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Title: War Games, Part 1
Writer: Mark Millar
Penciller: Aluir Almancio
Inker: Terry Austin
Colorist: Marie Severin
Letter: Lois Buhalis
Cover Art: Rick Burchett & Terry Austin
Summary:
Electronics
are going down all over Metropolis, and no one can figure out why. Superman
figures it may be one of his enemies, but who?
Description:
The
story opens with Clark Kent changing into Superman while swimming underwater.
Superman must charge into action in order to stop a boat from smashing into a
drawbridge that has failed to raise. We learn through Jimmy that computers all
over the city are failing and people are getting hurt. Superman is forced to
rush from one disaster to another. He has to stop a commuter train which has barreled
out of control, then he has to save Lex Luthor from his computer-controlled
helicopter. Soon the breakdowns are happening too fast for even him to help.
As Superman meets up with Dr. Emil Hamilton to
try and trace the source of all of these problems, electricity all over the
world shuts down -- but not before they track the origin of these electronic breakdowns
to the North Pole. More accurately - The Fortress of Solitude. Superman and the
Professor fly there to investigate. When they arrive, Brainiac steps from the
shadows to claim the he is responsible for all this crazy havoc. Brainiac has
been very busy: He's escaped from his prison, and has downloaded all computer
knowledge of Earth into a glowing globe. (The Orb) This makes Earth sorta
useless now, so Brainiac has used Superman's computers to trigger every single
nuclear bomb on Earth. All the bombs are set off to go off in 30 minutes.
Superman attacks, knocking the glowing globe away
and right up to Professor Hamilton. Even his situation was prepared for by
Brainiac and he activates a weapon that blasts Superman into cloud of basically
nothing. Brainiac begins demanding the globe from Emil Hamilton while Superman
floats helplessly in the Phantom Zone. Whoa, is Emil ever screwed.
Review:
The
story starts off a wee bit slow, but momentum builds pretty fast once Superman
and Emil head into action. The art is great as usual. There are a few weird
parts in the art, like body positions and such, but Aluir is able to work past
those and make them look half-way normal. Millar is onto something great here,
but he fails to catch the full potential of it. This is only part one, so maybe
the next part will blow us away.
Rating:  ˝
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