I can’t say enough about how wonderful it was to have a summer of Superman.

To see the character everywhere- tv, billboards, merchandise, online, etc- in the buildup to the movie was a lot of fun. Even if the movie ended up landing with a thud.

DC Comics of course tried to promote Superman in their comics as much as possible during this time as well, and released a treasury sized special two weeks before James Gunn’s Superman was released. I’m too young to remember when treasury editions were all the rage in comics (I believe mostly in the 70s), but the fact that it was a throwback that I’m sure many fans loved is pretty cool.

The special, called “Hero For All,” was written by the always reliable, solid Superman writer Dan Jurgens, with art by hot newcomer Bruno Redondo (with a few pages drawn by Jurgens too!). Dan needs no explanation, always a good choice for Superman to be sure. Redondo I wasn’t as familiar with, but was very impressed by his Nightwing work with Tom Taylor from a few years ago.

Needless to say, when this project was announced around April of this year, I became very excited! I’ll start with the good stuff.

Pros:

I was pleasantly surprised to see that this special wasn’t simply a buildup to the new movie, but it actually wraps up a lot of dangling plot threads from the tail end of Dan’s Rebirth run!

YEEEESSSS!!!

With Dan casting doubt on if Rebirth would ever be continued, it was wonderful to see him work it into this story here. You could include this special as the last chapter of a Superman Rebirth collection, and it would work just fine.

I’m hoping they do so in the second omnibus next year!

The art is great, albeit not quite as good as Redondo’s Nightwing stuff, but still really good. It lends itself well to the massive pages of this book, and makes for an enjoyable reading experience.

Dan Jurgens’ writing Superman and his supporting cast is always a decent read at worst, and everyone feels in character. Reading a story in which you feel the writer has no clue who the characters are in his book might just be the single biggest strike against a comic ever. Not the case here.

Hero For All has a pretty standard, but good plot- a menace arrives and puts Superman and his friends in a challenging situation that they have to find a way out of, learning something about themselves in the process. It also has a few nods to Triangle Era stories, which makes for great fan service. Check.

Finally, this story, which features many guest stars from the DC Universe, firmly makes Superman feel like the centerpiece of the characters’ world, which hasn’t felt that way for a long time. It was a VERY refreshing change of pace.

Cons:

Not all of it was good though.

The recent decision to bring Superboy back to Clark Kent’s last is featured here in a big way.

I have never cared for the character, and much preferred the Byrne reboot version of Clark first becoming Superman in Metropolis, with Superboy never existing. I guess some people do like it though, enough to not only bring that version of the character back, but also spend a lot of time talking about Superman’s newly revised history.

I understand the need to refresh once in a while, but I don’t care at all for doing it this way, or for spending so much time on it. The story in this special really suffered, unfortunately.

Along with retconning Superboy’s existence comes all the rest of it as well- Lex and Clark grew up together and hate each other for completely different reasons, etc. I never watched Smallville for this reason largely, and if you like this sort of thing, great. Not my cup of tea though.

Amidst finishing Rebirth and retconning the timeline, I also asked myself who is the target audience for this? If it’s longtime fans, cool, but why make it an oversize special clearly tying into the new upcoming movie? Outside of the movie related extras in the back of the book, this is hardly a story for a first time reader, or the casual fan.

Once again, the Big 2 miss an opportunity to promote comics to a broader audience.

I would have thought that the story for a book like this would have been something much simpler, and a distilled form of the character’s world that is deliberately meant as an introduction, similar to Robert Venditti’s wonderful Man of Tomorrow stories from a few years ago.

Overall, if you’re a longtime Superman fan like me, or even current DC reader, I’m sure there’s a lot in here that you’ll like, so let’s just focus on that. Looking forward to seeing this special included in the Action Comics omnibus next year, even if it wasn’t the strongest Superman story ever put together.

Capeage Meter: 6 out of 10