See, I knew this’d get good as soon as Clark got to Metropolis. It’s not rocket science – the early days of Superman’s public career, along with Clark getting to know Lois Lane and the Daily Planet and the rest of it, make for one of comicdom’s classic tales. If you’ve got the textbook elements in place, they’re so fundamentally good that it’s hard to do wrong. And they’re even harder to do wrong when you’re slavishly copying them from Superman: The Movie.

Because if you thought Johns’ obsession with replicating that film began and ended with the post-Infinite Crisis redesign of Jor-El, or that it was only in the way Gary Frank draws Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder into their roles that the current Superman comics would be reminiscent of Richard Donner’s masterpiece, then think again. Pretty much the only thing missing from the scene in which Clark rescues Lois after a fall from a skyscraper (and yes, he catches a helicopter as well), for example, is the fact that Johns doesn’t use the “You’ve got me? Who’s got you?” line. Note for note, though, it’s clear that of all previous versions of this tale, the movie is by far the biggest influence.

And yet… I really don’t mind that. I probably would mind if I didn’t like the film, but… it’s pretty much my favourite telling of one of my favourite stories. So to see it translated to the comic page, with a few contemporary tweaks and wider DC continuity bits and bobs brought in? I kind of like that. I kind of like it a lot. No, the problem I have with Johns doing this story now, and the way he’s done it, comes from the way in which it relates to the previous issue of this miniseries. In that it’s completely undermined by it. I already expressed my reservations when reviewing issue #2, so I don’t want to harp on about it too much, but I honestly feel that this story is hugely compromised by the reintroduction of Superboy into the mythos. Not only does it need to rely on being Superman’s first public appearance in order to have the same effect, but Johns specifically throws in a couple of moments that suggest it to be so (Clark remarking on how the costume will look, and his father talking about “letting the proverbial cat out of the bag”). But if he’d spent the previous decade flying around Smallville as Superboy… well, wouldn’t someone have noticed?

Still, if you want to pretend that #2 doesn’t exist, then this is cracking. Even when it’s nicking elements off Birthright, it gets away with it; indeed, as much as I love Birthright, this does certain moments better – the full-page splash of Clark catching Lois in the air is wonderfully iconic (although it’s also worth noting that as right as Gary Frank gets that moment, the “opening shirt in the alley to reveal the S” page is disappointingly lacking in a sense of motion and urgency). It hence comes off as a pretty solid distillation of various generations’ interpretations of the story – there are hints of Man of Steel in the mix, too, while Johns gives his own nod to present, post-marriage continuity by throwing the curve ball of Lois actually warming to Clark (as Clark, not Superman) fairly early on. I do rather wish it was being done by a writer with a bit more flair and wit than Johns – his dialogue rarely strays beyond functional, and there’s barely anything you’d call a successful joke here – but it’s hard to deny that as far as story beats go, this pretty much hits every mark. If it continues in this vein, Secret Origin might yet turn out to be the quintessential retelling we’ve been hoping for.

As far as opinions of Geoff Johns go, you can count me among those who don’t exactly hate the guy, but do feel that he’s a little overexposed in relation to the level of his talent. The prospect of “another Geoff Johns book” is hardly massively appealing, therefore, and that’s why it’s a surprise that Adventure Comics is so good. It sits in that corner of the DCU that quietly tells stories of slightly unfashionable characters, examining what heroism actually means – indeed, despite being by an A-list writer, and featuring a member of the Super-family, it’s closer to the likes of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold than the same writer’s Green Lantern or Winick’s Batman and so on.

