You know, it’s not terrible. I mean, it’s kind of dumb in a nineties rehash kind of way–if Byrne ever got so thorough in his thinking of Superman’s origin, he never showed it in Man of Steel and just let a lot go unmentioned–but it’s nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. Maybe because it’s just the origin of the Lizard, the Sandman and the Vulture.

What’s bad about it is Byrne’s faces. He’s fully formed John Byrne here, where everyone looks exactly the same. The Tinkerer looks the same as the Vulture, since they’re both old. Flint Marko looks the same as Norman Osborn, because they have the hair, but they also look the same, in the face, as Curt Connors.

The writing is no worse, for instance, than when Mark Millar did his Spider-Man villain amp-up in 2004. Some of it’s probably better.