Fav Comic: Tales of the Sinsetro Corp: Superman Prime
The hater of 2006 is back
Man this was such a great and wonderful Comic. Before I get into my thoughts here is a quick synopsis of the plot of the issue.
In this comic you the reasons why Clark Kent from Earth-Prime sided with Sinestro and new Corps of Fear. The book starts out with him Hovering over Bart Allen’s monument and defacing it. Then all of the heroes then proceeed to jump our poor wayward Kryptonian youth. During the battle he explains that while he was picked on his earth when he got his abilities he happy to be Superman, see he was a comic book fan on his earth and then he finds out he has the powers of the greatest superhero of all and on top of that Superman needs his help. At that moment His Earth was destroyed by the Anti-Monitor (as seen in Crisis on Infinite Earths). He lost everything he knew to save the one earth left, New Earth. Then He went Bonkers (as seen in Infinite Crisis). So now he wants to see the Anti-Monitor get what he wants just to take it away from him like the Anti-Monitor took away his Earth. His hatred of New Earth Heroes is because he sees them as flawed from the versions he read as a kid on his earth. During this the heroes are trying to defeat him before the sun rises and he gets his full powers. They don’t succeed. The Book ends with him going to fight the new Ion.
The really stand out element of this issue is the dialogue of Superman Prime, or as I personally call him Emoboy Prime and will continue to do so for the rest of my review. Geoff Johns, the writer of the issue really put and interesting twist on him that some will notice and some maybe not. Emoboy Prime is a Pre-Crisis DC universe fanboy, and one that posts mean criticism on websites like Newsarma. From the first page where he cynically disses Bart Allen’s Flash run reminds me so much of the hate spewing on the internet when bart was announced as the Flash for One Year Later.
Straight Played out our boy Bart.
We see here even more hate of One Year Later
Another great scene was when Emoboy was fighting the new Aquaman. Calling the new Aquaman not Aquaman and that Aquaman doesn’t have a sword. I remember hearing this sentiment about the new Aquaman in comic stores and occasionally online also, I found it funny that Johns added this to his character and made him kinda like a mirror for the audience reading the book, because we’ve all had some fanboy moments. His nonchalant way of also calling the current Firestorm not Firestorm because when he was reading Ronnie Raymond and Prof. Stein was Firestorm shows he is clearly coming from a bronze age readers perspective and can’t deal with how the DC universe has moved on from that time.
See the disdain on his face, that all those fan who buy stuff they say they don’t like it yet still buy it.
come on he’s crying, that’s awesome!
Towards the end of the issue he sees the sun and rips off his shirt to see a scar in the shape of the Superman shield basking in the sunlight powering up with a tearful smile and in that moment for a sec you feel him. And in the end we see he’s just an emotional moody teenager. Or EMO as the kids call it these days. Geoff Johns made a perfect new villain in this character because he’s comic fandom’s dark side. You gotta love him because he is you.
I have mixed feelings about Prime. I mean the concept is cool but DC ruined it by making him into a whiney annoying little twerp. Plus, the evil Superman thing has been done to death. Don’t we already have the Cyborg, Ultraman, Zod, Bizarro, Preus, the Composite Supeman, Match and Black Zero? Prime’s role could have easily gone to one of these other characters I mentioned.
It went have been better if they had kept Alexander Luthor around as an antagonist rather than have him go out like a punk against the Joker and Lex Luthor.