And yet the thing is, Conner Kent – this version, at least – isn’t really the most exhilarating of lead characters, barely straying out of the realm of “good-natured but slightly simple lunk”. What makes his stories – and this book – work, however, are those around him – with the possible exception of the even more terminally-dull Wonder Girl, he’s got a decent supporting cast. This issue, for example, centres around reintroducing Tim Drake to his life, and is instantly more readable than any issue of Red Robin so far – even managing to go so far as to shed a slightly withering gaze on the darkness of that book, saying “It’s a bit silly, isn’t it?” (although it’s mildly ironic for Johns to accuse anyone else of making their books too dark, of course) And then you’ve got a scene with Krypto, who’s been getting a lot of page time recently, about which it’s really hard to complain when he’s this amusing. And there’s Lex Luthor as a weird sort of background antagonist, lurking in his own subplot without yet actually encountering the main story.

Plus, of course, Johns has been carefully setting up a Smallville-based support cast for Conner to call his own – which is why it’s a shame that the creative team are upping sticks and moving to Flash so abruptly. It felt like some decent groundwork was being laid here for a good-quality, supporting-character-led “teen” superhero book (in the mould of… well, Blue Beetle again, to be honest), and it’s been among the most likeable and engaging stuff that Johns has turned in for a while. Plenty of folk are excited about Paul Levitz making the series his return to writing duties, but I do wonder how much – if any – of this setup he’s going to keep, and while it barely had a chance to establish itself, it’d be a shame to see the work go to waste.

As it’ll also be a shame to lose Francis Manapul – although on this evidence his art might be enough to get me to follow him to Flash. It’s a little soft at times for what is essentially still a superhero book, but it’s lovely work – helped by a stunning and subtle colouring job. It all makes for a genuinely enjoyable read – with the aforementioned Krypto scene, filled with animal character in that non-anthropomorphic way that precious few artists manage to get, a particular highlight. Even if it feels at times like it’s consciously reaching to do so, it’s just nice to read a superhero comic that makes you go “Awww” a bit from time to time. It may be unclear what the future holds for Adventure Comics, but this was shaping up to be something very promising.

So, here we go again. Superman needs another origin re-telling – in comics alone, that’s the third in the last quarter of a century, three times as many as Batman and Spider-Man have had in the same timeframe. Anyone would think that – All Star aside – DC didn’t know quite what to do with their flagship property, wouldn’t they?

Alright, so this doesn’t feel like a wholly pointless enterprise. While 2o-odd years may not be the usual natural lifespan of a canonical origin story, it’s not unfair to state that Man of Steel was very rooted in a particular time, and has outdated elements that could do with a tweaking. Birthright, meanwhile, was thrust rather unwillingly into the role – it was originally intended, and should have remained, as an “Ultimate”-style retelling, more akin to a movie reboot. This was something it did wonderfully, but reconciling it with “proper” DC continuity was fraught with problems.

So I can see the need to do a nice, big, ground-sweeping retelling – sort out a few of the rejigged post-Infinite Crisis elements that have been hinted at, play all the classic story beats in a fresh way, and just generally re-establish the Man of Steel in people’s minds. The problem is, if you’re going to do that, you really need to bring something new to the table – and as competently put together a comic as Secret Origin is, all it’s got in its pocket are old family heirlooms.

That it should so heavily mine the past should, of course, come as no surprise when you consider that it’s a Geoff Johns book – but I would have at least expected a few more original ideas than we come across here (the only one I can really make out is the idea that Clark wears specially-madeglasses as a kid to block his initially-uncontrollable heat vision – and even then, while it may be new to the Superman mythos, it’s not exactly unfamiliar to anyone who’s ever picked up an X-Men comic). Essentially, this is a cherry-picking of assorted elements – at various times you can see ideas from Birthright, Man of Steel, Smallville, the Donner movies, and even the Silver Age in there – lobbed together to give a version of Superman’s history that, rather than being instantly iconic, is simply “the version that Geoff Johns wants”.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the decision to rejig Clark’s adolescence yet again, and revert back to the status quo of his having been Superboy before being Superman. To which my only reaction is “nnnnnNNNNGGGG”, frankly. Superboy has always been the most problematic aspect of the “classic” Superman mythos – it diminishes the power of the icon, and of the character’s development as a man, to have had him running around as a famous superhero in an identical costume throughout his teens. John Byrne did quite a few things right in 1986, but none moreso than ditching that nonsense entirely. But Johns is a fan of the classic-style Legion of Super-Heroes, and Johns wants to tell classic-style Legion stories with a Clark Kent Superboy as a member – so this is what we’re lumbered with. And it leads to the frankly baffling sight of Jonathan and Martha suddenly deciding to send their teenage son out to be a superhero, complete with costume, with barely a thought as to the reasoning behind doing so.

