Rebirth Recommendations - Secondary Superman (Patreon)
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Hey everyone!
I'm still waiting on October solicitations, but I've been keeping up with my Rebirth "re-read" and thought I'd recommend two books that I actually read for the first time these last couple weeks. Regardless of how you feel about Bendis' run on Superman, I think pretty much anyone can enjoy these.
Lois Lane is a solid Greg Rucka mystery/crime/espionage book taking place before, during, and after Event Leviathan. Mike Perkins' art creates the perfect ambiance for a well crafted mystery story which reminded me a lot of Rucka's earlier books (Gotham Central, Stumptown, Checkmate, and Queen & Country).
Jimmy Olsen is quite the opposite, with Matt Fraction very much leaning into an Archie style comedy/relationship/mystery/conspiracy/road story. I wasn't sure how much I was going to like this, and was worried it would feel like a lengthy (12-issue) diversion from the rest of the reading order. Even though it didn't connect into much of anything going on in the normal DC books, this was such a fun aside. Don't expect serious Superman and Lois Lane in this one, or a direct tie-in to the Rebirth Superman books, instead you get the equivalent of a Saturday morning 15-minute cartoon series that bounces around in time and space while managing to develop and establish both the Olsen and Luthor families in a way I've never seen before.
Have any of you read these? What were your opinions of the series? Did you also enjoy them or find them to be unnecessary sub-plots?
P.S. I'm still adjusting placement on some of the books in the latter portion of Rebirth. Bendis' stuff seems to want to follow it's own timeline, so I've been moving around almost all of the Wonder Comics imprint books to fit around Year of the Villain and Action Comics/Superman. That being said, there are still some annoying little details in some books that make it impossible to create a perfect order, unless you literally jump between series issue by issue, which I'm not a fan of. Anywho, aside from someone wearing the wrong costume in a cell here or there, or Punchline showing up in the background of a page in Hell Arisen before her introduction in Batman, I think the order is pretty accurate.