The Dawn of DC-era Superman – as featured in both Action Comics and Superman – has felt appropriately sunny; even in the face of fairly brutal odds and grim villains (and the yawn-worthy Knight Terrors event), the Man of Steel and his pals have kept a brand of optimism that exemplifies the goodness of the character. Everything is candy colorful, dynamic, distilled to its cleanest form.
Joshua Williams and Jamal Campbell’s Superman has blended the definitive Bronze Age work of John Byrne with Superman: The Animated Series, populating the Man of Steel’s roster with representations of classic villains like Silver Banshee and Parasite that feel iconic, unbound from any lingering grim or gritty continuity. The characters – including supporting cast characters like Lois, Jimmy, and Lex – immediately feel more whole and substantial because their representation can be implied, supported by the reader’s extant relationship and understanding of those characters even when the characters themselves appear only briefly.
It’s interesting, then, to see how the team has been developing its new villains (with art by Gleb Melnikov, Norm Rapmund, David Baldeon, and Jamal Campbell in issue #8). The underlying Dr. Pharm and Mr. Graft, who have been pulling strings since the first issue, manage a sort of Saturday morning sinister, leaning so fully into their concept that they might as well be the pharmaceutical versions of Captain Planet or Toxic Avenger baddies, form defining character.
Superman #8 finds us right in the middle of a new bad guy’s opening arc: the Unchained feels born from the 1990s bondage mall goth design school, all black straps and chains, and all but begs to be animated as those chains lash out, ensnare our heroes, and devastate Metropolis. The book managed to make him compelling from the start, birthing him from a literal mystery box that Lex buried beneath the city.
This issue doubles down on rooting him to the narrative as Lex explains that the Unchained was part of the genetic stew from which Conner Kent was cloned – Conner’s tactile telekinesis is but a weaker strain as that developed in the Unchained while he was still a young boy. It’s a clever, convenient way to ground the villain as important as well as imposing.
With those major reveals providing the narrative meat of the issue, the book is free to devolve into city-destroying action, with Superboy and Superman taking big swings but never quite tipping the needle in their favor. The Unchained feels like a real threat.
The late-issue deployment of a very animated-series Super-radiation suit (an Easter egg at Supercorp in an earlier issue) continues to hammer home that shiny, action-figure-ready appeal even in the face of grim revelation. Even knowing that Lex Luthor imprisoned and then buried a child can’t darken these sunny pages.
It’s a delight to bask in that sun in between less light-hearted Amazon slayings and mutant devastation that might be on your pull list, standing with books like Shazam! as the brightest parts of this Dawn of DC.
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