Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years
This celebratory volume marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the debut of Superman, featuring 19 stories representing the many facets and eras of the hero’s lengthy career. The selections include his very first appearance, from 1938; landmark tales featuring his first encounters with Batman and archfoe Brainiac; and a recent story depicting a newly revamped version of the character. The creators include Superman’s originators, Siegel and Shuster; the artists most associated with the character in the 1950s and ’60s, Curt Swan and Wayne Boring; and such comics superstars as Alan Moore, Frank Miller, and Grant Morrison. Although chapter introductions explain Superman’s revised histories—for a while, he was married to longtime girlfriend Lois Lane, but now he’s single again—the multiple universes and alternate worlds are likely to confuse the casual reader, while hard-core fans will no doubt gripe about the selections (the most glaring omission might be Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman, 2007). The myriad approaches demonstrate the evolution of not just Superman but the entire superhero genre. --Gordon Flagg