Superman #690

Looks like everybody else is as excited about this as I am too.  I might just read the General Lane part in the shop and put it back on the rack.  Steel and Guardian are so 1990s!  Mon-El is so never!  I hope they have another crisis just to get rid of him.

I'm in, Robinson is the man.

@robbydzwonar Where to start, where to start. The Guardian is so 90s!? The character's over 40 years old! :-p And Mon-El's presence in the book is making me buy Superman! As for people not being excited about it... personally I thought last issue was one of the best issues of a series in a long time, so I'm looking forward to this, actually. I'm digging it a lot more than Action at this point. 

Since I'm pretty much reading all the other DC books now, I figure maybe I ought to jump on the Superman books too.

Hey Prax? you're a wealth of knowledge, i read the preview for this issue, can you give me a little background on these characters. (just don't give me the x-force chorus line BS again, HA!)

Easy enough, since they're all newish. Mon-El is Superman's buddy from the Negative Zone. He's slowly dying because of a cute that keeps him alive in Superman's reality. The big red guy is some sort of mythic figure or alternate reality war deity, beat the snot out of Superman and seems to live for nothing other than battle. Steel is, of course, one of the alternate Supermen from the death of Superman crossover. Sort of a DC Tony Stark.

Thanks zombox

@crazychris Hey thanks. i usually don't read book previews, so maybe if you drop some character names? Zombox has pretty good one-sentence summaries.

I was curious about Steel and the other guy on the cover. In the preview they're pretty much battling for all 7 pages

also maybe the basic plot of the last few issues

Robinsons been kicking all kinds of ass on this book.

@robby I thought your only complaint for the Superman books was the art.  I fucking love Mon-el for one.  I think there are too many characters in the Superman world to not mainstage as many as possible.  It's a cool ass run and I'm glad I went back and got all the back issues for this NK run. 

I dropped it after New Krypton and I'm thinking maybe it was a mistake now cuz all the other Superman books are good as hell right now, even Supergirl!  Mon-El just didn't do it for me in that issue where he gets out of the phantom zone.  It was only a few issues ago so my shop probably still has them, plus there ain't much good DC stuff out this week.

Honestly, after I check out that Secret Files book coming out next month, maybe I'll dig this title a little more.  The annual looks good too so maybe you guys are right.  Action Comics is great lately though, I don't know what you're talking about!

I wanna try to get into Green Lantern too but I can't find a list of trades in Chronological order from Rebirth up.  I'm a completionist so I have to read them all like I did with Batman with everything from Year One up (except for War Drums, Games, Crimes, etc. which I heard suck worse than Hush Returns anyway).

@robby 1) No Fear, 2) Revenge of the Green Lanterns, 3) Wanted: Hal Jordan, 4) Tales of the Sinestro Corps, 5 & 6) Sinestro Corps War 7) Sins of the Star Sapphire, 8) Rage of the Red Lantern (includes issues #26-28), 9) Secret Origins, 10) Rage of the Red Lantern (same trade latter part).  I think that's everything that's been put out in trade thus far and in order.  good luck.  You better read this btw.  It took me 20 minutes to compile it, lol.

@vadamowens: Thanx buddy.  So what you're telling me is to get No Fear after Rebirth and then so on, right? I hope this makes everything easier to understand if I read all this. It's not harder to understand then Final Crisis right, cuz I STILL don't know what that story is about!

OMG, what is so great about this Mon-El guy? Did I miss something before Brainaic and New Krypton?  I hope this Secret Files jont they have coming out is awfully helpful!

Oh, and when I said, "Guardian is so 1990s, that's because the first time I ever read about him was in Legacy Of Superman #1 which came out in the 1990s and I followed him for only a little while because nothing about him said, "read me!!"  Kind of like this Mon-El guy now.  Steel is from the 1990s though, right?  Or is there some kind of Golden and Silver age versions of him too?

Yeah. follows rebirth.

@Robby Mon-El is a character with a lot of history on the Legion of Super-Heroes and such, so there's a lot of people who like seeing him in this role. As per Vadamowns, he left out the "Tales of the Sinestro Corps trade" which features 4 one-shots that came out during the Sinestro Corps War that are integral to the plot of the event. (Prallax, Cyorg-Superman, Superboy-Prime and Ion, in case you want to just grab the single issues.)

OK, I'm in for this. Did some research and I think I got a handle on what's going on in the 4 superman books. It all looks pretty cool, so I'm in for all of them, Fuck it, DC is taking over my life.

The last two issues have been over-the-top awesome. I can't wait.

@prax read my post again bro:)

Wow, this most be good!  It says that the average rating is 10 out of five stars!  That's twice the chart over!  That has to be either a new record or another technical problem, probably the latter.

So I went to the shop and bought #s 688 & 689 to get caught up.  It turns out that I need #687 too!  Dammit!

I really feel like I know Metropolis and it's characters more after Robinsn's run than I have after reading Superman comics for 20 years.  More than twenty if you count all of my Dad's old comics.  He really knows how to build a world.

