If look at all the DC books I buy every month and all the trades I buy from them, I can trace the reason I buy all of them to Geoff Johns. I read anything Green Lantern related because of Geoff Johns’ take on the character, I read anything Flash related because of Johns’ massive run, Booster Gold has become one of my favorite characters because of Johns’ work on him in 52 and his solo series, etc… What I find is that when Johns writes a book, he not only makes the lead character interesting, but he also makes their backstory and mythology equally enthralling. As any geek knows, a great and interesting mythology will ensure that a franchise floureshes forever (just look at Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, etc…). Johns has already left his mark on Green Lantern and is currently building up the Flash mythos, and now he’s turning his sights onto Superman, as its looking like he’s building up the Superman folklore to be the greatest that its ever been.

Superman: Secret Origin #1 isn’t the first time that Johns is touching upon Superman mythology. Like in Green Lantern, he has included references and asides about the mythos in the main title, such as Krypton’s society and and bits & pieces of Clark Kent’s past. With this new mini-series, Johns can bring all those ideas together to make a solid foundation for the birth of Superman. One might argue over the need for a retelling of this birth, since not only “Man Of Steel” and “Birthright” tell the story pretty competantly, but also that nearly everyone in the world knows of Superman’s origin, comic fan or not. As evidenced by this first issue, however, Johns isn’t content with just telling the start of Superman, but also the start of Superman’s world.

This issue starts the series with Clark in Smallville first learning of his Kryptonian heritage and learning of his abilities. Here, Johns successfully mixes in the Kryptonian society and caste system that he helped create into the origin, and in all was a very fun and refreshing read. Everyone speaks and acts naturally, and not once did I think that the story was boring since I know the basics already.

Gary Frank has some great art here as well, as most of this issue was pretty down to earth, he did a great job grounding the characters in reality and yet didn’t make them seem boring. A great strength of all his art is his ability to make all these crazy ideas and characters appear believable, like they would look like if you saw them in real life. Even though there wasn’t much zaniness in this issue, I’m very much looking forward to the future issues and see how Frank depicts Superman’s history.

Being an invincible character, I understand that Superman is a very difficult character to write. But still, a couple of years ago, I couldn’t give two craps about anything Superman related, as the character himself is of no interest to me. I think the reason that the Geoff Johns’ Superman appeals to me so much is that when he writes a Superman story, he’s not concerned with just creating villains that are even stronger than him so that the story becomes a contest of who’s stronger. Instead, Johns creates stories that play into the larger world of his, so we see how Superman reacts andplays into these personal dilemmas. It’s looking as Superman: Secret Origin is being built to be the foundation to the larger story at hand, and with an excellent script and art, I’ll be eagerly awaiting the future issues.