ComicBook Showdown

Subject Zero has company it seems, in a cell elsewhere: 1/2 mile below Metropolis in the testing facility in which he's now held incarcerated. His companion is the strange alien humanoid-looking boy that General Lane has come to call Kal. Everyone else calls him Subject One. The boy exhibits abilities beyond those of mortal men, and his strange alien physiology allows his very cells to act as batteries, giving him a range of many different abilities. Subject Zero, meanwhile, while in captivity, manipulates minute waves of energy to vibrate simulations of sound, and in this way he communicates as whispers in Kal's, ear-teaching him how to use his x-ray vision. Subject Zero warns Kal not to trust the people in his compound. Subject One (Kal), did not arrive in his crashed rocket ship last issue alone. He had a canine companion whom he loves, and by not complying with a recent battery of tests, Subject One is punished by separation from his dog, who is put in a cramped holding pen. General Lane is visited on the same day by his daughter Lois, and by the lab�s major investor, Lionel Luthor and his odd son Lex, who get a tour of the facility and view some experiments. The visitors pass by as the dog is being penned, and not far away in his cell, Subject Zero targets the canine and releases a small amount of solar energy he's been holding for over 9 years. Once imbued with power, the alien dog goes ape against its captors. Lionel Luthor, in an effort to protect himself and destroy his despised son at the same time, throws young Lex at the dog! It�s then that lab security fire a weapon with a strange green energy blast that destroys the animal. This chain of events underlines to Kal what his unseen friend, Subject Zero, has been telling him about his captors all along. Working together, Subject One frees Subject Zero but instead of fleeing captivity, Subject Zero rains holy Hell down on everyone and everything in the facility. While Subject Zero gets his revenge, Kal goes to the General�s quarters and finds young Lois there. Subject Zero finds them there and making Lois's acquaintance decides to teach General Lane a lesson about attachment and sacrifice, but before he strikes, General Lane storms the room wearing a strange mechanical device. Subject Zero scoffs that the General got everything he wanted an unstoppable unkillable entity that can't be stopped-not even with his fancy apparatus. That�s when General Lane reveals he�s wearing a Phantom Zone reactor and turns it on, heroically banishing Subject Zero and himself to the Phantom Zone, never to return. Later, with General Lane gone, there's a new broom at the Cadmus research facility: General Nathanial Adam. Subject One, now no longer being called Kal, suffers a similar fate to his predecessor, when he's put into a tiny cramped holding area and is introduced to the General, who tells him how it's going to be from now on. And at the end of the issue Subject One is left alone to carve a crude drawing on his cell wall with his heat vision of the pretty little girl he met that one day he broke free.

Review: Flashpoint:Project Superman 2 by Scott Snyder, Lowell Francis and Gene Ha (DC)