Adventure Comics #5 – Review

Superboy Prime Story by Geoff Johns and Sterling Gates (writers), Jerry Ordway (artist), Bob Wiacek and Jerry Ordway (inkers)
Superboy Backup Story by Geoff Johns (writer) Francis Manapul (artist), Brian Buccellato (colorist)

The Story: Superboy Prime fights a bunch of zombies through the offices of the DC editors and creators. Alex Luthor teleports the whole donnybrook back to Superboy Prime’s basement where the climax occurs in blackest night fashion. The backup features our black-shirted Superboy who gets himself in trouble when he goes after a most charming vandal.

What’s Good: Ordway on art, especially with Wiacek, is a great treat, and he caught the flavor of blackest night with moody effects, black-costumed zombies, and the colored emotions. You can also tell that they had a good time drawing about twenty of the DC staffers in various states of shock. On Manapul’s side, the art is evocative and powerful. And he draws a mean Krypto, expressions and all. Manapul manages the expressive faces, those startled reactions and the arriving menace.

On plotting and story, blackest night looked at one of the least sympathetic characters in the DCU and put him through his own grinder, making him find a solution to the blackest night problem unlike any other’s so far. On character, both Clark (Prime) and Conner’s stories are about their feelings and how they fit into the world. Both stories are effective as character pieces.

What’s Not So Good: The tactical choices in these two stories were fine, but where the book fell down for me was on the strategic choices: using Superboy Prime and the whole metafictional angle. Superboy Prime really is the Jar Jar Binx of the DCU. He’s unsympathetic and whiny and it’s difficult to watch him do anything because I didn’t care about him at all. You have to be able to root for someone in the story, or at least sympathize with someone actively trying to accomplish something. Superboy Prime is craven, and in my opinion, even at the climax, unheroic, and is no fun to read.