Last Issue: 7 1/2 out of 10.
Two stories in this book, so I think I'll start off by reviewing the first. That seems to make sense to me. We pick up from Last Stand of New Krypton #2 with Superman falling towards New Krypton after having his powers removed from him due to a blast of red sunlight, courtesy of Brainiac's ship. Before Supes goes splat, one of Brainiac's robot minions flies over and catches Supes, landing safely with the confused Man of Steel. The robot reveals that it is actually one of the Legion members who had infiltrated Brainiac's ship, and the two of them try to figure out a way to get back on Brainiac's ship. Meanwhile, on said ship, Superboy gets separated from his Legion allies and trapped in a large room. As he attempts to pound a hole into the wall of the prison room, Lex Luthor strolls in and begins to taunt SB. Ah Lex, what an awesome villain you are! SB goes to attack Lex, but gets blasted with a major dosage of green Kryptonite before Lex blasts him into unconsciousness. Upon waking up, SB discovers that he is now trapped within the bottle city of Kandor, along with all of the Kryptonians. Mon-El, who was apparently captured in Last Stand #2, is being forced to live through some of his worst memories thanks to some sort of apparatus Brainiac's robots had hooked him up to. Back in the bottled city of Kandor, Superboy manages to find Gen. Zod and inquires as to whether of not the General has any plans for escaping. Zod tells SB to get lost, and after some more words between the two, they end up fighting, which leads to Zod taking SB down with some funky Kryptonian martial arts. With SB out of his way, Zod reveals that he does indeed have a plan for escaping Brainiac's bottled city, and along with a select group of military personal, Zod exits the bottled city and prepares to attack Brainiac's ship from within, ending the first story. The second story deals with the Kryptonian who had infiltrated Gen. Lane's Project 7734. Lane sends for her and shows her the scene from New Krypton, with Brainiac attacking the planet. Lane gloats for a while before revealing that he had known all along that she was an infiltrator... D'oh! The infiltrator tries to fight through Lane's men, but Lane uses his anti-Kryptonian tech to slowly sap her powers, which causes her to race to the lowest levels of the Project to see what Zod had been hiding. Upon arriving, she finds two fellow Kryptonian infiltrators and she realizes that Lane had tortured them in order to find out about her. With her powers totally spent, she is captured by Lane's soldiers and after complimenting her inventiveness, Lane puts a bullet between her eyes, ending this issue.
Very good stuff here! The first story was pretty good, but the second story was great! The infiltrator story had been very strong from the first part, and it definitely ended on a high note. Once again, although Gen. Lane is obviously the bad guy here, it is very easy to understand his motivations, and to a certain degree, almost agree with them. It's that ambiguity that made the infiltrator story so good, because I could sympathize with both Lane and the Kryptonian. As for the first story, it furthered the Last Stand storyline, which is a nice change of pace, since the past two Last Stand stories in Adventure Comics had been more or less filler stuff with very little connection to the main LS story. We get SB defeated(twice!)and locked up in Kandor, Mon-El as a prisoner of Brainiac, Supes trapped on the outside trying to finds a way in and Gen. Zod ready to launch one final all-out assault on Brainiac in order to set his people free. Yeah, I know I said it before, but I'm still going to say it again; I can't wait to see how this x-over ends up!
Score: 9 out of 10.
I'm a big fan of Superboy, but Gen. Zod thrashing him with that crazy Kryptonian martial arts was just beyond great!
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