Neal Adams plays in Jack Kirby’s Fourth World and the results are over the top.
Coming of the Supermen, Neal Adams’ raucous 6-issue DC miniseries, is collected in hardcover this week. Pick it up.
The premise isn’t particularly new, with concepts DC has played with even in the last 10 years: Some surviving Kryptonians show up on Earth to help out Superman, sort of as a junior Supersquad. They’re learning the powers but Darkseid and his minions are the opposition and all hell breaks loose. Plus there’s a hidden planet on the other side of the sun in an orbit opposite ours. And Superman bleeds.
Classic old-school wackiness, in other words.
Adams’ Facebook page
But this one’s all in the execution. Adams tells a tale that’s loads of unpretentious fun, filled with whiz-bang action and just this side of unhinged dialogue. This is big comics done big.
And it only makes sense that this story would come from an artist as bold as Neal Adams, with larger-than-life characters devised by the King, Jack Kirby. Why DC didn’t market this series as such is beyond me.
The artwork is kinetic, done up in Adams’ latter-day, looser style, with a bold color palette mostly by Tony Avina, with some issues by Alex Sinclair. (Some of the inks are by Adams’ son Josh and protege Buzz.) The characters’ emotions run high but the exaggeration works with the story’s freewheeling nature.
Now, I’m guessing that there were Adams fans who stayed away from this when it came out in issues because of the mixed response to his Batman: Odyssey series from a few years ago. The criticism of that series at times was pretty brutal. All I can tell you is that Coming of the Supermen is the opposite — a wild, free-for-all adventure that could only be told as a comic book, by the medium’s greatest living practitioner, with characters created by its most revered visionary.
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BONUS: If you want Adams’ perspective on working with Kirby’s creations — and you do — click here.
November 15, 2016
Don’t like the belt redesign. No need to change it.
October 14, 2022
This book has mediocre reviews, but I enjoyed it so far. It comes off a hybrid of Bronze Age Superman and Geoff Johns Superman. This story is why Grant Morrison’s Superman 2000 should have been the continuity Superman instead of what we got.
On the other hand, I strongly dislike Superman bleeding. Even when depowered y red solar energy or hit by attacks capable of killing him, Superman should be physically immutable – her doesn’t show damage, you can’t cut him, even when he’s dead. If DC had stuck with this aesthetic/power rule across the board they’d have a better character design. Little things like this annoy me, and I prefer stories where the author doesn’t try to bring Superman down to our level. No, he’s not relatable, except in the way Lord Ram is. Stupid humanism making everyone think we’re the center of the universe and the gold standard of ethics. Its idiotic. Most people are genetic hypocrites and conformist cowards. Superman is morally, mentally and physically better than us and we need to stop being envious snipes trying to reduce him to mere humanity.