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Tangent: Superman's Reign #5

Tangent: Superman's Reign #5

Scheduled to arrive in stores: July 16, 2008

Cover date: September 2008

"Superman's Reign - Chapter Five"

Writer: Dan Jurgens
Penciller: Jamal Igle
Inker: Robin Riggs

Back-Up Story: "History Lesson: Chapter Five"
Write: Ron Marz
Penciller: Fernando Pasarin
Inker: Matt Banning

Neal Bailey Reviewed by: Neal Bailey

Click to enlarge


The heroes do battle with Tangent Power Girl, who turns their energy upon them and decimates their ranks. Batman worries that they have reacted too rashly, and the Tangent Green Lantern pulls Batman and the Spectre into a safe house as Tangent and Earth Flashes are taken out, along with Black Lightning and Black Canary.

Tangent Hex shows Lori Lemaris a laboratory, where they see a bearded man in a sphere tell them that the plans must be altered.

Tangent Superman kisses Tangent Power Girl as John Stewart looks on. Superman pries the ring from his fingers, taking its power and seeing New Earth. He determines that Earth to be a threat.

In Tangent Lantern's safehouse, Batman sees a man in a tube floating around. They introduce him as Plastic Man.

Back-Up Story: "History Lesson: Chapter Five"
Write: Ron Marz
Penciller: Fernando Pasarin
Inker: Matt Banning

We continue, as Guy is led into the Blackhawk main area, to learn about the Tangent history, including the triple personality of Lori Lemaris, otherwise known as the Joker.

4Story - 4: Still very novel, very interesting. The pace is a bit cut short by the size of each episode, but I imagine this is the kind of feel that Trinity is trying (and failing) to get. A neat story with a curious backup that explains more of what's going on in the main story. It's very hard to get right, and given recent failures I've seen (Infinity, Inc, Trinity), I'm amazed.

I'm eager to see what happens when Superman gets to New Earth, and this story is still rocking my socks off.

There were, lamentably, two typos on one page, and that pulled me right out of the story, thus the minus point. When Superman is talking to Power Girl, Superman says, "They're working about me!" when it should be "worrying" and there's an "is" missing in the bottom left panel.

5Art - 5: Fantastic, particularly in a lot of the sweeping places. Flash carrying Manhunter out of the way through an entire double splash, the overlay with Superman and our Earth, just generally, the visuals here are very novel and pleasing.

5Back-up Story - 5: An interesting summary, yet again, well paced, and informing the story going on in the background. Good stuff.

5Back-up Art - 5: Good emotion, a ton of great freeze-frame panels, detail. Very well done, despite its brevity.

2Cover Art - 2: The gimmick of this cover fails when it goes all random. It used to be that the characters related to one another, now we have Manhunter randomly paired with Green Lantern in an odd pose that's unrelated to the issue at hand, in what appears to be a sewer. Not sure why.

Mild Mannered Reviews

2008

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

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