Superman: Dawnbreaker (DC Icons Series)

Matt de la Peña’s Superman: Dawnbreaker aims high. A YA origin story that weaves Kal-El’s alien displacement into a grounded mystery about missing families, shady biotech experiments, and the fading idyll of Smallville. On paper, it’s a strong setup. De la Peña has the talent to pull it off, and at times, he nearly does. The best parts hum with energy: Clark’s powers flare and overwhelm him in moments that double as metaphors for teen isolation and confusion. Scenes of him soaring over firefly-dotted fields or straining against the limits of his own strength capture real emotion. There’s a lyrical pulse beneath the action that reminds you why Superman endures: conscience and decency in a world that complicates both. But the book’s moral focus, its determination to tackle xenophobia and fear of “the other,” often drowns out the story itself. The depictions ring false; not because prejudice doesn’t exist, but because it’s rarely so one-note. The novel’s eagerness to condemn ends up echoing the very generalizations it wants to dismantle. The story stumbles under the weight of casting villains as over-the-top “deplorable” types with guttural accents, sweat-stained shirts, and rebel flags rather than flawed people shaped by hardship or fear. What might have been a nuanced reflection on prejudice becomes a sermon, and while the intent might be noble, the delivery feels heavy-handed and clumsy, flattening complexity into a good-vs-evil simplicity that does no favors to the message or the readers. Meant as a simplification for young audiences, the approach breeds a sharp irony: by cramming rural whites, tangled in fear’s grip, into one hateful box, it risks the same logic it condemns. The bad people are white, therefore all whites are bad. That lens erases the very nuances that make prejudice worth interrogating in the first place, turning what could have been a mirror into a megaphone. There’s still heart here, enough to chord with younger readers on identity and justice; but for me Dawnbreaker became less about Superman discovering who he is and more about the author making sure we know where he stands. A bold effort, ultimately more sermon than story. Engaging in bursts, frustrating in full, Dawnbreaker tries to soar, but trips on its own moral cape.