Smallville Season 11 #7 Review
Superman’s confrontation with Lex Luthor attracts the attention of General Lane and the US Army in Smallville Season 11 #7.
Smallville Season 11 #7
As Hank Henshaw lays paralyzed, his still-sharp mind trapped in his dying body, Lois tries to comfort Henshaw’s wife, who blames Superman for not being able to save her husband in time. Meanwhile, Chloe and Oliver finally track down the mysterious “alien” ship that crash-landed after the cosmic storm, only to discover that it isn’t alien at all. In fact, it was built by Queen Industries! And at LexCorp Tower, Superman violently accuses Lex of sabotaging his own space shuttle. Lex reveals it was all part of a plan to frame Superman, a trap the Man of Steel has now walked right into, with his attack on LexCorp drawing out the US Army.
First off, this week’s chapter was fantastic, save for one quibble which I’ll get out of the way now. Whoever put this issue together screwed up royally several times. Pages were out of order, word balloons were attributed to the wrong characters, and a few times the characters said the same thing twice from one page to another. Does this book even have an editor? I understand being so busy something slips through the cracks, it’s bound to happen. But this issue reads like someone went out of their way to mess things up.
Beyond that, however, the content of the chapter floored me. Finally, we’re done with set-up and are moving into the meat of the story. Like I suspected, the alien ship did in-fact come from Earth, and given Ollie’s surprise at its existence, still makes me think it comes from the future. Only now I’m not so sure it was Cyborg-Superman who walked out of it.
This issue showcased two major downsides to being Superman. Henshaw’s wife blames Superman for not being there to save her husband sooner, despite Henshaw’s choice to stay on the ship to save his crew. She’s the kind of person who acts as though Superman is God, and should be everywhere at once. On the other end of the spectrum, you have General Lane, who most likely distrusts Superman for the kind of power he possess, and has been sitting patiently waiting for a chance to strike.
And somewhere in the middle is Lex Luthor. Here we learn that Lex’s goal is not money or power. It’s simply to ruin Superman’s life. The baseness of it is brilliant. Everything Lex has done so far has been to set up Superman as a danger to humanity. Now, it’s true, that might be the means to another end, namely money and power. But just for right now, I’m really liking the idea of a Lex whose only goal is Superman’s misery.
Again, Miller brings us back to the John Byrne era, and the confrontation between Lex and Supes felt like something straight out of those books. With Superman storming into Lex’s office, only for Luthor to have an ace up his sleeve. Beautiful. Can’t wait for next week.
A COMIC BOOK BLOG RATING
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Now THIS is a Superman comic! | Editorial mistakes were very distracting. |
| Rating |
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