What do you think?
Rate this book
Superman Red & Blue (2021-) #1
Superman Red & Blue (2021-) #1
This new series presents fresh new visions of the Man of Steel in his two signature colors of red and blue! Around the world, everyone knows that when they see a red and blue streak in the sky, it’s not a bird...it’s not a plane...it’s Superman.
To start things off, Academy Award-winning writer of DC Future State: The Next Batman John Ridley joins artist Clayton Henry (Batman/Superman) to tell a story of Clark Kent as he confronts a villain who still haunts him, in a story that shows what Superman can mean to a whole country. Then, Brandon Easton (DC Future State’s “Mister Miracle”) and Steve Lieber (Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen) take readers to the streets of Metropolis to show how one hero can mean so much to an individual in pain.
Plus, writer/artist Wes Craig (Deadly Class) tells a tale of Superman’s early days and the man who inspired him to become the hero he is today! And Marguerite Bennett (DC Future State: Kara Zor-El, Superwoman) and artist Jill Thompson give us a tale of teenage Clark Kent, while Dan Watters and Dani, the team behind Coffin Bound, bring us an outlandish fable about what happens when all colors are stolen!
To start things off, Academy Award-winning writer of DC Future State: The Next Batman John Ridley joins artist Clayton Henry (Batman/Superman) to tell a story of Clark Kent as he confronts a villain who still haunts him, in a story that shows what Superman can mean to a whole country. Then, Brandon Easton (DC Future State’s “Mister Miracle”) and Steve Lieber (Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen) take readers to the streets of Metropolis to show how one hero can mean so much to an individual in pain.
Plus, writer/artist Wes Craig (Deadly Class) tells a tale of Superman’s early days and the man who inspired him to become the hero he is today! And Marguerite Bennett (DC Future State: Kara Zor-El, Superwoman) and artist Jill Thompson give us a tale of teenage Clark Kent, while Dan Watters and Dani, the team behind Coffin Bound, bring us an outlandish fable about what happens when all colors are stolen!
46 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 16, 2021
3 people are currently reading
64 people want to read
About the author
John Ridley
217 books92 followersJohn Ridley IV (born October 1965)[2] is an American screenwriter, television director, novelist, and showrunner, known for 12 Years a Slave, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He is also the creator and showrunner of the critically acclaimed anthology series American Crime. His most recent work is the documentary film Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982–1992.
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
March 22, 2021
A story as bad as the title. (Except for the color story by Dan Watters. That one was great).
July 24, 2021
I love you.
I'm proud of you.
You are special.
April 16, 2021
Superman Red and Blue #1 is the start of a new DC Comics series in which the only colors in the art are red and blue. The book contains multiple stand alone short stories. Consider the book as a companion piece to Batman Black and White.
This is another book I was planning on trade waiting but how could I turn down this beautiful Bermejo variant? The stories largely revolve around how Superman has inspired others. My favorite story revolved how Clark Kent see a young man interviewing for a position at the Daily Planet, Clark recognizes that he met this person as a young boy who ended up saving Superman's life. The stories are all very well told, but I do wish there was a little more action. At first the art style of only red, blue, and shades of black and white was a little weird, but it grew on me. I think some artists could do some really creative work here.
This is another book I was planning on trade waiting but how could I turn down this beautiful Bermejo variant? The stories largely revolve around how Superman has inspired others. My favorite story revolved how Clark Kent see a young man interviewing for a position at the Daily Planet, Clark recognizes that he met this person as a young boy who ended up saving Superman's life. The stories are all very well told, but I do wish there was a little more action. At first the art style of only red, blue, and shades of black and white was a little weird, but it grew on me. I think some artists could do some really creative work here.
April 1, 2021
I put this down after the first story by John Ridley. This man does not understand Superman, Batman, DC or comics and should never be allowed to write these characters again. Genuinely disgusted.
August 13, 2021
This is the best execution of these anthology issues I’ve seen yet. The quality of the stories are so great, the art is perfect in every chapter and the application of the red and blue theme is stunning.
