Superman vol. 4: Black Dawn

Yeah, I think I’m done with this series.  While there was plenty of early praise for Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason’s take on “Superman” at the start of “Rebirth” I never really felt that it measured up.  With the payoff this fourth volume tries to deliver for the threads that the co-writers have established in the first three, it looks like this series never will.  Things start of promisingly enough with Batman and Robin paying a visit to Superman and his family to discuss the ongoing problems with Jonathan Kent’s powers.  It’s all downhill from there as Batman is captured by evil milk, Jonathan and his dad find out the secret their neighbors have been hiding, and an old foe of Superman’s is revealed as the mastermind behind it all.

My main response to most of the developments here can be summed up as “Was this necessary?”  I don’t think that a good portion of the Hamilton citizenry needed the kind of twist this volume springs upon us, particularly since the cast was working just fine when I thought they were regular humans.  This still comes off as a genius twist when compared against the reveal of the main villain here.  It’s treated as a very big deal, and maybe it is if you’ve got a special place in your heart for Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke’s “Action Comics” #775 where the baddie made his debut.  If you don’t, and there’s a pretty good chance you’ve never heard of this guy if that’s the case, then the big reveal is going to fall completely flat for you.  It may even fall flat regardless because all he has going for him here is Very Eeeeevil Cockney Britishness.

The good news is that Gleason and Mahnke do a pretty good job with the art, even with their contrasting styles.  I also wanted to mention that while there’s one sequence in Mahnke’s work that looks like he had to bash it out in a couple of hours… I actually liked it.  It’s more in line with his earlier, chunkier work and has more personality to it than the slick style he’s adopted for “Superman.”  It’s still better work than this story deserves.