ACTION COMICS #873

New Krypton, Part 10:  Birth Of A Nation

March 2009

Written by Geoff Johns

Pencils by Pete Woods

Inks by Pete Woods

Cover by Ladrönn

Synopsis

[continued from Superman #683]

As the heroes of hero battle against the Kandorians, General Lane is pleased.  However, Lex luthor is not.  He fears that in the war, humanity would be the losers.  He wants to end it now.  Lane tells him that things need to move slowly.  Over Kandor, the battle continues.  Zantanna and Shazam cast a spell that disables all of the Kryptonians.  At that moment, Kandor suddenly splits from Earth and flies into the sky. Seeing what is happening, Supergirl flies to Kandor and her mother, moments before a shield is erected, preventing Superman from following her.  Kandor then reforms into a sphere and drifts into space, eventually falling into orbit opposite of Earth.  Later, Agent Liberty infiltrates General Lane;s base of operations.  However, he is discovered and killed by Superwoman.  On Kandor, Alura is pleased her daughter joined and believes she will be a loyal soldier.  And Zod will be her general.  [continued in Supergirl #37]

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

This was a good issue, but I think the key to this issue is not what is inside, but what will happen next.  this is all set-up as Johns rejiggers everything to set up the next batch of stories.  Supergirl is no longer on Earth.  Superwoman is revealed to a bad woman.  And so forth.  Johns handles everything with his usual terrific ability to juggle such stories and I enjoyed this immensely.  But I think I am eager to see what happens next more than anything else. 

I loved the magical solution to taking down the Kryptonians.  A combination of Freddy and Zantanna to knock them all unconscious, plus a little work from Green Lantern to protect Superman and Supergirl. 

My only knock on this issue is the fact that the Kryptonians seem to side with Alura.  I don’t see any of them siding with Superman.  It seems strange that all 100,000 of the Kryptonians would be solidly behind Alura and Zod.  I suppose living in a bottle would do strange things, but I was hoping to see a little more diversity in the population than what we got. 

It is amazing when a writer is able to tackle an obvious storytelling problem (what to do with Kandor and the Kryptonians) in a manner that just seems so perfect for the story.  There is no way DC editorial would keep that many Kryptonians on planet Earth.  It doesn’t work.  Superman may not be the last son of Krypton, but he certainly needs to be the only Krypton on Earth.  So, at some point Kandor and its people would have to leave Earth.  It is just a manner of how the writers would accomplish that trick.  To see what Johns does here, I am amazed.  It makes sense.  Not only within the storyline, the way Alura is acting, and how the Kryptonians feel, but from an editorial point of view it allows writers to either forget Kandor if they want or use the characters if they want.  It really is the best of both worlds, if you forgive the bad pun. 

Agent Liberty, we hardly knew ye.  No, I mean that, we barely knew the character.  He was re-introduced only a few issues, barely had screen time, and then was killed.  I guess the character was pulled out of the closet, dusted off only in order to be killed.  It would have been nice if Agent liberty had been given more to do so that his death didn’t seem so cold and calculated, but Superman’s supporting cast has grown exponentially since this “triangle” system started.

A lot of people complained that the death of Pa Kent was something that did not need to happen.  And I won’t debate that fully here.  But I will say that the scene with Pa at the end carries with a little bit more resonance because he is dead.  Granted, the scene would still work if Pa were alive to tell Superman in person, so yes it would work if he were alive.  But I doubt it carry the emotional heft that it does as seen here. 

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