Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons #4) – Matt de la Pena

When the dawn breaks, a hero rises.

His power is beyond imagining.

Clark Kent has always been faster, stronger--better--than everyone around him. But he wasn't raised to show off, and drawing attention to himself could be dangerous. Plus, it's not like he's earned his powers . . . yet.

But power comes with a price.

Lately it's difficult to hold back and keep his heroics in the shadows. When Clark follows the sound of a girl crying, he comes across Gloria Alvarez and discovers a dark secret lurking in Smallville. Turns out, Clark's not the only one hiding something. Teaming up with his best friend, Lana Lang, he throws himself into the pursuit of the truth. What evil lies below the surface of his small town? And what will it cost Clark to learn about his past as he steps into the light to become the future Man of Steel? Because before he can save the world, he must save Smallville.

This was a pretty disappointing installment in the DC Icons series and though I haven’t read Catwoman yet (I haven’t had a chance to get my hands on the audio), it’s the most disappointing. This book didn’t even feel like Superman’s origin story much at all. Aside from some of the things that even non-Superman fans know about him (strength, speed, x-ray vision), there really wasn’t much to show how Clark Kent started exploring his powers and what that meant to him as a person and especially as a teenager figuring out who he was and what he wanted to do with his life, which is even heavier than the normal coming-of-age story because of his powers and his potential.

Each of these books has a villain which, not being a comic book reader, I would say may or may not be the most “notorious” villain that we know from the comics or movies. We see Lex Luthor here but he’s not the main antagonist of the story, similar to seeing Harvey Dent in the Batman installment of this series. I don’t really know any other Batman villains so I don’t know if the one in this book is canon or not but he didn’t really feel very complex in any way. Actually, none of the characters seemed complex at all. For it being Clark Kent’s story, there wasn’t much personality packed in here and the side characters didn’t really provide much character growth either.

Some of this could have been overlooked if I had enjoyed the story, which I really didn’t connect with either. Matt de la Pena took this opportunity to explore some important issues of immigration and racism but it just didn’t fit with the Superman story for me and the way that it was incorporated actually felt more demeaning instead of eye-opening. I felt like we needed to actually spend time with Clark and his story (since this IS a book about Clark Kent/Superman after all), so trying to put all of those concepts and issues in this book left us with little time, only exploring the surface areas of these issues with some blanket statements that didn’t tackle the issue well. Maybe it could have worked better somehow but I felt like it was not adapted well into this book and some of the supernatural elements of the adaptation made it feel hokey, taking away from its importance.

This was just a big miss for me. I had hoped to enjoy reading more about Superman and getting to know Clark Kent’s story and I feel like there just wasn’t really much about him at all besides basic plot points that could have been shared in a few paragraphs or chapters.

Kept Me Hooked On: Superheroes, I guess. I’m not a big comic person and I don’t follow a lot of superhero stories but I actually was interested in reading about Superman since I kind of had the tiniest of childhood connections to him, at least compared to the other DC Icons featured.
Left Me Wanting More: Superman Substance. I felt like this book wasn’t even about Clark Kent. The basics were involved but it didn’t really make me feel like the author knew or cared about writing the Superman origin story.

Addiction Rating
Skip it

Even if you have read the others, I still wouldn’t recommend this book. I was really disappointed in it in so many ways. I guess if you’re finishing the series, it’s worth it just to finish but I can’t make any promises that you’ll enjoy it, especially if you’re expecting a good Superman story.