Superman #43 Review

Writer: Gene Luen Yang / Artist: John Romita, Jr / DC Comics What started as a fairly strong and unique story grinded to a halt this issue, focusing on Clark and Lois’ relationship after Lois learned his secret. This should have been a seminal moment for their development, especially to show some more personality from Lois, but ultimately, it just became a little soapy and made almost everything else in the book come to a stand-still. Superman is still feeling the effects of his encounter with Hordor_Root as he’s been knocked out for a over a day since his last flare. The creature that interfered with Superman during his last mini-explosion has had a lasting effect, and part of the battle for Superman is figuring out what it was and how it effected him. Ultimately, his showdown with the villain is pretty empty and doesn’t show us anything new. I understand that it is a big deal that Superman, after all these years, has a new power, but the dependency on this solar flare power ever since Johns introduced it back in issue #38 feels like it’s run its course by this point. There’s still good stuff here. We do get to see Lois in her natural element, but even that comes with some cache as we learn how Superman’s identity ultimately gets leaked and why. Actually, the “why” is still pretty iffy. That definitely could’ve been fleshed out more.

On the art side, Romita, Jr is still consistent in his portrayal of all these characters, though not much new has been explored. The creatures…