Superman: Doomed #1

Once the news broke of a New 52 interpretation of the infamous “Death of Superman” storyline, despite my misgivings and scepticism about what this event would bring, I decided to at least read the one shot. If nothing else to see how the Superman vs Doomsday fight played out and how the battle would end. And suffice to say, I’m regretting having spent £3.75 on this comic. SPOILERS from here on out:

The event starts off with the big introduction (after the Doomed prequels of course) of Doomsday to the New 52. Whilst I do like the introduction of Doomsday’s death aura powers, all Doomsday is in this story is a glorified punching bag for Superman that can punch back and be a physical match for him in combat. There was none of the desperation or sheer significance that Doomsday held in his first appearance. They just made him bigger, flashier and more menacing without going to the trouble of giving him the presence he had when DD first appeared in the 90s. He’s just an obstacle to overcome in this story even with all the destruction he causes in the first place. And this makes all he does in this issue seem empty in all honesty as it’s just a rehash of what came before with Doomsday rather than doing anything new with the “Doomsday can’t be stopped” hacked off excuse for a plot point.

As for Superman’s portrayal in this story, it’s all over the place. Which clearly does not make for quality writing at all. Initially, I do like how Superman is written when he saves the pilots and talks to the military as Superman is acting concerned about the situation and the loss of lives that has occurred. But this is all destroyed later on with is awkward and downright vapid conversations with Diana, his moaning and griping to Perry about “digging up an old story that could hurt people” and the outright lack of care Superman displays towards the end of the story. With the first issue, Superman’s romance is now a subject of priority for DC and that’s doing Superman way more harm than good. The unnecessary and ridiculous focus on his love life with Diana has hampered the quality of writing of those scenes greatly. I found no tenderness, no emotional sincerity or love in the lines “Kill the beast and bring me its head.” Is it lines like these which form the absurd Cliana shipping cliques? Do they only care about how well these two look together and not the emotional connection of a couple? Of which there is none in this comic? It baffles me how Superman/Wonder Woman is so popular with writing like this. Secondly , Clark’s discussion with Perry infuriates me to no end. Not only does Clark look unstable and heading into MOS territories of morality but Perry is made to look like someone he’s not in a masked attempt to convey a warped and mutilated version of why Superman should kill Doomsday. If it weren’t for morals and principles in our society to live by, there’d be chaos and anarchy and people wouldn’t treat each other well. It’s sheer foolishness for the writers to change the most moral and ethically sound fictional icon into a subscriber for the “Can’t always play by the rules” motto. That goes against the core of Superman’s principles and morality. I’ll talk about the final thing later on in the action section.

The fault here regrettably lies in the cluttered mess and poor excuse for writiting. I’d hoped Pak and Soule could tame Lobdell’s massive errors and hacked off excuse for writing. But all we get is a cluttered sequence of events where it’s clear different writers have written different scenes rather than one seamless story flowing between the writers. This also happens to the other characters in the story as well. Outside of her empty romance with Superman, Diana is written as a dumb, brash warrior who doesn’t wait to fight and acts aggressively in the field and to Luthor. I fail to see how this version of Diana (who I presume was mostly written by Soule in these scenes) is somehow superior to the calm yet fierce presence of Azzarello’s Diana. Also, the Lois-Lana sub plot is crammed into the story to try and make the readers care about possible future developments in this money grabbing excuse for an event this summer. There’s just too much going on to be committed to this. Moreover, Lois and Lana both have some really strange lines. Especially Lois what with her Brainiac possession. I’m really ticked off with how Lobdell has given Lois powers to try and make her seem important. In reality, the value of her importance lies in her own humanity and her desire to seek out the truth and do the right thing no matter what comes in her way. This kind of role for her in a Superman centred event is poorly handled and comes off as a blatantly ridiculous portrayal of Lois. And the Justice League aren’t written that well either. Hell they don’t even play a big role in the story unlike in the previous Death of Superman where Doomsday thrashes the League and Superman is the only one who can stand up to him. Their presence added little to the story and didn’t improve its quality. They just showed up to connect the events to the wider DCU.

Even the action has its flaws. True it’s bombastic, large in scale and really shows off Superman’s prowess against a powerful foe. Plenty of feats to discuss on the battle forums. But at the end of the day, the action was an anti-climatic disappointment. Superman flies Doomsday to Venus, beats him up there and incinerates him with heat vision. And then Superman does one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. He flies back to Smallville, his childhood town, leading a healed Doomsday right into the midst of innocent civilians. Truly I’ve never seen a lack of care or attention to detail from Superman. If you’re going to kill Doomsday, at least fly him into the sun to make sure the job’s done. That would have ended him for good I imagine. Basically, the fight is over all too quickly and it’s wrapped up far too fast so that the next chapter can progress on. Overall then, the action was decent but its use in the story meant it ended abruptly and without warning.

Now of course, if anyone’s reading this review who knows my posts on the Superman forums, you’re going to be wondering what my thoughts are on the ending. As some may know, I am staunchly and passionately against Superman killing sentient beings. I’ve criticised the controversial neck snapping incident in Man of Steel, countering support for it with pertinent examples and generally stating that a well written Superman at the core of his character does not kill ever. Zod is a sentient being and so the times Superman has killed Zod in the comics go against his character entirely. However, with the other candidate for Superman using lethal force, aka Doomsday, I have fewer quarrels. At the end of the day, Doomsday is a genetic abomination with no reason or capability to understand what it’s doing. It’s just mindless rage and destruction to all as it was genetically programmed to act like. It’s like a cancerous virus or a wild beast out of control. It cannot be reasoned with and it doesn’t see that what they’re doing is wrong. So Doomsday is the one time that Superman ‘killing’ is somewhat OK as Superman isn’t really killing a sentient life form. However, I absolutely hated how Superman killed Doomsday. The original story only had Superman put everything he had into one final punch to end Doomsday’s rampage. Here Superman sticks his hand inside Doomsday and tears the monster apart. That was the one thing that made me shout “What the hell” out loud in my house with no one around to hear. There was no reason to show Superman brutally and horrifically dispatching Doomsday with a disgraceful image of him tearing the monster apart. That’s utterly overkill rubbish that ruins the image of Superman as an iconic moral symbol for people to strive towards. That scene has really put me off what the New 52 Superman has become since he’s willing to not only kill but do so lethally.

As for the art, I do have to credit Ken Lashley for doing a somewhat good job. His pencils are dynamic, the proportions all look about right and the colours do visually enhance the story. His art is probably the best thing about this one shot. Having said this, some panels show Superman with a yellow instead of red belt (which works fine on the costume IMO) as well as cramming loads of events into many panels splitting them across a two page spread and muddling up what’s going on in the comic. It’s already hard enough to follow what’s going on without straining one’s eyes to see the panels in the comic.

Bottom line, this was a dooming disappointment. The story was pure edgy shock value which seems to characterise the New 52 nowadays, the action was anti climatic and this whole idea for a Superman event seems to be tailored to the Man of Steel crowd. Which I find to be a damning, desecrating shame to the heart of what Superman stands for. I’m sick and tired and have had as much as I can stand with supporters of the view that Superman killing is a good thing. When the world’s greatest hero tears a monster apart with his bare hands, I fail to see how that qualifies as being a good story at all. It’s a poor excuse for Superman to break his morality and the lack of effort and cohesion in this one shot is evident in its final poor story.

Final Scores:

• · Story: 2/10
• · Art: 7/10
• · Overall: 2/10