Back In The Day
It's Annuals week and with that, we're going to take a deeper look at Superman and Mongul to give us some backstory in Phillip Kennedy Johnson's new look at Mongul and his new background of being a Warzoon. This seems like a decent way to use an Annual since we're dealing with new aspects to an old concept that we thought we knew, but instead of using all that time with understanding Mongul and the Warzoons, we're also seeing a background of Clark Kent, and after all this time...... I'm not sure if that's something we need. Let's jump into this issue and see if we learn something new. Let's check it out.
For this Annual we have two stories that play side by side in showing us the childhood of our Mongul that is and of Clark Kent. For our villain story, we see the background that would change our current baddie from being a caring kid to the monster we currently know, based on how his culture feels and acts, and while there isn't a lot of story overall for this, mostly just alien names of tribes, places, and concepts we ultimately get the gist of why Mongul changed to become so hard compared to what his people would consider soft from when he was young. It's an interesting look that while doesn't do much overall besides show us a change in the character, it still feels like it does way more than our Clark Kent story.
Back in Smallville, Clark has a bully that our future hero has to deal with and through the lessons of his mother, Clark decides to show kindness to someone who doesn't want to show him any. The thing about this is, it's a pretty basic story to show us that Clark Kent was a good kid but I feel that we've gotten so much of that that this feels a little redundant and sometimes feels weird in forcing Ma Kent to have cancer in it, but does little with the family element of this with the Kents and ultimately just kind of uses this disease as a prop and doesn't feel like it was used properly at all.
All in all, the art is decent throughout this Annual and I love that at least part of this was used to give us a new backstory for Mongul since so much of him has changed for our current Warworld story, but everything about the Clark Kent aspect of this Annual came off feeling kind of redundant since we essentially know that Clark and his parents are good people and that our Man of Steel went through some tribulations as a kid in dealing with his powers and keeping a low profile with them, not to mention that while this Clark Kent story is about hope and compassion, the cancer aspect added to it felt really off and barely dealt with in any kind of way that seemed like how the Kents would and shou6ld deal with this situation..... I mean, it's barely brought up and there really isn't any kind of emotion put towards it and because of this it ultimately just feels like it here as a prop and that's disappointing.
Bits and Pieces:
While I did enjoy the art in this Annual and the Mongul aspects of our story, I would have liked the whole thing to be about Mongul and his rise to be the Mongul that is since we're working with a new continuity for the character and don't really know anything about the background that Johnson is using. Instead, though we get a weird Clark Kent story added in to fill up our page space that just continues to let you know that Superman is a really good guy..... and so are his parents.
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