Superman #25 Review and *SPOILERS*

Fell On Black Days

Written By: Patrick Gleason, Peter J. Tomasi

Art By: Doug Mahnke, Patrick Gleason, Jaime Mendoza, Mick Gray, Joe Prado, Ray McCarthy, Scott Hanna, Matt Santorelli, Wil Quintana, John Kalisz, Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: June 21, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

We've come to the end of our Black Dawn arc and with it....... possibly the end of Hamilton County?  I haven't looked ahead to see what the future of this series will bring, but I know that Action Comics is moving the Kent family to Metropolis so it stands to reason that this series isn't far behind in doing so.  In our previous issue, we saw Manchester Black take full control of Superboy with some black ooze nonsense that we saw coming out of the cow Bessie previously and at this point........ that's all I really want to know about...... What is this black ooze?  Hopefully we find out here in the final battle as Superboy leads the Super Elite against Superman, Batman, Robin, Frankenstein and his Bride.  Let's jump into this issue and check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Superboy just wailing on his father as the rest of the two teams duke it out and Manchester Black just watches on and talks shit along the way.  Eventually though, Batman sees something change in Jon when Superman was pleading to him to stop because of how much his mother and him love and he urges our Man of Steel to keep it up while Robin and him continue to take on the Super Elite.  This leads Superman to fly off........ and to my surprise, Superboy flying off to go chasing after his father.  It's sad as hell too because Superman really wanted Jon's first flight to be something special between them and not a life and death struggle.  

Jon continues to beat on his father, but the fight comes to an end when Lois shows up on the scene with two sexy legs and we find out that Manchester Black has been manipulating what everyone's been seeing all along and with this revelation, Superboy is able to break free of the black ooze that had been taking him over and begins putting a beating where it belongs.  Kathy eventually joins the fight, but she's not able to do much with her power, until she realizes that Superboy and Black are still connected so she takes Superboy's hand and the two focus on Black, zapping his psychic consciousness out of his body, rendering him pretty much a vegetable.............. and we still don't get any answers to what that black ooze was.

In the end, the Super Elite realize that they were wrong and ask Superman to let them stay and rebuild Hamilton County in their human disguises and even with his trust broken by everything they've done to his family, Superman agrees and we leave this issue with Hamilton County being the same as it ever was, but with Kathy taking over Cobb's farm and her dedicating herself to leading the rest of the aliens and making sure that their ship doesn't cause anymore disastrous breaches like we saw previously.  It's at the end of the book though where we start getting the feels again for this town and our Superman family when Jon flies off with Kathy as the two seem to be connected by destiny and Clark and Lois embrace each other now that the nightmare is over.  We have a great epilogue here too, where some no good teenagers are led out to Kathy's farm by dreams of Manchester Black and it's there that they try to give a cow a cigarette............ That's right, Manchester Black's consciousness is in a cow, but his power isn't up to snuff because before the kids could light his cigarette, the whammy they were under is broken and they decide to just tip the cow and get the hell out of there.  No mention of black ooze though.

That's it for this issue of Superman and while a lot of the comic is simply fighting until Jon is just able to break free of Manchester Black's control and rid himself of the black ooze that became a part of him........... which is never explained.  I have to say that ending was at least enjoyable and gave us the love and hope that we originally felt in this series and was a nice bookend to our days in Hamilton County.  Yeah, we'll apparently never learn about that black ooze, but it doesn't bother me too much because I like that we're back on track with the feeling of the series and the fact that Lois has both her legs intact.  The art in this issue was great and I love what both Doug Mahnke and Patrick Gleason bring to the party and look forward to what we'll be given next.  

Bits and Pieces:

Our Black Dawn story ties up with this extra-sized issue and I'm glad we got the extra page count here because the ending is what really kept my score up on this issue because it gave me what I've come to love out of this Superman book and that's the family feel of love and hope that the Kents inspire.  The art was great in this issue, but I'm still a little upset that we left this big battle with some dangling threads that I still don't understand.

7.8/10