I'll Always Be Your Monster...
Zod Is One of the few villains i've been wanting to check out in a very long time now, After Watching Man of Steel i was interested in the villain and found him to be cool. So Naturally i decided that reading upon his comic book counterpart would be a wise choice, and i really liked this version too, therefore it won't come off as a surprise that having greg pak write him would excite me, and after his decent start on darkseid i was really excited. Just to put it out there, the Most Frequent complain i've heard about Zod is that he Never seems to have any kind of consistency with his character, sure he has some Distinct characteristics but when the character has to many versions of himself it becomes hard to pint point which is the best or the right one.
I thoroughly enjoyed this issue. usually i'd begin with the art, but to be honest there isn't much to say other than the fact that i enjoyed it, i think it was very good in story telling and loved the New design for Zod.
As for the story, i'd say that this is a very good origin , which no doubt tweaks a lot of things, but at the end of the day gets the Job done. One of the best things about this issues is the way Zod is portrayed here. There are some people who are, were, and always will be Monsters deep down, Zod was one of them. These things doesn't usually come out easily, people might not seem dangerous but the last few panels show very vividly that Zod Loves monster simply because he is One . But that's not the greatest thing about him either, There are many monsters in fiction, but most of the are just creatures who enjoy destruction, but then there are people like Zod, the type of atrocities that think they know whats best. And that's really the most important thing here, Zod is a Monster, he knows that, but he also thinks he is needed, and he thinks that what he is doing is right. These type of villains are one of the most dangerous ones, because no matter what you tell them or what they do, they won't stop because they think they are right.
"My Name is Zod...and No matter what you do-- no matter where you send me, I promise you this: I...will always...be your Monster!"
Awesome.
However, this issue wasn't without any flaws. Thing is that because of the Movie, Ursa had been replaced by Faora , they are basically the same character, but still it'll peeve a lot of fans off, because if you are going to keep the same character, why change her name? because we all know Faora will be Urse 2.0. I don't know if this was greg paks decision, or the staffs, but either ways, some(possibly Many) will not be happy about this.
Overall though this was pretty solid and in enjoyed the heck out of it. The Time shifst are much better here and don't feel rushed like it was in darkseids issues. Can't wait for Doomsday.