Superman For All Seasons with Logan Crowley
We’re back with another episode of Trade School! This time, we’re talking about Superman For All Seasons! Our host this week is Logan Crowley!
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Edited by Case Aiken
Scored by Bret Eagleston
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⏱️ YouTube Chapters
00:00 – Introduction & Why This Book Matters
01:17 – Why Superman For All Seasons Is Logan's Favorite Superman Story
03:46 – Smallville, Clark Kent, and Rural America
05:34 – The Book's Outstanding Lex Luthor
06:23 – Pa Kent and the Influence of Uncle Bill
08:59 – Sharing the Book with Amy
10:17 – Naming Their Son Clark
10:53 – Final Thoughts & Recommendation
11:19 – Single Bound Podcast Promo
Transcription
00:00
Welcome to Certain Point of View's Trade School, where each episode a different host talks about a comic book trade paperback that they loved and why they love it. Hello class. I'm Logan Crowley from the Single Bound podcast available on Spotify, and I'll be your guest instructor this evening. So this is my second episode. The last one that I did was the Golden Age by James Robinson. And when Case had first put the challenge out of this trade school podcast, I initially planned for most of what I did to be more like the Golden Age, where I was picking an obscure story that I didn't feel that meant a lot to me, but I didn't feel like had the attention that it deserved.
00:52
I did not anticipate my second episode being one that is as well known as this, but I just went through an event in my life where this book that was already very important to me has become even more important. And I'll talk about that at the end. But not to bury the lead anymore. Today I'm talking about Superman for All Seasons by Jeph Loeb and the late great Tim Sale. Just an absolutely. I'm sure if you're a Superman fan at all, you have heard of this and you probably already love it. But on the off chance that you're not, I think this is probably the best piece of Superman fiction ever put together. Movies, TV shows, whatever. To me, what has always made Superman my favorite character is his rural roots, is the Smallville side of things.
01:52
Because I grew up in Murray County, Georgia, a little town called Chatsworth that is very much the Smallville type experience. Simple people with big hearts. Not always the openness of minds, but always the openest of arms. And I think that this book captures that so beautifully while also, in my opinion, improving the John Byrne man of Steel origin, which. Which I like. I know that John Byrne is a problematic figure. I do not like him, but I do like the man of Steel miniseries still. This though, it fills in all the holes that series does have and gives you a so much more well rounded character than what Byrne was working with in that. In that brief story. I It's tough to figure out what to say about this book.
02:49
I don't want to spoil it, but at the same time, can you spoil a Superman origin story? If I told you every bit of it, I don't think it would diminish the reading experience because the biggest thing that this book has that other comics don't have is the vibrance of the art and thematic weight that comes with this Setting so perfectly realized. The bombacity of Superman perfectly integrated with the small town America that birthed him. The way the colors just roar across the page. It's such an emotional story. I don't know if I told you what happened in it. I don't think it would sum up what makes it beautiful. I don't think you'd understand, as you would if you experienced this more quiet, contemplative Clark Kent and the world and the people around him that shaped him.
03:46
And you really see in this more than any other story, how Superman is a response to his environment. I think you see that there is no. There is no way that the same person comes out the way that Superman is in any other setting. The people around him talk like him. You know, there's some really good, subtle accent work which is hard to pull off in a written medium without it getting hokey, but they. Jeph Loeb does a really good way of reining in the sort of syntax of how people speak so that when you're in Smallville, pretty much everyone talks like Clark. And then when you're in Metropolis, suddenly only he speaks the way he does. Only he is dropping words and sort of speaking in these very simple, very blunt kind of ways of getting his point across.
04:45
And then, you know, juxtapose that with the faster, sleeker way that the people speak in the city. When you have Lois Lane and Lex Luthor and the others around him, and then they go back to Smallville and they speak with the same syntax that he does. There are words dropped that aren't necessarily important to the sentence. Some. Some of them just speak in sentence fragments. Seems counterintuitive, especially for a guy who's as good at writing as Clark Kent. But when you visit rural America, you realize that is a very common way of speaking. It's very blunt. It's inherently subconsciously honest, I think. And I. I yearn to see Clark Kent speak this way in more fiction. I. I think that it is a way to incorporate his culture subtly into every panel without necessarily beating you over the head with it.
