Superboy #11 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (writer), Pier Gallo (artist), Jamie Grant & Dom Regan (colorists)

The Story: Superboy gets by—with a little help from his friends.

The Review: Amidst the din and hype over the newest launch of Superboy, with critical darling Lemire at the helm, I remain largely puzzled by the lavish praise on this title.  Not that I don’t see its possibilities—far from it.  But now, one issue shy of a year’s worth of material, the series still feels like it’s winding up its first story arc.

And now, just when Lemire should be pulling out all the stops to make good on his and his star character’s potential, he just stops.  To prep the title for yet another relaunch come fall, Lemire was obligated to expedite the finish of his major storyline, and in combination with the reduced page count, that means he only had one option to get everything done in time: a big, wordy pile of exposition as told by either the raving Tannarak of the implacable Phantom Stranger.

Most of the action comes from Simon and Lori’s attempts to use their mere mortal means to escape the clutches of a life-draining blob-man and a town full of clay rednecks.  Since they have the least means to defend themselves (with Psion out of commission), these parts clearly have the most bite to them.  That said, Simon ends up doing little more than inadvertently serving as a decoy, leaving Lori to save them both with a couple moments of idiot-savant improvisation.

Speaking of Psion, he serves as a painfully obvious reminder that this title has definitely not gone anywhere it intended to.  Considering all the buildup Lemire put in towards the earnest lad’s possible betrayal—only because his superiors in the future commands him to so as to save their world from doom—it’s just disconcerting that you’ll never now find out what the future holds for him and his puppy-dog friendship with the Boy of Steel.

Superboy #10 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: No offense, Superboy, but honestly, one of you is more than enough.

The Review: From the get-go, we knew the Hollow Men would wind up Superboy’s first major opponents in this title, but only in recent issues have we gotten some clarification about their exact nature.  While previously, they seemed a race unto themselves, Jeff Lemire revealed they merely act on the orders of one Eben Took, a former Smallville resident who used some dark means to say alive.  As it turns out, that dark means has a name: Tannarak.

There’s a bit of bad timing in all this, as the revelation of this new villain came just two chapters before the title must run its course.  This issue is an attempt to shore up Tannarak’s background and give the evil sorcerer some kind of weight before things wrap up in a couple weeks.  We do get to learn a couple bits of important information: that ol’ Tan’s been around for a while, and he’s powerful enough to give even famed Atlantean sorcerer Arion some pause.

Instead of making us take the necromancer seriously, the period sequences actually have the opposite effect.  AA defines insanity as “doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results,” and under that definition, Tannarak can pretty much be classified as old-school megalomaniacal.  In each time period, he stubbornly makes the same attempt to conquer the world through doppelgangery, only to be defeated—rather simply, I might add—every time.

But if Tannarak expects different results this time around, he has ample reason for once.  After all, his biggest obstacle has always been the Phantom Stranger, and now he literally has the white-eyed man crawling on his knees—hatless, on top of that!  What you really would’ve liked to see is more of the specific relationship between the two mystics and their origins, as even way back in 45,025 B.C., they already had a mutual dislike that went back even further.

Even though the story lens focuses on the ancient mastermind this issue, we also get some light shed on our (relatively) more human villain, and how he got caught up in all this.  Don’t expect Took’s tears over his dead baby son, the resurrection of whom motivates him to join forces with Tannarak, as his grief comes less from a deep, paternalistic attachment and more from regret that his family can’t grow any bigger.  As is, this goal sounds mostly like the ravings of a radical nutjob; we have no idea why it’s so particularly important for him to have a huge family.

Superboy #9 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (writer), Pier Gallo (artist), Jaime Grant & Dom Regan (colorists)

The Story: It’s like looking in a mirror, isn’t it?  Make that several hundred mirrors.  In 3D.

The Review: It’s sometimes difficult to take teen superheroes seriously partly due to their smaller scale adventures.  Their villains tend to be sub-par versions of more famous counterparts (not unlike the heroes they face off with), and even when they manage some degree of originality, they rarely pose the kind of serious threat Justice Leaguers face on a daily basis.

Superboy sure has come a long way from sparring with King Shark off the Hawaiian coast.  Ever since he saved the universe during Infinite Crisis, his caliber of villain has definitely gone up a notch.  Limiting his flying grounds to Smallville seemed on the surface to hold him back, but this issue proves there’s plenty of dastardly stuff happening in the Midwestern farm town, and let out of control, the world will no doubt suffer.

