Some thoughts about Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent #1

Can a Superman defeat his biggest fear?

Jon Kent is happier than ever now that his father has returned but he's not the only Supermen who will come back and that will also bring the return of the man who tortured him during his childhood.

And here we have the return of one of the most flawed combinations of writer and character. As I've said several times before, Tom Taylor wasn't able to get the best from the premise of Jon Kent as Superman, either because he portrayed Jon as bland as a cardboard or focused on overly-shallow "political" commentary, it was simply a pretty unremarkable experience at best and downright laughable at worst.

However, for some reason everyone at DC decided to make him continue with his work in a brand new book and I'm not going to lie, there are a few things to appreciate here... along with the usual Taylor problems.

First of all, we kick off from the already forgettable Lazarus Planet even in which Jon gained new powers, now this is not really the interesting part (and I don't expect much from it going on) but what is interesting is that Taylor choose to build-up from the forgotten Brian Bendis plot-point of Jon being lost in Earth 3 as a kid and traumatized by Ultraman. Mind you, I still hate the whole deal of aging up Jon but this is at least a logical development from that and it actually leads to other appropriate plot-points like how such villain is killing Kal-Els across the Multiverse forcing Superman from different realities to join in.

... And this could have been great if Taylor didn't follow his usual thing of bringing back his pet characters. You think that Jon was enough of a cardboard already? Well, you have seen nothing since Supercardboard Val-Zod is back! (And of course Taylor didn't make him any more compelling here). Not only that but he also brings Red Tornado Lois from Earth 2 as well and I understand there's a connection between the whole cast but one can't help but find this both disappointed and predictable since there were so many other interesting characters from Earth 2 but obviously Taylor had to include the ones he created (Then again, the fact that Mister Terrific remembers them was a nice touch admitedly).

The plot itself doesn't offer much beyond that and this is King Taylor of Decompression so don't expect much progression from it.

Clayton Henry handles the art and is fine at telling the story but the style is not particularly my thing, especially because of some of the overly-angular characters.

Mixed bag, not sure if I should continue with this.