“Translated from the Original Interlac”
by Matthew K. Manning (2013)
This is an interesting coffee-table book
published rather late during this just-ending 75th anniversary year of
the first appearance of Superman. The simplest, most straightforward
short description is that it comprises an in-DC-Universe biography of
the greatest super-hero of the 21st century compiled from
the perspective of his 31st-century comrade in the Legion of
Super-Heroes, Brainiac 5.* Generally speaking, it combines
commentary from Brainiac 5 with documentary material from the Man of
Steel's own journals, news reports, and sundry other faux
“sources” to form a more-or-less cohesive narrative stretching
from background on his lost homeworld of Krypton to the 2013 present.
It does fall short of being a comprehensive history of the
character in that virtually no account is taken of materials
published before ca. 1985 when the Crisis on Infinite Earths
remade the DC Universe and was followed by the 1986-1987 Man of
Steel mini-series reimagining the flagship character with a
stripped-down, more cohesive continuity that would prevail for
approximately the next 25 years. But over the last quarter-century,
as far as I can tell, most everything, every major event and
story-line, is reconciled into a fairly organic whole that hangs
together remarkably well. There are various contradictions intrinsic
to the ongoing nature of the comic-book medium, with its serialized, continuous narrative inevitably necessitating period
rewritings of the internal history along the way (termed “retcons”
for “retroactive continuity”**), but even these are accounted for
as far as possible via Brainiac 5's acknowledgment of the various
chronal discontinuities that have become virtually a staple of DC's
story-telling – with the most recent Flashpoint Event that
gave birth to the current “New 52” and its sometimes radically
different DC Universe that began in 2011 being frankly acknowledged
in the final few pages. Even if you have read Superman
continuously from the mid 1980s to the present (which I have not,
mainly reading a few years from the beginning as well as the last
half-dozen years or so, with scattered specific story-lines in
between), I can imagine fans of the character paging through this
large volume with immense enjoyment, reveling in the variety of art
selected from across that period, generally presented as if
photographs posted into a scrapbook, with attendant commentary and
textual pieces telling the overall story as if from a variety of
perspectives and viewpoints. I know that I have done so, since
receiving it from my wife and son for Christmas.
