Superman #23 Review and *SPOILERS*

Monsterville, USA

Written By: Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason

Art By: Doug Mahnke, Jaime Mendoza, Keith Champagne, Wil Quintana, Hi-Fi, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: May 17, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

This Black Dawn arc has been one hell of a roller coaster ride so far and has taken everything we've known about Hamilton County and flipped it on its ear........ That's a saying right?  Anyway, as we've previously seen, the townsfolk of Hamilton County aren't what they appear and it all seems to do with Jon Kent and his powers.  Yeah, we still don't know what was up with Bessie's milk and how that was connected to Jon's powers, but we do know that Cobb and Kathy Branden are somehow behind it and have systematically taken out anyone who might interfere with what they're doing.  That led us to seeing Superman finding a complex underneath the scary mansion in Dead Man's Swamp, where we saw Batman, Robin and a whole slew of other people being kept in stasis tubes, while Lois discovered that their friends aren't who they appeared to be.  Let's jump into this issue and see what Tomasi and Gleason have in store for us now.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us seeing Cobb confronting Lois and Superman investigating the stasis tubes back and forth until their stories merge when Lois screams after Cobb starts telekinetically crushing her hand through the Hell Bat gauntlet.  This scream brings Superman flying up from the underground complex and putting a hurt on Cobb until he tells our hero where his son is.  Too bad, that the town erupts in a hotbed of gigantic monsters out of nowhere, forcing the Man of Steel to tie Cobb up and knocking him out so that he can go see what all the hubbub is about.  

Once in town, Superman witnesses the gigantic animal monsters being taken out and killed by a group of weird looking individuals, who apparently are the people of Hamilton County that we've seen the most of and who went after Lois in the previous issue.  Now though, they're really alien looking and are all about saving the town and themselves by throwing some fatal force the monsters' direction, which doesn't quite jive with Superman.  It's during this scuffle that we find out that these individuals call themselves "The Super Elite" and whenever I hear the name "Elite", it's usually followed by Manchester Black making an appearance and he doesn't disappoint this time either.  Only problem is, he seems to be completely different than the version we saw in the Teen Titans back in the New 52........... still putting an Elite team together, but looks completely different.

In the end, we find out that Manchester Black has Jon Kent and is forcing the boy to watch all the destruction in Hamilton County because he wants the boy to witness his father fail when he doesn't take the measures that he needs to to take these monsters down........ essentially kill and to my surprise, Manchester Black gets his little moment of failure, when one of the monsters causes Lois' leg to get cut off at the thigh and Superman has to rush her to a hospital.  So yeah, Lois is an amputee now and I have no idea what to expect from this series anymore.

That's it for this issue of Superman and while I love getting more information about what's going down in Hamilton County, it seems that this issue just went up and turned the crazy all the way up for this one because out of nowhere we have giant animal monsters attacking the town and while we've seen this before in Dead Man's Swamp, this is something that you'd think the Man of Steel might have been able to hear or maybe have come across in the past.  I've liked the progression of the story up until now, but having these monsters show up and the prominent members of Hamilton County completely change into the Super Elite just comes off a bit rushed here and while I normally love Doug Mahnke's art, that too seemed a bit rushed to me.  I'm still intrigued with this story, I just hope that the payoff is decent enough to make this issue come across a little bit better in the long run........ Plus, it weirds me the hell out that Lois might be an amputee now.  

Bits and Pieces:

While this issue certainly throws a lot at us and has some fucked up moments, I can't help but feel that it comes off a bit rushed for what we were getting previously.  I mean, things have just sped up considerably now and even parts of the art feel rushed too.  I'm still enjoying the story overall, but this issue just came off as the weakest installment of the arc so far, even with those fucked up moments. 

7/10