It's Mon-El against multiple Kokos! It's Brainiac history time... again... And Lex Luthor is an idiot. All this and more as we look at Superman #698 & Adventure Comics #9

Superman #698

We're hip deep in this big story, so let's do a quick recap:

Mon-El has flown to Brainiac's spaceship to rescue Superman, who was captured by Brainiac and Luthor (not sure how that happened, they just showed an unconscious Supes).

The Legion has been released from custody by Alura, Supergirl's mom, and have taken off, heading to the same ship, alongside Superboy.

General Zod and Ursa run New Krypton's defences and want to do something they know the Kryptonian council won't like.

Brainiac has sent thousands of robots, armed with red sun energy, to kill as many Kryptonians as possible. Supergirl has been fighting to stop them but it looks like the city is being overrun. 

We've reached chapter 34 of the Superman books in 2010 - this one is written by James Robinson with art by Javier Pina & Bernard Chang.

Zod and Ursa provide the recap this issue. It's so nice when they stand in dramatic poses and provide the exposition so we know what's been going on. More than 11,000 Kryptonians have been killed, over a tenth of the total population, in less than an hour. I don't know how you consider that anything more than an abject failure, even if they're able to stand up to the drones. Zod expects something worse to come - Brainiac is Coluan and they're always thinking ahead. How much worse can this get? Also, why hasn't Zod been replaced yet?

Aboard the ship, Superman is being held by a Brainiac/octopus-like robot while Luthor and Braniac stare at him.

Wow! Mon-El has his own bubble explaining who he is, just like Superman. "An explorer from the planet Daxam, he is blessed with Superman's powers yet cursed with a fatal weakness to the lead in Earth's air. After years in the Phantom Zone, he was suddenly and mysteriously cured just as Superman bid farewell to Earth. Taking up the mantle of Metropolis's super-powered champion, he is... Mon-El."

I don't know why I love seeing this, but I think that if they can explain one Legionnaire in such a simple way, they can explain any of them. Am I right?

Brainiac and Luthor reveal why they're attacking New Krypton. Well, Brainiac does - he's angry Superman made him feel something when they first met. So now he's going to make Superman watch as he makes Kandor his possession again. He wants Superman to... feel??

Elsewhere, Mon-El is flying towards the ship - Tellus is telepathically connecting him to Superman. Okay, he already did that, and Tellus was slightly busy as Mon-El flew away... or Tellus had been knocked unconscious... I don't think the writers know what's going on at this point.

The voices in his head change to requests, wanting him to move forward. Luckily, he learned how to get into Brainiac's ship last issue, so they don't need to show him doing it here. And they don't. Seriously. Superman had an entire page showing how he got past the force field. Mon-El's just inside.

He also hears one name, over and over again: Koko. He gets through one part of the ship and that's when the gigantic, violent, dangerous-looking white gorillas appear. I know I'm in the minority here, but I have always hated Koko showing up in Superman or Legion comics. This doesn't change my opinion.

Brainiac and Luthor continue to gloat and threaten, probing Superman's mind for the secrets of New Krypton.

Mon-El keeps fighting and we learn who is speaking to him. There's a bottled city of telepathic beings called the Lanothians. They got into Mon-El's brain through Tellus (yeah, this is making less sense) and are begging him for help. They're also helpful enough to identify every one of the beings Mon-El is fighting. The Ulla, Laroo, Trago, and Raagin are different races that have been released from their bottles to stop Mon-El. Brainiac promised to release their cities if they defeated the Daxamite.

Superman continues to resist, even as Brainiac saps his powers with kryptonite. Somehow Superman is still able to use his heat vision and smashes his way out of the robot arms that were holding him. I guess it's kinda dramatic as Superman swears that he'll never stop trying, but we are just completely ignoring the kryptonite, aren't we?

The Lanothians haven't figured out that constantly begging for help might be distracting to Mon-El, who's fighting against an uncountable number of foes.

