What do you think?
Rate this book
Adventures of Superman by George Pérez
Now collected for the first time in hardcover format is the award-winning artis tand writer George Pérez's work featuring Superman in Adventures of Superman by George Pérez!
The 1980s Superman stories by celebrated writer and artist George Pérez are collected in a new hardcover volume! These tales include a face-off with Brainiac, a team-up with O.M.A.C., the start of Superman's New 52 adventures, and much more.
One of the most popular artists working in comics over the last 30 years, George Pérez's résumé contains a who's who of the most popular characters in comics. From his co-creation, with Marv Wolfman, of The New Teen Titans in the '80s and his work on Crisis on Infinite Earths and Wonder Woman to his mega-successful JLA/Avengers, George's work has thrilled comics fans for over three decades.
Written by: GEORGE PÉREZ, LEN WEIN, ROGER STERN, JERRY ORDWAY, and others
Art by: GEORGE PÉREZ, BRETT BREEDING, KEITH GIFFEN, KERRY GAMMILL, CURT SWAN, JERRY ORDWAY, JESUS MERINO, NICOLA SCOTT, and others
Cover by: GEORGE PÉREZ
Collects:DC Comics Presents #61, Action Comics #643-652, Action Comics Annual #2, and Superman #1-6 (2011 series).
The 1980s Superman stories by celebrated writer and artist George Pérez are collected in a new hardcover volume! These tales include a face-off with Brainiac, a team-up with O.M.A.C., the start of Superman's New 52 adventures, and much more.
One of the most popular artists working in comics over the last 30 years, George Pérez's résumé contains a who's who of the most popular characters in comics. From his co-creation, with Marv Wolfman, of The New Teen Titans in the '80s and his work on Crisis on Infinite Earths and Wonder Woman to his mega-successful JLA/Avengers, George's work has thrilled comics fans for over three decades.
Written by: GEORGE PÉREZ, LEN WEIN, ROGER STERN, JERRY ORDWAY, and others
Art by: GEORGE PÉREZ, BRETT BREEDING, KEITH GIFFEN, KERRY GAMMILL, CURT SWAN, JERRY ORDWAY, JESUS MERINO, NICOLA SCOTT, and others
Cover by: GEORGE PÉREZ
Collects:DC Comics Presents #61, Action Comics #643-652, Action Comics Annual #2, and Superman #1-6 (2011 series).
448 pages, Hardcover
Published May 12, 2020
5 people are currently reading
34 people want to read
About the author
George Pérez
1,496 books208 followersGeorge Pérez (June 9, 1954 – May 6, 2022) was an American comic books artist and writer, known for his work on various titles, including Avengers, Teen Titans and Wonder Woman.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Read
December 18, 2020George Perez’s Superman work is rarely mentioned among his best. Aside from drawing the character in books like Crisis, Perez had a brief Action Comics run in the late 80s/early 90s, and scripted the first Superman New 52 arc. It’s all collected in this useful tome.
After a throwaway OMAC team-up from ’83, his Action run begins. It’s mostly enjoyable. Perez draws all these issues, writing or co-writing with Roger Stern. The art of course is excellent, with many great panels of Superman in action and plenty of human emotion. The stories themselves are continuity-heavy, sometimes skipping plot points from concurrent Superman or Adventures of Superman issues, but otherwise straightforward (it’s not nearly as impenetrable as later 90’s Superman comics). These issues come a year after John Byrne’s run, and they generally match his storytelling. We see Superman on Warworld, confront Maxima for the first time, deal with Brainiac again, and embrace his Kryptonian heritage. Decent stuff. I like this era of Superman before the death when they were building everything from the ground up. The stories are fun, wholesome, and unpretentious.
Then there’s the New 52 story. God, where to begin with this garbage? I’ll just say that I’ve heard horror stories about the New 52, Superman in particular, and this confirms them. The plot is all over the place and there’s loads of text on every page. Clark is also unlikable, especially in contrast to the stories preceding this one. This was awful. I’ll stick with Perez’s earlier work, thanks.