The two standouts are the Wes Craig story and the Dan Watters & Dani collab but all 5 are worth your time.
The two standouts are the Wes Craig story and the Dan Watters & Dani collab but all 5 are worth your time.
September 13, 2025
3½⭐
There's a few really sweet and endearing stories, however they're bundled in with some very ehh stories too. It's a decent enough read but also can become a slog when you bump into one of the lesser shorts.
There's a few really sweet and endearing stories, however they're bundled in with some very ehh stories too. It's a decent enough read but also can become a slog when you bump into one of the lesser shorts.
March 21, 2021
Some beautiful stories.
July 23, 2021
can you believe i willingly read a superman comic (yes, i don't care about superman at all, and what about it?) just because i'm a slut for amazing art,, i'm so brave
April 1, 2021
I'm more than disappointed with this comic. As a Superman fan, I've been truly looking forward to this.
John Ridley needs to be fired. He clearly doesn't know how to write Superman. I read the two World's Finest issues he referenced, and he completely forgot to mention Batman was alongside Superman the entire time in Lubania. We didn't see any torture from 1970 so that's a bit more of a stretch, but no matter what - Superman would NOT daydream of killing Koslov. Brandon Easton wants to blame Superman for things he can't control. Just one bad one after the next...
John Ridley needs to be fired. He clearly doesn't know how to write Superman. I read the two World's Finest issues he referenced, and he completely forgot to mention Batman was alongside Superman the entire time in Lubania. We didn't see any torture from 1970 so that's a bit more of a stretch, but no matter what - Superman would NOT daydream of killing Koslov. Brandon Easton wants to blame Superman for things he can't control. Just one bad one after the next...
March 19, 2021
I didn't know anything about Superman: Red and Blue before reading it, and it made the experience very surprising, so if you don't want to know what it is or what it's about but want to know if it's worth picking up, yes, yes it it. If you want to know more about the book and what I thought of it please read on.
Superman: Red and Blue is an anthology of short stories that focus on Superman, all with art where the only colours are, you guessed it, red and blue. This issue has five stories, 'Untitled' written by John Ridley with art from Jordie Bellaire, 'The Measure of Hope' written by Brandon Easton with art from Steve Lieber and Ron Chan, 'The Boy Who Saved Superman' by Wes Craig, 'Human Colors' written by Dan Watters with art by Dani, and 'School of Hard Knock-Knock Jokes' written by Marguerite Bennett with art from Jill Thompson.
One of the things that all of these stories have in common, beyond the obviousness of them all being about Superman and using a limited colour pallet, is that these are some of the most human stories I think I've seen featuring the character.
'Untitled' sees Clark Kent travelling to the nation of Lubania, a nation where Superman and Batman were held prisoner and tortured for months in Worlds Finest #192 - 193. Clark has travelled there to interview Nikolai Koslov, the man who ran the concentration camp where he was held prisoner; the man who tortured him every single day he was there. Clark comes face to face with the man who made him feel his weakest, the man who still haunts his dreams, and has to talk with him. We see the level of trauma that Clark has had to live with in this story, the amount of post-traumatic stress that he has inside him. We even see that a small part of him wants to punish Koslov for what he put him through, to burn him in half with his heat vision. This story shows a level of pain that we've never seen in Superman before, and it's incredibly shocking for that.

'The Measure of Hope' sees Superman coming to attend the funeral of a woman who has passed away following an addiction with heroin. Her son was a kid who looked up to Superman as a child, who's best moment was seeing Superman in action, in having Superman talk to him. He adored and idolised him, so when he learnt his mother was a drug user, when he was afraid of what might happen he wrote to Superman asking him for help. Unfortunately, thanks to how much fan mail he gets it takes Superman a long time to read through his letters, and by the time he reaches these ones it's too late to help this family. The story is an incredibly moving one, one where we see that Superman can't save everyone, even if he really wants to. It's a story that shows why terrible things still happen in a world where Superman is there to help; because despite all his powers he's still just one man, and one man can't save the entire world all the time.
