Week of 29 July 2009

(SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers. Don't read it before you've read the comic.)

SUPERMAN #690 (9/09)
"The Setup"
ROLL CALL: Mon-El, Sensor Girl [Wilcox], Tellus

The title says it all: this issue is little more than four vignettes, each a setup for a later story.

Eleven pages are wasted on a protracted fight scene between Steel and Atlas, in which the dialogue consists mostly of various grunts. Eleven pages which could easily have been spent showing us something interesting, like Mon-El undressing and taking a shower, or parading around in bathing trunks, or any of a number of other scenarios.

A two-page Science Police setup (in which Mon-El appears, fully-clothed, in only two panels) has Officer Harper assigned to partner with Mon-El (Jon Kent) in the new plainclothes squad. Well, at least this bit has an openly gay S.P. officer, so that's cool. This story will be continued in Superman: Secret Files 2009.

An extended teaser has the Parasite going after Zatara, who is assisted by Mark Merlin. (I should know who Mark Merlin is, but I'm too lazy to look it up.) Zatara, as always, is cute but rather insufferable. Somebody needs to shove something in his mouth to keep him from talking. This story will be continued in the pages of Superman and Justice League.

The last setup sequence is the best. It shows a meeting between Tellus and Sodam Yat. Sodam is on his way to find Mon-El for some hot Daxamite boy-on-boy action, but Tellus stops him. Tellus announces that "If you meet Mon-El now, the future will be such that evil will win out over good." I am guessing that this is a tie-in to L3W, where Mon and Sodam apparently met for the first time...but perhaps it is some other kind of time paradox.

Sodam wanted to show Mon his etchings...er...crystals with information about Daxam. (Sodam is apparently under the impression that Mon doesn't know that much about Daxam, which is odd, because Daxam is where Mon grew up, eh?) So Tellus agrees to take the crystals to Mon. This story will be continued in Superman Annual #14. Somehow, it seems like Sodam is missing the point. I mean, he gets credit for the "seduce Mon by showing him pictures from home" plan, but not so much for the "send the hulking telepathic alien in my place to seduce Mon by showing him pictures from home" plan.

Tellus, on the other hand, knows exactly what he's doing -- after all, now he gets to seduce Mon, and he's gotten rid of the competition. Just goes to show that a Legionnaire can out-think any 21st century hero, especially when it comes to hot mansex.


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