Review: Flashpoint: Project Superman #3

Flashpoint: Project Superman #3 came out this week and brought this story of the Flashpoint world Superman to a very satisfying close. I haven't been too keen on the Flashpoint world and in particular, found the Atlantean/Amazon war stuff to be pretty tedious. But I have enjoyed both Kid Flash Lost and Project Superman as they were really more character driven series and (for the most part) tangentially involved with the war storyline.

As I have said before, I have read plenty of Superman Elseworld stories before so I am used to these sort of arcs, seeing what would come of Superman if he wasn't raised by the Kents and taught to cherish life. This mini-series has shown a different sort of Superman, sheltered and abused for most of his life, but suffering from that torture rather than angry. For me, the most interesting part of the book has been how big a presence General Sam Lane has had in Kal's life, a position in stark contrast to the one he held in the non-Flashpoint DCU.

Writers Scott Snyder and Lowell Francis do a good job giving Kal some depth here, despite having him say few words. They also do a great job conveying just how horrible this world is, whether it be the torture lab where Kal was kept or the war torn areas of the world.

And Gene Ha's work here really is perfectly suited for the book, thick lined and kinetic, and somehow conveying both a roughness as well as remarkable detail (I know that makes no sense). When words and art mesh, comics are gold. Ha's work meshes here ... wonderfully.

The damage  by the Flash and Batman that freed Kal from his laboratory prison unfortunately destroyed the power supply that was keeping Sinclair/Doomsday and General Lane in the Phantom Zone. Suddenly freed, filled with Doomsday's rage and decades of frustration, Sinclair goes straight to work.

He was built to 'defend' the world from enemies. But now he looks at everyone as his enemy. Fueled by hate and flush with power, Sinclair decides to carve a bloody path across the world, starting with General Lane. There are great moments for Sinclair too. He doesn't allow Lane to even get any 'defiant last words' instead pulping him immediately. Unlike much of Flashpoint, Lane being crushed is done off panel. Here it works.

Through the issue we see Sinclair killing, destroying, absorbing energy from the original Doomsday (who I guess is subject number 3 ... not Supergirl), and tracking down Kal.

And this is why Lane being killed off screen works.

Kal has fled from the compound and heads straight to Europe. He comes across the horrific sights of the war-addled continent. People, dead by their cars as they tried to flee, food for the crows. If Kal thought his prison in the sterile sunless cube was Hell, he has learned a new definition. Look at the horror on his face.

But from a story telling point of view, the crow eating the corpse carries a quiet power to it, something that would have been lessened if we had seen Lane's brains splattered over the previous page. This stands out as terrifying because there wasn't something more terrifying immediately preceding.

Now whether Kal has simply fled and luckily runs into Lois or if he is tracking her, he finds her in the UK, fighting for the Resistance.

I have to say Lois is a bigger presence, a better character in this mini-series than in her self-titled Flashpoint mini.

To Kal she represents something good in this world ... maybe the only good thing. He wants to protect her and the best way to do that is to simply leave the area.

I love Lois' response. First, she states she can't just leave. She has to 'do something' to better the world. That's the Lois I am used to seeing, that I want to see. But then she realizes that Kal is damaged goods, traumatized, and afraid. She softens, realizing that she probably needs to protect Kal at least emotionally. Ha's facial expressions work so well here.

But before this conversation can continue, Sinclair arrives. He is massive, maybe 10 feet tall, towering over everyone like the monster he is.

Again Lois shows her mettle, picking up a weapon and firing on Sinclair. She even tries to talk to Sinclair, telling him that the right thing to do is stop the Atlantean/Amazon war, not mete out his revenge on General Lane by killing her and Kal.

I love the last panel, a sort of homage to the car-crushing cover of Action Comics #1, Kal smashing an auto in Sinclair's face.

Their skirmish attracts the Amazon army forcing Sinclair to wade into battle. It is clear that he is an unstoppable monster, casually crushing the women as he makes his way to Kal and Lois.

As noted in the earlier issues of this mini, it is interesting that General Lane plays the role of Pa Kent in this book, the loving father figure teaching Kal just what a hero does. Despite being overpowered by Sinclair, Kal knows the right thing to do is protect people from monsters. It is a rare look of determination and courage on Kal's face in this Flashpoint world.

Great work by colorist Art Lyon, driving home the fact that Sinclair is a monster, is 'other', by coloring him in blue, the blood soaked area around him bright red.

Now I don't know if I quite understand what happens next but Superman begins absorbing energy from Sinclair, draining him of all the power he has. And in dramatic fashion, Kal ends the fight by punching through Sinclair's chest, causing a massive explosion.

Superman doesn't kill. But Kal on Flashpoint Earth realized that this creature needed to be put down.

But there are consequences to violence like that. It is never as simple an answer as people believe.

Lois is within the blast area of Sinclair's death explosion and is killed by its force. This Lane does get some last words. And her last words are that Kal needs to help the people of this Earth because it is the right thing to do. And then we get a pieta-like panel, reminiscent of Crisis #7.

Man, I love Lois in this issue. Such a strong character, a strong will. It is time for Kal to become Superman on this Earth.

And I like the journey that this Kal has gone on. It would be easy for him to simply hide out after escaping but instead he goes to help Lois. And then makes the logical next step, if Lois deserves protecting then everybody does. So is it nature that makes Superman a hero? Or nurture? There is no denying that even here it is a human loving presence teaching Kal right from wrong that is a big part of who he is. Here it is General Lane.

In the past DCU, it's Ma and Pa Kent. In the new DCnU? Dan Didio says he has no 'human tether'. So what will we see?

Snyder and Francis do a great job showing us enough snippets of Kal's life and Sinclair's devolution to give us a strong sense of who they are, what their motivations are. And it leads to a prefect denouement, with Kal suddenly thrust into the role of world saver. And Gene Ha's art complements that script seamlessly. This miniseries was a bright spot in the Flashpoint universe.

Overall grade: A

Review: Flashpoint: Project Superman #2

Flashpoint:Project Superman #2 came out last week and so far, this has been one of the high points of the Flashpoint event. This is basically an Elseworlds look at Superman, a rethinking of his origins, and therefore continues to grab my attention. There are some interesting wrinkles to some of the usual Superman origin points.

I mean, I have seen all sorts of Elseworlds like this. Superman as Russian communist, as Quaker, as adopted son of the Waynes, as adopted son of Darkseid. So this 'adopted by the military' storyline can provide some of the same beats. Is Superman Superman because of who he is? Or because of the upbringing the Kents provided? Is it nature or nurture? It is an important question to be answered not only here but in the relaunched Superman as well.

Writer Scott Snyder continues to bring us up to the present as we see Superman's past in this world. We aren't at the point of the Atlantis/Themyscira war yet. This story is working forward to that point. So we are seeing a young Kal-El here, basically a captured and tormented young man. Snyder also does a great job introducing more of the Superman universe into this book. We see some of the familiar faces we have grown used to, but here in this strange universe. And we see some of the basics of Superman's persona despite the psychological and physical trauma he is suffering in this military lab.

I am also enjoying Gene Ha's art on this book very much. He is thick lined and chunky where he needs to be. And there certainly is a flair to what he is doing here.

You may remember that last issue, Agent Sinclair was evolving and losing control of his rage. As a result he was locked up by the military. And that happens at around the same time that Superman landed in Metropolis.

This issue takes place about 8-10 years after that event. Here we see a school age Superman, a young Kal,  being tested and probed in an army secret weapons base. But basically he is being held prisoner. There doesn't seem to be any joy in his life. And during these tests, it is clear that Kal has not mastered his powers. After being fed some yellow sun rays, Kal lashes out uncontrollably with his heat vision, melting the machinery and nearly killing some of the staff. Look at the wide eyed panicked face on Kal in that second panel. He looks like a caged and abused animal.

But here is the plot thread I like the best in this book. General Lane is a loving almost fatherly character here. He does his best to treat Kal like the son he doesn't have. Here he runs in to protect Kal from the big bad mad scientists. This is just a great thread in this book. I am used to seeing the xenophobic Lane. Here we see the potential for him to be a family man, a loving father.

And Lane tries to have a personal relationship with Kal. He calls him Kal when everyone else calls him Subject One. Lane wants a son. The government wants a weapon.

Despite the psychological trauma, despite this dehumanizing treatment, Kal won't become a robotic weapon. Instead he becomes a frazzled appearing introvert. Again, Ha is able to convey that tortured interior with a simple wide-eyed expression here.

It is an interesting difference from JMS' Supreme Power book in which the government 'weaponizes' Hyperion by faking a Kent-like upbringing, subtly making that Superman archetype love home and country by sheer repetition. It was almost brainwashing. That seems like a better way to gain some semblence of control.

But this government instead treats Kal like a lab rat. This panel is frightening. Imagine being an eight year old boy being incessantly injected and poked like this. Your life would be a horror show.

Unfortunately for the establishment, Sinclair's powers have continued to increase despite his imprisonment. He has been whispering in Kal's ear for years, promising freedom. Sinclair gives Kal some confidence, telling him he can survive all this testing and escape. Together they can make it. And Sinclair tells Kal to spy on the task force. So suddenly Kal knows what the military has planned. Kal hears them talking to Lane about his training, about how they want to 'weaponize' him. What a sad life.No wonder he is a cringing mess.

As I have said before, I love seeing a loving General Lane here. This is such a different take on the man, and maybe the first glimmer of love I have seen in this Flashpoint world, certainly in this book.

So something as little as a baseball trophy, a souvenir of Kal's power, shows a personal side of Lane I haven't seen before. Lane realizes that there are pressures to make Kal take part in the experiments but Lane also wants to keep him a little boy. He wants to let Kal have Krypto as a pet. He promises Kal a game of catch if Kal will comply. Lane clearly loves this little boy but is still trying to do what he is ordered.

This sort of change in persona is just what these Elseworlds are built for.

I also liked this Smallville riff on the Luthors. Here, Lionel seems to have stepped right off the show's sets. Instead of being a drunk, killed by Lex, Lionel is instead a powerful man in the government. But little has changed in Lex  who still seems to be planning his father's death.

While so much has changed in this world, it is interesting to see Lex remains the same. 

As the Luthors tour the facility, Sinclair somehow incites Krypto to attack and presumably kill (or at least dismember and maim) Lex. The government has no choice but to euthanize the dog. And of course, this shatters Kal spirit. There is no doubt, the military lost him in that moment. Suddenly the time is right for Kal to try and escape. All of Sinclair's lies and now this murder of his beloved pet have made Kal want to rebel.

I love the panel with Kal wailing, the empty space around him making him small, indicating his powerlessness.
Now how Sinclair was able to imbue Krypto with that rage and power is unclear. And it is creepy to hear that Lionel is more interested in the Krypto carcass than in the health of Lex.

Kal uses his powers to burn out the lock on the cage holding Sinclair in place. Sinclair emerges, suddenly massive, towering over the tiny Kal. But Sinclair is simply an inhuman killing machine, crushing heads and ripping soldiers apart as he strolls through the base. Sinclair is relentless and remorseless. And this butchering is horrific to Kal who runs away as the bodies fall.

Does Kal's response show that some internal compass of what is right still burns within him?

Now last issue I said that Sinclair looked a bit like Super Saiyan Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. But in this issue he is even more powerful.

Sinclair looks more like Super Saiyan 3 Vegeta with the flowing locks. Even the suit looks similar.

While Sinclair is rampaging through the base, Lois has somehow slipped on the grounds to wish her father a happy birthday. So I want to look at this as a positive, that even at that age Lois has enough ingenuity to sneak onto a highly guarded top secret military base. On the other hand, I could look at it as an unrealistic way of shoving Lois into the story. How does this young girl even know where the base is, let alone have the skills to get in?

Sinclair is happy to see her though, thinking killing her will teach Lane a lesson. This is perhaps the best moment in this book. Kal actually stands in front of Lois, between her and Sinclair. It is clear he is going to defend Lois, his fists clenched. Lois might be the only other child he has ever seen. He is not going to let her die.

But this clearly shows that the hero is within Kal. Is this his nature? Is this the nurturing from General Lane? I'd like to think that Superman is Superman no matter universe he is in.

This also added a blush of Silver Age stories where we would learn that characters happened to meet when children. It seemed like everybody just happened to have a stopover in Smallville in those books.

But before that brawl can happen (I think Sinclair would crush Kal), General Lane runs in with his ace in the hole, a Phantom Zone device which shoves both he and Sinclair into that realm.

Again, these are lessons for Kal. His 'father', Lois' father, did the right thing and defended them despite being clearly outgunned. Lane is a hero here, saving untold numbers of people. What better example for Clark to witness and learn from?

With Lane gone and the scientists (weird plant like hybrids) slaughtered, General Adams comes back on board as the head of the site. And he feels safest with Kal put in a cell, deprived of yellow sun rays, and basically forgotten. With his last iota of power, Kal burns a doodle of Lois onto his wall with heat vision.

And that is probably where he has stayed until we see him rescued by the Flash in Flashpoint #3. We know that at some point London is burning and a fight with Sinclair happens. Or maybe Sinclair is simply watching this unfold from the Phantom Zone.

But the big thing here is seeing the beginnings of this Superman, the formative events that made him become the skittish prisoner of war who ran at the first chance. His life has been one torture after another. But even in the darkest moments, he still seemed to have the right impulses, to defend the helpless.

Hmmm ... where is Supergirl in this world though?

I will say, I have very much enjoyed this look at Superman, seen through a mirror darkly.

Overall grade: A

Review: Flashpoint Project Superman

Flashpoint:Project Superman came out last week, yet another Flashpoint mini-series I am picking up as I await the DCnU. Unlike most of the Flashpoint minis, Project Superman actually grabbed me a bit. I have sort of limped through Secret Seven, Wonder Woman and the Furies, and Lois Lane and the Resistance. Only Kid Flash Lost has me eager to see the next issue.

But Project Superman has me intrigued, actually right from the very first panels. It is a simple technique to show us a glimpse of the end of the story right at the beginning. As a reader I know eventually we will get to that point and now I get to wonder just how we get there. On top of that we get a few beats from other areas of the comics world that seem to echo here. It made this feel like a lusher read than some of the other Flashpoint books.

I admit I haven't read anything by Scott Snyder before, despite the near universal praise I have seen for his work on American Vampire and Detective Comics. When this mini was announced I was interested in seeing just what he would do with the Superman Family. And even though we only have a glimpse of the Superman mythos in this first issue, the rest of the book rolls right along.

Add to that the solid work by Gene Ha on art here, a sort of thick lined moody work which occasionally explodes of the page with action and violence, and you have a recipe for a very good book.

The book opens up with a view of the present, a view of London in ruins, aflame. A steely set of eyes vows to kill a Superman ... and then remembers volunteering to become on 30 years earlier.

So we know that at some point this character is going to end up squaring off against Superman in war-torn London. But what has to happen before then to get us there? We need to learn much, we need to see who this person is, who Superman is on this world, what part they play in the Atlantis/Themyscira war.

The opening domino in that thread occurs 30 years ago when a Lieutenant Sinclair volunteers to be 'upgraded'. Now just last week I complained about how I thought that the pace of Lois Lane was too fast, that glossing over 32 weeks in the Amazon camp didn't sit well. And yet here, probably because I got a better sense of what was happening during the years that pass in this issue, I didn't mind that pace. I was curious to know just what happens in an Amazon re-education camp in Lois. I think I know what is happening here. I guess I can have it both ways.

And who should be heading up this 'super soldier' experiment but our old friend Sam Lane. I thought this was a nice move by Snyder. How interesting that Lane's fear of metahumans is a constant no matter what timeline of the DCU unfolds.

But I also thought that this resonated with Captain America. Again, we have a Sinclair, a 'normal guy', a soldier who, by his own admission, has seen too much horror and wants to become a hero, willing to be experimented on. Sounds somewhat like Cap. I worried a bit when he said his motto was 'attachment leads to suffering'. You need attachments to ground you, you need a foundation to build upon. Without a past, how can someone have a solid sense of what is right and wrong. It is clear that not everyone is Steve Rogers.

And someone else knows that. General Adam has been kicked off the project because he worried about the outcome here. So know we know what happened to Captain Atom in this world. He has some scars but no powers. Maybe he knows a little too well what absolute power does.

I did like the 'lots of body bags' line. Reminded me of Richard Crenna's warning line to Brian Dennehy in First Blood.

But the experiment is carried out despite Adam's concerns. We see snippets of Sinclair's training and evolution as they roll out over the next several years. As the government continues to throw things at Sinclair, his powers seem to mutate. No weapon can incapacitate him more than once. He seems to grow more and more powerful, more and more invulnerable as time passes.

And he acquires more than just brute strength. His senses continue to expand. In some nice pages, we see Sinclair eavesdrop on his superiors, seen only as xray images (perhaps dehumanizing them to Sinclair?). The military is starting to get a bit squeamish about him. They don't know what Sinclair is becoming ... and it worries them. It should.

Even more worrisome is the mention of something called The Vault, a place that sounds like it holds prior attempts at experiments like this, prior attempts which have become monsters.

After a while, the government finally decides to let the genie out of the bottle. After proving to be nearly unstoppable for three years, Sinclair is dropped into a warzone to bring down some rebels.

Finally unleashed, Sinclair simply loses control and rips through the battle. He still has some self-awareness ... he talks of wanting to flow like water but becomes a tidal wave. He is pure destruction, slaughtering all those around him, friend and foe alike. Ultimately, he levels the entire site.

And even when faced with the horror around him, when he is told he slaughtered his support team, he can barely calm down.

Now up to this point, I thought I had a pop culture equivalent to Sinclair ...

That's right! Sinclair's loss of control, his massive powers, even his look strikes me as being equivalent to Dragon Ball Z's very own Dark Prince, Vegeta.

But then I thought a bit more. You know who Sinclair is going to end up being ...

Sinclair is mutating such that no weapon can defeat him more than once. We know he eventually will face off against Superman.

Sinclair has to be the Flashpoint world's Doomsday.

After the mission, Sinclair is locked up in the Vault. And just as he is being wheeled into that prison, Kal-El's rocket smashes into Metropolis. How interesting that Sinclair thinks this will help him. My reading of that is eventually Superman is going to go against someone's wishes (maybe Luthor? he is name-dropped here, or the military) and Sinclair is going to be released to stop him. That is what the London battle is.

But the appearance of Superman in Metropolis adds a lot to the mix. Is Superman going to be 'raised' by Lane? Or will he simply be more raw material for future experiments by Project Superman?

So this first issue grabbed me the way any good first issue should. A nice opening hook. A good understanding of the character. A great end hook to keep me coming back. What will Superman be like in this bleak world? What will he be like without the upbringing of the Kents? It is Superman's attachments that make him who he is. Will he have those attachments in the Flashpoint DCU?

Add to the solid story the wild Gene Ha art, and this book was a winner.

Overall grade: B+