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.
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Filed under: DC Comics, Reviews | Tagged: Andrew Mangum, Bit, Cafu, Connor Kent, DC, DC Comics, Dom Regan, Eben Took, Hollow Men, Jaime Grant, Jeff Lemire, Kon-El, Paulo Siqueira, Pete Woods, Phantom Stranger, Superboy, Superboy #10, Superboy #10 review, Tannarak | Leave a comment »
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