DCU Comic Book Reviews

SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #6 and #7

Welcome to Mer-Tropolis

November & early December 2007

Written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti

Pencils by Koi Turnball

Inks by Sandra Hope

Covers by Koi Turnball and Andy Park

Synopsis

During an expedition to investigate the sunken Spanish galleon Estrella, Lori Lemaris finds an Incan talisman on a chain.  When she puts the necklace on, something strange happens....  three weeks, later, Metropolis is under water and all of its citizens have turned to mermaids.  They are being ruled by Queen Lori and King Superman, who is being controlled by Lori.  However, he has vague memories of the way life used to be, including Lois.  Meanwhile, Lex Luthor devises a plan to free Metropolis.  Along with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, they attack Superman’s palace.  Lex then kills “Lois,” a robot double.  It is enough to shock Superman to reality.  He tries to convince Lori to restore Metropolis.  She refuses.  But as she talks to Superman, Lex takes the talisman from her and crushes it.  Metropolis returns to normal.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

I’ll talk specifically about these two issues in minute, but I wanted to indicate my feeling that both this title and its companion, Batman Confidential, will probably be canceled soon.  The quality just does not seem to be there.  And the one story that has been good, the first story arc in this title, has been so late that the conclusion has been postponed.  So, to date, neither Confidential title has had a good track record and I can’t imagine it can continue like this. 

Anyway.

As you can probably guess from the above statement, this was not a good issue, by any stretch of the imagination.  For a story that took two issues or 44 pages to tell, it still felt like there was a lot of wasted space and repetitive actions.  It easily could’ve been told in one issue.  Either that or the editor needed to chop out the excess and tell the writers to write some actual content. 

The first problem is the “three weeks later” caption at the beginning as we switch from Lori finding the talisman to suddenly being tossed into the middle of Mer-Tropolis.  It is meant to be shocking, but it doesn’t have the intended effect.  The problem, for me at least, is that I don’t know that much about the character of Lori to really understand her motivations for why she does what does.  Or even if she is responsible for what she does.  We get a little bit of it in the second issue, but by then it is too late.  The writers seem to want the brainwashing of Superman to be from Lori because she loves him, but does that mean she also wanted Metropolis underwater to?  But if that is the talisman’s doing, how does she get enough control of it to brainwash Superman (which, by the way, is becoming a tiresome plot device and needs to be ditched)?  Later in the story, Lori uses the talisman in an attempt to fix what she had done, which is plain stupid because earlier the talisman corrupted her, but now it doesn’t corrupt her and bends to her will?  What power the talisman has seems to depend on the needs of the plot rather than a consistent set of rules. 

Actually, speaking of tiresome plot devices, the entire idea of Lex Luthor banding together with his enemy (Superman or Lois or Jimmy) to defeat something that threatens both is also a little tiresome.  Taking these two ideas and adding it to an underwater setting doesn’t make it unique or different; it just points how poorly written the story really is.  And that really is the crux of the problem: it is poorly written and haphazardly plotted.  For a short two issue story, the writers needed six pages for the epilogue? 

And there is more. 

Lex Luthor comes across as a walking exposition board, spouting lines to let us know how superior he is, how much he hates everyone, and how is going to fix everything.  It’s the last part that fails to grab me, because frankly the writers don’t bother to show us the new Mer-Tropolis enough to show me that it is bad enough to revert it to normal.  Or at least what they call normal.  At one point Superman tells King Shark (in a useless, useless fight scene that does nothing for the story) that Metropolis was always under water, since forever.  Yet, Lex Luthor tells the others to follow him so they can walk once more.  So which one is it?  (and, by the way, where are the other heroes, or even Aquaman in this mess?  Just asking.) 

 

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