Big events are one of the best parts about long-running comics. When writers can build up to a big story over years, bridging multiple ongoing comics and creative teams together, they can create a magical experience where character arcs and storylines set up across multiple runs can finally come into bloom. Seeing multiple comics unite to tell a single story, where every issue is important and continues the plot, is one of the biggest strengths of shared universes. Instead of waiting a month between issues, every week gives you another chapter of this hero-specific crossover. That’s exactly what’s going down right now with the Superman Family in the “Kingdom of Zod” event.
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Since the start of Superman Unlimited, Kryptonite has spread across the world, while Lois Lane has been in possession of a Kryptonian’s powers, secretly General Zod’s, for the last few years. Supergirl, meanwhile, has been taking on more responsibility as the Heir to the House of El. All of these storylines and more are converging in one epic event. We’re now entering its second week, but already, it has one major problem. One of these events’ biggest problems is balancing all of the characters, and it clearly has no idea how to handle Superboy-Prime’s power. Once again, power scaling is ruining this comic.
Insane Power That’s Nowhere to Be Seen
This issue saw a whole lot happen, but the important part was the battle between Superboy, Superboy-Prime, and the revitalized General Zod. Beneath them, Kryptonite was spreading to cover the entire world, but Conner and CK had protective shields provided by Lena Luthor, meaning that Zod was the only one feeling the green. Now, on the surface, this fight seems entirely one-sided. After all, it’s two Kryptonians to one, Zod just got his powers back and is being affected by Green K, and one of his opponents is Superboy-freaking-Prime, who is one of the strongest beings in the entire multiverse.
The fight was over extremely quickly and was, in fact, extremely one-sided, but nowhere near the side it should have been. Zod decimated the Superboys, even when slowly losing his strength. He cited that he was a general while they were mere boys, but that doesn’t even make sense in context, given they’ve both been fighting for decades at this point. In fact, this is one of the most egregious instances of plot armor in modern comics. Heck, Superboy-Prime has taken on the entire Green Lantern Corps and two versions of Superman and nearly won. It took the entire superhero community ganging up on Prime to even slow him down.
That’s even ignoring how absurdly disrespectful this is to Conner. He should be more than capable of stomping a weakened Zod on his own, between his own Kryptonian might and non-Kryptonian tactile telekinesis. Zod beating him in a fair fight I can see, but I cannot imagine a world where Conner has every advantage, protection from Kryptonite, and backup from Prime Time himself, and still gets backhanded into the ground. It makes absolutely zero sense, but the plot needs it to happen, so it does. That is the greatest weakness of these big events that bring in a bunch of characters. Sometimes, the characters are put behind the story.
Put the Plot Before Characters, But At Least Make It Make Sense
At the end of the day, events like this have a story that no individual issue can change. When coordinating so many different creative teams, everyone is going to have to compromise on some things to make it work. Where individual runs can be character-driven, events, by necessity, have to be plot-driven. The plot connects everyone and spurs the characters together, after all. Yet, putting the plot first doesn’t need to mean making impossible things happen just to smooth things out. It’s clear that this story needed Zod to beat Prime and Conner, but it could have been so much better than this atrocity.
I’m not saying that Conner and Prime had to absolutely slam Zod into the ground or anything. That would immediately end the event, and it’s clearly building up to something more. However, seeing Superboy-Prime of all people being beaten into the ground by a weakened Zod is so far left of the realm of what should happen that it takes the audience out of the story. Zod is a strategist and knows that Prime has been operating as Metropolis’s fill-in Superman, so he could have easily prepared a countermeasure to combat the massive power differential.
At the end of the day, plot will come before power-level consistency and characterization in these events. Still, it’s the responsibility of the writers to make it all make sense, and Prime getting his butt handed to him raises way more questions than it should.
Superman Unlimited #16 is on sale now!
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