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A review by otherwyrld
Smallville Season 11, Volume 2: Detective by Mico Suayan, Bryan Q. Miller, Jamal Igle, Marc Deering, ChrisCross
4.0
I was ready to dismiss this book as being a generic Superman story rather than Smallville based mostly on the cover. Inside however, I was more than a little surprised to find that it stands up pretty well in the TV series mythology. I was at a bit of a disadvantage for parts of this story as I haven't read volume 1, but I could mostly guess what was going on.
Firstly the good parts - the art was pretty good and the likenesses were close enough for them not to be disappointing, though Chloe's smile was a bit off (if you watched the series you will know that smile). The difficulties of having the "no flying, no tights" restrictions from the TV series have been swept away and you can really appreciate how this has broadened out the appeal of the story. The other good part is the appearance of Batman in this story, something that the series could never do (either because of rights issues or general cost of obtaining the rights). You don't have to be either a Smallville fan or a DC comics fan to appreciate the story either. The Batman in this story is a pretty fully realised character as well, though I don't know enough Batman lore to say if the version seen here is completely new or has been based on some existing version.
The main issue I had with the story is that it gets a little crowded at times - not only do we have Superman, Lois, Green Arrow (the Smallville Green Arrow not the current, just to confuse people), Chloe and Lex from the series, but we also have Batman and Nightwing (here played by Barbara Gordon, which is fabulous and I don't know why this hasn't been done before) but also a bunch of villains such as Mr Freeze, the Toymaker, the Prankster and probably others. It means that a lot of significant events get less time spent on them than they should have, such as Batman quickly working out who Superman is, and vice versa. The whole Green Arrow/Chloe relationship gets short shrift as well, but there is a sweet section where Nightwing and Lois Lane take out a gang by themselves.
All in all though, I would rather had too much action than not enough so on the whole I really enjoyed this. It's a pity that my local library doesn't have the rest of the series because I would certainly read them
Firstly the good parts - the art was pretty good and the likenesses were close enough for them not to be disappointing, though Chloe's smile was a bit off (if you watched the series you will know that smile). The difficulties of having the "no flying, no tights" restrictions from the TV series have been swept away and you can really appreciate how this has broadened out the appeal of the story. The other good part is the appearance of Batman in this story, something that the series could never do (either because of rights issues or general cost of obtaining the rights). You don't have to be either a Smallville fan or a DC comics fan to appreciate the story either. The Batman in this story is a pretty fully realised character as well, though I don't know enough Batman lore to say if the version seen here is completely new or has been based on some existing version.
The main issue I had with the story is that it gets a little crowded at times - not only do we have Superman, Lois, Green Arrow (the Smallville Green Arrow not the current, just to confuse people), Chloe and Lex from the series, but we also have Batman and Nightwing (here played by Barbara Gordon, which is fabulous and I don't know why this hasn't been done before) but also a bunch of villains such as Mr Freeze, the Toymaker, the Prankster and probably others. It means that a lot of significant events get less time spent on them than they should have, such as Batman quickly working out who Superman is, and vice versa. The whole Green Arrow/Chloe relationship gets short shrift as well, but there is a sweet section where Nightwing and Lois Lane take out a gang by themselves.
All in all though, I would rather had too much action than not enough so on the whole I really enjoyed this. It's a pity that my local library doesn't have the rest of the series because I would certainly read them