Superman #3 Review and *SPOILERS*

He'll Suck You Till You're Pure

Written By: Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason
Art By: Jorge Jimenez, Alejandro Sanchez, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: July 20, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Besides for Superman telling his son in the previous issue that his mother would be proud of him even though he burned her cat alive......... which really, the act was way less disturbing then Superman saying that after the fact....... Well, besides for that, I've really been digging this Superman title and its focus on the Pre-Flashpoint Superman and his family.  It's a wonderful change from what we got in the past and I really hope that it stays this Superman family book for the duration.  Yeah, it would probably be tough to keep that up, but a boy can dream can't he?  Anyway, in our previous issue we saw some strange thing gather up the blood of Jon after his father and him were attacked by a gigantic octopus monster in the Arctic, where it then took the blood to the Fortress of Solitude and used it to assimilate a body, making the Eradicator.  Yeah, shit is really getting all Reign of Supermen on our ass with all these Superman titles, but hopefully this can bring us something we've never seen before and boy does it have the chance to start here because after Jon fell out of a tree in the previous issue and sustained a concussion, Lois and Clark took him to the Fortress to check him out with some Kryptonian technology.  Let's jump into this issue and see how Clark deals with being face to face with the Eradicator once again.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins in a hilarious way to me just because Clark and Lois come walking into the Fortress to find the Eradicator there.......... Yeah, it doesn't sound too hilarious when you just say it like that, but for some reason the idea that Superman just can't catch a break with faces from his past showing up makes me chuckle....... and I'm emotionally dead inside so please don't take my chuckle away from me.  Of course, with this Superman being so over protective of his family, things lead to super fisticuffs immediately, but they eventually cool off after the fight leads to parts of the Fortress collapsing and the Eradicator going out of his way to save both Lois and Jon.  

With his family safe from this sometimes brutal entity, Clark goes about getting Jon checked out so he can determine why his powers are so finicky.  As it turns out, with his powers just emerging, his Kryptonian and Human genomes are kind of battling one another to see where they fit as the boy grows....... so right now it looks like Jon will just have to wait and see what powers he ultimately develops and gets to keep or possibly his human side takes over his body entirely....... which apparently the Eradicator won't allow to happen.  Before that though, we get the Eradicator laying out his backstory because what's a comic book character without an origin tale?  Apparently this Eradicator was designed by General Zod to be a sort of law enforcement...... force on Krytpon, who would suck the life energy out of someone and place it in the Phantom Zone, while the perp's body would be placed into stasis while it awaited trial, but after Krypton was destroyed, The Eradicator went searching for the lone spacecraft it saw leaving the planet until it eventually found Earth and Jon's blood.  

In the end, after Eradicator's story time, his true colors finally come out when he reveals that his secret protocol is to keep the Kryptonian species alive and the first part to him achieving this goal is purging the human side of Jon.  Before our little Superboy could go and get sucked by this alien monster, Krypto jumps in the way and the dog takes one for the team, but appears to be killed/eaten by the Eradicator, leaving Superman to start asking fist questions again and Jon looking mighty steamed that another animal was harmed because of him........... The strange thing is though, this Krypto seems to be the classic one instead of the large ass white wolf looking Krypto we all learned to love when the New 52 began.  Poor big ass wolf looking Krypto getting retconned.

That's it for this issue of Superman and even though the majority of this issue is spent with Superman and Eradicator merely punching each other....... and a kind of boring origin tale for Eradicator, this was still an enjoyable issue because of the amount of emotion that was put into the pages concerning Jon and Superman's love for his family.  I know, it's silly to be happy as hell for just a couple of pages of a comic, but the parts that worked, worked really well and trumped the excessive fights that seemed to only pad the issue out.  On top of that, the art was fucking amazing in this issue and even though I love the art team that's been on this book so far, this team's style and colors work magic on these characters that really elevate the issue.  Really though, I'm looking for an explanation about Krypto because seeing this old version of him really threw me off at first, especially with Eradicator saying "We" all the time because I started thinking that Krypto was created with Jon's blood as well....... which may be the case, even if it sounds silly as hell.  Who knows.

Bits and Pieces:

While this issue of Superman really pads out the story with excessive fights, it also packs an emotional punch by the end and really makes the whole issue worthwhile.  Even though the action is a little heavy here, it's presented wonderfully though with Jorge Jimenez and Alejandro Sanchez on art and colors.  All in all we get a cool new/old villain to look forward to and father and son doing all they can to stop him....... and that sounds awesome.

7.8/10