Superman: Nightwing and Flamebird volume 1

By Greg Rucka, Eddy Barrows, Sidney Teles, Diego Olmos, Pere PÃ©rez & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2639-8

â€œThe Dynamic Duo of Kandorâ€ were first envisioned by pulp author Edmond Hamilton and artists Curt Swan & George Klein in Superman #158 (January 1963, ‘Superman in Kandor!’) which saw raiders from the preserved Kryptonian enclave attacking the Man of Steel and describing him as a traitor to his people.

Back then, the baffled Superman infiltrated the Bottle City with Jimmy Olsen where they created the Batman and Robin-inspired masked identities of Nightwing and Flamebird to ferret out the answerâ€¦

Over intervening decades the roles have been played by a number of others in Kandor and elsewhere, before eventually being appropriated for regular Earthbound characters when the original Robin became Nightwing and first Batgirl Bette Kane re-branded herself as Flamebird.

In this iteration, part of the recent overarching Superman publishing event â€œWorld of New Krypton/World Without Supermanâ€, the 100,000 preserved Kandorians have escaped imprisonment in the Bottle City and, gaining superpowers under Sol’s light, built themselves a planet in our solar system.

With the Man of Steel’s arch-nemesis General Zod prominent and pre-eminent in the newly re-established society and most of Earth crazy-scared about a world full of belligerent supermen flying around in their backyard, Kal-El has abandoned his adopted homeworld to keep an eye on the system’s newest immigrantsâ€¦

Earth is not completely defenceless, however. As well as the Justice League and Superman’s hand-picked replacement Mon-El of Daxam, Supergirl and a mysterious â€œSuperwomanâ€ still fly our skies and top-secret, sinister paramilitary, anti-alien task force Project 7734 is watching, certain that there are other ET insurgents just waiting in hidingâ€¦

Collecting Action Comics #875-879, Action Comics Annual #12 (from May to September 2009) and excerpts from Superman Secret Files 2009, this tense suspense thriller introduces a brace of apparently familiar new players to the cosmic drama of World Without Supermanâ€¦

Written throughout by Greg Rucka, 5-part saga ‘The Sleepers’ (illustrated by Eddy Barrows, Ruy JosÃ© & Julio Ferreira) begins in Australia with a masked and armoured duo attacking a media mogul and revealing that he is in fact Kryptonian agent Tor-An; placed in deep cover by Zod to infiltrate Earth’s echelons of power prior to invasion.

His cover spectacularly blown by Nightwing and Flamebird – Kryptonians masquerading as earthling heroes during these times of xenophobic hysteria – the alien infiltrator battles manically but is soon overcome and transported to Superman’s vacant Fortress of Solitude as, in Metropolis, Lois Lane ponders the implications of the televised battle.

Also considering the state of affairs is the fanatical leader of Project 7734. General Sam Lane is Lois’ father and a global war hero thought long-perished in service of humanity. However the severely off-reservation zealot is actually running his own covert agenda of rendition and murder under the noses of family and government, secure in his conviction that only he knows what’s best for Earth.

What he doesn’t know is who these newcomers are – although he does have some suspicionsâ€¦

On New Krypton military martinet – and Zod’s former lover – Ursa is investigating the disappearance of security officer Thara Ak-Var, unaware as yet that the young woman is AWOL on Earth, hunting down six Kryptonian sleepers the General and Ursa so assiduously trained. The twisted, sadistic soldier-fanatic has no idea how closely the mysterious Flamebird is to one she thought lost foreverâ€¦

And in the Fortress Thara, having locked up Tor-An, is horrified to see her teenaged companion Lor-Zod age ten years in agonising secondsâ€¦

Part 2 (with additional pencils from Sidney Teles) opens with the distraught pair ambushed and overwhelmed by the deranged, unstoppable Ursa, who seems to know all the bewildered boy-man’s secrets. So she should: Ursa is his motherâ€¦

Unfortunately, bringing him into the world doesn’t prevent the Kryptonian killer savagely beating Nightwing to the brink of death and stabbing Flamebird with a lethal Kryptonite knife. Only a desperate rally and sheer luck allows the tormented young man to fend her off and escape the Fortress with his dying partner.

In Metropolis some time later, Lois Lane looks out her window and sees the son she thought lost forever floating in mid-air with a dead woman in his armsâ€¦â€¦

Part 3 (illustrated by Teles & Sandro Ribeiro) opens with a furious and frustrated Ursa discovering the Fortress empty except for the incarcerated failure Tor-An as, in distant America, Lois is reunited with the strangely altered boy who was briefly adopted by her and husband Clark Kentâ€¦

It all began when Superman intercepted a spaceship crashing to Earth. Catching the blazing capsule he discovered a young boy within, apparently from Kryptonâ€¦

Claimed by the US government, the boy nearly disappeared into the nebulous miasma of US covert agencies until the Man of Tomorrow rescued him. Determined the boy should have a normal childhood he then closeted him with his own foster parents. Jonathan and Martha Kent were the only humans with any experience of raising super-kidsâ€¦

Thereafter the Action Ace decided to keep the authorities involved but at arms length, even after Lex Luthor sent the unstable juggernaut Bizarro to steal the boy, but was eventually forced to admit that only total anonymity could save the youngster from becoming somebody’s ultimate weapon.

