An Improvement By Leaps And Bounds!
At the end of the second season of WB's Smallville, comes the first bi-monthly issue of the comic book tie-in. This is a much better effort than the first, 64-page one-shot the previous fall, at the start of the second season. Another great John Van Fleet cover. Dublin's finest, Kilian Plunkett (mostly known for his work at Dark Horse on Aliens, Star Wars and maybe a little Indiana Jones from the looks of his blog), with inks by Mark Morales, colors by Jeromy Coh and letters by Comicraft make the Mark Verheiden - Clint Carpenter script, edited by Tom Palmer, leap to life.
Maybe I'm the only one that thinks that this series should really be about more than the meteor (kryptonite) freak of the week - or the (bi)month. Here we have another tragic story of yet another resident of Smallville affected by the meteor shower. Ken Cavanuagh and his widowed father are on a hunting trip in the woods the day the meteors hit. Now, after dropping Clark and Pete off for a fishing and camping trip, Jonathan Kent encounters The Invisible Ken. Seems the day of the meteor shower, Ken lost his father and he's gone all Predator, and is camouflaged. That's his meteor rock mutation. This story manages to capture the wonder and simple fun of the classic Superboy stories with Pete encouraging the straight-laced Clark to take the opportunity to enjoy his abilities out in the wild. This story really manages to translate the drama, the comedy and the values of the series back onto the page. Plunkett captures the cast and - more importantly - the Kent's kitchen and the Talon. A big improvement over the previous one-shot. Bonus points for being able to render invisibility and Clark's x-ray vision clearly. In the Silver or the Bronze Age, invisibility looked so much different than it does now. There wasn't much difference between the Invisible Kid and someone imprisoned in the Phantom Zone. The way Smallville approaches x-ray vision is really logical and practical.
The story, Paterfamilias (latin for "father of the family"), is followed by a behind the scenes look at filming the episode "Dichotic" and an episode guide for the second through fifth episodes from the first season.
At $3.50 and bi-monthly, I would have taken less series interviews, photos, episode guides and just story. Eventually most of this same material might show up in a season companion or part of the special features of the season box sets.
Maybe the animated Superman Adventures and The New Adventures of Superboy books had more licensed cameos than Smallville could; but it would be nice to see the Ultra-Humanite, Solomon Grundy, Grodd; maybe The Spectre, Dr. Fate, or even Phantom Stranger, Crimson Avenger, The Question or Wesley Dodds' The Sandman with Dian Belmont visit Smallville. What a casting coup it might have been to have Noel Niell as Dian Belmont with Jack Larson as Wesley Dodds visit Smallville during the first or second season against The Mist. And not fall back on explaining away The Mist as a meteor freak. I could see Lex scheduling a book signing at the Talon to boost business; maybe because one of the books his mother gave him was Dian Belmont's (Kind of an adaptation of the Sand and Stars storyline from Starman). I could see the Phantom Stranger presenting alternate opportunities to Clark at Christmas an homage to It's A Wonderful Life (kind of taking a story point from an issue of Gotham Adventures). I could see a paranoid Vic Sage and The Question investigating the paranormal like Chloe. Maybe instead of the teachers, students and principal getting toasted, one of the teachers that gets a start in Smallville could have been Jefferson Pierce. Smallville seems to be bogged down with guilt more than teen angst; and the people that have been helpful resources in the mainstream comics series are now warped and twisted; like Professor Hamilton and Jor-El. It would have been nice to see that Clark had mistranslated kryptonian phrases like rule and conquer that should have come out as serve, protect or inspire. It's a shame that Jor-El comes off as such an @$$ here, more than anywhere else. Still, Smallville has its moments.