I love the way Robinson has used Kirby era Jimmy Olsen concepts in this book. It was also nice to see Olsen maturing. But most of all Robinson has taken Mon-El and made him interesting enough that I will be UBERPISSED if he really goes teets up. I am glad I went ahead and stuck with these titles as the whole story is really gaining ground. This issue proves yet again that Robinson can craft a great tale but you have to be prepared to start slow and wait for the wheeeeee moments.

@Vadamowens Whoops! My mind Merged it. ;-)

I liked this issue. Robinson is an ace at world building. I thought the Atlas/Steel fight was fell choreographed. The false hand moment was nicely done, too. 4/5. 

"As media mogul Morgan Edge fans the flames of Earth's distrust of all things alien, Mon-El wrestles with his looming demise and what to do with his remaining life."

So when did any of that happen in this issue?

I thought it was an ok issue but it just kind of seemed rushed to bring some threads to a close while setting up the crossover. 3/5

This wasn't an issue by itself as much as a series of intermissions.  Adding to the story overall, but doing nothing for this month's issue. 

i dislike the art

I have been impressed with all the super titles since New Krypton, however, this has been the worse.  Not that this issue was terrible, just the worse of the bunch so far.

What was that?

@PraxJargin: It does to say, "tales of the Sinestro Corps" up there.  Do you mean that there are two of them?

Well I just finished reading Rebirth last night.  It wasn't THAT impossible to understand but I was a bit confused reading it.  Maybe I should read it twice since I have never been a Green Lantern reader before.  

Rebirth wasn't exactly inspiring enough to make me want to read GL regularly.  I thought it was going to be as good as HUSH which had me start picking up Batman again after a decade, but it was alright.  I'll give it another shot with No Fear but if that doesn't suck me in, then I suppose GL just isn't my thing.  Oh well, I have plenty of DC to keep up with with all the Batman & Superman stuff going on right now.  I really wanted to get to know some more of the JLA characters a little better though!  

I tried reading the first issue of Flash Rebirth.  It was like trying to read something that was in Chinese or something!  I guess I'm just more of a Grant Morrison guy than Geoff Johns?

Oh yeah, one more GL question: Why is Rebirth the starting point?  There aren't any good GL stories from before then?  Rebirth was hardly a "Year One" kind of story either.  I was totally lost when they were talking about Parallax and The Spectre.

I like how this has became a ensemble book.

@robbydzwonar I missed it when I read through Vadamowen's post, saw it and apologized to him above. Rebirth is considered a starting point because it was the reboot of the character. It's a bit continuity heavy (that's Johns for you) but it essentially places those plot points on the side and never bothers to mention them again (more or less). While there are some good trades from before Rebirth, they mostly focus on the character of Kyle Rayner, the GL over in Green Lantern Corps. But if you're looking for some background information might I suggest:

1) Green Lantern Chronicles Vol. 1; 2) Green Lantern/Green Arrow Vols. 1 & 2; 3) Green Lantern: The Road Back; 4) Ganthet's Tale; 5) Green Lantern: Emerald Twilight; 6) Green Lantern: A New Dawn (Sometimes 5 & 6 are sold together); 7) Zero Hour; 8) Final Night; 9) Day of Judgement;

And while they've been sort of undone by re-telling in the Secret Origin trade "Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn" and "GL: Emerald Dawn II" are quite good.

As well, I have to admit I'm heartened by your opinion that Rebirth isn't like Hush. Hush was a storyline I liked at the time but have since reread and can't imagine liking it. If you like, great, but I only like it now for the Alan Scott scene. ;-)

I didn't really like what they did with this issue. They are pretty much using this one to get people to buy other ones like a trailer or advertisement. Id much rather they just included the things they did in the books they advertised for. Felt like a waste of 3 bucks to me

alright, Rebirth wasn't the easiest read but I got through it.  I just ordered No Fear off of Ebay so I sure hope you aren't lying when you said they put all that Parallax and Spectre shit away somewhere and do what a reboot does: reboot.

@Robby Parallax comes back into play in the Sinestro Corps war, but it's only slightly contingent on previous knowledge of things. As always, feel free to ask around iFanboy for questions or help on the GL mythos. (More specifically, feel free to ask myself. It's been noted I have a deep, continuity laden knowledge of GL as I was a fan of he character since I started reading comics in '92.)

@robbydzwonar - I read No Fear and DESPISED it so don't be disheartened if you feel the same way. I skipped past everything between No Fear and Sinestro Corps War and was completely happy with it. If you're O.C.D. and need to read Everything in-between and if it sucks (i wouldn't know) then just keep pushing past and know that it get's Amazing in the Sinestro War trades and has not gone bad ever since.

 p.s. are we really talking GL trades in a Superman issue thread?  lol

@TopGun Well, Ion *was* in the issue. ;-)

@praxjarvin - i see. i don't read this title. was just goin through the thread and noticed all the GL talk

The video podcast says there are books called Ion that fit in somewhere too.  When should I read those?  After Sinestro Corps War?

Well I'm partially into No Fear now.  The first story about Hal taking his buddy on a flight in the jet wasn't so appealing, but at least I knew what the hell these people were talking about!!

My store didn't have anything else in between No Fear and Tale Of The Sinestro Corps so I'm not sure what I wanna do yet.  Revenge Of The Green Lanterns and Wanted: Hal Jordan are cheap as hell on Ebay though, I just hate waiting!!