Superman: Lost #8 (2023)

A thief has broken into Lex's mansion and finds Lex standing on a darkened room, alone and talking about Dante's Inferno. The thief aims his gun at Lex, who is unfazed and tells that he doesn't care if he dies, for he has lived a good life. He even tells the robber to take whatever he wants. Lex is feeling uncharacteristically generous and says that if the thief went through the trouble of bypassing his security measures, then he should take something. That said, Lex has already gone through the trouble of disabling the thief's gun. Lex then tells the thief to stare at an expensive painting hanging on a wall. He believes Superman should have burst through that wall weeks ago. He poisoned the love of Superman's life, so Superman should be angry and looking for revenge. However, no such thing has happened. Suddenly, Lex gets a phone call from Lois, who doesn't actually say anything. Lex puts two and two together and deduces that she hasn't told Superman about her cancer. He is confused as to why hasn't she told him. She wanted his help in how to get Superman out of his depression and now, she has it, just not in the way she expected. Lois hangs up and Lex is left to wonder when will Superman come to him. In the past, Superman stands on a skyscraper in planet Rann. He is waiting for the Zeta beam to take him to Earth so he can find some kind of assistance for planet Kansas and return there as soon as possible. Alanna shares Superman's frustration, for the Zeta beam's inherent design has forced to repeatedly part ways from his husband, who enters the balcony and tells Superman that using a spaceship to reach Earth is out of the question. If he does, it will take him 10 years to reach Earth. As Adam explains, space travel is time travel. Superman still feels guilty for being unable to find a way to help the people of Kansas, but fortunately, as as the Zeta energy surrounds Adam, he has an idea. Superman confronts Metallo in the middle of a raging storm in the Chinese harbor. Metallo, who has absorbed an entire group of Chinese warships and transformed into a giant, feels nothing but jealousy towards Superman. He has everything, while Metallo has nothing. Superman tells Metallo that it's within their power to help the people caught up in the storm, but Metallo feels that power is useless to a man without a heart. Before they come to blows, however, Supergirl tears Metallo's giant body to pieces, leaving him to sink into the depths of the sea. Supergirl, wearing the white suit her cousin had worn throughout his long journey across space, believes that trying to reason with a lunatic powered by Kryptonite was a bad idea. After Superman rescues Metallo, Supergirl notices that her cousin is still traumatized by his experience and can only tell him to accept the fact that he's home. Meanwhile, Lois visits Terry, the former assistant of Senator McGonigle, who has fired from her job and now works as at a coffee shop. Terry doesn't want anything to do with Lois, blaming her for the loss of her job and is now worried that she could go to jail, but Lois has come to tell her that she doesn't believe that Terry and McGonigle are dirty. Lex is also keeping himself busy trying to figure out how did Lois keep her cancer diagnosis secret from a man with X-ray vision. At his mansion, he holds Lois' doctor hostage and has injected him with a serum to force him to divulge the truth. That is when Lex puts two and two together. Clark returns home and finds Lois weakened and lying on their bed. He finds pregnancy test that marks positive and she says that she has made progress on her story with McGonigle. He wants her to forget about work and focus on recovering, something that Lois finds a bit hypocritical, given Clark's own state of mind. Everyone has told him to move on and find solace on the fact that he is home, but Lois knows her husband better than anyone. If he doesn't fix whatever's troubling him, the people of Earth will never have Superman back. A few days later, Superman joins Black Adam on a mission to stop a horde of monsters summoned by a wizard on the same caliber as Mamaragan. Few wizards of the old order remain and this one foolishly summoned those monsters as an act of defiance against Adam, the original champion of Marmaragan. Adam Strange, also present on Earth, asks Black Adam whether he remembers a specific planet during his own journey across space. Superman and his allies drive the monsters back to the interdimensional rift they came from and Black Adam summons the living lightning of Shazam to seal the breach between dimensions. Returned to his mortal form, Adam admits that he doesn't remember every planet he came across during his exile in space and repeats to Superman what Supergirl had told him earlier: to accept the fact that he is home and move on. Clark returns home and finds Lois resting on their table. He takes her to their bed and goes to pick up her purse, only to find few of Lois' things lying on the floor, including her phone and a bottle of pills. He nervously checks the phone and finds that she has called Lex multiple times. On his home, Lex continues to wait for Superman.