SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN #8 (Doomed, Part II)
This too has Superman taking a back seat in the story. And it works great.
In Doomed #1, Superman laments all the lies he needs to tell to protect his friends and colleagues from his life as Superman. Here, as Superman’s Doomsday infection grows worse, the neat compartments that Clark Kent has been able to build around his life start to crumble.
For Swamp Thing scribe Charles Soule, this comic take the term Wonder Women to new heights:
- Diana — Wonder Woman — is making the rounds. She goes to Clark’s office to speak with Cat Grant. She tracks down Lois Lane. She runs into Batman.
- Cat Grant, Clark Kent’s business partner, is clearly interested in him. She is shocked to learn that Clark has a girlfriend. She tosses a low blow at Diana when she says that Clark never mentioned her, which is deftly swatted away by Diana.
- Diana catches up with Lois Lane, who is on more of a mission for Brainiac than the Daily Planet and gets herself tangled up with soldiers. Diana helps her go free, and learns that there is something not quite right with Lois.
But we see how much Diana herself has also been placed into a compartment. She searches Clark’s public life. She searches the Fortress of Solitude. She ignores Smallville because everyone there is still in a coma.
It is Bruce Wayne, Batman, that shows he really knows Clark. He tells Diana to check his apartment — “where he feels most human.”
The same Superman we see in Doomed is here too. This is not a hero fighting a never-ending battle. Superman is acquiescing to the infection. He wants to be killed. He wants Diana to kill him. Fighting the infection doesn’t occurs as a thought until Diana convinces him of it.
Remember that Doomed is a my-own-worst-enemy story. That means we get to see some of Superman’s most base feelings. And he has a lot of them, it seems. What’s great about the execution of this — all seething with true feeling from artists Tony Daniel (Batman R.I.P.) and Matt “Batt” Banning (Green Lantern Corps) — is that there is real history in which Superman is reacting. This is not just random grumpiness for the sake of the story. He has legitimate gripes with the two people trying to help him.
- JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED #1 – This book didn’t feel like a DC story. Jeff (Animal Man) Lemire‘s new title has the same exact feel as Marvel’s Avengers #1, but this book is poorly executed compared to that. Avengers #1 gave breakdown’s of who the characters are and what they were doing an why. United doesn’t really do that. It assumes, for example, that you know who Adam Strange is or that a Zeta Beam teleports people across the expanses of the galaxy. However, there is careful attention to telling the reader where they are as the story changes settings, and that’s done in a very Marvel way. The story is fun and light hearted, and it is absent of the typical weight that accompanies a DC story. That’s not a bad thing. The cast of characters, even the often weighty J’onn J’onzz the Martian Manhunter, are perfect for light-hearted romps. 3/5.
⅘ Ray guns