SUPERMAN: NEW KRYPTON SPECIAL #1Written by Geoff Johns, James Robinson and Sterling Gates
Art by Gary Frank and Jon Sibal, Renato Guedes and Wilson Magalháes, and Pete Woods
For a one-shot special that is supposed to setup a major event, this read more like an issue of Action Comics and Superman mashed together than a cohesive introduction / jumping on point. I'd imagine you're enjoyment of the issue, on the whole, will stem from your enjoyment of each of those two titles.
Personally, I love the current Action Comics while, after reading a few issues of Robinson's run, it's safe to say I'm not a fan of the current Superman title. As such, I'm a little torn over this issue in terms of how much I enjoyed it.
In fact, considering this is the first part of the New Krypton storyline, I found it odd that the Kyrptonian centric parts of this issue were the weakest ones, by far. When compared to the funeral for Jonathan Kent and Johns and Frank's powerful portrayal of Superman's grief opening the issue, almost everything after that was destined to pale in comparison, but the Kryptonian parts, specifically, were fairly weak and did nothing for me for whatever reason.
For reference, everything dealing the Kryptonians and Kandor boils down to Superman talking to Supergirl's parents, laying the seeds for the obvious difference of opinions between Kryptonians as Humans and someone punching a whale with their new super powers. Yes, someone punches a whale.
Thankfully, while those parts were fairly boring, both in the lackluster art that accompanied them and in the writing, the Johns and Frank penned funeral was just so good, it's hard to complain about anything else that came with such a powerful and moving short story. Frank's artwork during Superman's dream of what he wanted to do to Brainiac (hint: pound him into green paste) was some of the finest storytelling from both a writing and art standpoint that I've seen in a long time. Great stuff that stood head and shoulders above everything else in the issue.
With the influx of Kryptonians and Superman dealing with his father's funeral, that left some time to introduce the villains of the piece in the form of Lex Luthor, who was recruited by the mystery man from Robinson's Superman arc, revealed here as Lois Lane's supposedly dead father.
I'm not sure how I feel about such a casual resurrection nor his villainous turn, but the introduction of Lex to the mix should fun, if only to see his reaction to an entire city of Supermen.
Verdict - Must Read. While I don't think the entire issue warrants a Must Read, I'm giving it one on the strength of the Johns / Frank part of the book and Superman's dealing with his grief over his father's death. The problems with the rest of the book stem from the rather slow opening for a major event and how it seems to have throttled down from the Action Comics Brainiac story that preceeded it.
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