Let’s go ALL IN (sort of) with DC … Week 40! (with an added bonus!)

There’s a new Superman movie coming out this week, which you may have heard about, and DC certainly wants you to remember, what with the whole “Summer of Superman” thing going on and a very fancy giant, black-and-white version of All Star Superman #1 (I didn’t buy it, but it looks sweeeeeet), and today’s entry, the Superman Treasury 2025: Hero For All. I guess this isn’t technically an ALL IN book, but what the hell, this is my conceit, so I’m calling it one! Let’s take a look! (Some SPOILERS below, so beware! be aware!)

This is written by Dan Jurgens (who also draws 8 pages in the middle of it), drawn by Bruno Redondo, assisted on the inks by Caio Filipe, colored by Adriano Lucas, and lettered by Dave Sharpe. It costs $14.99, sure, but like a lot of DC books, it’s a good value — it is 73 pages long, and it’s Treasury-sized, so it’s just a cool-looking comic. Maybe it’s a couple of bucks overpriced, but it’s not bad.

Jurgens, as you know, is the Tapioca Pudding Of Comics™ — if you want something workmanlike, competent, fairly entertaining but almost instantly forgettable, and unextraordinary in every way, you give him a call, and that’s what he delivers here. Jurgens thought to himself, “You know, that Alan Moore wrote a fairly good story in Superman Annual #11, but I bet I could do better!” and he gives us his spin on “Let’s take Superman out of the game by tricking him into thinking he’s just a dude in a nice reality.” Superman fights a giant robot that’s stomping through Metropolis, and he defeats it rather easily. The signals controlling the robot are coming from somewhere off-Earth, so Our Guy flies off to see what’s going on … or does he? It’s revealed later that he never left the robot, but was captured by a telepath and fed a fantasy world where everything sort-of happened the same way as it did on the “real” DC Earth … except he’s not Superman. Eventually, of course, he breaks out of this trap because he’s so very indomitable, and puts things right. It turns out Maxima was invading with the help of Hank Henshaw, mainly because she’s peeved that Supes rejected her advances and hooked up with *shudder* an Earth woman. Trapping Superman is all part of her fiendish plan to conquer the world and, presumably, get a baby from him. Oh, Maxima, you fool!

It’s fine, I guess. Maxima, interestingly enough, is absolutely correct about Superman — if you take him out of the equation, Earth crumbles easily. I know this is a Superman comic and with our New, Shiny Happy Superman that we’re (apparently) getting in the new movie, DC wants to lean into his heroic-ness, but it seems kind of jerky to make every single other hero on the planet so ineffective. I mean, sheesh! It is interesting to see the heroes fight their futile fight against Maxima, and Batman is still the smartest dude around, and Superman (and Jurgens) tries to throw the heroes some bones toward the end, so the books moves along nicely, but it’s still a bit odd that the other heroes are so lousy at this. Whatever. Jurgens has fun with the “alternate reality” — we know it’s wonky right away, because we see Jonathan Kent, alive and well, on the first page of the book, but in the other reality, he dies early on; Clark is friends with Lex Luthor, who gets him the job at The Daily Planet and who marries Lois because, it seems, he’s not a tool. Clark has a nice fake life, but he realizes it’s not the real one, which Maxima and her lackeys hadn’t anticipated. Jurgens does a nice job showing how Superman defeats the invasion force, which is nice, but it’s kind of a bog-standard Superman comic, one that tells us, “This guy sure is great, isn’t he?” I mean, sure. Jurgens can’t help doing a “retrospective” of Superman’s career (those are the pages he draws), which is fine, I guess. I doubt anyone who’s buying this doesn’t know the guy’s deal, but you do you, Mr. Jurgens. I’m always a bit uncomfortable with portraying Maxima this way — she rules a galactic empire but she’s just a whiny female at heart — mainly because there have been a few times when she’s been interesting (Jurgens even wrote some of them!) and the fact that it always comes back to her mooning over Superman feels weird, but such is life. As with most Jurgens comics, it’s entertaining and forgettable. Fun to read, but leaves without making a fuss.

