By Geoff Johns, Richard Donner & Adam Kubert (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-572-9
In recent years DC has taken great pains to rationalise the attendant continuities surrounding their comicbook characters’ forays into other media. It’s sound sense, both commercially and artistically, as no matter whether if it’s a television series, big screen interpretation or the animated “kids†shows (generally the very best and most palatable material for died-in-the-wool fans: check out Justice League Unlimited or Batman: the Brave and the Bold and see for yourselves) that bring new fans into the mix. When they finally check out the comics – which is surely the ultimate goal – inconsistencies and jarring differences can only lead to confusion, disappointment and a lost reader.
Last Son was a five issue story-arc that blended portions of the Christopher Reeve Superman films into the then-current comics continuity, using the “ripple effect†of the reality-altering Infinite Crisis to explain the changes in the character’s back-story – and as a palliative sop to the most intransigent and picky fan-boys. The storyline also impacted on many other DC titles and its repercussions are still in effect in current issues of all Superman titles.
It also brought film director Richard Donner back to the characters he had turned into global sensations in Superman: the Movie and Superman II, substituting key elements of those epics for much of the increasingly tangled web which had preceded it. This volume collects Action Comics #844-866, #851 and Action Comics Annual #11; the stories co-written by Donner’s old assistant and super-scripter Geoff Johns, with stylish and gritty illustration from Adam Kubert and colorists Dave Stewart and Edgar Delgado making an incomparable contribution to the events.
In his Fortress of Solitude the Man of Tomorrow is chided and reminded by the computer-recorded consciousness of his father Jor-El that he is an alien surrounded by humans, but never one of them. As the troubled hero returns to Metropolis and his wife Lois, he detects a spaceship crashing to Earth. Catching the blazing capsule he discovers a young boy within, who appears to be from Krypton…
Claimed by the US government the boy nearly disappears into the nebulous miasma of US covert agencies until Superman breaks him free and hides him with the only humans with any experience of raising super-kids: Jonathan and Martha Kent…
With his own family as a support group the Man of Steel decides on a course of action that will keep the government involved-but-honest, although when Lex Luthor sends the unstable juggernaut Bizarro to steal the child, he is forced to see that only secrecy and anonymity can save the youngster from becoming somebody’s ultimate weapon.
Naming the mysterious child Christopher he and Lois adopt the boy, just as three Kryptonian villains break free of the Phantom Zone (based on the filmic General Zod, Ursa and Non as seen in the aforementioned Superman: the Movie and Superman II). Confronting Superman they claim to know the boy’s secret, but they are angry, implacable and hungry for revenge…
Despite many scheduling problems during its initial release this series has slowly been accepted as a cornerstone of Superman’s latest mythology, and by reintroducing many beloved facets of older interpretations – albeit in the whimsy-lite, grim-and-gritty post-modern manner (such as the return of Superman’s Daxamite “big brother†Mon-El and different shades of Kryptonite), has almost re-validated some of the most charming memories of many older devotees. Spectacular and fabulously compelling, this heroic mystery epic is a brilliant book to introduce modern readers to the comics industry’s greatest invention, and has lots to offer any older fan who will accept yet another revamp.
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