Some thoughts about Superman: Villains #1

Superman revealed his identity, what does his enemies think now?

Everyone in the universe is reacting to Clark's news, even some of the worst criminals around and they all have their own ideas about it.

A new special based on the current Superman events is here and it proves to be an interesting, yet messy read.

Brian Bendis, Matt Fraction and Jody Houser deliver a story focusing on how each and every villain in Superman's rogue gallery handle the fact that he was Clark Kent all this time. Surprisingly enough, the most interesting parts are the ones obviously handled by Bendis because of how much connection they all have with the current direction of the Superman line.

The most compelling aspects of this issue are the segments based on Toyman who now realizes that Clark was being sincere all this time he tried to help him and decides to quit his criminal behavior and all of this leads to a more important role in the fight against Leviathan. Mongul also gets a quite interesting part where his brutal lineage is revealed, has a moment of epiphany about it only for his son to continue with it. These two stories were pretty well-handled I believe.

And of course, Fraction's segments are easiest to distinguish because of how out of place they are. The scene about Lex Luthor is decent enough but is pretty comical in style and thus doesn't mix well with the tone of the issue, same with his yet another obviously written moment about Steve Lombard. I'm not sure what Jody Houser handled though, the Supergirl scene?

For this reason I feel like the pacing is all over the place, not only because we jump from different story to different story but also because the writing of each author doesn't get along with the rest.

And speaking of which, Michael Gaydos, Riley Rossmo, Scott Godlewski, Bryan Hitch, Cully Hamner, Steve Lieber and Jim Mahfood handle the art and they all do a pretty good job during their respective segments but due that their artstyles are so different from one another, they also affect the flow of the read.

A pretty flawed read but offers a few solid moments.