Superman Year One #2 // Review
Frank Miller either doesn’t understand Superman, or he hates Superman. That’s the only explanation for the mess of Superman Year One #2, a book that features a character who is unrecognizable as Superman, champion of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
The first half of the book follows Clark as a new recruit in the US Navy. Clark is still obsessed with how fragile humans around him are, perseverating on it alarmingly often. It’s disturbingly incongruous to see Clark depicted as an expert marksman; it’s not that it’s unbelievable, as it makes sense that his supervision would give him perfect aim, it’s just that Superman even holding a gun, let alone being proficient at using one, seems so counter to the ideals and characters of the icon as to be unimaginable. Clark revels in the violence of combat training, even saying in the narration how “into this” he is. Though he does get queasy when his captain reminds him that he’s being trained to kill. Still, when he and his fellow recruits liberate a tanker from pirates (presumably Somali, as Frank Miller won’t ever miss a chance to write violence being committed against Muslims), he doesn’t flinch. While many of them are killed by his squad (it’s unclear whether Clark himself shoots any in the head, though he does save the very last one standing, an action that gets him drummed out of the Navy).
After leaving the service, Clark finally dons his famous red and blue tights and cape. Not to save people as Superman, but to court Lori Lemaris by meeting her father, Poseidon, the Greek god of the seas. Poseidon, of course, wishes to marry his own daughter against her will, so he forces Clark to undergo a series of underwater trials. The issue leaves Clark living a presumably idyllic life underwater with Lori Lemaris. Presumably, he’ll forget about her in the third issue just as quickly as he forgot about Lana Lang in this issue.
John Romita Jr’s art (with inks by Danny Miki) is better than serviceable. His page compositions are efficient and clear, his designs of Atlantis and the mermaids appropriately fantastical, but at the end of the day it feels perfunctory. For all the outsized details Miller gives the characters (one Navy recruit is constantly calling for his mother; the captain at the Naval base is named Jacob Kurtzberg, which is of course comics legend Jack Kirby’s real name), Romita’s characters lack definition or personality. In most of the book, Clark Kent has no expression other than a blank stare and a small smirk. Regardless of whether he’s getting his hair shorn, starting a bar fight, courting a mermaid, or watching pirates get slaughtered. Colorist Alex Sinclair does good work, creating a lush environment. It’s jarring, then, when Sinclair can’t seem to keep track of whether the negative space in Superman’s “S” shield is yellow or black. Just like in the first issue, Miller’s narration is confusing. Jumping from first to the third person and changing character perspective for no reason. Sinclair and letterer John Workman do their best to clarify some of this confusion, but it’s a lost cause.
Overall, Superman Year One #2 is slightly less offensive than the first issue (implied mermaid incest aside). Instead, it commits the even greater sin of being simply boring. For a comic that is approximately sixty pages long, surprisingly little happens, and much of Miller’s labored and hackneyed narration is repetitive. Thankfully, DC will only be inflicting one more issue of this series upon its readers. Then it can be consigned next to its spiritual sibling All-Star Batman and Robin in the annals of history.
