So, the bottled city of Kandor was freed from Brainiac, exiled to their own planet, under attack from earth and now is being attacked by Brainiac again. To up the stages, the Legion of Superheroes must stop free all of Brainiac’s other bottled cities to ensure the safety of the universe. Here’s the end of that miniseries.
Summary: As soon as the issue begins, Brainiac’s ship is falling. Lex Luthor has betrayed Brainiac, re-enlarging a bottled city within the ship. The Legion (including Mon El) immediately grab all the other bottled cities and scurry off to their now safe future, leaving Superman, Supergirl and Superboy to deal with the aftermath of a giant ship crashing into Kandor. The ship is stopped from crashing and destroying everything by Superman, Supergirl and Brainiac 5 (The Legion member who is with Supergirl), but Superman is impaled on numerous spikes. He is soon healed by Superboy’s blood and yellow sunlight Brainy zaps him with. Brainiac finds Lex, who says he’d never work with an alien, spits in Brainiac’s face, and then has his (Lex’s) neck snapped. Kandor catches up to Brainiac and a red sun weakened General Zod faces Brainiac hand to hand. Zod defeats Brainiac and is ready to execute him before being stopped by Superman. Brainiac 5 then grabs Brainiac and teleports away. The Lex Luthor that is dead, meanwhile, is a robot and this was all a plan by General Lane, who gets Luthor a Presidential Pardon. However, with most of the council dead, Zod rules New Krypton and now wants war on Earth, leading to the War of the Supermen.
Thoughts: This was quite the climax. The Legion bits here felt quite tacked on and more could certainly have been done, but the rest was suitably epic, with Superman, Brainiac, and Luthor all faked as dying (of course none would, but that isn’t the point) and the crisis ended only to create a larger crisis for Earth. Zod has been the star of this, largely a sympathetic antagonist, he’s now crossing the threshold into full villiany with an invasion of earth. Stopping a brilliant military mind with thousands of Superman powered soldiers should be quite the intriguing story, especially as it may pit Superman and Luthor on the same side- always an interesting development. Further, Brainiac in the future with Brainiac 5 makes me long for the new Legion of Superheroes series, as the classic Coluan villain matches wits with his heroic counterpart.
Rating: 7/10 – The issue was quite good and suitably epic, but the possibilities it sets up are absolutely great.
