Superman Unchained
Comics’ biggest writer! Comics’ biggest artist! Together on comics’ biggest character! That’s the kind of hype which preceded this series featuring Scott Snyder and Jim Lee taking on Superman, with Dustin Nguyen pitching in here and there for a few pages. The first issue hit the stands when the “Man of Steel” movie was still fresh in everyone’s minds, so it’s not hard to imagine that DC wanted to give the masses an accessible “Superman” story that the scale and scope of a summer blockbuster. On that level, they certainly succeeded. If you’re looking for something more substantial than that, or something that offers a fresh take on the character, then expect to be disappointed.
After a brief prologue in which we find out that it wasn’t an atomic bomb that exploded over Nagasaki at the end of WWII, the story hits the ground running as we find out that Superman has been flying across the Earth to protect everyone from the eight satellites that have suddenly fallen out of orbit. Though he manages to take care of seven of them, Superman finds out that the seventh was actually diverted from its point of impact at an abandoned military base into the ocean. It’s soon revealed that this is the work of an alien named Wraith who has been working with the U.S. military and their secret complex known as the Machine for the past seventy-five years. Coincidentally, the Machine is currently run by General Sam Lane — Lois’ father — and now that Wraith’s existence is known, he seems determined to provoke a confrontation with the Man of Steel. This is in spite of the fact that a luddite terrorist group known as Ascension is currently enacting their master plan to send mankind back to the stone age, and Lex Luthor is scheming away on his way to prison.
The idea of an alien who is as powerful as, or has powers similar to, Superman is not a new one. Wraith embodies both of these things and he’s used here to lampshade the idea that the title character hasn’t lived up to his potential and that his approach may be doing more harm than good in the long run for humanity. This isn’t a new idea either, and it’s one I’m tired of since it feels like a cheap shot at the character given all he’s done for the DCU over the years. Fortunately Snyder is a competent enough writer to know that idea has to be shot down at some point as Superman shows himself to be the better man in his conflict against Wraith and Lane.
The execution of this narrative is as comfortable and familiar as you’d expect, and ultimately a little dull as a result. You can probably guess how things are going to turn out once all of the major players in this story have made their appearance and that sucks a lot of drama out of the proceedings. Snyder tries to compensate for this by finding new things to do with Superman’s powers, like using his X-ray vision to short-circuit a nuclear device, as well as indulging his habit for finding superpowered explanations for real world events. The writer has shown in his “Batman” stories that he has a real knack for finding new twists on familiar tropes. It’s a shame that skill is mostly absent here.
I will say that Snyder has a great handle on Luthor. He has the character’s arrogance and sense of superiority down cold in his dialogue and actions, which involve pre-taping a monologue as he escapes from prison while unconsciously strapped to an exoskeleton. It’s completely over-the-top and unrealistic, but still immensely fun to see unfold on the page. Also, while Snyder likes to throw in lots of historical and scientific miscellany into his works, these items feel less obtrusive coming from Luthor as it’s completely believable that he’d throw stuff like this out in regular conversation just to illustrate his superiority.
Less successful at the writer’s hands is Wraith. He’s got an interesting origin as the response to a mathematical equation the U.S. broadcasted into space in the late 30’s, and the fact that he has wholeheartedly aligned with the military sets up an interesting contrast to the title character. Beyond that, Wraith really doesn’t have a personality of his own. The character’s actions are defined by the will of the plot as he regularly makes friendly or hostile actions towards Superman that come off as attempts to raise the level of drama than the actions of a coherent personality. It’s bad enough that when Wraith makes a fateful choice at the story’s climax it falls completely flat because there’s no feeling that he’s doing it for himself rather than the needs of the story.
Even though the writing is uneven, the art delivers on the promise of epic superhero action. Jim Lee may not be able to keep to a schedule, but he can still deliver some impressive visuals after all these years. Superman’s fight to save the astronauts in the Lighthouse station in the opening issue is a fantastic piece of action as it shows the character working against gargantuan odds on a grand scale. Lee also does a great job of making the crunch of time in Snyder’s script feel palpable when Superman has to save the tallest building in Dubai from falling over, and the showdown between Batman and Wraith is also a great sequence that spares no expense in detail. No, Lee’s characters aren’t always the most emotive — they tend to default to tense or pensive in their acting — yet that doesn’t matter as much with his strengths being so well served and displayed here.
On that note, it’s an odd choice to have someone like Dustin Nguyen provide additional art in the form of epilogues and flashback sequences throughout these nine issues. He’s not as flashy or as detailed an artist as Lee so there’s a definite clash in their styles for this series. Plus, the parts Nguyen is called upon to draw aren’t all that substantial. The work he does here is good, but it feels like his reason for being there was to take some of the pressure off of Lee in having to draw all of the pages for a given issue. Not exactly the best reason to have a secondary artist for a series, but better that Nguyen gets the exposure from this series than someone less deserving.
“Superman Unchained” also contains a large amount of supplemental material in the form of variant covers, Snyder’s script from the first issue, and some of Lee’s pencils from that issue as well. Much to my surprise, the variant cover gallery turns out to be a very welcome addition to this volume. Rather than just having “Additional Cover By Artist X” there was actually a theme for the variants of the first six issues as each artist took on a different era for Superman. So we get artists like Bruce Timm showing us Superman of the 30’s, Kevin Nowlan illustrating the Bronze Age, Yanick Paquette giving us the goofiness of the Silver Age, and Sean Murphy taking on the 90’s. It’s a great showcase for each of the artists as well as the many incarnations of the Man of Steel over the years.
This story, though, barely rates a footnote in that long and decorated history. “Superman Unchained” stands out for the level of talent involved in its creation, but the end product is far less than the sum of those parts would indicate. Even so, it’s not a bad story and if you keep your expectations low then you’ll likely be entertained by it. I do doubt that the idea of Snyder and Lee taking on “Superman” wasn’t to leave me wishing that the writer would do a series about Lex Luthor in the future.