Superman: The Man of Steel #19

"Doomsday Is Here!"
Louise Simonson (writer), Jon Bogdanove (pencils), Dennis Janke (inks), Glenn Whitmore (colors) , Bill Oakley (letters), Mike Carlin (editor)

Superman catches up with Doomsday at a construction site in Metropolis. He tries to carry Doomsday into outer space, but Doomsday escapes his grip. Now on the streets of Metropolis, Doomsday happens to come across the imprisoned Warworlders, who assume that Doomsday was sent to save them but instead he kills most of them. Supergirl, Cadmus' soldiers, Dan Turpin, Maggie Sawyer, and Professor Hamilton (armed with a giant laser, of course) join the fray, but to no avail. Superman vows that Metropolis will be where he will "hold the line."

Comments

I don't know what else to say by this point, so I'll just reiterate what I've been pointing out from the beginning: it's all just one long action scene, it's five times longer than it needs to be, and it's cross-franchise "event" storytelling at its worst. I will say that Louise Simonson does turn out the most interesting chapter so far, but she does benefit from being able to throw more of Superman's supporting cast into the mix. Maybe the story suffers from knowing where it's headed, but honestly the whole thing just reads like a really lackluster Superman/Incredible Hulk crossover (if the Hulk normally slaughtered innocent people).

Footnotes

At this point the Guardian was an agent of the Cadmus Project (which happened to be headed by the former Newsboy Legion). As you might guess, Dubbilex is one of Cadmus' creations.

Page 15, Panel 1 - What's up with Supergirl?! Well, this version of the character was a "protoplasmic matrix" created by a Lex Luthor from a parallel Earth to fight off a trio of Kryptonian criminals. After said criminals ended up destroying her homeworld regardless, she returned with Superman. Also the reason Lex Luthor is attracted to her - and is pretty obviously creasing the sheets with her on a daily basis - is because the other-universe Lex modeled her after his number one love, Lana Lang. And hopefully that's the most I'll ever have to write about the hellishly complex history of post-Crisis Supergirl(s).