Superman: Shadows Linger by Kurt Busiek, Peter Vale, Jesús Marino and Renato Guedes

Superman and Lois have adopted a Kryptonian child from the Phantom Zone named Chris. The three live together as a happy family in an apartment on the Upper East Side. To control his abilities until he can control them on his own, Chris wears a red sun watch to keep his powers in check.

But when a race of Insect people invade Metropolis, they not only carry away people and items, they steal Lana Lang, CEO of Lexcorp, and abduct her, taking her away. When Superman goes to see her, the other people in the company tell him of her disappearance. Superman goes seeking her, and eventually, thanks to some unusual dust he keeps finding around the various places the insect-people have been sighted, tracks them to the moon.

There, he finds that the insect people's Queen has used Lana Lang to model her new body on. But the Queen has an excess of arms and built-in stilettos on her feet. After her insect drones fail to kill Superman, she decides he's strong enough to be her mate, and tries to make him dream of ruling an empire together with her. Meanwhile, Lana has escaped and met up with other Lexcorp scientists and engineers hiding in the base of the insect hive, which used to be the Lexcorp Moonbase 1.

Using their knowhow, Lana helps Superman get free and deal with the Insect Queen, imprisoning her in her own food substance and sending her spinning through space, hopefully landing far, far away from the sun. Back home, Chris has been getting sick, feverish, and when Lois realizes that it's the watch causing the problem, she tells him to take it off, which makes the entire apartment explode!

She and Chris escape, but Chris is afraid that Superman will banish him back to the Phantom Zone for what happened. Superman doesn't, and he tells Chris that he loves him, and he would never send Chris back because he is family now. Using his powers, Superman rebuilds the building, saying it is a present for his two favorite reporters.

But his troubles aren't over. Superman is still seeking a cure for Lar Gand, whom he once called Mon-El, thinking him a fellow Kryptonian. But Lar Gand's fellow Daxamites, a group of priests, have tracked him to Earth, and get in between a fight between Superman and a villain known as Paragon, whose suit drains some of Superman's powers and gives them to Paragon.

Superman asks for Paragon's help in dispersing the Daxamites, but Paragon's idea of help is shooting them, and lead, like that in bullets, is a fatal poison to them. Superman tries to help them when he realizes that the one bullet that wasn't a through and through wound is poisoning one of the Daxamites, but they would literally rather die, or commit suicide, rather than accept the help of Superman's science.

Which leaves Superman to fight the Daxamite Golem on his own. But will he be able to secure the help of the cowardly Paragon, or will he be on his own in this fight? And Arion warned Superman of a coming disaster if humans relied on Alien Superheroes to fight for them. Is there any way for Superman to stave off an Apocalypse?

This was only slightly more exciting than the Atlas graphic novel, although it was awfully nice to see Lar Gand of Daxam again, as my favorite comic series, once upon a time ago, was The Legion of Superheroes, and he was a part of it under the name "Mon-El". Ah, for those long-forgotten days!

But all he does here is hang out in the Phantom Zone while Superman attempts to find him a cure for his lead poisoning, and talk to Supes. We find out that his planet is ruled by a religious elite who hate science that they don't control, and that Lar Gand and his entire family were condemned to death for wanting to try and fix the machines that were slowly dying. Lar managed to escape to earth, but the fanatics have gone after him in a starship. Hmm... religious fanatics who hate science... who does that resemble?

Lots of fighting, but the stories didn't thrill me all that much. It just seemed so boring and humdrum. But given that this came before the "Atlas" book, I had to wonder what happened to Chris in the meantime? We certainly seem to be heading for the future of the Legion, with the Science Police in the "Atlas" stories. But isn't even that a contradiction? As opposed to what? The magic police? The Religion Police? Okay, I'd recommend this, but only weakly.