DCU Comic Book Reviews

SUPERMAN ANNUAL #14

The History Lesson

2009

Written by James Robinson

Pencils by Javier Pina

Inks by Javier Pina

Cover by Renato Guedes

Synopsis

One night, Mon-el discovered crystals that appeared mysteriously out of the blue.  Holding the crystals, it gave Mon-el a glimpse in the past of his home planet, Daxam.  At first, Mon-el doesn’t want to know, but his friend Mitch convinces him that you need to appreciate the past in order to appreciate the present.  So, Mon-el takes the crystals and learns that the history of Daxam begins on Krypton.  A young man named Dax-Am discovered Daxam.  Kryptons intermixed with the locals to create a new genetic breed.  With time, knowledge of Krypton is lost.  Daxamites began to explore the stars.  Even though they are forbidden to mix their genes, one woman visits Earth and is impregnated by an Indian Warrior.  She returns to Daxam to have the child, but died before returning to Earth, even though she left her ship ready, programmed to return.  Eventually, Daxamites become xenophobic and space travel is forbidden.  Later, Lar Gand (aka Mon-el) finds the ship and wants to fly it.  The Daxamites refuse and forcibly come after him.  Lar Gand runs to the ship and flies away anyway and lands in Smallville, where he meets a young Clark Kent.  For Mon-el, the history lesson is over except for one final bit of information:  the name of the woman who gave birth to a Earth child was Bal Gand, a distant relative of Mon-el. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

This was a bit of a mix bag for me.  Basically, this is an entire issue of exposition as Robinson, as the voice of the narrator of the crystals, tells us the most current version of Daxamite continuity in the DC universe.  As someone who reads a lot of DC books, especially all of the Superman-related titles, I was very interested in this issue and curious to see how it fits together with what has been happening recently (including this story from Green Lantern Corps, which also gives a little bit of Daxam history).  But as a story, it didn’t work.  Except for the small bit with Bal Gand, there is no story, just a literal history lesson, as the title of the issue proclaims.  Was it good?  Yeah, it was interesting and it was executed well by Robinson and Pina.  But ultimately, this is not the main story, it is only the background information and while it helps to explain the history about Daxam and the connection to Krypton, it is not absolutely essential to appreciate Mon-el’s story. 

The ending (the last couple of panels) was telegraphed and not much of a surprise.  I mean, why else keep the woman’s name from being spoken if the name was important in some way?  If it is not “Gand” then why would it be important to the main character whose name is “Lar Gand?”  I get what Robinson was going for with the way he set-up the ending, but ultimately it felt forced and way too obvious that Robinson was going for something at the ending. 

Did we really need to see Lar Gand land in Smallville?  Okay, we needed to se him land, but I think the one shot of the ship over the corn (or grain) field was enough.  The following two pages just seemed like a little bit of overkill.  I think that might’ve been added for the trade paperback, with the assumption that some readers might not have read the scene when Lar Gand landed, which occurred way back in this issue of Action Comics Annual. 

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