The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 21 Jun 2013 02:50 AM PDT We celebrate the release of Man Of Steel and the 75th anniversary of Superman with a look back at some of his greatest stories. FROM George Reeves to Christopher Reeve, Dean Cain to Tom Welling by way of Brandon Routh, there has never been a Superman movie or television series that has met my considerably high comics-derived expectations. However, as I write this still fresh from watching Man Of Steel, and I am happy (and surprised) to report that I actually liked the movie! Sure, it wasn't in the calibre of The Dark Knight, and the best part of it was actually the visual effects, but in my humble opinion, this is THE best Superman movie ever, narrowly edging out Superman II. The action and Kal-El's fights with villains of equal might made it an enjoyable movie outing – and saved me the horror of going through yet another "escape from Krypton" subplot or another lame Lex Luthor appearance. But I'm not here to review Man Of Steel. Instead, I would like to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Superman's creation (creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster probably never imagined the Man of Tomorrow living on for so many tomorrows!) by going through 10 key stories that have defined the Man of Steel. Happy birthday, Superman! The last son of Krypton There have been numerous stories written about Kal-El's flight from Krypton and his ascension from Smallville country boy to Metropolis' top reporter. Prior to this six-parter, the benchmark for Superman's early years was John Byrne's Man Of Steel (as well as the World Of Krypton miniseries), and Mark Waid's Superman: Birthright. However, what makes Secret Origin the ultimate reference point is the way it redefined the Super-mythos by injecting depth, believability and nostalgia (Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder would have been proud) into Superman's early years. The man for all seasons The four-parter that put Smallville on the map. The beauty of this story lies in the way Loeb juxtaposed a third party's perspective on the Man of Steel with the four seasons. For instance, Spring is represented by Jonathan Kent's thoughts on his son during his pre-Superman days. Lois Lane makes Summer a sizzling one as she recalls her early experiences being saved by the Man of Steel. Lex Luthor puts a different perspective to Fall by driving home into Superman the point that he can't save everyone. And finally, Winter reveals Lana Lang's frustrations and hopes for her once-boyfriend. The dying Man of Steel Considered one of the greatest Superman tales ever written, Morrison and Quitely's epic story features the beginning of the end to Superman's life! Unlike the copout death at the hands of Doomsday in the 1990s, however, here Superman dies ... slowly, not in an action-packed fight but in a gradual way courtesy of Lex Luthor's devious act of overdosing Superman's cells with solar radiation. With less than a year to live, the Man of Steel occupies his time by doing long-overdue things – including full disclosure with Lois, levelling with Lex and leaving behind a legacy for humans and Kryptonians. The man who has everything What if Krypton never exploded and Kal-El lived a happy life there? Moore and Gibbons' For The Man Who Has Everything story answers this question, courtesy of the villainous Mongul's "birthday gift" – a Black Mercy plant. Superman's 47th birthday party at the Fortress of Solitude is dampened when his "guests" (Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman) find him in a comatose state with the plant feeding off his greatest desires. For Superman, this means a life where he is on Krypton, happily married with kids. Inevitably, this dream environment has to end and the decisive moment where Kal-El bids adieu to his Kryptonian desires is one of those rare moments that sees him at his most vulnerable. This story by the co-creators of Watchmen was also immortalised in the second episode of the Justice League Unlimited animated series. The secret revealed! At long last, the worst-kept secret in comics is finally revealed … to Lois Lane at least. Despite being the Daily Planet's nosiest reporter, Lois took 53 years to find out Clark Kent's not-so-secret identity, thanks to him finally coming clean in Action Comics #662's Secrets In The Night story. After decades of false alarms and U-turns, I never thought this moment would ever materialise, within my lifetime at least. This breakthrough certainly paved the way for bigger things in the Lois-Clark relationship, as they would finally tie the knot five years later. The city in a bottle Although there has been a gradual introduction of Kryptonian survivors (i.e. Supergirl, Zod, etc.) into the Superman mythos over the years, none of these was as impactful as the discovery of the "bottled city" of Kandor. The existence of a surviving Kryptonian community from Kandor (the capital city of Krypton) emerged in Action Comics #242, via Superman's first encounter with Brainiac. While that initial encounter with Kandor proved inconclusive (as in, the city stayed in the bottle), the 21st century take by Johns and Frank took things one step further, expanding the city to full size and therefore unleashing 100,000 Kryptonians upon Earth! Unfortunately, Superman's "homecoming" occurs at a great cost, as his Earth father, Jonathan Kent, is killed in the aftermath. Judge, jury and executioner Superman never kills ... unless he is under the influence of Lex Luthor! Dubbed the Supergirl Saga, this three-parter set in a "pocket universe" has Superman teaming up with that world's Lex Luthor against Phantom Zone criminals General Zod, Zaora and Quex-Ul – a battle which ends with Superman making the terrible and difficult decision