Finally, “Superman Unchained” has come back to comics! I feel like I’ve used that joke before…
No matter. Still, at long last, the conclusion to Scott Snyder and Jim Lee’s Superman epic has arrive and, yes, I am going to talk about Superman again. So strap yourselves in as we’re going on a wild ride and diving into “Superman Unchained” #9.
Written by Scott Snyder
Illustrated by Jim LeeThis is it – the extraordinary finale of Scott Snyder and Jim Lee’s Superman saga, surrounded by an epic wraparound cover! It’s a battle in the sun as Superman and Wraith accept their destinies…and Lex Luthor pulls the trigger on his ultimate weapon!
When “Superman Unchained” was announced, oh, what, two years ago? I was intrigued. Having recently wrapped up ‘Court of Owls’ at the time, I was really taken with Scott Snyder as a writer. And even though he’s a rather divisive artist, especially more recently, Jim Lee is an artist I love for his bombastic, out of this world art style. I was also deeply unsatisfied with the direction of Superman as a character in the New 52. Since then, we’ve seen Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder take over “Action Comics,” and turn that book into an exploration into Superman’s mind by way of his actions. We’ve seen Geoff Johns and John Romita Jr. take over “Superman” and explore the character’s humanity by presenting him with an uncanny reflection of his self.
We’ve also seen “Superman Unchained” become subject to delay after delay, which is why this ninth issue is concluding the series more than a year after the first issue came out. But I’m not here to point fingers. These things happen and we still got a comic at the end of it, right? Sure, you’ll probably need to reread the earlier issues as a refresher before diving into this one, but at least we got the ending to the damn comic, right?
For a while, I could not for the life of me figure out what kind of a book “Superman Unchained” wanted to be. With so many story threads Snyder, Lee and back-up (and later flashback) artist Dustin Nguyen were creating in each issue, it was hard to pull back and see the bigger picture, to see how it all came together. Well, in this finale, it’s safe to say it all came together. Turns out, the title was actually surprisingly apt for the series. What “Superman Unchained” has done is try to present a depiction of the character, not just in the New 52, but in his entire history, with an unprecedented sense of scale.
A lot of that does come down to Jim Lee’s artwork. For a series that started with Superman crashing back into Earth to stop a falling satellite, it was only fitting that it would end with him flying off into space to save the world. This allows Lee to do what he does best and create an immense sense of scale in his artwork. To single page splashes of Superman soaring through space to being confronted by a seemingly endless armada of alien ships to even the more immediate peril of planes crashing over Metropolis, Jim Lee does not hold back in this issue. However, the use of splash pages borders on the overuse, as some pages can feel static as the focus on presenting a poster worthy hero shot of Superman overrides the storytelling on that page.
That’s a problem that has plagued the series for a while now as the attempt to create this sense of unbounded action has somewhat overridden the story. Looking back, the problem wasn’t that “Superman Unchained” didn’t know what to be, it’s that it wanted to be too many things at once. Contrasting with Jim Lee’s art, Dustin Nguyen returns to finish a flashback sequence that was started in issue five and hasn’t been seen since. Technically, the pages work as Nguyen and colourist John Kalisz’ use of a sepia-toned and inkwashed style creates a lush contrast to Jim Lee’s sharp pencil style and Alex Sinclair’s bright, vibrant colours for the main story. However, it was certainly hampered by the fact that it was a sequence we haven’t seen in three whole issues and was suddenly coming back into play.
Continued belowThere is a lot going in “Superman Unchained” and Scott Snyder does his best to rein it all in and create an effective ending for the series, but I have to wonder if the nine issue limit and the delays were too much. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that this series was Snyder’s way of using Jim Lee’s artwork to create seemingly impossible, insurmountable challenges that would allow him to explore his rather different take on Superman as a character. It’s a take that works well within the New 52 to explain why Clark feels so different to how he used to. Snyder posits that Superman is not some alien god sent here to show us the way to a brighter tomorrow, he’s just a man with an unparalleled amount of power trying to figure out his own way in life. It’s a bit of a controversial stance for me, sure, but it works with Snyder’s writing as he tries to find moments to humanise Clark against the backdrop of total annihilation.
He creates quiet moments between Clark and Lois that actually showcase Jim Lee as a storyteller better than any of the action scenes in this issue as their goodbye is a large shot of their embrace framed by cascading panels that focus on their last, brief touches that mimic the surrounding snowfall. It’s, honestly, a rather beautiful scene and it’s a shame that the rest of the book doesn’t really live up to it. While Snyder promises us Superman versus an armada of alien warships as penned by Jim Lee, the end result feels neutered as they instead opt for, essentially, a reference to “The Dark Knight Returns” and then a deus ex machina. Again, a lot of what works against this issue is that it feels like Snyder, as a writer, was juggling far too much and trying to make it all stick after only nine issues left some things feeling rushed. When it works, it works, but more often than not it feels like there was a lot of potential here that didn’t quite stick the landing.
Still, after waiting over a year for a nine issue series to end, it could have turned out a lot worse. The issue is still an exciting finale to the series that makes great use of Jim Lee as an artist not just to create an insane level of scale in the action scenes, but also to slow things down and create some really poignant scenes. Dustin Nguyen, honestly, was rather misused for this series as his artwork was often relegated to backup stories and only got to create the flashback scene that finishes here in two of the issues, but still created a beautiful scene that contrasted nicely with the style of Jim Lee’s artwork. The biggest disappointment of “Superman Unchained” is that fact that this issue showed the potential of the series more than any other as Scott Snyder used the world-ending threat present in the story to really dig in deep and explore how he views Superman. It’s just a shame that it was buried under more subplots than a nine issue series can handle.
Final Verdict: 6.1 – There was a lot working against this issue and while everyone involved did the best they could, it still faltered under all the weight it had to carry. Still not the worst Superman story to come out of the New 52, though.
