ALL-STAR SUPERMAN (2011)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, metaphysical, psychological, sociological*

In 2005-08 Grant Morrison, in collaboration with artist Frank Quitely, authored a twelve-issue Superman series, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. Though the name may have been suggested by one of DC Comics’ most notable Golden Age anthology-titles, ALL STAR COMICS, there may also be some knowing irony on Morrison’s part. Though the comic-book series is very episodic—seeming to be an amalgam of “Grant Morrison’s Favorite Superman-Concepts”—the overall arc is concerned with Superman’s conflict with the very star that gives him most of his super-powers.

Writer Dwayne McDuffie prunes away any of the comic-book narrative that doesn’t contribute to the OAV’s story—which, incidentally, means eliminating my favorite segment, BEING BIZARRO. But the omissions are to the overall narrative’s benefit. The setup is that Superman’s most persistent enemy Lex Luthor finally succeeds in dooming his Kryptonian antagonist, poisoning the hero through his connection with Earth’s sun. The film, like the comic, is a little vague about how Luthor brings this doom about, though it has something to do with his having contacted an alien being, Solaris, who desires to get rid of Earth’s sun and take its place at the center of the system. However, the method is not as important as the effect: what does the world’s greatest hero do when he’s convinced his death is inevitable?

Revealing his identity to Lois Lane, of course, tops the list, though as in the comic the romance of Lois and Superman is not especially compelling. A little more levity comes in when two super-suitors from the future, Atlas and Samson, arrive to court Lois, much to the hero’s chagrin. That said, Superman’s main mission is that of finding out what Luthor did and what the villain’s long-range plans are, once his old nemesis is no longer a threat. The film’s strongest section has Clark Kent visit Luthor in prison, which allows the viewer to see how narcissistic Luthor’s personality is. At times, the film,like the original comic, strains to sell the hero as the opposite: the true-blue boy scout who would never consider peeping on a woman with X-ray vision. Yet toward the end of the series—and the cartoon—the viewer is given a plausible reason as to why Superman is so incredibly good-hearted.

Even before the highly publicized “Death of Superman” storyline, there had many DC stories which presented readers Superman as dead or dying. Most such stories sought to capitalize on the incongruity of seeing the world’s most powerful hero reduced to common mortality. I tend to think that Morrison wished to do his own unique take on heroic mortality, and thus both series and cartoon end ambiguously: Superman disappears into the sun, but Lois promises that he’ll return once he’s done “fixing” it. Thus Morrison’s Superman remains a myth even after being rendered mortal.

I’m not sure how possible it would be to translate Frank Quitely’s somewhat decadent art-style to an animated OAV, so I don’t fault the animators for largely taking a more basic storytelling stance, while only using a few visual “Quitely quotes.”