As Superman and his son look over the writing in the cave they found, the two are suddenly attacked by a surviving soldier. Superman easily blocks the bullets and stops the attack, before explaining how they got here. The soldier, a man named Captain Storm, calms down, and tells them he’s been stranded here for some time. He’s the last survivor of the Losers… nobody else made it on this dangerous and crazy place. He’s relieved to hear that they did win the second world war, but doesn’t care what year it must be where Superman came from – he can tell just by looking at the two that his time has come and gone long ago.
He does agree to help the two, but only after they do him a favour. They recover the bones found in the T-Rex skeleton, which belonged to Storm’s friend – the last survivor other than him. Together, they give the man’s remains a proper burial. He thanks them, and agrees to help find the device that brought the family here. Storm suspects that a creature holed up in some nearby swampland has taken the device, and goes back to his cave to get some weapons. He’s not going in there unarmed. As Storm leaves, Superman sees his son crying a short distance away. The boy is starting to get afraid that they might not be able to escape this place, and he is worried they may never see his mom again. Superman reassures the boy that they will get out of this, but before they do that, there’s something Clark wants to do.
[Related: Click Here To Find DC Rebirth’s Superman Comic Books Online]
In the cave, Jon presents a wooden leg his father carved for Captain Storm. He appreciates it, and says he’s ready to head out. Superman offers to fly him, but Storm has a ride of his own. They arrive to find a White Gorilla with a strange robotic eye sitting on a horde of technology. When our heroes move in, the Gorilla orders an army of beasts to attack.
Our heroes fight back, and when the gorilla hurls a sea mine at them, Krypto happily dives in the way, easily surviving the attack without damage. As Superman squares off with the gorilla, Jon is able to slip past it and initiates another teleportation sequence similar to the one that brought them here. As it powers up, Superman steals the gorilla’s strange eye and tries to bring Storm along with them. The Captain says not to worry about him, as they can’t have these monsters getting back to the mainland. Besides, he’s already home.
In a flash, the family finds themselves back in the Fortress of Solitude, but Superman notes the robotic eye is gone. Jon wonders what happened, and if Storm will be okay. His father replies that he doesn’t know, but he promises they’ll find a way back there one day. And together, they will get some answers.
So this was a fun little story, overall. Wrapping up the whole Escape from Dinosaur Island in only two issues was probably a good idea. This is a nice, simple story that never overstayed it’s welcome, had a really fun setting and colourful ideas, and overall worked as a nice, short Superman tale that worked for me. The art, on the whole, is a big selling point here, will lots of creative imagery and well made designs on the whole. That being said, in both these issues I’ve noticed the art team does tend to make Krypto and Jon look super creepy in a couple of panels. Ahhhhhh!!!
It’s fine, really. The art is overall really great and this happens, but still, they are not the faces you want to see emerge from a cornfield in the middle of the night and whisper… “you’re next.”
I also learned a little bit of DC history from this one. Evidently the Losers are a band of soldiers not unlike Marvel’s Howling Commandos, so that’s cool. I had never heard of them but it’s cool to have this little reference and I always welcome when DC makes obscure ties to the past like this. As for the ending, well, I’m sure that’s set up for content to come at a later date, because I have no idea what any of that meant. I’m sure we’ll learn more at some point.
This is a well written story, even though the stakes were never that high, to the extent I’m quite confident Superman and his family were technically never in any real danger, but that’s not important. The story was more about having fun, showing our characters fighting some cool stuff and doing cool things, and that’s about it. It’s all it really had to be, but even then, that same depth I was talking about last issue is still here. Superman once again proves to be really interesting when given the father son dynamic, and, even though a lot of this has to do with the strength of this character, a big part of this is how well writer Peter J. Tomasi does with making Jon a very realistic ten year old boy.
[Related: Click Here To Find DC Rebirth’s Superman Comic Books Online]
He gets afraid, he’s still learning, and he has a natural curiosity to him. It makes him compelling, but also a good character. This is a kid who still has a long way to go and is bound to make a lot of mistakes along the way, just like any child. It’s refreshing to see though, but really is night and day when you compare Jon to someone like, oh, say, Damian, who, even though they are close in age, these two are completely different. Damian led a hard life which made him grow up fast and never really had the chance to be a kid, but Jon… Jon’s only ever been a kid. I say all of this because next issue is something I and many others have been expecting ever since this new Superboy was announced. Yep. So I’m pretty hyped for next issue.
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