Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Future State: Superman Vs. Imperious Lex #3 Review


Weakened By The Red Sun: Part 3


Written By: Mark Russell
Art By: Steve Pugh, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Carlos M. Mangual
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: March 30, 2021


Even though we're deep into Infinite Frontier, it's time to take a step back into the future of..... you guessed it, Future State.... for some reason because apparently, this series needed another issue to come out a month later than everything else. Yeah, it's weird but we'll go with it because, for the most part, this has been an alright story, even though we're essentially doing the same thing in each issue and making Lex Luthor look like a dummy for the sake of Russell's satire. Let's jump into this issue and see if we needed a third issue to this story and if it matters to the overall Future State premise that our heroes will be dealing with as they progress in their Infinite Frontier. Let's check it out.


Previously we left the planet Lexor with Lex Luthor having an abundance of energy crystals that he was hoping to sell to the rest of the galaxy to not only keep his economy afloat but to make Lexor one of the richest planets in the galaxy..... Superman wasn't about to let that happen though so he created synthetic energy crystals and undersold Lex, leaving him holding a huge amount of unsold product and a populace that was ready to turn on their leader. In each of the issues we've had Superman show up, say that the red sun of Lexor will weaken him, and in each issue, he still somehow manages to overcome Lex's assaults and this issue is no different and all we essentially do is continue to make Lex look like a dummy and not his normal bright self that could easily run a planet if he was allowed to and that's just a shame because since we're essentially just doing the same things over and over again here, I would have at least liked the characters to feel like themselves




I didn't mind the previous issues of this series even though I've never been a fan of Mark Russell's satire driven stories because he always just wants to write a story and force the characters into that situation whether it fits or not and by the end of this three-issue story I'm not having as much fun as I was hoping to because we are just rinsing and repeating what came previously and there's no real depth to any of the characters and all we leave this comic doing is having the people of Lexor rebel against Lex and Superman and Lois arresting him, while Lex's robot professes his love for his creator. Nothing was really new about this issue and everything ended up feeling forced to a conclusion.




All in all, I did love the art in this issue, even though we never did get to see Lex's real face under his youthful mask that he's been wearing but while I thought the art remained consistently good throughout this series, the story just kind of took a nosedive for me here because there was really nothing new added and this left me wondering why this needed a third issue, especially since it wouldn't come out until a month after Future State ended. It just feels odd, forced, and a bit of a money grab since there was nothing that was really important here to anything and just made everyone look stupid for a few forced yuks.  


Bits and Pieces:


While the art remains strong, there are diminishing returns in the enjoyment of the story as we're essentially doing the same things in this issue that we did previously, while forcing Lex to look like a dummy so that the satire can flow. Sadly, there's nothing to this issue and it adds nothing to Future State as a whole and by the end, I'm just left wondering why this was so important that it needed to be released a month after Future State.


5.5/10

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