Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

Superman: Unbound is a breath of fresh air after what feels like way too many of these animated DC movies in a row that were centered around the morality of killing. Under the Red Hood had, as its central feature, that the Red Hood’s vendetta against Batman wasn’t because the latter let Jason Todd die, but because he let Jason’s killer, Joker, live. Superman vs. The Elite focused on the importance of Superman’s intractable moral code and how his rule that he never uses deadly force ensures that he is a benevolent force in contrast to the “modern” Elite. Dark Knight Returns has Batman’s refusal to break his no-killing rule in order to put Joker down for good also be a major plot point, as his almost doing so and then being framed for the Joker’s murder is the primary axis on which the second part turns. Although all of these movies were adaptations of source material that was spread out across decades of comics, having all of them adapted within such a short time was beginning to feel stale and uncreative. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the next film from this studio, Flashpoint Paradox, will also feature this as a plot point (in the form of an alternate timeline Batman who is willing to murder), it’s nice to get a break from that, if only for one movie. 

That Unbound is a little different is a nice change of pace, even if it creates a bit of a snarl regarding which of these movies are related to each other, which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, given how often this is a problem in the originating medium. Remember when we talked about Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, and how that was an adaptation of the “Supergirl from Krypton” story arc in that book that led into the 2005 relaunch of the Supergirl comic, which was itself created to reintroduce the character after the most recent reboot of the company’s continuity with 2005-6’s Infinite Crisis (not to be confused with 1986’s Crisis on Infinite Earths)? Long-running Superman foe Brainiac hadn’t been seen since that crossover event, and was reintroduced in 2008 with a storyline in the “Brainiac” storyline from Superman’s main comic, Action Comics, upon which Unbound is based. That comic plot heavily featured the involvement of the new Kara Zor-El Supergirl that we all now know and love, and threads left over from both “Supergirl from Krypton” and her own ongoing series are part of the “Brainaic” arc. So, to recap, this film is an adaptation of a storyline that follows closely upon and directly tied to the storyline that was adapted into Apocalypse, but Unbound is, for some reason, not a sequel to Apocalypse in its film form. It’s okay if you need to take a break or a drink after that, I promise. It’s not really relevant, but has to be mentioned because, in case you’ve never noticed, comic book pedantry is the lifeblood of the internet, where you’re reading this right now. 

Unbound opens in the middle of a hostage situation, as Lois Lane (Stana Katic) has been taken by armed men after volunteering to be their captive in lieu of other, less Superman-adjacent people who might otherwise be at higher risk, per her logic. It’s not him who comes to her assistance initially, however, as the first hero to arrive on scene is Supergirl (Molly Quinn), whose recent appearance in this fictional world is given some lip service based on the fact that Lane’s captors don’t recognize her. Superman (Matt Bomer) eventually arrives on the scene, and our unrelated-to-the-plot action cold open comes to a conclusion. Back at the offices of The Daily Planet, one of Lois’s co-workers hits on her piggishly while insinuating that he “knows” Clark and Lois aren’t together because there can be only one reason that Kent is forever disappearing without explanation and is ostensibly single despite being built like a brick house, and it starts with “in” and ends with “the closet.” Clark walks in while this is happening and uses his heat vision to cause the man to take a harmless but humiliating tumble out of his chair, which sets up our emotional conflict for this film: Clark and Lois are dating, she knows his secret identity, she does count on him to rescue her from terrorists but not the office misogynist, she thinks that there’s no reason to keep their relationship a secret while he keeps her at emotional arm’s length with that tired old canard about how their dating as civilians would somehow endanger her, and so on and so forth. 

As a side note, for each of these movies that has focused on Superman as the primary character (rather than just as a member of the Justice League), whether as a result of what source material is chosen for adaptation or through deliberate choice, the most traditional Clark/Lois relationships (she adores Superman and either sees Clark as just a friend or is obsessed with proving that he’s secretly the big blue boy scout) has either been excised or used as part of the narrative and then dismissed. In Doomsday, Lois and Superman are openly dating but he refuses to “come out” to her as Clark until the end of the film, when his (temporary) death at the hands of the titular villain put things into perspective for him. In Public Enemies, she’s absent completely, other than an unvoiced cameo at the end of the film, and she’s likewise not present in the entirety of Apocalypse. All Star Superman featured their relationship as a major part of the plot, with Superman and Lois having been an item for some time and him again “coming out” to her as Clark as he nears the end of his life. Most recently, in Superman vs. The Elite, their relationship was as intimate as it could be, with her already being aware of both of his identities and the two of them at least cohabitating and possibly being married already. Here, the formula is a little different: she’s aware of both of his identities, the two are dating, but they’ve kept their relationship (as Clark and Lois) a secret; even still, based on the recurring story elements we’ve mentioned, it’s not exactly a surprise that the events of the film cause Clark to (sing along if you know the words) re-evaluate his position and decide to come around to Lois’s more open way of thinking. 

Back to the narrative, Clark must dash out of a staff meeting when there’s news of a meteorite that’s headed toward Arizona. When he gets there, however, he learns that the meteorite is actually a probe that can transform into a humanoid robot that he puts down after some difficulty. Bringing the ‘bot back to his Fortress of Solitude, Kara joins him and identifies the probe as a herald of Brainiac (John Noble), a spacefaring cyborg who roams the galaxy in an effort to collect all knowledge in the universe. It’s not a bad goal, but his methods are genocidal: he finds planets with sentient life, “collects” one of said planet’s major cities and shrinks it down to bell jar size and keeps it in his menagerie, then destroys the planet. It’s the result of a flaw in his programming; once he’s “studied” a planet, he can’t let it grow and change from that point forward because then his knowledge would be incomplete, so he must ensure that his database remains inerrant by freezing the planet in time via total annihilation. Kara saw him in action when she was a child, as he came to Krypton and “collected” the planet’s Argo City; the only reason anyone lived to tell the tale was because Brainiac didn’t see the logic in wasting the energy to blow up a planet that was already on the precipice of destruction. Having learned this, Superman heads into space aboard a Kryptonian ship to face Brainiac head-on and, if possible, restore the shrunken cities that the cyborg has captured. 

I like how straightforward this one is, and as these movies go, this is possibly one of the ones with the lowest barrier to entry. You don’t really need to know anything about Brainiac since it’s all explained over the course of the film. There are a lot of nifty setpieces, like Supes’s early desert battle with the Brainiac probe, Superman’s time spent shrunken down and placed into Argo City, and the final swampy battle between Superman and Brainiac proper. This film also approaches the series’ mandate for more adult storytelling from a different angle, as it doesn’t rely solely on more violence to hit a PG-13 rating, and instead uses more adult humor (Lois is surprised that Clark didn’t think of pretending to be gay years ago, as it’s “the perfect cover,” made more on-the-nose given that this is the first time that the character has been voiced by an out gay man). There’s also some horror on display here, too, of the overt body horror variety on display with all of the upgrades Brainiac has made to his body and the way that all of his weird prehensile tubes attach to him, as well as the terror of more subtle moments. This is best evidenced when Superman is horrified to learn that the people in Brainiac’s shrunken cities are alive but essentially in stasis, meaning that one of the children who is excited to see him has been a toddler for decades. It’s good stuff, and reminds me of the simplicity of the old Fleischer Studios Superman cartoons of the 1940s: straightforward, cleanly animated, and digestible. Not necessarily the best of the lot, but a perfect low-commitment animated movie for a rainy weekend afternoon. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond