I just read Absolute Superman #23. This is Get Brainiac Part 2 (“The Toyman”), coming off the Metallo fight that opened the arc in Absolute Superman #22. Brainiac is still the target. Toyman is the obstacle in the way. Next issue looks like Steel.
The Setup
The issue opens with a Krypton flashback that has a Stand By Me vibe: kids arguing over whether to bring young Clark along to see a dead body. The trip is short, and it sets the tone for the rest of the book. The present-day story weaves in and out of those childhood scenes — Clark (Kal) with the other kids, Clark (Kal) with his mother — while adult Superman is hunting Brainiac and running into Winslow Schott, Absolute Toyman.
They’ve crossed paths before, back around issue #15. This time Schott has a room full of kids packed into action-figure-style boxes. The book never fully spells it out in dialogue, but the X-rays and heartbeats make the implication clear enough. Superman’s response is immediate anger. What we don’t get are the usual panels of him first making sure every kid is safe. He goes straight at the people who were buying.
Highlights
The art change is noticeable. Rafa Sandoval has been the look of this series for a long time. This issue is Juan Ferreyra, who also handled #15 and #22. You can tell quickly that it’s a different hand. Some of the fight work and close-ups are striking. The flashbacks are the best visual choice in the book — they shift into something closer to a watercolor style, which helps the Krypton scenes feel separate from the present.
This is also the issue where Absolute Superman starts acting less like the version we’ve been getting. For most of the run, even when the world is uglier, he still defaults to the Boy Scout: save the people first, try to reach the person underneath the power, try to reform whoever just tried to kill him. That was true through the King Shazam / Moonfall stretch. Here he doesn’t. He punishes the buyers, wrecks property, moves money that doesn’t belong where it used to, and takes the fight further than this book usually lets him go.
Brainiac’s angle sits underneath all of it. The idea is that people are depraved, that Superman should stop listening to them, and that this path is what he’s going to become. Whether Brainiac is trying to make him into that or just trying to show him that the world will do it anyway, the issue wants Superman (and the reader) sitting with that.
The Krypton flashbacks give that present-day rage a root. Clark is talking to his mother about a cruel official — a minister of farming affairs who beat a man to death. The implied lesson is retribution. Those pages are some of the strongest in the issue. The Toyman fight itself has a few surprise beats I won’t spoil.
The one thing that doesn’t fully land for me is how fast the switch happens. I have wanted Absolute Superman to feel more different from classic Superman for a while. This issue finally does that. It just does it all at once. If we’d seen more of this earlier — little glimpses of what he might become in a world this hard — the cruelty here would feel earned instead of like a hard swerve. He’s even appalled at himself by the end, which is interesting, but it still reads like the book jumped instead of built.
There’s also a Green Arrow-ish flavor to the wealth destruction. The people involved in this had to have money. The book still frames it in a way that leans toward “the rich,” broadly, more than “the specific monsters who bought this.”
Final Verdict
Absolute Superman #23 is the more interesting issue in the Get Brainiac arc so far, even if it isn’t the cleanest. The Krypton flashbacks work. Ferreyra’s style change stands out, especially in those pages and a few other striking panels. Toyman, even if not the most formidable, is a nasty obstacle. For the first time in a while, this Superman doesn’t feel like he’s already arrived as the guy who always does the right thing.
That difference is what I’ve been hoping the Absolute version would lean into more. I just wish it had been a longer fuse instead of one big swing. The ending leaves him wrestling with what Brainiac wants him to see, and with the fact that he may already be capable of becoming that thing. Next up is Steel. I’m curious whether this darker register sticks or whether the book snaps back.
What did you think of Superman going this far? Tag me on X @NostalgicNestEg!
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