Of course, the fact Phantom Stranger is involved should be proof enough that Superboy faces nothing short of an epic challenge, especially considering the fedora-wearing man’s unusually urgent behavior of late.  This recent take-charge attitude turns out to be a ruse for a pretty significant plot twist, one with half a chance of surprising you.  Although Lemire does a fairly good job using Stranger’s cryptic clauses to cover up the big reveal at the end, let’s face it: old P.S. has been acting rather out of character (read: grim and patronizing) lately.

Actually, we get quite a lot of major developments this issue, as Psionic Lad’s (Psion, I should say, as he and Simon agree the “Lad” part sounds more like something his great-uncle would’ve really dug) loyalties finally get put to the test.  While it’s comforting to see his moral compass remains squarely in goodhearted territory, it all becomes a moot point when the mission in Smallville’s underground Hollowville takes a turn for the worse.

Superboy #8 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (writer), Pier Gallo (artist), Jamie Grant & Dom Regan (colorists)

The Story: Superboy and the Chamber of Secrets.

The Review: The moment Lemire launched this title, he injected a supernatural tone to the Smallville mythos that he many times said he would expand in time.  The Phantom Stranger’s multiple appearances heralded significant horrors to come for the Boy of Steel, but till now we’ve gotten radio-controlled frogs, time-traveling psychics, and plants from outer space.  Superboy seemed well on his way to joining his cousins in primarily sci-fi-based heroics.

Then this issue comes, and magic once again rears its unpredictable head, in the form of the Hollow Men, your classic creepy farmers with a twist of zombie.  This isn’t your usual Western European tradition of mysticism: witches and warlocks, nonsense words and fairy creatures.  Lemire takes a much more primal kind of magic and gives it a mad-scientist spin, a union that really suits the earthy, Midwestern backdrop of Smallville and Superboy’s scientific roots.

The arcane elements in this issue are equal parts alchemy, necromancy, and druidism, a perfect match for the eerie frontier of Smallville’s Wild West, the setting for Nathaniel Kent and Albert Valentine’s encounter with the town’s darker side.  It’s got all the stuff that makes great ghost stories: the banished Puritan doctor and his disturbed family; hidden spaces with macabre secrets; shudder-worthy murders; the inevitable building gone down in flames.

Like all great ghost stories, these details inevitably come back to haunt the real world once more, as the entire town falls into a stupor right before Connor’s eyes.  The answer lies of course in the “broken silo,” his only clue to the mysterious events of #2, and the place Nathaniel Kent found has more to it “than life and death,” in the words of crazed surgeon-occultist Eben Took.  Our payoff: the final splash showing what’s “below” Smallville, a stunner of a reveal if there’s any.

Superboy #7 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (writer), Marco Rudy with Daniel HDR (artists), Jamie Grant & Dom Regan (colorists)

The Story: Superboy discovers what the fuss is all about with these hallucinogenic plants.

The Review: Ever since Geoff Johns wrote Superboy as the product of the world’s greatest hero and the world’s greatest villain, this dual nature has become a focal point of his character—too much so, in fact.  Ignoring the fact that genetics don’t really work that way, this plot point has infected almost every Superboy story since it first came to light, which has really cramped the Kid of Steel’s style.  It’s like writers are trying to wring the issue for all the angst it’s worth.

Superboy’s nightmare come to life falls under those lines.  Now, there’s nothing wrong with the way Lemire executes the story.  He actually keeps things clipping at a quick pace with his habit of jarring scene-cuts. You’re constantly shunted back and forth between Superboy and Psionic Lad’s present mystery in orbital space, and the future apocalyptic hellscape, which Connor apparently unleashes on the world.  It definitely keeps you invested in what the heck is going on.

Instinct tells you to think this is where Psi-Lad reveals his true colors.  You know he’s from the future, and that it’s a grim dystopia (or so he says), and he’s intended to turn on Superboy at some point, so all the signs for his betrayal get put in place.  But once Lori and Red Robin show up in this alternate timeline, and they don’t seem to get from Connor’s t-shirt/jeans get-up that he’s not the ruthless murderer they seem to know, you know something fishy’s happening.