Smallville #4 – Review

By: Bryan Q. Miller (story), Pere Perez (art), Chris Beckett (colors)

The Story: Chloe stares at her own death right in the face.

The Review: As it so happens, when I bought this issue of Smallville, I noticed my comic book shop had a small, prominent display of Marvel’s Ultimate line of books, probably the most substantial investment in an alternate-reality series ever.  After flipping through a few of the trades, I came to Ultimate Spider-Man and realized that no matter how compelling or well-crafted any of these characters will be, no one will ever think of them as the definitive heroes.

So there’s a kind of futility that comes attached to these parallel Earth series.  Granted, no one has established the world of Smallville as an “official” parallel Earth with its own numeric designation in the grand scheme of DC’s Multiverse just yet, but what else can it be?  As a continuing series, it can’t operate under the Elseworlds moniker (if indeed DC ever plans to use that brand again), and it’s certainly not meant to supplant the current Superman in a major way.