Blue Water Comics is known for doing biographical comics on celebrities. They decided to do one on George Reeves, TV’s Superman of the 1950s. That guy had an interesting life to say the least. How’s the comic hold up?
It doesn’t hold up at all. This comic is not good. There are several spelling errors, at least six that I can remember off the top of my head. This book reads like it wasn’t looked at by a single editor. I mean, just a cursory read by someone else should have been able to catch these errors.
The art features heavily photoshopped photos that look terrible. Several people look dead or diseased due to this overly done style. It’s just got filter after filter on it, or something to that effect. It’s not fun to look at and it took me out of reading immersion on several occasions.
The story goes on weird tangents that are unnecessary. I found one of them worth mentioning in the story for the idea of how Reeves and his role as Superman inspired someone to help others, but then it’s handled in a strange manner. The book wants to tell you about George Reeves, but has this filler as if Reeves’s life wasn’t fascinating enough. There were things in his life that were not mentioned, and ignored, which are really interesting to hear about.
These complaints are an isolated incident from Blue Water products. I’ve seen from promotional images in their biographical comics that they have many errors and strange writing choices. Some of them can be “so bad they are good,” but for the most part they just come off unprofessional. I don’t recommend this comic. If you want to learn about George Reeves, reading his Wikipedia page is more interesting. There’s plenty of other media that talks about his life and does it better. [Editor’s Note: I recommend Hollywoodland (2006), starring Ben Affleck as George Reeves, which explores the events leading up to and surrounding Reeves’s death.]
Dr. Alexander Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net