'The Boy Who Saved Superman' sees Clark at the Daily Planet, watching a young man interview for a job, a man who he calls his hero, the man who was the boy who saved Superman. We go back to one of the earliest adventures of Superman, where he'd only been around for a few months, and in protecting Metropolis from a giant monster is rendered unconscious. Whilst others are fleeing in terror a lone boy takes hold of the unconscious hero and drags him through a collapsing building, taking him to the roof, above the dust clouds, so that he can get into the sunlight the hero needs. He manages to get Superman out, he gives him the boost he needs to save the day, but loses his hand doing so. When seeing him again in the Daily Planet we see Clark almost lost for words, stuttering out what he wants to say, because he's face to face with the young man who saved his life, his own personal hero.
'Human Colors' is the strangest tale in the collection, and sees Superman confronting an imp from the fifth dimension, who has drained all of the colour out of the world, leaving it completely black and white. The imp gives Superman a small box, a box that contains all of the stolen colours, but Superman isn't sure if he should open it or not; so decides to start with two particular colours to see what happens. This is probably the strangest of the stories in this issue, and it doesn't so much focus on Clark in particular, but on humanity as a whole and the connections that we all have with our emotions.
'The School of Hard Knock-Knock Jokes' is the only story in this issue to not feature Superman at all, instead focusing on Clark as a child, attending his first days in kindergarten. The story shows Clark in a very mundane situation, one where powers and abilities won't help him through, and instead he needs to focus on the qualities that make him a good person, his kindness and generous spirit.
The stories in this issue focus on what make Superman great, not his powers, but his humanity. Superman might be an alien, he might have the powers of a god, but he's one of the most human of characters, one of the kindest and most decent; and these stories demonstrate that. I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the series has in store.
Superman: Red and Blue is an anthology of short stories that focus on Superman, all with art where the only colours are, you guessed it, red and blue. This issue has five stories, 'Untitled' written by John Ridley with art from Jordie Bellaire, 'The Measure of Hope' written by Brandon Easton with art from Steve Lieber and Ron Chan, 'The Boy Who Saved Superman' by Wes Craig, 'Human Colors' written by Dan Watters with art by Dani, and 'School of Hard Knock-Knock Jokes' written by Marguerite Bennett with art from Jill Thompson.
One of the things that all of these stories have in common, beyond the obviousness of them all being about Superman and using a limited colour pallet, is that these are some of the most human stories I think I've seen featuring the character.
'Untitled' sees Clark Kent travelling to the nation of Lubania, a nation where Superman and Batman were held prisoner and tortured for months in Worlds Finest #192 - 193. Clark has travelled there to interview Nikolai Koslov, the man who ran the concentration camp where he was held prisoner; the man who tortured him every single day he was there. Clark comes face to face with the man who made him feel his weakest, the man who still haunts his dreams, and has to talk with him. We see the level of trauma that Clark has had to live with in this story, the amount of post-traumatic stress that he has inside him. We even see that a small part of him wants to punish Koslov for what he put him through, to burn him in half with his heat vision. This story shows a level of pain that we've never seen in Superman before, and it's incredibly shocking for that.

'The Measure of Hope' sees Superman coming to attend the funeral of a woman who has passed away following an addiction with heroin. Her son was a kid who looked up to Superman as a child, who's best moment was seeing Superman in action, in having Superman talk to him. He adored and idolised him, so when he learnt his mother was a drug user, when he was afraid of what might happen he wrote to Superman asking him for help. Unfortunately, thanks to how much fan mail he gets it takes Superman a long time to read through his letters, and by the time he reaches these ones it's too late to help this family. The story is an incredibly moving one, one where we see that Superman can't save everyone, even if he really wants to. It's a story that shows why terrible things still happen in a world where Superman is there to help; because despite all his powers he's still just one man, and one man can't save the entire world all the time.
