Superman: Son Of Kal-El #16
Superman’s day takes a turn in Superman: Son Of Kal-El #16, by writer Tom Taylor, artists Cian Tormey and Ruairi Coleman, colorist Romulo Fajardo Jr., and letterer Dave Sharpe. This is a fun little slice-of-life issue with a reunion that we’ve all been waiting for.
Superman gets up missing his father and prepares for his daily patrol. Lois tells him about the piece she’s working on - someone has stolen some of Luthor’s technology from a Metropolis police station - and he goes out on patrol, doing Superman stuff. He visits Lex to check in on him and ask him about the stolen tech when an explosion at Stryker’s Island calls him away. The Ultra-Humanite hits him with a telepathic whammy, but he turns the psi-blockers back on. The guards tell him the bomb accidentally went off outside of Ultra-Humanite’s cell; they were moving it because it had been planted outside of Metallo’s. Suddenly, he hears something he hasn’t heard in a long time: his father’s heartbeat. The Supermen are reunited as the person who stole Luthor’s tech gets ready to strike at Superman.
The thing about this chapter is that everyone knows what’s going to happen from the minute they open it. With Superman back on Earth, there’s pretty much no other way for this book to go other than getting the two of them back together. Taylor uses the first couple of pages to play into that, going back to Jon’s childhood with a flashback about his father helping him deal with his super hearing. From that moment, readers know where Taylor is going. The key is how the story gets there, and that’s where the issue does an amazing job.
Taylor takes readers through Jon’s day as he does all of the things readers expect him to. Jon travels the world, doing good deeds, visiting children, planting trees. It all builds to the Lex visit, where the specter of the missing Superman is brought up, and the Ultra-Humanite escape, a moment where readers could almost believe Supes was going to show up. He doesn’t, but there’s an implicit threat to the whole thing - whoever wants to free Metallo wants to kill Kryptonians - before the actual reunion. It’s a wonderful little moment, thrown in at the perfect time, and it’s immediately juxtaposed by the coming threat from the person who stole Luthor’s tech from the police station. The whole thing is expertly laid out, playing with reader expectations from the beginning.
Tormey and Coleman do great with the art. Tormey has been knocking it out of the park for a while in this book, so that’s no surprise. He does an excellent job with the opening pages, capturing Jon’s pain and the love of a father and son. Coleman’s art style is similar enough to Tormey’s that there’s no jarring transition but unique enough to know that it happened. He also does a terrific job on his pages. Fajardo Jr.’s colors are fantastic. He gives the issue a bright, optimistic feel.
Superman: Son Of Kal-El #16 gives everyone the reunion they’ve been waiting for. Taylor hits all the right notes with this one, building to the moment well while also setting up the rest of this story arc. Tormey, Coleman, and Fajardo Jr. give readers the kind of wonderful art they’ve come to expect from this comic. All in all, another great effort from this creative team.
