Relive Clark Kent's early years in Smallville. His super powers are just coming into play as Clark turns 13. Clark wants to use his abilities to help those in need. But he's butting heads with Ma and Pa Kent who are afraid that should the world know of the existence of extraterrestrial life, Clark Kent will end up a lab experiment.
At this time in his life, Clark is still in the dark about his origins. That is until a mysterious probe crashes nearby. It's appearance makes the space ark in which Clark arrived on earth go awry. On top of that, Clark can also understand what the drone is saying. It turns out that the alien tech is going amok searching for a missing inhabitant from its planet of origin. Could this rogue rocket be on the hunt for Clark?
I waited a long time for this book. I love the collective works of Art Baltazar and Franco (Tiny Titans) and when the book was announced in early 2019, I was ready to grab it as soon as it debuted at my local library. And then COVID hit.
I really enjoyed this book. It has that classic charm that all of Baltazar and Franco's family aimed comics have. The writer/artist duo know how to make classic comics modern without losing that nostalgic magic. This graphic novel was a funtastic mix of the Superboy stories from 1950s era Adventure Comics and the retro reboot in the 1970s. Only, why is Clark referred to as Superman in this book and not Superboy? That miffed me a little. I'd be okay with it if Clark was in high school. But he's still in middle school here. He's not a Super Man yet!
The other thing I had a issue with was that this book was a little difficult to read due to it's gimmick. The alien probe speaks in the Kryptonian. In order to understand what it says, you have to have a code key- which is all the way in the back of the book. I would have like it if this book could have had a flap with the code key on it so you could decode without having to continuously flip back and forth.
I'm also not sure if the Kryptonian letters are canon or the creation of the creative team. Either way, some of the letters look way too similar to each other. So I was getting confused going back and forth and misremembering the image I was tracking. It took me about an hour to read this book. Had the formatting been a little more reader friendly, I probably would have finished in 30 minutes.
Superman of Smallville was inaccurately titled. It was also a fun and games activity with a serious design flaw. It you can make a copy of the code key or have an image of it on your phone to refer to, you'd probably benefit. I'd imagine reading this on a Kindle or other e-reader is darn near impossible to do without getting frustrated.
I long for more from Baltazar and Franco. But I hope the next work doesn't have similar problems as this one did.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.
