Will Eisner’s best moments showcase genuine empathy for people. In A Contract With God, we meet Mr. Scuggs, a mysterious building superintendent whom nobody knows, yet everybody has an opinion of. People regard him with fear and mistrust. With a single facial expression, Eisner allows us to see Mr. Scuggs as his tenants either cannot or don’t care to see. We also meet Frimme Hersh, who finds success as a business shark. Though Hersh has hardened his heart, there is a pervasive sense of yearning for something that he once renounced. These characters typify the book, which catalogues flawed things done by ordinary people who cannot be dismissed.

A Contract With God is frequently described as the first graphic novel*, which is misleading. In actuality, it is a collection of four short graphic stories. The first one, the titular “A Contract With God,” consumes a full third of the book. The page length is fitting enough; the story bears the hefty burden of depicting the life of Frimme Hersh, from childhood to death. In doing so, it strains even the generous page count that Eisner allots to it.

The heavy reliance upon third-person narration in “A Contract With God” might indicate a couple of things. First, the story is being briskly summarized to fit into a predetermined page length. It comes across as more of a yarn with accompanying illustrations than a complete comic. Secondly, this simply may not be the format best-suited to telling a story of this scope. It is difficult to span a man’s entire life in any fashion, let alone in the sparse, scattershot fashion seen here.

That issue aside, “A Contract With God” does contain a strong moment in which the character of Frimme Hersh renounces his faith, which is conveyed through a two-page physical transformation. It’s a strong visual idea that will hang like a specter over the subsequent stories. Eisner’s original preface to this book reveals the private, long-held grief that inspired “A Contract With God.” Hersh’s transformative moment is strong enough to earn that inspiration, even if the rest of the tale falls short.

There is a recurring theme of life-changing events, punctuated by one last ritualistic run-through of daily routine. Frimme Hersh says his prayers for the last time. In the next story, “The Super,” Mr. Scuggs shovels one more load of coal into the fire. It’s a classic literary move, but there is something vital in these moments. The characters understand the passing of their way of life. They do what they do for the last time, perhaps out of attachment, out of obligation, or as a symbol of burial. It’s not easily put into words, which is probably why Eisner didn’t.

In “The Street Singer,” Eisner ingeniously switches among different points of view. First, we get an omniscient account of street singers and their activities. From there, the story switches to the P.O.V. of a washed-up opera queen looking to reignite her career. Finally, it switches to that of the street singer himself. While not as emotionally involving as the other stories in this collection, “The Street Singer” almost functions as dark comedy. The climactic moment of the story centers around a tragicomic misunderstanding, rich with irony. The punchline is that the street singer, fond of the drink, gets kicked out of his favorite tavern.

The final story in the bunch is called “Cookalein.” It seems to be the most overtly autobiographical, and it is also perhaps the most illustrative of Eisner’s strengths and weaknesses. Until this point, the stories have toed the fine line between drama and melodrama. “Cookalein” crosses that line. Events occur that demand greater attention to complexity and nuance than is allowed here by the remaining space of the book. There is the sense that the story condenses events from several boyhood vacations into one, resulting in a greatest hits collection of mishaps and milestones. This kind of story is best dealt with in fine touches, rather than the broad strokes used here.

But even if the scope of the story escapes the storytelling, the characters are as vividly drawn as one could hope–in both senses of the phrase. The events do offer a glimpse into a way of life that is distinctly Depression-era, urban, and Jewish, which most readers will be obviously unfamiliar with. Here, Eisner is letting the audience in on the secret rituals of his upbringing. It’s his human touch that shields these stories from sentimentality and cliche.

The environments throughout, inspired by old NYC tenements, are presented impressionistically. Often, a patch of bare floorboards, a set of steps, or an arch of bricks stand in for the complete picture. Eisner’s art is not sloppy or lazy. Every partially (or completely) omitted background is calculated to represent the environment in effect, rather than in totality. A few key details present all the necessary information to evoke a feeling of being there, even if all the mundanities of the room are not accounted for. Make no mistake: this a forceful way of placing focus upon the characters at the center of the action. That said, the sense of environment is strong enough that completing the backgrounds might have done more harm than good.

As with all of Eisner’s work, the drawings are slightly cartoonier than one might expect from stories ostensibly grounded in reality. This aesthetic is a clever deception on Eisner’s part. Rather than put the stories at a distance, the theatrical gestures and exaggerated facial expressions have an immersive quality that captures the quirks of humanity through amplification. Drawn more subtly (or not at all), the visual action in the story might never achieve those human qualities. There are far too many comics with nominally realistic artwork, but which don’t achieve Eisner’s truth to life. Eisner’s faith was in the visual as the most character-expressive element of his stories.

As it happens with items of historical importance, A Contract With God’s reputation does not rest entirely upon the merits of its content. It is a strong book, and it would be unfair to judge it based purely on its place in history. Now that its epoch has passed and the newness of its ideas has worn off, it can be appreciated for what it is–not Eisner’s best work, but an original achievement in comic art. It goes without saying that it is necessary reading for any informed and literate reader of comics.

