warlord

Superman Stuff #21: Review Roundup for May 13 through 27

blakemp Superman Stuff , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thaaaat’s right, once again, it’s time to take a look at some of the recent Superman-related comics that DC has turned out for us. Including another heapin’ helpin’ of Mark Waid, a dash of dandy Dan Mora, more-a of those Superboys reignin’, and Superman’s return to Elseworlds!

Action Comics #1098
Title: Future Shock Part Two (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer: Mark Waid
Artists: Skylar Patridge and Patricia Delpeche
Main Cover: Ryan Sook

The time-tossed team of Martian Manhunter, Booster Gold, and Mary Marvel are in Smallville with Clark Kent early in his career as Superboy, and it’s not looking good when they learn that the villain they chased into the past, Epoch, has stolen the rocket that brought baby Kal-El to Earth in the first place. There’s a fight and a face-off, which of course is to be expected in a superhero comic book, but none of that is where this issue really shines. The heart of the book comes in the middle section, as Jonathan and Martha recount the story of how they found the baby to the time-travelers. Waid, of course, recently cleaned up DC’s timeline with his New History of the DC Universe series, so if there’s anybody we can consider an expert on what’s currently canon and what isn’t, it’s probably him. Seeing the current version of Superman’s origin presented answers a few questions and clarifies things, and leads to a surprisingly sweet moment between J’onn and the Kents. 

As with last issue, though, I’m absolutely loving the Mary/Clark dynamic. I really like the characterization of Mary as the older sibling of the Marvel family, and she carries that over here to her interactions with Clark, leading to a delightful scene where she decides to play wingwoman for him in his relationship with Lana. It’s a highly entertaining moment, although I do very much wonder if we’ll ever see a scene after Superman returns in the present timeline where the two of them talk about this.

Strong artwork by Skylar Patridge and Patricia Delpeche give the issue a sort of finishing touch. With issue #1100 coming up, it seems as though the time-missing Superman storyline is about to come to an end, but I hope that doesn’t mean an end to Waid’s time in Smallville, because these stories have been a lot of fun. 

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #51
Title: Warlords Part One
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Adrian Gutierrez
Main Cover: Dan Mora

Over in World’s Finest, which is ALSO set in the past (early in the partnership of Superman, Batman, and the Dick Grayson Robin), it’s time for a trip to the Arctic. Our heroes are tracking the flight path of a missing Air Force pilot, one who vanished on the same trajectory as another missing pilot, one Travis Morgan. Of course, the world’s finest get zapped to the out-of-time world of Skartaris and find themselves fighting alongside Morgan, the Warlord, in battle against the mysterious Tyrant Rex. Robin, of course, is wild about the dinosaurs. Superman is less wild about the magic flying around this little corner of the DC Universe.

I’ve never gotten super into Warlord. Its heyday was before my time as a comic book reader, and the various attempts to bring him back over the years have never quite landed. That said, I do enjoy watching Waid play with all the toys available in the DC Universe, and this is no exception. He used the time differential between the “normal” world and Skartaris to good effect here, changing things up for our heroes almost immediately upon entering the lost land, and Batman and Robin are thrust into rescue mode fairly early. 

Gutierrez draws some wildly fun dinosaurs, and he really sells the “acting” with the characters’ faces, particularly Robin, whom we are reminded time and again is pretty young in this series. He behaves like a younger version of the Dick Grayson we know – a little more impulsive, a little less confident, but still with the same solid heart.

This remains one of my favorite series that DC is putting out. 

Superman Unlimited #13
Title: Primal Fears (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in
Writer: Dan Slott
Artist: Lucas Meyer
Main Cover: Taurin Clarke

This issue starts with the greatest character in comics, Bibbo Bibbowski, taking care of the monkey he found last issue. Some goons from the lab the monkey escaped show up trying to get him back, and things get much rougher than they expected. The time-tossed younger version of Jon Kent, meanwhile, is having nightmares about the torture he endured at the hands of Ultraman, while the older Jon – now calling himself Tomorrow Man – finds that a masked hero in Metropolis doesn’t necessarily enjoy the same kind of trust from the public that he may be used to. The two Jons are called into action when the super-monkey starts tearing it up. 

