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JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE WITH JOHN BUSCEMA CREATING SUPERMAN
Not Recommended (2/10)
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DC Comics
"Just Imagine..."
Writer: Stan Lee
Artist: John Buscema
Colors: Chris Chuckry
"On The Street"
Writers: Stan Lee & Michael Uslan
Artist: Kyle Baker
Letters: Bill Oakley
Editor: Mike Carlin
Price: $5.95 US/$9.95 CAN |
Some of you may remember Ravage 2099, Stan Lee's mid-90s Marvel book that featured a super-powered garbage man fighting crime in the future. The rest of you probably think I'm making that up. But it's true, that was Lee's last big splash in the comics market, and it was dreadful. The Superman issue of Just Imagine is almost, but not quite, as bad as Ravage 2099. What we've got here is a book that would
have felt hokey and unbelievable in the Silver Age, and feels just ridiculously
contrived and unreal now. The characters are stiff and cardboard, the science so
bad that even a bad science student like myself can spot them and the conflict
patently ridiculous. If not for the backup humor strip with art by Kyle Baker,
I'd consider this a horrendous waste of time, energy, money and paper. As is,
it's just mostly a waste of time, energy, money and paper.
This has the mark of being written by
someone who didn't remember exactly what the rules were as he kept telling the
story. Salden's powers are sometimes technology-based, sometimes a result of
different gravity and atmosphere and sometimes just completely out of nowhere.
Sometimes he can fly, sometimes he can leap, sometimes he's super-fast and this
has one of the most ridiculous rationales for "super vision" that I've ever
heard. This is coming from a guy who finds Spider-Man's origin believable enough
for what it is and the Whizzer's "mongoose blood transfusion" origin only mildly
silly, and I found this to be completely ridiculous.
It doesn't help that the supporting cast
and villains are no better. Gorrok is a brutish idiot who is hard to take
seriously as some sort of criminal mastermind, and Lois Lane is an opportunistic
weasel who also manages to be completely shallow, stupid and incompetent. None
of them are convincing as characters, and the final plot, simplifying the
concept of Chinese-American relations into one clash between two spandex-clad
morons, borders on insulting. This is brainless writing, and while I expect
goofy and sometimes outdated from Lee, I don't expect anything this
oversimplistic.
The artwork, at least, is passable, although far from Buscema's best work. I've been a fan of his since his runs on Avengers (first with Roy Thomas, later with Roger
Stern), but this isn't anywhere near that caliber. Buscema is not a fan of
super-heroes in general, and while that hasn't shown in his work in the past,
his disdain for them seems to have gotten to his work this time around. Or
perhaps it's simply that his work requires an inker like Tom Palmer to reach its
heights.
The backup story is a cutesy little bit of
fluff, with Kyle Baker working in a style that reminds me of Sergio Aragones and
Uslan pulling off a predictable but fun story about licensing, Superman and
greedy agents. However, one cute six-pager doesn't really redeem the book, and I
was left very disappointed in this issue, which isn't even enough fun to be read
as goofy throwback style super-heroes.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
