Books : Superman: 'Til Death Do Us Part (Book 3)

In association with Amazon.com

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- Too Long & too irrelevant.
As you can see this book has a lot of pages but most of the story in these pages are just fillers. They are long and irrelevant to the main story and at a certain point makes you stop caring about the story altogether. The main premise is interesting...it's about Lois and Clark's marriage being on the rocks. Superman tries his best to accomodate to her feelings or at least what he perceives to be her feelings. While this story can be told in a limited number of issues, DC comics opts to spread it over other mini-stories that are much less interesting. The end result is you get a mediocre collection of Superman stories.

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- What happened?
After the great "Death of Superman" series, this work was not up to my expectations. The artwork was sadly sub-standard and it was a very weak portrayal of Superman. I can't quite picture Superman so willingly being a doormat, even for Lois. If this were my only exposure I wouldn't come back, even with the interesting twist at the end.

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- Introducing: Superman the Softie!
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman to be the modern mythical hero ala' Hercules. Read the Golden Age tales collected in the Archive Editions. Superman fights for the everyman. Superman is a crusader. Superman is proactive and sometimes even works outside the law, all the while believing in the greater good. Then read this insipid volume and weep!

In the early days of the Silver Age (1950s), Superman is criticized for being more "Steel" than "Man". Therefore the warm and funny "Shazam" comics were outselling Superman nearly every month. When Mort Weisinger brought in Jerry Siegel and Otto Binder to rework the entire Superman mythos in the late 1950s, however, the book took on a change for the better. We are introduced to a Superman Family and to his Kryptonian past. Superman became a character with tragedy, family and fun all mixed together. With the 1986 revamp of the character by John Byrne, he became even more "human", having grown up in Smallville and all. The team of Dan Jurgens, Louise Simonson, Roger Stern and Jerry Ordway sought to always balance the "Steel" and the "Man" showing him as a very powerful hero who at the same time have very human sentiments.

Then came Jeph Loeb. "Superman For All Seasons", the Smallville TV series and now this. Superman is no longer the Man of Steel. He's now the man of soft-putty. Granted, Loeb wanted to bring Supes back to his Smallville roots but he tends to overdo it. Supes became a softie, a country-bumpkin. Worse is Superman's attitude towards his wife, Lois Lane. Granted, Supes is a good husband - but under the hands of Loeb and gang in this volume, Supes doesn't even dare to breathe unless Lois gives him permission! The melodrama is a little too much.

Now the story. Lois is acting like a total b*tch in this story. Superman is trying to suck up to her to make her stop acting so b*tchy! Turns out that Lois is actually replaced by Parasite (since when? oh, it happened off-panel?). Superman fights Parasite-Lois. That's all! Worse still, the story doesn't get resolved until the next insipid volume "Critical Condition" that is even worse than this one (if that is even possible)!!!

The only highlight here is the art by Ed McGuiness. Though not the traditional style associated with Superman, McGuiness is able to make everything look BIG and FUN almost effortlessly with his manga-esque art. As for the writing, most of it is done by Jeph Loeb and Joe Kelly. In my opinion, Joe Kelly can't write even if it is to save his life (read some of his JLA to see what I mean). As for Loeb, I actually like HOW he writes but not WHAT he writes. He has the ability to let the reader "see" into the thoughts of the characters but the plots are all so paper-thin that the whole thing amounts to nothing more than self-important introspection.

All in all, a TERRIBLE work by a creative team that should have delivered better. I dropped the Superman books not long after this story and the next, "Critical Condition". If this trend continues, the "condition" of the Superman books is "critical" indeed!

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