There are two ultra-cheap freebies this week.  One is Daredevil, plugging the first part of a new storyline.  The other is Superman: The Ten Cent Adventure, trying to draw attention to the Superman line.

I have some scepticism about the freebie device as a way of building sales.  The Batman titles didn't benefit all that much from Batman: The Ten Cent Adevnture in the long run - putting Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee on Batman proved a much more effective way of boosting sales.  Fantastic Four hasn't seen a particularly drastic improvement in sales either.  Yes, these freebie books did boost sales, but giving away a ton of comics must be an expensive business, and I have to wonder whether they're delivering the long term sales to justify that cost.  As for the Gen 13 relaunch, well, that just sank like a stone.

Sure, there's a lot of sense in cutting the price to draw attention to a new series or a new direction.  I've never really understood the logic of making first issues double-sized and overpriced, when it would surely make more sense to take a hit on the price at that stage as a loss leader.  But is the extreme price-cutting of these giveaways really generating results proportionate to the expense?

Anyway, the point of this particular giveaway is... uh...  Hold on, let me check Previews.  Well, it's the debut of a new creative team - Steven Seagle and Scott McDaniel.  But they don't really push that point - the house ad on the last page doesn't even tell me which of the regular titles these guys work on.  It doesn't name the creative teams for any of them, in fact.  And thankfully, unlike the Batman issue, this is not the beginning of another megacrossover - it sets up some new subplots, but it's basically a self-contained story.  So really, it's just a matter of saying "Here's the sort of Superman story we do these days."

And it's alright.  The main story introduces Amok, formerly an utterly ineffectual supervillain who's now been vastly powered-up.  The basic gag of the villain thinking he has a personal feud with a superhero who's never even noticed him has been done before, but it's still a fun idea.  There's the introduction of a new villain group called the Futuresmiths, and a twist on an old element of the Superman mythos.  There's a reassertion of traditional "heroes don't kill" values, and of the character's dual role as a man and a superhero.  And there's a lovely panel of him in front of an American flag.  There's a subplot about Clark's secret identity being exposed, although it's hardly a major mental exercise to come up with a solution for him.  It looks very nice, because it's drawn by Scott McDaniel, and it's pleasantly told by Seagle, even if it does open with his usual writing tic of having a narrator who spends two pages reading from the Junior Book Of Atmospheric Conditions to kick off the story.

It's perfectly good.  But at the end of the day it's Superman, and it does nothing to change my normal attitude towards Superman - namely, I don't really care.  Yes, I know he's an icon.  Yes, I know he's the original superhero.  It says so on the last page and everything.  But you know what?  I don't watch films of trains pulling into stations, I don't drive a Model T Ford, I don't fly in a biplane, and when it comes to deciding whether to read his current stories, I couldn't give a toss if Superman is the first superhero.  He's still bland.

But then, I've always felt that way about Superman, so that's not necessarily a criticism of the story.  If you're actually interested in Superman, you'll probably be happy with this.  There's nothing wrong with it.  It's a Superman story, quite a decent one.  But it's nothing you wouldn't expect to find in a Superman story.  It's unlikely to change your mind.

Rating: B

back | continue