I’m not going to keep playing coy here – the story works great as a reintroduction of Beppo the Super-Monkey into the DC Universe, although the origin that Slott chooses for him here has a lot of 90s flavor to it, bringing back the long-missing Dabney Donovan character. I also like the dynamic he’s playing with the two Jons and Lois, who is far too smart not to figure out what the deal is with Tomorrow Man, and Slott seems to be leaning into that. I really don’t know what the endgame of this particular storyline is going to be, and that’s a nice feeling in a day and age where everything gets spoiled yesterday. It’s a longshot, but I think that if things shook out with young Jon/Superboy and old Jon/Tomorrow Man coexisted in the DCU long-term, I’d be okay with it.

Of course, Jon is still wearing the “S” over in New Titans, so that’s probably not going to happen.

Supergirl #13
Title: Hero of Kandor Part Three (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer, Artist, & Main Cover: Sophie Campbell

Kara’s adventure in Kandor continues. With Black Flame causing chaos, Supergirl – now stuck with some cyborg parts, in case you missed last issue – tracks down Lesla-Lar to try to get her help. Lesla, meanwhile, has something very, very important to show our heroine, and it might just change things for Kara Zor-El for good.

It really feels like Campbell has been building up to this story since issue #1, and that’s a great thing. All of the stuff with Lesla and Lena and Kara showing her constant compassion and trust in people who were once her enemies is paying off in really interesting and unexpected ways. Ultimately, we still aren’t 100 percent sure what side Lesla is going to land on once all of this is over, and Campbell has set it up in such a way that either choice would be conceivably in-character. That’s quite a trick, and it’s pulled off impressively. 

If there’s anything to complain about, it’s that the whole “Reign of the Superboys” tie-in feels more tacked on than ever. Conner finally makes it into Kandor in this issue, but he’s only around for a couple of frankly unnecessary pages before the story moves back to Kara. It really feels as though Campbell had the story planned and in the works when editorial put out an edict that Conner Kent had to feature into these post-DC KO issues somehow, then she just kind of crowbarred him in where she could while causing minimal disruption to the narrative. If that’s the case, then it’s a failure on editorial’s part, not Campbell’s, and the pages without Conner at all work just fine at telling an interesting, gripping story that only really could be told with Kara Zor-El. 

Superman #38
Title: Prime Time Part Three (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer: Joshua Williamson
Artist and Main Cover: Dan Mora

I didn’t have a Superboy-Prime/Witchfire pairing on my 2026 wish list, but here we are. Witchfire, a magic user from Kurt Busiek’s fun and forgotten series Power Company, is looking for an innocent soul to use in a spell she needs. Unfortunately, she has TOTALLY misread the aura of that cute guy at the comic shop. All is not lost, though – Superboy-Prime IS in the midst of a redemption arc, after all, and this seems like just the way to do it.

Williamson is clearly having fun with this. He leans more into the meta nature of Prime in this issue, and the last act of the book dives into it headfirst, with the return of this arc’s true villain and Prime being thrust into what is possibly his own worst nightmare. But the amazing, encouraging thing here is that we never feel like his attempts at redemption are fake or forced or cheap. Williamson has successfully convinced us that Prime sincerely wants to reform and become a hero like he always wanted, and despite the horrific crimes he committed in the past (some of which we are specifically reminded of in this issue), the reader finds themselves rooting for him. It’s an odd feeling, to look at someone who once casually slaughtered Teen Titans like they were nothing and find yourself pulling for him. But the whole thing kind of plays into a personal philosophy of redemption that I subscribe to. I’ve got to believe – hell, for the good of the WORLD I’ve got to believe – that redemption is possible. And that if someone truly wants to become a better person today than they were yesterday, at the very least they deserve the opportunity to TRY.

