

But the bigger problem is how Morrison treats Luthor's worldview, especially when it comes to Superman.

 

The basic idea of Luthor is complicated. At his most compelling, he should have a sympathetic view that Superman's genius and abilities are preventing humanity from developing further. He should be an Ayn Rand style persona, furthering humanity even as he doesn't care about the individuals within humanity. But Morrison has no interest in that. The most we ever get is the page above with some lukewarm bit of dialog saying that Lex should have been working for humanity all along. 

But was that really ever a question? Wouldn't it have been more interesting if we could have seen how Lex thought he was saving the planet and maybe there was a core of truth there? Not in Morrison's take, which makes Lex too one-note. (Note, not that Darius Dax is any better. Neither series establishes very compelling villains, but Moore doesn't even try. At least Dax comes across as menacing, especially when his Judy Jordan trap springs shut.)

I could go on, but you get the point. All-Star Superman is a wonderful, flawed, beautiful, aggravating take on Superman.

So how does it compare to Supreme? Obviously I'm biased, but while both series pick and choose what bits of Superman lore to use, Moore grounds his in history, having the past interact with the present, educating the reader on Superman and comics history even as it advances the Supreme plot. That's something well beyond All-Star Superman's reach. All-Star Superman has no greater aspirations than to be a great Superman story. 

But Moore, in Supreme, even gets the basic storytelling right. Think about how well Moore handled the complicated time-travel bits building up and through issue #52B. It was easy to understand and allowed readers to put together what was happening without being confusing.

Compare that to how Morrison wrapped up his series. In his, Superman died, went to a Krypton that was no more and then came back from the dead with no explanation. It makes no sense whatsoever, but as it's pretty to look at, who cares.

The art is certainly better in All-Star Superman, though it's not as one-sided an argument as it seems at first, considering the amazing art Rick Veitch provided throughout the series. Veitch has the harder task of imitating art from various points in comic history and to make it all work together. And while the modern art is problematic, J. Morrigan and Chris Sprouse provided some short but beautiful bursts of art that can stand alongside Moore's writing.

But maybe comparing All-Star Superman to Supreme is the wrong idea. All-Star Superman is mainly concerned with the impending death of Superman. So maybe Supreme is the wrong Alan Moore Superman story to compare it to. Maybe the better comparison is to Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

As I said a long time back, I truly think Whatever Happened was a tremendous misfire. It was cynical and gory. Wouldn't it be better to wrap up Superman with a story of wonder and whimsy? Shouldn't Superman's end feel heroic? In that comparison, I'd take All-Star Superman any day of the week.

So even though I obviously think Supreme is the far better series, I enjoyed All-Star Superman and am glad I read it. It's far and away better than most other takes on Superman and something more Superman writers should strive to aspire to. If DC would allow more writers to take on Superman with the same sense of joy and wonder and whimsy, wouldn't comics be better off?

Here's another interesting piece from Superman that may have been more directly inspired from Supreme, the Fortress of Solidarity (I learned of this from Greg Williams's amazing The Ivory Icon Informer website). In Superman 708, J. Michael Straczynski wrote the following:

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

I hope that was homage because otherwise that was a major swipe! It looks like the Fortress of Solidarity wasn't ever mentioned again, which might be for the best.

Speaking of making things for the best, would Youngblood comics be better off with a return to Image? We'll find out next time.