He and Lois adopted the boy, naming him Christopher, just as three Kryptonian villains smashed free of the Phantom Zone (a stark and silent realm of nullity; formless and intangible, it was a time-proof, timeless prison for the worst villains of lost planet Krypton) and attacked Earth.

Challenging the Man of Steel, they claimed to know the boy’s true origins. Christopher – nee Lor-Zod – had been born in an aberrant, solid sector of the ghostly plane; impossible fruit of a union between disgraced Zod and psychotic killer Ursa. Subjected to constant torture and abuse at the hands of the twisted prison population the unearthly child finally escaped, but his uncanny genesis had made him a creature of disruptive potential.

His mere presence on Earth threatened to break down the walls to the Phantom Zone, and Lois last saw her adopted son when the brave little boy voluntarily returned to his birth dimension to save the world from invasion by an army of Kryptonian convictsâ€¦

Now only months later he is back, full grown and carrying a wounded woman he clearly loved deeply. Possibly the greatest human expert on Kryptonians, Lois promptly calls on Justice Leaguer Kimiyo Hoshi who – as Dr. Light – bombards Thara with yellow solar radiation to kickstart super-healing.

Unfortunately the spectacular radiance is picked up by covert 7734 surveillance. General Lane turns his paranoid attentions upon his daughter and discovers â€œEnemy Hostileâ€ Thara Ak-Var sunbathing on his little girl’s roofâ€¦

Christopher, assured that Thara is on the mend, returns to the Fortress. Once there though, he only finds Tor-An’s corpse and his own maniac birth-mother alternatively itching for another fight and beseeching him to come home.

Disgusted and distracted Nightwing flees but is ambushed over the icy wastes by Lane’s souped-up drone planes.

Now, in Nevada, a young Kryptonian couple begin a lethal rampage: hot, horny and obsessed with becoming the new Bonnie and Clyde in their own gory remake of â€œBadlandsâ€â€¦

Part 4 (art by Diego Olmos) finds former sleeper agents Az-Rel and Nadira in New Mexico, having gouged a bloody swathe through the Southwest, completely rejecting Zod’s schemes, preferring a life of murderous, sex-fuelled self-indulgenceâ€¦

Chris had been wounded in 7734’s attack and DNA has been gathered and processed by the covert xenophobes. The results confirm General Lane’s theory that Nightwing is the same child Superman prevented the US Government from confiscating and it also proves his own daughter is a traitor to humanity, consorting with and giving comfort to aliensâ€¦

Nightwing returns to Metropolis just as the recuperating Thara finishes telling Lois how she and the boy first hooked up, but no sooner are they all reunited than news of the spree-killers catapults the heroes into amother battleâ€¦

The furious fight against power-drunk Az-Rel and Nadira in Part 5 (Olmos art) is only interrupted when 7734’s top agent and an army of bizarre monsters join the melee.

Codename: Assassin is a powerful telepathic fanatic more concerned with capturing Nightwing and Flamebird than saving lives and his interference allows the Kryptonian thrill-killers opportunity to escape. Nightwing pursues, but the telepath remains, preferring to extract all the enigmatic crusaders’ secrets from Thara’s mind.

With Nightwing obliviously chasing the fugitive sleepers, all Flamebird’s memories are being sampled by the rapacious Assassin until he inadvertently triggers a terrifying explosive transformation and his captive manifests as a chaotic creature of blazing destructive energyâ€¦

In the aftermath Az-Rel and Nadira elude Chris and the shaken but restored Thara (but not 7734’s other metahuman assets) whilst at a distant grave Mon-El confirms Lois’ worst suspicions: her driven, duplicitous, obsessive father is still aliveâ€¦

Action Comics Annual #12 then provides ‘The Origin of Nightwing and Flamebird’ (illustrated by Pere PÃ©rez); disclosing how Kandor’s abduction by Brainiac set in motion a series of tragic events which orphaned Thara and led to her becoming a security officer in Kandor, protecting the parents of the girl who would one day become Supergirl.

We also learn how her life was further changed when, moved by an irresistible inpulse, she joined the city’s Spiritual Guild and somehow, impossibly, connected with a little boy lost in the Phantom Zone and constantly tortured by his own parents and all the ghostly inmates of the penal plane.

And then one day, prompted by urgings from a mythical deity, Thara broke into the Zone and spectacularly rescued Lor-Zod, battling demons in human form to bring them both into the lightâ€¦

To Be Continuedâ€¦

With a cover gallery by Andrew Robinson and Renato Guedes and including full fact file pages on both Nightwing and Flamebird, this slim exotic tome is fast paced, action-packed, pretty and engaging but as an opening shot in only a sidebar sequence to a major story arc, probably offers more bewilderment than wonderment to any reader not intimately aware with the ever-changing minutiae of the continuity.

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