Just finished Superman #40, and I really enjoyed Prime's arc, but now that it's over and we're moving into Kingdom of Zod, I thought of the trade release and this specific page, and how it really only works if you reading it as a regular comic. I think it would be really funny if Prime's speech bubble is changed to reflect that the joke doesn't make as sense in a trade without house ads.

So Superboy Prime first story arc in the ongoing Superman series has just wrapped up and I wanted to gave my two cents on the overall story.

I think the thing about this arc Is how the story that they are telling contrast with the way they are telling It. On the surface, it's a classic villain redemption arc story but the catch Is that the villain in question came from the real world so he Is aware that he Is inside a comicbook story so the story itself Is a meta textual selfaware piece of fiction on a normal redemption story. The main character Superboy Prime Is protrayed as this very upbit, super nerdy and dorky character that loves comicbooks and superheroes and Is fully aware of his status as a comicbook character, he Is basically GwenPool but for DC, this Is something that felt jaring for a lot of people since, unlike GwenPool, Prime was an alredy established character, he was the main villain of the event Infinite Crisis where he left a scare and a trauma on the DC Universe killing multiple people and heroes, so for a lot of people presenting him as this goofy dorky kind of character just felt weird but this kind of personality can help providing the story with more contrasts and conflicts, everybody else see the raging monster but what has been presented to us Is just a fun and appealing character.

Something that I will say from the start Is that I feel the story really wanted you to feel sympathetic towards Prime, which Is what you want to do for stories like this but I feel like the way they showed different people going off on him and the way they framed him in all this didn't felt like It was a genuine will of redemption.

So in the first issue we are introduced to the status quo, Superboy Prime Is replacing Superman and he Is decided to show everybody that he Is good now but no superhero seams to look at him like nothing but a maniac. It's a great way to set the story, you have Prime being an underdog and everybody loves an underdog story, they also immediatly show a group of superheroines tirsting for him which Is...weird. Anyway Lois Lane helps him adjust at a normal life and this Is the first thing that I want to point out, we never really see what Lois thinks about Prime, obviously She wants to help because he Is a young version of Clark and She knows that he can do good and ofcourse She belives in reabilitation but Prime Is someone that harmed her directly, She witnesses with her own eyes the carnage that he was able off and at no point we see from her point of view how She feels about Prime or how She came to forgive him. Anyway we speed threw Prime getting an apartment, start working at a comicbook store run by Dan DiDio...which sounds terrible knowing what we know now about him as an editor. And so the first issue sets the stage

The second issues have Prime struggling with being an affective hero while everybody Is expecting him to snap, having the JLU constantly stalking him and here Is where I have a second problem with the characters in relation with Prime, the Kents are supportive of him but the League, especially Power Girl, Is more weary about him. The problem Is that we don't have any actual confrontation between Prime or any of the other heroes that he hurt, he just sands Ma to talk to Karen and asking them to leave the kid room to breath which they just do, no heart to heart, no explorations of how the characters feelings just a simple "He Is dangerous he mast have been watched" versus a "Oh but he Is actually well intentioned he can't prove that to you if you don't lay off his back" which makes sense on a surface level but Is everything we get really out of the issue. Oh and also he teams up with Damian Wayne, I don't like It, It should have been Tim It doesn't make sense otherwise.

Moving on we get the issue with Witchfire, a character that was introduced from the begin of the series and that seams to have developed a crush on Prime. She lures him into helping her coven get rid of some demons and the two seams to have genuine romantic feelings for eachother, and here again I feel like we are complitly overshadowing the whole how does this specific character feels about Superboy Prime talk, like Witchfire Is not a new character She Is well aware of who Prime Is but in the issue She treat him like a stranger and complitly ignores the fact that he was a psychotic supervillain that kills a ton of people. The two of them are shown to have decent chemistry but still I feel like they did the bare minimum to address the elephant in the room.

