Telekinetic bad boy The Chained continues his vendetta against Lex Luthor and while the Super Family do a good job fending him off, a secret revealed could shake one member to the core.
Superman #8 – legacy number 851 – begins with a look back to the childhood of The Chained, and the day young Sammy Stryker became a metahuman.
In the here and now Superman visits Lex, in hospital after an attack masterminded by Dr Pharm and Mr Graft, who want The Chained to join their new Lex Luthor Revenge Squad. He’s not keen, so Dr Pharm or Mr Graft – I still have no idea who’s who – gives him a rundown of Lex’s dastardly doings in the several years since Lex buried The Chained under one of his buildings.
Superman, meanwhile, catches up to Lex, who catches Superman up on The Chained’s background. He’s interrupted by the man himself, who proceeds to grab Lex’s daughter Lena with his powers and wrap Superman and Superboy Conner Kent with the massive chains he prefers to a pet dog. The pair turn this move against The Chained, dragging him away from the hospital and non-combatants. As the fight resumes, Superman and Lex chat over the latter’s watch radio, and the super scientist shares some knowledge.
He also reveals just what substance he used to defeat The Chained all those years ago, sparking Superman into coming up with a plan which could spell his end.
Writer Joshua Williamson continues to balance action and character marvellously, with the revelation about Superboy’s origins a great touch – I never understood how Cadmus scientists gave him tactile TK to help him mimic some of Superman’s powers, now I know. If we have to keep the Geoff Johns retcon about Conner being half Superman, half Lex, at least Williamson has done something useful with it. And that Sammy flashback, as well as showing us a young Lex looking dapper with hair, also includes a cameo by Carl ‘Moosie’ Draper, future Super-foe the Master Jailer. Even if he doesn’t show up in the current day, I’m always glad to see Lana Lang’s number one fan.
Something else I like is Superman’s use of what I assume is Young Person Speak.
Other things I like in Williamson’s script include an intriguing reference to Metropolis mystery maid Marilyn Moonlight, the presence of Lena and gruesome Grandma Letitia, and Superman’s sheer smarts – this isn’t the Man of Steel as average guy, this is a brawny boffin, able to tap into his experience and use whatever comes to hand in pursuit of justice.
Artists Gleb Melnikov and Norm Rapmund are retained from last issue, presumably penciling and inking, while we also have David Baldeón and (I no longer believe this) regular artist Jamal Campbell contributing. I see three Campbell pages at the end but the rest looks like Melnikov, and likely Rapmund, to me… could someone with a better artistic eye pinpoint Badeón? Whoever does what, it’s all good stuff, with lots of work going into transferring Williamson’s refreshingly busy script into grabby graphics. Favourite moments include Superman landing one on The Chained while telling him just who he is, and Superboy providing the perfect follow-up.
With Jamal Campbell providing full-colour art for his pages, Alejandro Sanchez colours the rest of the book and a very nice job he does too. Dave Sharpe contributes nattily neat lettering.
Campbell’s cover image is a winner, though I’d have put the big, blocky ‘CHAINED’ at the bottom – the artist seems to have left some room for it – and used a colour other than red for the logo telescoping; it’s a little lost amidst the sea of red that runs across the image.
Ah, back-seat editors, ain’t we stinkers? Overall, this is another great read for Superman fans, deepening existing players, shaping new ones, and giving us character-based action via clever, good-looking visuals. I recommend a read.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
Great review. That last page was garish. Bring back the indestructible outfit!
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First, let me say—all this wonky numbering never, ever made much sense to me. The constantly restarting titles always made it difficult to figure out a good reading order. For me, I like a title that has a bit of history behind it, and I am more inclined to read it.
When DC launched its latest revamp with Dawn—I was more hopeful that it would be more quality than hype. While the movie side and other parts of the greater DC are a mess—to be kind—there has been a real effort to make DC… well, DC again.
It started back in 2016 with Rebirth, and you can connect the dots to DC’s Dawn initiative. To me, Dawn is about giving fans what they want—not necessarily a name writer or flooding the market with subpar comic books—but going back to the core of the mythos.