Admittedly, applying that philosophy to a murderer is totally on the extreme end, but just ask yourself how many bad guys joined the heroes on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and tell me if what’s going on with Prime here is really all that different.

Dan Mora’s artwork, as usual, is wonderful. I’ve talked before about how some artists are good at “acting” with their characters, and this issue is a fantastic example of that – the sweet, nervous flirtation between C.K. and Rebecca is written not only on their faces, but in their body language as well. It’s such a small thing, but it adds so much to the story. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I almost don’t want the real Superman to come back to this title just yet, because I’m not ready for this story to end. 

Justice League Unlimited #19
Title: Amnesty Part One
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist and Main Cover Dan Mora

Speaking of redemption, why don’t we peek in on what the Justice League is doing, shall we? Lex Luthor went public with the League’s plan to offer amnesty to certain super villains as part of their larger plan to fortify the defenses against the darkness they know is coming (that’s what DC All In is all about, Charlie Brown), and as you might have expected, public perception is NOT what the League may have hoped for. Meanwhile, Guy Gardner’s team is en route to Oa to hide the Power Bank with backups of the Leaguers’ respective super-powers, and Superboy (Conner) and Steel (Natasha) get a nasty surprise when they’re hanging out with Air Wave.

I mentioned this last issue, but I love the way that Mark Waid is juggling so many storylines at once. The “main” story, the one with Lex Luthor working with the League’s big guns and (in this issue, at least) rounding up villains who are falsely claiming amnesty, is really fascinating. Luthor, as a character, is the sort who always has something up his sleeve and you can never actually trust him, but considering what he and the other participants in the KO tournament know about the future, this is a case where it’s possible that he really is being genuine, even his motives are ultimately selfish. The fun here is trying to figure out just exactly HOW much is self-interest and self-preservation.

The other storylines are looked at quickly, but progress as well. Guy Gardner and the Justice Gang (if you’re gonna use the characters from the movie I’m gonna use the name from the movie) naturally run into some problems in the course of their mission, and just when you thought poor Air Wave’s troubles were over, they get worse. I’m looking forward to seeing them take the forefront next issue.

Dan Mora – have I mentioned that Dan Mora is really, really freaking good at what he does? And he’s doing it TWICE A MONTH. Plus about a billion covers. Dude is a machine. 

Superman: Father of Tomorrow #1
Title: Planetfall
Writer: Kenny Porter
Artist and Main Cover: Danny Earl

I’ve been waiting for this ever since DC announced they were bringing back the Elseworlds imprint. While alternate versions of Superman have featured in some of the books like Dark Knights of Steel or the Gotham By Gaslight sequels, this is the first of the new Elseworlds to explicitly be a Superman comic.

Not Kal-El, mind you, but I’ll take what I can get.

In Father of Tomorrow, the catch is that rather than Kal-El, it was JOR-El who escaped Krypton’s destruction and came to Earth, Similarly to what happened to his son in the main universe, he crashes to Earth in Smallville, Kansas, and is taken in by the Kents, who pass him off as Jonathan’s younger brother, Jordan. Jordan lives with the Kents, hiding the truth of his alien ancestry for years, until something happens that spurs him to come out of hiding and use his power and advanced Kryptonian technology to make the Earth a better place.

This first issue is intriguing. Porter uses a lot of familiar Superman elements, characters, and even standard plot points from various versions of Superman’s origin to put together this story, but the fact that it’s about an adult Jor-El instead of baby Kal-El twists things in curious ways. Jor-El is well-meaning, to be certain, but by the end of the first issue we start to get an ominous feeling that perhaps his good intentions are going to lead him down a dark path.

I don’t want this to be yet another “evil Superman” story by the end of it, but let’s be honest here. It’s an Elseworlds, and an awful lot of the classic Elseworlds stories had tragic endings. It wouldn’t be out of character for that to happen here.

I like Danny Earls’ artwork. His designs for Jor-El’s costume and the Kryptonian technology are unique and exciting, and contrast the idyllic small-town feel of Smallville in just the right way.

