2023 Trek to America – The Comics

For the last couple of months my family and I have been on holidays (that is, “on vacation” for the Americans amongst us) in the United States. The USA is the in which I was born and bred, but for about half of my life now I’ve been living in Australia. Normally we get back her for a visit about ever two years, but owing to various policies in both the USA and especially Australia related to recent global events, this is my first time back with my whole family for nearly five years.

My time in the US has been filled with many blessings and many things to be grateful for. One of them is the chance to get some comics for less than they would cost in Australia. This is not the major blessing, or the most important one, but it’s something I enjoy about my visits to the States nonetheless.

Superman: New Krypton vol. 4

And with this book we come to the end of the “middle” of the New Krypton story, and the end of the concurrent storytelling.  And not a moment too soon.  There’s been a lot of energy spent trying to keep track of the different threads and the internal chronology of this epic.  Actually, the first issue in this current book is already printed at the start of the Codename: Patriot book, just for the sake of these trades actually carrying the entirety of the actual New Kryptons series. 

Nightwing & Flamebird vol. 2

Aaaaand here we are, back to concurrent storytelling in this New Krypton epic, into the second half of the four simultaneous series that contained it before it got into it’s last act.  I wasn’t sure what order to read these books in so I decided to do them more or less in the opposite order to how I enjoyed the prior chapters (sort of how I eat my meals sometimes).  That meant without a doubt that first up was Nightwing and Flamebird, vol. 2.

Superman: Codename Patriot

Codename: Patriot, by Greg Rucka, James Robinson and Sterling Gates, follows right on the heels of New Krypton vol. 3, showing the aftermath of the assassination attempt on General Zod.  The culprit flees and Krypton’s military, now led basically by Commander Kal-El (the other two ranking officers being the brutish and dopey Commander Gor and the psychotic but lovestruck Commander Ursa) trace him to earth.  He follows, but in his more traditional guise (the first issue ends with the book’s best moment as he takes out his familiar costume and says, “This is a job for Superman.”)

Superman: New Krypton vol. 3

And so we finally come to a place where all of concurrent storylines in the New Krypton saga are up to the same point. And though I was not reading any of this as it came out, it’s fairly obvious that this particular stream was the flagship title at the time, even though it wasn’t appearing in any of the regularly published series. This is where we actually got a proper taste of “New Krypton” as a world and a society. And even more importantly, this is where we had appearances Superman himself.

Superman: Nightwing and Flamebird vol. 1

I started off rereading the Nightwing & Flamebird vol. 1, largely written by Greg Rucka, thinking it was one of the better New Krypton books.  It had a strong story start, quickly establishing the identities of the mysterious heroes (which has been kept a mystery in the other concurrent books I’d read) and giving them a sense of a mission on earth.  We got a clear picture of General Zod and Ursa’s involvement, and the whole thing really came across as a decent follow-up to Last Son, which is one of the books that really set this whole story arc into motion.