Furthermore, it doesn’t do a hugely convincing job of being the first issue of an origin. Simply put, opening with Clark in high school makes it feel like we’ve missed a chapter. This isn’t Spider-Man, where the discovery of the powers is the defining moment – the Krypton story should always be the opening act of any telling of this story. It’s not good enough simply to introduce Jor-El for the first time as a hologram, and tell the tragic tale of the doomed scientist as a flashback. Alright, we all know how it goes – but we know how all of this goes (does anyone seriously think Clark’s going to move to Gotham in a couple of issues’ time?), it doesn’t mean it can’t be retold in an entertaining way.

There are good points, mind (and it must be said that even the weaker aspects of the story Johns chooses to tell don’t affect the quality of the telling – this isn’t a bad comic by any objective criteria). Reasserting Lana’s role in Clark’s history post-Smallville works, and there are nice moments here and there – particularly in setting his real and adoptive parents side-by-side in quite a touching way. And of course, Gary Frank’s art is excellent (although, much as I’m looking forward to seeing him draw the adult Clark as Christopher Reeve, essentially superimposing the late actor’s features onto a teenage boy just comes out looking wrong).

But it’s slow, dwelling for too long on aspects of the character’s life that simply aren’t as interesting as everything that we know is due to come later. As such, it comes off less as a defining, page-one origin story – and more as a wistful flashback through the character’s childhood. And when you’re following in the footsteps of two truly great versions of this tale (three, if you add Donner’s movie to Byrne and Waid’s comics), that just won’t cut it. I’ll continue to give this a chance (there remains the potential for things to get much more exciting – and, crucially, iconic – when we get to Metropolis), but for something I was so excited about seeing, it’s something of a letdown.

Bit of a surprise, this. A relaunch of a long-dead anthology title, being essentially used as the new lead book for a character (Superboy) with a bizarre and chequered recent history (essentially, killed off because of a copyright dispute, and abruptly resurrected when said dispute was apparently resolved), written by the hit-and-miss Geoff Johns, and with a numbering system that seems specifically designed to infuriate (it’s numbered as both #1 and #504 on the cover, apparently so as to suck up the sales and attention both from being a new #1 AND from being a continuation of an old series).

And yet it’s not bad at all. Conner Kent’s always been something of a “nothing” character – at least, since he ditched the amusingly bad “teen speak” and sunglasses look and became someone with very few distinguishing characteristics – but Johns, as he did in his Teen Titans run, chooses to focus on the one angle that makes him in any way interesting: the fact that he is, essentially, a cross between Superman and Lex Luthor. It means that we get a fairly reflective story that sees Conner comparing his own life with the young life of Clark, before a closing-page twist that throws everything prior to it into a new perspective. There’s foundations laid for the introduction of a new, Smallville-based supporting cast – and I have to say, the idea of having Superboy stories set there, with an entirely original set of support characters (rather than simply having his life revolve around the Titans) is an idea I can get behind. Although I do wish he’d get round to changing that costume – or, you know, actually having one.

It’s actually the details of Clark’s earlier life, though, that make for the biggest problem with the story – we’re told, almost without warning, that it’s now “official” continuity once more that Clark was once Superboy, and joined the Legion of Super-Heroes as a teenager. Now, I know that this is Johns laying groundwork for what will be fully explained in the upcoming Superman : Secret Origin – but I don’t like having retcons foisted upon me until said origin has actually been told properly. I, and many other comics readers, have grown up with the notion that Superman’s identity only comes about in adult life (with his powers manifesting as a teenager), and some three years on from the establishment of “New Earth”, such major changes can’t be snuck in under the radar simply because Johns feels like it – they have to be set up properly.

