Book Review: Superman: Daily Planet

Book: Superman: Daily Planet by various writers and artists

Edition: Trade Paperback

Rating: 5 stars

Review:

There is a reason why the Daily Planet is one of the most respected newspapers in the world of DC Comics and that is due to the hard working staff of the Daily Planet. For these characters, journalism is a way of life, they are focused on finding the truth and chasing down stories. And in these 16 stories (which were published from 1952-1999) they range from fun and goofy to deep and concerning.

I really enjoyed reading Superman: Daily Planet there was a good balance of stories that focused on Lois Lane, Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White and the Daily Planet staff. I loved reading these stories, especially the older ones because they were fun and sometimes a little wacky for instance in one story Supergirl in her secret identity as Linda Danvers got a job at the Daily Planet to save Jimmy Olsen. From a glimpse into the future she thought she saw Jimmy's death and she was trying to keep that from happening.

In another story, Jimmy was the Editor-in-Chief for a day and had assigned Perry all types of strenuous stories. It seemed like Jimmy was on a power trip but his reason for being so tough on Perry was explained at the end. In another story, Lois was teaching a class on how to be a good reporter and unbeknownst to her two crooks had attended her class in order to kill her. But Lois is certainly not clueless and somehow figured out what those guys were up to.

In another story, Jimmy went undercover disguised as a young woman to find out where a jewel thief had hidden the stolen jewels. Jimmy made a very convincing lady that the thief had become very smitten with him. And then there was one where Clark using his x-ray vision found a file in the Daily Planet archive room that showed that he's Superman. He really wanted to find out who knew his secret identity.

I found in many of the older stories a humorous element that you just don't find in a lot of current stories. There were also several stories where the Daily Planet was either being closed down or taken over by new ownership and the last two stories in the book (which were published in 1998 and 1999) showed the cruelty of Lex Luthor after he bought the newspaper and intermediately started firing the staff and implementing other changes.

Even though I wish there had been more than 16 stories in this book, I was surprised there were no stories from the 80s in this, I'm sure there were some that centered around the Daily Planet. Maybe whoever compiled this book didn't feel like looking for any. Anyway, this was still a good read, it had a great group of stories, some made me laugh, others were a bit dramatic while the ones near the end (the ones with Lex taking over the Daily Planet) made me mad.

If you feel like reading a few interesting stories about the staff of the Daily Planet you might want to consider giving this a read.