The Starman Omnibus Volume One DC Comics Review by Russell Burlingame |
DC Finally Reaching For the Stars With Latest Omnibus
DC Comics' newest big-pricetag release, The Starman Omnibus Volume One, had me a bit worried at first. James Robinson's Starman is very probably the greatest accomplishment in superhero comics of the last twenty years, and the sales success of the book probably allowed for some more commercially-questionable content like Chase, H-E-R-O and Manhunter to be given a chance at DC. The idea of a high-quality, hardcover collection of Starman should appeal to every right-thinking comic book reader...but there was, at first, the question of whether the collection would, in fact, BE high-quality.
When DC recently reissued the Death and Return of Superman as an omnibus edition that ostensibly contained the Doomsday!, Funeral For a Friend and Reign of the Supermen stories, the omissions were many and glaring. While DC's Jack Kirby's Fourth World collections are ostensibly being published on newsprint-quality paper to preserve "the feel" of the original presentations, it would have seemed that the Death of Superman story--though originally presented on a similar sort of paper but clearly more modern in its look and feel--would have warranted a re-mastering and a better paper stock, a la the Crisis on Infinite Earths Absolute Edition. The Death of Superman, after all, is (as DC loves to boast) the best-selling graphic novel of all time. Instead, what readers got was a gutted, emasculated version of the original tale, with Funeral For a Friend trimmed to almost nonexistent to keep the page-count low, in what was an ironic parallel to the terrible cuts inflicted on the DVD release of Superman/Doomsday, which was released and roundly panned on the same week as the Omnibus. Notably absent from the "omnibus" (besides about half of the Funeral... and many pages of the Reign... storylines) was The Legacy of Superman one-shot featuring the reaction of Metropolis and its B-list heroes, almost any notable promotional materials (there were THOUSANDS of pages of ads, cameos, etc. that could have been included here) or the Newstime magazine-format special that commemorated the death.
The Starman Omnibus, though, seems to have taken its cues from the failures of The Death and Return of Superman Omnibus. Marked volume one of six, the introduction by series mastermind James Robinson promises that the series will be presented in its entirety, including the various annuals, miniseries and sundry other stories that would have been absent if the Superman formula was followed. Perhaps, had DC thought about it, they could have bled fans for two slightly less expensive Omnibus Editions--The Death of Superman, featuring the death, the funeral and a wide array of extras--and then The Reign of the Supermen, which could in itself be an Omnibus (it would not be surprising if, even without "bonus" features or annuals, the original Return of Superman trade paperback weighed in with a slightly higher page count than The Starman Omnibus Volume One).
The quality of the paper stock is also superior not only to the Superman book, but to the stock used in the original printing of the comics. While not as desirable as the "comic-page-sized" Absolute format, the hardcover presentation does lend a sense of weight and size to the book that many of the softcover collections fail to capture, and Starman today looks as good as it ever did.
Also to the credit of DC Editorial was the decision to include letter columns, sketches and other geek minutae that, to my recollection, has never been reprinted in a mainstream collected edition. In this particular book, reading the "note from James Robinson" that came at the close of Starman's seminal "zero issue" was a bit of a trip--often, the first-issue (with no letter column to turn to) would contain lengthy diatribes about the creation of the book, and the lofty ambitions of its creators, which were, of course, rarely met. Reading through Robinson's initial statement of agenda, you can see point after point that the things critics have always lauded about his book, its world and characters, were exactly the things he set out to do. Remarkable. Robinson here is Ruth, calling his shot, and Robinson's Starman--the book and the character--is Ruth's ball, blasted rather reluctantly into the sky and into the ongoing mythology of the art form.
Page last updated on October 12, 2008