After a throwaway OMAC team-up from ’83, his Action run begins. It’s mostly enjoyable. Perez draws all these issues, writing or co-writing with Roger Stern. The art of course is excellent, with many great panels of Superman in action and plenty of human emotion. The stories themselves are continuity-heavy, sometimes skipping plot points from concurrent Superman or Adventures of Superman issues, but otherwise straightforward (it’s not nearly as impenetrable as later 90’s Superman comics). These issues come a year after John Byrne’s run, and they generally match his storytelling. We see Superman on Warworld, confront Maxima for the first time, deal with Brainiac again, and embrace his Kryptonian heritage. Decent stuff. I like this era of Superman before the death when they were building everything from the ground up. The stories are fun, wholesome, and unpretentious.
Then there’s the New 52 story. God, where to begin with this garbage? I’ll just say that I’ve heard horror stories about the New 52, Superman in particular, and this confirms them. The plot is all over the place and there’s loads of text on every page. Clark is also unlikable, especially in contrast to the stories preceding this one. This was awful. I’ll stick with Perez’s earlier work, thanks.
June 21, 2021
This is an odd collection for DC to put out - but DC makes a lot of weird moves in their graphic novel publications so I shouldn't be surprised. It is odd because George Perez is known for his art and the majority of this book is about his writing of Superman and/or his breakdowns, but not his actual pencils on the art. The opening story (which is my fav) is the only true example of his art.
Having said that - even on the breakdowns you can see his artistic style poking through so it is still a nice collection of his art if you don't mind the fact it is watered down.
It is also odd (and the main reason I am giving it 2 stars) because George's stories are often part of an ongoing story in all the Superman titles so we get (as an example) Part 6 but not Part 1-5. That's a reason why these "creator" collections are often frustrating because with all the Events that happen in Dc and Marvel you miss a lot of the story.
His writing? George is a good plotter (as seen on his work on Teen Titans) but his writing is not his strong suit (I found his Wonder Woman run dull). However, he does benefit from Roger Stern helping out as co-writer on a lot of these stories.
Overall - despite the negative rating - there are some fun stories here and it is a nice peek into the 80's Superman after Crisis on Infinite Earths rebooted him and the DC Universe. I don't really love the new Brainiac that is an Earth man and not from space (later reboots agreed with me and forgot this version ever existed) but it is still an interesting idea. But for every fun story - you get thrown in the middle of confusing stories (like Supergirl/Matrix). Oh also - there is a 6 part story (at the ned of the collection) from the New 52 that is almost unreadable. And do you need a collection that has stories from TWO DC reboots? Yikes DC - enough with the reboots. As this collection shows - when you reboot so much you lose the history of the character and you devalue the stories from other reboots that are "wiped away".
So I can't recommend this collection. I would have preferred an "Art of George Perez in DC comics".
Having said that - even on the breakdowns you can see his artistic style poking through so it is still a nice collection of his art if you don't mind the fact it is watered down.
It is also odd (and the main reason I am giving it 2 stars) because George's stories are often part of an ongoing story in all the Superman titles so we get (as an example) Part 6 but not Part 1-5. That's a reason why these "creator" collections are often frustrating because with all the Events that happen in Dc and Marvel you miss a lot of the story.
His writing? George is a good plotter (as seen on his work on Teen Titans) but his writing is not his strong suit (I found his Wonder Woman run dull). However, he does benefit from Roger Stern helping out as co-writer on a lot of these stories.
Overall - despite the negative rating - there are some fun stories here and it is a nice peek into the 80's Superman after Crisis on Infinite Earths rebooted him and the DC Universe. I don't really love the new Brainiac that is an Earth man and not from space (later reboots agreed with me and forgot this version ever existed) but it is still an interesting idea. But for every fun story - you get thrown in the middle of confusing stories (like Supergirl/Matrix). Oh also - there is a 6 part story (at the ned of the collection) from the New 52 that is almost unreadable. And do you need a collection that has stories from TWO DC reboots? Yikes DC - enough with the reboots. As this collection shows - when you reboot so much you lose the history of the character and you devalue the stories from other reboots that are "wiped away".
So I can't recommend this collection. I would have preferred an "Art of George Perez in DC comics".
October 1, 2022
This is really quite a capsule. I bought it after the news of George Pérez’s death, and I’m glad, now, for reasons other than commemorating his career in what happened to be available to me at the time.
Pérez was never considered a definitive Superman creator. The closest he came was launching the new Superman title at the start of the New 52 era, but as far as I ever saw, no one thought much of that run at the time, and he was gone after half a year anyway.