So far so good, folks. Let’s see if you can keep it going. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Geek Punditry #14: Filling In the Gaps

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I’ve been reading comic books pretty much since I learned to read. The hook caught me when I was still in elementary school and my dad brought home a box of Archie Comics from a co-worker, and it was set even more firmly when my uncle gave me some old issues of Green Lantern and Legion of Super-Heroes he had. And much like watching your favorite TV show over and over, rereading old comic books is a form of comfort entertainment for folks like me. Oh sure, I still read new stuff, but revisiting the classics is like a shot of dopamine straight to the ol’ cerebral cortex (or wherever dopamine goes). The digital revolution in media has made that easier. You can find old stories you lost years ago, voraciously read precious comics without the fear of damaging those pristine back issues in your collection, or FINALLY read that missing issue of Power Pack you could never find as a kid that explained why the hell all of the kids had suddenly traded super powers and how the Snarkwars ended. This was serious business, friends.

Imagine waiting 35 years for apps to be invented so you could finally read this.

Of course, not everything is available digitally, not yet anyway. With nearly a century of comic books to digitize before they can be made available (and rights issues tying up a lot of them in various ways), the dream of a single device from which you can read every comic book ever made is probably going to remain a dream. But with Marvel Comics boasting over 30,000 comics on its app and DC hosting a library of over 24,000, it could practically take a lifetime to go through the stuff that’s already out there. Psyched for the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie? You can read every issue of their series right now. Pumped for the Blue Beetle film? The history of Jaime Reyes awaits you! Want to go back to the beginning? Check out every appearance of Superm–

Oh, wait.

Actually, not every issue of the assorted Superman comics from the past 85 years is among the 24K titles DC Universe Infinite has waiting for you. As every American learns in first grade, Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1 in 1938 and appeared in nearly every one of the title’s 904 issues before DC’s line-wide relaunch in 2011. But of those 904 issues, only 463 of them are on DCUI as of this writing. There are similar gaps in the other long-running Superman titles such as Superman and Adventures of Superman. Clark’s buddy Bruce Wayne has a similar problem: of the 811 pre-reboot issues of his flagship Detective Comics, DCUI has 696 as of now, again, with similar gaps in his other titles. Not as bad as the voids in Superman’s history, but still frustrating.

You’re telling me THIS isn’t worth digitizing?

My favorite characters and stories, as you may have noticed, tend to lean more towards DC than Marvel, but I also believe in credit where credit is due, and when it comes to making their library available, Marvel is considerably ahead of DC. You can read almost the entire run of the main series of their flagship properties like Fantastic Four, Avengers, and X-Men, and any gaps that exist are far smaller than those of their rivals. They’re also filling in the gaps much faster, with an almost weekly addition of big chunks of missing books (the last couple of weeks have given us dozens of issues of Dazzler, for instance), whereas DC rarely puts more than five or six older issues up a week, and usually from five or six different series, making it take much longer to complete a run if it gets completed at all.

I know it’s not as simple as pushing a button, of course. For comics that were produced before computer technology became a standard part of the production process (which means practically every comic produced before the 90s and a lot of them after that), digitizing them is a process. You need to find quality prints, scan each page by hand, and remaster them to make for a solid digital reading experience. For many comics, that means completely recoloring them based on the original guides. This takes time and money, so I don’t mind the wait. What bothers me, and a lot of other fans, is the kind of haphazard nature of what gets added. For example, this week’s slate of older books being added to the app includes Creature Commandos #1 from 2000, the first issue of the 1991 update to Who’s Who in the DC Universe, the first issue of the Eclipso: The Darkness Within crossover from 1992, Superman: Day of Doom #1 (a four-issue miniseries from 2002 produced for the 10th anniversary of Superman’s “Death”), and Stormwatch #46 from 1997. They’ve been (slowly) adding Stormwatch for some time now, so that makes sense, and Creature Commandos was part of James Gunn’s big DC announcement from a few weeks ago, so I get that too. The rest of them…baffling. Not that I’m complaining about anything being added, I have no objection to any of these titles. I just can’t figure why they’re going to those books when they haven’t yet added, for example, issues #216-274 of The Flash.

