Review: Superman: Lois and Clark: Doom Rising trade paperback (DC Comics)

Given, especially, that Dan Jurgens' Superman: Lois and Clark from a couple years back dealt with a pre-Flashpoint Superman in a post-Rebirth world, all long since wiped away, the chance of a sequel seemed rather remote. So Superman: Lois and Clark: Doom Rising is interesting in that respect, and I guess if one is really hankering for Jon Kent-as-a-kid content, this delivers that as well.

Unfortunately, for me none of that could surmount the affectation that was mildly present in Jurgens' work in his heyday but that has become ubiquitous and impossible to ignore in his current work. That is, for anyone younger than the titular characters, Jurgens employs a barrage of so-called “eye dialect,” replacing “have to” with “hafta,” “chunk of” with “chunka,” and on and on.

We’ve seen it with Jurgens' Jimmy Olsen, but here the victim is Jon Kent, and given Jon’s presence on almost every page, it’s unrelenting. In just the first chapter, Jon is asking about Superman’s fight with Doomsday “an’ how he s’posedly died”; he worries, “Will [Doomsday] be lookin' for me, too? An' trying t' kill me?” Since Clark came back to life, Jon wonders, “An' does that mean I can’t be killed neither?”

One might (might) be able to look past it if Jurgens' Doom Rising could really distinguish itself. But not unlike the original Superman: Lois and Clark, Doom Rising is distractingly picaresque, flitting from storyline to storyline without feeling like it gives any its full attention, and ending without much consequence. (Having re-read the original in preparation, I’m given to wonder how much the first Lois and Clark was buoyed simply by the presence of the post-Crisis Superman, story aside.)

Overall, unless the events of Doom Rising should suddenly become relevant in the ongoing Super-titles, I feel this one could be safely skipped.

[Review contains spoilers]

Long story short, on a Kent family trip back to their former California home, Jon discovers an alien spaceship; what seems an alien princess in need of help turns out to be a despot who kidnaps Jon to blackmail Superman into vanquishing her enemies. The conclusion turns on Superman neither being able to see nor hear Jon while he’s imprisoned in lead, but Jon manages to break his way out enough to be rescued.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

In the 1980s-1990s, Dan Jurgens earned his status as one of DC’s premier writer/artists, star of the Triangle Titles and with “Death of Superman” and Zero Hour under his belt. To that end, the idea that Superman can’t hear through lead should get past Jurgens and a team of DC editors should make everyone concerned what’s happening here. That’s not only nonsensical even by comic book standards, but contradicts decades of Superman lore — sure, I understand not harping on minor minutiae, whether Jimmy Olsen grew up in Suicide Slum or came from money, but how lead affects Superman rather seems Superman 101.

Doom Rising kicks off with Jurgens' story from the Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special, notably paired with Brett Breeding (word is the two at some point had a falling out). It is not a spot-on recreation of the caliber of their work from 30 years ago, but it sure is close, and I especially liked Jurgens mimicking the “four, three, two, one panel” effect from the original “Doomsday” story.¹ The story feels a bit overwrought, though, plus Jurgens strangely drawing Superman in a nonstandard costume with raised S-shield and armbands — I can’t quite figure the point of that and, again, one wonders where editorial was in this process.

Doombreaker, city worker Lloyd Crayton, is seemingly cured at the end of the special, though he returns to his monstrous form in the Doom Rising stories by Jurgens and Lee Weeks (backups to Action Comics, originally titled “Home Again”). His inclusion feels like a misfit, too sizable to be a B-plot but really serving to do nothing but fill pages for Clark and Lois while Jon is kidnapped.

Perhaps Jurgens is building a Lois and Clark Revenge Squad out of the alien princess Glyanna and Doombreaker, to return in a third book. My guess is their mysterious benefactor is the conquerer Hyathis from the first book, which would at least bolster Superman: Lois and Clark’s equally sudden ending. But neither do I see a third Lois and Clark book coming down the pike, nor was any of this compelling enough to make me eager for a sequel.

In the midst of it all, Jurgens writes a Jon Kent who tosses around the word “dope” and also the phrase “Oh my gawd.” Eye dialect has assuredly been used by writers of some renown, though equally there’s critiques out there that eye dialect presents characters as unsophisticated and, in some uses, stereotyped.

To my reading “ear,” Jurgens' eye dialect seems so forced as to be a distraction, not to mention it’s inconsistent with Jon’s more prominent portrayals (Super Sons, for instance). Further, I don’t agree with the premise that the son of supposed journalistic greats Lois Lane and Clark Kent wouldn’t grow up with better diction. If anything, young Jon ought be precocious; Jurgens just makes him grating.

Again, I was pleased to see all of this again, and I’m remiss not to mention Lee Weeks' light artistic touch, perfect for the Kents on the farm. Dan Jurgens has to do a lot of narrative dancing in Superman: Lois and Clark: Doom Rising to explain, for instance, why Clark would wear his black suit from the first book again just because they’re in California, except for the macro-reason of matching the first book. That’s nice, but it’s weird — another symbol of the awkwardness of the project as a whole.

[Includes some cover art, uncolored pages]

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1. Too, in the background there’s an onlooker filming Superman’s current battle with Doombreaker with their cell phone. Back in 1992, Jimmy documented the Doomsday fight with a film camera while Ma and Pa Kent watched it on their CRT television. What would it be like if Superman died today, and all that.  ↩︎

Rating 2.0