Superman: World Of New Krypton #8 – Review

by Greg Rucka and James Robinson (writers), Pete Woods and Ron Randall (artists), Nei Ruffino (colorist)

The Story: Jupiter’s moon Callisto is on a collision course with New Krypton and is moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. The Thanagarians are attacking the Kryptonians with weapons that can hurt them. Watch Kal-El try to pull this one out of the fire.

What’s Good: I love the space opera feel of this issue. My interest perked up big time last issue when the Kryptonians started moving Callisto out of Jupiter’s orbit and the tense, science fictional space battle in this issue only raises the stakes. The scales are not cosmic, but I can’t think of the last good solar-system level conflict I’ve seen. It works well and the arrival of some special solar system neighbors at the end changes the dynamic a lot. At the same time, the hand-waving used to explain the science fiction was better in this story than in many other comics. The Nth metal was obviously soft scifi, but the relativistic envelope around Callisto and the artificial gravity wells produced by the Thanagarians added layers of believability to the story.

Rucka and Robinson also did a first rate job on the speech patterns of the Thanagarians. They used weird terminology and used some words differently than we do, but the crisp dialogue was as fun to read as the art was to look at. The art team delivered some great action scenes, a sense of scale to the space battles and some real beauty in some strange aliens. Hat’s off to them.

What’s Not So Good: The New Krypton story is getting more and more interesting. My only problem with the storytelling is that there’s so much going on, that major events that would deserve an issue of story on their own, are wedged between scenes. Last issue, last page, the Thanagarians are suddenly attacking. Their motivation is not much clearer in this issue, unless a perfunctory ‘shoot first, finish first’ strategy can be called motivation. Kal-El’s actions, while classically Superman flavored, seem awfully sudden and overly trusting in this new, politically-gray world that DC has created on the opposite side of the sun. They don’t come across as wise so much as foolhardy or naïve and that’s not the aftertaste you want to leave your readers with when you’re talking about your flagship character. All this made this issue (and the last) feel a bit jumpy and abrupt. What’s the fix? Write the story onto a larger canvas (more than 12 issues) and have the political intrigue be part of the tension. Or do a smaller story that fits entirely within the 12 issues DC budgeted for this.

Conclusion: World of New Krypton continues to satisfy, but Rucka and Robinson may be trying to fit too much into one year of stories.

Grade: B-

DS Arsenault