REVIEW: New Super-Man #12

Right out of the gate and fight is going on with a giant monster that is destroying the city. Superman, and what I am assuming is the Asian counter-part of the Justice League, show up ready to put down that monster. But, upon arriving to the scene they witness that someone else with powers similar to Superman already battling the deadly creature. The real Superman of China is still learning how to use his powers, he is a young adolescent while the grown man flying around battling the monster is in full control of his abilities. The younger Superman tries to stop the older but is discarded easily and the strange man continues on with his battle.

Will the group find out who this strange new Superman is, and will they be able to stop the gigantic creature from leveling the city?

There were a few things that bothered me in this issue. This is the first time I have ever read this series, as a matter of fact I have never heard of this Superman, and I think this is a huge part as to why I didn’t appreciate this issue. After I was done reading as a new reader I went and researched the rest of the story and it made sense of course but I just couldn’t get past the lack of explanation as to what was going on. The issues of most comic books nowadays offer a summary at the beginning of the issue in which this one did not and it definitely needed one, I have always found them very useful in figuring out what is going on in a new story I am checking out. With that being said it is definitely not a jumping on point for the series. It made the issue very hard to follow and also very hard to figure who was who as far as the characters are concerned. It also seemed that the comic book was just basically poorly written.

Billy Tan is the saving grace of this issue, his artwork is amazing as usual. I have had an appreciation of Billy Tan’s penciling since his work at Image Comics way back in 1996. The other thing that was pretty cool with the New Superman book is the way they portray some of our favorite DC heroes. They’re Asian counter parts worked great and were designed really well, the Batman and Robin were really awesome. 3 out of 5 stars

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Billy Tan is the reason that this issue received 3 stars and him alone. I did like all the designs of all the character and the whole parallel earth part I always find those interesting and love the alternate versions of characters. I feel if I would’ve read the previous issues I think I may have liked this issue a little bit better, but I didn’t find anything besides the artwork that would have made me want to continue to read this series.

New Super-Man #12
writer- Gene Luen Yang
artist- Billy Tan
Cover- Philip Tan & Elmer Santos
Variant Cover- Bernard Chang