Luthor has the perfect way to stop Superman from fighting back. He points a gun at one of the bottled cities and threatens to kill everyone within if Superman doesn't surrender. We get another cliched moment where Superman can't believe Luthor is able to do it and, to no one's surprise, Luthor is perfectly willing to kill everyone to succeed. Has Superman learned nothing by this point? Or is Superman just such a nice guy that he cannot even comprehend someone who's evil? Even someone he's faced numerous times before?

With no warning, and for no reason, Luthor decides to shoot the city anyway. So Superman has surrendered, they're going to be able to read all of New Krypton's secrets, and Luthor just decides that he's still going to murder an entire city. For no reason. I know that this is a different version of Luthor from the one I grew up reading, but when did he become such a bone-headed character? After all, the moment he shoots, Superman knows that surrendering won't protect anyone and he'll never do it again. Which means, of course, that they'll never get the secrets out of his head. Luthor as an idiot was not something I had on my bingo card for this story.

Oh, I'll also point out that the city he's going to destroy contains the Lanothians.

So when Mon-El flies in, grabbing the city and knocking the gun out of Luthor's hands, it's not really a surprise.

What is a surprise is how the entire city isn't destroyed by moving at super speed when Mon-El grabs it. Or is there some sort of magic in these bottle cities so that g-forces don't affect them?

Also, where is Brainiac right now? Is he okay with Luthor destroying one of his bottled cities?

Don't worry - he's right there, ordering his drones to attack. Our final two-page splash is Superman and Mon-El, smashing through a bunch of robots.

This one really didn't work for me for a variety of reasons. Not much happened in the story, the art was mediocre at best, and the villains just reverted to that standard trope of standing around and explaining their plans. I don't need every issue to be packed to the gills with story, but this one really didn't do much.

I guess the only thing I learned is that Luthor is... stupid along with being unpredictable and psychotic? 

 

Adventure Comics #9

So many Legionnaires on the cover. Does this mean Blok has left Sorcerer's World and they've all headed to the 21st Century? Or did the cover artist just use whichever Legionnaire he wanted to draw and didn't care about the story? I'm betting the latter.

We also have three different stories in this book. The first one is titled Namesake and was written by James Robinson, pencilled by Travis Moore, and inked by Julio Ferreira.

We're in the future and reading Brainiac 5's personal log. He talks about the end of the universe and the end of time combining to become the end of everything. Then he talks about the event he wants to prevent, the one that is not meant to happen, based on their historical records: The Death of Superman. Does this mean that the first time he was killed was supposed to happen and never again? Or was he never killed in this DC continuity? Or are the writers just throwing crap against the wall?

Ultra Boy wants to know how things are going - they're three galaxies down and counting. The other Legionnaires want to know what to do but Brainy is distracted. After all, Superman's killer is his ancestor and namesake: Brainiac.

We get yet another run through the Brainiac family tree and this is the first time my memory of the L.E.G.I.O.N. doesn't match what they're saying - I always thought Brainiac 3 was the villain and Brainiac 5 was just a Machiavellian jerk. I guess not anymore. Or I stopped reading too early.

Anyway, we finally get the big reveal of what the actual threat is. There's a red storm in space and it's less than five minutes from Earth. Jupiter is already gone and Mars will be gone in two minutes.

What does Brainiac 5 do during those two minutes? He spends more time thinking about his ancestors, thinking about their deaths. We get another reveal that no one knows what's happened to the first Brainiac. Maybe he died. Or maybe he came to the 31st Century and became Pulsar Stargrave. No one really knows. But we do know he didn't kill Superman.

Oh, and if he becomes Stargrave and we get that epic 70s-style costume design back, I will retract every bad thing I've said about this era.

All Brainy does as Mars is destroyed is think about his family's past. Should I point out now that millions of beings have died on both Mars and Titan, as both are populated in the 31st Century?

With Earth about to be destroyed, Brainy finally gets out of his own head (heh) and orders the team to use all of their powers on some big blue ball he's built. Yes, I know it's a time bubble, but it looks like a marble. They all blast it with everything they have while XS sprints around to contain the energy.

Brainy promises to save everyone, to save the world, and fix everything. He swears they'll meet again and almost gets to say, "Long Live the Legion!" before disappearing. The red storm destroys the Earth in the 31st Century.

