Inside this week’s Sunday (and not-at-all Hastily Edited On Monday) Pages, you can find a selection of capsule reviews including Captain America #42, Daredevil #111, Fantastic Four: True Story #3, Ms. Marvel #32, Superman #680, Ultimate Spider-Man #126, X-Men Legacy #216. In addition, we give a quick plugola to an interview with one of our very favourite comics talents, and there’s another big UK show coming up!

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This week marks the start of the new Sunday Pages format, incorporating capsule reviews alongside news tidbits. Since Julian’s now joining us, you can identify his contributions by the initials [JHa] and mine by [JHu], while Seb , obviously, gets to keep the more concise [SP]. We’re still feeling out the specifics, so be sure to let us know how you’re finding it, and whether or not you think it could be improved! Look inside for mini-reviews of Action Comics #869, Amazing Spider-Man #572, Greatest Hits #1 and X-Factor #35, as well as some discussion of Neil Gaiman’s reaction to the new Hitchiker’s Guide book.

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There’s been something about the timing of All-Star Superman. It was strangely fitting that #10, with its portrayal of the creation of Superman in a world in which he didn’t exist (interpret it literally as “our” world if you want, but let’s not get into the metaphysics of it all right now), should have come out in the same week as the Siegel ruling. And now, barely a month after a clueless studio exec said that the next Superman movie would “try to go dark”, Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely wrap up their magnum opus with an issue that shows a deep-rooted understanding of exactly what Superman means (clue : it’s not “going dark”).

I’m well aware that quoting wholesale a passage from the issue isn’t really the best thing to do in a review - firstly, it’s a reproduction of copyrighted content, and secondly, it spoils it for those who’ve yet to read - but the following speech, delivered by Jor-El (yes. Jor El. Don’t ask, just read it), is the pure encapsulation of Morrison’s vision, and the series as a whole, and as such I can’t help but share it :

Your work is done. You have shown them the face of the man of tomorrow. You have given them an ideal to aspire to, embodied their highest aspirations. They will race, and stumble, and fall and crawl… and curse… and finally… they will join you in the sun, Kal-El.

There’s plenty more I want to say about this issue, but it’s going to have to wait until I can do some kind of retrospective - because anything I say is going to have to delve into pretty major spoilers for the way the whole thing wraps up. And I can’t even really say anything new about the quality of the series, either. What, you really think they’re suddenly going to have dropped the ball at this point? But I can say that almost everything is wrapped up in a satisfactory way (although not always in the manner you’d expect, and a lot is done through subtle hinting rather than directly showing you - but then, right from the moment in issue #1 where Clark rescued a man’s life by “accidentally” knocking him over, the blend of subtlety and bombast has been one of the series’ defining attributes). There’s a touch of strangeness about a couple of the finale’s elements, and the specific note upon which the closing pages dwell is not the sort of image you’d expect either. On the other hand, there is absolutely no fake-out - Morrison somehow manages to deliver the ending that he’s been promising from day one and yet still turn it into a story about hope, and belief in the future.

And it doesn’t scrimp on the action - nor shy away from the big punch-up promised at the end of #11 - or the tender moments, or the iconic imagery, or the beauty of Quitely’s draftsmanship, or the mind-screwery (or the “Did he really just do that?” moments - in this case, I’m pretty sure he’s making a direct reference to one of the most infamously-awful aspects of JJ Abrams’ aborted movie script, and making the idea work in the process). Let’s not go over the top, though, mind. It’s not the best issue of the series (those are #6, #10 and #11), and in telling “the last Superman story”, it’s placing itself directly up against Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? - and, although they do different things (Morrison’s is bravura, experimental, unique; Moore’s is quintessential, timeless, iconic), All Star falls just short of “greatest Superman story ever” in such a straight comparison.

But that’s hardly an insult. The simple fact remains that we have been treated to a genuine, bona fide masterpiece. These are the men who brought us Flex Mentallo and We3, and yet they’ve still managed to make this the absolute high-point of their respective careers. And now that it’s a complete whole, I can finally even go so far as to call it the absolute high-point of twenty-first century comics so far. You can never really say, of course, whether people will still be talking about a particular book in twenty, thirty or even fifty years’ time. But in the case of All-Star, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that they will. The only question is - how will either of them follow it?

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.