of executing all three via fatal exposure to green kryptonite. Truth, justice, and the American way What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & The American Way is another Superman story that recently received the animated movie treatment and rightly so, as this story explores and reinforces the Man of Steel's modus operandi in delivering justice. While Kingdom Come debates the degree of punishment meted out to villains, this tale reaffirms Superman's dream of making dignity, honour and justice a shared reality. Providing an alternative to Superman's "outdated" methods is a new team of antiheroes called the Elite, led by one Manchester Black. The Elite's "the end justifies the means" approach was mooted as a permanent solution to society's ills – that is, until Superman gave them a taste of the same treatment, and proved that violence is never the answer. Truth, justice, and the Ukrainian way? What if the Man of Steel's baby rocket had landed in Russia instead of America? Mark Millar's Red Son story gives Superman's origin story a twist, as Jor-El, in a haste to save his son, miscalculates the Earth's rotation, which results in Kal-El's rocket landing in Ukraine instead of Kansas. Without the Kents' parental guidance, Kal-El grows up under a very strict regime, and instead of growing up to be the Superman we all know, he becomes Russia's Super Soldier, who champions the common worker, Stalin and socialism! The missing Man of Tomorrow If I had to choose a "The End" tale for Superman, this would be it! Moore's Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow story (which is now available as a standalone book) focuses on Superman's mysterious disappearance from the public eye. Set 11 years in the future (1997, to be exact), Lois Lane-Elliot (the last person to see Superman) recollects Superman's final moments through an exclusive interview with a Daily Planet reporter. The protagonists are Toyman and the Prankster, who discover Superman's secret identity by abducting Pete Ross. Teaming up with Braniac, Metallo and the Kryptonite Man, they storm the Fortress of Solitude for a major showdown. While Superman (with his super friends) succeeds in overcoming the threat, he discovers that the attack was just a smokescreen as the real mastermind, Mr Mxyzptlk, pops up! However, instead of the usual comical ending involving saying his name backwards, the imp receives his dues in a tragic manner, as Superman accidentally kills him. The violation of his self-imposed code not to take a life prompts Superman to voluntarily depower himself via Gold Kryptonite exposure. The interview ends with Lois declaring that "as far as I'm concerned, Superman died in the Arctic". But to find out whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow ... well, go read it and find out for yourself! Our regular comics contributor, Earth 638 (Tel: 012-6631584, email: earth638@yahoo.com) will be relocating their brick-and-mortar shop onto a virtual plane as of June 25. For more details, visit their Facebook page (Facebook.com/Earth638). |
| Posted: 21 Jun 2013 05:00 AM PDT There's nothing like a good book to fuel the imagination. The School For Good And Evil Twelve-year-old best friends Sophie and Agatha from the cursed village of Galvadon find themselves kidnapped and sent to the School for Good & Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. Bubbly Sophie, with her pretty dresses and glass slippers, looks set to graduate as a storybook princess from the School for Good. Meanwhile, morbid Agatha, with her plain black frocks and nasty pet cat, seems more suited to the School for Evil. Yet, to their surprise, the girls find their fortunes reversed in the Endless Woods. Sophie is thrust into the School for Evil, while Agatha is surrounded by handsome princes in the School for Good. Is it all a terrible mistake or are the girls where they truly belong? The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop WELCOME to The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop, the most magical place in London. Eleven-year-old twins Oz and Lily Spoffard move into this wondrous place after their family inherits it along with the house above the shop. But when their evil immortal uncle comes a-hunting for the secret of the shop's greatest recipe, Oz and Lily discover that the famous chocolate-makers were actually sorcerers and the power of the magic chocolate could destroy the world. Joining forces with their magical neighbour Caydon, Oz and Lily try to save their unborn sister and the world with help from an invisible cat, a talking rat and the ghost of an elephant. Better Nate Than Never NATE Foster is a small-town boy with big dreams. He has always wanted to star in a Broadway show. Unfortunately, it looks like nothing exciting is ever going to happen in Jankburg, Pennsylvania, where nobody appreciates a good show tune. So with his best pal Libby's help, Nate breaks his curfew and escapes on a bus to New York City to crash an open-casting audition for E.T.: The Musical. Nate thinks that would be his best shot at big-time stardom, but does he have what it takes to make his dreams come true? Infinity Ring #4: Curse Of The Ancients BOOK four of the time travel-themed Infinity Ring series continues to mix genuine historical facts with adventure and fantasy. Curse Of The Ancients revolves around the creation and destruction of the Mayan culture and their greatest legacy: the Mayan Codex. Sera, Riq and Dak use the Infinity Ring to go back to ancient Mayan times in order to fix breaks in history so that they can prevent future disasters and save the world from the Cataclysm. But, another problem arises when Riq doesn't want to leave because he has fallen for a young Mayan snake whisperer and jewellery maker named Kisa. The 5th Wave IT's the dawn of