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Superman: New Krypton Vol. 1

June 22, 2009 | Trades

Superman: New Krypton Vol. 1
Geoff Johns, James Robinson, Gary Frank, Pete Woods, Renato Guedes
DC Comics
$27.99/$24.99 US (Hardcover)
*** 1/2 (out of five)

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman … um … men … um people — and a lot of them.

Spinning out of the event of Superman: Brainiac and Superman: The Coming of Atlas (so if you haven’t read those, be prepared for some spoilers) — the first collection of the New Krypton saga chronicles the Man of Steel’s first interactions with some of the 100,000 Kryptonians now living on Earth in the now-full-sized city of Kandor. On an even more personal level, Superman must also come to grips with the recent sudden death of his adoptive father, Jonathan Kent.

Unfortunately, instead of beginning with a bang right after Kandor’s rebirth and Pa Kent’s death, this first volume builds slowly with two double-sized issues involving Daily Planet would-be reporter Jimmy Olsen uncovering a conspiracy surrounding the hero called The Guardian. While this story does impact on future events in this storyline, it takes a bit of the wind out of the sails of a book called New Krypton.

Once the action does finally ramp up, things improve fast with the return of one of Superman’s greatest critics (a person thought to be dead), the return of one of his deadliest enemies (also thought to be toast) and the (sort of) return of two classic heroes.