***THIS REVIEW WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON THE NERD BLITZ PATREON***
After reviewing Volume 1, I got to a thunkin’ about the rest of this series and where it went.
So I got on the world wide internet web and decided to have a poke around to see if I could possibly stumble across Volume 2.
After much searching, he answer was yes I could, and it was quite a steal for a hardcover!
So now the question that desperately needs answering has reared it’s, possibly, ugly head: After how much I dug volume 1, can volume 2 stand up and deliver a story that is anywhere near as good?
I dare say we find out, gang.
This is your big bad and super ***SPOILER ALERT***
Cover by Shane Davis: A more detailed and dynamic rendering of a panel inside, it’s pretty damn gorgeous.
It also made me a bit worried about the story that follows as this does bring to mind a more unhinged Superman with the balled up fists, burning skulls, and glowing eyes.
While it looks incredibly cool, this is bordering on a Superman that I’m not sure I want to read about.
We shall see.
Art by Shane Davis: Goddamn, this is beautiful work.
Yet again, these splash pages are just breathtaking glory shots that would make incredible posters.
The one above is my particular favorite.
Shane Davis’s work is just so dynamic and fluid.
His detail and designs are great.
His take on Parasite is monstrous and disgustingly scary.
But the human elements don’t get lost in the shuffle either.
Damn great work.
Story by J. Michael Straczynski: Starting to settle into his new found roles as a Reporter and Superhero, Clark Kent’s life is starting to stabilize.
But with a neighbor and a coworker in hot pursuit of Clark for different reasons and a muderer looking for Superman, his life is about to get a whole lot crazier once again.
Okay, I gotta get this off my chest because I’m bursting at the seams, I have a problem that is starting to form with this series and if it continues in the 3rd volume it may lose all of the good will that I’ve long held because of that 1st volume.
Last time Clark had a sort of reason to let a villain die, but this time not so much.
There is a tyrannical warlord on the island of Borada who threatens to kill citizens unless Superman leaves.
Later, Superman returns and pretty much leads the rebels in a revolt against the warlord.
That’s all good.
My problem comes when Superman, in a page out of the Batman Begins book, basically tells the dude “I’m not going to kill you, but I don’t have to save you.” and flies off as guntoting rebels close in on the dude.
That is not Superman, he doesn’t leave people to die.
Does this Warlord deserve to die?
By the Doom scale: yes, painfully and drawn out.
But I am not Superman.
Just as Ma Kent said about wearing a mask, if Superman does shit like this it makes him seem untrustworthy and unhinged.
How he handles a piece of shit beating his hooker neighbor feels far more Supermany than this shit.
He snatches the dude out of her apartment, flies him to probably Alaska and tells him “there’s a village to the west, start walking and you should make it by nightfall.”
That is how Superman handles assholes, he teaches them a lesson so that maybe, just maybe, they will come back and be better.
I can stomach and even root for that, but I will not tolerate some rogue shit that sees him damn near pulling the trigger himself.
Now, with that anger out of the way, let’s focus on the good.
Which, thankfully, is pretty much everything else.
Despite my bitching above, we do see a great example of Clark’s humanity when we watch how he interacts with and later profiles one of his Bob Dylan loving and heroin addicted neighbors.
He never treats this guy like a piece of shit, he engages and treats him with dignity, as he should, and it’s pretty wonderful.
The 2 pages of the Daily Planet that recap Parasite and profile the neighbor are, yet again, a highlight of this volume.
It just feels like the smartest possible way to wrap up the story and make the world feel more real, my only complaint being that I just want more of it.
I would love it if DC would put out a weekly or monthly Daily Planet newspaper to catch you up on all of their current stories, I think it would add so much depth to them and make for a fun challenge for the writing team.
And imagine the strips and shit they could do to add a bit of levity.
But, back on task, I still love this newspaper feature.
I feel like a spent a large amount of this review bitching about 2 pages, but I did dig this book overall.
Parasite was always one of my favorite villains on Superman: The Animated Series, mostly because you could see what Superman would be like if he wasn’t such a purely good character and used his powers to be an asshole.
This story gives you that too, and you get a bit more color on the character as well.
The bottomline, gang, is that while some of this story is on thin ice, I do dig roughly 85 percent or more of it.
Straczynski still seems to have a fairly steady, though slightly loosened, grasp on the character and Davis is still delivering in a big bad way.
I can only hope that Volume 3 fixed my issues and managed to bounce back to being a fully enjoyable ride with one of the best characters in all of fiction.
Hopefully I can find out before too long.
Special thanks to @ACFerrell1976 for her continued editorial assistance.
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