Books : Superman: Camelot Falls, Vol. 2

In association with Amazon.com

Rating:

- Camelot
Camelot is a greta series to put up. I have a friend who hates superman and he cant got enough of this series. so if u r one of those the u would enjoy this book and part one.

Rating:

- Exsquisit
Camelot Falls Vol 1-2 is the best Superman Story in years. 2007-2008 is the year of Superman

Rating:

- after a nice build-up, a pretty big disappointment
this review is of the second volume of "camelot falls." amazon can't seem to differentiate between the volumes, but there is really no comparing the two. the first volume was a strong start with some relatively self-contained chapters, fantastic art by carlos pacheco, and a pretty strong build-up to what seemed like a very interesting conflict for superman. the basic premise is that a time-traveler named arion warns superman that his ongoing "interference" with the history of mankind will eventually lead to humanity's extinction. it's an interesting concept, nicely executed by busiek and pacheco. it's rare when a writer comes up with a credible challenge for a character as powerful and timeless as superman, and this one really grabbed my interest. i read the first volume months ago and eagerly awaited the conclusion.

i feel like i should have skipped it. it's no secret that the monthly issues in this collection were severely delayed (apparently on the art side of the creative team), but there is no good reason that such delays should have affected the story so severely in this format. events that occurred in other books have altered superman's status quo in-between volumes, and it's at least a little bit jarring. during the break since the first volume of "camelot falls" superman and lois lane have adopted a child (this is quickly explained in a recap at the start of the story), and he shows up in a few pages to do nothing except confuse readers. when issues are delayed in a book with characters that appear elsewhere, either (A) the story goes on as planned, unaffected by changes in other books, or (B) the story is altered to reflect the changes. each of these choices presents a problem. in the first case a reader is asked to recognize that the story takes place in the past, and in the second case the story will be disjointed and confusing when read in one sitting. in some situations i could understand the decision to go with the second option, because it helps readers feel like, despite delays, the current story is happening in the present and matters. but in the case of a superman story, nobody expects anything major to happen to any of the main characters, so it effectively doesn't matter when the story takes place. any superman story could take place at any time because readers know at the end of the day superman's got to get back to the status quo. also the first option favors the collected edition, which will be in print forever, and the second favors the monthly comics, which are on the shelves for a month. so for the life of me i don't understand why the decision was made to muddle this story up with unnecessary and off-putting baggage from other books.

but the bigger problem here is the art. by far the biggest factor for me in picking up these books was carlos pacheco. he's one of my favorite artists, and i'll generally pick up anything he does. but this is not calrlos pacheco. reasonably perceptive readers will notice that where the first volume says "pencils by carlos pacheco, inks by jesus merino," the second one says "art by carlos pacheco and jesus merino," and it shows. it's hard to tell how much of this book is sloppy pacheco pencils, pacheco's layouts with finishes by merino, or just all merino's work, but the entire package pales in comparison to the first volume. overall this just doesn't look very good. certainly not what readers have come to expect from carlos pacheco. but then, i suspect this book has considerably more contribution from merino than pacheco. apparently, despite this, dc is still giving him work, so hopefully this new method of merino contributing to his pencils is an isolated incident, but i'm certainly going to check it out his work in the future before getting excited about picking it up.

and as for the story, it just degrades into another fight. maybe that's what we should expect by now, but i guess i just expected a little more. the question of if superman's actions are really hurting humanity remains and might never be addressed again, let alone resolved. i probably won't be sticking around anyways, but this experience has left me leery of an artist who's been a favorite of mine for ten years. check out the covers for some full pacheco pencils and compare them to what's inside. if you can't tell the difference (and i suspect there's a large portion of readership that can't), you might well enjoy this art quite a lot. but more visually astute readers will be in for some serious disappointment.

Rating:

- Great Superman story
This is how Superman should be: heroic yet human. I don't have much else to say except, if you like Superman, you should probably get this story. Although, wait for the second volume to come out as this one is only the first half.

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