Years of experimenting on Kal won’t leave him in a particularly friendly state towards just about anyone…
What They Say:
FLASH QUESTION: Who is behind Project Superman?
The Review:
After an issue that dealt largely with events in the past with Sinclair and General Lane to some extent, Project Superman moves the timeline forward to just twenty years ago as we see a young boy that’s a pretty big experiment designed to give the country the hero that it needs that’s under their control. With Sam Lane running the show, he tries to put a pretty human element to things in order to deal with Kal in as honest a way as possible. Unfortunately, there’s a conflict with how the project is being run as the woman that’s doing most of the science continues to refer to him as subject one and that’s all, dehumanizing him as much as possible in her pursuit of science. While it’s a traditional story element, it’s one that still feels too force and just doesn’t resonate well after all these years of seeing it play out.
While the story is seen through Kal’s eyes, it’s told in narration by subject zero who has long been held captive here and thought to be out of the picture for the most part. Over the years, because of the connection between him and Kal, he was able to form a way to communicate with him and to mold Kal along the path to helping him out when he built up enough strength to bust out. Watching Kal grow up in this situation isn’t pretty since it does so much psychological damage to him which is twisted more so by subject zero. Lane himself tries to balance it out as best as he can, since he lost his own family to a large degree and looks on Kal as a surrogate son of sorts. You can appreciate the relationship as we see it here, which isn’t as deep as it could be with a bit more room to work, but it gets the gist of it out there for an origin story.
The story progression has its moments here, such as how they take away his dog to try and get him to do more of what they want as he starts to resist more due to subject zero. I really liked the use of the Luthor’s here in brief since it’s kind of cold and brutal in a proper way and conveyed well in short form. The same can be said about when Lois gets involved when she comes to visit her father only to get caught up in the breakout by subject zero. He brings some menace to things and a really interesting design that speaks of power and brutality which gets doled out as events unfold. It takes an almost comical and abrupt turn though when Lane tries to end everything, which is unfortunate since it could have gone pretty interesting, and it instead puts everything into a new holding pattern for the final issue and what we saw in the main Flashpoint series itself.
Digital Notes:
This digital edition of the Project Superman from Comixology features just the first printing cover of the issue with no additional extras included in the book.
In Summary:
Going in a completely different direction in a way from the first issue, Project Superman has a book filled with potential but also familiarity as we see a particular take on how the creation of a superhero using alien information would go. It’s a somewhat standard origin story in a way that we’ve seen many times over the years with some fun little twists to it since it’s operating on the Superman dynamic and draws from the mythos with some main changes to things. While I would have preferred a bit more time spent with both him and subject zero, I did like what was here even if it doesn’t seem like it’s really going to go anywhere significant. Kal’s a cute character here with some real problems and the narration is done well enough here that you really need to pay attention to it unlike most other books.
Grade: B-
