Review: Superman Adventures Vol. 3 trade paperback (DC Comics)

After a bumpy second volume, Superman Adventures Vol. 3 hits its stride with its third volume, collecting nine issues that knock Superman, Metropolis, and the supporting cast right out of the ballpark. Writer Mark Millar is back, scripting five (and among them the best) of the nine issues, and Millar has lots of fun rooting these stories within the DCAU at large and into the subtle loose threads of Superman Adventures itself.

I have used the phrase “meat and potatoes” to describe these DCAU tie-in comics, but Superman Adventures especially took advantage of a streamlined continuity to give us a recognizable and Triangle Titles-adjacent Metropolis without the burden of the latter’s soap opera plotting. (I say that lovingly, as someone whose definitive Superman lives firmly within the Triangle Era.) As before, this Superman has the benefit of zipping over to Smallville for a Ma and Pa pep talk, while Clancy Brown’s tycoon Lex Luthor is almost always pulling the pursestrings. Yet there are still a few knowing winks, as when Livewire jokes - in mid-1998 - “Since when did Superman have a blue face and crackle with electricity, pal?” (Perish the thought, eh?)

The appearance of Livewire late in the book grounds (no pun intended) the volume in the animated series, for which Livewire was more or less its Harley Quinn, a snappy and original villain who eventually worked her way into the comics and a redemption of sorts. But it also ties into her last appearance in Superman Adventures, which left her depowered and comatose. That Millar takes the time to connect the dots, rather than simply pick Livewire out of the ether, is a fine example of the care that these creators didn’t need to take. Pitting her against Brainiac, on the other hand, is just good clean fun, and this two-parter is fantastic reading for any Superman fan.

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If the citizens of Metropolis took center stage in the last volume, Vol. 3 is very nearly “ladies' night out” for Superman, and not just because Devin Grayson gets to pen an issue (the first, if memory serves, written by a woman in these DCAU titles). Her story is a solid riff on the classic “Must There Be a Superman?” with the Man of Steel interrogating whether his life as Clark Kent is preventing him from saving lives. Grayson’s conclusion is clever and elegant, even if the question itself has been plumbed to its depths and to death.

At the center of the book is “Last Daughter of Argo,” written by Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer and illustrated by Bret Blevins. It’s half-prequel, half-sequel to the episode “Little Girl Lost,” which introduced Supergirl to the DCAU, and indeed that episode ‘happens’ in the middle of this comic, narrated in Kara’s diary as a “Big Day!” Along the way, we learn more about Kara’s relationship with Ma and Pa Kent, while the issue also finds Granny Goodness recruiting no less than General Zod from the Phantom Zone to wreak revenge on the Girl of Steel. It’s one of those issues that retails for considerably higher than cover price these days, partly as a first appearance and partly, no doubt, for that spritely Bruce Timm cover, but it’s also a fun one-off for a unique take on a decidedly not Kryptonian Supergirl.¹

Across the bay, Vol. 3 ends with one of my all-time favorite single issues, #25 - “(Almost) the World’s Finest Team.” From Millar and Mike Manley, it begins with an indelibly memorable splash page, which finds the Mad Hatter holding a gagged Bruce Wayne at gunpoint, promising to kill him if Batman does not unmask by midnight. Of course, we know the catch to that little challenge, and so too do Superman and Batgirl, who have to team up to save the Dark Knight while playing by Gotham rules. (“Next time you lean on a snitch,” Batgirl advises, “don’t buy him coffee afterwards.”) It reminds of a certain other issue #25, which teamed up Batman and Superman, but it’s also a nice reprise of “Knight Time,” possibly my best-loved episode of Superman: The Animated Series.

The rest of the stories are a little less flashy but no less sturdy. In one, a billion-dollar contract on the president’s life puts Superman on the trail of the chameleonic assassin Multi-Face, while another finds the Parasite draining Superman’s energy to win the affection of an old flame. There’s a forgettable tale from Jordan B. Gorfinkel about MasterTrax, an armored villain whose crimes beggar any understanding, while a Chris Duffy farce about the Daily Planet’s latest intern might have been better served by a Scott McCloud script. 

If I haven’t said much about the art in this volume, it’s unfortunately due to a rotating cast - Aluir Amancio, Neil Vokes, Bret Blevins, and Mike Manley - who stick painfully close to a house style sheet that makes most of the book look indistinguishable. It’s journeyman work, to be sure, but this reader sensed a little less individual expression than we saw from, say, the clear and present differences between Mike Parobeck and Rick Burchett on The Batman Adventures. If nothing else, though, we do have Burchett on cover duties for most of this volume, and his square-jawed dynamism is a breath of fresh animated air.²

If the first volume of Superman Adventures was a solid primer on the world of Metropolis, something you could hand to anyone to explain Superman in a nutshell, Vol. 3 is the kind of book that feels like a natural extension of the animated series. It’s an exuberantly fun book that gives us the animated Superman at his most colorful, and his rogues have very seldom been as entertaining as they are here. And we will see no shortage of those rogues in the fourth - and, sadly, final - volume next time.

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1. Superman Adventures #21 was later reprinted in Supergirl Adventures: Girl of Steel (2021), a digest-sized collection spotlighting Kara. It also included two uncollected issues of Superman Adventures and two of Justice League Unlimited.  ↩︎

2. Burchett was busy with Gotham Adventures and the occasional “No Man’s Land” issue on the main Bat-books.  ↩︎