New Super-Man #2 Review

Writer: Gene Luen Yang/ Artists: Richard Friend, Viktor Bogdanovic / DC Comics All right, all right, I’ll admit it: Kenan has grown on me since last issue. Of course, it helps when this issue is filled more with the spectacular skills of the Justice League of China and a little less of his whiny self-importance and bullying this time around. And how to feel about the Justice League of China? Well, Gene Luen Yang certainly wastes no time in lampshading by having Dr. Omen declare the group of heroes a “new league for a new era,” so you can’t complain that he didn’t do the research. Yet Wonder-Woman and Bat-Man are a little hit or miss for me; one moment they work wonderfully in tandem, Wonder-Woman’s lasso and shield strikingly different than her American counterpart but still impressive while Bat-Man seems to be a fairly standard carbon copy, the next their personalities feel a little dry and flat. It might be because we have no idea of their backstory or even their age (the duo appears to be a little older than Kenan), but the sarcastic barbs flung by either hero can sometimes feel unnecessarily harsh given their status as what I assume would be mentors to a fledgling superhero. Where Kenan’s personality is in sharp contrast to Clark’s and therefore makes sense to be erratic, self-centered, and occasionally outright violent, the other members of the League aren’t quite fleshed out enough to determine either way.

The story doesn’t really seem to hit its stride until the …