Batman: Earth One – Review

By: Geoff Johns (story), Gary Frank (pencils), Jonathan Sibal (inks), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: Batman Begins. Again.

The Writing: Well, here we are again, another Batman origin story that is extremely faithful to the story we’ve always known. Hey, if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it, right? And that’s Johns’ approach to this graphic novel–don’t mess with the Batman mythos that works, just add subtle changes throughout. In many retread origins, there seems to be two camps with Batman: 1) random killing or 2) caused by someone in his rogue’s gallery. Think Tim Burton’s Batman against Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. Now, what I love with this origin–and I hope this is just a tease and not a spoiler–Johns finds a creative way to do both (have your murder and kill someone too). The specifics of such, I’ll leave as blank as possible, but it was a unique take that was still very faithful to the original.

Superman #712 – Review

By: Kurt Busiek (writer), Rick Leonardi (penciller), Jonathan Sibal (inker), Brad Anderson (colorist)

The Story: What’s the matter, boy?  What?  Connor’s stuck in a time-space crisis?  Let’s go!

The Review: As much love exists between a man and his dog, it has nothing on that between a dog and his boy.  As a clone with hyper-accelerated growth, Superboy had little in the way of a typical boy’s life—and that’s before he started playing the teen vigilante in Hawaii, often with two girls on either arm.  But owning a dog can’t fail to inject some responsibility into your life, so Krypto has had the effect of normalizing Connor a great deal.

Most writers have fun with Krypto as Superboy’s loyal companion, but few have really explored the depth of his affection for Connor.  I can think of no better man to do so than Busiek, whose work on Astro City proves him as one of the greatest humanizers of superheroes.  Here, he shows what makes Krypto inarguably the most appealing and lovable of super-pets (besides the fact that he’s a dog with a cape, of course).

Underneath all his powers, Superman is in spirit an overgrown Eagle Scout with your good ol’ Midwestern values, and by the same token, Krypto has the soul of a playful, devoted hound.  Busiek lets that soul shine in all of the super-canine’s behavior in this issue, making the story that much more touching.  Really, if you look past his flying around and using X-ray vision, this is at heart the tale of a dog looking for his lost boy.

Even so, Krypto’s powers allow greater understanding than most dogs, giving that much more weight to his simple range of emotions.  As he tracks Connor’s trail (during the events of Infinite Crisis), his enhanced senses give him rich details of what his owner got up to, ending amidst the ruins of Alexander Luthor’s world-destroying tower, which Connor destroyed at the cost of his life.  Krypto’s glass-shattering howl upon the discovery is a poignant allusion to Superman’s cry upon Supergirl’s death in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, and quite heartrending.