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.