Last week with the release of the digital Adventures of Superman#51 by Jerry Ordway and Steve Rude, this series came to an end.
Which was a shame because the stories being told in Adventures were my last ongoing link to all new Superman stories.
I have the print edition on my pull list at my LCS, Acme Comics in Greensboro NC. If I've done the math right, issue #17 will be the last issue of that unless DC Comics...er, DC Entertainment does some kind of dick move and cancels the print book early or something. (Didio still in charge? Yeah, dick move coming up.)
The stories in the Adventures of Superman have varied in quality and style but have never been less than engaging and imaginative, moving between thought provoking and just plain fun and sometimes both at the same time. It is a series that I will sorely miss.
So what's next for Superman and me? I'm not sure. Apparently I'm missing some pretty good Superman stories from Scott Snyder & Jim Lee in Superman Unchained. But apparently those who have been following series will be missing those stories as well. Orders for issue #8 and #9, the last two issues of the series, have been cancelled. There's no word on when or if those issues will be re-solicited. Perhaps they will haunt the soon to be empty halls of DC's New York offices along with the ghosts of All Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder.
I'm apparently missing some good stuff over in Action Comics and Batman & Superman, both by Greg Pak. The deal breaker here for me is the $3.99 price point. Yeah, I know this is the wave of the future. Marvel Comics has almost no books at $2.99 anymore and trust me, DC's corporate masters over at Time Warner are paying attention to that. Let me say I'm willing to pay $3.99 if I know for sure I'm getting more bang for the buck. For example, Adventures of Superman has 30 pages of story and art; ditto for Batman '66. But other titles, I'm less sure of. Unlike the aforementioned books which are solicited as 40 pages, Action and other $3.99 titles are listed as 32 pages, the same as the $2.99 book. The $2.99 books definitely have a 20 page story; as I understand it, the $3.99 books have a slightly higher story page count, maybe 22 pages.
I am still collecting Batman to finish off the Zero Year story line by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo which retails at $3.99 and I sense the story page count is more than 20. But I'm scared to actually count them and find out for sure that I'm paying 4 dollars for a 20 page story.
Maybe it's just that I'm an old fart who remembers starting this comic book collecting journey when the standard story count was 20 pages and the cover price was 20 cents, 1 penny a page. If a 20 page story can be sold for $3.99, that comes to 20 cents a page. That's an inflation rate of 2000%.
Wow!
Well, Adventures of Superman, with it's comparatively bargain price of 13 cents a page for the printed book, will go the way of the red trunks. This is a title that will be missed.
Dave-El
I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuses You
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| Art by Chris Samnee |
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