—

(*A Contract With God is allegedly the first-ever “graphic novel.” Eisner would later admit to using the term to court publishers, many of whom weren’t interested in comics. The etymology is quite simple. A graphic novel is novelistic storytelling carried out through images rather than text. As a collection of short stories loosely connected by common themes and environments, A Contract With God does not fit the bill. That’s not to say that Eisner was wrong, but “graphic novel” in this case applies only as a marketing tool for skeptical publishers. For the rest of us, a more accurate descriptor could be “graphic anthology,” or simply “comics.”)

It bugs me that, with a few exceptions aside, the humble critic has yet to come to comics. I’d like to see a greater appreciation for comics as both a craft and an art form. But even more so, I think that storytellers in comics sometimes need a good kick in the ass. Perhaps if that ball is going to get rolling, I’d better step up and figure out what I personally think is good and bad in the realm of comics. A list of principles—rules, if you will.

Be warned! At 2,441 words, this is going to be an epic length excursion into the guts of the comics medium. It will explore things that can be done to good effect. It will explore mistakes that are made all too often, sometimes by comics’ brightest stars. I really hope it will explore ways for writers and artists to achieve an improvement in their own work.

Prepare to become a better storyteller!

1. Choose your format wisely.

Is the finished artwork going to be on 6×9 paper? Horizontal 14×11 paper? A computer screen? Make sure that the needs of your story are in tune with the format you’re working in.

There is most definitely a common format, but by no means is it automatically the best for what you’re doing.

Don’t be afraid to experiment!

2. Sound in comics has severe limitations. Or, off-panel voices don’t work.

A dialogue balloon comes in from an unknown source beyond the edge of the panel. Is it a man’s voice? A woman’s voice? Is it coming from an old person or a young person? If it’s off-panel, who knows? Remember, the readers are supposed to be hearing this in their heads!

Never keep your audience from knowing what a voice should sound like. It might be mysterious, but it’s also cheating. Dialogue balloons stand in for real sound. If you can see the dialogue on the page, you should be able to “hear” it.

3. Time in comics has severe limitations. Or, one panel cannot represent multiple lengths of time.

Comics can’t outright show the passage of time, so be as careful as possible when implying it. If you have both an action sequence and a bunch of expositional dialogue to get through, find a better solution than just cramming them together.

Say that one of your characters is punching another character in the jaw. If the panel is supposed to be showing the hit, then the hit is controlling how long the panel lasts. If the panel is supposed to be showing dialogue, then the dialogue is controlling how long the panel lasts.

Of course, you see the problem. Punching is fairly instantaneous. Dialogue is not. They can’t be included in the same panel without screwing up the panel’s sense of duration. This can be thought of as the “Jeph Loeb makes superheroes talk too much while they fight” rule.

4. Use color with deliberate purpose, or not at all.

Color for the sake of color is a marketing tool at best, and an intrusion upon the visual design of the story at worst. Know why you’re using it.

Avoid the shiny, airbrushed, gradiated, heavily filtered coloring often seen in today’s mainstream comics. It’s sterile and artificial-looking. Colorists ought to be proud when their work looks like it came primarily from the hand of a human being, rather than a computer.

Don’t be afraid of black and white.

5. Don’t rely too heavily on text.

Let the readers discover your world visually. Let it unfold for them. It will be much more “real” than if it’s explained through captions.

Use subtext and physical action to hint at what your characters are thinking! Many comic book characters express themselves just by grimacing and balling up their fists. Real people have a much broader range of expression than that.

Don’t overload the page with text. It makes for an ugly page. Once upon a time, former DC Comics editor Mort Weisinger decided that 210 is the maximum number of words that one page can support. How he came up with that figure is a mystery to me, but it seems pretty spot-on.

6. Choose wisely, when to break from the panel you’re in and advance to the next one!

Tell your story in as few well-chosen, well-composed images as you can. Fragmented visuals are a sign that the author and artist are imposing too much of their own voice upon the material. Let the readers form their own experience, rather than forming it for them.

Give your readers enough detail to visualize the complete environment. A strong grasp of the geography (this word will pop up again in a little while) is essential for the reader to make visual sense of what’s going on.

More lines in your drawings do not mean more detail. This means you, Jim Lee!

7. Avoid talking heads.

If two characters are talking to each other, let them be seen together! Draw them in “two-shots,” and use as few panels as possible. If you find yourself needing a long chain of close-ups to get the whole conversation in, trim your dialogue first.

In fact, don’t use close-ups at all unless you need to reveal something in the character’s face. That’s what close-ups are for.

8. Work from the human level.

Don’t go for flashy visual angles unless they somehow make sense within the story. If your two characters are calmly dining in a restaurant, keep us in the room and keep us at eye level. Leave the fancy angles out of it.

9. Be mindful of the axis of action.

As I’ve said, your drawings should be creating a sense of geography—in other words, the physical space of the story—in the reader’s mind.

If the geography is going to make sense, the placement of characters and objects needs to be consistent. This is best accomplished by keeping them in the same left-to-right visual arrangement from panel to panel. Their positioning will feel much more consistent this way.

