I can’t remember a week of comics as good as this in a very long time. In a way, it’s a reflection of just how badly things tend to be scheduled – and certainly, for a writer of a site where we can only review four new books a week, it’s frustrating to have to miss out so much stuff, when there are other weeks in which we’ll barely have anything of interest to say. Nevertheless, the disappointment of Final Crisis aside, we’ve had customarily superb issues of Astonishing X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man and Batman, the possible sleeper-hit of 1985, and somewhat surprisingly, two books by Geoff Johns (Action Comics and Green Lantern) that were both perhaps the strongest issues of his recent runs. But of course, at the head of all of this – in much the same way as it stands at the head of pretty much the entire mainstream comics field – is All-Star Superman.

One issue to go! How will we cope in its absence? I’m genuinely not sure. Sure, the scheduling has been erratic (although, hey, it’s actually managed to overtake All-Star Batman now, by virtue of actually successfully hitting a bimonthly release for the first time), but by gum, it’s a comic that lights up any week in which it deigns to appear. It goes without saying by now that Morrison and Quitely have crafted one of the finest Superman stories of all time – an absolute masterclass of comics creation on every conceivable level. In fact, is there really anything left to say about it?

Well, it is worth noting that perhaps the weaker issues of the series have been the ones that revolved a bit more around action, rather than emotion or metaphysics. Not that the action hasn’t been well-done – it’s just that the more memorable moments of the series (the one with Clark’s dad, the two “replacement” Kryptonians, and of course the incredible issue #10) have tended to be when it’s reflected on the deeper meaning of Superman and his existence. What’s surprising about #11, then, is that in setting up the big-bucks series finale (short version – Lex Luthor has powers for twenty-four hours) it provides perhaps the most thrilling “action” issue the series has seen to date – and it’s one that takes its place alongside the “reflective” issues.

Not that it doesn’t get reflective, of course – there’s an absolutely wonderful moment where a valuable whole panel is used to show the sole remaining Superman Robot left to guard the fortress alone in the dark – but really, this is about giving us a proper, explosive grand finale. The confrontation proper doesn’t yet begin – Luthor lurks menacingly in the background after brutally escaping his own execution, leaving his brilliantly malevolent niece (another dusted-off Silver Age obscurity) to steal the show, while Superman is kept busy having a punch-up with a sentient red sun – but everything is set up for what will basically be “the General Zod fight from Superman II done better”. At the same time as it’s being darkly ominous (the wonderful cover image of a headline “SUPERMAN DEAD” with a byline “by Clark Kent” - so simple and classic that I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before – does actually appear in the issue proper), it’s playful and thrilling in turn.

But while Morrison is clearly just having fun throwing ideas at the page and watching them come beautifully together (not to mention throwing in such gems as having Jimmy say “quite frankly”), Frank Quitely is – on an entirely serious level – once again showing everyone just how it’s done. I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but I’ll keep repeating it until the idiots who bleat things like “his people are pudgy and ugly” shut the hell up : he is the singular greatest artistic talent currently working in the industry. His senses of storytelling and composition alone deserve to elevate him up among the all-time greats (the pair of panels in which Superman is shown about to deliver the final blow to Solaris, followed by a city-wide shot of a red explosion, feel like Scott McCloud could use them in an essay about using the gutter properly), but with his startling level of detail and precision (and again, inker/colourist Jamie Grant deserves almost as much credit here), I simply can’t see how anybody could ever complain about his aesthetics. He can do large-scale as well as someone like Cassaday, and if there’s a criticism, it’s that on occasion he’s a bit too over-reliant on those trademark wide shots – with small characters picked out amid a huge empty background – when sometimes, as brilliant as his use of space is, a close-up would add a bit more humanity.

Such details feel like nitpicking, though, because it feels faintly ridiculous telling the creators of All-Star Superman what to do. I’d go so far as to say that this is the first time, in my experience of regularly buying comics (as opposed to just reading whatever fell my way, which was how I did things up until I went to Uni), that I’ve known what it must have felt like as Watchmen or Sandman drew to a close. And if that sounds like hyperbole, and if you’re amazed that such things could be said about a Superman comic, of all things – well, that’s just a reflection of what Grant and Frank have done with this magnificent series. It’ll be a very, very long time before we see its like again.

Tags: Frank Quitely, Grant Morrison, Superman
Publisher: DC