Superman Unchained #6 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (story), Jim Lee (pencils), Scott Williams (inks), Dustin Nguyen (art), Alex Sinclair & John Kalisz (colors)

The Story: Superman faces the nuclear winter of Ascension’s discontent.

The Review: While I personally think Action Comics is the quintessential Superman title on the market, there’s no denying that Unchained remains the Superman “It Girl.”  What’s interesting is that the current storylines in each series have a common conflict: Clark’s universal concern for humanity versus purely American interests.  The way Greg Pak and Snyder have handled this conflict reveals the essential differences in their respective styles and books.

In a way, Pak doesn’t really challenge Clark’s values as directly as Snyder does.  In Action Comics, Ghost Soldier is a formidable opponent for Clark, but he’s no match for Clark’s capabilities.  Under those conditions, Clark can take a broader worldview than Soldier simply because he has the power to.  But Wraith is not only Clark’s match, but his superior both in power and experience.  If there’s a scenario Wraith can’t handle, it calls into question whether Clark can, either.

The scenario in question is the simultaneous launch of nine hundred and nineteen nuclear missiles, aimed at various cities around the world, with Batman estimating a mere sixty percent stop rate (“at best”) with the League’s combined strength.  It’s a situation that demands hard decisions, and neither Wraith nor Clark hesitate in making theirs; Wraith targets the U.S.-bound missiles while Clark goes for a more global solution.  In the abstract, it’s easy enough to criticize Wraith’s position for a lack of imagination as well as selfishness, but in the real world, how many of us would support Clark’s all-or-nothing gamble rather than cut our losses?

The problem is that in the real world, well-intentioned gambles fail all the time; not so in fiction.  Clark’s success is ultimately guaranteed, rendering any ethical dilemma moot.  Superhero stories are inherently limited by the fact that hero always saves the day.  The characters may experience a great deal of stress up until the moment of victory, and the critics may cry foul afterwards, but once the world is actually saved, all criticism is just hot air.

Indeed, once Superman successfully disables all the launched missiles, Wraith can do little else except congratulate him on a job “[w]ell done” and find a new point of contention, namely ownership of the Earthstone.  Clark’s refusal to hand over the crystal is, unlike earlier disagreements, outright defiance of Wraith, leading to their inevitable confrontation.  But fending off Wraith (thanks to one paranoid friend) is only a small component to the enemy Superman’s really facing, namely the American government.  Once General Lane declares that the U.S. has declared war on Superman, that takes the overarching conflict to a more inescapable level.  It’ll be interesting to see how Clark can navigate out of this one.

There’s one area in which Snyder clearly falls short of Pak in their respective Superman stories, and that’s in the leading women.  While Pak is writing a Lana Lang for the ages, Snyder’s Lois doesn’t branch out very far from the typical spunky reporter mold.  She just barely manages to avoid being completely vanilla with her acerbic attitude (to Ascension: “Your story…?  I’m afraid it’s real short.  You were born, and you became a #$$%.  The end.”), but at the end of the day, she’s still the damsel in distress whose role is limited to courier, delivering the plot’s solution to Superman rather than devising it.

As sharp and dashing an artist as Lee can be, his linework tends to look rather scratchy and distracting, which is not the case here.  This issue is remarkably clean for one drawn by Lee, which makes it far easier to admire the forcefulness and attraction of his art.  Lee draws the self-destruction of Ascension’s base as one large image stretching across two pages, the explosions climaxing towards the second page.  Within that image, you see successive, panel-less visuals of Clark rushing towards Lois, him flinging his cape around her as the fire grows around them, and the two of them escaping through a storm of explosions.  It conveys the speed of the action with a smart use of storytelling that Lee isn’t often known for.

Conclusion: Fully entertaining, though Snyder doesn’t quite succeed in breaking old Superman formulas.

Grade: B+

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – I don’t know if it’s really safe for Lois to just be wandering about endangered alien species by herself.

– I love the musical note Batman hums as he watches Clark use his failsafe to defeat Wraith.  I can’t imagine Batman being happy about many things, but that is definitely one of them.