Superman #19

If Wonder Woman can beat Orion and Orion can beat Superman, then transitive property conclusion!

I've actually been pretty happy and upbeat all morning and then I picked up Superman to read out in the sun in the backyard, and suddenly all of my energy was sucked out of my body and I began to fall into a deep depression. I'm out of breath. I'm angry. I want to quit reading Scott Lobdell comic books altogether. I sat here for ten minutes watching and listening to the birds and trying to relax. And finally I opened this comic book to the first page and my day was utterly and completely ruined.

Is everybody in Scott Lobdell comic books counting down before beating people up this month? He seriously uses the same exact opening here as he did in Teen Titans. Fuck you, Lobdell.

So there is a race of beings living on our sun. And they speak English. And the one word that might mean something different is "super". And they want to conquer Earth why? If they live on the sun, the Earth wouldn't exactly be the ideal environment for them. How about Mercury? Probably more in line with their usual living conditions. And how do they live on the sun, exactly? Do they have a floating city made out of Inertron? How do they keep their clothes from exploding into flames? Are they super evolved ancient Romans that built a road to the sun because the Romans were so good at building roads? It makes sense since they also conquered Europa as seen in Voodoo.

I believe that last paragraph of speculation was, by itself, more speculation about the Sunturians than even Scott Lobdell did. He probably came up with the name and then wrote this opening scene and then stole Superman's reaction from Red Robin and Wonder Girl over in Teen Titans because why not use the same shit over and over again when DC is paying you to write more than one book? Grab up all the easy money, my friend!

Oh wait! I turned the page and now must apologize for my mistaken belief that these creatures were from a city called Neo Sol that was located on our sun, Sol. Apparently these creatures are from a Red Star named Neo Sol that exists somewhere else in the Universe which makes it even stranger that they speak English. I normally don't have a problem with languages in comic books because characters need to communicate somehow and Interlac isn't invented yet, so whatever. But when a character actually makes a statement that presumes they are definitely speaking the same language even when they shouldn't be, I must rant. And this Neo Sol must be a place where they had long dreamed about taking over Earth and beating up Superman. I'll let their leader, Allysun the Solaratrix (oh gut! Please refrain from bursting!), explain:

As the supreme leader of an entire sun of beings, I'd definitely want to come along with the advanced guard's initial assault.

The most believable part of these first three pages (and I'm using "believable" in the comic book sense where the reader wants to believe as much as possible so the story works) is the part where these Sunturions are composed of Red Star Particles. And that's stretching things, so you can see how much I'm really hating Lobdell's shit right now. But Superman is almost done counting to 47, so let's see what happens then!

With his last six seconds, Superman explains to Allysun how he had tossed a bunch of containers filled with water into the air before arriving. And now they're about to land on top of everybody and spill out their contents which will create a state of shock in the people made out of sun particles and allow Superman to freeze everything! Which is exactly what happens!

Very smart of them to disguise it as either a thoroughly destroyed city block or as a spaceship that smashes and burns in just the same way a city block would!

Superman takes the frozen ship (as well as a huge hunk of the Earth it's sitting upon) and throws it out into space. He says, "Here's to letting ice and orbit do its thing...". I think he meant "momentum" and not "orbit" since he clearly just wants this thing to continue careening through the solar system and out into deep space. If he did mean "orbit" then I guess he's expecting it to come back around the sun in another two hundred years or so. Whatever. In space, Superman finds the Sunturian Mother Ship which just raises even more questions about how fucking good the Romans were at building roads!

Those fuckers conquered a hell of a lot more than I realized.

Meanwhile Lois Lane is throwing a housewarming party which Clark is going to miss because he needs to kill the rest of the Sunturians. Well, he just killed their Solaratrix and her advanced guard by freezing them solid and hurtling them into space, right? Why wouldn't he simply just kill the rest of them as well? Over at Lois's party, Diana Prince arrives because she's Clark Kent's date. Fuck, Superman. You really don't give a shit about your secret identity, do you? Clark Kent is way out of Diana's league! That may or may not be a Justice League pun. At the party, Diana meets Jimmy Olsen.

