Superman #21 Review and *SPOILERS*

Well........ That Just Happened

Written By: Patrick Gleason, Peter J. Tomasi

Art By: Patrick Gleason, Mick Gray, Joe Prado, Ray McCarthy, John Kalisz, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: April 19, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

I'll tell ya, the last issue of Superman really got me back into this book.  Where I thought that Action Comics was the title that was telling all the important stories, it turns out that what I really needed was a little down home living with the Kents because even though this series has been plagued with little two to three part stories that didn't seem to matter and were only there to get us to the Reborn arc, from what we saw in the previous issue, it seems to all be coming to a head.  Not only did we get Batman and Robin making an appearance, but we also got to talk about Jon's powers....... or the lack of them at this state in his growth and had Batman discover that things maybe a little shady over at Cobb's Dairy.  When I say shady, I mean that the milk that Jon's been drinking is something funky as hell that turned black and wrapped around Batman, subduing him.  Let's jump into this issue and see what's up with the milk and if we can gleam anymore information about what's going on with the Branden Family.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Damian and the Kents realizing that Batman never came back to the farm the night before and with that the search begins for whatever happened to the Dark Knight.......... but before all that, we have to have our regular dose of Cobb Branden seeming like a creep, where he shows up to deliver the milk and meets Damian and if knowing about his prize winning cow Bessie's milk being the funky stuff that it is wasn't enough, we also see things getting weirder when he sees Krypto when he's walking back to his truck and seemingly possesses the dog with the idea that it needs to watch Jon.  

So yeah, after our creep fest with Cobb, we get Superman, Superboy and Robin searching for Batman, but they're coming up short and thanks to a mysterious Mr. Oz wanna-be, who's been pulling the strings with everything surrounding Superboy since the beginning of this series, their search gets delayed when they have to deal with the giant octopus that they fought all the way back in issue #2.  It's a pretty cool scene, where you get to see how the people of Hamilton County seem to love Superboy, but after a woman gets hurt and Jon uses his heat vision on the octopus to stop it, you also see a bit of disappointment in Superman.......... which only continues when Damian brings up Jon's little misadventure in Dead Man's Swamp and the fact that Cobb Branden never told him about it.  

In the end, Superman goes off to search for Batman in Dead Man's Swamp alone and our Boy of Steel is grounded and really just frustrated with Damian for always getting him in trouble.  The two tussle a bit until Damian is stopped by Kathy Branden, who out of nowhere uses some damn psychic powers to levitate him in the air and when Jon freaks out by this and accidentally uses his heat vision again, Kathy tells him to be more careful or they'll take that power from him too....... which she then does.  As our issue closes, Kathy becomes creepy as hell by talking about our mystery man trying to keep him safe and Superman walking into that scary house deep in Dead Man's Swamp.

That's it for this issue of Superman and goddamn was it crazy!  I mean, it totally took a left turn from where I thought we were going with finding out what was up with Bessie's milk and straight up took me on a journey that I didn't know I wanted to go on, tying this whole series together in the process.  We've got a hell of a reveal here and a hell of a mystery with that, that was made all the much better by the excellent art in this issue.  My biggest problem with this is the fight with the octopus, that made ink men out of nowhere........ that seemed to go nowhere, but ultimately, it got us to a new development, where Superman seemed a bit disappointed in his son, which is something totally new to us.  All in all, this is an enjoyable issue that makes me really pissed that I have to wait two weeks to find out what happened because goddamn do I need to know now.

Bits and Pieces:

Goddamn, did this series just go and tie everything together with what we got here.  I mean, we got some crazy reveals, some crazy mysteries and some oh so good art all the way through.  Yeah, I had an issue with the fight scene we got, but overall this was an awesome issue that gets me crazy because we have to wait to find out what happens next.  Go and get some Superman because it's now becoming my go to Superman book again. 

9/10