Did we see this red storm before? Does this mean the red storm is the result of Superman dying... and somehow it doesn't have any effect for 1,000 years? 

To be continued in Last Stand of Red Krypton #2.

One more question - would it not have made more sense to bring as many Legionnaires back to the 21st Century with him? 

Speaking of New Krypton, we've reached the second story in this book. This one takes place on New Krypton and it's Supergirl, Superboy, and the Legion attacking the Brainiac drones. Our writer for this one is Sterling Gates, with pencils by Eduardo Pansica and inks by Eber Ferreira.

We get a nice two-page spread of everyone in action. You would think that the Legion and Superboy would be the most valuable fighters here as they have no weakness to red sun energy. But if we've learned nothing from this storyline, it's that the Legion tend to get their butts kicked quite often. Oh, and I still have no idea how this is an Espionage Squad.

Here's a few things I've learned from the character captions so we know who these Legionnaires are:

• Projectra is "highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat." I guess that makes sense, considering she was married to Karate Kid, but it is also something that wasn't a part of the OG Legion.
• Starman has the power of "gravity manipulation," which means he can make things lighter and heavier, right?
• Element Lad's power is "elemental control," whatever that means
• Matter-Eater Lad's power is "matter consumption," which means he has the same power as me
• Quislet's is "object animation." Basically, this is the worst way to describe their powers that I've ever seen. Also, I've been trying to figure out if Quislet, who wouldn't shut up during Volume 3, has spoken once since I started reading this era of the Legion. I don't think so.

The heroes are trying their best to get into Brainiac's ship but the force field is preventing them from succeeding. If only someone knew how to get past the field. Or if only some character had mentally connected the person who knew how to get past the field to another person and had access to that information...

We get a silly moment where Superboy acts as peacekeeper between scientist and laborer Kryptonians and the segregation of the community is shoved down our throats. Superboy doesn't understand this thinking at all, wondering why they'd believe they'd be safer with their own group than by working together. Which leads me to believe that Superboy hasn't read a single thing about Earth history.

Tellus volunteers to attempt to change their minds. But first, he lets everyone know that Mon-El and Superman have "hit a complication" and are fighting a ton of Brainiac drones. Tellus enters Supergirl's mind to get knowledge of the Kryptonian guilds and then uses that to help bridge the barriers between the groups.

Superboy promises "tenacious defense" and I had to call that out while listening to a tribute to the greatest song in the world.

Tellus is able to change some minds, but not all, but hopefully there are enough to stop Brainiac. He also states that if he can connect with the Lanothians, he can create a full mindnet and affect every Kryptonian. Hmmm... so the solution to save the idiot Kryptonians is to take away their free will and force them to unify. Is that a good solution? Do the Kryptonians deserve to be saved at this point?

And I know this is overkill, but why didn't Tellus tell Supergirl how to get past the force field? I just wish any part of this story made sense.

 

The third story, which doesn't even have credits, brings us to Earth and we're dealing with the Kryptonians who are trying to start a war. They want to capture Quex-Ul and use some advanced tech to do it. The end up executing him and we get more of the undercover Kryptonian, Officer Romundi, helping General Lane. She's going to betray him and I honestly don't care about any of this. Sorry.

 

This whole issue really just feels like it's full of stories that could've been told in two pages but they got fleshed out into eight. The first one was just a Brainiac history lesson... again... The second was a deep dive into how stupid the Kryptonians are. And the third was just continuing to prepare us for Romundi's eventual betrayal of Lane... which I would care about if I liked Lane in the slightest. But since he's just as much of a villain as Zod, I'd say that I would be happy if Romundi destroyed everything.

Art-wise, it's a whole bunch of "meh." It's not horrible. It's not great. It's perfectly serviceable comic book art. Nothing leaps off the page, nothing makes me want to find more comics these people have drawn. But it's better than the Superman issue.

 

Thoughts? Did you enjoy these latest chapters in the Last Stand of New Krypton saga? Please share on Reddit on in the comments below!