Napalm Lullaby

You know how the story goes:  A kindly couple in the midwest finds a baby with powers in a strange capsule that crashed on Earth and raises him according to their values.  Cut to 50 years later and now the world has become a religious fascism with those who unquestioningly believe in its leader living in his light while those who don’t are cast out to make their way in squalor.  That’s how Sarah and Sam grew up, even with their own unique set of powers to aid them, but that’s about to change.  They’ve found a way into his holy land and are planning on finally putting him to sleep with all the intensity of a, well… you know.

This volume collects all ten issues of “Napalm Lullaby” by writer Rick Remender and artist Bengal, the same team who brought us “Death or Glory.”  If you’re concerned that this means something went wrong along the way to put the entire series in one collection, then let me tell you that your concerns are justified.  This series starts off decently enough with its “Superman, But With Added Religious Zealotry” premise quickly established and off to the races for the first six issues for some zippy action and familiar social commentary.  It feels like these first six issues were meant to be the actual first volume of this title, and they’re alright in a way that feels like Remender and Bengal were pleasantly coasting on their previous successes.

Then the setup changes in issue seven and keeps changing until the end of the series, which implies that things clearly weren’t working and the creators needed to find a way to wrap things up as quickly as possible.  They do that in a way which doesn’t come off as satisfying with the last-page-twist aiming for a level of profundity it really doesn’t earn.  This failure also has the added effect of making Remender’s usual diatribes about what’s wrong with the world (and the comics industry) a lot more irritating as you can see that he’s not going to go anywhere interesting with them.  Bengal’s art is a stylish delight throughout, particularly with the action scenes, but I can only recommend this to the hardest of hardcore fans for these creators and hope that they can do better next time – because it’d be really hard to do any worse.