Editor’s note: This month’s Comics for Manga Lovers looks at two straight-to-DVD movies aimed squarely at the tights and capes crowd. If you’re a recovering Marvel maniac or have fond memories of the Super Friends, you’ll be interested in what our resident anime expert Carlos Alexandre has to say about Dr. Strange: Sorcerer Supreme and Superman: Doomsday.

Dr. Strange: Sorcerer Supreme

Distributed by Lionsgate Home Entertainment
95 minutes

The Marvel Animated Features, an ongoing set of direct-to-TV and DVD animated movies, have ranged in quality from “just okay” to “monstrously bad.” Ultimate Avengers and Ultimate Avengers 2 were good enough, combining decent animation and passable stories; both movies were neither perfect nor terrible. The Invincible Iron Man, however, was so horrible that I honestly wonder how it could have possibly been given the green light.

But I love superhero stories. Despite not being a comic collector, I love following and reading about superheroes, their past and present story arcs, and their rogue galleries. So despite the average-at-best showing of its three predecessors, I picked up Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme. Thankfully, it wasn’t “monstrously bad.” It settles with being “just okay” with the addition of “could’ve easily been much better.”

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Superman: Doomsday

Distributed by Warner Premiere
74 minutes

It’s been a while since Bruce Timm and fellows ended the long-ongoing and fan-adored “DC animated universe,” a cohesive timeline that started in 1992 with Batman: The Animated Series, ended an amazing fourteen years later with the series finale of Justice League Unlimited, and spanned almost a dozen separate TV series and movies.

Superman: Doomsday, along with two other direct-to-DVD animated movies Timm and co. are currently working on (Justice League: New Frontier and Teen Titans: The Judas Contract), is not a part of that canon. Which, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. But, still, why do I feel like this movie could have been so much better had it been a sequel to Justice League Unlimited (which conveniently had a loose end concerning the character Doomsday), instead of a retelling of the classic Death and Return of Superman comic arc?

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COMICS FOR MANGA LOVERS INDEX
Comics for Manga Lovers: August 2007 (The Red Star)
Comics for Manga Lovers: May 2007 (Essex County: Tales from the Farm, Korgi)
Comics for Manga Lovers: January 2007 (Mouse Guard, The Killer, Okko, Robotika)
Comics for Manga Lovers: November 2006 (Daughters of the Dragon, Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall)