What I’ve Been Reading: Superman: Camelot Falls
3 Comments | Posted: February 26th, 2009 | Filed under: What I've Been Reading | Tags: camelot falls, superman
With all of the recent hullabaloo over New Krypton, it seems like the set-just-after-One Year Later story Camelot Falls has been forgotten completely. This isn’t that surprising, really, as DC decided to release the story very slowly with their now-standard hardcover-to-paperback program that means that for a while, you could get the softcover version of Volume 1 of the story with the hardcover of volume 2. Despite being pretty interested in the contents, I opted to be my usual stubborn self and waited until this week’s release of the second half in softcover. Great job, everyone involved! Get that last half out while any interest in the book is a dying ember, alone in the dark night.
Anyway.
In Camelot Falls Busiek’s straightforward, mannerly scripting works very nicely with Carlos Pacheco’s classically-nice art while the plot reminds me of an extended riff from the Superman books of the mid-70s, with the titular character fighting a threat that falls outside of the normal punch-them-until-they-stop oeuvre and dealing with the some previously-unknown repercussions of his arrival on Earth. I really like how Busiek balances his comics in general and he’s doing his best in this one, managing to make the huge (the villain Khyber and the ramifications of his battle with Superman) and minute (Jimmy Olsen getting bawled out by Perry for taking pictures of birds when they’re at lunch) work side-by-side very effectively. It’s a lot of fun and doesn’t require an intimate knowledge of the Superman mythos to get into. In that way, it reminds me of what I like about Up, Up, And Away – any trivia you might know about the DC Universe adds to the experience, but not knowing it doesn’t detract from the story being told one bit.
Buy This And Keep Me In Whiskey Money:
Volume 1 • Volume 2
I actually loved this collection. And I, too, was frustrated by the year span between hardcover releases (I got both volumes in HC, because, well, why not?). I think this is a perfect example of how to balance the post-Byrne-era soap opera Supes with the bam-pow-action Supes.
Interesting comparison to the 70′s-era Superman titles. While I didn’t make the comparison myself (which makes me feel less smart), it completely works, right up to the scale of threats, complications for Superman, etc…
I wished Busiek had more room to monkey with Subjekt 13, and I’d hoped the character would reappear as it seemed like an interesting reversal of the stranded alien, but without the baggage that comes from an Elseworld’s re-telling of Superman.
Not every note of Busiek’s run resonated with me, but it was such a quantum leap from pre-Infinite Crisis Superman, that it was very welcome by this reader.
I loved how Busiek used Superman’s new super-intelligence throughout his run, and he showcased it well in Superman: Camelot Falls Volume 1 — that bit on the plane where Clark’s reading microscopic books embedded in the pages of his regular book were priceless!
Indeed this carried well the 1970s (and even early-1990s) theme of “Should Superman stop every threat?” and “Does Superman’s presence do more harm than good?” Unfortunately I didn’t think volume two finished it off satisfactorily enough, and of course the whole thing is near forgotten in deference to New Krypton. In retrospect I’m not sure I should’ve bought the hardcovers, but it’s no fault of Busiek or his writing.