7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not Bad, But Perhaps it's Time Superman Returned to Earth (And Stayed There), June 30, 2010
This review is from: Superman: New Krypton, Vol. 4 (Hardcover)
The Superman: New Krypton saga began with a thoroughly engaging premise and some interesting characters. Unfortunately, due to slow storytelling and a merely average plot, the fourth volume is unable to live up to the standards set by the earlier installments.
For those who need a recap, Superman has freed the people of Kandor, a Kryptonian city, from the clutches of Brainiac. But these newly liberated Kryptonians quickly realize that they could never regard the Earth as their home, and so they create their own planet, a "New Krypton," on an orbit parallel to the Earth on the opposite side of the sun. Because Zod, Superman's nemesis, is put in charge of New Krypton's emerging military, Superman decides to take up residency on the planet himself so that he can keep a careful eye on matters. He's soon made a commander in Zod's military.
In Volume Four, Superman finds himself temporarily promoted to general while Zod slowly recovers from an attempt on his life. But Kal's transformation into the leader of the Kryptonian military does little for his personality. His usual good humor and compassion now replaced with a wooden and cold exterior, Superman first searches for Zod's would-be assassin, then encounters some Thanagarians, and then spends the latter half of the book investigating the murder of a Kryptonian Council member. If none of these plot points sound particularly exciting, it's because they're not.
And that's the greatest flaw with this fourth installment. While everything here is told in a perfectly competent manner, there simply aren't enough compelling twists, interesting revelations and grandiose battles to engage anyone but the most loyal fans. The earlier volumes were able to convey both the wonders and the fears Superman had for the resurrection of his people. Volume Four, however, is little more than our hero running back and forth to investigate and then solve one problem after another. It's all mundane and sterile, with little insight given into the Man of Steel's own feelings towards the people he encounters and situations he faces. Only at the end does Superman open up and bare his soul. . .a little.
Ultimately, Superman: New Krypton Volume 4 smacks of being more filler than substance--it's more a segueway into the next story than something that is truly significant on its own. That said, fans already invested in the previous books may still find it a worthwhile read.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomot - *yaaaawn*, August 17, 2010
This review is from: Superman: New Krypton, Vol. 4 (Hardcover)
This is the catch-up paragraph, as we catch up in this paragraph. In SUPERMAN: CODENAME: PATRIOT Kal-El once again dons his Superman costume and flies back to Earth with Supergirl in search of General Zod's assassin. On Earth he discovers that the mastermind behind the assassination attempt was General Sam Lane, Lois's long-presumed dead father. General Lane, extremely paranoid and nursing a hatred against extraterrestrials, has pulled his strings and now has achieved his goal of turning Earth's people even more against the Kryptonians. As a very concerned Kal-El makes his return to New Krypton, the threat of war looms ever closer over both worlds...
SUPERMAN: NEW KRYPTON Vol. 4 collects issues #6-12 of the SUPERMAN: WORLD OF NEW KRYPTON limited series, and it immediately picks up from the events in the CODENAME: PATRIOT arc. Back on New Krypton, Superman re-assumes his guise of Commander Kal-El of the military guild's Red Shard unit, just in time to talk sense into the riled up factions chomping at the bit to take the fight to Earth. And this is pretty much what Superman does for the rest of this limited series, act as the voice of reason, tamp down the warmongering. If you're expecting thrills and spills and the Man of Steel clobbering bad guys, you're in for some disappointment. We do get several pages of space combat with the Kryptonians and the Thanagarians, this even as the Kryptonians herd one of Jupiter's moons across space to their home planet (New Krypton wants its own moon). Superman's honorable actions pacify the Thanagarians, and an accord is reached between the two similarly aggressive alien races. However, other planetary powers are prompt to take umbrage with New Krypton's high and mighty demeanor. In a "What the--?" moment, Jemm, Son of Saturn, in an act of protest, busts into a Kryptonian council chamber and proceeds to lay waste to various Folks of Steel. And then Superman pacifies him. Do you sense a trend?
Throughout this series writers James Robinson & Greg Rucka have presented General Zod not as a despicable villain but more as a beleaguered head of state whose pragmatic leadership - of doing what has to be done to safeguard his people - can't help but clash with Superman's moral code. And it's working. I'm seeing Zod as more of a sympathetic character. Here, he's still recovering from his near-fatal injury and, in a startling move, he promotes Kal to his own rank of General of the military guild. Now I don't know if the writers could have done more with this plot device, because, really, this promotion could only render Kal-El more diplomatic, less prone to take action. And internal logic suggests that Kal is doing the right thing. Kid gloves are a must when administrating over a combustible populace of one hundred thousand, and each with Superman's power set. But it makes for a boring story.
Adam Strange arrives on New Krypton to voice New Rann's displeasure at the Krypton-Thanagar treaty, except that Adam zeta beams himself in a room housing a murdered corpse. He instantly becomes the prime suspect, and this means that the last three issues of the series are devoted to a whodunit, and the damning thing is that it's a thoroughly lackluster whodunit. Although there is one nice character moment as Kal-El asks Adam Strange to go sleuthing with him, frankly admitting that he's no Bruce or Ralph.
So the second half of SUPERMAN: WORLD OF NEW KRYPTON sucks, I can't put it any plainer. I'm not sure what happened. The series starts out terrifically - and I was even bragging to people that, after BLACKEST NIGHT, this is the event to check out - but then it runs out of steam as Superman immerses himself in the uninteresting social and political climate of New Krypton. If Robinson and Rucka intended to present Superman as more than just a hero with super-strength and whatever, that what makes him a true hero is his ideals and convictions, then, fine, they've delivered on message. But, somewhere along the way, they've somehow discarded what makes Superman fun and full of wonder, the part of him that's faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. Now he's just one among one hundred thousand. There should've been a happy meeting ground where Superman's idealism and his otherworldy superheroics are given equal value, but when the story reads so blah and uninvolving and then degenerates into a lame murder investigation (of someone we don't at all give a what about), well, that's when you really nitpick. There's just too much of not enough happening. The final issue gives us the identity of the Kryptonian mastermind who's been working the strings all along, except that it's some doofus we also don't care about. Pete Woods and Ron Randall provide solid artwork, not that it matters.
This trade reproduces several variant covers (including from artists Joe Kubert and Dustin Nguyen) and also has Pete Woods' sketches, costume designs, and 3-D models of New Krypton, and 5 pages of black & white art of a deleted scene originally intended for SUPERMAN: WORLD OF NEW KRYPTON #1.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Neat idea but..., November 1, 2010
This review is from: Superman: New Krypton, Vol. 4 (Hardcover)
... it doesn't really work. The story ran for too many issues and there wasn't enough material there to really make it work for that long of a run. Had there been other storylines interspersed with what was there it could have run that long. So the end result is this kind of cool idea for a Superman story ends up feeling watered down with filler material to make it run over a certain number of issues.
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