Credits: Written by Roger Stern, art by Jackson Guice with Denis Rodier and edited by Mike Carlin
Cast: The Last Son of Krypton, Guy Gardner, Lois Lane, Catherine Grant, Commissioner Henderson, Inspector Maggie Sawyer and the Fortress robots.
Plot: In Chicago, former Green Lantern, Guy Gardner is reading magazines, while hovering above a newsstand, getting more and more irate over coverage of the four new ‘Supermen’ in Metropolis. After being chased away for not actually buying the magazines he’s reading, he decides to visit Metropolis. Whilst he was not a fan of Superman, he respected that he stopped Doomsday and held the line, at the cost of his life and he won’t have the man’s symbol disrespected in death.
In Metropolis, a safecracker is breaking into a local bank, before being pulled away from the safe by the Last Son. The thief comments that he’s not going to kill him, he isn’t a violent offender, but the Last Son points out that his crimes do hurt people and even if he doesn’t deserve to be killed, he can’t be allowed to do this again. Cut to the next day and we learn that every bone in his hands has been broken. If more damage had been done, amputation would have been needed. As it is, it will be months of rehab before he hand use his hands again at all. Through painkillers, the only description given to Lois Lane, who is at the hospital to interview him, is that he wore sunglasses. Whilst leaving the ward, Lois bumps into Cat Grant, the former colleagues catch up and on a TV screen nearby they see the Metropolis Kid being interviewed by Tana Moon, who Cat considers a threat to her job, while Lois just sees a person wearing the S-shield that is nothing like Clark,
At the Fortress of Solitude, the Last Son returns and is attended by the robots there, who inform him that the monitor array is online and ready to be view. After that, the Last Son visits the regeneration matrix and pulls energy from it.
Now we’re in Metropolis and Captain Maggie Sawyer of the Special Crimes Unit is called to the commissioner’s office. She is surprised to see Inspector Henderson there, he informs her that he is now the commissioner and that he has news for her. Their testy working relationship is not before she’s a lesbian (which she has long believed) but that she’s only a Captain and is outranked by many of the SCU including Dan ‘Terrible’ Turpin, who instead of resenting being led by a sub-ordinate, talks as though Maggie walks on water, so Henderson promotes her to Inspector, fixing a problem he has viewed for a while. He then tells her that one of the problems she will have to deal with is the ‘Supermen’.
Elsewhere in the city, the Last Son sees a fire during a patrol. When he arrives, he finds no damage and realises it’s an illusion, just in time to be attacked by Guy Gardner. Rather than a more restrained Superman, the Last Son has no time for Gardner’s s**t and fights back, hard, at one point, throwing him through a warehouse wall, where an arms deal is taking place. When the arms dealers and the buyers start shooting at the two newcomers, they join forces and make short work of the criminals. Even Guy is taken aback by the brutality of the Last Son, but loves to see it.
When the Last Son is ready to resume the fight, Gardner relents, explaining that he had to know he was Superman, but he is on board with this new direction, especially when he learns that he was thrown into the warehouse on purpose. He agrees to leave Metropolis to Superman and use his membership in the Justice League to keep the police happy.
The police aren’t happy. Maggie Sawyer rails against this brutal vigilantism and says that the real Superman would not have done this so recklessly. Gardner simply praises the Last Son, saying that he’s entitled to be a little rougher after what he has been through. At the Fortress, the Last Son hears this and wonders that if the person cheering him on is Guy Gardner, is he really doing the right thing? He at point believed that he was doing the right thing ,but perhaps there’s a better way.
Notes: I have an appreciation for Guy Gardner. Most comic book protagonists are either the hero type, the reluctant champion or driven anti-hero. Guy Gardner is none of those things. He’s an a$$, he’s a massive a$$. There is no group of people where everyone is nice, no team of workers, no family. There’s an a$$hole in every group, in the Green Lantern Corps had Guy Gardner. He was fearless, he was honest, but he wasn’t nice. He was chauvinist, reactionary and had no respect for anyone. He was the epitome of that 80s action hero, all bluster and bad haircut. But he was entertaining. This was the era where he was no longer a Green Lantern, but wielded a yellow lantern ring. He wants to be the guy who shows these ‘Supermen’ what’s what, but when he sees how the Last Son is more reactionary and more violent he kow-tows to this ‘real’ Superman. This makes the Last Son think he might be wrong about how he’s doing things.
This issue also furthers subplots, Lois Lane trying to reconcile her knowledge of who Clark/Superman was and who these 4 newcomers are. We also see Maggie Sawyer promoted and asked to focus on these new caped heroes. This issue has started to feel like it’s moving in a direction. These aren’t separate stories, these are returning to the 4 title never ending battle that defined the triangle era.
Verdict: Writing 4 out of 5 – Roger Stern does this very well, he filters subplots in between the main story. Everyone sounds like how you expect and there’s a flow to the action and it’s very well paced. Like many comics he wrote, it’s a solid super hero story within a larger over-arching story.
Art: 3 out of 5 – Guice is great at the inter-personal stuff, the real life stuff, but is just as good as his sci-fi stuff. But the revelation here is his Gardner. Cartoonish, but not out of place in this less cartoonish world. The action scenes are bombastic and fast paced. The last page where the Last Son reconsiders his reaction is really well composed. It’s one of the best of Guice’s issues.
Overall – 7 out 10: A solid issue that moves the story beyond the last four and into an ongoing tale and now we’re off onto the last second of the three book saga.
Next Time: Ending the Cable mini-series
