Comic Book Review: Superman #694

Written By James Robinson

Art By Javier Pina

Plot

Mon-El has escaped captivity from General Lane and is back in the crime fighting life style.  Everything is new for Mon-El as he attempts to change his voice and receives a new costume that resembles the Man of Steel’s in every way, but reversed.  Mon-El wants to be the symbol of hope that Superman was and become a worthy “replacement” in Superman’s absence.  But can Mon-El be the “carbon copy” of Superman he hopes to be, or should he find his own direction?  Should he be the Superman Metropolis never had?

My Thoughts

I can’t figure out where to take this review.  The current storylines that have been bestowed onto the Superman title are drastically wearing me down.  I would have dropped this title a while ago and gone strictly with World of New Krypton except that I subscribed to the title, so I get it no matter what.  Robinson is continually beating down the title with a rubber mallet desperately trying to make the stories relatable to his reader’s.   However with every issue, sadly, Robinson goes beyond what is necessary and fails to give Mon-El the humanity that I’m sure he’s attempting to achieve.

Now I do like the new costume, despite the “S” symbol attached to his suits left pectoral.  It is new and creative, yet resembles the suit worn by the Man of Steel enough to be more than acceptable.  But the means behind the new costume is less than appealing.  According to Mon-El, General Lane has corrupted the Superman legacy and it needs to be put back into a positive light among the people.  So Mon-El decides to revamp himself, change his voice and be something that can help remind the people of Metropolis that Superman is, and will always be, the savior of the city.  But this was explained in a very long, drawn out, boring bit of dialectical jargon between him and Superboy in a flash back, consisting of the two of them sitting in a poorly drawn kitchen while eating breakfast.  It was unnecessary and bored me to tears.

Speaking of art, how much worse can it get?  I feel like one of the kids at the middle school I work could have drawn and inked this garbage.  The only really good artistic expression in this book was Mitch carrying a small child out of a fiery mess, and it was really good!  But every other page did not help me engage the story in the least, and having good art is necessary to help boost a story up from it’s repulsiveness.

Overall

The worst comic of the month.  I’ll be so happy to see Superman come back from New Krypton and save this title from humiliation and low sales.  But I think the only way to really fix this is to exile James Robinson from ever writing for Superman again and arrest Javier Pina for creating such awful artwork.

0 out of 5 stars

Next Issue Coming December 23, 2009

Part 2 of Man of Valor! Metropolis gets a chance to see the new Mon-El in action. But now the stakes are raised even higher and the action escalates as Mon finally goes mano-a-mano against the Parasite! This is a battle that's been brewing since Mon's emergence on Earth and now it explodes into the streets and skies of the city.

Plus, with Mon-El's secret identity publicly known, how will the Science Police react to him now that they know he's been living among them all this time? All this plus the return of Natasha Irons and the fate of Steel!