Joshua Williamson’s Superman Vol. 5: Love and Mercy unfolded differently than I expected. Maybe that’s a good thing, a book that wasn’t about what I thought it was — a surprise, unpredictable. But at the same time it’s a weirdly “down” trade¹ — given what Superman dealt with last time around and what’s coming up next, I hadn’t imagined this one would be so markedly insular, a story that threatens lots of changes but eventually just puts all its toys back in the box where they came from. Is this all because of proximity to the movie?

Williamson’s on too much of a roll for me to be worried; no question the Superman title is central to DC All In’s forward action. But I’d feel more confident knowing there’s a plan in place — that the events of Love and Mercy will have further consequences and this wasn’t just biding time to link up with the Justice League/World’s Finest: We Are Yesterday crossover. Once, Williamson wrote the Shade into his Flash comic, with big implications, and then the Shade was never seen or mentioned again, my guess because the target kept moving on where Williamson’s Rebirth Flash lined up with the rest of the DCU. I’m just saying, I hope the events of Love and Mercy don’t go the way of the Shade.