the 5th Wave and a girl named Cassie Sullivan is armed with an M-16 as she runs from Them on a lonely stretch of highway. They are the alien beings who look human but roam the countryside killing anyone they see. So, Cassie believes that to stay alive, she has to be alone. That is until she meets the mysterious and beguiling Evan Walker. Amazon's best teen book in the month of May, The 5th Wave has also been described by USA Today as "a modern sci-fi masterpiece ... that should do for aliens what Twilight did for vampires." Back And Deader Than Ever (Monster High #4) LALA (also known as Draculaura) gets a life and flashes her fangs in the fourth book of this New York Times bestselling series, now that the RADs (Regular Attribute Dodgers) are free to do as they please. Unfortunately, Daddy Drac drops in for a surprise visit; he is anti-RAD/normie integration and insists that the RADs get their own school. So to save Merston High, Lala sets her eyes on a glamorous contest by footwear company T'eau Dally shoes; the winner gets a big cash prize and the chance to star in a national campaign as the brand's spokesmodels. In this battle between father and daughter, will anybody make it to the end in one piece? |
| The tragic failure of an American dream Posted: 21 Jun 2013 04:58 AM PDT This is a gripping thriller that portrays the flipside of the American dream and how ordinary men can veer into madness. Fallen Land GIVEN its essential nature, it comes as no surprise that the American dream gave way so quickly to the Air-Conditioned Nightmare. A wide variety of American writers, from Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) to Henry Miller (1891-1980) to Don DeLillo (1936-) and beyond, have expended a good deal of ink on investigating why things should have turned out so badly for so many. Now, on the back of his highly regarded South Africa-set debut, Absolution, Patrick Flanery takes up the challenge of what DeLillo calls "the American mystery" in a new novel that also explores the dark shadows cast by history and old lies, beginning with a race riot and ending, almost a century later, with an execution on death row. Along the way, he examines the collapse of one man's crude but persuasive value system. The fact that this man stands, in many ways, as a kind of American Everyman is, at times, almost unbearably poignant – a reminder that the tragedy at the heart of Fallen Land is not that of one individual, but of an entire nation. The condemned man is a former builder and property developer, Paul Krovik. Ever since he was a boy, Krovik has placed his trust in the preachings of a shadowy "great man", whose guiding principles are passed on by Paul's father: "Remember the teachings of the great man, Paul. Regret is nothing but a false prayer. Trust the gleam of your own mind. Be brave: God does not want cowards to manifest His work. Your hands are trustworthy. Society is nothing but a conspiracy against you. If the country is at war, then the average citizen has to look out for his own even more than in peacetime, government be damned." This half-baked philosophy is both seductive (to a child growing up in the shadow of a forceful parent, especially so) and highly toxic: even before Paul's American Dream runs into financial trouble, he is preparing "not just for attack by foreign terrorists, or governments, but also for the possibility of hostile fellow Americans, for a new civil war, or for an environmental, technological, or biochemical conclusion to the human era on this planet". In short, Paul Krovik, a potentially good man who "loved his wife, still loves her, loves the boys as well, only ever wanted to protect them and still does", has placed himself on a war footing with the entire world. As his poorly constructed houses begin to fall apart and the lawsuits and debts pile up, his wife divorces him and flees with the children to Florida, leaving him with nothing but a state-of-the-art post-apocalyptic bunker into which he has needlessly thrown hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is when Paul's mind truly begins to unravel, and the violence that ensues comes to seem inevitable. Like its predecessor, Fallen Land is a book full of sinister echoes, bad history rising from the tainted earth, not so much to infect as to reveal the poisonous currents running just beneath the appearance of normal, even conventional life. The paranoia and innate violence of America's bad dream not only drives Paul to desperate acts, but also poisons Nathaniel, the seemingly contented husband and father who buys Krovik's signature house after the would-be property tycoon goes bankrupt. That it is the men – Paul's domineering father, Krovik himself, Nathaniel – who succumb to violence is not unexpected for, as "the great man" says, "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." That manhood must be defended against every threat, real or imagined – and in the paranoid imperium, threats are everywhere. In an epigraph, Flanery picks up on Hawthorne's observation (in The House Of The Seven Gables, of 1851): "In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point." This, we might reasonably contend, is why the American dream always fails: because that dream is founded on a harsh competitiveness and aggression that is bound to push not just somebody, but many, to drowning point. In Fallen Land, Flanery has given us a gripping thriller, and a superb portrayal of how ordinary men can veer into madness, but its real power lies in its recognition of the tragic failure of an American dream that should have tried, at least, to live up to the principle laid down in 1892 in the American Pledge of Allegiance by Francis Bellamy of "liberty and justice for all". – Guardian News & Media |
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