This is a strange one. Written by current Superman scribe James Robinson, and advertised on the closing pages of that title’s most recent issue as the “next” part of the ongoing arc, it would apparently seem from all of that to be a crucial part of the big storyline that Robinson and Geoff Johns are apparently building. And yet in fact, upon reading it, it’s actually a standalone adventure story that – while it does answer one of the questions posed by the Atlas storyline, and contains continuity developments that are significant if you’re a long-time Superman reader – winds up feeling less essential than one might have thought.

This is a curious feature of DC’s publishing habits in recent years, though. When a big storyline comes along, it’s no longer customary to keep it within the pages of its own title – instead all manner of spinoffs, one-shots and tie-in issues abound, and it’s difficult for the reader to know exactly what they need to buy. The only one of the Final Crisis tie-ins I’ve touched, for example, was Superman Beyond – after all, if I have to see one more story about “the Rogues”, I’m going to scream – and so I genuinely don’t know if I’m going to be missing something big when issue #4 finally hits next week. And the latest Detective Comics story has “Batman RIP” banners splashed all over it, even though it can’t possibly be a concurrent part of Morrison’s story (it can only be taking place before it, in fact). So when it comes to Superman, it’s a bit annoying that significant developments are apparently taking place in one-shot titles rather than the main book – the upcoming New Krypton Special is apparently the next part of the story, although it remains to be seen what it does that couldn’t be told in one or both of the main Superman titles.

Still, divorced from that context, this isn’t a bad read – and in shifting the focus onto Olsen, there’s at least a reason for it to be kept out of the main title. It’s also clear that it offers more to the Superman fan than to anyone drawn in by Robinson’s run on the main title (which has so far kept admirably free of the trappings of tangled continuity, and so has proven pretty accessible to the casual reader), dealing as it does with characters – and an entire organization, in fact – that were created by Kirby in the ’40s (some of them) and ‘70s (the rest) before becoming a slightly overused part of the title’s early ‘90s storylines. Yes, it’s the Newsboy Legion and Cadmus – in fact, in somewhat surprising fashion, it’s the end of the Newsboy Legion and Cadmus, along with a retconning revelation about the Guardian. I can’t imagine there are masses of people out there who’d particularly care about this, but those that do are probably the sum total of the target market for this special.

Anyway, it’s a measure of Robinson’s ability as a writer of dialogue and mood that, on those occasions that he gets the tone right, he’s able to mask storytelling problems with strong atmosphere. Here, if you pick apart the story, it’s a relatively simplistic one, with almost all the exposition handed to Jimmy on a plate – yet it has the feel of a fairly compulsive mystery thriller, and that’s no mean feat. Still, it doesn’t feel like the most coherent work Robinson has ever put together – for example, a neat telepathy-related moment involving Dubbilex contradicts a plot point established earlier in the issue – although that’s no fault of the three pencillers and two inkers, who somehow conspire to give the book a consistent look and style even as they’re passing it between themselves.

Where this works, though, as with much of Robinson’s work, is in the dialogue and character beats. Olsen is a difficult character to make work – too long the butt of jokes, too outdated in the role he tends to play in stories – and I even felt he was, the closing issue aside, one of the weaker elements of All Star Superman. I wouldn’t say that Robinson shows the strongest grasp of the existing character here – because by putting him through a bit of progression for once, he comes out with arguably a new person entirely. But crucially, and this is what makes it more satisfying than most other Jimmy appearances of recent years, he might just be turning him into a character I want to read stories about. And that’s an achievement in itself.