Superman Year One #3 // Review
In a recent issue of Tom King’s run on Batman, Superman enters a building from the lobby and takes an elevator, explaining to Batman that he couldn’t fly directly into the building on the floor he wanted because he’d have to break a window. It’s a big contrast from the Superman depicted in Superman Year One #3, who destroys thousands of dollars of municipal and private property to capture a couple of bank robbers.
In the previous issue, writer Frank Miller’s version of Superman seemed to have settled in Atlantis for a life with Lori Lemaris. In this issue, he abandons that life for seemingly no reason; it’s implied that he left explicitly because he was smitten with Lois Lane, but a later flashback contradicts that implication. Miller has Superman fight with a group of Navy SEALs, possibly the same men Clark trained within issue #2, without giving any explanation as to why they’re at odds. A scene in this issue with an abusive husband does hearken back to Siegel and Shuster’s early Superman stories. Still, Miller takes it farther than Siegel and Shuster ever did, and Superman just seems needlessly cruel at times.
In fact, Miller’s Superman might as well be his Batman--in this issue, Clark even makes the same “They’ll live” crack that Miller’s Batman makes after dispatching some bad guys. At one point, Superman crouches on the edge of a building in the rain, a very Batman move. At another point, he’s disappointed when he sees that Batman isn’t afraid of him the way he should be. Miller’s Superman is bizarrely mercurial in his romantic tastes. In the first issue, Superman was smitten with Lana Lang. In the second, he forgets about her immediately upon meeting Lori Lemaris. In this issue, Lori isn’t mentioned at all, but Clark spends some of the installment pining over Lois Lane. By the end of the chapter, he’s referring to Wonder Woman as his Amazon Queen. Miller’s characterization of Lois Lane is equally bizarre; here, she seems to be an irresponsible adrenaline junkie more than a hard-hitting reporter.
The plot of the book is freewheeling and unfocused. After introducing Lex Luthor two-thirds of the way through the book, Miller suddenly borrows from Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice with Luthor’s plan to pit Superman and Batman against each other, introducing Batman with no foreshadowing or previous mentions. Then, the story is wrapped up by the literal deus ex machina of Wonder Woman’s sudden appearance. The art by John Romita Jr., with inks by Danny Miki, color by Alex Sinclair, and lettering by John Workman, is excellent, especially a splash page of Superman flying through a storm, though at times Romita’s figures have abnormally large heads.
With Superman Year One #3 on the stands, Frank Miller has completed his statement on Superman. Unfortunately, it’s clear that that statement is “Frank Miller doesn’t understand Superman, either as a character or as a symbol.” The book ends with Superman leaving Earth on another quest, possibly foreshadowing a Year Two; let’s hope that that never comes to pass.