'The Boy Who Saved Superman' sees Clark at the Daily Planet, watching a young man interview for a job, a man who he calls his hero, the man who was the boy who saved Superman. We go back to one of the earliest adventures of Superman, where he'd only been around for a few months, and in protecting Metropolis from a giant monster is rendered unconscious. Whilst others are fleeing in terror a lone boy takes hold of the unconscious hero and drags him through a collapsing building, taking him to the roof, above the dust clouds, so that he can get into the sunlight the hero needs. He manages to get Superman out, he gives him the boost he needs to save the day, but loses his hand doing so. When seeing him again in the Daily Planet we see Clark almost lost for words, stuttering out what he wants to say, because he's face to face with the young man who saved his life, his own personal hero.
'Human Colors' is the strangest tale in the collection, and sees Superman confronting an imp from the fifth dimension, who has drained all of the colour out of the world, leaving it completely black and white. The imp gives Superman a small box, a box that contains all of the stolen colours, but Superman isn't sure if he should open it or not; so decides to start with two particular colours to see what happens. This is probably the strangest of the stories in this issue, and it doesn't so much focus on Clark in particular, but on humanity as a whole and the connections that we all have with our emotions.
'The School of Hard Knock-Knock Jokes' is the only story in this issue to not feature Superman at all, instead focusing on Clark as a child, attending his first days in kindergarten. The story shows Clark in a very mundane situation, one where powers and abilities won't help him through, and instead he needs to focus on the qualities that make him a good person, his kindness and generous spirit.
The stories in this issue focus on what make Superman great, not his powers, but his humanity. Superman might be an alien, he might have the powers of a god, but he's one of the most human of characters, one of the kindest and most decent; and these stories demonstrate that. I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the series has in store.
July 22, 2023
First story: love the colors. "It's easy to 'move on' when you're the victimizer, and not the victim." This is a thoughtful if slight (and frankly a little disingenuous) story. The disingenuousness comes from... like... I'm all about using pop culture for deceptively or surprisingly subversive messaging, but using a DC comic as an anti-capitalist platform just feels a bit on the "having your cake and eating it too" side. And I don't mean in a "how can you tweet from your iPhone that capitalism is bad hur hur" way; it's just... like... even if this publisher allows explicit anti-capitalist sentiment in their intellectual property, there is no near or even distant future in which DC suddenly becomes fully artist-owned or in any way free of capitalist baggage. Like, it's cool to make Superman understand capitalism's effect on inequality but Superman as an iconic property is fully implicated in capitalistic power dynamics... or has Warner Bros Discovery radically restructured itself in the midst of me typing this? Again: I'm fully in favor of writers putting these kinds of words in these icons' mouths, but I think that more subtlety is both more interesting and adds a tad more... "plausible deniability", for lack of a better term.
"The Measure of Hope": similarly strong use of color (I guess I'll just stop commenting on this) but the writing feels pretty stilted and unsubtle to me.
"The Boy Who Saved Superman": okay, actually, this coloring is not great. Too little contrast; everything is hard to read.
"Human Colors": probably the most cloying, thin story I've ever read in my short time reading comics! Looked interesting, at least.
"The School of Hard Knock-Knock Jokes": the fact that this moved me so much is proof that it wasn't the goals of "Human Colors" that I disliked. This story is just about the sweetest thing you'll find in this medium and it just knocked me flat. I'm very new to this whole world, but I feel like--as a culture--we all spent a little too long acting like we were too cool for someone as sincerely wholesome as Superman. We're not. We need stories like these to remind us that the world isn't just war, mean tweets, global warming, and disease.
"The Measure of Hope": similarly strong use of color (I guess I'll just stop commenting on this) but the writing feels pretty stilted and unsubtle to me.
"The Boy Who Saved Superman": okay, actually, this coloring is not great. Too little contrast; everything is hard to read.