This visual arrangement is sacred! Stray from it only in two circumstances: one, the scene ends, or two, a new viewing angle has been clearly established.

10. When it comes to the era, keep it real.

Either tell the story here and now, or do good research to create the time and place that it does happen. Don’t use stereotypes or clichés to create the illusion of an exotic setting. That’s cheating.

11. When it comes to environments, continue to keep it real.

If a scene takes place in a bedroom, the bedroom should have the things that a real bedroom would have. The same goes for a kitchen, a living room, a dining hall, a snowy field, a desert, or a verdant forest.

If your environment has a foreign item in it—that is, anything that wouldn’t commonly be there—your story must include a plausible explanation for how it got there and why. A gun taped to the bottom of a table, a chest buried in the yard, or whatever.

This could even extend to special knowledge possessed by a character. Unless your characters are all-knowing and all-powerful, they should never miraculously be able pull the right item or right bit of information out of thin air in the nick of time.

12. If it looks like it violates the laws of physics, don’t use it.

If your character clearly kicks a ball forward in one panel and it is seen rocketing straight up into the sky in the next, something is wrong. If your character punches a boulder and the boulder reacts as though it’s made of rubber rather than stone, something is really wrong.

Get rid of this stuff. If your story depends on it in order to work, go back as many steps as it takes to fix it.

Of course, this assumes that your story’s universe is consistent with real world physics. If not, then any differences from reality must be carefully established early on. And, once established, your story must never stray from its own version of physics.

13. Come up with something better than a villain who exists solely to oppose the hero.

Unless you’re going to explore the hero’s grief when he realizes that his actions led directly to the existence of a violent monster—and trust me, it’s been done—you’re only going to make him look stupid, impotent, and irresponsible.

14. Avoid telling stories with “quote marks” around them.

The comics medium is so choked with parodies, alternative takes, ironic takes, and other post-modern dickery that the original stories are starting to lose out.

Learn to tell sincere, original stories first, because you need to know what something is before you can even attempt to subvert it. There’s a fine line between clever and obnoxious—and when the authors know and even enjoy what they’re playing with, it makes all the difference.

Note: “sincere” and “original” do not necessarily mean serious! There is such a thing as sincere comedy, just as there is such a thing as ironic tragedy.

15. Ambiguity is good. Deliberately confusing your audience is not.

Ambiguity means that there are a variety of valid, interesting ways that your story can be looked at. A muddled, nonsensical story doesn’t count as ambiguous. Not that meaning can’t be found in muddled nonsense, but in that case, the audience deserves the credit—not you.

16. Female wardrobe is not an opportunity to pander to young male readers.

I realize that mainstream comics are primarily read by teenage boys and adult men, and that most of those comics involve superheroes—and superheroines. If you insist on perpetuating the dominance that this genre unfairly has over all others, this rule is especially for you.

Please, please—at least pretend that your female characters are proud and emotionally secure when you’re designing their costumes. Also try to remember that while your female characters might be able to defy gravity, the costumes probably can’t.

While you’re at it, you might also pretend that your superheroine would probably opt for clothes that protect her skin, rather than expose as much of it as possible.

17. Don’t sanitize violence.

If you’re going to let your characters fight, then show what would happen if they fought. Blood. Broken bones. Severe wounds, perhaps. If the nature of your story doesn’t allow this, then it doesn’t allow the violence.

However, don’t amp up the violence to exaggerated levels, either. This isolates the reader with a layer of fantasy, which is its own sort of sanitation.

18. Storytelling is a moral activity.

Remember the thing about imposing your voice upon the readers’ experience? Your readers have a right to explore the images without you dragging them around with selective, constrictive page layouts. When in doubt, always err on the side of giving the readers more freedom.

How much you control the reader’s experience is a matter of story as well. Don’t be too restrictive in how the story can be judged, and do not, DO NOT impose your overarching interpretation upon the reader! Never be too on-the-nose with what you think it all means.

The amount of freedom you give to your readers, in any aspect of your comic, is an important moral decision.

19. Everything in your comic matters.

Every panel composition, every page layout, every character design, and every line of dialogue has its own little bit of influence upon how your story will come across. Be careful of your decisions!

The reader can and probably will notice careless decisions and overlooked mistakes. And even if they don’t, their experience of the work will still be negatively impacted. Assuming you’re good enough to weave a spell over your audience, it’s all too easy for that spell to be broken.

