Superman: Doomed #2 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Superman, now with the rage of a thousand suns and the brains of seven billion minds.

The Review: As you may know, it’s very important for me to make a good-faith attempt to figure out what a writer (or writers, as the case may be) is trying to do before passing judgment on it. Stories like Doomed are thus the most difficult for me to review because I never know whether it makes sense to criticize something for being over-the-top when its intention is to be so. In cases like these, you can only find the true merit of the story by peeling away its many distracting layers of plot twists.

If the intention of Doomed was to produce the biggest, wildest story possible, Greg Pak and Charles Soule have definitely succeeded: seven billion souls at risk, Superman as Doomsday, Wonder Woman coercing Mongul in the Phantom Zone, Lois Lane as a telepathic Brainiac-avatar, the list goes on. And by the issue’s end, there’s no denying that Pak-Soule manage to coordinate all their moving pieces to reach a sensible resolution that trails into a potentially even bigger storyline. Yes, it’s quite diverting, even entertaining. But is it satisfying? Well, that’s a more complicated question.

Ultimately, the tension of Doomed is manufactured because you’re never really in doubt as to the outcome: Clark overcomes the Doomsday influence and saves everyone, etc. Obviously. You might say it was necessary for Pak-Soule to go as big as they did to reinforce the idea that there’s some serious danger at work here.

Still, this is a common hazard of the superhero genre, in which the conclusion must always be the victory of the heroes and the outraged defeat of the villains. The thing that truly matters is what the characters lose and gain along the way.* Thus you have Brainiac tempting Clark with the lure of a perfect world (Steel and Lana as lord and lady of Metropolis, a retired Bruce smiling upon a recovered Gotham) or alternatively baiting him with the sordid possibilities of the current flawed one (Kara losing control, destroying Clark, and becoming Doomsday herself). Clark falls for neither, obviously, and he also easily sidesteps the choice of whether to kill Brainiac to stop the chaos.

In the end, Doomed is a storyline that can keep you occupied for as long as its momentum lasts, but once it’s over, you have nothing left but the already fading thrill of the ride. Almost nothing; [Spoiler alert!] there is Brainiac’s claim that Cyborg-Superman is actually Kara’s father—which we never see her dealing with anyway—and then there’s the strange reality Clark leaves Brainiac in after dragging them both into a black hole, a reality filled with fragments of some very familiar universes: Superman with red underpants still proudly worn on the outside; a multi-generation Justice Society; a youthful Legion of Super-Heroes; the Marv Wolfman-era Teen Titans; Flashpoint Wonder Woman and Aquaman fighting it out; Uncle Sam and Plastic Man in a world hung with Nazi banners.

But far from getting me excited, I dread what this means. At best, it’s a reminder of a continuity already lost that will never be restored. At worst, it’s a hint of greater continuity upheaval to come. Either way, it signals a DCU that’s still a little ashamed of what it’s become or regretful of what it lost.

We have a veritable army of artists putting this oversized issue together, some more impressive than others, though all absolve themselves pretty well. Since I’m not really capable of identifying which pieces of art belongs to which, I can only tell you that Szymon Kudranski really stands out with his delicate, shadowy work, so perfectly suited to moments of psychological/existential crisis as when Clark encounters Brainiac in his mind.

Conclusion: Explosive, but not shocking, it’s nothing you couldn’t have foreseen at the start of the arc.

Grade: B-

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: * I was going to say that in a way, the superhero genre reflects life itself: we all know what the end will be, but we don’t know what it’ll take to get there. But this observation seems a tad high-minded for this