Adventures of Superman #505 - 516

I’ve been struggling with writing this blog entry, trying to explain why there were some elements about these issues that I liked, some that I think failed, and some that were just kinda “meh”, but it wasn’t coming together at all. After dwelling on it for a couple of days, I think I finally figured out what was missing: chemistry.
 

In my last entry I wrote how, a few misogynistic warts aside, I really enjoyed the Superboy character and the issues that focused on him, also making slight reference to the fact that I preferred the new writer, Karl Kesel, to the previous writer, Jerry Ordway. Well, The Adventures of Superman, #501 – 504, also had art by Tom Grummett. Grummet left the series after # 506, replaced by Barry Kitson. Not coincidentally, it was after #506 that my enjoyment level significantly dropped. Why? Because of the difference in chemistry between Kesel and Grummett and Kesel and Kitson.

Collaboration is a tricky thing. I don’t think it’s easily quantifiable although, like so much in the world, you know it when you see it. Back in college I was part of my university's acting group, and I stared in two one-act plays with my friend Jason. Jason was a theater major, and I was acting strictly for kicks, but we had an great time working together. We were able to build off each others reactions and go where we felt the material could take us. I think our performances reflected the fun we had working together and while I had fun with other actors in other shows, I don't think I had the same chemistry with them as I did working with Jay.

I can’t be 100% certain, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened with Kesel and Grummett. There’s a light, humorous quality to their work that wasn’t in the title before they worked together. Even after Superman returns proper and Superboy takes a backseat, the two issues where Kesel works with Grummett have their moments of whimsy.  For example, in issue #505, there’s an unexpected homage to the Dallas cliffhanger where Bobby Ewing returned from the dead:

And then in the next issue we have an equally unexpected music critique by Clark Kent:

I loved both these scenes even with—or perhaps because of—their absurdity. In the former, the Dallas reference reminded me of when I was a kid and would watch episodes of Dallas with my father. In fact, I remember watching that infamous episode where Bobby Ewing stepped out of the shower, my father and I staring at the screen with our jaws on the floor.  (I suppose one could also get all meta-textural and assume the scene is Kesel and Grummett’s sly commentary that how the whole “Death/Return” storyline was as much a cop-out as Bobby Ewing proclaiming an entire TV season to have been a dream. But I digress.) And I am happily baffled by the non-sequitur of a scene where Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen trade musical tastes. Aside from being a cute character moment, I also have to wonder how tongue-in-cheek this is meant to be. I mean, what’s weirder: that Shriekback would get a shout-out in a Superman comic or that Clark Kent would be the kind of guy that would listen to Shriekback? Also, how can you take the phrase “Almost a hip-hop Lyle Lovett, or grunge Sinatra,” seriously?  What the hell does “grunge Sinatra” even mean?

Sadly, Grummett left Adventures of Superman after #506 because he was moving over to the new Superboy title that launched shortly after Superman returned. (And who was the writer for this new series? Why, none other than Karl Kesel. In retrospect, I think I would’ve been better off leaving Adventures of Superman myself and collecting Superboy instead; it probably would’ve been a lot more fun. But I digress.) Clearly, these were two people who enjoyed working together. I don’t know the extent of how much they collaborated on ideas and plots, but I suspect it was significant because once Grummett leaves the title, all the bits of humor leave with him.

I should, at this point, admit that I am not a fan of Brian Kitson’s work on Adventures of Superman. I like the work Kitson would eventually produce, but his tenure on Adventures was early in his career and there’s a noticeable lack of clarity to his work. Grummett’s artwork is very crisp, with clean lines and the ability to clearly render a whole scene, not to mention draw distinct facial expressions. He’s an artist very much in the John Byrne/Alan Davis/George Perez school. In contrast, Kitson’s work his much scratchier. His faces tend to be more scrunched together, his figures broad and bulky. If Grummet was an artist in the style of early 80's artists,  Kitson’s early issues are pure '90's, where he’s aping artists like Todd McFarlane and Rob Lifield with lots of cross-hatching and jagged, angry lines. (If you’d like to see what I mean, compare Tom Grummett’s art in #506 to Barry Kitson’s art in #515.)

