Some thoughts about Superman: Red & Blue #2

Who is the real Superman?

Around the Multiverse, there are many people who are known as Men of Steel and each one of them have their own thoughts about what such term means.

This anthology continues and thankfully there's still a lot of quality for the most part.

Steven T. Seagle opens with a story mostly focused on Martha Kent and how she sees her son. This is actually both charming and funny, particularly because of how she shows her "friends" how important her child is for her despite that he's adopted. Duncan Rouleau follows the red and blue format cemented since issue 1 with a style that reminds me a lot of Tim Sale's which is always a great thing, very expressive and depicting the story perfectly.

Chuck Brown follows with a tale about President Superman against Prometheus which is actually a pretty badass premise in an of itself and it tries to fulfill that promise but unfortunately the issue ends rather quickly and in a way that feels unsatisfying. Denys Cowan handles the art and it has its typical rough yet appealing style.

Luthor gets the spotlight by Dan Panosian which seems to combine many different versions of the character (although there's a big emphasis on the old businessmen created by John Byrne) while delivering his classic obsession and envy over the Man of Tomorrow, it works rather well overall. The pencils are pretty detailed and follow the premise clearly.

Stephanie Phillips delivers a little segment about a little girl who tells her class that Superman is her friend. Between this and Phillips' Harley Quinn, I'm starting to think I don't really like her work as a whole, the tale can be overly sappy and doesn't offer anything particularly new unless you haven't heard Superman say "anyone can be a hero" a million times before. Marley Zarcone's art represents the children in the section appropriately at least.

Fortunately, we close with a story about Cyborg Superman of all people written by Jason Howard which seems to touch on two different ideas about what Superman represents. Not a novel idea either but much better told and actually endearing in its execution. Tom Napolitano gets a pretty good execution of the format with a pretty detailed and sometimes dark style.

Overall, a solid entry. Can't wait for the next one.