James Robinson's work on Superman has been shaky, at best, over the last three issues.  It's not that I hated it, but after loving Starman and his run on Batman, I held much higher hopes for his Superman work.  This issues sees the close of his first run, and while there is one major complaint I have about the storyline, I also had a lot of fun this issue and realized that I'm a complete sucker.

Before I talk about what a sucker I am, let me discuss the major problem that I had with the issue.  While the overall writing was good and featured some very good dialogue and character moments, I was astonished by the ending.  It has absolutely no payoff whatsoever.  While Superman has been battling Atlas for the last three issues, we were lead to believe that it was going to end epically, or reveal some major stuff that's going on in Superman's world.  But instead, the fight is ended in less than two panels.  Heck, one could even make the argument that the end of the fight wasn't even in the book...it just happened off panel.  To me, this is a storytelling misstep because it makes the last three issues seem pointless.  If you look at the storyline as it is now, James Robinson has introduced nothing new nor has he moved the character forward.  And despite all of this, I still had fun reading this issue.

The majority of my fun came from the scenes with Krypto (and thus proving me a giant sucker).  It was just damn fun to see him beating/annoying the crap out of Atlas.  What was also amusing to me was the way that Atlas never lost his hoity-toity way of speaking to the dog.  He would give him a quick death...with honor.  Who talks about dogs that way?  The other aspect of the issue that I loved was the interaction between Superman and Zatara.  It had snappy dialogue, and Superman showed some real matching wits with him.  It's these glimmers that give me confidence that once "New Krypton" kicks in, we'll see some real magic from Robinson.

I'm fairly luke warm with Guedes art.  While some of his panels look really good, others just don't look all that great.  Some of his figures just look weird and his perspective can be off at times.  Also, I very much dislike the colors in this issue.  Superman's tones are far to muted for my tastes, and the flesh tones look weird (which could be a result of the weird colors).  Overall, it's servicable.  It's just not my favorite.