Superman #48 - A Review

The Justice League is held hostage as Vandal Savage makes a play for world domination. This would be a job for Superman... if he weren't running on empty. To refuel his powers, he will attempt a mad plan that could kill him faster than Savage's newest minion The Puzzler can. But that plan will require the help of one person Clark Kent would rather not talk to - Col. Steve Trevor of ARGUS.


The story this month is something of a mixed bag. Gene Luen Yang does a good job explaining the crossover so far for those readers, like me, who aren't reading any of the other Superman titles. And the concept for the new Puzzler - who absorbs technology into himself piecemeal - is an interesting one. Nevertheless, Yang his hampered by the fact that he's one writer at work at one part of a crossover and there's so much to be addressed that he doesn't have time to linger on some of the social scenes he's so good at writing. There's a lot of material to be mined between Clark and Steve's status as Wonder Woman's ex-boyfriends but Yang has little time to examine that here.


Unfortunately, the artwork is as conflicted as as the writing. With two artists and three inkers at work, there's very little visual continuity from page to page. About the only thing that is consistent is the coloration by Hi-Fi, which seems bright to the point of glowing like a neon sign.