I could choose to read this as Jimmy Olsen being an inept, socially awkward nerd that somehow thinks, upon greeting a woman, asking her if he can stick his dick inside her can somehow be taken right or I can choose to read this as Scott Lobdell being a disgusting pig. Yeah, you know which one I'm choosing.

Normally I cut writers a lot of slack when writing characters and how they'd react to situations. The character is not the writer. But I dislike everything Scott Lobdell writes and thus cannot think of him as a writer and thus can cut him no slack for that panel. Diana should have asked if she could have his testicles to wear around her neck.

Over at STAR Labs, Hector Hammond's head is still huge.

Superman arrives back on Earth and changes into Clark Kent. Where does Clark keep his glasses when he's flying around as Superman? He muses about how awkward it's been around Lois now that he's fucking Wonder Woman and he can't fuck Lois too. Usually that's my hyperbole speaking but this is actually the way Lobdell has Superman thinking. Okay, maybe it's a little bit hyperbole. But I know reading Clark's thoughts make me think he doesn't see Lois as a friend if there's no possibility of having intercourse. He's as big a pig as Jimmy Olsen!

And it just gets worse! As he knocks on the door, he fantasizes about Lois answering in a Wonder Woman costume and kissing him. Maybe that was a bit of a push from Hector Hammond but it's still something Clark is thinking since he can't even tell if he hallucinated it or fantasized it. I think Scott Lobdell likes writing men having sex with women while under the influence of another being. Tim Drake influenced by Raven and making out with Wonder Girl and Solstice. And now Clark influenced by Hector Hammond and wanting to sleep with Lois and Diana.

No! I take that back about Lobdell liking that plot. This is just Lobdell, once again, simply recycling one plot across multiple books! DC, I'd rather have well written stories late than piece of shit, recycled, afterthought stories on time.

Orion arrives on Earth and is led to Hector Hammond as the great threat that will blow up the Earth and END ALL OF COSMIC EXISTENCE ACROSS ALL SPACE AND TIME! But he realizes Hammond's mind is no longer in his body. Adding up all of the facts (which is really hard for a dumbshit like Orion), he believes that Hammond's mind is in Superman. So now he needs to go kill Superman to save the Omniverse.

I wonder if the omnieditors told Lobdell to omnistop using "omni" on omnithing because it was omniannoying.

Orion is heading over to crash Lois's party. I hope Diana Prince crushes his testicles again. Everybody is already acting weird at the party because Hector Hammond is using his psionic shenanigans to force everyone to say things they normally wouldn't say. And that's a lot of stuff in a Scott Lobdell comic book since nobody can ever share their feelings ever and they all hide behind a wall of sarcasm and snark. And believe me, I know that wall!

Luckily for Clark Kent's secret identity and Lois's renter's insurance, Orion grabs Clark when he steps out on the balcony to make out with Wonder Woman. He's thrown into the bay where he definitely realizes that everybody was being psionically manipulated. And then he gets to meet the guy that threw him in the river.

Why do the consequences always have to be the end of everything?

Superman #19 Rating: -1 Ranking. I suppose Scott Lobdell can use the psionic manipulations of Hector Hammond as an excuse for writing a bunch of shitty shit that shits shit. Maybe that's his new plan to avoid any kind of criticism about how he sucks at writing characters? Which is why Tim Drake is also being manipulated in Teen Titans by Raven. It's so simple! If the character isn't the character, how can you write the character incorrectly? Just to clarify: I am not a fan of Scott Lobdell. At first I just disliked his writing in an unbiased fashion. At this point, I don't think I would like anything he wrote no matter what the quality of it. My mind is clouded with too much bias and hatred! At least I'm done reading his books for the month.