All the same, this collection contradicts that perception. John Byrne’s relaunch of the character in the late ‘80s eventually opened up to other creators joining him and of course eventually replacing him. Pérez, as about half the material in the collection indicates, was one of them. I didn’t start reading until the Doomsday arc, but I knew about some of the things that had been done (Lex Luthor has a metallic hand because he wore a Kryptonite ring that cost him the hand and eventually his life to poisoning from it, for instance). After this work, Maxima, who debuts here, joined the Justice League, and Matrix reverted back to its Supergirl persona, Clark reveals his secret identity to Lois, and of course, Doomsday.
The work represented in this half of the collection is representative of the long string of continuity that was maintained basically from Byrne to, technically, the New 52 (although the turn of the millennium involved a soft reboot). The Mongul/exile/Warworld arc, ironically or not, has just been duplicated in current lore (without Superman killing anyone to reach that point, this time; it’s worth noting that just as we see Brainiac history play out, that exile arc involved a different kind of past lore, that era’s version of Zod).
But let’s go ahead and just jump to the New 52 material. Actually, paired with the earlier stuff, it might be easier to contextualize it, if readers are willing to give it more of a chance, now. Pérez might have angered the DC offices itself with it. This is the first time I’ve read it, so until now I always assumed there was at least a grain of truth to fan perceptions. There really isn’t.
All the launches of the New 52 I’ve experienced end the first issue attempting to set up a new villain, a big dramatic hook to help establish the new continuity. Pérez opts for a different approach. In fact, he opens his run by thinly referencing the New 52 itself, in allegory, with the destruction of the old Daily Planet building and opening of a new one.
Eventually the story looks like what had and has become such a dominant perception of Superman in recent years: what happens if he goes rogue? From DC’s own Injustice to Mark Waid’s Irredeemable to The Boys, it seems we’re an era that really can’t bring itself to believe, well, that a man can fly.
And what was DC really supposed to do? The New 52 was predicated on that other dominant modern perception of Superman, that he’s just not cool anymore, that the whole line had to be revamped, make it more modern. And here’s George Pérez, with the flagship hero, contradicting the publisher.
I mean, I don’t know. Pérez, for whatever reason, left early, and was hardly the only creative shakeup early in the new era. It could have been anything. But it was probably that he didn’t deliver what DC expected at the time.
But the guy became an institution in the medium for a reason. He helped define superheroes for decades. For a lot of fans, that usually means his artwork, especially when he was cramming as many figures in as possible (for him), or for one or two specific projects. And like I said, no one thinks of his Superman material, any of it, as definitive to the character, much less anyone jumping to thinking of his writing as part of his legacy. But he wouldn’t even be the only Superman artist to have also written him that I would put in the conversation, and I’m not talking Byrne.
I think his New 52 work establishes far more than it seems. I think it was a link to the past, and in more ways than one. He’d been a part of it before. We see that in this collection. And being asked to do it again gave him a chance to approach the character the same way again, when DC was expecting something very different. But for six issues he did it anyway. A lot of fans point out the Lois material as indicative of what was so wrong. But even there he knew what he was doing. He just didn’t have a chance to play it out. Times were different. The only other Superman comic at the time, Grant Morrison’s Action Comics, was not only telling different stories, but it was set in a different timeframe entirely. And maybe the fans were different, too. Two decades earlier, there would have been no confusion at all.
He had the sense to update, too. He was playing by new standards. Just not the right ones, apparently. Fortunately, there’s always a chance for reassessment. Now would be a great time.
Pérez was never considered a definitive Superman creator. The closest he came was launching the new Superman title at the start of the New 52 era, but as far as I ever saw, no one thought much of that run at the time, and he was gone after half a year anyway.
All the same, this collection contradicts that perception. John Byrne’s relaunch of the character in the late ‘80s eventually opened up to other creators joining him and of course eventually replacing him. Pérez, as about half the material in the collection indicates, was one of them. I didn’t start reading until the Doomsday arc, but I knew about some of the things that had been done (Lex Luthor has a metallic hand because he wore a Kryptonite ring that cost him the hand and eventually his life to poisoning from it, for instance). After this work, Maxima, who debuts here, joined the Justice League, and Matrix reverted back to its Supergirl persona, Clark reveals his secret identity to Lois, and of course, Doomsday.
