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Mild Mannered Reviews - Specials

Tangent: Superman's Reign #11

Tangent: Superman's Reign #11

Scheduled to arrive in stores: January 21, 2009

Cover date: March 2009

"Superman's Reign - Chapter Eleven"

Writer: Dan Jurgens
Penciller: Carlos Magno
Inker: Julio Ferreira

Back-Up Story: "History Lesson: Chapter Eleven"
Write: Ron Marz
Penciller: Andie Tong
Inker: Mark McKenna

Neal Bailey Reviewed by: Neal Bailey

Click to enlarge


Superman and the heroes from Earth Tangent search for the Tangent Superman with Batman leading the charge.

Vixen breaks free and uses her totem to summon the heroes. In the meanwhile, the Tangent Superman unleashes the villain and prepares a gambit.

Tangent Superman unleashes the Tangent Ultra-Humanite, prepared to go to any lengths to stop the heroes.

Back-Up Story: "History Lesson: Chapter Eleven"
Write: Ron Marz
Penciller: Andie Tong
Inker: Mark McKenna

Jennifer recoils as Clayface moves forward, revealing he's been working for Tangent Superman. He absorbs her, tells the Superman that he's got everything in hand, and takes Jennifer's form.

1Story - 1: Man! What a dovetail! Am I reading the same series? What was once an interesting character piece with strange players on the board turned very suddenly into a random brawl with stilted dialogue and much extrapolation through dialogue. I'm not sure what happened here. It started with an unnecessary two page splash page that accomplishes nothing save "We are where we were before" with no real draw-in, and moves to clunky dialogue in an awful fight that really only covers the three paragraphs above.

Luthor: "Do you have any idea who you're messing with?"

Green Lantern: "He's on ice."

Joker: "What an outrageous joke! Ah-ha-ha-hah!"

John Stewart: "The Superman is using these creeps to slow us down!"

It's not that the battle sucks, it's that before this was such an intelligent and awesome series, and then bang! It's one-liners, clichés, and all of a sudden a buttload of villains with zero reason to be working for the Superman on his side and attacking. Odd.

5Art - 5: The art, though, really knocks it out of the park, and makes cliché fights into something detailed and awesome. Some great action scenes, some strong character work, and a lot of great backgrounds.

5Back-up Story - 5: Interesting end to a series of extrapolations, I'll be curious to see how it works into the final book.

5Back-up Art - 5: Flat-out creepy vision of Clayface. Well done.

5Cover Art - 5: A sweet vision of all of the characters interacting, and a culmination of what was good about all of the previous covers.

Mild Mannered Reviews

2009

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

January 2009

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