Superman: War of the Supermen #3 – Review

By: James Robinson and Sterling Gates (writers), Cafu (penciller), Wil Moss (assistant editor), Matt Idelson (editor)

The Story: The Battle for Earth: First, the Kryptonians are screwed. Then, the sun (turned red last week) is turned back to its normal yellow. Only 7,000 Kryptonians have survived the brief color change and the destruction of New Krypton. Now the humans are screwed. Actually, I mean really screwed. Prime Minister of Britain dead (don’t know if they’re talking about Brown or the new one). Prime Minister of Japan torn to pieces. Thousands of people dead.

What’s Good: Wow, is this issue ever fast-paced and action-packed! The story swept me along and didn’t let me go until the final splash page. It jumps from disaster to near-miss to cliffhanger, leaving corpses everywhere. On Earth, in space, in the sun….bodies everywhere. Remember last issue I said that the Human Defense Corps would never have stood a chance against Kryptonians moving at full speed? Well, here we see what happens when Kryptonians really get pissed and use all their powers. It is awesome to behold. It reminds me a lot of when Darkseid took over the mind of every Daxamite in an old Legion arc called the Great Darkness. A hundred thousand Daxamites? Seven thousand Kryptonians? It doesn’t matter. Anything more than about five and you haven’t got a prayer, not even those clever Australians with their kryptonite robots. Robinson, Gates and Cafu have shown the supermen in all their overwhelming power.

Superman: World of New Krypton #7 – Review

By James Robinson and Greg Rucka (writers), Pete Woods (artist), Nei Ruffino with Pete Pantazis (colorists)

The Story: After the attempt on Zod’s life, New Krypton is paralyzed. One faction wants to declare war on Earth, and the other doesn’t know what to do. Then Zod comes out of the hospital long enough to promote Kal-El to General (and leader of the Military Guild) and say they can’t go to war… yet. Kal-El takes over, but the threats to New Krypton haven’t stopped. They’ve gotten worse.

What’s Good: The character work: General Zod, as always, sucks up the attention of any room he’s in. He’s much more charismatic than Kal-El, and even though we only see him for three pages, his decisions drive almost every issue. However, Kal-El gets to show some steel later on and it’s fun to watch.

The art works well for the story and there are a few moments worth mentioning: floating, glowing heads in the council chambers, holographic computer readouts, a staggering General Zod, the expressions on Tyr’s face, and especially the Jovian moon Callisto.

What’s Not So Good: Not a lot seemed to happen in this month’s issue. Yes, we get a couple of moments, but moments don’t make a story. Even the ending, which has an epic kind of feel to it, failed to pull the tension any higher. Part of this is the sense that, why exactly should I be worried for a city full of Kryptonians? Other than the weapons they themselves made, and one apparently made on Earth (used on Zod), can anything other than kryptonite kool-aid hurt them? DC has spent seventy years looking for something to challenge the man of steel and the best they’ve got is still just a red sun or kryptonite in its rainbow flavors. Early in this series, when the conflict was among Kryptonians (equals), the sense of tension was really good and we knew that even Kal-El might have to take one on the chin. But given any external threat to a Kryptonian, it’s hard to get worked up about it as a reader.

Conclusion: This issue continues the steam-losing descent of this series since the high point in issue #3’s.

Grade: C

-DS Arsenault