And finally, the big Kahuna…

20. Never use what is overused.

The following are signs that your story is on autopilot:
• Romantic complications that occur because one character cuts off the other’s explanation and nobody ever bothers to clear things up.
• Horror stories that only move forward because somebody does something unreasonably stupid.
• Superficial, unlikely action of any kind—weapons, murders, drugs, whatever. Most of us will never kill anybody, be murdered, or be involved in a shootout in a warehouse full of heroin. And yet, our lives certainly don’t lack stories that are worth telling.
• Directionless stories about quirky outsiders and their unlikely friendships.
• Revenge plots.
• Wealthy criminal masterminds who issue orders while sitting in the shadow of a really tall chair.
• Impossible-to-kill characters that fall down, apparently dead, but rise back to their feet after a moment. Or—for the Dragon Ball fans—characters that apparently die, but emerge unscathed from a cloud of dust and dirt.
• Common turns of phrase, especially in dialogue. (“I’m not a terrorist—I’m a patriot!” “She died of a broken heart.” “We’ll meet again, Spider-Man!”)
• Characters that are capable of coming up with a perfect Seinfeldian one-liner for any situation.
• Out-of-the-box slice-of-life woe-is-me self-indulgent masturbatory sub-cultural award-baiting psychosexual pseudo-intellectual coming-of-age generic pre-fab shopping-list anything.
• Stories in which the main problem is that the hero and the villain haven’t fought yet, and the solution is that they do.
• Gunfire scenes in which nobody hits anything or anyone unless it’s convenient to the plot. Also known as the Imperial Stormtrooper School of Marksmanship.
• Exotic, elaborate forms of assassination that could just as easily be accomplished with a single gunshot. Also known as the Dr. Evil School of Supervillainy.
• Final showdowns that occur in a factory with showers of sparks everywhere, or in a completely deserted area with lots of smashable scenery.
• Final showdowns that occur in densely populated areas, completely glossing over the high number of casualties that would necessarily occur.
• Really, any story in which the conflict is resolved through prolonged physical combat of any kind—fire arms, kung fu, whatever. If you’re such a great writer, is that the best you can do?

This is usually the part where you’d expect me to say that rules are meant to be broken, or something equally trite. But that’s not going to happen here. You may think you have an awesome reason to violate these principles. I assure you, though, that you do not. You need these limitations. They will give your stories a fighting chance at some kind of ingenuity.

Seriously, no excuses. Don’t phone it in. Don’t slack off. Don’t put your story on autopilot. Be a good storyteller.

I recently saw this question posted in (don’t judge me) the Internet Movie Database forums: Is it possible for a TV show to last without overturning its premise? The question was asked in reference to sci-fi and fantasy shows, but it applies to just about any kind of indefinitely long-running story. I will broaden the question: Is it possible for any long-running story to last without overturning its premise?

What’s a premise, in this context? The short answer is “what the story is about.” The premise of Smallville is that it’s about Clark Kent and Lex Luthor in their teen years, before they become superhero and supervillain, respectively. The premise of The Simpsons is that it’s a less fantastical, more dysfunctional look at the typical sitcom family. The premise of House, MD is that it’s a group of doctors who specialize in bizarre cases that nobody else can handle.

Let’s go for a more accurate definition. The premise is nothing more than the set of conditions, or limitations, that determines what a story is going to be about. And what it’s not going to be about, for that matter.

Example: Alec Holland is an experimental plant researcher in the bayous of Louisiana. One day, he becomes the victim of an act of sabotage. He mutates into the Swamp Thing, a man/plant hybrid monster, which must take revenge on the perpetrators and find a way to become human again.

Now, maybe there’s some other interesting stuff happening in Louisiana at the same time–political scandals, achievements in the arts, and so on–but that’s not in the story, because it falls outside of the conditions of the premise.

One condition of the premise is that Swamp Thing is trying to become human again. If he does, then his goal–the thing he wants, which drives him to do what he does–is met. There’s no more story. The main character is done. His character problem, the problem that falls within the conditions of the premise, has been solved.

Maybe he has other problems. Maybe Alec Holland has severe credit card debt, or a little cousin with autism. But that’s not in the story because it falls outside of the premise.

If Swamp Thing were a one-off story, like a novel or a movie, this would be no big deal. Assuming an optimistic ending, Swamp Thing would beat the bad guys, figure out how to become human again, and live happily ever after with the friends he meets along the way.

But Swamp Thing was an ongoing comic book series–to be continued forever, no end in sight.

Swamp Thing needs to become human again, or there’s no reason for the story to move. But if Swamp Thing solves this problem, the story ends and DC Comics is out of a monthly title. The premise, the set of conditions that determines what the story is about, has put the writers in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t position.

There are a couple solutions. One of them, typically employed on TV shows, is to gradually lessen the importance of the conditions and hope the audience doesn’t notice. The premise becomes broader, more inclusive, less distinct. The story becomes less specific, more directionless, more bloated, more meandering. Everything but the kitchen sink can be included, with hit-or-miss results. This happened in Swamp Thing for a while, causing a decline in the quality of the series. On the Simpsons, this approach produced the finest TV comedy of the ‘90s.

A riskier solution is to, in one swift motion of authorial godhood, abruptly destroy the premise and implement a new one. If it works, the story has a new lease on life. If not, the story is reduced to utter ridiculousness. This solution was successfully implemented in Swamp Thing, courtesy of a daring-but-then-unknown British gentleman by the name of Alan Moore. In just a couple of key issues, he introduced plot points that completely redefined (let’s all say it together this time) the conditions that determine what the story is about.

This not only freed the books of the limitations that had come to shackle them, but introduced new ones that kept a strong sense of direction and did not pose the same Catch-22 as the previous ones.

