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kitewithfishI have just finished reading Superman: Red Son, and I am floored. It is good, it is beautiful, it is amazing. This is what comic books can be, people. This is the careful crafting of a world not our own: an alternate history of a world that didn't exist in the first place. The spacecraft caring the infant Superman crashes not in Kansas, but Soviet Russia. Superman is the symbol of the rising power of the USSR and it changes everything.
I have on-and-off issues with Mark Millar, but this was a truly beautiful piece of work. This was carefully built from the hints and ashes of the world of comics we know. Here, there is insight, forethought, and skill. This is exactly what an Elseworld should be: something familiar and well understood becoming the strange and frightening. The story makes sense: you get the feeling that this is how things could very well have been, had one thing shifted just the slightest bit. The art is wonderful.
Honestly, this was just a pleasure to read. The relationship between Lois and Lex seemed really spot-on: she doesn't love him, he's so far beyond humanity that he can't hardly love her or show it, and yet at the same time he hates that she might love anything else. This relationship could have gotten lost in a rock-em-sock-em fight, but it never did, and the story is better for it. Millar reimagines the world of DC comics, Paradise Island and the Green Lantern Corps hundred of villains all as part of the massive struggle between Lex and Superman, and it just works. It's elegant and takes into account so many lovely little bits of real-world continuity that it's rewarding to read for the truly geeky and the eager n00b alike. This is some very, very good work, and I hope that you guys will try and pick this up.
I have on-and-off issues with Mark Millar, but this was a truly beautiful piece of work. This was carefully built from the hints and ashes of the world of comics we know. Here, there is insight, forethought, and skill. This is exactly what an Elseworld should be: something familiar and well understood becoming the strange and frightening. The story makes sense: you get the feeling that this is how things could very well have been, had one thing shifted just the slightest bit. The art is wonderful.
Honestly, this was just a pleasure to read. The relationship between Lois and Lex seemed really spot-on: she doesn't love him, he's so far beyond humanity that he can't hardly love her or show it, and yet at the same time he hates that she might love anything else. This relationship could have gotten lost in a rock-em-sock-em fight, but it never did, and the story is better for it. Millar reimagines the world of DC comics, Paradise Island and the Green Lantern Corps hundred of villains all as part of the massive struggle between Lex and Superman, and it just works. It's elegant and takes into account so many lovely little bits of real-world continuity that it's rewarding to read for the truly geeky and the eager n00b alike. This is some very, very good work, and I hope that you guys will try and pick this up.
