When Superman (second series) hit issue one-hundred a few scant years ago, the best thing the ol’ crew at DC could come up with for a great anniversary story was The Death of Clark Kent… which was an interesting concept in theory, but was nothing more than a long, drawn-out story-arc that had Superman dealing with another second-rate villain (Conduit) that was created in the week following a second-rate Crisis On Infinite Earths event (Zero Hour). Blah.
This year, Superman reached 200 issues. Yay. How should we celebrate this momentous occasion? Let’s call it The Last Superman Story.
It’s a giveaway, but you’ve read right. The title of this anniversary Superman issue is called The Last Superman Story… but if you’ve been checking out issues of Wizard or Previews, you’d know better. Hell, if you’ve read comics since the dawn of time, you know that they tried to kill off Superman one time and even THAT didn’t stick.
Of course, the hype over Superman’s 200th issue (again, second series) seemed to be focused around time travel and a “shocking” ending. But imagine what a fuss DC could have made if they promoted it as the LAST Superman story ever, only to have him come back a couple months due to unforeseen circumstances.
So when someone presents me with a story and calls it the LAST Superman story, I can’t help but wonder about that. The title does not detract from the quality of the work, which is actually fairly good. The overall plot of Superman 200 is your standard “trip to the not-so-pleasant future” type of storyline, but it’s actually alright. Nothing mind-blowing or anything, but it’s not terrible. It’s the typical Superman quality that most of us is used to these days. The art style isn’t to my liking, but it’s pretty damn good and the selective use of colors is okay.
As far as the ending, it goes on a road that very few people go through with a Superman story, but it’s nothing “shocking” by any means. It’s a good way to cap off this supposed “Last Superman story,” but promoting future Superman projects defeats the whole purpose of Superman 200 being the last one and thus the ending’s effect is lost. Still, pretend it’s shocking and you’ll probably be amazed that this is happening in DC canon and not in some Elseworlds story.
There’s also a couple of pages of bonus material featuring a couple of sketches, but it’s nothing you can find in an issue of Wizard or anything else of that sort.
Overall, the two-hundredth issue of Superman (second series, again) is an alright story and worth a read if you’ve been following the whole Futuresmith storyline, and chances are the collectors would want to pick it up in hopes that it will raise in stock in the coming years. If you don’t know what’s going on here, I’d advise you pick up some of the issues that go before this one or save your money for the obvious collected edition which can show up in a few months time.
In the meantime, I’m anxiously looking forward to issue 300 (second series once more), where DC will probably promote a bearded Superman flipping pizza dough in a shop run by the mob. Then again, anything is better than Superman having electric powers and dressed up as Captain Planet.
dtm666 