Rating:  -
There are virtually no supervillains to be seen; instead, Superman started out as a kind of progressive icon, fighting the good fight for the common man. He takes on unjust death sentences, the military-industrial complex, unsafe working conditions, torture in prisons, and lax enforcement of traffic safety laws. It's incredibly bizarre and clearly written for an era with a different set of ideas about how superhero comics worked. In fact, it takes until the final issue of this collection - Action Comics #13 - to introduce a recurring villain, and that makes for a lot of extremely forgettable stories.
A few of the details of the Superman mythos have yet to be worked out. For starters, he works for the Daily Star at this point, and the chief doesn't appear to be named Perry White yet. The Kents are dead (which is something that will be changed later) and there is no Lex Luthor to speak of. Lois is here, though, and the love "triangle" between her, Clark, and Superman is hammered into place with some extremely hilarious thought-bubbles (turns out Lois loves Superman for his strength and hates Clark for his weakness - feminist comics, these ain't).
The narrative is also kind of choppy. There are a few false starts, with the plot changing halfway through an issue. In other cases, the story will end abruptly and then be picked up again the next issue as if nothing changed. In a digest format, these issues are weird; in a serial I can imagine they would be downright jarring. And while there is less of the casual murder we see in early Batman, Superman is not exactly violence-averse. He is more than willing to destroy property (I'm not even sure how to justify his behavior in his fight for automobile safety), punch people out, and threaten the bad guys until they agree to confess their crimes. The 1930s were a simpler time for those who relied on forced confessions, and apparently for many other things as well.
Rating:  -
I got into Superman after getting into Smallville. It's very enjoyable to get back to the origins of this impressive legacy. I can't wait to see the evolution of Superman personally and in his powers. I will collect all of these chronicles as long as they publish them, and hopefully they will publish them all the way through.
Rating: -
It's nice to read Superman's early stories. This is the way, he is supposed to be. Excellent kick back reading.
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This is a collection of the earliest Superman comics, they are in color and affordable. I would consider these a must own for any Superman fan. Overall production value, although not flashy, is excellent and the stories are classics. This is where it all started.
Rating:  -
Almost a year after the release of Volume 1, DC finally gives us SUPERMAN CHRONICLES VOLUME 2, continuing the admirable but somewhat laughable effort (at this rate, at least) of reprinting every Superman appearance in chronological order. This book features classic tales from Action Comics #14-20 and Superman #2 & 3, from 1939-1940. All stories are written and illustrated by Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Keep in mind that these are some of the earliest adventures of Superman from comics' Golden Age, so the style is very direct, almost to a fault. Looking back on them, there's no real narrative complexity or character development - more like Siegel and Shuster were simply producing stories to fill a demand. It actually seems that the boys from Cleveland weren't quite sure what to do with their fantastic creation now that he was finally in comics. Superman didn't have much of a rogues gallery at this point; instead, he deals with white-collar criminals and thugs, with everyone behaving similarly to what was seen in the Superman TV series of the `50s. The only remarkable villain is the Ultra-Humanite, whose appearance in the final story of this volume is something no fan of James Robinson's THE GOLDEN AGE will want to miss. In any case, you're experiencing comics history in the making, getting a look at stories that your parents or grandparents enjoyed as kids, and gaining an understanding of why comics caught on as they did in a world that had a need for fantastic heroes. Even though these stories may be somewhat bland, they have an appeal that can't be ingnored.
I just wish DC would speed up their reprinting of these stories so that readers don't grow old before the Golden Age stories wrap up. There are certainly plenty of stories and other characters to choose from to keep these books coming. Get it in gear, DC!
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