The work represented in this half of the collection is representative of the long string of continuity that was maintained basically from Byrne to, technically, the New 52 (although the turn of the millennium involved a soft reboot). The Mongul/exile/Warworld arc, ironically or not, has just been duplicated in current lore (without Superman killing anyone to reach that point, this time; it’s worth noting that just as we see Brainiac history play out, that exile arc involved a different kind of past lore, that era’s version of Zod).
But let’s go ahead and just jump to the New 52 material. Actually, paired with the earlier stuff, it might be easier to contextualize it, if readers are willing to give it more of a chance, now. Pérez might have angered the DC offices itself with it. This is the first time I’ve read it, so until now I always assumed there was at least a grain of truth to fan perceptions. There really isn’t.
All the launches of the New 52 I’ve experienced end the first issue attempting to set up a new villain, a big dramatic hook to help establish the new continuity. Pérez opts for a different approach. In fact, he opens his run by thinly referencing the New 52 itself, in allegory, with the destruction of the old Daily Planet building and opening of a new one.
Eventually the story looks like what had and has become such a dominant perception of Superman in recent years: what happens if he goes rogue? From DC’s own Injustice to Mark Waid’s Irredeemable to The Boys, it seems we’re an era that really can’t bring itself to believe, well, that a man can fly.
And what was DC really supposed to do? The New 52 was predicated on that other dominant modern perception of Superman, that he’s just not cool anymore, that the whole line had to be revamped, make it more modern. And here’s George Pérez, with the flagship hero, contradicting the publisher.
I mean, I don’t know. Pérez, for whatever reason, left early, and was hardly the only creative shakeup early in the new era. It could have been anything. But it was probably that he didn’t deliver what DC expected at the time.
But the guy became an institution in the medium for a reason. He helped define superheroes for decades. For a lot of fans, that usually means his artwork, especially when he was cramming as many figures in as possible (for him), or for one or two specific projects. And like I said, no one thinks of his Superman material, any of it, as definitive to the character, much less anyone jumping to thinking of his writing as part of his legacy. But he wouldn’t even be the only Superman artist to have also written him that I would put in the conversation, and I’m not talking Byrne.
I think his New 52 work establishes far more than it seems. I think it was a link to the past, and in more ways than one. He’d been a part of it before. We see that in this collection. And being asked to do it again gave him a chance to approach the character the same way again, when DC was expecting something very different. But for six issues he did it anyway. A lot of fans point out the Lois material as indicative of what was so wrong. But even there he knew what he was doing. He just didn’t have a chance to play it out. Times were different. The only other Superman comic at the time, Grant Morrison’s Action Comics, was not only telling different stories, but it was set in a different timeframe entirely. And maybe the fans were different, too. Two decades earlier, there would have been no confusion at all.
He had the sense to update, too. He was playing by new standards. Just not the right ones, apparently. Fortunately, there’s always a chance for reassessment. Now would be a great time.
June 18, 2022
When Byrne left the SUPERMAN titles rather abruptly, some of us readers were devastated. Yes, Kerry Gammill's art was lovely and eased the transition, but it was still hard. Finally, the endless SUPERMAN IN EXILE storyline ended, Superman came back to Earth, and George Perez took over Action Comics (with Roger Stern)!
Most of this collection is that Action Comics run and it returns the reader to a time when SUPERMAN comics were fun, creative, and well executed. I've gotten so used to modern-day "decompressed" storytelling, that I forgot what it was like to dig in to a comic book as a reading experience. The original appearance of Maxima, the Brainiac Trilogy, so much there there. Great fun.
After Perez's tragic death, it feels like DC is trying to cash in -- I would rather not seem so cynical, but this collection seems to exist for no other reason. It's nice to have, but it feels a little... extra.
Most of this collection is that Action Comics run and it returns the reader to a time when SUPERMAN comics were fun, creative, and well executed. I've gotten so used to modern-day "decompressed" storytelling, that I forgot what it was like to dig in to a comic book as a reading experience. The original appearance of Maxima, the Brainiac Trilogy, so much there there. Great fun.
After Perez's tragic death, it feels like DC is trying to cash in -- I would rather not seem so cynical, but this collection seems to exist for no other reason. It's nice to have, but it feels a little... extra.
December 14, 2024
The 4 is for the older Superman stories. The new ones were meh.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews