Thus begins yet another multi-title crossover for the Superman books, and once again my reaction is largely apathy and disappointment. The phrase "too many cooks" is one that has applied to the Superman books for years, and no matter how talented the individual chef (in this case, Flash, JSA and Avengers writer Geoff Johns), the stew comes out a little bland and uninteresting in an attempt to appeal to every taste. This issue is the opening gambit in the response to Luthor learning Superman's secret identity, an event that happened quite a while back, and it consists largely of a fight between Superman and two unknown villains. With such great potential material, I'm disappointed that the story couldn't be a bit more exciting.
There have been a lot of exciting changes in the Superman over the past few years. Luthor becoming President and discovering Superman's secret identity are two big examples. Unfortunately, they are also the biggest examples of the failure of the editorial and creative teams to really capitalize on these enormous events, as we are only now getting to some kind of fallout for Clark Kent, and it thus far looks fairly unsophisticated. While I can appreciate that if Luthor plays it as smart as he probably should, the creators would essentially be destroying the character of Superman, I was hoping for something a little more subtle than sending a couple goons to attack him.
One of the things that has put me off the Superman books, oddly enough, is their inaccessibility, and that continues to be a problem. There's a sense in this book that the Master Jailer is a character who has shown up before, that he and Superman (or Luthor) have some past history, but I have no idea who he is. Neutron, his partner, at least gets the benefit of an overly expository speech about his origins so that new readers can understand who he is and where he's coming from. Neither of them are particularly interesting, though, visually or otherwise.
Speaking of visuals... while I've enjoyed Pascual Ferry's artwork elsewhere, and he has definitely grown since his early work on Heroes For Hire, he's another artist whose style doesn't really seem appropriate to Superman, at least for my tastes. Regardless of stylistic tastes, I also found the storytelling in this issue to be a little weak, as the tendency for backgrounds to disappear when the action starts leaves out the all-important context in the fight scenes that would drive home how far Superman is punching his opponents, or that the fight is taking place in the fairly dramatic setting of an enclosed Capitol Building.
While "Ending Battle" may turn out to be the exception to the formula, becoming an exciting read that leaves the reader breathlessly awaiting each new chapter, it doesn't look likely from this somewhat stale first issue. Instead, it seems likely to wind up in the same category as most of the other big Superman crossovers, in the pile of "interesting idea, goes nowhere over a long period of time."
