Judge this book by Dan Mora’s stupendous cover and just buy it, OK. Because yes, this comic does feature Superboy Prime trapped in a landscape of different genres and it is ridiculously entertaining.
It’s not Prime – he prefers to be called CK these days – using his reality punching power to explore, though; he’s the victim here. The villain?
Manchester Black, bad boy psychic anti-hero, and last time we saw him, dead.
And now he’s out to persuade Superboy Prime to use his unique continuity-cracking power to… well, we don’t know yet, though Black claims it’s all about Prime.
But CK isn’t the loose cannon he was, he wants to be like the Superman he admired as he grew up reading comics – an exemplar of goodness. Can Black break Prime’s resolve by dropping him into comic genres? He believes Prime to be fundamentally unstable, ready to regress if he transmits the right scenario.
Dan Mora is quite the chameleon, apparently able to evoke any artistic forebear and make it look easy. I’d pay to see a whole book by Mora in any of the styles he plays with this issue, with my favourite being the nod to DC’s classic romance books.
And he meanwhile keeps the storytelling on point.
Huge credit, too, to colourist Alejandro Sánchez and letterer Ariana Maher for employing their own boxes of tricks to get everything looking as it should, whether that means employing BenDay dots or changing fonts every other panel. The craft on display is dizzyingly good, bringing Williamson’s script to glorious life.
I’m guessing Williamson is a fan of the various Ambush Bug mini-series masterminded by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming, because the metafictive approach is so similar. Heck, maybe the old teleporting twit will show up to lend a hand, breaking the Fourth Wall and breaking hearts.
Whatever the case, Williamson is having massive fun and that translates to the page. The drama is to the fore but there are plenty of jokes, including some especially for British readers. If Williamson can inject his recently announced Legion of Super-Heroes reboot with as much fun and heart as we get here, everybody wins.
This loving tribute to comics is masterminded by Editors Paul Kaminski and Jillian Grant, who must have oohed and aahed like crazy as they clapped eyes on these pages. You can do the same if you buy a copy of this fantastic issue. And do please cheer Prime on, he deserves it.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 