Young Justice: Phantoms – “Over and Out”

Director: Christopher Berkeley 

Writer: Greg Weisman

We pick up right where we left off, on the planet Trombus on September 14, 0:01 UTC. Lor-Zod steps on Kid Flash to greet his parents (as seen above) and proclaim the galaxy theirs. General Zod and Ursa quickly confirm Lor’s identity, but Green Lantern Forager manages to shake off the Kaizer-Thrall’s hold long enough to shoot out a couple of blasts of energy. Realizing how vulnerable they are under this red sun, Lor-Zod orders Ma’alefa’ak to take them to Earth immediately. General Zod wants to pull the rest of his army out of the Phantom Zone first, but Lor convinces him it’ll be better to do that on Earth. Zod does, however, choose to bring the injured and slightly brainwashed Superboy with him, Ursa, Lor, Ma’alefa’ak and the Mother Box-powered Kaizer-Thrall.

Once free of the Kaizer-Thrall, Superman takes off Bart’s inhibitor collar, enabling him to race back to the Bio-Ship. Miss Martian, Orion, Superman, Black Lightning, J’emm J’axx and the three Legionnaires all board the Bio-Ship, which is now being super-charged by both Kid Flash and Green Lantern Forager. As they speed through Subspace, Superman asks Bart if he’s heard from Zatanna and Nightwing, who were last seen looking for Bart. But Bart is sad to report that they never found him.

But even with the Bio-Ship’s enhanced speed, it still needed nearly four hours to reach Earth. The ship’s computer detects a Boomtube at the North Pole, or more precisely, Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. M’gann boasts that the Bio-Ship will be able to approach the fortress undetected, but that doesn’t happen. Mainly because Ursa has bonded with the Emerald Eye (which Lor stole from Metron when he was looking for the Phantom Zone projector a while ago). Ursa uses the Emerald Eye to shoot the Bio-Ship out of the sky, causing it to crash hard enough to knock out everyone on board. Everyone, except Superman. But he’s quickly subdued by a piece of kryptonite that Zod actually stole from Nightwing in the Phantom Zone. (Big mistake on Dick’s part!)

Lor begs his father to kill both Superman and Superboy immediately, but General Zod chooses to boomtube to the Daily Planet building in Metropolis. And with the world watching, he orders Superboy to kill Superman.

That was a pretty nice cliffhanger ending. And the story is still quite compelling. Of course, you know I’m going to complain that Bart still hasn’t had anything to do. True, he did have a few spoken lines here, but he didn’t have anything interesting to say. Oh well. Maybe he’ll help pull off some actual time travel in the show’s finale. And that finale may be the next thing we review here. But we might get an Impulse appearance in the comics before that. We’ll just have to wait and see.