REVIEW: Superman: The Wedding Album 30th Anniversary Special #1
Superman: The Wedding Album 30th Anniversary Special #1 is a great one-shot anthology that follows a connected theme – much like the “Triangle Era” when the wedding took place. There’s four chapters highlighting creative teams of the past and present making for a fun new adventure all while walking down nostalgia lane.
The standard cover is by legends Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, and Laura Martin. This wraparound piece does a great job commemorating the monumental event by having Superman and Lois flying off toward us on the front and the Justice League on the back waving them off. It’s an image that hasn’t been done often and it’s nice to get a larger scope on this version.
Terry and Rachel Dodson’s variant gives away the main antagonist for this anniversary special. Mr. Mxyptlyk is up to some hijinks galore and it’s all centered around Lois & Clark’s anniversary. The dialogue exchange also nods heavily to the cover of Mxy’s first appearance after ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’ on ‘Superman’ #11, which just adds to more reverence to this one-shot.
The variant by Stanley “Artgerm” Lau is so gorgeous it also gets the foil treatment. It’s easy to see why Artgerm is such a fan favorite when it comes to cover art. His realistic approach really brings these characters off the page.
Joshua Middleton also gives us a nearly photo-realistic variant. This time it’s what could easily be an album photo of Lois on her wedding day. It truly is an impressive piece that doesn’t look like art at first glance.
Set up in chapters, each section showcases their own creative team. Cian Tormey and Colorist Romulo Fajardo Jr. kick things off giving us a visual familiarity to the current looks of Superman comics. The story then gets passed off to Jon Bogdanove, Tom Grummett & Denis Rodier, and finishes with Dan Jurgens & Jerry Ordway to take us down 90’s memory lane. The majority of the book is colored by John Kalisz which ties it all together nicely. These art teams haven’t lost their touch as the story flows seemlessly from chapter to chapter with only the art to let us know the teams changed. It’s truly great to see these legends apply their talents to Superman once more.
Keeping to theme, the four writers all collaborated in creating the story so instead get Script credits instead of the usual Writer credit. Rainbow Rowell, Louise Simonson, Karl Kesel, and Dan Jurgens all get lettered by Dave Sharpe to entertain us with a Mxy story worthy of their talents. Lois and Clark’s wedding anniversary is fastly approaching and Jon gets the great idea to throw them a surprise party. Little does he know he’s going to get a bit of 5th Dimensional help from the Master of Mayhem, Mr. Mxyptlyk himself. From that premise alone the story is worth reading, but this all star team throws in all kinds of goodies from their time on these characters which make it a must for fans of their era. ‘Superman The Wedding Album 30th Anniversary Special’ #1 is a well structured, self contained story that easily fits into the current events of Superman storytelling with a feel good ending.
(10/10) I found myself smiling, chuckling, and just feeling good throughout the entirety of Superman: The Wedding Album 30th Anniversary Special #1. That’s not to say it’s campy or overly comedic, but it is the right amount of lightheartedness that makes reading it just plain fun.
