Superman #12 Review and *SPOILERS*

Bounty of Frankenstein

Written By: Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason
Art By: Doug Mahnke, Jaime Mendoza, Christian Alamy, Wil Quintana, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: December 7, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Now that Annual week is over, it's time to get back to our regular Superman book and see where this new arc takes us and judging from the cover, it's taking us right to Frankenstein and whenever we get that big dead dude in a book........ Well, it makes me smile.  There's just something about Frankenstein and him being a hero in DC Comics that just tickles my fancy and I hope that I'm not let down by him here.  There's really not a lot of recap going into this issue since we're starting a new arc and all you really need to know going into this is that the Smith's (Kent's) live in Hamilton County and recently Lois took over her double's job at the Daily Planet.  Let's jump into this issue and get an eye full of Frankenstein and hopefully get a "Melmoth's Beard!" out of him.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with me wondering about how I manage my time because on top of taking over her double's duties at the Daily Planet, it looks like Lois has enough time to also become a writer at the Hamilton Horn newspaper in her own town.  Shit, I barely have enough time to get these reviews done on top of working at a cardboard box factory and doing the podcast, not to mention that she rides to work on a bike and I barely have enough energy after work to the point where I start looking at empty bottles as a choice substitute to actually getting up and going to the bathroom.  That's enough about me though, back at the Hamilton Horn we see that Lois is about to get the job when her interview is interrupted by Frankenstein breaking in through the wall and grabbing Lois' new employer Candice by the throat, where he begins talking about ending her ruse.  Now, while this is great setup to get me interested in what's going down, it leads to some nonsense that bothers the hell out of me.  You see, Lois stops the attack by reaching into her backpack and putting on the Hell Batsuit glove and blowing the holy hell out of Frankenstein and while I find it ridiculous that Lois would just keep this in her backpack like other people would carry mace, the thing that bothers me the most is that the Justice League would allow her to have it at all since they all had a part in making it and originally kept it locked up in the Justice League Watchtower so that it couldn't fall into the wrong hands since it was designed to be able to take on Darkseid.  It's just a callback to the Batcave on the moon, where Lois originally found the suit, but it's just silly here and makes me wonder about the Justice League's or Batman's accountability.

Once Frankenstein is down, Lois grabs Candice and the two take off on Frankenstein's hover bike, where the monster quickly grabs on so that his prey doesn't get away, but as we all know, it's not smart or safe to go after Superman's wife in any circumstance and our Man of Steel shows up to put a hurt on our lovable monster.  This whole middle section, while unneeded for where we go in the story is pretty fun with Frankenstein and Superman going back and forth with blows and it even has Mr. Cobb getting a few licks in with a shotgun against old Frankie that was pretty cool and pretty funny.

In the end, Frankenstein doesn't have to go after Candice anymore because Lois somehow turned the hover bike around and actually crashed it into her husband, allowing Frank to grab Candice and cut her goddamn face off before Superman could actually do something about it and as our issue closes, we see that Candice has been some sort of purple skinned Czarian looking thing named Kroog this whole time.

That's it for this issue of Superman and while I had problems with Lois having the glove to the Hell Batsuit still, this was a pretty decent issue that offered more than one laugh and was full of excellent art the whole way through.  I loved how Doug Mahnke drew Frankenstein in this issue and got him to emote even without a lot of emotion being presented........ Does that make sense?  Think of Dolph Lundgren from Rocky IV and you'll get my drift.  Anyway, this is an alright issue even with the padding thrown in the middle and it left me curious as to where it's going and who this Kroog character actually is.

Bits and Pieces:

If you've been missing Frankenstein like I have, well maybe this is the issue for you.  Yeah, we don't get any explanation about why Frankenstein is working for SHADE again or why Lois is able to keep such wonderful toys in her backpack, but we do get a fun issue that offers up some laughs, some fights and some amazing art and colors all the way through.

7.8/10