Superman, the four seasons of the hero’s path – Danger Room –

The perfect Loeb touch

Jeph Loeb (Stamford, Connecticut, 1958) started out as a fan, should have been. His father was vice president of Brandeis University, and in the early 1970s Elliot S! He is good friends with Maggin and Who does he think is his mentor? Maggin was the author of Superman in the ’70s and even Crisis on Infinite Earths† However, Loeb began his writing career in film, not comics. to command or young wolf and more. While preparing the script for a Flash movie, he met Jenette Kahn, who offered to write for DC. The result was the 1991 mini-series Challenge the unknown It coincided for the first time with Tim Sale (Ithaca, NY, 1956), the beginning of a fruitful and successful collaboration.

Loeb’s thirty-year career oscillates between Marvel, DC and the film industry. One of the milestones is the launch of red kryptonite. smallvilleMake the Hulk red, write the parts heroes or lossFictions and writers for Rob Liefeld, Draw the worst comic book I’ve ever read Ultimatum† and ran Marvel’s television arm for 10 years, until the rise of Kevin Feige in 2019 removed him from the role.

I have to admit: Loeb for me, Bendis for others, the author I love to hate is the person who brings me the most joy on my frozen blog. Loeb’s career is evident in the comics he fills with characters, his collaborations with some of the best cartoonists of his time, the better the better off keeping the comics where things happen without any reason whatsoever. With this formula, Loeb managed to become a true bestseller of the late 1990s and late 2000s.Loeb has a great quality: he knows how to synthesize the essence and history of the characters and present them in the most comfortable and friendly way for any audience.†

We can see this in both his work at Marvel (Pani’s re-edited “color” miniseries featuring Daredevil, Spiderman, Hulk, and Captain America) and DC. Batman: The Long Halloween or in all seasons superman with the common denominator they all collaborate so closely with Tim Sale that they draw as “narrator” rather than “writer-illustrator”.†

great american novel

over Superman Four Seasons Loeb and Sale are recreating the beginnings of Superman, specifically the beginnings of the John Byrne version, who was only 13 years old at the time. In a market that doesn’t know which card to stick to, These investigations into the origins of the characters were the subject of the day.or Spider-Man’s Untold Stories Where Kurt Busiek draws the gaps in Lee and Ditko’s founding pages, or the gaps in John Byrne’s various initiatives, Spider-Man Episode One, X-Men: The Lost Years or Marvel: The Lost Generation Without forgetting the Batman stories of Loeb and Sale, who took Frank Miller’s ideas for himself. Batman first year to tell a kind of sequel.

Byrnean law is fully respected here, but they add new details and unpublished stories about the first year of Superman’s career. Contrary to what the title suggests, this story does not cover a year of the character’s life.but the first part SpringIt begins when Clark Kent is about to complete the Institute, then skipping a few years, making him already in a blue, red, and yellow suit, at the start of his career, already working on the planet and contradicting Luthor. Subsequent chapters, hence the name summer autumn and Winter It looks like it will happen in the same year.

over Spring Clark considers what to do with his future. Narrated by the worried Jonathan Kent, who naturally wants the best for his son, but He feels unable to help him decide on his future, not realizing that he has already given him everything he needs.† A hurricane gives Clark a chance to use his powers and he realizes he must use them to help people. After revealing his abilities to Lana, as Byrne said at the time, Clark leaves Smallville, and when we meet him, he’s already playing as Superman in Metropolis, as we mentioned earlier, and rescuing a boy running on rooftops. ‘Mom made for him’ suit.

The second part is narrated by Lois Lane and examines the reasons why someone with such powers is committed to doing good.† His favorite sin is jealousy, Luthor is presented as a copy of Donald Trump, a media businessman who at the time boasted his negotiation skills even with terrorists. Clark returns to Smallville and admits, as an example of Loeb inconsistencies, that he hasn’t heard from Lana in years: something he hasn’t seen in years but never cared about how she turned out. Either he asked his parents or he had no idea that people living in such a small town no longer lived in Smallville, which no one believes. By the way, John Byrne also told where Lana is on the occasion of the saga. millennium†

The third episode, narrated by Lex Luthor, is about Superman’s first arrest of Luthor and Superman is a little obsessive here, constantly spying on the billionaire and letting him know you’re watching him.†

Luthor, on the other hand, guides a Superman-obsessed virologist into a deadly situation he can’t prevent, with little success. Also for a train that is about to derail because the driver fainted, because in the DC Universe trains don’t have safety mechanisms for such situations as they do in our world. It also stops abruptly without having to worry that sudden braking could injure the driver or passengers. The Loeb thing, I’m telling you.

If Luthor can’t physically destroy him, he can emotionally: Clark comes home in winter, both literally and figuratively. Luthor’s armored henchmen replace Superman as the security of Metropolis, only to scold the same boy who insists on splashing water from the ledges of Metropolis’ skyscrapers in the first episode. Lana is back in Smallville and will be the narrator of this final episode.† Clark’s conversations with him and his fellow countrymen, and how he saved the city from flooding (go with the city, you don’t understand anyone who is a resident), his father and dog (I saw you there, Zack Snyder) convinced him to continue playing the Superman role (without much explanation)Recognizing that even himself has limits, he returns to Metropolis in time to save the goddamn boy who escaped the cliff and deserves to agree with Darwin.

As we said, Loeb reveals the essence of the character, his personality and motivations. If Superman is anything, he knows it’s because of Clark, an honest boy from a small town who was brought up by the best parents. and presents it to you in a very emotional way. It’s a shame that his work, which has been used over and over again for movie adaptations in the case of Batman, hasn’t made it into a version. snyderian Superman, although it’s been a lot lately superman and lois† Here, the screenwriter uses and abuses the source of the narrative, which is very typical for him, and it is often boring. These are very well written texts, but sin from excesses, from many excesses.

Loeb remained close to Byrne’s version and Remarkably, he wrote the character’s regular series almost immediately and then reinvented many elements of Silver Age Superman.Including Supergirl, but that’s not surprising considering she’s also her editor. sublime Here’s where Alan Moore shows how to modernize all those concepts that DC in the 1980s and John Byrne saw as outdated ballast.

The graphics aspect is simply overwhelming. Right now Tim Sale is at the pinnacle of his art. a style that does not shy away from almost caricatured exaggerations, especially in the physique of the protagonistDrinking heavily from both Byrne’s and Frank Miller’s versions. Narratively, he chooses to use very large vignettes and copious amounts of vignettes. splash pages and pay special attention to the setting. Sale dedicates this work to Norman Rockwell, the painter of the bright and happy 1950s America, but it doesn’t stop at the rural landscapes of Smallville, expanding it into a retro-futuristic metropolis with impeccable buildings and streets. Exercising in Nostalgia for an America that never existed. But there’s also something about Edward Hopper, his cityscapes, and his characters lurking in rooms. Graphically ingenious, a result that Danish colorist Bjarne Hansen’s watercolors and colored pencils are no stranger to.

And by the way, the title of this article is not superfluous. Like many others, this story willingly or unwillingly follows the structure of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, in each of its formulations, from “call to adventure” to “master of two worlds”. character-defining groups. Despite the inconsistencies and monolithic texts, Superman Four Seasons It’s a great introduction to the character and a reminder of why he’s the first and best hero of them all.† It shows me that I have already written this on this website, but it is no less true.