Less important than Creature Commandos #1.

Some things will probably never get digitized, I know that. For example, I’ve got no idea who currently owns the rights to the Adventures of Bob Hope, Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, or Jackie Gleason and the Honeymooners series launched in the 50s, and I doubt anybody except me actually cares. There are issues of the old Showcase anthology series that featured licensed characters DC has no rights to, such as G.I. Joe and James Bond, and which will almost certainly never be seen on the app. Then there’s Sovereign Seven, a series by legendary X-Men writer Chris Claremont, set in the DC Universe and often guest-starring DC characters, but for which the copyright was held by Claremont and artist Dwayne Turner. It would probably take some sort of monetary agreement between all the parties involved to add that series, and with so many other books still waiting for their shot, it seems unlikely that DC will make the effort to do so any time soon.

Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want to know what happens next.

Then there are long runs of Green Lantern and Justice League Europe from the 90s that now present serious problems because the writer, Gerard Jones, plead guilty to possession of child pornography in 2018. Here’s a case where it’s perfectly understandable that DC doesn’t want to do anything that looks like they’re promoting his work or having to pay him royalties, and I don’t blame them for that. But it sucks for the other writers and artists who worked on those comics and who, through no fault of their own, find their back catalogs throttled. It also leaves us a case where some pretty big storylines are missing or incomplete, both for DC and Marvel. (Most notably for Marvel, Jones wrote what is to date the only ongoing Wonder Man series. With that character slated to get a Disney+ MCU series, normally you would expect his comics to be fast tracked for inclusion on the app, but as of now the only issues available are a few that are chapters in the Avengers crossover series, Operation: Galactic Storm.) 

The reason I’m thinking about this right now is because DC recently held their first “Backlist Breakout” poll for users of the DCUI app. Users were presented with a slate of eight titles not currently available and were asked to vote on which ones we wanted to move to the front of the queue, with the top three promised to be added to the app beginning in June. My vote was for one of the eventual winners, DC Challenge, a miniseries from the 80s where an all-star group of writers and artists participated in a sort of “exquisite corpse” experiment: the first team produced an issue of a DC crossover and then handed it off to the next team to continue the story with no instructions or input, figuring it out as they went along. This kind of storytelling has been done in books and other forms of entertainment, and the result was a delightfully insane comic that went totally off the rails, leaving the creators of the last issue the unenviable task of trying to make sense of a plot that had ballooned to include time travel, Nazis, the planet Earth itself being moved to another galaxy, and Groucho Marx. I cannot wait to read it again.

The most important vote you’ll cast this year.

The other two winners in this round are books I’ve never read: the five issues of the 1967 Blue Beetle series (featuring Ted Kord, not Jaime, and published by Charleton Comics, but which DC owns the rights to) and the first 12 issues of the seminal fantasy series Warlord. The support for Warlord on the DC boards made its victory seem almost a foregone conclusion, and I look forward to it, since I’ve never read those issues. But it does open up another problem. Only the first 12 issues of Warlord have been promised. That’s 12 out of a series that ran for 133 issues plus six annuals. If fans want to see issues #13-24, Warlord is going to have come out triumphant again in the NEXT round of “Backlist Breakout” this summer. And then keep winning, every twelve issues, again and again, to finally make the whole series available. If it fails to win in even one round fans will be left dangling, their series put on a shelf with other unfinished titles like Adventure Comics, Doom Patrol, and Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane.

“Is this a joke to you?”

Again, I don’t mind waiting for everything to be digitized. And I even like the idea of “Backlist Breakout” making a game out of deciding what the next goodie added to DCUI will be. But there are some gaps that are so conspicuous that I just can’t figure out why DC isn’t doing anything to fix them right now.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He is admittedly thrilled that DC finally finished adding Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew to the app a while back, but he’s quite put out that they haven’t gotten around to the three-issue Oz/Wonderland War miniseries that wrapped up the original Zoo Crew’s story yet.