Smallville: Season Eleven Volume One
Collecting Smallville: Season Eleven web comics
Writers and artists: Varied
DC Entertainment, $14.99, color
I watched Smallville for 10 seasons, and enjoyed it. I do not enjoy the webcomics continuation, part of which which is collected here.
This book gives us Tess and Lex Luthor, who are extensions of the show (where both died), but are somehow back. It also gives us a lot of DCU characters, most of which follow Silver Age patterns, with mild variations. And it puts Clark in the Super-suit, which the TV show went out of its way to avoid.
Which might have some interesting parts to comics fans like me, but doesn't, really.
The concept of the TV show, as I saw it, was showing us a world where the natural progression of Clark Kent's life would NOT necessarily lead to putting on a union suit and creating the concept of "superhero." I mean, why would he? So week after week we watched the progression to where the suit would somehow become necessary. That was pretty good TV, but also had a natural end point: When Clark decided he needed to be a symbol, and not just a helpful "blur."
So this book, which collects webcomics that continue after the show has already told the story, is kinda superfluous. In this book, Clark Kent has become the comic-book Superman, flying around in a union suit, righting wrongs and fighting for truth, justice and the American way. Meanwhile. the characters he met on the TV show have become the familiar Justice League characters we all know, complete with circus outfits. (Even Batman, who couldn't appear on the TV show due to contractual problems. So Smallville substituted Green Arrow for Batman as the scary urban crimefighter who is Superman's best superhero pal, which means the online Smallville has two characters who serve identical story purposes.)
So this series is giving us the Superman we already have. Plus, the art is boring.
I thought as I was reading this (and watching TV at the same time) if the online Smallville is just another New 52 version of the DCU, why should I bother to keep reading it?
And, so far, the answer that keeps coming back is: "I shouldn't."
Replies
I came to that same conclusion two or three issues in. I watched Smallville all ten seasons, but I have yet to re-watch any of it. At some point in the future, I have a vague notion of watching it again on DVD. At some point beyond that, I may read Season 11 in trade. Neither of those things will happen any time soon, though.
...Do these have any of the material that appeared in the standard-format Season 11 comic books ?????????
Are these stories " standard length 20/22-pagers or the 8/10 page length that seems to be becoming exclusive for " Web- exclusive " (Cough !!!!!!!!!) projects ?????????
I assume this is the same material in three different packages, Emerkeith.