Adventures of Superbro: Unchained and The Men of Tomorrow

When you ask these days about New 52 Superman people will usually say that Pak took up, or at least tried, the baton after Morrison's run ended. But at the time it wasn't as obvious. Pak was basically going from crossover to crossover and DC did two big Superman launches: Superman Unchained by Snyder/Lee and short run in Superman (The Men of Tomorrow) by Johns/Romita. So why not many people talk about them today?

Despite being done by two very different creative teams both stories are somewhat similar. Core of the plot in both stories is about arrival of another "Superman level" character and writers trying to tell something about Superman by showing that he is not just about his power levels. I think that both fail to say anything meaningful, but at least Snyder was trying. Johns just coasted and had Superman being indirectly responsible for a genocide with zero repercussions.

Snyder does introduce few additional ideas, but everything is really wrapped up in the run so it is a story that is easy to ignore - it doesn't lead to anything else. By contrast Men of Tomorrow has stuff that ends up mattering in the long run. Continuity "mistakes", Oz, solar flare power, trying to move New 52 Superman closer to Pre-Flashpoint Superman's status quo.

What about the art? I think that I'm higher on Romita than average comic book reader these days, but he doesn't really compare with Lee. On the other hand The Men of Tomorrow wasn't like 15 months late by the time last issues was published. Oh, and Nguyen did some pages for Unchained as well to make sure that the series wasn't late by 25 months. I really like his work and I think it worked very well when he did flashbacks, but few present day sequences just felt odd when Lee would then continue those pages in next issue. Not very compatible art styles.

So why nobody really cares about these stories these days? As I already mentioned Unchained is very self-contained and big publishing delays meant that it never really built up the hype machine around itself. The Men of Tomorrow attempt to move status quo closer to pre-Flashpoint was kinda pointless considering that we got Truth just right after it and eventually Rebirth. Plus some plot points like Oz character ended up as big flops.

Big creative teams, but really not much to talk about. Personally I don't recommend either of those stories, but if you really want to pick one I'd say that you should go with Unchained. It is self-contained, it got better art and Snyder is trying to say something even if he ultimately fails.

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