New Super-Man #10 Review and **SPOILERS**

Chinese Hell Ain’t Swell

Writer: Gene Luen Yang 

Pencils: Viktor Bogdanovic 

Inks: Viktor Bogdanovic and Jonathan Glapion 

Colors: Mike Spicer 

Letters: Dave Sharpe 

Cover: Bogdanovic and Spicer 

Cover Price: $3.99 

On Sale Date: April 12, 2017

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

There’s been a lot of Internet commotion over Marvel lately—no, not that internet commotion, surrounding the interior artwork of a certain X-Men comic book magazine. No, I mean the other, less recent Internet commotion from when Axel Alonso told an audience at WonderCon that comics retailers were making them kill off all lesbian characters, or something like that. To be honest, I only read headlines. The gist of it was that Marvel was going to pull back on its aggressive diversity in comics campaign due to sluggish sales. Now, I don’t read a lot of the big Marvel books, so I can’t speak to their quality (though I suppose I am therefore culpable in their low sales numbers), but I do read New Super-Man, which would seem to fit neatly into any definition of diversity on comic books. And I love it. But the sales do suck. So maybe there’s something to this unpleasant claim about diversity diminishing sales, but it seems to me that if you keep catering to the entrenched fan base, then you’re only forestalling the end of the industry. Or maybe not! All I know is that New Super-Man is great, and you can read my gushing all about the latest issue, right here!

 

Explain It!

We pick up exactly from where we left off last issue: Superman hovers in a hole he busted through the wall of Lex Luthor’s super secret lab and regards the scene before him: the China White Triad including speedster Avery Ho, Kong Kenan, I-Ching, and Lex in his Superman armor. All looking as guilty as hell. I imagine from Superman’s perspective, it’s like busting in on your kid’s sleepover to catch everyone horsing around. Everyone has their own reaction to his intrustion, however: Kenan is very enthusiastic, while Lex is predictably salty. The China White Triad have the stupidest reaction: to attack Superman!

He messes them up pretty good, but Strato the Cloud-Man gets the best of Kenan by throwing a lightning cloud at him. He decides he can’t be of any help to Superman unless he throws open the gates of Chinese hell and absorb the essence of that scary skeleton Superman that briefly gave him full powers last issue! So he throws the giant doors wide, but this time like hundreds of weird-looking demon monsters come pouring through! Which is bad enough to make I-Ching sigh. The demons even start getting the better of Superman, being that magic is one of his weaknesses. After Lex is snatched up by the Chinese devils and brought back to their evil domain, I-Ching valorously runs after him, and then the door is shut! It would be easy enough to crack the doors back open, except the China White Triad made off with the doorknobs. Oops!

That’s when Kenan realizes that it’s time to stop bullshittin’, and get his Qi in order. While Avery and Superman try to fight the China White Triad and like a bajillion demons, Kenan centers himself and concentrates on the body parts necessary to charge up his super powers. And it’s just a cool piece of sequential art, folks, juxtaposed with Lex and I-Ching in Chinese hell watching skeleton Superman blow away like so much dust. Skeleton Superman, you see, was really a manifestation of Kenan’s desire to rush his training or some such thing? I dunno. Point is, this scene looks really cool and it’s a great way to show some character growth. After that, everything ends well…but you know what? I’m not going to tell you how. Because it’s awesome. And if you’re using this review as a replacement for the actual text, you should stop because New Super-Man is a goddamned blessing in this festering colon of a world.

So I loved this issue. Big surprise. Everything was awesome as hell. I didn’t even mention the scene where the Bat-Man and Wonder-Woman of China find out Kenan’s dad is still alive, in some giant jar with tubes in him. Because that’s just a little scene that can happen in New Super-Man, and it’s not even a big deal. Oh, they’re reanimating dead superheroes now? We can get back to that later, I’m more interested in the horde of Kabuki-mask demons that are making off with Lex Luthor and I-Ching. Just read this book, for crying out loud, it’s an absolute delight!

Bits and Pieces:

Kenan Kong gets his groove back and it is incredible. If you are buying this comic, you are a good and smart human being. If you're not, then I don't know what your problem is. Get your act together. Your life sucks and it's not getting any better by avoiding this comic book.

9/10