Superman: Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

Here we are! Issue 12 of Joshua Williamson’s Superman run, where he, Jamal Campbell, Nick Dragotta, Gleb Melnikov, Bruno Redondo, and a whole slew of some of comics hottest artists, where we’ve seen Superman’s role in Metropolis has changed drastically. The biggest change is the addition of Lex Luthor, his gal Friday, Mercy, and Supercorp as a more active STAR Labs, working with the Man of Steel, when facing Metropolis’ baddest. Plus we get a whole new set of baddies, who have a personal vendetta against Lex Luthor! So let’s get going!

Joshua Williamson’s become one of DC’s prolific writers since the beginning of the Rebirth era, and has worked on some of the biggest books and events to come out, including last year’s Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths. While I find Williamson’s more ambitious endeavors tends to fall flat, it’s when he’s writing solos, or team books that doesn’t seek to change the fabric of all reality, he really hits his stride. Since taking on this title, Williamson has steadily brought in brand new threats, new heroes, all the while developing those that have come before. Heck, we’ve even had an adventure that took place in the wild, Wild West. The newest creations added have all had secret histories tied to Lex, where he experimented on them, mutating them. Lex’s experiments creating monsters out of these people, who end up creating the Lex Luthor Revenge Squad.

One of the  biggest complaints regarding his Superman has been the pacing. We’re going at neck breaking steam, while leaving very little for character development. We’ve had some memorable moments, with the biggest Sure, the Silver Banshee and Jimmy Olsen are dating, but outside of her arc we’ve seen very little of them. Meanwhile the Revenge Squad are blank canvases begging to be made into multidimensional characters. Williamson threw out so many new faces in this run that it’s hard to care about them. One has to wonder how much they’ll have to do with the upcoming storyline that looks to be starting next month.

Another complaint has been the lack of consistency with the art. The book started with Jamal Campbell, who’s a rising star who produced the art for the smash hit, Far Sector, as well as Naomi. Seeing him attached to the relaunch meant that DC meant business. Unfortunately we would only have him for the first arc, to be replaced by Gleb Melnikov. While Melnikov’s a very talented artist, unfortunately his work was a hard follow. Since then we’ve had a rotating cast of newer, and more classic artists, with David Baldeon lending his talents. Baldeon’s work here is quite serviceable here, and fun. Sure, not everything hit its target, and his style isn’t one that you’d normally associate with Superman, but it was a very fun read. Here’s hoping that we’ll see on a Superboy or Girl book.