Review: Absolute Superman Vol. 2: Son of the Demon hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

Scott Snyder’s Absolute Batman Vol. 2 was a parade of grotesqueries, overlaying on Batman some of Snyder’s horror chops. Kelly Thompson’s second volume of Absolute Wonder Woman was also good, but with nowhere near the intensity of the Batman volume.

Jason Aaron’s Absolute Superman Vol. 2: Son of the Demon falls into the Absolute Batman category, with visceral chapters of torture and murder, perhaps such to show that as far as the Absolute Universe is concerned, DC is “not just for kids anymore” (again). Of course, given that the central character is still a guy in a red cape who can fly, some of that darkness in this book is inherently mitigated, and for better or worse with every step we get closer to an Absolute Superman indistinguishable from his mainstream counterpart.

Indeed the dance that Aaron does in Son of the Demon is fascinating, flitting toward and away from the established elements of the Man of Steel. We still arrive at “four,” even as Aaron adds one plus three instead of two plus two. That’s born of some clever writing even as I’m still not sure what happens when any of the Absolute titles reach their “essentially just like the regular one” tipping point.

[Review contains spoilers]

Son kicks off with a single-issue spotlight on the Absolute Brainiac with art by Carmine Di Giandomenico (series artist Rafa Sandoval is quite capable elsewhere). Here, Aaron achieves the creepiest Braniac since Geoff Johns' wormlike reinvention in his own Superman: Brainiac. Aaron’s is the consummate (and terrifying) mad scientist, ever ready with a scalpel and with a ray that causes an enemy soldier to vomit his own bones (graphically, on the page). Brainiac narrates the horrors of his own origins to a soldier he keeps flayed alive on a table, only to nonchalantly crush the man’s brain at the end.

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It’s a heady start to a book that also sees a group of prisoners hung and a baby dropped off a building — which is to say, Son of the Demon seems intent on letting the audience know it’s not joking around. Maybe not coincidentally, as the violence ramps up, Son also takes up the old standby that Superman doesn’t kill. It’s something that gets exercised often here, both because Superman’s enemies keep committing capital atrocities and because Superman’s allies don’t have the same compunctions against killing as he does.

The question of enemies and allies becomes a moot point a few issues in, when it’s revealed that the Omega Men, who were ostensibly opposing Ra’s al Ghul’s Lazarus corporation, were actually working for him. It was not a surprise that the Omega Men’s leader was Ra’s daughter Talia; that’s been almost certain since the beginning, though it was conceivable Talia could be working against her father, as she sometimes is.

But indeed the plan seems to have been to push Superman into Ra’s arms from two sides, whether because Ra’s would take him over or because Talia would lead Superman to such violence that he “turned,” maybe? (The exact parameters of the villainous plot are slightly muddy.) It’s a nice revelation that ties to the formative hopelessness of the Absolute Universe — even the freedom fighters are corrupted — though with an ironic result, that revealing the evil partnership between Lazarus and Omega actually creates a positive partnership of the same, that between Agent Lois Lane and Omega “Alpha” Jimmy Olsen.

By the end, Lois and Jimmy are a writer/photographer team, reporting from the “Battle of Kansas”; they’re joined by various Smallville residents, including gun-toting waitress Lana Lang. Thus we see Aaron continuing to fill in Superman’s classic supporting cast, though with twists; Superman and Lana didn’t grow up together, though by and large Smallville now claims Superman as their own (giving, cleverly, Lois license still to call Superman “Smallville”). The Absolute Superman’s Midwestern values are this time instilled in him solidly by his Kryptonian parents — usefully, since it seems here he spent no more than a few weeks with the Kents, now both deceased — though Aaron still manages to have Ma Kent sew his costume and grant him the name “Clark Kent.”

All that, plus a couple shots of the Daily Planet in the background of Metropolis, does make one wonder what the next volume, “The Neverending Begins,” will consist of. Among Darkseid’s Absolute dystopia, “the Daily Planet” might be a pollution-ridden space-mining operation, but if it’s a newspaper, with Perry White yelling in the halls and Lois, Jimmy, and the newly christened Clark Kent signing on as cub reporters, that feels like a slippery slope. How long until it’s just another day in Metropolis, a giant robot attacks, Clark slips off to take care of it, and Absolute is no different than regular? (Also Lex must surely be around here somewhere.)

Though, perhaps one key difference between the Absolute and mainstream Superman, if it lasts, is how forlorn Aaron’s Superman is. He opened himself a little, revealing Krypton and Smallville, and that brought Lazarus to Smallville’s door. “This isn’t my home. I have no home,” he thinks. “I fight for strangers who fear me … I’m only here to bleed,” and surely the death of Ma Kent doesn’t make that better. Again, I’m skeptical that Aaron can keep from writing a Superman who acts like “our” Superman for long, but portraying a Superman who actively mourns the Krypton he knew and who seems frankly depressed would be one way to do that.

And so, Jason Aaron’s Absolute Superman Vol. 2: Son of the Demon is perfectly compelling, the same as Absolute Batman and Absolute Wonder Woman have been compelling, an Absolute Big Three, at least, that remains must-read comics. But time is the enemy of comics, as I keep saying ad nauseam, and so I anticipate the arrival of the next volume (the “Neverending,” as it were), even as I sense each volume brings us closer to the Absolute Universe’s not-so-fictional omega.

[Includes original and variant covers]

Rating 3.0