Thursday, May 21, 2009

Superman / Batman & Supergirl

I haven't read Superman / Batman in a while, but I thought this cover was really striking so I started flipping through the issue and the interior art looked great as well. To my knowledge, artist Francis Manapul, is fairly new on the scene, but I think just based on this first chapter of this new story arc, he's going to be someone who is going to join the ranks of fan favorites very, very soon.

Superman / Batman is now written by Michael Green and Mike Johnson and their writing returns this title back to the over the top fun of the Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness period of this book. This storyline is called "Mash-Up" (think of this term in regards what people have been doing with different songs and you'll get an idea of what the this story is about) and I don't want to talk about any specifics of the story because it's better to experience the fun ride that is Superman / Batman #60 with very little fore knowledge. This title doesn't take place in current continuity (which is a plus or minus depending on how you feel about a title that isn't part of a shared universe), but I thought it was the most enjoyable superhero title I read this week.
Supergirl continues to be highly entertaining since the new creative team came on board with issue #34 (eight months now!) and hasn't been this good since Peter David's Supergirl years ago. Supergirl #41 concludes the "Who Is Superwoman" arc, with Sperling Gates writing, but artists Fernando Dagnino and Raul Fernandez are filling in for regular artists Jamal Igal and Jon Sibal. When I first saw that there was an artist change this issue I groaned, but got over that really quickly because the guest artists are really good and stylistically they are similar to the regular art team so green lights all the way for total superhero entertainment. DC has made this Supergirl title tie in more with the two Superman titles, but a person could read Supergirl unto itself (but even the two Superman titles have been pretty good lately even though they don't have Superman in them).

DC needs to hurry and get a Supergirl trade with the first arc by this new creative team in production, but I think a person could pick almost any issue of the new run and get caught up to speed pretty quickly as to what is going on.

1 comment:

Dave Ziegler said...

Francis Manapul was the artist of Jim Shooter's too-brief run on Legion of Super-Heroes, Ralph. And I think he'd done something for Top Cow before that...