No better example is Superman (and Action Comics), where they are taking the best of the Superman mythos and finding fresh stories to tell. It’s nice to see the FULL Superman family more prominent in stories instead of ignoring characters because they have been problematic in the past—I’m talking to you, Conner, and Power Girl!
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That’s a point! Did it vanish officially, in a story?
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I wish I knew. I don’t if Superman had a career as Superboy, if he and Lex Luthor were friends in Smallville, what became of the indestructible cape, or if any of that Jor-El nonsense is still in play. DC has been a mess the last few years.
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I can actually get behind the idea of Superman wanting to save Lex Luthor’s life much more than I ever could with Batman always preventing the Joker from getting killed. Over the past 30 years DC has basically turned the Joker into Hannibal Lecter in greasepaint, an utterly irredeemable, unstoppable monster with hundreds of victims, and it feels like everyone except Batman would be very happy to see him dead.
But with Luthor, well, yeah, he’s also definitely committed a whole bunch of horrible crimes, but the writers on the Superman books have done a pretty good job of selling the idea that Luthor nevertheless has a certain moral ambiguity, and that Clark still sees him as a former friend from long ago, and that he really hopes that one day Luthor might reform, and even as a convicted felon who’s in jail his genius can still be used to help humanity.
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You’re spot on, Ben. Superman’s wanting to save Luthor gives me lovely classic Silver and Bronze vibes, particularly with regard to Cary Bates’ work – he wrote my favourite Lex, remember the business with his family on Lexor. So sad.
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I agree that this was a fine issue with an interesting end and The Chained is an interesting character with an interesting visual style. One thing I am having trouble with is that this book, and the rest of the Supes books, have developed X-Men syndrome in which so many characters are just all over the place and it seems to dilute the story. At least for me.
Give Action Comics over to the rest of the Superfamily and let Clark have this book to himself (With wife and children, of course)
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I agree. Superboy has a reason to be in this story, everyone else, less so. I do think we need an untold story showing the Super Family deciding to work as a unit and get terrible costumes. Give me capes!
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I always assumed that Superboy’s tactile telekinesis was based on Byrne’s ideas about how Superman flew and could hold up large objects without them falling apart, that it was basically telekinesis but very limited to things in contact with the user’s body. I haven’t read this issue yet (I get a monthly parcel) but looking forward to it!
Stu
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That would make sense, Stu, I thought they were somehow linked to Dubbilex, wasn’t he also created with TK etc by Cadmus? I hope you enjoy the book when you get it.
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The whole “Superman working with Lex” has a sort of high-concept conceit, an arbitrary shakeup feel, that I want to not like it. But I do think the Lex-Superman axis in this series has been working. I haven’t loved/bought the larger “Supercorp” aspect, but I can tolerate that. While I think this book has less pure heart than Johnson’s Action, I’m enjoying this run even more than I’d expected.
The Chained is a good villain. (Lame name, and why has everyone started calling him that? Are they reading the cover copy?) His backstory is great, and the continuity tie-ins are really smart, and he isn’t “evil,” and wouldn’t even have to remain purely an antagonist. He feels like a character that could have legs, be used by other writers, rather than a one-off.
I agree that sometimes the books feel crowded with superfamily members, though I like them all and like that there IS a family feel. I wish the market supported a super family anthology. I’d be happy for a thicker monthly or quarterly that gives all the superfam their own spotlight, in solo stories or various group dynamics. That way they could be slightly less present in every Superman story, while actually growing/doing more when they get their own spotlights.
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FWIW, signature:
—bpm
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I’m enjoying the Lex business, I much prefer this kind of thing to Lex in a super-suit. My favourite Luthor, though, is a little more distanced from Superman, the Cary Bates type.
The Chained is indeed a very strange name. What could we call him… Mindlink?
A new Superman Family book could be great… could I decide the writers, please? There’s a whole host of Bronze Age writers who could likely step up, people with more of an understanding of the short story form than newer writers and editors.
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