Superman #24 Review and *SPOILERS*

Time To Fight Your Father

Written By: Patrick Gleason, Peter J. Tomasi

Art By: Doug Mahnke, Patrick Gleason, Jaime Mendoza, Mick Gray, Joe Prado, Wil Quintana, John Kalisz, Hi-Fi, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: June 7, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Goddamn has this been a messed up arc!  Not only are we getting into who Cobb and Kathy are, but we're seeing that Hamilton County as a whole isn't the pristine little down home paradise that we all thought it was.  In our previous issue, we saw Superman go up against Cobb as he was hurting Lois, but that didn't last long because out of nowhere, Hamilton County became infested with giant animals running a muck and it was up to Superman to stop them.......... or so we thought.  Instead, we saw the new Elite taking them down and making sure they stay down by brutal force and as Superman was trying to talk them out of using these means, Lois was caught with some shrapnel, cutting her goddamn leg off.  So yeah, Superman was out of the story after that as he desperately tried to get Lois to the hospital, but before we ended, we saw that Manchester Black was the one behind everything going on in Hamilton County and he was making Jon watch as his father failed to protect his mother with his antiquated morality.  Let's jump into this issue and see if Superman loses his shit after having his son kidnapped and his wife losing her damn leg.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us seeing who the new Elite are.......... and to my surprise, they're aliens, who were fighting against the Kroog, which we saw one of them if you remember from the Frankenstein arc of this series.  It seems that these aliens were all about peace and letting the Kroog rule over them until somehow Manchester Black showed up in space and taught them about killing injustice, before helping them escape to Earth.  Yeah, this issue is a bit hard to follow at times because of how intricate the backstory is for everything that's gone down in this series, but it seems that the spaceship that carried the Elite and Manchester Black to Earth went through a rift that never closed properly, allowing these monster animals through periodically somehow and they've set up shop in Hamilton County to watch over Superboy because Manchester Black believes that if he can shape the boy into the Elite enforcer that he wants him to be, he'll be the greatest hero who ever lived.  

We get a lot of this backstory after Manchester Black makes himself known to Superman and after whoopin' Superman's ass for a bit, we see Black uses his psychic powers to bring the inner workings of their complex to the surface, including the stasis tubes we saw all of our previous guest starts of this book residing in.  Manchester Black plans on having Jon turn to the dark side by talking shit about his father's methods of justice and by having the young boy execute the Kroog alien we saw earlier in this series.  Thankfully Cobb and Kathy (who are aliens) show up and make sure that we know that they're redeemable characters by trying to stop Black, but they're quickly dispatched by our villain, where it looks like Cobb might have died.

In the end, Manchester Black done screwed up a bit by bringing all those stasis tubes up because now Superman has backup after he revives Batman, Robin, Frankenstein and The Bride, but maybe Manchester Black was ready for this because using that black ooze that I'm not really certain of how it works, he has Superboy go bad and brainwashed and with the Elite backing him up, Superman might need to call in more backup for this father/son squabble.

That's it for this issue of Superman and while I'm enjoying this arc enough, I find that the story is getting a bit convoluted with every new answer we get to what has been going on in the background to this series.  I would have loved to know how and why Manchester Black wound up in space and ended up gathering a team, but it's just thrown out there and comes off odd because of it.  The art too at times is hard to follow on top of the complicated story, but overall, this isn't a bad issue and I can't wait to see how Superboy overcomes this dilemma and becomes stronger in the long run for it.  

Bits and Pieces:

While I'm still enjoying this arc overall, I find the answers we're getting a little too over the top, while still lacking a proper explanation about how and why things are happening in this story.  The art was decent enough, but I found myself having trouble understanding why things were happening at times, but even with that and the convoluted explanations we're getting right now, I'm still interested in this story and look forward to the next issue.

7/10