In answer to the original question, I would say it’s necessary to do SOMETHING to the premise. Once you’ve explored every cubic inch of the box you’re in, there’s nothing else you can do. You either find a new box, or look for ways to expand the box you’re already in. Or you do something that, Seinfeld aside, is unthinkable in American television: you end the story before it becomes necessary to ask questions like this one.

The Halloween season is over. Hopefully everybody has decompressed from their annual binge, whether it be on candy, booze, horror movies, or whatever else.

There is a distinct division within the horror genre. There’s the old-fashioned kind of horror, which aims to put you on the edge of your seat and prickle your anxieties. Then there’s the junk food: the stuff that serves up gore and violence as a means to an amusement, like monster trucks flattening rows of demolished cars.

There’s no use evaluating one version of horror against the other. Each has its audience. But the differences are worth discussion, which is why I thought I’d share this interview clip from comic book writer Alan Moore.

There was a British comic called Action, which received a great deal of negative attention from Mary Whitehouse and various campaigners for decency at the time because of the violence of its content…

One of the strips in it was called Hookjaw, and it was a blatant Jaws ripoff about a giant white shark. And I think it was originally drawn by a Spanish artist. I’m not sure of the artist’s name, but he was heavily into the gore on the strip. He would do it in a chops-smacking EC Comics fashion, where you saw every dangling eyeball, you saw every uprooted set of entrails… There is something about that kind of horror that is kind of reassuring, because it is so preposterous… it gives you an insulation against the material you’re reading. You can look at it and think, “Right, this is happening in some kind of horror universe, where everything that is possible… is going to happen, and happen spectacularly.”

When the artist finished on the strip, they replaced him with an artist from the girls’ comics, the British girls’ comics that were around at the time. And this was an artist who was mostly used to drawing the very demanding but largely conversational strips, which have got a completely different set of requirements [from] a horror strip. They show most people half-figure in the middle distance, having conversations in a completely mundane and lackluster environment, that is nevertheless drawn in perfect mundane detail.

So when the previous artist was on the strip… if he was called upon to show the discovery of a severed arm on the beach, then he would know how to do the shot. It would be right down there in the sand, next to the bloody end of the arm, looking up past all the exposed veins and dripping tendons and splintered bone, at the horrified people staring down at it in an upshot. Whereas the new artist on the strip, if he was asked to show the discovery of a severed arm on the beach, he would draw it as a middle-distance full-figure shot, where you’ve got a number of bland-looking people–therefore, realistic-looking people–standing around without contorted expressions, staring down at the awful fact of a severed human arm lying at their feet.

It wasn’t drawn to exaggerate the gore quotient. It was drawn in this completely quiet and unassuming way, the same that he would draw in a girls’ comic. But the horror was 10 times greater. It was because you were suddenly looking at a severed arm in an apparently real world, that was the same world that you could conceivably inhabit.

And this… I’m convinced, was the reason why his artwork worked so beautifully.

- Alan Moore, on Eddie Campbell’s contribution to From Hell
(Resonance FM, 10/23/2008)

The example of the two artists and their different approach to the same strip is an excellent illustration of the two varieties of horror. One kind savors every detail and lets it all hang out in a sort of hyper-realistic fantasy. The villain is the hero, the one with the personality; the victims are a blank canvas. They’re cannon fodder, and the object of the horror is to have fun at their expense.

The other kind relies on the commonality of everyday experiences to put the audience into the thick of it all. When the horrific element shows up, it’s all the more jarring, because it happens in a universe that isn’t deliberately “horror-ized.” The object could still be viewed as “fun,” but the fun comes at our own expense. We’re the victims, in a vicarious sense. The film Paranormal Activity is a relevant, if somewhat flawed, recent example, in that it takes the idea of horrific elements in a real(istic) world to an almost absurd degree.

During the spring semester of this year, I took a university class on visual rhetoric. For my final project in that class, I chose to apply the principles learned in class, plus the elements of comics design, to a series of pages selected from various comics. My goal was to analyze what makes each page tick, and make a case for comics as one of the chief forms of art, entertainment, and information in the 21st century. I chose to do the project as a PowerPoint slide show, for reasons explained by the disclaimer at the end.

As a further disclaimer, a YouTube video and a PowerPoint slide show obviously have different sets of capabilities. Due to its design, YouTube cannot do some of the things that PowerPoint can, such as turning text boxes on and off with the click of a button, or navigating to any slide at any time with a drop-down menu. Though unintentionally, this makes a further case for the unique advantages of viewing a work in its native medium, rather than through adaptation.

There is also a certain loss of quality due to compression, first from the video software and then through the conversion to YouTube’s format. With that in mind, I’ve provided a sharper version of each image used in the video at the end of this entry.

Here’s the video, split into three parts:

And here are the images.

Superheroes are a genre that isn’t without its potential, but what potential it does have has been squandered on countless bland copycat characters and long-running story threads that don’t get resolved, get resolved unsatisfactorily, or were never based on a good idea in the first place. Even though I don’t particularly care for superheroes, Superman has always been one of a handful of exceptions.

