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 
Mora’s still consistently amazing. Because he knows fundamentals front to back, inside and out, he can mimic almost any style.
Dynamic, kinetic, there’s nothing he hasn’t drawn expertly well.
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He’d definitely well trained!
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It was okay. It was well done fluff getting us to the last page but definitely fluff. It was well done fluff that looked great but it felt like spinning wheels because it had to be a certain page count. Rozakis could have done it all in eight pages.
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With Howard Bender art!
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I enjoy this very much. Prime’s villainous turn never made sense to me and this “redemption” turn is welcome, even if I could argue there is no real way to redeem someone as insane as he got.
I enjoy the way the character is written like a boy in a man’s body. Someone whose childhood was stripped from him by tragedy and who is allowing that inner child to come out again for the first time in a long time. Some of us out here can relate to that.
Something that bothers me, though, is the way he has been portrayed interacting with people he almost killed, although with all the continuity shifting how much of that actually happened is beyond my ken, without showing a lot of emotion. He seems a bit too flippant about the whole thing, which is a bit childish and squares with what I said above, but it still bugs me a bit.
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Has anyone made a list of Prime’s victims and their current status? I’m too ADHD to do it but it would help me accept Prime now. His actions were so heinous I feel like having consequences should follow any redemption arc. Not that it matters. If this arc doesn’t end with him murderously loopy again a future writer will do it. Comics, am I right?
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I was looking back at Infinite Crisis the other day, blimey, it really was grisly, unnecessarily so.
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I’m trying to think, who has he interacted with that he killed, outside of the Manchester Black visions? I suppose he shows little emotion because even though he’s not a resident of the ‘comics’ world it still doesn’t feel quite real to him.
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I was just thinking about all his victims, too. IIRC, his victims included:
I’m sure there are others I’m not recalling, but that is at least all main ones. So his claim about everyone he killed being restored via various cosmic means is not true. Ironic, since he has the power to do just that.
I wonder if when he finally loses all his meta-awareness, it will be the true start of his redemption. I don’t have a problem with him being redeemed. It’s very Superman.
I’d also point out that though not necessarily a great way of doing things, Manchester Black really hasn’t done anything evil yet. Is wanting to come back to life a bad thing? And though he is showing Prime his demons, is that any different than when J’onn (and other telepaths) did the same on countless occasions to see a person’s true self? What if he was really redeemed via Warwold and the Authority? He will always be an ass, but so is Guy Gardner. Doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy (yet).
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Wow Jeff. And indeed, wow, wow, wow. What an incredible memory.id forgotten Bushido even existed, never mind died. And as I said, I reread the super-violent issue only last week. Heck, in the latest Superman when we had the ‘What about me’ page turn the only person I was expecting was Pantha, probably because she had the most memorable death.
Very good points about Manchester Black, I rather liked his un-heel turn in Superman and the Authority.
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Aren’t they all back as of Infinite Frontier? Guess not.
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It’s hard to know! I’d like to think so.
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I’m just about done with an “Infinite Crisis” reread, including of all the minis/specials that built up to it. I think Geoff Johns and colleagues, including Marv Wolfman, did a good job at the time showing how Prime, Alex Luthor and Earth 2 Superman individually had become damaged characters – Prime had just become Superboy when the first Crisis stripped him of his world/future, Alex longed for a normal life given he’d been born/grown up in a matter of weeks, Superman was blinded by his desperation to keep Lois from dying of old age. But it bugged me then and still bugs me now how Johns on the one hand seemed to be using the series to criticize how grim the DCU had become over the years and next panel has Prime punching off heads and tearing off arms… It’s like Johns had no self-realization that he was just adding to DC’s body count. I still don’t like Prime as a continuing villain and think he had a good enough redemption arc in “Death Metal” and should have been retired. I just don’t think you can rehabilitate such a nasty character. While rehabbing villains is certainly nothing new in fiction, it just seems like Prime is such a childishly vile and violent one that any efforts to prove otherwise just seem too hamfisted. I somehow can sympathize more with Magneto, Dr. Doom and Darth Vader, all villainous icons who have had some sort of “redemption” arcs, than a brat like Prime. – Brian
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There’s a definite dichotomy surrounding Johns and his Infinite Crisis work, Brian. Was he trying to please both sides of the ‘too violent’ argument? Or trying to emphasise the ‘it’s all become too grim’ idea by having a previously good character become so savage?
Whatever the case, I agree Prime’s happy ending should have stuck, notwithstanding how much I’m enjoying this run. He was turned mad on a dime, he can become sane again. As he would say, ‘it’s comics’.
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Great issue and great review! Mark Waid, take note!
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Thanks, it’s appreciated.
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