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Friday, April 27, 2012

Smallville Season 11 #3 - "Guardian"


ROLL CALL:

SUPERMAN! LOIS LANE! LEX LUTHOR! (absent this week) CHLOE SULLIVAN! THE GREEN ARROW!

Last issue ended when Clark heard a BRRRIIIINNNGGG! onomatopoeia that pulled him away from his sidewalk tete-a-tete with Lex, right before Lex saw the ghost of his dearly murdered sister Tess.

Back from that week-long commercial break for act three, and we're now in the midst of a robbery in Metropolis Port. Luckily, our hero The Green Arrow is here to foil this dastardly deed. We may have forgotten that Oliver Queen is still publicly known as The Green Arrow (when he "came out" in 10x3 - "Supergirl") and he's publicly known to be married "to that little nobody", as he's taunted by the heavily armed thieves. Wait, so what did the Daily Planet society pages say when it announced Oliver Queen tied the knot? Just "identity of his new bride unknown"?  But they do know she's little.

Green Arrow doesn't seem to mind the eleven-to-one odds and takes out his attackers with what look like electrical taser arrow bombs from above. But wouldn't you know it? Oliver is sloppy. He's always sloppy. He doesn't notice the guy with the RPG rocket launcher behind him. He doesn't have an RPG disposer-of-er arrow in his quiver. Thus he's a goner. If only somebody would save him.


Wait, so it seems like it's night-time now in the Metropolis Docks when this happened. But it was morning when Clark Blurred away on Lex. So that must have been an unrelated thing that Clark went to go deal with last issue.

Anyway, everything's tied up in a nice little bow. Literally. Superman tied up all the attackers in a design Oliver couldn't help but admire and then, in their mild mannered guises as Oliver Queen and Clark Kent, the two founding members of the Justice League get caught up. Oliver needles Clark on his new methodology  and his new attire. Clark: "The last thing I want to do is look like a show off." After all, Clark was a guy who adamantly avoided wearing a costume for ten years. Now you can see his junk through the blue if you look real closely. Oliver and Chloe are still planning on relocating to Star City, which they've delayed for six months since Superman's debut. Who wouldn't want to stick around to see Clark fly around like a caped wonder and routinely stun the city? Oliver laments how much he'll miss the action in Metropolis, like "exploding babies". Clark: "Where ever you go, I guarantee trouble won't be far behind." Soothing words of goodbye from Clark Kent to his best guy friend.

Alas, leaving town is hard to do, and Chloe has delayed packing up Watchtower and starting on with her new life working for the Star City Gazette (a job she took over six months ago and hasn't started - her editor must be very understanding.) Chloe's been busy trying to get similar Watchtowers online in the home cities of the other Justice League members. When Lois arrives with coffee (how much coffee do these people drink?) Chloe's even more distracted by hacking into the camera feed of the Russian space station Korolyev, the very same station Lois' "forever-fiance saved without breaking a sweat", she notes proudly.  So when is the Lois and Clark wedding back on, Chloe wants to know?  Lois: "When the world isn't exploding, and he's not trying to stop it from exploding, and I'm not writing about him trying to stop the world from exploding."

When Chloe does get the Korolyev cameras online to the moments after Clark stopped "the Rift" (she should check with Clark, he already named it the Aurora), they see trouble with a capital S - for space craft. "Something..." "...Or someone..." "...came down in that storm..."

Actually, I'm curious who it could be. Zod? Seen him. Brainiac? Seen him. Darkseid? Dead. Maxima? I wish. Mongul -- hey, Mongul! We haven't seen him yet. Lobo? Haven't seen him. It's probably neither of them. Back in a week...

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