The Good and the Superbad
The concept of the Superman 80-Page Giant 2011 book is good: Have some short stories about the extended Superman family done by different artists and writers. The problem comes when the story aren't engaging or too short. I almost feel I need to break the book down into each individual story in order to review it best.... so I will:
-Jor-El's story is pretty interesting. I really gives a sense of Superman's daddy and the place he come from. As with all of the stories it's short but this story doesn't need to be long in order tog et it's point across. This one I didn't mind.
-Perry White's story was really enjoyable. We get to see Wildcat and Perry sitting and drinking and it works. The characters mirror each other well enough that you can see how they get along but they both have an unique voice. This story is probably my second favorite.
-Bizarro's tale looks incredible. The generally messed-up-ness of Bizarro World really shines through in this story and it's a funny reference to Superman's Grounded storyline. I thought it went on just long enough for you to get to see some of Bizarro, his friends, and get the refrence. Pretty good.
-Jimmy Olsen's story is my favorite of the lot. It also references past Superman issues where Jimmy gets into trouble but it uses the plot to demonstrate it. I'm coming up on my quarter life crisis myself and Jimmy's feeling that he might have be missing out on something really hits home. There is a surprising, twist ending that is neither surprising nor a twist but that fact that you see it coming is likely due to the stories small size.
-Lois Lane's story shows her investigating Intergang with Lana. I thought the art was shotty and the story seemed really linear. This might have benefited from being a little longer but at the same time it wasn't interesting enough as it was. Points to this one for including Superman but other than that this one isn't good.
-Supergirl's story is drawn beautifully and really shows off her character. Although the the climax of the story seems to jump out of nowhere the real story is the relationship of people involved in it. I'm not saying this one was fantastic but it was alright.
-I'm calling it. The Superboy story was the worst. It sucks that this seems to be the main thing advertised about this issue but this story is a dud. It seems like an idea that wasn't good enough for the Superboy book because it wasn't going to yield enough issues. It wasn't good enough and the few pages it take up seem too long. To say this story is pandering is an understatement.
All things considered I think I disliked more of the stories than I liked. The good ones weren't amazing and the bad ones were down right terrible so I wouldn't recommend this issue. I'm kind of torn by this decision though because despite the fact the stories were lacking something the art was pretty consistently awesome. Although the writers might not have all succed in the attempt to have story stories shining a spotlight on a number of characters the artists really did. It's a shame.