Clearly, not finding Kitson’s work as enjoyable as Grummett is biasing me in some respects, but I do think the storylines back me up. For one thing, after Grummett leaves, the humor in the comic all but disappears.  While Adventures has to service the same heavy-handed storylines that it did before, at least you had Superboy and his quips to take the edge off. None of that happens here, even though Superman has enough of a supporting cast that they could easily have someone come in to cut the tension. 

Speaking of Supes’ support cast, we see very little of them after Grummet leaves the title. Aside from Cat Grant’s long-running harassment storyline (which, thankfully, finally ends in #510 when she announces—on live television—that she’s filed a sexual harassment suit against Vincent Edge) and a Lois sub-plot where she investigates a murder Lex Luthor committed, most non-powered characters get just a walk-on here or there. Comparing these issues to the one’s Kesel was partnered with Grummett and you see there is a definite change in the tone of the stories and the way characters are used in a storyline.

And then there’s the character Kitson is directly responsible for: Massacre. (Kitson receives a “plot” credit for Massacre’s two appearances; normally he’s listed only as the penciler, which indicates the character was Kitson’s idea). Massacre isn’t a particularly interesting character. If you ever needed evidence that the grim-n-gritty style was alive and well in the Superman comics of the ‘90’s, look no further. Massacre’s a one-dimensional psychopath who gets his kicks by beating the crap out of his opponents before he kills them.  When Massacre comes to Metropolis in #515 you basically get a 20 page slug-fest. There’s nothing to Massacre beyond his sadism, and the fact he doesn’t show up again after his appearance in #515 suggests I wasn’t the only one in recognizing the lack of potential.

If it sounds like I’m heaping all the blame on Kitson’s art, that’s not my intention. I may be trashing his artwork here, but his work does improve over the course of his run on this title (naturally, his best work appears to be in the issues following the batch I'm discussing here). In fact, I’m pretty sure that I would’ve liked these issues more if Kitson’s work on Adventures was more like the style he would eventually develop. Down the road I'll be discussing his collaboration with Mark Waid on the great mini-series Empire; by the time Empire was released in the mid 2000's, Kitson’s line work had become a lot cleaner, his facial expressions more natural, and his layouts much easier to follow.  But in Adventures of Superman we see an artist still coming into his own, and while it's heartening to see him improve, it doesn't change the weaknesses present in his early work.

Regardless of the quality of the art, the stories themselves still don't work as well as what came before. Even if Kitson was at the top of his game, I’d still be reading some lackluster storylines like the new racsist Bloodsport, the return of Bizarro, Superman’s powers going out of control, and the destruction of Metropolis. The way these issues fail to impress me is as much Kesel’s doing (and the rest of the Superman creative teams that plotted everything—and, of course, my own personal tastes) as anyone’s. But the way these stories are presented differs from creative team to creative team. These Kesel/Kiston issues don't have the same noticeable joy in working together that came across the page the way the Kesel/Grummett  work did. Whatever positives Kesel’s collaboration with Kitson had (and there are positives, even if I didn’t consider them much here. The issue introducing Alpha Centurion, for example, was pretty cool, and we’ll be talking about him more in the near future. But I digress.) it didn’t have the same irreverent humor that I enjoyed so much before.The darker tone of these issues, both thematically and visually, doesn’t hold up nearly as well as the issues that balanced the doom and gloom with moments of levity and characters that had emotional depth to them. 

I wonder if that's why I collected all these Superman titles for as long as I did, even if I wasn't enjoying them as much I used to. Comicbook fans are willing to go through periods where we’re not having fun for the hope of recapturing the excitement and joy that made us start collecting a series in the first place. I don't think that's a tendency unique to comicbook readers, but it certainly explains why the signal-to-noise ratio of my collection is as high as it is in what I've read so far.

Next Issue: Zero Hour rears its reboot-ilicious little head, Superman loses his sanity, and then Clark Kent loses his life. Some stuff happens in-between, but most fortunately for you, Barry Kitson leaves the title so I won't have Barry Kitson to kick around anymore. (I imagine this will make Barry Kitson very happy. Can I write "Barry Kitson" any more times? Of course I can: Barry Kitson Barry Kitson Barry Kitson. . . .)