Kneel Before Zod #4 – Joe Casey, Writer; Dan McDaid, Artist; David Baron, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: There’s never been a series quite like this one, featuring an unrepentant villain with such a militaristic personality, so it’s hard to see where this is going—but this issue makes clear it’ll be a particularly interesting journey. Last issue saw Zod repel the Khund invasion on New Kandor, but at a high cost—the life of his wife Ursa. And as he lays her to rest this issue, only two issues after she essentially attempted a coup of his leadership (with a very interesting ironic visual callback), it’s clear that any humanity he had in him is gone. He recommits his AI, Eradicator, to a singular purpose, sends the bottled city of Kandor far away to an unknown fate, and prepares to launch a one-man war on the Khund Armada. This battle delivers some great visuals immediately, but it also seems a little odd to make the Khund the first main villains of the series—after all, they never quite had much characterization.
But it all makes sense after reading this issue. Because as Zod confronts the Khund leader, the truth—and potentially the main conflict of the issue is revealed. The decision to make Zod’s conflict with Lor-Zod the main thrust of this series is fascinating, because at first glance I’m not sure who the lesser of two evils is. Unlike Ozai and Zuko, this doesn’t seem like a case of Lor being turned off by his father’s ruthlessness—he likes giant weapons just as much as anyone, and resented being left out of the loop more than anything. Will his own adventures with Sinson change that? We’ll see, but as of this issue it seems any hope for a father-son reconciliation is dead and buried and the two are on a collision course—without Ursa around to potentially mediate between them and knock some heads together. I may not have anyone to root for in this series, but I am definitely interested to see what happens next.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
