Spoilers, I guess, if anyone cares.

As I buy old trade paperbacks from Scott Beatty, it has allowed me to catch up on some comic books I wasn’t buying even when I bought comic books. (I haven’t been to a comic shop since Blackest Night ended.)

So, I read this TPB that was all about Ruin, a new villain who had lots of insight into Superman’s personal life. It is heavily implied (too much, really) that it is Pete Ross, but the ID was not revealed in that book. Ruin is at one point captured, but he kills all of the policemen in the paddywagon with him (gorily so; there’s blood everywhere) and escapes.

The story is, sorry to say, not all that good. I don’t want to buy another book just to see who it is, so I look up “Ruin” on Wikipedia.

It’s Professor Emil Hamilton. Now, this is a guy who held a handgun on a young “strumpet” in order to compel Superman to do his bidding in only his second appearance, but he was stressed from Lex Luthor stealing his work and I always had the impression he wouldn’t really commit murder. He did his time in prison and had been a friend and asset to Superman ever since.

Then he started believing that Superman was a drain on the sun and would bring about the death of humanity in only 4.5 billion years instead of 5 billion. That’s why he suddenly turned into a mass murderer.

If he’d turned against Superman because he thought it would reunite him with Ray Palmer, I’d have said he had a better motivation.

To go from kindly absent-minded scientist to a man willing to rip apart police officers with his bare hands just doesn’t seem that believable. And I think they only did that because he was a traitor in the Justice League animated series, where his actions made total sense.