Superman: Birthright Author: MARK WAID LEINIL YU Leinil Francis Yu | Language: English | ISBN:
B00BPFV5DU | Format: PDF
Superman: Birthright Description
This volume collects the 12-issue miniseries that features the entire modern-day retelling of Superman by writer Mark Waid and artists Leinil Francis Yu and Gerry Alanguilan. Plus, an introduction by Smallville television producers Al Gough and Miles Millar and a sketchbook section!
- File Size: 109647 KB
- Print Length: 314 pages
- Publisher: DC (March 5, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00BPFV5DU
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #291,357 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
"People know now, it stands for courage. It stands for hope. It stands for SUPERMAN."
What makes the Man of Tomorrow take his stand? What goes through a young boy's mind that causes him to don tights and a cape and a big red "S" and stand up to fight for truth, justice, and the American way? These are questions that get asked when the real question is, "Why should we care about a man who cannot be hurt?"
These are the questions that Mark Waid and Leinil Francis Yu set out to answer in Superman: Birthright.
This book was the big effort from DC to bring the Man of Steel into the 21st century, and it was the job of the writer, artist, and the rest of the collaborators to accomplish this while keeping true to the spirit of the character created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. A new view of a familiar origin was needed, a new perspective on characters that had been loved for over six decades, and Superman Birthright accomplishes all that and more.
We first see Superman as Kal El, infant son of Jor El and Lara during Krypton's last dying hours. The familiar elements are there - his parents will send him to earth where his Kryptonian biology will gain incredible powers from the radiation of Earth's yellow sun, but before he goes, he is wrapped in the Flag of Krypton and given a recordings of its history. This is where Waid and Yu really start to dig into the mythology and explore some new motivations. The "S" symbol is not just the El family crest, not just a sign on a blanket sent with the last son of Krypton to his new home - it is a reminder of his heritage, a symbol of his people and what they stood for, and something that Clark Kent will always carry with him.
When Mark Waid and the editors at DC Comics first announced their plans for Superman: Birthright, I was excited. From all accounts, it looked like it was going to be the continuation of the Smallville Superman, taken out of the TV show and moved forwards eight or ten years, and the story of how that Clark Kent first came to put on the costume. Which I was quite excited for; the tying in of this newest part of the legend back to its original format seemed like a very good idea. By the end of the first issue, it was somewhat obvious that it was more Ultimate Superman than Smallville; while taking elements from the TV show, it was clearly set in its own universe.
But then came the big news; the sources from on high had ruled that, after seventeen years, Superman's origin had grown stale and needed revision - and that Birthright would henceforth be the origin of the one, true Superman. For a while, it seemed like the entire Superman universe was in limbo; was the S-man about to be rebooted? Were nearly two decades of history about to be written over? Well, yes and no.
It ended up that this story was designed to be a sort of prequel to the current Superman's history, that they were rewriting his history from the present but that it was actually to take place in the past. Unfortunately, either someone forgot to get Waid the memo or the story was too far along to change, as the entire run seems more like the first 12 issues of a new continuum than the rewriting of Superman's past in a way that would make sense in today's continuity.
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