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THIS WEEK: The Man of Steel stars in an oversized adventure in Superman Treasury 2025: Hero For All.
Note: the review below contains spoilers. If you want a quick, spoiler-free buy/pass recommendation on the comics in question, check out the bottom of the article for our final verdict.
Superman Treasury 2025: Hero For All
Writer: Dan Jurgens
Artist: Bruno Redondo
Ink Assists: Caio Filipe
Resurrection Sequence Penciller: Dan Jurgens
Resurrection Sequence Inker: Brett Breeding
Colorist: Adriano Lucas
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
Cover Artist: Bruno Redondo
This week marks arguably the apex of the Summer of Superman, with the release of the James Gunn-directed Superman film, the big-screen kickoff to a new cinematic DC Universe, starring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult. You can read our review of that very film here. DC’s gotten into the ‘go big or go home’ act themselves to mark the occasion with Superman Treasury 2025: Hero For All, a new oversized one-shot from writer Dan Jurgens and Eisner-winning artist Bruno Redondo. The one-shot, which finds the Earth under threat of an alien invasion, is a large-scale adventure that doesn’t lose sight of the characters at its center.
Jurgens is no stranger to the Man of Steel, having worked on the character off and on for the past thirty years, and he brings the confidence of that experience with him to this outing. It’s a tale set in the recent past, with Clark and Lois’s son, Jon, still a pre-teen, which is where most of Jurgens’s recent Superman work has been set, and there are elements here that tie this story both to the writer’s recent work and to his classic Superman stories of the early ‘90s. The main villain of the story, for example, is one who, as far as I can tell, hasn’t been in a comic in over twenty years, but whose identity longtime Superman fans can probably suss out even before the big reveal. Another character who pops up later in the issue has ties to young Jon and his Jurgens-written adventures over the past few years. Jurgens is taking the opportunity to play with a lot of the toys he’s added to the Superman toybox over the past decades.
With an oversized book like this, though, the visuals are the real star of the show, and Bruno Redondo and colorist Adriano Lucas deliver. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that, with the publisher review PDF system being what it is, I did not have the opportunity to review a treasury-sized version of this comic. But even on the screen of my tablet, Redondo and Lucas’s work is spectacular. Redondo’s page composition is superb, his storytelling top-notch as always. Lucas’s colors enhance Redondo’s linework wonderfully, adding depth and vibrance to main action that’s set in the middle of the day in Metropolis, and using a muted palette for a fantasy sequence that’s anything but a fantasy. There are images and sequences from Redondo and Lucas in this book that will absolutely crush in treasury format, and I can’t wait to see how they look at that scale.
With a cover price of $14.99 and a huge in-store footprint for retailers to contend with, a treasury-sized book like Superman Treasury 2025: Hero For All is anything but an easy sell. Putting Redondo and Lucas on art chores for this book is a huge selling point, and they put forth incredible work as usual when given the chance. Jurgens, on the other hand, feels like the safest of safe bets, and that shows in the story. How many alien invasions can Earth face before it becomes old hat? The personal connection between Superman and the issue’s villain adds some depth to the invasion, but their interaction is limited. In fact, Superman spends most of the issue completely off the board, trapped in a bleak, Black Mercy-esque simulation of what his life could have been like had he not developed super powers. The big moment when that simulation ends and Superman breaks free is immediately interrupted by an extended ‘resurrection’ sequence of Superman’s life story (primarily the bits told originally by Jurgens) by Jurgens and longtime collaborator Brett Breeding that doesn’t fit at all visually with the rest of the issue. It’s hard not to wish that that sequence had been cut in favor of allowing Redondo and Lucas to go wild on a story that was all Superman, all the time.
I wish I could say that Superman Treasury 2025: Hero For All is an easy buy. There’s nothing groundbreaking in the story, and Redondo and Lucas’s work, while fantastic, doesn’t get the opportunity to shine that it could have had with a more interesting, inventive story. Still, the moments that land visually do so spectacularly, which may be enough for some readers. To my mind, though, $14.99 is a lot to spend on a book with a story that’s Just Okay. It’s a missed opportunity to (pardon the pun) go All In for Superman’s Big Week, and that’s the most disappointing thing of all.
Final Verdict: Browse.
Round-Up
- Let’s keep the Superman Week theme going by focusing this week’s Round-Up on all the new Superman-related titles DC has out. Absolute Superman #9 continues Jason Aaron and Rafa Sandoval’s reinvention of the last son of Krypton with a story that’s sure to have huge implications for the overall DC All In storyline. Lois comes face to face with Ra’s al Ghul, and Superman comes face to face with just what The Omega Men have been doing and the lengths to which they’ll go to do it. Pretty solid middle chapter of a storyline.
- Action Comics #1088 is the second part of Mark Waid and Skyler Patridge’s modernization of young Clark Kent’s origin as Superboy. Waid incorporates elements from past Superboy/man origins nicely, from where the boy of steel got his name to Waid’s own Birthright explanation for why the Clark Kent glasses disguise works. The threat Superboy faces in this issue is ultimately one that can’t be punched, an important lesson for the young superhero to learn. This is probably Waid’s strongest book for DC right now, and Patridge’s artwork is beautiful.
- Sophie Cambell’s Supergirl #3 continues Kara’s ongoing identity theft struggles with Kandorian Lesla-Lar. This book has been a delight from the start, perfectly blending Silver Age sensibilities with modern storytelling. The introduction of a new iteration of Satan Girl was unexpectedly wild, and Lena Luthor’s role in the story and her tie to the identity theme of the series was really strong.
- It may not strictly be a Super-title, but Joanne Starer and Stephen Byrne’s Fire & Ice: When Hell Freezes Over is set in Smallville, and this week’s #4 features the Man of Steel pretty prominently. The body swap confusion continues in this issue as lessons are learned, super-powered telepathic gorillas are fought, and Bea and Tora face separate challenges in Hell. This book is just fun.
Miss any of our earlier reviews? Check out our full archive!
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