Next month, we go to the comic shop, and Marvel has one comic on the shelf. It’s by Ty Templeton. It’s called Marvel Universe Ultimate Spider-Man. Next to it is Superman Family Adventures by Art Baltazar, published by DC. And we all lived happily ever after.
Sam, our young protagonist, is deemed old enough now to step out of diapers and into the world of big-boy pants, but first he must master the skills of potty-training, and who better to teach him than the Super Friends?
… Best of all, it avoids Morrison’s two greatest faults – weak piddle-away endings that don’t match the strength of his opening concepts, and a propensity for being up himself to an extent, well, usually seen only on very specialist websites…
For such an iconic character, there are few truly memorable comics featuring Superman. There’s a balancing act that few creators manage to pull off successfully, and the result is a comic that’s staid, or twee, or camp, or disastrously modified to fit current trends. In this issue, they’ve opted to create a comic that reads like a throwback from the 1970s.
Both Marvel and DC have been releasing straight-to-DVD animations of their characters for a few years now, with apparently variable results. This is the latest, a collection of shorts featuring a new Superman/Captain Marvel team up, along with previously released features starring The Spectre, Jonah Hex and Green Arrow.
