Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Parker
Art: Sam Lofti, John Rauch, Michael McKone
Colors: Romulo Fajardo, Jr.
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
What They Say:
Story 1 – Superman and Lois respond to an emergency call at the mines outside of Metropolis. Can Superman save the miners from a horde of mysterious rock creatures? And where did these creatures come from?
Story 2 – Brainiac unleashes a monstrous creature on the Portland airport. Can Superman stop it before it spawns and overwhelms the planet!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The latest installment of this run that pulls from the DC Giants gives us two short stories in one issue. Jeff Parker writes both of them and ties them together thematically as they’re both about the Brainiac of the modern-day period. The opening story has Sam Lofti and John Rauch handling the art duties while Michael McKone handles the second one. Both of them look good but are definitely leaning into the style of the opponents they face and have a kind of earthy feeling about them. I know these were produced independently previously but I wish Parker had just had a full issue to do a Brainiac story instead of two short ones that underperform a bit.
The opening tale is an interesting one in that we get Superman and Lois working together as she got a call for help from a mine that she did a story on previously. It turns out a number of the miners have gone missing and it’s an ideal situation for Superman to help out with. The dynamic with Lois is a lot of fun as she’s right in on the action herself and we see them going into the cafe to discover that it’s filled with decent-sized creepy crawlies that are trying to bond to him and Lois – and did so to the rest of the miners. It’s got some nice moments of panicking over what’s going on and figuring out how to deal with it, which has Superman playing it big with the local water tower, but it sets up that the villain behind it all was Brainiac as part of his plan to toy with Earth just a bit more.
The second tale focuses on Braniac as well but in a more direct way as its latest experiment being performed on Earth catches Superman’s attention early enough. This is actually the last one by Brainiac that he’s doing but it’s basically releasing a creature of some size and power that had its progress halted when he captured it elsewhere. It’s a little tough to read with the color design used for the lettering, which has a lot of symbols mixed in, but it doesn’t make too much of an impact since so much of this story is just about the action. Superman knows that the creature is just blindly attacking so it’s mostly about him trying to stop it from causing more damage and calming down the situation so he can find out where it belongs. It just delays the larger fight with Brainiac in the end, which is expected, but it’s a solid fight installment made tough to read because of the lettering.
In Summary:
I continue to enjoy these Superman stories that are disconnected from larger events and team books, giving readers a chance to just have smaller adventures and deal with a range of villains without it extended over multiple issues. This one gives us some fun Brainiac time overall but it’s more about the creatures that Superman has to face more than anything else. The opening one works just a touch better for me since it involves Lois and doesn’t have nearly as much problematic lettering as the second one does with its design. Both are fun but neither really hit their stride or stick the landing in a way that makes them strong enough to stand against some of the other recent tales.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Kindle
Release Date: June 29th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
