Ooof. This was... Rough. I generally don't like to be negative (specially because started lining this series) but this reveal felt simultaneously too predictable (many people had figured out that the prophecy involved imposters, hence the "they'll look like us") and completely disconnected from the narrative this story was *seemingly* presenting. Spoilers ahead:

It was aliens. The war has really little to do with any of the factions involved, they're being impersonated by aliens.

Which to me, feels like the biggest cop-out ever. Now, having a *third* faction of shapeshifters involved in the plot isn't bad, what is bad is the fact that they remove almost all culpability from any of the Houses (you know, the people we're actually following in this plot). The bad thing is that they are non-characters we haven't really followed. The bad thing is that they've prevented characters like Kal or Zala from having anything but the most barebones characterization for a whopping 9 issues (for fear of revealing that there were imposters involved too early).

They are Taylor's built-in excuse to have "shocking" deaths ala Game of Thrones, but without any of the gravity that comes with it.

I now get what Taylor wants from this book. He wants a book he gets to write "And now Batman rides a f*cking dragon! Awesome!" which can be cool, but for some reason he craves the supposed "respectability" that comes with more serious fantasy with morally grey characers (which isn't necessary tbh), and his solution to have them both was to pull this Scooby-Doo level twist.

Also, I'm still not a fan of the severe Batman-favoritism this series has. more

Have to be honest, I thought the reveals in this were pretty terrible. Many, many people had figured out that there was something wrong with the Els, but pulling the "turns out, it was actually shapeshifting aliens from outer-space!" card, like this was some cheesy B-movie is just bad. It completely cheapens the story and the setting, because it removes any and all nuance from the conflict for the sake of

a) Having a surprise and

b) Having the "shoking death moments" while compeltely absolving any characters of any wrong-doing.

Which wouldn't be bad if the tone they were going for were soemthing more lighthearted, but Taylor is so focused on creating a "serious" and "dramatic" scenario that pulling this frankly cartoonish swerve is just jarring.

And the Alfred reveal is... Okay, I guess. But it suffers from the same problems many Taylor stories suffer: narrative cheats. Nobody figured that out, because there was nothing to suggest it was a mystery. Yet Taylor plays it as a reveal.

Taylor should have just presented this as a strightforward fantasy-adventure with obvious villains (and with us knowing about them, this would have allowed them more screentime and made them more entertaining to watch - It's not like anybody cares the bad guys in Lord of Rings are straightforward villains), instead of this convoluted "mystery" that feels only exist because TT wanted people to think this was a deconstructionist fantasy ala Game of Thrones. more

Taylor is constatly writing himself into corners with this franchise and there's not spinal cord to focus on something else...

Supes cure was way to easy.

This issue fell very short of expectations because it discarded the story that was being built up until this moment.

Instead of an interesting clash between Superman, who was supposedly much more powerful and this dangerous from all the time he was in the sun and his son, we see the problem being solved without any kind of difficult and the narration still has the gall to try to pretend something exciting is happening.

This wouldn't be a problem if the rest of the series hadn't presented the zombie Superman as a formidable threat waiting to happen. You can't just ignore such an important plot point (that the readership is invested in, IT WAS EVEN THE CLIMAX OF THE FIRST SERIES!) because it destroys the trust in your story and lets me think you're playing with "anything goes" rules.

Beyond that, the choices for the zombies aren't very itneresting either. SUre "Zombie Gods" is the thing that sounds cool on paper, but in practice they don't behave much different from other superpowered zombies in this series, with the minus that our characters don't have a personal connection to any of them. more

Surprisingly effective. Seems like it isn't afraid of the zombie genre unlike the main series.

The author wrote himself into corner here, which makes the supposedly emotional moments fall flat. Superman's situation has to be the most random, unpersonal and insane sequence of events I've read in a long time.

Surprisingly solid spin-off, I left the main series a while ago but this ended up clicking.

lol This just sucked.

What a terrible twist that frankly, makes this whole series just so much worse.