More What I Expected
The Good: Superboy dons his awesome costume, and that's pretty damn great.
We actually get to see some of his 'mind in every cell of his body' in action.
Rose gets more developed as a character, and I'm really liking this direction for her. We also get to see her in action and that's quite a treat. She's really coming around as a supporting character, retaining a lot of mystery.
The set up for the next issue is pretty intense.
The Bad: Superboy #1 took a lot of fun little interesting twists and turns, and had some surprisingly great pacing that kept me on edge, while this issue approaches things much more standardly.
Superboy's internal monologue drove the last issue really well, where everything was new and alien to him, as well as the reader, but as this issue is more straightforward, sometimes the narration becomes a bit too much.
Aside from my previous complaints about characters occasionally looking like mannequins, especially when near nude, there's also a tendency in the art for hair to look super weird when its in motion.
The monsters fought in this issue are almost depressingly generic, and it's weird that they're the only threat in this kind of story.
I feel a bit of missed opportunity on Rose. They do a great job subtly showcasing her swords, only for her to pull out some handguns for the entire fight.
N.O.W.H.E.R.E. seems to have a checklist of things for a generic evil mystery organization to do, and it's slowly checking them off one-by-one.
In Conclusion: 3/5
While the first issue really impressed me with its unique narrative and running group of nice little chocking twists, this issue is much more straightforward and less interesting. It's occasionally a bit clunky, and the art isn't overall that great. My original expectations of Superboy was something more akin to this, so here's hoping it'll start heading in the direction I saw before.
