In the fourth volume of Tomasi and Gleason's run on
Superman a lot of the plot threads they had been building up are finally paid off...
It begins with relative calm, as Clark and his family enjoy a pleasant evening. Then Batman shows up Damien, questioning why Superboy's powers have not developed further. Because of his unique Kryptonian/human physiology, Batman believes that Jon should be on his way to becoming even more powerful then his father, yet his development seems to have stalled. The reason for this is revealed in this arc.
Batman believes that environmental factors may be contributing to Jon's issue. He decides to investigate their neighbor Cobb's cow, to see if her milk may not be what it seems. He is proven right as milk turns into black goo and envelops him. Clark, wondering what Bruce has gotten up to, decides to investigate himself, taking Damien and Jon along to find him. Their search is interrupted when a giant alien monster attacks Hamilton. After a fierce battle, Jon kills the monster, much to his father's chagrin.
Damien then inadvertently informs Superman that Jon and Kathy's adventure in the Dead Man's Swamp (back in Volume 3). Clark is disappointed to find out that Jon disobeyed him and then hid it from him. He goes to search the Dead Man's Swamp for Batman on his own, leaving Jon and Damien behind. Damien urges Jon to continue the search on their own, leading to a fight between the two super-sons. Kathy shows up to break it up and revels that she has telepathic powers, strangling Damien with her mind.
Lois, who has seen the alien attack on TV, decides to investigate herself. After talking to Cobb, who feigns ignorance, she goes to town where she finds a secret lair with monitors showing Jon. Someone has been watching him. Then Candice, who runs the local paper, shows up despite seemingly having been injured during the attack. Suspicious, Lois pepper sprays her and runs back home only to find Candice there along with the mayor and other townsfolk. Realizing that something strange is going on, Lois tries to alert the Justice League only to find that Mayor Goodman has stolen the communicator. They try to capture her but she is able to escape using the Batmobile, which Bruce left behind.
Superman, still searching for Batman, finds him, Robin, Frankenstein, and the Bride, along with others, being kept in stasis in the labyrinthine pathways under the cellar of house in Dead Man's Swamp. As Lois drives away from the house, Mr. Cobb shows up and telepathically dismantles it. He tells Lois that he's preparing her and her family for a new world. When she tries to shoot him he crushes her weapon telepathically. Hearing her scream, Superman flies off to see what's wrong. Her confronts Cobb, declaring that never really trusted him.
Cobb claims, again, that he was only trying to protect Jon and Kathy and he refuses to tell Superman where Jon is. When another alien monster emerges, Superman restrains Cobb and goes off to face it. He finds Mayor Goodman and some of the other townsfolk fighting with the creatures. They use lethal force and try to persuade Superman to do the same. Calling themselves The Super Elite, they say that "he" taught them to and that "he" will teach Jon as well. As the fighting continues Lois, seemingly, loses a leg
to flying debris and Superman cauterizes the wound.
Jon, strapped to chair, watches all of this in horror as a mysterious person, quickly revealed to be Manchester Black (the villain from Joe Kelly's semi iconic Superman story
What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way? which was later adapted into the 2011 film
Superman vs. The Elite), talks to him. It is then revealed in a flashback that Kathy, Mr. Cobb and the Super Elite are actually aliens. Kathy watched her home planet be decimated by the Kroog (the same race as the alien criminal from the
Super-Monster) and Black offered her and her grandfather protection. The Super Elite are his new team, they how they came to join with him is never really explained.
Back in
the present Cobb is shaken by what has transpired and demands to talk to Black. Clark has taken Lois to
hospital where the staff are blind to what's happening, believing the alien attack to be an earthquake. Clearly Black is messing with peoples' heads. Superman then discovers that there is an entire network of tunnels beneath Hamilton where Black and the Super Elite are hiding their ship. Manchester Black then shows up along with Jon and he and Superman fight. It is revealed that Black has rendered Jon's
powers inert by scrambling his brain. He tries to persuade Jon to kill Kroog but he refuses saying “I'd die first”.
Mr. Cobb and Kathy then show up and fight against Black who
kills Cobb. Superman then frees Batman,
Robin, Frankenstein and the Bride as Black mind controls Jon, making him attack Superman along
with the Super Elite. Batman and Superman try to talk him down but he is too far under Black's control. As Jon and Black quickly subdue Frankenstein and the Bride Baman tells Clark that the familial bond between
he and Jon might be able to overcome Black's and influence and Superman draws Jon away from the fight.
Then, the quantum reactor in Black's ship is disrupted and begins giving off arcs
of space-time. This allows Jon to sees other timelines and he is able to break free of Black's control. He tries to kill him but Lois
intervenes and Jon sees that her lost leg was an
illusion conjured by Black. He and Kathy then defeat Black by combining their powers into a telepathic attack.
After the battle the Super Elite agree to stay and guard their ship to keep the rift that has been created from worsening. They realize that Manchester Black was wrong and they help to rebuild Hamilton to make amends. Kathy, left without any mentor, also decides to stick around. Manchester Black, though still alive, seemingly has no neural activity and is left on ice in the Fortress of Solitude. It is revealed at the end of the book that he transferred his consciousness into Kathy's cow, Bessie.
Like
Multiplicity this arc feels a little rushed. There's a conflict of ideas set up between Manchester Black and Superman that is never adequately explored. Once the Super Elite see what Black is capable of, they immediately turn against him. The writers seem to assume that Superman's position, that killing is always wrong, is the correct one and needs no justification. I'm kind of ok with that as I do generally wish more modern Superman stories would simply allow the character to be himself without a lot of psychoanalytical hand-wringing, but if your going to bring these issues up you should probably do a little more to explore them.
Jon goes through a bit of a character arc here. He's is afraid of using his powers which allows Black to more easily manipulate him by making it look like the people he cares about will suffer if he and Superman don't take more drastic action. Ironically, it's only when Black forces his powers to fully emerge that he sees that he can control them. He reveals to Kathy at the end of the story that he is no longer afraid. Taking Kathy's hand, he then takes flight for the first time.
Tomasi and Gleason are at their best when writing the small human moments like early on in the story, as Clark does work on the farm and takes a minute to appreciate his family and the home they've made for themselves and then near the end when he and Lois watch Jon and Kathy fly up into the sky. Their are also small moments and lines dispersed throughout the story where their grasp of these characters really shines through. Lois shouting "Jonathan Samuel Kent" to get through to her son before he murders Black is just perfect. So is Superman's speech to Jon after he kills one of the alien monsters, "Listen, son. One day you're going to have to choose what to do with your own fear... whatever you choose, right or wrong, it's going to change people's lives. It's going to change the world and it's going to change you."
The art is pretty good but, once again, it was drawn by two different art teams. Patrick Gleason penciled the first two issues, then Doug Mahnke did the next two and both worked on the final issue. It's somewhat distracting but, at this point I'm used to it. At least, in this case, Mahnke's issues tended to be the darker, more action driven ones, providing a contrast to Gleason's, which are the quitter more character driven ones. It's really distracting in the final issue though, where you literally have Mahnke's art on one page and then Gleason's on the next. Inkers include Mick Gray, Joe Prado, Ray McCarthy and Jaime Mendoza while Wil Quintana and John Kalisz provided the colors for most of the story, though some of it was done digitally by HiFi Design.
In the end, Back Dawn is an important chapter in Tomasi and Gleason's run on Superman, even if it's middling in quality.
Score: 7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment