Superman Smashes the Klan

I'm surprised that I forgot to mark this. I recall struggling with what I wanted to say about it and guess I just didn't add it at all. I really like Yang and love that he built on the original story from the late 40's. I also appreciate that in his complex portrayal of the klansman's son. I also recall the Chinese mother being well constructed.

This was an extremely well done story from beginning to end. The story of being an “alien” in two ways was incredible. I think Yang's bluntness with some of the subject matter was absolutely necessary even for an all ages book. Reading this as an adult, I feel like a lot of the implications felt heavy handed but I think that's totally necessary for younger readers and it gets the point across starkly. Great pick for IRCB's March Book of the Month!

Damn this was good! It's not surprising because Gene Luen Yang is just the best. (Side note: he did a program at MICE in Boston with Ryan North a few years ago and it was so great and so funny and he just seems like the nicest guy!)

I wasn't expecting to cry or for the story to be both so exciting and so meaningful. I don't really know anything about Superman other than just the general cultural knowledge and random movie viewings. Yang does such a good job of presenting an origin story that's more than the trope of an origin story with compassion and humor. His afterward should be the model of an afterward for a story like this: comprehensive, readable, contextual, and personal.

Finally, the absolute least important part of this book, but the part that made me laugh the most is the random background kid obsessed with the idea of Superman smelling like “cotton candy clouds.” LOL.

I picked this up randomly when I saw the title (I was intrigued) and the author (I recognized Yang's name). The graphic novel managed to have many character arcs that were interesting and it touched on themes that I think are important for teens to see/explore. And of course you get the Superman related fun you'd expect from a comic. At the end there are 10 pages of non-fiction outlining the history of Superman and the KKK - I just didn't know. I'd recommend this book for anyone teen to adult.

Very fun. I don't read a lot of modern superhero comics but this was recommended by a friend. My friends who like Superman say there are some really solid stories to read about him, that do him correctly, since he's kind of a hard character to make interesting. This book focuses a lot on the kids who's family is being harassed by the klan, and a nephew of the local klan leader's (though this uncle is clearly a father figure) who's conflicted about the situation.

Per the back of the book, this story originally was done as a radio show in 1946. So any comments crying this is “woke” are nonsensical, because apparently he's always been this way. The back of the book has a brief history on how and why Superman would be a POC ally (tl;dr: he's an alien and his creators are Jewish. Duh).

I really like that the villain, before you know for sure what his role in the story is, starts off with some really sound advice for his nephew - before completely going overboard and revealing to him that he's the grand scorpion for the klan. That and the fact that his nephew struggles internally so much with trying to rationalize what his family does and says, because it's bad stuff; but he's only ever seen them as good, loving people before this. People can have good shades to them while still doing or endorsing terrible things.

Superman also starts off not having all his powers, because he wasn't originally designed with all of his modern powers, which I liked. I hear DC does a lot of “let's do the origin story again!” so I don't know if this angle is common for his stories, but I'd sort of forgotten that he used to be described as “leaping a building in a single bound” and now he flies.