For a long time, I’ve been a fan of Superman. I’ve talked about how I introduced the Little Man to Superman. But until Friday night, I’d never read a Superman comic. And doing so gave me a nifty little idea.
When I heard about the DC Comics “new 52”–their renumbering of 52 of their most popular comics–I was pretty excited. I’ve never read comic books, but I like Superman and this would give me a chance to start fresh with Superman. I suppose I am the ideal audience for DC Comics and this is exactly what they were hoping for by doing this renumbering: bringing new readers onboard. Of course, they have upset some longtime fans, but you can’t please everyone.
I couldn’t sleep Friday night and tossed and turned, until finally I grabbed for my iPad and launched the DC Comics app, for which I have zero content. It was just after midnight. When I went to browse some content, I discovered to my surprise that DC Comics was holding a 48-hour special they called Superman 101, in which they were offering full comics from the various Superman threads for $0.99 each in digital format. Among the free comics they were offering was the Action Comics #1, containing the very first Superman comic.
Well, I couldn’t resist that. I ended up buying 9 comics:
- Action Comics #1, #6, and #23
- The Man of Steel #1-6
And naturally, I couldn’t just buy that Action Comic #1 without sitting down to read it at once. It was both fun and interesting to see how Superman started out. In those very early comics, he’s kind of mean and vengeful, despite being an otherwise heroic type. When I finished that one, I ended up reading Action Comics #6 as well, which briefly introduced Jimmy Olson. The story in this one was much better, I thought, even somewhat meta. I was surprised that in these very early comics, Clark Kent didn’t work for the Daily Planet, but for another paper (I can’t recall the name of it at the moment.)
Bear with me for a moment while I diverge slightly. I generally read to the Little Man before he goes to sleep at night. Typically we read one of a variety of Dr. Seuss books, Thomas the Train books, or some other book that I’ve read a million times.
But it occurred to me… he likes Superman now. He knows what you’d expect a two-year old to know about Superman. And the new DC Comics renumbering might be something that he likes as well. It might be kind of fun, beginning at the end of August, to read each issue of the new Superman comic with the Little Man. It’s something that he and I can do together. The timing of this is particularly good since the Little Miss will arrive before the end of August and the Little Man might not feel like he is getting the full attention he’s used to.
Spending one or two evenings a week reading some of the new Superman comic might be just the ticket. I think I’m going to try it out and see how it goes. In the meantime, I have 6 or 7 older Superman comics to hold my interest until the new ones start to come out.
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