Superman: Leviathan Rising Special #1 Review

Held Captive By Kryptonite

Written By: Brian Michael Bendis, Greg Rucka, Matt Fraction, Marc Andreyko
Art By: Yanick Paquette, Mike Perkins, Steve Lieber, Eduardo Pansica, Julio Ferreira, Nathan Fairbairn, Paul Mounts, FCO Plascencia, Dave Sharpe, Simon Bowland, Clayton Cowles, Tom Napolitano, Troy Peteri
Cover Price: $9.99
Release Date: May 29, 2019


Alright, we've had five issues of Leviathan Rising and now it's on to the Special, where we'll see him really rise........  no, what we will do though is go through this giant mama jama and look at four stories that will tie together..... for the most part....... by the end.  Previously, we've seen Leviathan's imploding monster, who I'm still just calling Leviathan as well, go through the world we love so much and take out the secret agencies as a way to clean the slate...... or a Royal Flush as it's been called.  Now it's time to see what happens next.  Let's check it out.



Like I said, there's four stories within this that loosely tie together by the end, with the different writers and artists from the new Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane books taking a crack at the characters, but from what I understand, this doesn't have anything to do with their runs coming up.  With that in mind, we get a decent look at what we'll be dealing with for Event Leviathan coming up, with the story about Clark Kent being kidnapped by Leviathan as a way to lure Superman out, which is a classic trope that I do enjoy, but as for the Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen stories........ they just seem kind of out of place here. 

Lois' plea to the Justice League to help her find Clark is decent enough, it just feels odd in this issue because by the end it doesn't really go anywhere or expand on what they're doing and Jimmy Olsen......... Hell, Jimmy Olsen is so out of place here because continuity, logic and even trying to take itself seriously is thrown right out the window so we can see his strange misadventure in Gorilla City during his book tour, where he eventually teams up with Dex-Starr.  Nothing really plays out well in this section in my mind.  Marc Andreyko's bit of Supergirl is handled pretty well here and I love that the character has missed so much within her personal life since being away in space....... but even this has its drawbacks because where we previously were told that there aren't any bodies left after a Leviathan attack, we see here that there's a bunch of bodies at the DEO building so that's odd and another thing that doesn't jive is that Eliza Danvers is now being depicted with two hands instead of one. 

All in all, I enjoyed the Clark Kent being kidnapped story because it was fun and added to our Leviathan story and connected it to the Silent Mafia/Secret Syndicate story that we began Brian Michael Bendis' Action Comics with, but even that was odd to me by the end with who was actually the one pulling the strings behind the kidnapping.  Beyond that though, Supergirl's story was the next strongest, just getting her and us caught up in things going on while she's been away, but there's problems with that as I said.  Lois' bit felt weird being here, but it was a decent addition to the story, while Jimmy's bit was just pure nonsense.  I enjoyed the many artists throughout that made this special possible, but I don't see how all of this was needed when we just want to figure out more on Leviathan.

Bits and Pieces:

I enjoyed what we got out of our "Super" characters in this issue, but a lot of this didn't seem needed by the end and some of it just came off as nonsense that didn't care if it tied into the rest of the DCU or not.  The art was great throughout, but overall, this story just seemed bloated to get it to its price tag.  There's some important stuff to the Leviathan story here that got me excited, but it didn't get me excited for the Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen books.

6/10