05:34
I think also this is best Lex Luthor stories ever. There is such a. Such a casual cruelty to Luther and a real dig into how and why this corporate Lex makes the decisions that he does and how his environment shaped him, but not in a way that's. That's cackling or over the top. It, it, like everything else in the book, it is very subtle and subdued and I, I think. I think the best word, actually I can Say, for the way that Lex is cruel is. It's very casual. It's not out of the ordinary for him. Even though it's shocking. Clark, Lex just lives every day like this. This is how he approaches every enemy and every challenge. And then, and then the best part of this, of the. Of the whole comic, of course, in the first issue, is Pa Kent.
06:23
Pa Kent has never been better written. Pa Kent has never been more true to the kind of man that Pa Kent is supposed to be. Stoic, but well spoken. Simple but eloquent. Assault of the Earth guy. And it's one of two reasons why this story affects me so much. I am. I work in land surveying and I got started in that industry because my. My Uncle Bill is actually my great uncle. He was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, but he couldn't afford to quit working and he was a land surveyor and he needed help. So he asked me to come work for him for one summer and I worked with him for a year. And he was every bit paw Kent. He was honest, he was forthright. He was as hard working as you could be.
07:14
He had a temper for injustice, but infinite patience when things deserved them, right? In the more sensitive and the more quiet moments, he had a real big heart. And he could wait and he could teach you. Never, never uttered a sound unless he absolutely had to. But when he spoke, always seemed to know the exact right words to pick. And like a lot of people remembering a past loved one, you know, yeah, maybe I am. Maybe I am cleaning it up a little bit, but then maybe I am leaving out the. The warts or the. Or the darker moments in between the lost tempers and the tensions. But that is what nostalgia does, that is what storytelling does, is I've boiled the story down to what's most important, which is that I love him and I miss him. And he was honest and hardworking.
08:10
And this story feels that way for Superman. It feels in a lot of ways, like this is what Superman remembers from this time with his father, with his family. And it doesn't hurt that my Uncle Bill was the spitting image of. Of Pa Kent in this story. It's important to remember also from the next story that I say that my Uncle Bill's middle name was Clark, which I have always thought is very fitting and does play into where I'm going next. The most important reason that this story is so near and dear to me and why I. And so glad that case allowed me the opportunity to talk about it on trade school is the role that this book played in the formation of my little family. I probably read it the first time. I think I was 18.
08:59
I got it from McKay's used books in Chattanooga. And I really did love it then immediately. But I wouldn't say then it was my favorite Superman story for a myriad of reasons. It would grow to be a couple years later. I'm 20 years old. I just started dating my. The girl who would become my wife, Amy, my co host on Single Bound. And she could tell right from the jump what a big. I mean, you can tell what a big comic book fan I am from Orbit. You look at my house, you look at the clothes I wear, you look at the things that I decide to talk about. My parents named me after Wolverine.
09:35
So it was clear to her immediately that if she was going to be with me, the comic books were going to then be a big part of her life, too. So she asked me to give her a comic just the first couple weeks of dating. That showed her why I loved comic books. And I thought about it and I thought about the things that I knew she liked. And I picked Superman for All Seasons. I knew it had to be a Superman book, but that book, I felt like would touch her where she lived. And I was right. She absolutely loved it. She became an avid comic reader, as you will see on our podcast, Reading Monthly Comics, having a working knowledge of these characters comparable to anyone you meet in a comic shop.
10:17
And over a decade later, last weekend, she and I had our first son, and his name is Clark. And. And he's perfect. And I. And I don't know that I'd have him in some ways, certainly not in the way that I do. And I don't know that his mother would have picked that name if I had not chosen Superman for All Seasons in the second week of us dating. So I hope that you will pick up this book and that you will read it on a quiet weekend when you need something that. That truly touches you. And I hope, and I hope that it does truly have the emotional impact on your life that it has had on mine.
10:53
And I just want to take a second in case they ever hear this, to thank Jeff Loeb and everyone else who worked on it and to thank the late, great Tim Sale for that gift and how that gift has led to others that I. That I was blessed to have. And I think that's about all I can say on it. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Case, again, for giving me this opportunity. And happy reading.
11:19
We love digging into epic comic book runs, but what about the art of the single issue? Single Bound is a new podcast series hosted by married couple Amy and Logan as they review single issues of comics. And if the title also makes you think of Superman, you're not alone as the man of Steel is Logan's favorite character and a regular topic of discussion on Single Bound. Listen and subscribe on Spotify and YouTube, and follow the show on Instagram @singleboundpodcast certainpov.com.