Recommendation: ALL-STAR SUPERMAN DC Compact Comics Edition
A new format for an old classic
What is the greatest Superman story? There will be a lot of answers to that question, with some being a bit more outlandish than others (somewhere out there is a person whose favorite Superman story is Superman Red/Superman Blue), but a few tales will make most people nod their heads in agreement that, if not the best, they’re at the top. Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s Absolute Superman is one of those; a twelve issue epic about Superman discovering he’s going to die, it’s a distillation of the very concept of Superman into a story that seems to have no limits to its creative ambitions. Morrison, always a big thinker, throws all sense and caution to the wind and creates a dozen comics where the Silver Age science fiction is expansive, silly and absolutely awe-inspiring.
This run was part of a publishing initiative by DC Comics back in 2005 that only produced two books (there was a third under the title in 2016, but it didn’t follow the concept of the original imprint). The premise was simple: the greatest writers and artists in comics would have access to the greatest superheroes in DC’s stable and get to tell any story they wanted about them. They would not be limited by continuity or canon, although all of canon was open to them. The idea was that anyone could pick these books up and understand them, and would not have to worry about byzantine storylines and crossovers and retcons. One of these books was a contender for greatest comic book story of all time, the other gave us what is arguably the wildest-ass panel of all time:
Anyway, I’m not here to litigate All-Star Batman and Robin (which is at least partially satirical) but rather to tell you about the latest edition of All-Star Superman, as part of DC’s new DC Compact Comics reprint line.
The question about comic books has been the same for decades now: how to get them into people’s hands. What was once a true mass medium - in the 50s Superman’s comics may have sold over one million copies - has become an increasingly niche market. We can argue about why this is (it’s because as sales lowered companies doubled down on selling to the hardcore audience at the expense of all others. Also, nobody wants to read anymore) but it is the central vexation for the industry. And so every now and again one or the other of the Big Two superhero companies makes an effort to sell comics to people who might otherwise not buy comics.
As in the case of All-Star (and the upcoming Absolute comic line) it might be the form of a new ongoing title that promises to be understandable to the common man who has not wasted the best years of his life and copious corners of his cerebral cortex on comic book continuity crapola. Or in the case of the DC Compact Comics it’s a new format that collects stories that people have already acknowledged as great and/or good starting places and enticing newcomers to give this format a shot. I have to say, in this case, they may be on to something.
The DC Compact Comic format is more or less the size of a standard trade paperback - not the comic standard, but the publishing industry standard. It’s bigger than the pocket sized paperback, smaller than the traditional comic trades. Think of digest comics, but a little bigger, and you’re in the right zone. It’s not quite the size of manga but it has a similarly solid heft to it. It’s kind of perfectly holdable; one of the issues with comic trades is that they just simply don’t feel portable. They’re clearly meant for shelves, not to be toted around and read on the go. Like too many comic book things these days they’re collector-oriented, and their cost reflects that.
But the Compact Comics are cheap. And I mean cheap (by 2024 standards). They’re ten bucks. Less than a movie ticket. In the case of All-Star Superman you get twelve issues for less than a dollar each, an unbeatable proposition. I may not be willing to drop 20/25 dollars on a trade but I will very easily throw down ten dollars to read something I have heard is quite good. In many ways that price point is a gamechanger, and I suspect there was some market research that told DC people would happily part with a tenner but would draw the line at adding a Washington to the (pre-tax) total.
The reading experience itself is good, and I think All-Star Superman presents a good test case. Frank Quitely’s linework is exquisite, the kind of art that makes you want to invest in one of those big expensive hardback archival editions, the kind where you can pore over every detail. And his figures in particular can be thicc, in the colloquial term, with Superman especially having a kind of massiveness that is somehow undercut by the light gracefulness with which Quitely imbues him. Quitely is a great collaborator for Morrison because he takes the writer’s wildest flights of enormous imagination and makes them expansive realities, filled with a kind of gee-whiz wonder that still incorporates a grounded feeling of physical reality. How does this all translate to the size of the Compact Comic?
