Taking a Look at The Great World
Superman #37 The Men of Tomorrow Chapter 6: The Great World
As I mentioned in the last issue, Superman was hurting in a bad way. He actually is captured by Ulysses and we see him bound to a chair emitting Kryptonite radiation, helpless…except he can speak. Ulysses tries to tell him how much he means as an inspiration and Klerik shows up with a few of the 4th dimension dudes. Alien gibberish is spoken and Klerik smacks Ulysses into tomorrow. Apparently he wasn’t happy that Ulysses wanted to return Superman to Earth after they do their deed.
And as Ulysses recovers from his pummeling we learn the whole story…Klerik is Ulysses’ adoptive father and the two of them are part of The Seekers for The Great World. The Seekers hunt the five dimensions in search of fuel for the Core that powers The Great World. Every decade the Core needs a new dose of fuel or the planet falls apart. This time around, Ulysses found Earth and figured humans could spare 6 million people (outta 7 billion) to keep The Great World functioning as paradise for another 10 years.
Superman tries to talk sense into Ulysses but he sees a small sacrifice of humans means nothing if it can keep paradise running – what do they have to look forward to on Earth anyway, it’s just full of hate and violence. Even though Superman has a just and honorable argument to stop the disassembling of 6 million innocent beings, it isn’t until he spots Neil’s parents in those collected as fuel that Ulysses decides to turn things around.
The two superbeings race to transfer the humans back to Earth, but in doing so, they inadvertently disrupt the Core and The Great World blows up. Of course Ulysses isn’t too pleased about his adoptive world being destroyed so he attacks Superman again and things once again don’t look too good for our hero.
This was a pretty eventful issue and it brought quite a bit into clarity. I enjoyed the story and the drawings of The Great World before and after it blew up were pretty impressive. My main takeaways are:
- I didn’t realize the alien guy they fought in issue 32 was Klerik (good thing I pay attention)
- I don’t recall seeing the reaper type dude in this issue
- The foreshadowing was appropriate – I certainly got the feeling of a To Serve Man type story or a Silver Surfer type vibe
- Sometimes Superman needs to use his mind as his strongest asset to convince others of reality
- The Great World may be gone, but I’m not so sure we’ve seen the last of Klerik
With all that said, I am looking forward to see where things end up. If I’m not mistaken, I think Ulysses and Superman are in the 4th dimension without a ship to get back to Earth, and Ulysses is pretty pissed. I know they’ll fight some more in the next issue, but somehow at least Superman has to get back home…eventually. And while I enjoyed this issue, I’ll only give it a B this time since while the Klerik as Ulysses’ father was a cool reveal, I am sad we didn’t get to see more of The Great World and it’s paradise.