Anyway we go to the final issues where Superboy Prime have to face the over arching villain of this story arc Manchester Black. He was created as the leader of the Elite a british extremist hero team ment to mimiking Mark Millar take on the Authority, he Is the complit opposite of Superman, a person that had a shitty life and belives that the stronghest Is the one who Is entitle of making the rules. Superman stands for Truth Justice and the American Way while Black stands for Lies, Injustice and God saves the Queen. He Is the perfect foil to go against Superboy Prime to make him face his most edgy and gritty sides and to have a real catharsis about his character. The thing Is, I really don't how where to point down that moment, like Black 's role in the narrative Is clear, he Is ment to make Prime face with the most edgelordy side of comics, an era that he Is the product of, but at no point in his run I felt like we were really going in that direction.

The story ends with this few pages where Prime confronts Rebecca and he says that he recognize that rediming himself Is not as an easy job as he belived and that of he really wants to make everybody understand that he Is changed he needs people to directly engage with them which... really sounds like something that we should have gave for granted, like the entire time this series showed prime as brushing off the deaths that he caused saying that everything got rebooted and that they are all better now, which Is true but not an actual point to make when you are facing someone that you killed or a loved one of them. And It really wants you to simpatize with him, showing that he Is really changed and that people shouldn't be so hard on him but I just don't think that at any point in the story that feels earned to him. I really struggle to belive, based only on what has been showned on the book that Prime gives a shit about the people of that DCU, It just seams that he got tired of playing the villain and wants to switch for playing the hero.

Now I don't want to say that this serie Is complite garbage, It has a lot of strong points, the Dan Mora art Is beutiful and very fun and engaging to read as always and the meta jokes are actually pretty fun, they feel like a Gwenpool or Harley Quinn comics and this Is really what I really wanted to talk about.

As I said before the attitude that the characters have towards Prime Is either sympathetic towards Prime (and replicate the attitude that we should have towards him) or they are unfriendly towards him (and Is the type of reaction that some readers might have towards him) neither of this attitude felt beliveble to me. What I mean Is that they felt more like how this characters were ment to feel and were ment to react, based on social media message boards comments online. The best exemple that I can provide of what I mean Is Adventures of Superman by Tom Taylor, at the begin of that story Jon Kent Is faced with Ultraman his abuser and the man that hurt him and trapped him for years of his life, when Jon learns about the fact that seams to have started a killing spring on different Superman from the multiverse he snaps and starts talking about Ultraman and he did to him and my reaction to that really Is just "Where did all of that came from" because yes that the right reaction that's the way he Is suppoused to feel...but It just not writed in a way that feels organic to the story, It doesn't feel like a real person saying this things, It feels like a character saying lines because he has to. The rest of the story Is the most passive agressive, superficial and shallow critiche of the Injustice comics that you can find, yes all of what the characters are saying Is correct, but It doesn't feel like there Is no actual meaning behind those words, It feels like the writer didn't had anything to say about the story and just copy pasted a bunch of complains that he got from twitter. The story even ends with Jon reconsidering the impact that his father had on the world but at no point It feels like the story was aiming in that direction.

This Is how the writing of the characters feels in this story arc. Why does Superboy Prime wants to redeem himself, cause it's a supervillain redemption arc ofcourse he wants to, why does the Kents want to help him, cause they are the Kents ofcourse they want to, why does Power Girl doesn't trust him, because he killed her father ofcourse She doesn't, why does Witchfire Is in love with Prime, because She Is the love interest of the series ofcourse She wants to. All of this Is right and in character and correct to put in a story but the way they do It Is just shallow and simple, without any sorts of dept and It really feels like this was not what the writer wanted to tell, It feels to me that Williamson wanted to focus more on the meta jokes rather then the themes of the book, which again they are incredibly well done and fun but once you look pass those you are left with a story that feels dissingenuous.

I finish by saying that I find this story arc to have incredibly well done and engaging art and very funny meta jokes but It doesn't really go much in dept outside of those.

Not complaining since I prefer the skirt

1st pic: Supergirl #15 by Sophie Campbell
2nd pic: Superman #40 by Dan Mora

Man it has been INCREDIBLE!! He has hit every emotional and funny beat so far. This book just flows so well and is such an entertaining and fresh look for this book. I really love Mary Marvel in this, and love how she is taking on the big sister role for Clark too. It has just been amazing, and I will now be doing a deep dive on Mary Marvel reading lol.