Superman #44 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Gene Luen Yang
Art By: John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson, Dean White, Leonardo Olea, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 30, 2015

The Truth About Superman

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Oh it's the finale to the Truth...... even though this story takes place before any of the other titles that have been dealing with this depowered Superman nonsense.  Lousy prequels throwing us all out of sorts.  Anyway, it's the finale and the reason we're here is that a despicable group known as Hordr, who blackmail people all over the world with information they've collected from........... let's just say the Cloud.  They know that Superman is Clark Kent and after witnessing that god awful solar flare power, the leader of the group...... called Hordr_Root wants to suck on Superman a little to store the energy that comes off him.  After the suck fest started though, Lois went and took matters into her own hands and released the information on the web........ so voila, the world knows Superman's secret and without the information to hold him tight until Hordr_Root got done sucking, the villain took off and Superman's life will never be the same.  Let's jump into this issue and see if everything makes sense the way it should.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

The cat is out of the bag and for some reason the intrepid reporter Clark Kent figures that going home is a great idea.  Yeah, I know that this is all new to him at this point, but he's got to realize that there's got to be some sort of backlash to the information leak.  Well, if he didn't know earlier, he sure knows now because down the block from his apartment, he's jumped by the Royal Flush Gang.  I love the Royal Flush Gang but sadly, this incarnation of the group isn't the best.  They immediately get their asses kicked by Superman and afterwards our Man of Steel takes off to the Daily Planet after he hears there's a hostage situation going on.

At the Planet, we have the same situation going on.  We've got a group of villains holding Clark's friends hostage, waiting for the hero to turn up so that they can take him down.  Which is kind of weird because even though we know that he's a bit depowered from all the robot sucking last issue, no one else knows that and for the most part in this issue, he's still the goddamn Superman.  So we've got Live Wire holding Lombard hostage, even though she should be locked up and here she's sporting a look that I'm not a fan of at all and as backup she's got Killer Croc, Killer Frost, Atomic Skull and Shockwave.  Like the Royal Flush Gang, these villains aren't a match for our hero even in his weakened state.  After the brawl, we see that the ring leader is a guy who once worked for the Planet and who's wife died when Titano attacked the city....... well, of course he blames Superman for his spouse's death now that he knows his actual name, but besides for getting a lucky shot off with his arm guns and tagging Perry White in the shoulder, this is all kinds of anti-climactic since we've already dealt with the way that people see Superman now in other titles.  

In the end, Superman is forced from his home and his friends don't want anything to do with him...... well, mainly Perry White and after Jimmy pirates a broadcast signal so Superman can tell everyone that he's all about an eye for an eye now if anyone threatens his friends in the future, he checks into a motel room and begins cutting his hair........ because that's what emotional people do...... it's gotta be true, I've seen it in movies.  As the issue closes we see that Hordr_Root has gotten himself a new body to inhabit and as he talks about his daddy issues, we see that he's about to walk through one of those mystical doors where we saw Wrath, Vandal Savage and Mr. Bend in Superman/Wonder Woman............ even though the timeline doesn't add up at all.  The Truth is, this should have ended with Superman fighting shadow monsters on his way to the Fortress.

That's it for this issue of Superman and as much as I didn't really care for the majority of the Truth because of how all over the place it was, this has got to be the weakest story to come out of the four title crossover........ especially for a finale because all we got was a bunch of villains getting over zealous as hell about learning Superman's secret identity........ you know, since he's still Superman and a bonafide ass kicker.  Don't get me wrong though, I dig seeing Superman take on super villains, but there just wasn't much to this story since we've already seen the aftermath.  The only bit of real revelation is that Hordr_Root is going to be a part of the super baddie team up that we saw in Superman/Wonder Woman........ but that's about it.  Another disappointment is the fact that John Romita's art wasn't as good as it was in the previous issue.  He seemed to be making great strides in his work with Superman, but with this issue it comes off as if he's never drawn these characters before in his life and a great deal of the artwork made everyone look like mongoloids because of how disproportionate their heads and eyes were.  There just wasn't much going on in this issue and it's just sad.

Bits and Pieces:

We can finally put a pin in this Truth thing now that we've gone through all the iterations of Superman's life depowered and his identity revealed, but since this is a prequel to the rest of the stories, there isn't too much to be gleamed from this issue.  It's just what we expected from reading every other title and with very disappointing art I can't see why anyone should get this issue.

4/10