Jeff Mazzuca Comic Reviews

Now that the story has gotten past it's similarities to Watchmen and found its own footing, there isn't much of anything I didn't enjoy about this issue. Sure, there are some purists who might not like the "generalness" and lack of details of the storyline, but when one only has ten issues to cover the DCU's quite extensive history, all we need is enough to get us caught up to where our modern storylines are currently taking us.

I just wish there was more of it happening in the book.

As an individual issue, J.T. Krul gives us some background of Green Arrow that help explains his motivation as a hero of Star City. The artwork of Diogenese Neves and Vicente Cifuentes is a very nice accompaniment for the story, clearly illustrating what's between the lines of the text. As it relates to the overall Green Arrow title, I don't think this issue gives any clarification in that category.

If you're not too worried about solid writing, then go along for the ride with Christopher Chance. Travel the world and join him on his adventures in "kill or be killed."

Overall, this book did a nice job of reminding us where the Man of Steel has been, what he's been up to, and really, where he needs to go from here. Seven hundred issues is something to celebrate, and this book did a decent job, through short stories, of pushing the character through to issue number seven hundred one and all that lies ahead for Superman and his place in the human world. I would have liked to see a little more focus on the "what's to come" story, since that's the important part, but I enjoyed the other short stories enough to where it wasn't too much of a problem.

JMS delivers a very solid first story about a side of Superman that we haven't seen much of before. His story works well in conjunction with the artwork in the book to show the struggle that Superman is facing and the distance he's feeling from his former self. Being a new type of Superman, this book is very approachable for the reader who hasn't been following Superman for awhile or just wants to start getting into Superman.