I’m sure one reason is the way that he, more than any other character in the genre, is inextricably linked with and reflective of American culture. Whatever was going on in the life and times of the country was going on in the life and times of Superman. There was no hero to swoop in and save us from the villains who took advantage of our inability to defend ourselves during the Depression, so we invented one. Post-war, Americans wanted a figure of authority to reassure them, so Superman stepped up. During the 60s, a time when we were reflecting upon and questioning the values that had shepherded us through the early adolescence of our country, Superman was questioning himself—and at the height of his physical powers, at that. It is generally accepted that Superman is a walking symbol of the American ideal, whatever form it happens to take at the time.

Post-Nixon, Americans lost trust in their heroes, and that, I think, is what led to a series of progressively weird and misguided attempts to figure out who Superman was to the contemporary audience. (A hard feat for modern writers who never understood who Superman was to any audience in the first place.) It’s very easy to write and read dark, violent Batman stories that confirm the suspicions and fulfill cynical the fantasies. Perhaps a character who staunchly represents optimism and progress is too challenging to the popular sensibilities of today.

Just as a refresher, a “+” indicates a recommended title. “Favorable factor” indicates a title that, while otherwise not recommended, has at least one element of note. A “-“ indicates a title that is not recommended.

SUPERMAN FOR ALL SEASONS (COMICS, 1998)
Tim Sale’s recognizable style has limited applications, most evident here in the form of a pudgy, graceless Man of Steel. The art fares better in other areas, but it’s Jeph Loeb’s overwriting that ultimately sinks this attempt at introspective, episodic storytelling. -

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OST (MUSIC, 1998)
It isn’t the authentic film recordings—it’s better. It’s more complete, more dynamic, far grander in every way. When the trumpets of the Royal Scottish Orchestra announce the three syllables that make up the character’s name, it really swaggers. This is how this music should sound. +

PEACE ON EARTH (COMICS, 1998)
I’ve often thought of Alex Ross as an artist in search of a format. His paintings sure do make the characters look suitably larger than life, but comic book storytelling is almost exclusively the domain of the pencil artist for a reason. Photorealistic watercolor is too dense and self-conscious to really move a narrative—unless it’s a sparse, open narrative such as the one Paul Dini contributes to this project. His perceptive and elegant world hunger parable is a fine canvas for Ross’s arresting style. +

JUSTICE LEAGUE (TELEVISION, 2001)
The format is an interesting choice: 45 minute stories divided into two parts each, featuring an ensemble cast. Timm and Co., perhaps for the first time, seem unsure of their footing at times, unwisely nerfing Superman and committing a variety of other errors. Nevertheless, there are some good stories to be had, and Michael Rosenbaum is a hoot as The Flash. +

SMALLVILLE (TELEVISION, 2001)
The premise: it’s Clark Kent and Lex Luthor, before the costumes, before the alter-egos, before the life-long conflict. The progress towards their destinies is the storytelling fuel, which inevitably runs low once there’s nothing left to do besides put on tights and fly. FAVORABLE FACTOR: The decently written second and third seasons successfully rise above season one’s repetitive freaks of the week. Season four successfully rises above the shark.

SUPREME: STORY OF THE YEAR (COMICS, 2002)
There is an audience out there with a lot of background in Silver Age superhero comics, and there is an audience out there that appreciates obnoxiously clever meta-fiction. The audience for this book lies within the intersection. No, the title character isn’t Superman, but he might as well be. +

BIRTHRIGHT (COMICS, 2003)
Big summer blockbuster storytelling, with big summer blockbuster flaws. Mark Waid seems to realize that relevance isn’t about attempting to integrate current issues, but he does it anyway. But the real offense is that it’s a superfluous remix of a story that’s had more than its share of superfluous remixes. -

RED SON (COMICS, 2003)
It’s Superman, with all the compassion but none of the wisdom to keeps it in check. While the metaphors are obvious and not especially daring, this oddball Stalinist reimagining is a nice way of looking at the classic superhero themes of power and responsibility (eat your heart out, Spidey) from an unusual angle. +

SUPERMAN/BATMAN: PUBLIC ENEMIES (COMICS, 2003)
Interesting concept, abysmal execution. Loeb’s signature overwriting and a prodigious number of cameos supplant any possibility of a story, but—to his dubious credit—at least Superman and Batman don’t get into a brawl for the nth time. FAVORABLE FACTOR: The brief Tim Sale-penciled vignette at the beginning is the one salvageable element in this flashy mess of a comic.

THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD (COMICS, 2004)
“Greatest Hits” collections typically place too much emphasis on inclusiveness, sampling various periods in the attempt to represent all of them. Greatness, more often than not, does not fall evenly on the timeline, which this compendium proves as well as any other. FAVORABLE FACTOR: Elliot S! Maggin’s “Must There Be a Superman?” smartly suggests that Superman shouldn’t help too much, while Jim Steranko’s “Exile on the Edge of Eternity” applies innovative visuals to a Clarke-esque storyline.

