Superman Annual #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Let Swamp Thing Inside of You Superman!

Written By: Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason

Art By: Jorge Jimenez, Alejandro Sanchez, Saida Temofonte
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: November 30, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's so hard coming up with a way to open these reviews when the book is an annual because unless the annual ties directly into a story that we've been dealing with, it's just me wasting time and filling some space so that this part doesn't look completely empty.  This annual has nothing to do with anything that we've dealt with so far............ So yeah, I'm wasting time.  All you have to know going into this issue is that Superman and his family are living in Hamilton County, where they've taken the name Smith and have taken up farming like Ma and Pa Kent........... Hell, I guess you don't even need to know the "Smith" part, but it doesn't hurt to know and plus, I'm trying to fill up space here.  Let's jump into this annual and see what's in store for our Man of Steel since Swamp Thing is apparently coming to town.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us thinking that Clark didn't learn a goddamn thing about farming from his father because all of his lettuce crops are dried out to hell, but eventually we learn that the reason behind his lackluster vegetables is because of a drought out of nowhere that only seems to be affecting Hamilton County.  Once our hero goes and investigates the area, we see that Swamp Thing is behind this whole mess as a way to lead our hero to him........ possibly because as we find out, it may also be because Superman's sucking too much solar energy out of the sun and it's messing with the Green....... which is weird as hell too because it only seems to be since the New 52 Superman died.

While we never learn why Superman's sucking so much sun since the New 52 Superman died, we do see that this annual is trying to connect to previous issues of Superman, where we saw our hero leave a strange blue glowing hand print at the grave of his doppelganger and this is apparently because Superman is an anomaly to this world, which the world is trying to purge out.  It never really comes to mean anything....... even though Superman somehow infects Swamp Thing with the blue energy that gets him to start speaking ancient Kryptonian and attacking our hero.  It's all just a big fight scene where Superman tries to get Swamp Thing to purge the energy and when he does, the fight continues because Swamp Thing wants to fuse with Superman so that he can make the world accept him.

In the end, we find out that someone with a vibration deviation is easily fixed by simply accepting yourself as a part of the world.  No, I'm serious.  Swamp Thing devours our hero and then fuses with him, turning themselves inside out and outside in so that Swamp Thing can simply tell Superman to accept his new home and to cut the ties to his old world......... and this works.  Yeah, Lois and Jon are still from another world, but apparently they don't matter and we leave this annual with nothing really happening that makes sense and the renewed knowledge that Mr. Oz is out there and Superman has had run-ins with him during Rebirth.

That's it for our Annual of Superman and this issue just left me with my mouth agape at how little went down here.  I mean, the story wants you to think that there's a lot of shit at stake and even makes you ponder what could be going on with our Man of Steel since his predecessor died, but ultimately none of that matters because Superman believes that he's a part of the world and the world accepted him for it.  No fuss, no muss...... just a bunch of big ass fight scenes and a convoluted story that really means nothing in the end.  While I do love Jorge Jimenez' art and look forward to whenever he's on this book, somethings just didn't come off as good as they usually do, while others came off great.  It's a toss up for me really and I think that this Annual could have came off looking a lot better if the book wasn't so drab in the color department.  All in all, this is a really disappointing Annual, which its soul purpose seems to be to only remind people of what's come before and that this isn't the Superman from the New 52.

Bits and Pieces:

Nothing really goes down in this book that isn't a whole bunch of smoke and mirrors to make you think that it did.  Yeah, it says things that seem important but ultimately it's just a convoluted mess that seems to try to get out of the corner it painted itself into earlier in the series.  The art was decent enough, but I found myself just really disappointed with the story that we were given.

5.5/10