Superman: Son of Kal-El #9 – Tom Taylor, Writer; Bruno Redondo, Artist; Wade Von Grawbadger, Inker; Adriano Lucas, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: Most crossovers are explosive and deal with major story changes, but Tom Taylor—crossing over his two biggest ongoings at the moment—has taken a different route. This story mostly focuses on the unique bond between Dick Grayson and Jon Kent, who knew each other at two very different stages of Jon’s life thanks to his accelerated aging. Last issue, Dick showed up to help Jon with his crisis of faith after Henry Bendix framed him for the Metropolis disaster, only for them to be pulled into a crisis involving the murder of superheroes. The mysterious villains known as The Rising, agents of Bendix, hunted down the former Titan Risk and killed him—and now they’re on the trail of their next target. This leads Dick and Jon to set up a trap with Dick as bait and Jon waiting in the wings—and they easily handle the villains. But as it soon turns out, that may have been Bendix’s plan all along.
One of the scariest things about Henry Bendix as a villain is just how willing he is to sacrifice his own high-level pawns in service of a greater goal—in this case, demonizing the new Superman to the world. While the action part of the story wraps up about halfway through, the best scenes are dialogue-heavy and take place mostly in the Kent apartment. Taylor is able to excellently cut through to the core of what drives Jon as a character, including one of the most awkward elements—those five years he spent in an odd limbo-prison on Earth-3. Some of the decisions he makes with that period may be controversial, but the scenes discussing it are a genuine gut-punch. I’m also loving how Taylor uses The Truth, Jay’s secret info-network, to pull in other characters including Dick and Lois. This book was a risk from the start—any replacement hero storyarc is—but this one is knocking it out of the park so far.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
