Superman: American Alien #6 (DC)

With the exception of Tom De Haven's It's Superman!, which was a novel, few writers have been able to explore Superman in as thoroughly human a way as Max Landis has within the pages of Superman: American Alien.  Part of its charm is that each issue features a specific period, a moment of identity crisis, in the formative development of Superman.  Each issue has an artist to fit that moment.

This issue has Jonathan Case.  I've been following his work in various exceptional graphic novels (Dear Creature, The New Deal), so I've been looking forward to the issue since the start of the mini-series.  What he brings to this particular moment is a feel for all those comic books geared toward people who don't particularly care for superheroes, the graphic novels frequently trotted out so that the public will take this medium seriously.  Since Case, to this point, has literally made that his home (although, especially with Dear Creature, in as imaginative fashion as he could), he's ideally suited to Clark Kent arguing with his old Smallville friends that becoming Superman wasn't a horrible mistake.

So often, we take Clark Kent's transformation into Superman for granted.  Once you get the origin out of the way, once he becomes Superman, the idea of Clark Kent becomes entirely subject to the Superman identity.  Clark fades into the background, fodder for the Lois Lane romance and little more.  He essentially ceases to be. 

Landis doesn't allow that to happen.  The Smallville TV series made a big point of keeping Superman entirely out of the picture, for as long as possible, and so it helped pave the way for storytelling like this.  Landis, however, takes it to an entirely new level.  It helps, I think, because this is literally his first regular comic book work.  He made his name with Chronicle, the movie that recast the superhero genre into the teenage angst genre (which director Josh Trank then attempted to translate back with the Fantastic Four reboot, to critical and popular derision).  It was all about creating a fresh perspective, and that's exactly what he brought to Superman: American Alien, too.

It may just be the best Superman origin ever.  The story continues in each issue, and every now and again, you're reminded of that fact, but the decision to base each issue on a given moment in Superman's young life is a true creative triumph, that has seen rewards each issue.  Loeb and Sale's Superman: For All Seasons did much the same thing, as did John Byrne's Man of Steel, but in Landis' hands, it feels different.  He never shies away from exploring the full impact of these moments.  They're not just impressions, or Landis attempting to hit all the familiar marks.  He's blazing new territory each issue, which for a character three quarters of a century old, is truly remarkable.