Broken Frontier

Clark Kent continues to adjust and appreciate his new life while his oldest enemy continues to attempt his own return to grace.

Lucky for Clark Kent his old life gave him a large number of friends like Green Lantern and Hawkgirl who are all willing to help out. Because no longer is Clark Kent Metropolis’ protector. Having returned One Year Later to find Clark with no powers, Superman is no more and only mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent remains. But where he at first compared the lack of powers to being blind and deaf, it seems like he is not only growing used to being without powers, but he is actually enjoying it. Even more important for him, his wife is enjoying it too. The only problem is that it doesn’t matter if he’s just Clark Kent or Superman, Lex Luthor is always going to cause him trouble. Because while Clark may be happy with his new life, Lex is trying like crazy to re-establish himself as Metropolis’ real power figure.

The most common thing I’ve been hearing lately about the new Superman storyline (running in Superman and Action Comics) is that people are amazed that taking Superman’s powers away from him has improved his book tremendously. In fact, I’ve been hearing a lot of people saying this was the best Superman story they’d read in years. And while I might not go that far, I will say that this has been a very enjoyable read. Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns both have experience with the Man of Steel so it isn’t hard to believe that they work incredibly well together in writing the first Superman story coming out of Infinite Crisis. The characters have been brought back to their core essence. The dialogue is tight and the pacing properly builds to each major part of the story, and even without Superman in the book, the action hasn’t gone away too.

For his part in the creation of this book, Pete Woods does his all to make this book look like a quintessential superhero tale. His linework is strong and clean. And he takes the proper strides to give everything the proper exaggerations without looking unrealistic. He never goes overboard with his panel and page design and the storytelling is very clear. Woods never slows down when it comes to the action scenes either and knows exactly when it’s time to show off.

One can only be happy when noticing that DC is taking their time and making sure that their biggest icons are on the right track and in good hands. Let’s just hope that when they eventually do give Superman his powers back his book remains as good as it is right now.