Time Is Not On Superman's Side
With Future State behind us, it's time to see what a Phillip Kennedy Johnson Superman series actually looks like in a present setting and while I complained previously about not getting enough Superman in those Future State books, that was a whole separate animal that needed to do what it was doing so I'm willing to let that slide and go with this with an open mind and see what kind of Superman tales we'll get out our Man of Steel's new writer. Let's jump into this issue and see what this era of Superman holds in store for us. Let's check it out.
For this issue of Superman we see Clark and his son Jon fighting inter-dimensional monsters being released by a breach opened between worlds and for whatever reason, even though they see a STAR Labs satellite being able to close this breach by the end of their initial fight, they don't seem to have any concern about what this formerly beloved laboratory, but recently investigated and put into a negative light is up to. Ultimately, Amanda Waller seems to be gaging Superman and Superboy's reactions to this breach and the monsters that come from it, but we're essentially still getting the same idea that we had previously in Young Justice and Action Comics books with STAR Labs being the bad guy, even though we're now replacing Dr. Glory with Amanda Waller.
Beyond the battles though, we have Superman and Jon dealing with the idea of Clark and Lois losing time with their son and the new concept that Jon knows about Superman's final death from what he learned from the future and sadly, it doesn't seem to be too far off and while I think this concept is interesting, the way we get there was through narration boxes while our hero and his son barely said a word to each other through the majority of the issue. So yeah, I was a bit disappointed with what we got out of Phillip Kennedy Johnson's first official Superman issue and the Bibbo backup by Sean Lewis didn't help things for me either. Man of the people and apparently writer for the Daily Planet, Bibbo is targeted by aliens. This backup didn't do much for me except make me confused at this depiction in not only the concept but also the way that Bibbo was portrayed. Hopefully, things pick up as we go along but this issue wasn't a great way to start things off in my mind.
All in all, I wasn't a fan of Phil Hester's art in this issue but did enjoy how the Bibbo backup looked by Sami Basri...... even if I wasn't a fan of the story that backup gave us. As for our main Superman story though... There's something to be said to giving us an issue of father and son working together and sharing their feels about what they've lost and what Jon's afraid that he'll lose in the not so distant future, but I just wish that it was handled a bit better because like in Future State, you barely get anything from Superman in this book besides for him punching alien monsters and the majority of the narration surrounding these battles are from Jon's perspective and it takes us almost until the end of the issue for our two characters to actually start talking to each other. Not to mention that our background plot feels a lot like what we just dealt with in Dr. Glory. So not a lot of fresh new concepts here, beyond the idea that Superman's time is coming to an end and Amanda Waller is testing our Super Family, which is cool..... I just hope that it's handled in a better and more intriguing way as we continue.
Bits and Pieces:
The ideas of Superman's time coming to an end and Amanda Waller testing our Man of Steel are intriguing concepts that have me interested, I just wish that they were presented in a better way that didn't take most of the issue for Superman and Jon to talk to each other, while also feeling like the story was just a redo of what we got recently with Dr. Glory. Sadly, I wasn't too fond of the art here either and just hope that things smooth out as this new era of Superman continues.
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