Still, though, this is a nice little story, aided by some lovely artwork from Francis Manapul. Meanwhile, the Legion backup, while appropriate given the title of the comic, feels a little superfluous – first, we get a two-page introduction to the current version of the team (and it’s hard not to roll one’s eyes and say “Yeah, okay, whatever” when confronted with a two page spread of yet another set of slightly redesigned and tweaked Legionnaires), before a brief and largely confusing encounter with the Thom Kallor version of Starman. The bowling alley scene is actually pretty amusing (“Touchdown!”) but I can’t help but feel that, essentially, I’m being made to laugh at something (schizophrenia) that I shouldn’t be – and that’s why this interpretation of the character has always felt slightly off to me. But DC’s current slate of backup strips are being used in such a way that while the strong ones (Metal Men, Blue Beetle) can have as much value as the lead features, they can get away with feeling inessential if the lead is strong. And Adventure Comics doesn’t set the world on fire, but it’s pleasant enough, and promises to have a sense of gentle fun at odds with much of the current DCU output. So, we’ll see.

And so DC’s Next Big Event Crossover Thing begins, having morphed in the couple of years since it was first teased from being a Green Lantern story into being a general DC Universe story. So even though, in a rather nice scene in the early pages, the focus is on both Hal Jordan and the core GL Corps cast, events quickly expand to take in a variety of DCU characters – with a large hint that, once again, Bruce Wayne’s fate is going to be pretty integral to proceedings. And this despite the fact that… well, look, I’d never accuse Geoff Johns of not knowing his DC stuff (in fact, as we trawl through yet another set of flashback panels, it’s clear that he thoroughly enjoys playing the game of “Look at me! I know the entire history of the DCU! Let’s have a look at some of it!”), but given that there was more than a hint of ambiguity over whether the charred corpse carried forth by Superman at the end of Final Crisis and subsequently buried at Wayne Manor was actually Bruce Wayne (what with that whole “being transported back in time” deely), then making said corpse an immediate plot macguffin seems a risky strategy to say the least.

Incidentally, it’s not as if first-issue repetitive scenes with various characters handwringing about things that have happened in the last year or so is the only Johns trope employed here – the defining characteristic of the book, as with just about every other Johns-related event, and the “Prelude” issue that I capsule-reviewed last week, is that it’s quite deliberately unpleasant while still trying to remain within the boundaries of what you can get away with in a mainstream superhero book. Alright, so it’s not Ultimatum, but still – this is essentially a superhero zombie story, so ickiness abounds almost from the word go. The body count (or, at least, the “characters being killed so they can immediately come back as Black Lanterns” count) is kicked off in earnest, although I question the wisdom of deciding to kill two particular characters as the first marker of intent when they’ve already suffered such high-profile recent confusion over whether they died in the last big event.

Still, the issue builds a decent sense of ominous foreboding – the wider sequence of the Black Lantern rings streaming across the universe seeking out their new owners is played in nicely cinematic fashion, weaving in and out of smaller-scale scenes of impending darkness like the attack of rogue Guardian Scar, or the appearance of none other than Black Lantern J’onn J’onnz. I think I’ve said before that I generally approve of building a story around the very idea of “comic book death”, so there’s also a strong resonance in one of the better ideas Johns employs here, of DC’s world having a specific day on which people remember fallen superheroes (and rogues). On the flipside, mind, I question whether having a supervillain morgue in JLA headquarters is really an idea that anyone can swallow the entire League as having been morally okay with (if anything, it simply feels like a massive bit of plot telegraphing for when they inevitably pop out and attack en masse).

