Spoilers ahead for Action Comics #979, out today.
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Whose Squad will reign supreme?
This is a big week for General Zod, the Kryptonian villain who has been a regular feature in Suicide Squad since the start of the Rebirth era a year ago.
After a successful mission, Zod returned home with the Suicide Squad, but he’s bent on using his heat vision to surgically remove the Kryptonite bomb in his skull.
Meanwhile, over in Action Comics, a new version of the Superman Revenge Squad assembled, and the final-page cliffhanger put them on a collision course with Amanda Waller’s crew hen their leader Hank Henshaw revealed that he intended to free (and recruit) Zod.
The original Silver Age version of the Superman Revenge Squad was a group of alien conquerors from Wexr II, whom Superboy had thwarted. In Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity, the team was assembled by corrupt businessman Morgan Edge as a group of super-villains who each have a personal grudge against Superman.
That version of the team — which included Maxima, Riot, Barrage, and other B- and C-list villains — failed in part because they couldn’t work together…although it’s debatable whether they had enough power between them to take down Superman anyway. Certainly once Maxima was out of the picture, it’s hard to see him taking a beatdown from Rock and Anomaly.
The current take — well, that’s a different story. Besides Henshaw in his Cyborg Superman persona, the current Revenge Squad boasts a Kryptonian living weapon known as The Eradicator; Mongul, the world conqueror; Blanque, a formidable telepath and telekinetic who wiped out an entire small town before Superman could stop him in Superman: Lois and Clark; and Metallo, a cyborg with a Kryptonite heart.
Of course, all that Kryptonite around Kryptonian allies like The Eradicator, Zod, and Cyborg Superman might do more harm than good. But that’s a story for later.
The story follows Justice League vs. Suicide Squad, a fun crossover event that pitted DC’s two biggest super-teams against one another a few months ago and laid bare years of previously-buried Squad mythology. While Zod was not part of the Squad during that event, he joined shortly after.
The story continues in two weeks, when both Action Comics and Suicide Squad have new issues on the stand.
More Superman news:
- Will Conner Kent Return in Action Comics’ Upcoming “Revenge” storyline?
- Superman Artist Doug Mahnke To Revisit His Most Famous Story
- Spider-Man And Spider-Gwen Just Crossed Over To The DC Universe
- 20 Years Later, The Creators Answer: How Did “Electric Superman” Happen?
You can get the latest issue of Action Comics and pre-order upcoming ones at your local comic shop, or digitally on ComiXology.
