Saturday Evening Cartoons: Super Sons, Volume 1: When I Grow Up

I decided to go back and read Peter J. Tomasi's Super Sons as the series is concluding with a miniseries that started earlier this month...

     Spinning out of he and Patrick Gleason's Superman run Super Sons focuses on the friendship/rivalry between Jon Kent and Damien Wayne. The two characters have very different personalities. Damien is a rather egotistical, rebellious teen, while Jon is a really good kid, though lacking in Damien's confidence. Like their fathers this causes them to have difficulties getting along, except, as 10 and 13 year old boys, they lack the maturity to see past their differences. This is the main focus of this book, from a character perspective.

     The story opens by showing a creepy kid controlling his family members, who seem mortally afraid of him. Then, we see Jon and Damien fight some unidentified bad guys in a forest. Finally, we cut to to two days earlier, where Jon tries to stand up to bullies at school only to have Damien, disguised as bus driver, show up and scare them off. The first few pages jump around an awful lot and I'm not really convinced that this nonlinear storytelling really works for this story. We don't get back to the fight in the forest until the third issue, by which time (especially if your reading monthly) you may have forgotten about it. In addition to this, we're already switching between two different story lines, with the creepy boy and his family opening each issue.

      Back at the Kent Farm Superman is called away on League business and, as Batman won't let him go out on patrol, Damien shows up and convinces Jon to come with him to investigate break-ins LexCorp without their parents permission. Reaching LexCorp, they are caught trying to break in by Luthor. Damien pushes Jon off of the building in order to distract Lex, who has to save him (this is before Superboy has learned to fly). After hacking into Lex Corp's security footage, Robin and Superboy make their escape.

     Damien tells Jon that he has found footage of the break-in. It is revealed that the same creepy kid who we saw torturing his family is responsible. He and family gained superpowers during the breakout of the Amazo virus (in Justice League Volume 6). Although the cure removed most people's powers, 5 percent kept them, including this boy's family. Afterward, they became a superhero team but disappeared after a battle amongst themselves. Investigating fursther, Jon and Damien find corpses of family in the warehouse where the younger son (calling himself Kid Amazo) was holding them captive. Jon, feeling they are in over their heads, decides to go to tell his father. Damien, wanting to investigate further on his own, is unhappy with this.

     Jon finds the daughter, who apparently survived, hiding outside the warehouse and, simultaneously, Damien determines that there's a body missing. At this point, an Amazo bot, which has Batman's appearance and skills attacks Jon while another, with Superman's appearance and skills, attacks Damien. They are subdued by their fathers' doppelgangers but the girl, who has telekinetic powers over machines, shuts them down. The girl, named Sara, explains that her brother, Reggie, had held her family captive for weeks. Possessing the power to multiply himself, Reggie's powers increased when he stole Luthor's Amazo armor and he began splitting himself into Amazo powered creatures. The bodies that Jon and Damien found were actually doppelgangers of Sara's real family who Reggie killed over and over again while they were forced to watch. But Sara was able to escape.

     Once again, Jon wants to go and get help but Damien disagrees, calling himself, "the world's greatest superhero.” They are then attacked by Amazo duplicates of themselves, bringing us back (finally) to the action scene that opened the story. It is then revelaed that Sara is also an Amazo bot as Reggie attempts to control her. She tells them that they need to find Reggie before he kills the real Sara, and agrees to buy them time. Chased by their Amazo doppelgangers, Jon and Damien are eventually overwhelmed and captured.

     As Kid Amazo explains his plan to defeat the Justice League and take their powers, Lex shows up and frees them. They take Sara and family to safety while he fights the Amazo bots. They return with Sara who uses her power to separate Reggie from the Amazo armor, defeating him. Lex promises to help her develop her powers as Jon and Damien sneak off once again, only to be caught by Lois and Alfred, who discovered that they snuck off on their own.

     In the last issue Damien stews about being grounded by Batman while Jon is yelled at for using powers to do chores, which his parents forbade him from doing as a punishment. He is upset about having to move to Metropolis and runs away to Gotham to talk to Damien. Damien teases him for being a crybaby about moving leading to a fight which is broken up when Alfred shows up. Alfred tries to counsel the two super sons, telling them that they must learn to trust each other as their fathers have and emphasizing the importance of seeing from someone else's perspectives. Finally, Batman and Superman show up and Clark tells Jon that, while it's natural to be apprehensive about moving to a new place, its something they need to do as a family. He also gives Jon permission to go on adventures with Damien, saying that he'll find a way to make Lois understand.

     Once again, I think that Tomasi really knows these characters. Not only had he written Jon Kent for 16 issues, he also written Damien in Batman and Son during the 52 era. He also does a great job with characters like Alfred who, after discovering that Damien has snuck off on his own declares, "At least when master Richard snuck out, he had the decency to construct a pillow dummy." There are some confusing elements to this story. For some reason Lex doesn't seem to know who Superboy or Robin are. Surely they've been around long enough for him to be aware of their existance and connection to Superman and Batman. I'm also not sure why Superboy doesn't know about the Amazo virus, especially since he seems to understand what Damien is talking about but then questions it when they talk to Sara. I understand the need to give readers unfamiliar with the Justice League story the necessary exposition, but this came off as a little sloppy.

     It was also a surprisingly dark story. I was hoping to maybe give this story to my 8 year old sister to read but its clearly much too violent. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, some of my favorite comics are very adult, but superhero comics have always, traditionally, been aimed at a younger audience and it troubles me that you now have to go out of your way to find kid-appropriate books, especially ones that aren't comedic in nature.

      The art by Jorge Jimenez and Alejandro Sanchez is quite good and fits the material well. Jimenez has a very exaggerated style that sometimes rubs me the wrong way but it works here. He also, at times, struggles with facial work in some of the wider panels, but these kinds of problems are few and far between. The last issue in this volume was drawn by Alisson Borges with colors by Hi-Fi Design. Borges pencils are even more cartoony then Jimenez but it's not too distracting as the last issue is basically a one-off, taking place after the main plot has been resolved. The plotting throughout the story is quite creative, particularly the panel breakups during the action scenes.

     Super Sons, Volume 1: When I Grow Up is a solid start to Tomasi's run. I'm exicited to see what else I missed, especially as the quality of the current Superman title has flagged considerably in Tomasi's absence.

Score: 8/10