Visually it’s all as competent as you’d expect, Reis is always solid and reliable rather than particularly spectacular. There’s some memorable imagery, particularly the double-page spread of former Green Lanterns rising as one, but I just wonder how long he can sustain the grislier tone – he’s clearly far more at home drawing the living heroes than the dead ones – and whether Doug Mahnke, who turned in some genuinely unsettling work in the Black Hand Prelude, might have been a better choice to carry this. Still, it’s a decent start – I’m not sure yet if it’s going to be anything like the epoch-making event that the really quite ludicrously long build-up would suggest, nor indeed if it’s worthy of finally putting a story to Alan Moore’s vague decades-old notions of an “end of it all” event for the Corps; but for the moment, it’s at least refreshing to see a big company-wide event that’s honest about its obsession with needless death.

Blimey, this has been a long and drawn-out resurrection, hasn’t it? It was prior to Final Crisis that Barry “Flash II” Allen officially returned from the dead, subsequently showing up briefly in the pages of Morrison’s event mini – but having very little actual impact on the story or even much in the way of page time – and now, finally, Geoff Johns gets to sit down and tell the tale of the icon of DC’s Silver Age making his return to modern-day comics, reuniting with Ethan Van Sciver for a thematic sequel to their Green Lantern : Rebirth (oh, and a note to DC – if a title like that becomes a franchise? You’re DOING IT TOO OFTEN).

If I’m honest, I’m still struggling to see what the point of it all is. I have no small measure of affection for some of the classic Barry stories, and his death remains one of the greatest in comics history. But he’s very much of his time, a fact that Johns even alludes to (intentionally or otherwise) when discussing his particularly simplistic moral stance. He’s iconically representative of a certain era – that was kind of the symbolic point of killing him off in the original Crisis – so how do you make him relevant to this one when he hasn’t even been around to experience the world changing in twenty years?

Still, such concerns are probably for the longer view, and needn’t necessarily be reflected in what this is like as a comic and an introductory issue. And it’s… well, it’s as you’d expect from a Geoff Johns tentpole book. It’s entirely, thoroughly and inextricably rooted in “DCness”, and hugely reliant on prior knowledge of the identities of just about everyone that shows up. Make no mistake – if you’re wondering what the Flash is all about and you’re looking to start following his adventures, this ain’t the place for you. There isn’t even an explanation for why Bart is suddenly (a) alive and (b) a teenager again for those of us who haven’t read Final Crisis : Legion of 3 Worlds (I had to Wiki it just to find out that that was where it had happened).

And yet despite its impenetrability for the casual reader, from a technical point of view, it’s a pretty well-made comic. Despite approaching things from a different starting point to Hal Jordan’s return – Barry’s already alive when the book opens, for one thing – there are parallels in the way the layers of mystery are stacked up, with the hero’s apparently joyous return possibly not all that it seems, and there’s an intriguing twist to that effect in the closing pages. And if there’s one thing Johns is good at, it’s hopping around a universe he knows like the back of his hand and instantly slipping comfortably into assorted characters’ voices and setups – the page or so spent with the Titans instantly feels more like the “proper” versions of the characters than Judd Winick could manage in three or four lifetimes. That said, from a character point of view, he struggles to really make us care about the straight-laced and somewhat boring Barry – let’s hope that can be rectified, as the character’s past deserves it.

Visually it’s excellent, of course – when van Sciver does one of these big events, he usually brings his top form to the table, and this is an appropriately pacey and powerful-looking book, with strong use of vibrant colour. He gets Barry’s out-of-costume look spot on and instantly recognisable, and there’s a terrific panel of Wally reprimanding his kids that suggests he knows how to nail the sense of speed a Flash book requires.

The reader unfriendliness hampers the book somewhat, though, and there are elements even within its own framework that are frustratingly unexplained (just what’s going on with Barry – not the Flash, but Barry – suddenly having reappeared in everyone’s lives? What’s the “explanation”?) But it’s a solid, well-put-together slice of “event” comics, and even if it doesn’t answer the question of just what Barry’s eventual role will in the DCU be (given that Wally West, Jay Garrick and now Bart Allen are all still active), it does enough to suggest that he could have one.