IT’S A BIRD… (COMICS, 2004)
This Superman writer’s contradictory feelings about the character mirror his contradictory feelings about a hereditary family disease, as told in this (kind of) true story. It’s peppered with short vignettes that cast a critical eye on various elements of the Superman myth, which are interesting if Watchmen wasn’t enough of a deconstructionist’s feast for you. +

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED (TELEVISION, 2004)
Timm and Co. successfully resuscitate their Justice League project with shorter episodes and a wider variety of characters. They capture an age of superheroes, but aren’t naïve enough to either ignore the many ramifications or stoop to bland superhero cavalcade beat-em-ups. The first season is undoubtedly smarter and much more interesting, but the Flash/Luthor mind swap in the second season is too funny to miss. +

SECRET IDENTITY (COMICS, 2004)
There is a fictional character named Clark Kent, secretly a superhero. There is a real person (or a less fictional character?) named Clark Kent, also secretly a superhero, who lives his double life generally unhappy about being named after the fictional character. I promise the story is more touching and less obnoxiously clever than it sounds. +

ALL STAR SUPERMAN (COMICS, 2005)
The imagination, human optimism, and breakneck storytelling of classic Superman are wedded with modern authorial and artistic sophistication. In my experience, this is not only a definitive and marvelous take on the character, but the superhero genre’s strongest claim to real artistic merit. +

SUPERMAN II: THE RICHARD DONNER CUT (FILM, 2006)
Editor Michael Thau gamely attempts to cobble together a jigsaw puzzle with several missing pieces, and the final picture is discernible enough if you squint hard. This chop-job Superman II, thematically, is a much better companion—indeed, a much better second half—to the 1978 original. It ups the romance and reduces the sound and fury, leaving the final lesson (including that time travel sequence, which works best here where it belongs) all the more bittersweet. +

SUPERMAN RETURNS (FILM, 2006)
Oft-maligned, much-misunderstood, semi-reboot. Director Bryan Singer deserves criticism for not delivering the classical rendition that the title promises. He also deserves praise for daring to hurt the invulnerable man. +

SUPERMAN RETURNS OST (MUSIC, 2006)
John Ottman does an admirable job of devising his own musical take on Superman while integrating the classic cues at the right moments, though his own stuff curiously sounds better rehearsed. It’s much moodier and less grand than the Williams score that precedes it, but it would have been a mistake to not stake out new territory. +

DOOMSDAY (FILM, 2007)
Timm and Co.’s track record was so sterling at this point that the announcement of a spate of feature DVDs probably wasn’t greeted with enough skepticism. It isn’t as bloated or shamelessly commercialistic as its source material, but successfully adapts the rest of the weaknesses. -

JUSTICE LEAGUE: NEW FRONTIER (FILM, 2008)
I’ve not read the book that this is based on, but its poppy artwork is well-matched by the animators. This is a very good-looking film. Too bad the story whips along so fast that there isn’t enough time for the high concept to get off the ground. So much happens, none of it interesting. FAVORABLE FACTOR: It has a clever way of dealing with the evolution of superhero archetypes in the 20th century, particularly Batman’s transition from cold-blooded vigilante to deputized public servant.

As announced last week, today’s entry is the first of a two-part review retrospective, in celebration of the 71st anniversary of Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics. The first review will be of that first appearance and will proceed onward to about the mid ‘90s. Comics, movies, and television shows will all be included.

As with any criticism you might find on this blog, the following reviews don’t claim to be an objective evaluation of their respective subjects. It’s all my opinion. Don’t expect to agree with them 100% of the time unless your tastes mirror mine exactly.

SUPERMAN IN ACTION COMICS #1 (COMICS, 1938)
Sure, the stories were simpler—the morals less complex, the characters rougher around the edges. But the comics of this era were far more bountiful than those of today. Here, for your consideration, are a recounting of Superman’s origin, a brief sidebar offering a plausible explanation for his (then relatively modest) abilities, and a breezy story introducing many long-term staples—all in a dozen pages or so. Can the ponderous, incremental superhero stories of today really be considered an improvement? +
[Action Comics #1 is available for online reading here.]

SUPERMAN: THE SUNDAY STRIPS (COMICS, 1939)
Reading these stories collected, back to back, is (probably) infinitely preferable to reading them in their original presentation as weekly fragments. The artwork is excellent, and we get to see plenty of Superman in his early days of righteous, if somewhat shapeless, social anger. +

SUPERMAN: THE FLEISCHER CARTOONS (FILM, 1941)
They lack scope, but there are more than enough heroics to make up for it. All the basic elements of the myth are here, drawn vividly in the definitive style of Joe Shuster. These first appearances in fluid motion are as sensational as a flying superhero ought to be. +

SUPERMAN: THE FAMOUS STUDIOS CARTOONS (FILM, 1943)
Obtaining a Max Fleischer property, unfortunately, doesn’t mean obtaining Max Fleischer quality. The difference? Fleischer’s lighthearted sci-fi adventures can be appreciated sincerely. This blatant ham-fisted war propaganda can only be appreciated ironically. –

THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN (TELEVISION, 1951)
It’s Clark Kent as a reporter first, donning the tights only when the stakes are at their highest. Perhaps this choice was a necessity of effects-spare ‘50s television, but it worked better here than it ever has in the comics. +

