Joe Casey Joe Kelly's Adventures of Superman #611: Lost Hearts

Lost Hearts: "Lost" / "Heartbroken" / "Giving In" / "Heart Song"

The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #611 (Feb. 2003)
DC Comics Presents: Superman vol. 2 #2 (Jan. 2011), reprinting Action Comics vol. 1 #798, Superman vol. 2 #189, Superman: The Man of Steel #133 (Feb. 2003) 

Writers: Geoff Johns and Joe Kelly
Pencils: Pascual Ferry, Dwayne Turner, and Tom Derenick
Inks: Keith Champagne, Pascual Ferry, Kevin Conrad, Norm Rapmund, Walden Wong, Bob Petrecca, Sandu Florea, and Cam Smith 
Colors: Tanya and Rich Horie, Guy Major, and Moose Baumann
Letterer: Richard Starkings
Associate Editor: Tom Palmer Jr.
Editor: Eddie Berganza 

#611 is the third and final fill-in during Joe Casey's run on Adventures of Superman. Unlike #591 and 607, where my philosophy was that I would read them if I could get them at no extra cost and skip them if I could not, I intended to get #611 from the beginning. It's the second installment of the Lost Hearts crossover, but in this four-part story, Joe Kelly (regular writer of Action Comics) takes over Adventures. But I was intrigued by what I knew of its more personal focus, by its evocative covers, by the fact someone had bothered to reprint it (in DC Comics Presents: Superman vol. 2), and by the fact that it introduced Traci Thirteen, a character I came to love during the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle run.

from Superman: The Man of Steel #133
(script by Geoff Johns, art by Tom Derenick and
Norm Rapmund, Walden Wong, Bob Petrecca, & Sandu Florea)

Lana Lang, Clark Kent's childhood sweetheart and the vice president's wife, runs away to Hell's Heart, the worst neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and Clark goes after her. There, amid the growing cold of late year, he discovers rampant drug addiction, homelessness, sexual exploitation, and (of course) strange alien parasites. Clark finds his values tested; this is a place and a situation where he can't be Superman... but is Clark strong enough?

It has its moments, but something about it didn't quite click. Maybe it's that I'm always kind of wary of Superman comics getting too close to "real social issues"; maybe it's that the emotional throughline for Clark felt a bit muddled. Maybe it's that I'm not convinced of the need for a subplot about an exploitative photo shoot of Lana. It feels like the story kind of meanders to a conclusion more than it has an actual plot.

from The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #611
(script by Joe Kelly, art by Dwayne Turner & Kevin Conrad)

But I enjoyed a lot of it. Traci Thirteen is a fun character, you can see why she came back, even if she's not quite the same character as later. (She seems older and more detached than she was in Blue Beetle. I don't remember her having an iguana familiar in any other stories, and I don't think her dad can possibly be Doctor 13, as Architecture & Mortality would establish.) Some of the stuff about Superman coming to help Hell's Heart is, well, heart-warming, and fits in well with what Casey has been doing in Adventures.

from Action Comics vol. 1 #798
(script by Joe Kelly, art by Pascual Ferry and
Keith Champagne & Cam Smith)

It's nice to have a Superman titles crossover that's about, well, Superman-- not about big fights and Events.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE