Review of
Just
Imagine Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe Omnibus,
ISBN 9781401238858
Five out of five stars
There is no
greater living legend in the world of comics than Stan (the man) Lee. His
collaboration with Jack Kirby and others at Marvel Comics gave us many of the
greatest comic book characters ever created, Lee is arguably the greatest
living creative force in entertainment. Over the last several decades, there
have been two large entities in the comic book world, Marvel and DC, each with
its own collection of major characters.
The premise of
this book is to have Stan Lee recreate many of the most popular DC characters,
using his powerful imagination. Lee performs a reboot on Batman, Robin, Green
Lantern, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Superman, Catwoman, Flash, Sandman and Shazam.
These are not simply restatements of the well known stories of the origins of
these characters, in many ways the only similarities are in their names. For
example, Shazam is now a large red creature with fangs and wings, Aquaman is
formed from water and Batman is a professional wrestler.
Along with the
physical differences there are major changes in their personalities. Superman’s
powers are toned down, but his attitude has been dramatically increased. A JLA
is formed when the world is in peril, but the members find it almost impossible
to stop bickering long enough to face the threat. In the comic book world of
print and screen, the origin stories have been repeated many times with few
differences.
Not so in this
case, it is clear that Lee and his collaborators were given free reign by the
executives at DC to go wherever their minds took them. This is very refreshing,
another retelling of the destruction of Krypton and the lonely flight of Kal-El
to Earth would have been boring and unworthy of such a great endeavor.
This is a great
comic book opus, it is new, refreshing and incredibly original. I strongly
recommend it to all fans of the comics.
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