I don’t know how long Redondo was working on this, but boy howdy, was it worth it. It’s a wonderful-looking comic, and it’s almost worth it getting it just for the art. In the “real” world, Redondo uses a nice, clean line without a ton of hatching (some, but not a lot) and some Zip-A-Tone effects sprinkled in to add a bit of nuance. Lucas uses a lighter tone, creating a warmer world, and the shading is more clearly delineated. Redondo’s Superman is excellent, but his Maxima is brilliant, too — regal and powerful and condescending all at once. The action scenes work really well, and Redondo doesn’t have to draw a ton of heroes a lot, but when he does, he nails it, especially the double-page spread near the end that will get the “slow motion walking” treatment when it shows up in the movie (which it never will, but it’s still that kind of scene). The “alternate reality” scenes are excellent, too. Redondo and Lucas use effects to “roughen” the paper itself, so it looks more old-school, and Redondo, it appears, using a bit more hatching to add just a bit more nuance to the line work — not enough to make the art scratchy, but enough to make it slightly different from the “real” world. There’s a bit more spot blacks, and Lucas mutes the colors just a little, so it’s a nice contrast to the “real” world. It also looks great because of the dimensions of the comic itself — the work leaps off the page because it’s so big. It’s very nice to look at.

I don’t know if you’re ready to go ALL IN with the Superman Treasury, but it is a pretty cool package, and I like that DC is doing some different things with their presentation. The story is the weak point, but it’s certainly not bad. You’ll have to decide how much Superman you can take!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆

One totally Airwolf panel:

For the bonus, we have the Marvel Swimsuit Special! I got the first … two, I think, Swimsuit Specials back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and they were fun, and I kind of wish Marvel had done this as a magazine format, as this one is just a comic-book-sized comic. But! there is a story, which the earlier ones didn’t have, and this one was written by Tim Seeley and Tony Fleecs, drawn by Nick Bradshaw, colored by Rachelle Rosenberg, and lettered by Travis Lanham. It’s $5.99, which is a bit much, as it’s still just a comic and it’s 30 pages, which sounds like a lot but of course, a lot of it is pin-ups. Bradshaw draws only 15 pages of it, but it’s still nice to see 15 pages of Bradshaw’s art. We get a story about Roxxon publishing a magazine showing various superheroes in bathing suits, but it’s all AI, which pisses off the Avengers. So they decide to round up a bunch of heroes and do their own swimsuit issue! It’s pretty funny — there are protestors in the book, which Seeley and Fleecs don’t really mock, but they have some fun with it; Deadpool is in the book for two panels (plus the few pin-ups he’s in), but he’s very funny, as is the entire two-page scene in which he appears; and the two pages with the Punisher are really, really hilarious. Fleecs and Seeley cram some political correctness into it, which is fine but silly — it’s a Swimsuit Special, for crying out loud. It’s not quite as cheese- and beef-cakey as the original magazines, but there’s still plenty of it, and who cares? The pin-ups are terrific, of course — Joshua Cassar, Marguerite Sauvage, Mahmud Asrar, Aaron Kuder, John Tyler Christopher, Ron Lim, Nic Klein, Kuder again, David Marquez, Olivier Coipel, Mirka Andolfo, Rian Gonzalez, Ryusei Yamada, Luciano Vecchio, and Adam Hughes are the artists, and they’re all gorgeous, of course, and often fun and goofy. Is this worth 6 bucks? Not really, but it’s fun, and that goes a long way with me. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

Rating: CHEESECAKERY!!!!!

One totally Airwolf panel:

All right, you people, we’re done for now! Who’s going to see the Superman movie this weekend, because it’s going to be the ZOMGAWDDDDDDD IT’S THE BEST MOVIE EVAHHHHHHH!!!!!! I hope it does well, certainly, but I don’t really care all that much. I can’t endorse an illegal immigrant who beats up legitimate businessmen and saves the weak. That’s not the ‘Murican Way!!!!!