Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Superman #38 Review and *SPOILERS*



And Boom Goes The Superboy


Written By: Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason
Art By: Sergio Davila, Vicente Cifuentes, Gabe Eltaeb, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: January 3, 2018

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

While I was a little down the last issue of our Super Sons of Tomorrow crossover, this is still a story that I'm interested in and see some huge potential for what it may set up down the line...... That's all I got here...... Previously, we saw the Teen Titans break off into two groups, where Raven and Beast Boy went all team Tim Drake (Savior) to stop Superboy, while Starfire, Kid Flash and Aqualad felt that they needed to get to Damian so that they could help protect Jon.  Let's jump into this issue and see what team finds our pre-teen hero first and what the Titans of Tomorrow will do when they finally arrive in our time.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Aqualad on the trail of Superboy....... because he can sense his power trail and once Jackson leads Starfire and Kid Flash to the Fortress of Attitude........ the fight is on..... which really sucks because it isn't needed and only leads to them realizing that this is a big misunderstanding.  For some reason though, the Fortress of Attitude is taken off the board when the rest of the Teen Titans want to knock Damian and Jon out so that Raven can't sense them and before Jon is knocked out, he asks them to take him to the Fortress of Solitude because of its safety.

Yeah, as we saw at the beginning of this story, the Fortress has seen better days and where I had hoped that the nonsense had ended and the story would pick up, we now have Jon being confronted by the fact that his father is trapped in a Red Kryptonite shell and even though Red K has different effects at different times, this time it specifically affects emotions, which somehow makes our Kryptonian heroes weaker........... but is able to break when its pushed into icy water, but the damage is done because Superboy is affected emotionally before this, which sets him off to blow up again, but since he had just recently solar flared, apparently this one will kill him.

In the end, the Titans of Tomorrow show up using Savior's hand as a dowsing rod to find Tim Drake and they quickly act with the Teen Titans to try and contain Superboy.  Even with the combined might of both Titans teams and having two Supermen, they can't contain him though and out of nowhere Savior decides that he's going to be the good guy and siphons the energy into himself as he disappears into Hypertime, saving the day.  

That's it for this issue of Superman and this part of the Super Sons of Tomorrow crossover and while I was originally really liking this crossover, each progression of the story seems to be taking more and more away from it and just forcing things to happen whether they make sense or not and even just dramatically changing characters for no real reason other than the story has to move on.  The art in this issue is amazing though and love seeing all these characters together, but if the next issue of this story doesn't do something drastic to tie everything together and have this story make sense, then I think it's just going to be something that's easily forgotten or just simply remembered as that thing that brought the terrible solar flare back into continuity.

Bits and Pieces:

While this issue is high on action, it's lacking in reason behind the majority of it and just seems to want to finish up just for the sake of finishing whether it makes sense or not.  Things are just thrown at you here just because and that's really disappointing for how interesting this crossover started.  The art is amazing, but overall....... I'm just left wondering why anything went down the way it did here.

6/10

8 comments:

  1. Eric your too kind this issue made no sense things just happen the titans tommorow are good and we have conner but why!? And red kryptonite does...something? This issue is a beautiful mess just here to finish the arc 3 for me sir

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    1. I'm with Mike. This issue was really disappointing. Savior came back with a singular purpose - to kill Jon - and then randomly decides to play the momentary hero and sacrifice himself? That was a totally garbage ending and out of character.

      I can accept that the Titans of Tomorrow are heroic now under the theory that their past has been changed in a way that made them different than they were in their original story, but I can't say the same with Tim's original self since he's not in this story.

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    2. one more issue to go though........... maybe it will all make sense....... god, it better make sense!

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    3. Also how the hell does Damian and the titans tommorow know to call tim "Savior" ugh im coming here first before buying the last issue lol

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  2. Superman doesn't show surprise at Kon-El's appearance or about his comment that "I won't fail him again!"...what's up with that?

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  3. How did Superman break through the Ice? If he was de-powered because of the red Kryptonite, then does ice overrun the red kryptonite or something silly like that or was Jon's outburst so strong that it somehow made the red bubble around Supes burst underneath the Ice??
    Also, Isn't Jon contained inside along with his solar flare? Wasn't that the whole point of the field to protect everyone on the outside from the blast??
    I don't understand how Tim knew/saw that Jon's solar flare became its own separate entity and decided and was able to absorb it outside of the containment field in order to blow it up?????
    Can anyone explain it?? The artwork isn't very clear at all and I literally had to read and look over that sequence like 8 times to make out what I think was happening.
    The last part of the issue after getting to the fortress was a complete mess I thought.

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    1. This was picked as one of the Patreon Spotlight books and me and eric could not explain the ice, what Tim did at the end or really anything once they got to the Fortress! It is just another promising story fizzling out at the end

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