I didn’t even know Louise Simonson wrote Superman in the nineties because, as I understood it, Superman was awful in the nineties until the late nineties.
If this Retroactive issue is any indication, Simonson’s Superman is pretty miserable.
Forgetting about how stupid a bunch of the details are—Cadmus Project, Underworlders, I mean… come on, Superman needs a supporting cast but not a silly one with a bunch of complicated mythology—Simonson relies almost entirely on expository dialogue. Simonson’s writing is slow, pointless and mercilessly dense.
But the writing isn’t even the issue’s worst part—Jon Bogdanove’s art is atrocious. While his layouts are fine—maybe even good in the Daily Planet newsroom scenes especially—the finished product is not. Bogdanove has no sense of scale—Clark’s 5’2”, shorter than the Guardian and sometimes Lois, buildings are double the size of cars, and so on.
This issue’s just a stinker.