"Human Colors": probably the most cloying, thin story I've ever read in my short time reading comics! Looked interesting, at least.
"The School of Hard Knock-Knock Jokes": the fact that this moved me so much is proof that it wasn't the goals of "Human Colors" that I disliked. This story is just about the sweetest thing you'll find in this medium and it just knocked me flat. I'm very new to this whole world, but I feel like--as a culture--we all spent a little too long acting like we were too cool for someone as sincerely wholesome as Superman. We're not. We need stories like these to remind us that the world isn't just war, mean tweets, global warming, and disease.
March 22, 2021
My favorite story was definitely Human Colors. At first, I was confused by it only being in black and white, since it was such an abrupt visual change after all the red and blues. However, as you progress in the storyline, it gets really beautiful, both in the narrative and the art.
Another part I’d like to highlight is The School of Hard Knock-Knock Jokes. Never could’ve have imagined little Clark and watercolor going so well together. Take-home message: “(...) if you see a problem, especially if it affects another person, you must also always see yourself as someone who can help solve that problem. Just seeing it and being bothered by it is not enough”.
Other than that, DC, please, I know having to talk about soviet authoritarian regimes is your thing but, you know you got problems currently in the USA too, right?
Another part I’d like to highlight is The School of Hard Knock-Knock Jokes. Never could’ve have imagined little Clark and watercolor going so well together. Take-home message: “(...) if you see a problem, especially if it affects another person, you must also always see yourself as someone who can help solve that problem. Just seeing it and being bothered by it is not enough”.
Other than that, DC, please, I know having to talk about soviet authoritarian regimes is your thing but, you know you got problems currently in the USA too, right?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 24, 2021
Superman. The Man of steel. DC had done a lot to keep their icon on the top…and while some stories were the best others fell flat. I consider myself a Superman fan than a Batman fan and I loved this first issue. Following Batman Black & White, these little Superman stories are hit or miss but that’s the thing with anthologies….some work..some does not but I am sure, once all these gets collected in a trade paperback or better still an omnibus…there will be something for everyone. Read this while ‘What are you going to do when you are not saving the world’ track from Man of Steel soundtrack and it did wonders.
September 26, 2021
I remember loving what I read from Batman: Black & White several years ago. I really liked this idea of the same being done with Superman but with blue and red. I was kinda put off by the art style of the first story, but thankfully, each story had its own style, and the anthology got better. It was nice seeing Superman deal with the realities of a funeral and whatnot. The one that's mostly black and white was confusing for a bit, though it gets the colors by the end, and it makes sense, titled "Human Colors" and all. The final story was a cute one, showing Superman as a kid.
March 17, 2021
5 stories by 5 different writers. All good stories. Artwork matched very well. I think my favorite one is probably the last one that tells a story of 5 year old Clark and his first week of kindergarten.
June 1, 2021
Ok so with this issue, you don't even need to be into Superman or superheroes to enjoy it! The stories are great and I love all the different art styles readers can experience. Looking forward to reading the second one!
June 29, 2021
I didn't know anything about Superman: Red and Blue before reading it, and it made the experience very nice.This is a comic series in which the only colors in the art are red and blue.In this the arts are good.
March 24, 2021
Pretty good. Not my favourite Superman miniseries, but it contains just enough.
Great artwork, the story about colours was my favourite one by far.
Great artwork, the story about colours was my favourite one by far.
March 25, 2021
Great stuff. Generally my favorite superman stories are ones like this, short punches that showcase his character and the effect he has on the world. The art was all fantastic as well. I loved it.
April 19, 2021
❤️💙❤️💙❤️💙❤️💙❤️💙❤️‼️
May 20, 2021
no because..what the fuck
May 24, 2021
“Human Colors” was my favorite of them all.
March 7, 2025
Beautiful
October 9, 2025
Sinceramente me ha encantada este issue. No me esperaba para nada que relatase una experiencia traumática que tuvo que vivir Superman.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews