Superman: Speeding Bullets

Rating:
Summary: Superman As Batman and Vise Versa
Review: There is a hard-to-find Elseworlds issue out there. This one is called Speeding Bullets and is told by Superman's closest associates. The main idea is that they are convinced that he is the man he is because of where his ship landed, his parents, the influence of Lois Lane and other factors. Only this combination could result in superman. Right?

Kal-El's craft crashed and spotted by a childless couple who returned to their house and treated the boy as their own son. These people are Dr. and Martha Wayne. Kal-El manages to burn the mugger who kills his parents, but not before he discovers he is bullet proof. He represses the memories and eventually becomes a heartless vigilante known as Batman.

Bruce Wayne comes out of hiding and enters the newspaper business by hiring the best; out of work Perry White, Lois Lane and others. The first big story is Lex Luthor's move to Gotham.

Lex Luthor gets to play the part of three separate villains all rolled into one but I won't tell you who or how the heartless Batman becomes Superman, but it was a very entertaining story.

Rating:
Summary: Superman As Batman and Vise Versa
Review: There is a hard-to-find Elseworlds issue out there. This one is called Speeding Bullets and is told by Superman's closest associates. The main idea is that they are convinced that he is the man he is because of where his ship landed, his parents, the influence of Lois Lane and other factors. Only this combination could result in superman. Right?

Kal-El's craft crashed and spotted by a childless couple who returned to their house and treated the boy as their own son. These people are Dr. and Martha Wayne. Kal-El manages to burn the mugger who kills his parents, but not before he discovers he is bullet proof. He represses the memories and eventually becomes a heartless vigilante known as Batman.

Bruce Wayne comes out of hiding and enters the newspaper business by hiring the best; out of work Perry White, Lois Lane and others. The first big story is Lex Luthor's move to Gotham.

Lex Luthor gets to play the part of three separate villains all rolled into one but I won't tell you who or how the heartless Batman becomes Superman, but it was a very entertaining story.

Rating:
Summary: Readable
Review: This is not a Superman story, that's for sure. The dark settings of Gotham City, the storyline, the background, all point to a Batman flick.

Nevertheless, the plot is interesting, to say the least. The idea of Lois Lane narrating the story is a good one, and well exploited. However, the attempt to merge the personalities of Lex Luthor and the Joker falls flat on its face....it is just a no-go, considering how different the two personalities are in any case.

The book is sporadically good, but has the potential to be much better. It fails to tackle the problems Bruce Wayne (aka Superman, in this case) would have experienced as a child, in terms of his superpowers.

I wouldn't recommend anyone to go out and buy this comic book, but it is definitely worth one read. And it does set the mind thinking about 'what-if' things had been as portrayed by this book.

Rating:
Summary: Readable
Review: This is not a Superman story, that's for sure. The dark settings of Gotham City, the storyline, the background, all point to a Batman flick.

Nevertheless, the plot is interesting, to say the least. The idea of Lois Lane narrating the story is a good one, and well exploited. However, the attempt to merge the personalities of Lex Luthor and the Joker falls flat on its face....it is just a no-go, considering how different the two personalities are in any case.

The book is sporadically good, but has the potential to be much better. It fails to tackle the problems Bruce Wayne (aka Superman, in this case) would have experienced as a child, in terms of his superpowers.

I wouldn't recommend anyone to go out and buy this comic book, but it is definitely worth one read. And it does set the mind thinking about 'what-if' things had been as portrayed by this book.

Rating:
Summary: The Dark Knight of Steel
Review: Warning: This review includes spoilers to the material reviewed. If you hope to read this some day, be careful how you read my review.

I first came across SUPERMAN: SPEEDING BULLETS in a newsagent not long after seeing the third BATMAN movie and developing a serious Batman addiction. It looked fantastic. I didn't get it. This proved to be a mistake - I never saw it again.

Until about four days ago, in a small Adelaide collectors store - when, prompted by years of vague, half-memories and a sense that it would have been a great purchase, I snapped it up for about AUS$10.00. Am I glad I did? You bet. It's by no means perfect, but it's an excellent work, and proof that the memory doesn't always cheat. It's easily one of my best purchases.

The Elseworlds plot is intriguing; what if the baby Kal-El had landed outside Gotham, and had been raised not by the Kents, but by the Waynes? And suppose that baby, traumatized by witnessing the murder of his parents and then frying the murderer with his heat vision, grew into a bitter, obsessive Bruce Wayne, who decides to bring terror to those who bring terror to others as the Batman? And suppose, in his quest for justice, he locks horns not only Lex Luthor (who is hiding a dark, terrible secret of his own in this work), but his true-love, Lois Lane (the narrator of this story)?

For the most part, despite the cramped length, the writers have an immense amount of fun contrasting the two heroes who represent polar opposites of the D.C range within the same person. The superpowered Batman seems far darker, more obsessive and a demonstration of the kind of damage someone really obsessed with dishing out justice to evildoers can do withsuper-strength and heat-vision. Seeing this is pretty damn fantastic - I've always thought that Batman was cooler than Superman, and seeing a superpowered Batman is just awesome. In an interesting comparison, his alter-ego Bruce Wayne is strangely warmer and slightly klutzier than his proper continuity counter-part - shades of Clark Kent coming into play, perhaps? The Bruce Wayne / Lois Lane relationship is also interesting and slightly touching, with the possibility for more depth than the actual D.C comics allow, showing Lois Lane not only as the Man of Steel's heart, but also, in this universe, the comfort to his tortured soul.

It's not perfect -the attempt to meld Lex Luthor and the Joker into one character is somewhat awkward (couldn't Luthor have just hired the Joker to deal with Wayne, thus including both?). And the ending is something of a cop-out - especially for those, like me, who think Batman's cooler than Superman any day of the week. And really, it could have done with being extended into a mini-series - there's so much potential for growth here that, really, one slim comic book would never cut it. A mini-series, however, would have rivalled SUPERMAN: RED SON as being a classic work.

But if you do happen to come across a copy of this, don't make the mistake my younger self made and pass up on it. Get it. You won't regret it.