Our review of Absolute Superman #15 marks a new high for the Man of Tomorrow.
I’ve written fairly extensively on this site about how much DC’s Absolute line has wow’ed me time and again. I’ve written about Absolute Batman and a bit about Absolute Wonder Woman. But I’ve yet to write about the last member of the Absolute trinity, Superman. To be truthful, I hadn’t been reading the book. I picked up the first issue when it came out but it just didn’t hook me the way the other two initial Absolute titles did, so I stopped there with the vague idea that I’d come back around to it at some point. So cut to over a year later when I see the cover to Absolute Superman #15, the newly blue costumed man of steel flying high over the bright city of Metropolis with the faintest smile on his face and a small piece of text below the DC logo that read “A NEW STORY STARTS HERE”. This felt like the hook I’ve been waiting for.
So over the past few days I finally started digging into the book. I was pretty hooked to be honest. The first fourteen issues were a thrilling origin story for this take on the character. It felt more like a complete narrative that you could bound in one of DC’s compact trades than the other absolute books. However, despite thoroughly enjoying my ride with the book I didn’t feel any particular need to write about it. That’s not unusual mind you, I read a lot of great comics that I never write about for one reason or another. But my oh my, after reading the first installment in this “NEW STORY”, Absolute Superman #15, I felt such a deep urge to write about it that I immediately put everything down and sat to type up the article you’re presently reading. In other words, it wow’ed me.
The issue is fairly simple on a plot level: After the defeat of the Lazarus corporation and its CEO Ra’s Al Ghul, Superman has found himself in a new status quo tending the late Kent’s farm and helping people and places in crisis across the globe in-between planting seeds. Because of his super hearing he can hear cries from help from across the globe and is extending himself to answer as many of those cries as he can. In between the Superman’ing and the farming he’s also trying to reform the imprisoned Ra’s Al Ghul.
This issue demonstrates that Jason Aaron and co really get Superman on a fundamental level. Just as much as he’s about punching alien invaders, Superman man is equally about the small acts of service. The epitome of selflessness. Clark Kent is pushing himself to his limits in this issue to try and save the people of the world, no matter how small. A particularly touching and evocative moment comes when he takes a dying orphaned child to see the beautiful snow capped peaks, so that she doesn’t have to die alone in a hospital room. This happens over the course of two panels. That speaks to an incredible control over the storytelling economy a twenty page comic offers. Superman is the embodiment of empathy and charity, human good made flesh and wrapped in a cape. Yet Superman isn’t portrayed as a platonic ideal above human emotion, the strain and weight of being a bastion of justice and righteousness in a world that seems doomed bears down on him. And always he hears those screams and cries for help. He’s a man at his breaking point and yet still extends himself in only the way a Superman could. That toll it takes on him is what gives this issue its critically needed pathos. Superman’s as human as anyone and to perform the great acts that he does takes a human toll. Yet despite that toll Superman rises again and again for the sake of others. It also behooves me to spend a bit of time talking about the stuff with Ra’s Al Ghul. Ra’s has done horrific things in prior issues of this comic, most viscerally he threw a baby off a skyscraper in one issue. By any measurement he’s a monster of historic proportions. Yet, and this is quite the beautiful thing in the comic, Superman tries to reach through to him. To build bridges with the man and give him grace when he arguably has none. It once again speaks to the character’s faith in people and their capacity for change, something remarkable that this creative team taps into.
It would be a disservice to the issue to not mention its art. I mean no insult to the other artists on the title before him, but Juan Ferreyra’s art is the best this book has ever looked. His brushstrokes are painterly yet detailed to an obscene level. There is a certain softness he gives Superman, a reminder of the man under the steel. The bodies are angular and sharp yet still shave that aforementioned soft quality. I’m about to make an insane comparison but it is almost reminiscent of the work of Alex Ross in the 90s. Perhaps that’s the painterly quality I mentioned before. Or maybe it’s the fact that both artists seem to strip away the fluff and provide work that exposes the essence of these iconic heroes. There is also a pastoral sense to some of his illustrations that can’t help but remind me of Patrick Horvath’s Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees, sans all the anthropomorphic animal gore. I could devote more words to breathlessly praising Ferreyra’s art, but I’ll spare us all the time and just say that it’s damn good and worth the price of entry.
To wrap up before I go over one thousand words, this is a real triumph of an issue, a peak in a book already filled with peaks. The darkness of this universe can’t dull Superman’s bright and neverending love for humanity. Absolute Superman may not have the same eyes on it as some of its sibling titles, but damn if it doesn’t deserve them.
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