I remember some bad old days of Superman events, and so by that comparison Joshua Williamson’s Superman: House of Brainiac is a head-and-shoulders improvement. But Williamson’s first two Superman books that lead here were demonstrably better than this first-year climax, and indeed if House of Brainiac starts with lots of potential, it falters by the end. For whatever reason, Williamson just does not seem to be able to get this one together.

[Review contains spoilers]

House begins brilliantly, a near-musical number as Lois Lane flits through Metropolis “Belle”-esque, encountering the whole of our main cast on the bustling streets — before the tone switches to disaster movie as Brainiacs and Czarnians rain down from the sky. There’s a gripping mystery posed, same as Williamson has broached at every opportunity over the past year (including in his Knight Terrors: Superman tie-in and etc.): what is Brainiac scared of, what did Lex Luthor glimpse inside Brainiac’s head, and what is coming that Lex’s been trying to prepare Superman for?

Those questions get teased plenty over the course of the book’s seven chapters, but the answers are never complete or satisfactory. As is telegraphed almost from the moment Brainiac kidnaps Superman’s family, what Brainiac believes will fill the much bandied “hole” in his thought processes is to create a family of his own; thus, all of these machinations are toward creating a Brainiac Queen. Once revealed, Williamson’s Lobo laughs, “That’s what this was all about? Old smarty-pants wanted a lady version of himself,” perhaps meant to mitigate the simplified view, but indeed that seems the sum of it. It’s the most obvious of answers that only scratches the surface of what the book had promised.

It’s a waste of a wholly promising premise. For one thing, in Superman Vol. 2: The Chained, Williamson brought back the child Lena Luthor, former hostage of Brainiac 13 not seen in these parts since the early 2000s, portending a big Brainiac showdown. Lena’s presence motivates Lex to act, but in terms of Brainiac’s scheme she’s just … extra hard-drive space? The lift of resurrecting the character hardly seems worth the payoff. One would hope Williamson still means to use Lena later on, especially given Lex’s incapacitation in the finale, but at the same time the book is already crowded with more characters than Williamson can use — Livewire, Silver Banshee, Superwoman Lana Lang, Parasite, New Super-Man, and Steels John Henry and Natasha Irons are all present but then largely fade into the background, the first three women sometimes even indistinguishable from one another.

The secondary hook of House is not only that Superman fights Brainiac, but also Lobo and a lost civilization of Czarnians are involved. Here too, it seems Williamson’s off to a good start, bucking stereotypical portrayals of Lobo toward something more nuanced, a Lobo who gets the job done when the job needs doing and isn’t necessarily looking to fight with Superman if their goals align. But Lobo decides to betray and then rejoin Superman in the span of an issue, and it’s such a swift turn/return as to be almost nonsensical (I was sure it was a ruse), undercutting what Williamson establishes about Lobo in the rest of the story.

House, of course, is still exciting page to page, driven so well by its potential that disappointment mostly comes at the end, after the back cover is closed. As has been the case in Williamson’s Green Arrow, he’s fulfilling the recent promise (that many other titles are not) of streamlining DC continuity into a coherent whole — we see it with Lena’s presence and with Brainiacs ranging from John Byrne’s Milton Fine to Brainiac 13, Geoff Johns' insectoid Brainiac, the Convergence iteration and more. There’s a great many references to characters' interactions during the events of Scott Snyder’s Justice League: No Justice and that subsequent Justice League run; not that any of that is that far in the past, but we’re about five years and half a continuity off from there, so it’s fun to see it all presented as relevant. See also cameos by Lyrl Dox(!) and Indigo(!!); there’s also a significant hat tip to Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, too.

Rafa Sandoval draws most of the book, perfectly capable of rendering the widescreen action sequences, and no concerns about him proceeding to Absolute Superman from here. The short with LEGION’s Vril Dox is drawn gritty and harrowing by Mirko Colak, if maybe too much in shadow by Colak and colorist Mike Spicer (when, when do we get a new LEGION series?!). This volume’s lone story not written by Williamson is Mark Russell and Steve Pugh’s Metropolis interlude, a nicely written, nicely drawn spotlight on Bibbo and Perry White to make any Triangle Titles fan happy.

Fairly or not, I must hold a “Brainiac’s headship comes to Earth” story up against the classic “Panic in the Sky,” which benefits among other things from the rosy hue of nostalgia. But nearly half of Joshua Williamson’s Superman: House of Brainiac is Superman and Lobo just journeying to find Brainiac, and that’s not even successful so much as they arrive by being captured, and even then it’s Lex Luthor who saves the day while Superman mostly hits things. I respect a supporting cast — and even in “Panic in the Sky,” it’s other heroes and not Superman who turn the tide — but I’m struck by how much less it feels writers can get done these days versus a story with essentially the same angles 30 years ago.

All in all I was hopeful for more in what’s again been a stellar year of the Superman stories that preceded it.

[Includes original and variant covers]