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE (FILM, 1978)
The makers of this picture view the titular character as mythic and human in all the ways that count. In spite of the misplaced time travel sequence, Superman: the Movie makes an excellent case for their position. Everyone in this production delivers, especially Superman himself. +

SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE OST (MUSIC, 1978)
The music is larger than life. It’s bold, it’s optimistic, it soars; it is the essence of Superman distilled into sine waves. It is therefore a slur on the composer’s reputation that an otherwise powerful score should be preserved in a sonically anemic, truncated document such as this one. -

SUPERMAN II (FILM, 1981)
There is a profound discomfort when differing directorial visions clash. In this installment, mayhem and hokey tricks overwrite myth and humanity, leaving Superman II a superficial imitation of 30% of itself. FAVORABLE FACTOR: The chemistry between Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder is the strongest holdover from the vastly superior previous installment.

SUPERMAN III (FILM, 1983)
From opposite ends of the cosmos, a bad Superman movie and a bad Richard Pryor movie travel on a collision course. Shrapnel flies. Gravity violently fluctuates. Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor) becomes Robert Vaughn (generic technocrat). Chaos ensues. -

SUPERMAN ANNUAL #15: FOR THE MAN WHO HAS EVERYTHING (COMICS, 1985)
The Watchmen writer/artist duo manages to wed crowd-pleasing action, fan-pleasing Easter eggs, and intelligentsia-pleasing meditations on greener grass. Never mistake it for the inferior television counterpart, which lacks the necessary context. +

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW? (COMICS, 1986)
Dark portent appropriately gives way to sunny optimism in the last Superman story of the Silver Age. It’s heartfelt in its desire to hit all the bases, and while that means a slightly silly everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach, it’s infinitely preferable to the reboot that followed. +
[Superman Annual #15 and both parts of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? are both available in the trade paperback volume The DC Comics Stories of Alan Moore.]

SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE (FILM, 1987)
You will believe a man can pose on wires in front of a scrolling backdrop. FAVORABLE FACTOR: The film (Reeve himself, actually) has the audacity to suggest that even Superman’s best intentions can’t solve every problem. It’s a great idea that can be, should be, and has been done better.

THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN (COMICS, 1992)
In this tale of masturbatory violence and crass commercialism, our hero is tragically felled by (wait for it) a walking plot device that, quite literally, pops up out of the ground one day. It has no relevance to anything, other than perhaps itself. If Superman is the American ideal, then what does this bode for America? -

SUPERMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES (TELEVISION, 1996)
This amalgam of many editions of the character is too heavy on the post-1986 “earthling” Superman for my taste, but it’s smoother than any blend has a right to be. For the creators, Batman: the Animated Series is still the standard to beat. The third season of this show, smart and thematically rich, rises to the challenge, and the rest of it is pretty good too. +

All two or three people who have been following this blog for a while will remember that I once declared an indefinite embargo on certain topics: namely, the movie industry’s recent interest in the comics medium, and particularly in the superhero genre. My reasoning was that if such an association is a harmful one, then an activist-minded nerd such as me could only be doing further harm by openly bitching about it. There is no such thing as bad publicity, as they say.

I’ve gone around the embargo a few times, testing the waters, further putting off my final decision. As of today, I think I’ve reached it. I still have strong misgivings about both the quality of films in the superhero genre (they’re almost universally crap) and the negative way in which they reinforce the public’s misguided opinions about comics (look at the immense favor Hollywood is doing for this miserable bastard medium!). However, I’m not sure I see the point any longer in ignoring the elephant in the room, fat and smelly as it is.

Moreover, I’ve been contemplating my hostile attitude towards mainstream comics in general. I’m no big fan of superheroes, aside from the big guy, and I’m not sure the majority of the stories in the genre are relevant to anything but themselves. But I think I’ve often tried to shut superheroes out in my various appraisals of the medium, which is probably also a mistake. If I’m going to accept Vladek Spiegelman and other Very Dramatic characters drawn in black and white, then I suppose I also have to accept Spider-Man in his flashy primary colors. It is a fact that the superhero genre still comprises the majority of the comics medium, and it seems a little silly to ignore that fact. It’s a holier-than-thou position, and I have a few too many of those to comfortably manage. Until I hire an assistant, that is.

If there is a main motivating force for my decision, I suppose it’s the confidence that these problems will eventually sort themselves out in a more elegant fashion than mere bitching and shunning could hope to achieve. As long as there are artists working on the fringes of comics to bring in a higher standard of artistic quality, things will be alright.

Nevertheless, I’ll maintain my opinions of the qualities of these various things, and I’ll be sure to say them louder and more often than ever before. Why, did anybody else see the Wolverine movie? Watch out, Plan 9: a new contender has emerged.

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It comes to my attention that I haven’t discussed this yet, but Freak Safari has a new feature called Freak of the Day: a daily humor feature that collects news stories about bizarre, funny, and interesting people from all around the world. The entries are written by the Freak Safari forum leaders, including yours truly, so check it out.