The Heroes and the Villains
Tony Daniel's definitely sticking to Diggle's notes well, because this issue doesn't slip in quality at all in terms of the writing even though Daniel had to fill-in a bit on the writing. Lex Luthor is still such a phenomenal figure, calm and collected as he's still behind the scenes of this plan. He truly sees himself as the world's savior, and Superman as the world's enemy. The psychoanalysis of him last issue was spot on and his portrayal is kept up here, even if the scenes here aren't quite as amazing as last issue. But the end of this issue cinches the perfection of this plan as a true 'Lex Luthor' plan.
The Hybrid has been separated from Superman, and this might actually make things worse. His full capabilities are unknown, but he appears capable of possessing large groups of people. It's interesting how The Hybrid is the focus of this arc, but it's really Lex Luthor behind him from the start. The Hybrid is an odd sort of villain, where he's only in this situation, and even only exists, due to the actions of the higher level villain, Lex Luthor, who wants to use Hybrid to show the world that Superman is a villain. The various ranges of heroism are all over the place in a pretty fascinating way.
The Hybrid also has a pretty awesome design, very complicated but not in an off-putting way. Tony Daniel is really putting out some stunning work on this series on the art side. The aliens and tech are all so full of insane detail without reducing the dynamism of the action. This issue has a few too many close ups when Superman's fighting The Hybrid, but otherwise more excellent work.
Something that bothered me, though, was when Superman chalked up The Hybrid taking his form as another hallucination like when he saw Jimmy, and that doesn't totally make sense. It's obvious that The Hybrid is a shapeshifter, and it's clear that he's very connected to Superman; so why was it so crazy for The Hybrid to start taking a shape reminiscent of Superman himself? He didn't take the skin color or anything, he was still clearly The Hybrid, so why not just see it as that? That, and Superman's whole "am I a danger by being?" thing is a bit overplayed at this point.
This issue also brings back the co-feature to Action Comics, but this one is FAR more interesting than most of the random Sholly Fisch stories we had with Morrison's run. Scott Lobdell's doing some pretty good work so far on this co-feature, weaving an interesting tale of conspiracy in the distant past of Krypton, likely setting up Zod as a villain for later this year, and also probably to increase hype for the Man of Steel movie. But it seems intriguing so far, and Philip Tan has an awesome art style that compliments Tony Daniels' remarkably well.
In Conclusion: 4/5
I LOVED Morrison's run, but it had its downs. This Diggle arc so far has been consistent in quality. It's not the best thing ever, but it's still damn good. This is definitely a MIUST read for Lex Luthor fans, and honestly I would say it's currently THE Superman book to be reading right now.
