Reading the final issue of W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo’s first DC Comics collaboration, one thing came to mind: “That’s it?” And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just that for the team on the award-winning anthology series Ice Cream Man to tackle the most popular superhero ever, one would expect more. Especially talking about the total number of issues.
Now, sure, there is a lot of story in these five 32-page floppies. It opened very strongly: Superman hurting himself with pieces of his home, just to be close to it. It’s a perfect hook for a Superman mini-series, and a daringly relevant exploration of the dangers of nostalgia. But does it stick the landing?
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Every issue since the first ties itself with a Kryptonite color, lending particularly well to Prince’s experimental leanings. Each color has a gimmick and a theme, and it all comes to a head in this finale. Superman faces off against the Kryptonite Man, an entity comprised of his shattered and poisonous home, wearing the face of his mortal enemy, Lex Luthor. Nostalgia and humanity’s worst tendencies anthropomorphized. The stakes have never been higher. At least, on paper.
Prince, however, falls to the trappings of the comic book genre, can’t help but play in the sandbox that houses too many toys. He uses Batman more than I thought necessary, and in effect removes some of Superman’s agency. It’s a problem that I never found in his other stories. In such a short series, it robs the spotlight from Superman and Lois’ relationship and their different but interesting ties with time.
Like Grant Morrison before him, Prince has a noticeable reverence for the Silver Age of Superman stories. The ones where he goes on space hijinks and imperils Lois, where he acts like a child, but also holds a deep melancholy for his lost heritage. In fact, there’s a page in Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #5 that directly homages Morrison’s All-Star Superman, connecting the two series in pulp and ink.
While Morrison’s defining series explored Superman’s mortality, traveling to his twilight time, Kryptonite Spectrum effectively goes the opposite direction. I guess it goes the way of every comic book story, an endless “to be continued” that always finds its way back to the beginning. Endings that are never endings with people who never grow up.
In a sense, the core conflict of this comic is one anyone can relate to. Someone who, having matured, still longs for the childhood home that time left behind, the one destroyed by fading memory and neglect. There’s a sentimentality to it. The Man of Steel, still a baby tucked in a red blanket, earth nothing more than his escape pod. Comic books are essentially a home too, the only refuge some people have, that reminds us of our youth. It’s a warm place to hide in between covers. But, like Superman, we can’t indulge in it at the expense of people.
Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #5 interrogates what home is, where to find it, and its dangers, all in a heightened Silver Age style. It goes to show that a Superman would have a super-attachment to his origin. Almost a worthy spiritual successor to All-Star Superman, its modest length stops it short of reaching the same heights. Like Krypton, the comic’s lifespan ends prematurely. But at least it ends with a bang.
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