Digitally Speaking...#1 "FCBD 2013 Superman Edition"

This year I'm converting to the 21st century a little.  I'm starting to read, finally, comics digitally.  Thanks to handy comiXology, I've got a bunch of free comics to start this process, and I'll be sharing the journey with you.  Really, it'll be no different than any other time I've shared my comics thoughts, but I figured I'd make the distinction anyway...

FCBD: Superman: Last Son of Krypton Special Edition
From 2013.  A reprint of Action Comics #844 featuring the debut of Geoff Johns and Richard Donner's collaboration on the Man of Steel, which I read and eagerly followed from that point forward when originally published.  I got to thinking reading it this time, Perry White gives Jimmy Olsen (as J. Jonah Jameson does Peter Parker) a hard time for failing to capture a perfect Superman action shot.  He says these drastically affect sales of the Daily Planet.  Would they really?  In this version of the Superman story (I wonder if anyone has ever done one only from this perspective), the public apparently doesn't see this too often, so every time it does it's basically like the local baseball team winning the World Series, something that needs to be commemorated, or following a trial like O.J. Simpson's, something sensational but understood to be temporary and therefore must be preserved, because newspapers although designed to be incidental have great potential for preservation (something the Internet doesn't; no one will ever look back on a website's archives nostalgically, unless it's a social arena).  Is that what Perry is saying?  Or are we to believe that every single Superman adventure is followed breathlessly by the public, year after year?  What about a Superman who simply doesn't engage the popular imagination anymore?  Has that story been told?

Anyway, the story in this comic is the start of the Chris Kent saga, a new Kryptonian child arriving on Earth and eventually adopted by Lois & Clark, even though he's actually the son of General Zod.  He goes on to become the new Kryptonian Nightwing during the New Krypton era.  It's one of the more sensational Zod stories ever attempted, and a fine echo of the whole Superman story, which is reflected here when Superman brings the boy to his adoptive parents in Smallville (an otherwise overdone beat that both Supergirl and Superboy have experienced to no real impact except when Johns himself did it with the "What would Superman/what would Lex Luthor do?" arc at the start of Superboy's second ongoing series).  The special edition also includes a preview of Scott Snyder and Jim Lee's Superman Unchained, which actually comes in the form of an interview with the creators.  I missed this last year, so was glad that it was still available digitally.  That's certainly one advantage of the form!