Just when you think Grant Morrison can’t get any more metatextual – and this is the man who wrote Flex Mentallo and Animal Man, lest we forget – he gives us a Superman story in which the Man of Steel creates a microscopic, time-accelerated replica of Earth in order to observe the human race’s development in a world without him… and in said world, in a dingy Cleveland apartment, an artist’s hand draws Superman – the original, 1930s Superman – on a blank page. “Bravura” doesn’t cover the half of it.

This is just one of the reasons why All Star Superman wins Eisners. Why it’s the best superhero comic in years. Why it’s a comic that, hell, makes you realise why you read the damned things in the first place – that swoops down once every three months to pluck you from the despair of an industry in which Jeph Loeb can get regular work. This is, basically, what it’s all about.

And apologies for spoiling one of the best aspects of this issue, but quite frankly, I had to tell someone about it. And it’s far from the only thing that happens in it, anyway. In fact, events rattle along at breakneck pace, as the series’ underlying arc finally begins to pay off – and as Superman’s (apparent) impending death draws closer, he steps up his efforts to ensure the world will be adequately protected in his absence while still attempting to keep up with the day-to-day business of saving lives (from battling giant robots to talking down the suicidal).

One of the biggest successes of All Star Superman has been in attracting a readership that includes those who don’t usually care for the character. I wonder, though, what they’ll make of this issue – as it goes further than any before it in elevating its lead to both literal and figurative godlike status. While I’m not someone whom this would necessarily irk – as a massive fan of the character myself – where I think Morrison succeeds in making the idea fly (sorry) is that everything is done in such customarily charming fashion. And he creates a palpable sense of sorrow over the loss that the world is going to suffer – for arguably the first time, we’re really made to care, to realise that the world will be a poorer place after Superman dies.

The melancholy is made all the more powerful, too, by the sheer sense of wit and fun that has run through the increasingly far-out, “anything is possible” sci-fi concepts that drive the series. This issue sees perhaps the purest concentration so far of Morrison’s imagination pouring out onto the page, each successive idea trumping the last until, yes – we actually see a believable homage to the infamous “little Supermen shooting out of his hands” power from the ‘50s that Mozza spoke of in interviews back when the series started.

There isn’t really a lot left to say about All Star Superman as a series without endlessly retreading the same ground. It’s the product of a near limitless imagination working at the peak of its powers, allied to a sense of aesthetic wonder unmatched by any other title going (indeed, the only reason I haven’t really mentioned Frank Quitely so far is that, again, I’m not sure if there’s anything new I can say about him; save to reiterate my view that he’s the most gifted artist currently working in the industry). Even by the high standards of this series, though, the current issue is an absolute masterpiece. If you’re any sort of comics fan, you simply owe it to yourself to be reading this – how often, after all, do you get to contemporaneously experience something that people will be talking about for decades to come? Because that’s what All Star Superman is – as an advert for the craft in its current form, it has no peer. It is, quite simply, magical.

Like the titular Man of Steel, All Star Superman is utterly bullet-proof. I can’t believe that any Super-Hero fan could find fault with it. Every word and pencil-line of the book exudes quality the likes of which almost nothing else is managing to replicate, and that is Fact with a capital F. Morrison is using this book to prove that he is clearly the Next Alan Moore that the industry has been looking for, but far more than that - he’s the First Grant Morrison.

Frank Quitely’s art is the most common vector for people to have a go at the book. Quitely’s idiosyncratic approach to anatomy and, in particular, faces, cause idiots the planet over to shout poorly-considered accusations of “potato-head!” and use the phrase “worse than Liefeld!” These people are not just wrong, they are actually, genuinely stupid. Quitely may be stylised, but beyond that, he’s fantastically expressive and detail-oriented. He draws the moon blowing up with as much grace and panache as he draws an embarrassed look on Clark Kent’s face. In fact, Quitely may well be one of the few artists who can truly, completely make you believe that Clark and Superman are both different people as well as being the same.

But enough gushing about the creators. This issue, Superman returns from his 2-issue excursion to Bizarro-Earth to find that 2 other Kryptonians with a dangerous belief in their own superiority have moved in and taken his place. Superman teaches them the value of humanity, and that’s more or less it, except there’s so much more to it than that. It’s been said a hundred times before, but I’m going to say it anyway: Morrison combines Silver-Age weirdness with his particular brand of futurism perfectly and effortlessly. Nothing short of a must-buy.