Review: Superman Vol. 1- The Unity Saga: Phantom Earth
Quick Summary
Pros: The storyline is engaging and closes in a way that builds even more interest for the future. Quick moments from the characters offer wholesomeness, heart, and humor throughout the work. The artwork is fantastic from start to finish.
Cons: The narrative starts out rough.
Overall: This is a solid start to a new Superman series and an exciting volume on its own. The narrative starts out rough but quickly improves as it progresses. This leads to a book filled with engaging action, gorgeous artwork, and character-focused moments that make the whole experience better. This is a volume for fans looking to start an interesting, new Superman saga.
Story
Superman Vol. 1 The Unity Saga: Phantom Earth, by Brian Michael Bendis, is a great opening volume for this new series. It has everything you would expect from a Superman comic: action, drama, suspense, and an ending that leaves you wanting even more. However, most importantly, it has heart to it that gives allows the characters to express both humor and humanity. It stumbles a bit near the beginning but, besides this, remains solid all the way through. Overall, the volume offers a lot when it comes to opening up a new Superman series.
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The Unity Saga: Phantom Earth gets off to a somewhat mediocre start. It has scientists accidentally teleport the entire Earth into the Phantom Zone immediately on the heels of Superman imprisoning an incredibly powerful and vengeful being in the Phantom Zone, which serves as the book’s core conflict. Having the book start on a major coincidence like this is a bit unfortunate.
However, besides this one point of contention, the rest of the narrative in The Unity Saga: Phantom Earth is highly entertaining. The volume has the entire Earth in peril, the Justice League out for the count, and a horde of villains threatening everything. Then, the stakes get even higher as Zod joins the fray. It’s a cacophony of action and drama that works really well the entire way through.
The collection also concludes in a way that gears the reader up for the next volume. It keeps the mystery surrounding Lois, Jon, and the destruction of Krypton while also hinting at new plotlines involving Zod’s family. The conclusion here is so effective at drawing interest that I honestly prefer the cliffhanger here to the cliffhanger in the previous volume, which was actually supposed to build excitement for the whole series.
Where this collection really shines though is in little moments and interactions that highlight what makes this book’s characters great. This primarily involves showcasing Superman, who can be seen stopping natural disasters in the middle of a conversation or stopping looting by expressing his disappointment in the participants. However, some of these moments come from other characters and are just plain funny, like Livewire accidentally trying to rob S.T.A.R. Labs while they are dealing with a dimensional crisis or Adam Strange visiting Earth immediately after it disappeared. Either way, it makes this book’s characters feel alive and injects tons of personality into the volume.
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Art
The artwork in The Unity Saga: Phantom Earth is fantastic from start to finish. Ivan Reis’ work is detailed and realistic in a way that works well for this particular book. It makes the action-focused scenes feel intense and dramatic while the emotion-focused scenes properly convey the depth of feeling found in the writing. This particular volume also offers plenty of moments for Reis’ work to shine through a series of full-page spreads. When one of these shows up, it makes you stop in your tracks for a moment and simply appreciate the quality of the visuals. Plus, Joe Prado’s inks and Alex Sinclair’s colors complement the visuals well. All in all, the artwork here is great and is one of the book’s most significant positives.
Continuity
Superman Vol. 1: The Unity Saga: Phantom Earth continues the story from The Man of Steel (Review).
The story here continues in Superman Vol. 2: The Unity Saga: The House of El.
This volume also references other comic books, detailed below:
- The new Justice League (Reading Order) lineup was established in Justice League Vol. 1: The Totality (Review).
- General Zod’s situation on Jekuul is explained in Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps Vol. 6: Zod’s Will (Review). This generally continues Zod’s narrative from across the Rebirth era. See ComicBookWire’s “General Zod Reading Order” for more information.