Superman Confidential #1 - A Review

Superman Confidential #1 - Darwyn Cooke - Writer, Tim Sale - Artist, Dave Stewart - Colors

Premise - A series about various elements and/or events that occurred in Superman's life. This arc is about the origin of Kryptonite. The actual story starts with a hint about Kryptonite, then jumps to Superman in his early years and his questioning of how invulnerable he is or is not. Then the story moves into an assignment that Perry White has given to Clark, Lois and Jimmy in finding out the secrets behind a gangster type figure who has moved in on Metropolis.

What I Liked:

1) The art. Tim Sale has a wonderful style and an economy of line that makes his work have a cartoonish quality, while maintaining a seriousness to the work. Sometimes Tim's work can get too loose, but not in this issue. It's is gorgeous work. The Royal Flush Gang looks cool, Superman is heroic, the fluidness of the work is great, his Lois is sexy as hell, Jimmy is a hard nose kid, Clark is the seriousness and conservative reporter. Terrific work, complemented by the colors of Dave Stewart, whose work always seems to be spot on for the project he is working on.

2) The story. I'm a big Darwyn Cooke fan and its hard for me to really love all of his work, because my expectations are always high for his stories. He hits the mark again and I love this story so far. Short and sweet opening segment setting up the Kryptonite coming to earth, Superman at the start of his career wondering what can kill him (a point that has never been touched on before in my readings), Perry White the crusading editor guarding his city, the brassy Lois Lane, the straight laced Clark always a little too square, Jimmy as the hip technology geek, the swarthy but good looking bad guy. The book is set in more modern times, but has an ageless quality and feels like the golden age, silver age and modern age all rolled into one. Loved updating Jimmy's role as beyond just a photographer , as with today's technology just taking pictures is not enough to make him part of the team. Also, back to Superman wondering what can kill him, it was such a great point. I mean if you found out stuff was hurting you, how far would you go with trying stuff until it got too dangerous. One false step and you could kill yourself.

What I Didn't Like:

1) Ads, ads, everywhere an ad. The ads are way too persuasive. The 3-D goggles to view some special ad, the Teen Titans Go comic shoved in the middle of the book with some other crap insert. The ads are too much in comics again. Last time Marvel was really bad, I think DC maybe worse then Marvel now. I don't care unless they interfere with my enjoyment of the book and this arrangement really was annoying when first opening up the book.

Grade - A

Side note: I enjoyed Superman when Bryne re-launched Superman for a couple of years, loved some stories of Superman over the years (Alan Moore Last Superman Story especially), but I'm shocked after ten to fifteen years of not giving a damn about Superman to be really enjoying 4 different Superman titles. Superman, Action, All-Star and Confidential. Kudos to DC for giving their number one icon, the high quality talent a character like Superman deserves. Hope it last for awhile.