Commander Kal El of the New Kryptonian army puts himself at great risk to negotiate an end to the standoff between Labor Guild militants and General Zod’s army of snipers ready to take them out.  Kal enlists Kara, aka Supergirl, to “keep her eyes open” during the attempt at peacefully resolving the situation, and saves the life of the Labor Guild militant’s leader by catching a bullet fired from ultra-militant Commander Gor in defiance of even Zod’s orders.  Commander Gor, feeling slighted by Commander El for his peaceful resolution of the situation, challenges Kal to a duel which Gor ends up losing just before their battle is interrupted by Earth’s Green Lanterns, lead by Hal Jordan.

Bit of a misleading cover like this month's Supergirl cover was.

The tension and battles of ideology come hard and fast in the 3^rd issue of this new Superman classic, World of New Krypton.  Zod and Kal square off in different ideological corners, and Kal comes out the victor, ending the standoff between Labor Guild members and The New Kryptonian Army.  Yes, there’s a knock down, drag out fist fight at the end of the issue, but the real battle is between Zod’s “shoot first, plan to get out later” approach to dealing with insurgents, and the “diplomacy first” approach of Kal.  Luckily in this showdown, the Labor Guild has legitimate complaints, so Kal has the easy choice of putting himself at risk during the negotiations, which he does by blasting himself with a red sun burst from one of the military’s new rifles, in order to save their lives.  There’s some great writing going on here.  Robinson and Rucka, again, are tackling pretty serious political and ideological issues to great effect.  In today’s real world political discussions, we hear a lot about military action vs. diplomacy, and the drama which plays out on New Krypton in this issue is highly metaphoric of these real world issues.  This type of storytelling, metaphoric and with a purpose, is what is making World of New Krypton and all the Superman Family titles such fantastic reads right now.  Yes, they are “superhero” books, but they take on some pretty heady issues confronting us in the real world, such as the ideological battles being raged now over Iraq and the issues of possible nuclear proliferation in Iran, through the metaphor of Kal El and his moderate to liberal leanings, and Zod and his right wing militaristically conservative ideas.  There are moments, though, in this issue where Zod seems to actually show some centrist common sense in allowing Kal to pursue his mission in his own way, but like Kal, during his duel with Gor, allows Gor to get several licks in so that Kal can see all his moves then easily counter them during the second half of the duel, Zod can be doing the same thing by allowing Kal some latitude.  He’s simply watching Kal, and letting him show him all his moves as surely it will come down to a battle between them for the soul of their people, as well as New Krypton itself.

Overall, I can’t heap any more praise than I already have on Woods’ art.  It’s fantastic, and the combination of Robinson’s and Rucka’s plot with Woods’ art just keeps on delivering the high quality Superman tale with a message we are continuing to get with World of New Krypton.  This is a must read.