BIZARRO BREAK #3 – Jing Kal-El
BIZARRO BREAK #3 (Jing Kal-El)
“Jing Kal-El”
Writer – Andy Merrill
Art – Roger Langridge
Colors – Matt Madden
Edits – Joey Cavalieri
Time for another #BizarroBreak… and, wouldja lookit that, a Christmas-flavored one at that! I wasn’t expecting to dip into a Holiday story until July or so… but, I ain’t gonna complain! In fact, the Bizarro World collection has a few Christmas stories… including one we’ll look at in a couple weeks called “Batman Smells”. Hmm…
Anyhoo, without further ado… let’s take a look at Superman: Red Son… if it weren’t written by an edgelord!
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It’s Christmas Eve… on Krypton, and it turns out… this is the day where it all comes apart. Jor-El and Lara do the thing… ya know, loading the tot into the rocket, bingo-bango… Krytpon goes boom. Tale as old as time, right? Well, here’s the rub. In this version of the story, the tiny rocket doesn’t land in Smallville, Kansas… but, the North Pole!
Little baby Kal is discovered by a pair of elves named… err, Dingus and Doofus. Dingus, really? They look at the tot, and decide they ought to ask the Queen if they can keep him!
The Queen, naturally, is cool with it… and for a second I thought we were about to veer into Snow White territory. Thankfully, we do not. Baby Kal is taken in by the Legion of Elves, and taught how be nice, and never cruel. And so, Kal grows into adulthood under her kind hand.
As he grew old, he grew especially fond of children… and he began keeping tabs on whether or not they were naughty or nice. Ya see where this is headed?
The story wraps up with the revelation that baby Kal-El of Krypton grew up to be… Santa Claus!
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Ah! This was a lot of fun. Now, I might just be a sucker for both Superman and Christmas stories, but I thought this was a blast! It gave us just enough… didn’t overstay its welcome, and ended just how it needed to. I feel like this is the sort of story that could be over-thought and thus, over-written. We didn’t get that here.
Thought it was clever to play out the entire chapter under a revised version of T’was the Night before Christmas… didn’t hurt that it also kept the story “on track”. The art was also quite wonderful… I thought for a moment I was looking at Chris Giarrusso’s work, which I’ve always got time for.
Overall, a really good time… and, once again the #BizarroBreak proves to be one heckuva “palette cleanser”!
Tomorrow: Kicking off Wasteland #3 (sorry)… Hey, where y’all going?!
