SUPERMAN: UNCHAINED #1

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Avg Rating: 4.0
 
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Story by Scott Snyder
Art by Jim Lee, Scott Williams, & Dustin Nguyen
Cover by Jim Lee & Scott Williams

Size: 32 pages
Price: 4.99

Alright. Here we are, I personally would have liked if at your local store they would have kept piles of this under chains and then “unchained” them then let the fans just go ape getting their copies but that’s just me.

Now if you haven’t read this yet or are going to buy it based on this review (thank you) then you should know that you should have the same attitude towards this as you should have towards “Man of Steel”, meaning…

Don’t expect it to solve all of the problems you or anyone has ever had with the characters and stories of Superman.

This is not the single greatest issue of Superman ever. It will not glow with a holy light and it will not in any way, change your opinion of the character.

And that is because Superman is still Superman in this book. His costume may be New 52, and he may be a little bit more impulsive in the way that his thought boxes sound, but this IS Superman.

And he’s just been UNCHAINED!

But seriously, the book is very, very good. It delivers an interesting story with a hook at the end that shows a lot of promise and will probably lead to the first mega Superman fight we’ve had in the New 52. From the first page with Superman in it, you just know that Snyder finally nailed it. His Superman is interesting and wonderful to read. His Batman tends to talk to the reader. His Superman talks with the reader. It’s very different. In fact, my favorite moment is when Superman saves a space station that’s falling to Earth and he reminds himself to make sure that the astronauts can hear his voice so that they don’t get scared. That’s Superman right there. He gets the rest of the supporting cast right too, with a witty Jimmy and a gruff but fatherly Perry. His Lois is okay. I’d need to see more though since she’s only on 2 pages.

Jim Lee’s art is…still not great. It’s better than his Justice League stuff but not anywhere near his Batman:Hush stuff. It does feel rushed and unfinished in some places but on the whole it is better.

The backup story is a really big highlight for this issue. It’s just Perry and Jimmy talking about binoculars (if you read the preview, you know which binoculars I’m talking about) while a fisherman finds something very…interesting. The art from Dustin Nguyen and Scott Williams is great.

Now let’s talk about the poster.

It’s underwhelming. It would have been a great page had it been an actual page, and when you get it, follow my advice: open the comic, separate the poster from the glue, open the poster to remove the last of the glue, then cover the cardboard inside with paper so that the glue won’t rip the previous page, fold the poster back up, and slide it in. There. You may now enjoy Superman: Unchained.

Overall, this is a promising start and will hopefully be the first out and out GOOD Superman arc of the New 52.

One last thing: the letterer should have made sure that the word UNCHAINED had its outline set to “Outline Stroke” in Illustrator, because when it shrinks down on the last page, it thickens due to the decrease in size. Graphic designers will know what I’m talking about.

Story: 5 - Excellent
Art: 3 - Good

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