“Superman, Son of the Demon: A Mind is a Terrible Thing”
Creative Staff:
Story: Jason Aaron
Art: Carmine Di Giandomenico
Colors: Ulises Arreola
Letterer: Becca Carey
What They Say:
His stolen alien technology is at the heart of Lazarus Corp’s global success. Buthe operates out of a seedy lair, packed with bottled cities…cities he tortures relentlessly, just to hear the faint chorus of screams. Who is the mysterious Brainiac? And why is he so interested in the Last Son of Krypton?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the Batman and Wonder Woman books out as part of the launch trio of titles, Absolute Superman takes the other part of the DC trinity to showcase their plan for the character in this new timeline. The book has a strong team behind it as expected with Jason Aaron mapping out the story. I’ve enjoyed a lot of his work over the years but am always just a bit wary of how big in scale that they’ll go while missing on some good character material here. Carmine Di Giandomenico steps in for this issue and it’s another strong entry, though certainly different from what we had. But as the story shifts it works well to engage in the way that it does. It’s all supported by great color design from Ulises Arreola and the lettering design from Becca Carey that just elevates it all.
Expanding on the world of Superman is definitely welcome here and this issue basically spends all of its time on Brainiac. The framing is fairly familiar as we get the facility he operates out of in Nevada being infiltrated by a group of Omega Men who think they have the upper hand, but are wary since the place seems empty. Of course, the nature of Brainiac means that it’s never actually empty and he’s able to not just kill three of them and experiment on the fourth, he does it in the most Clive Barker-style way possible from a distance. But we see through this the madness of Brainiac as he operates under the direction of Ra’s Al Ghul for his ends. What he’s been tasked with now is to figure out the Superman problem but there doesn’t seem to be a solution he can find through the people he’s taken control of or the various species in the shrunken cities that he has.
What becomes interesting is his relating his origin story, basically, where he was a Brainiac born just to shovel refuse into the pit. That refuse being other Brainiac bodies that have been destroyed. This is something that he does for over 130 years, with some of that refuse still being alive, until no refuse was dropped into his room. That has him exploring more and discovering that he’s actually on a ship and the “first” Brainiac has died. This opens the galaxy to him, though he seems to avoid interacting with the Collective that exists throughout the galaxy. We don’t see how he ended up on Earth or under Al Ghul’s control, but it’s a pretty solid horror story that we get as his origin story plays out and how insane he is now. And that he’s operating outside of the Collective isn’t a great thing either, though he does use them to get the key information he needs that will give him an edge against Superman. But what a price and what a disturbing life, if it can be called that.
In Summary:
Absolute Superman doesn’t have any Superman for the most part here and that’s just fine. What we get is something that digs into Brainiac’s origins pretty well here and it makes him tragic and understandable, though obviously you don’t side with him and what he does. But you can ese why his path has made him this way and why the madness only grows. A familiar sight among many variations of Brainiac over the decades, though this has a real haunting quality to it. I do like getting some quality time to dig into this and to explore more aspects of what he’s up to for his boss, and it gets pretty disturbing with what he does to the Omega Men that show up here. It certainly is grim and very well illustrated with some detail that makes the whole thing really horrifying. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of how this Brainiac operates, especially with its current captirve.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics
Release Date: May 7th, 2025
MSRP: $4.99
