A friend of mine told me that I had to read Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman. Having never really been a huge fan of the character, I hesitated but my friend insisted to me that if I was going to be a fan of Superman at some point in my life, this was the book that would get me there. One afternoon, while at the local shop, I noticed it on the shelf and decided to picked it up.

The fact that Grant Morrison was writing All-Star Superman was one of the main selling points for me. I thought that since he was bringing a fresh start to the vintage character, it might not be as bad as some of the other Superman stuff I’d read. Well, sadly, I was wrong. To me, he was just digging up the same stuff that I had heard dozens of times before. Here’s the rundown of All-Star in comparison to the Superman that I knew way back:

He comes from Krypton…check.
He loves Lois Lane…check.
His alter ego is a bubbling idiot named Clark Kent…check.
He works at the Daily Planet…check.
Lex Luthor is his ultimate rival…check.
He flies around fighting villains that, much like him, are completely uninteresting to read about…check.

I get it already. It’s always the same.

To me, that’s boring. It’s the same story told an almost unnoticeably different kind of way. Don’t get me wrong, Grant Morrison is one of the best writers working for DC. I’m not here to argue that. I’m here to argue the fact that Superman is about as stale as they come at this point in his life. He’s a boring character to read about. While other vintage characters like Batman have been able to keep up with the younger, fresher heroes, I find that Superman has fallen into the “we’ll use him when we need some good sales” category. Morrison’s All-Star Superman seems to have tried to bring new life to the character but, for me, it just didn’t work out.

Some of my biggest issues with All-Star Superman is that it’s simply just a boring read altogether. I was pretty much struggling to get through the last couple of issues because the plot seemed to be going nowhere. The art, which I wasn’t a fan of, didn’t help matters much. I’d like to see artists steer clear of this computer based technique of creating a comic book and stick to the classic method since it delivers a much better finished product in the long run.

Superman fans, I await your wrath.