Sooooo Per Mannnnnn
It's the fight against the Superman of Synmar.... named Synmar and our Man of Steel as this alien threat has come to our planet looking to kick some ass and maybe chew a little bit of bubblegum.... I don't really know what he wants and neither does Superman, who keeps trying to communicate with this spindly, alien powerhouse but as we saw in the previous issue, to make sure that this fight doesn't tarnish the Superman name now that our hero has gone and outed his secret identity and can now be held accountable for things, Superman portals our foe and himself to the Phantom Zone to continue this brawl. Hopefully there the two can start working out their problems.....but since Bendis writes the Phantom Zone as a corporeal place, they'll probably just keep punching each other. Let's jump into this issue and check it out.
I was initially really interested in the Synmar character and the idea of the Synmar people watching Superman for his entire life to see what a Kryptonian under Earth's yellow sun would do, but I was left confused by the end of that first issue after Synmar became the Superman of his people because after an explosion killed people, Synmar seemed pissed at Superman and started his trek to Earth to get a little payback for some reason and since our "villain" here doesn't speak a lick of English, it's just been the Man of Steel and this pissed off alien duking it out nonstop and that doesn't change for the majority of this issue as our fight has moved to the Phantom Zone and while that gets a bit tedious, it's not as tedious as Bendis writing Superman's dialog and inner narration that is so over the top "good" that it becomes cringy and makes you want to vomit for how sweet it comes across.
Yeah, you want Superman to be the best person there is and Bendis goes out of his way to try and portray that, but it's too much here and on top of this aspect it also portrays Superman like a fucking dummy who's willing to possibly die to try and make friends with Synmar. We have to go to the Synmar system which is uncharted, but close enough to Krypton for them to immediately know it exploded and that a child was sent away so that doesn't make any sense and it takes about a minute for our hero and Synmar to get there. In this system, they have an orange sun which weakens Superman physically and mentally and ultimately we leave this issue not knowing what any of that really means and we reverse the scenario, where now Synmar can talk and can finally move this story along now that we finally know what he wants...even though he doesn't tell us here.
All in all, the art really saves the day this issue because while I thought we were going to start moving forward in a big way to get this Synmar story rolling, it's a lot of standing around in the Phantom Zone while Superman tells us in his mind how good he is as a person and how he doesn't see "evil" the way others may. Eventually, we head off to the Synmar system but none of it feels like it makes sense and you wonder why Superman would take such a risk out of nowhere for Synmar when making sure you can breathe should have been his #1 priority in my mind. Sadly, there isn't much to this issue but you can hope that Bendis is saving all the cool stuff for the finale issue to his run next month.
Bits and Pieces:
The art continues to be amazing in this book which I'm thankful for because the story and character depictions continue to be lacking in a big way. If you were wondering if Superman was a good guy, then look no further than this issue because he'll make sure to tell you over and over again how good he is, but we hardly move the story further than we were in the last issue, while also making Superman look like a reckless fool.
No comments:
Post a Comment