Superman #12, 13 (DC)

Anyone unfortunate enough to be following my lengthy Goodreads reviews knows I recently read the two collections of the New 52 series Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E., which was the first time I read the series.  I'd previously read the New 52 Frankenstein in the pages of Pete Tomasi and Patrick Gleason's Batman and Robin, and fell in love with the guy all over again (he originally debuted in this incarnation in Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory).

So flipping through back issues of Tomasi and Gleason's Rebirth series Superman, I was reminded that Frankenstein makes appearances here, too.  I couldn't have been happier that Tomasi and Gleason were given the Superman assignment.  I knew instantly that DC was rewarding them for knocking Batman and Robin out of the park, even if readers didn't seem to have notice.  But I haven't so far been much of a dedicated reader of their Superman because...I really want Gleason on art.  Every issue. 

Which on a biweekly basis, is never going to happen.

And it really doesn't have to, either, as I've gradually come to accept.  It doesn't hurt to have ringers like Doug Mahnke.  Mahnke has been working at DC since the turn of the millennium, and his stock has consistently risen, even as his profile has remained consistent.  If that makes sense. Anyway, he remains important to the company, and that remains true in the pages of Superman.

He's the artist who did Frankenstein for Seven Soldiers, by the way.  But he's not doing the character the same way in these pages.  He's been softening his style for years.  Some readers think his Superman now contrasts with Gleason's nicely, and I wonder if that has become the point.

Frankenstein himself, though, remains a joy to read.  The version who appears here is once again an agent of S.H.A.D.E., and seems to have become an intergalactic agent of said agency.  By the second issue, however, the point becomes finally resolving something from the old New 52 series, the status of his relationship with the Bride (no, not Uma!).  In that series they'd parted ways, and that was a big part of the reason why Frankenstein was in the shape he was when Tomasi and Gleason found him in Batman and Robin.  So the four of them (five, I guess!) come full circle in the pages of Superman.

Yes, the whole two-part episode is a metaphor about Superman's new status quo as both husband and father, but I can't help but appreciate this nod to Frankenstein, and his previous appearances.