100 Days, 100 Comics #37: ‘Blackest Night: Superman’ #3

Blackest Night Superman #3Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds must have spoiled me on giant crossover spin-offs, because the full stories from these now-wrapping “Blackest Night” books just aren’t cutting it for me. Granted, this one had much more of a structured finish than Blackest Night: Titans, but the whole New Krypton thread ending was framed as a bit of an afterthought in terms of the more open-ended Smallville storyline. I was hoping the two plots would intersect or something by the final page of issue #3 (of 3).

Ah well, again the action scenes were spectacular. James Robinson set them up well, specifically with Ma Kent and Krypto. That has to be the best Krypto fight I’ve read this year. The forcefield arm-severance was equally gratifying — though maybe not quite as much considering the Black Lanterns have regenerative capabilities.

The whole Psycho-Pirate demise was interesting in and of itself as a microcosm of how “Blackest Night” has been zombifying the DCU’s iconic elements — for instance, where the crowd of onlookers gazers starry-eyed at the heavens has he’s bludgeoned into dust by Superman and Superboy rushes up to use the Medusa Mask in space. The zombie bit lets Superman get away with killing an organism, since its just a husk of a real, living being who’s already deceased, so it allows the readers a taste of what we wouldn’t otherwise be able to see. Clever move, DC editorial who don’t typically let Superman kill things.

I’ll be interested to see how these spin-offs get collected — if they get collected — in the end, though, most for the reasons I outlined a couple posts ago discussing Titans. At three issues long each and shallow on full-circle narrative, I’m curious to see what sort of trade fate they have in store.

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