Very well. I found the art to be just as beautiful at this size, and every detail remained. Jamie Grant’s colors - themselves a key aspect of the original work - pop gorgeously on the paper here. The brightness, the in-your-face quality of the coloring, is vital to the tonal experience Morrison and Quitely are going for in this comic. I was worried that perhaps at a lower price point the paper quality would itself be crummier, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
That said, be aware that this is a comic meant to be read. I don’t know how this paper will hold up over time. You shouldn’t be buying this book to hand down to your grandchildren, you should be buying it to read, to hold in your hands and turn the pages and get lost in the story.
And what a story! God, I love All-Star Superman. I had not read this book in a long time, maybe since the original trade came out, and to get back into Morrison’s pop-damaged take on the Silver Age excited me beyond belief. I thought I’d kind of pick my way through the book over the course of a couple of days, but I tore through the whole thing in an evening; every time I put it down I needed to come back to it ten minutes later. And what’s nice is that unlike so many comic book reading experiences in the 21st century there’s a lot of meat here; you’re not going to blow through twelve issues in an hour or less.
For those who don’t know: in this story Superman becomes hyper-irradiated with yellow sun energy, and this begins the process of breaking down his cells, while also making him more powerful than ever before. In the course of this book Supes must try to find a way to secure his legacy while also performing twelve great feats of legend, all the while dealing with the evil plans of Lex Luthor - who is behind it all. Grant Morrison pulls from all eras of Superman to make a perfect version of the character and his world, with a lot of space given to the supporting cast. That’s part of the magic of the story; this isn’t a Superman comic about him punching stuff, although there is punching. It’s a story about Superman as a person and the people around him, and it’s about the meaning of Superman as a character and how important that can be. Every chapter explores this, with tons of tossed off weird science and strange fantasy along the way.
One of the side effects of re-reading this comic: an increased hope for James Gunn’s upcoming Superman, which we know to have been heavily influenced by this book. I doubt that the actual stories are the same but I’m hopeful the tone and angle of approach to Superman will be greatly informed by Morrison’s vision. This is the comic from which a regularly memed panel originates - Superman standing behind a suicidal girl on a ledge, talking her down - and that is the energy missing from the character’s big screen incarnation for far too long. I would be very happy to see that sequence recreated in Gunn’s film.
I like the Compact Comic format so much that I’m going to buy a couple more; there’s the Morrison-written Wonder Woman Earth One, which I’ve never read but at ten bucks you can’t lose. And there are a couple of Batman titles (of course there are Batman titles, you can’t launch a DC product without the Batman showing up somewhere). I will, however, be skipping Watchmen - I’ve bought that comic enough times and my Absolute Edition will do me. Hopefully this format does well, because I’d like to see more comics reprinted this way. DC in particular has a number of stories that are blind spots for me, and I’d be willing to take a chance on some of them at these price points.
Last thought: I have access to the DC Universe app, which has a ton of DC comics available, including All-Star Superman. I like the way the DC and Marvel apps open the doors to these huge libraries for me, but the experience of reading a comic on a tablet or a phone is so different from holding a comic in your hand and reading it that way. Last year I was doing a read-thru of the Chris Claremont run of X-Men on the Marvel Unlimited app and I eventually stopped not because I wasn’t enjoying it but because I was enjoying it so much that I wanted to collect the whole thing in physical ominbuses. Turns out that’s a cost-prohibitive proposition. At any rate, the act of reading a comic on paper, the way the medium was designed to be read, is an act of communion with the art. Reading a comic page is the experience of seeing the entirety of the page and then focusing in on panels while still having the whole in front of you. At the risk of sounding insane this is kind of what it’s like to have a view of time from outside of time, to be able to see it all but then pay attention to one piece while holding all the rest in context. You can, of course, do this on a tablet, but the paper doesn’t zoom in and out at your will, it’s consistently there and in some way you’re communing with the work on its own terms. Reading comics digitally is cheap and convenient, and I am grateful the option exists, but reading comics on paper… this is the point of the whole thing. This is the difference between riding a rollercoaster and riding a rocketship. What a joy.