WARNING: The following contains spoilers for House of El: The Shadow Threat #1 by Claudia Gray, Eric Zawadski, Dee Cunniffe, and Deron Bennett, on sale now.
House of El: The Shadow Threat is all about showing the perverse nature of Krypton's ideals and how the arrogance of its elite residents keeps pushing society towards the brink of destruction. It's all about close-minded, wealthy people ignoring the cries of scientists like Jor-El and Lara, focusing on their genetic predisposition and a belief that Krypton cannot fall, not even with all the quakes happening.
However, there's pushback in the form of a group of rogues from the lower castes who want to take the power structure down. This hierarchy is ruining the planet by censoring voices and manipulating the media, and as a result, we get the planet's most sinister terrorist cell: Midnight.
In Superman lore, the cell we hear most about is Black Zero, terrorists who've worked under Zod in the past and who have appeared in Man of Steel and even the Krypton TV show. Here, there not as military-inclined, as it's mostly made up of poor people and axes, the people who do not procreate naturally and generally have menial jobs.
But they know about ideals and philosophies, which shapes their main goal -- break the message, stop the gaslighting and end the brainwashing. It seems simple but from the middle-class up, everyone's been conditioned to laugh off the seismic activity wreaking havoc. Once the tribunes say ignore the shocks, they will, which leaves Midnight worried.
Through Voss, the group works with an elite, Zahn-Re (Lara's cousin), who fails to convince the tribunes to spare dissidents and to keep an open mind. In fact, these 'insurrectionists' are being lopped into the Phantom Zone, which leaves the terrorists a bit more aggressive. This leads to Voss hiring Zahn to co-opt the Summit Tower so Midnight can control all the messages going out to Krypton. By stifling comms from the tribunes, they can try to infect the minds of everyone at once, all over the planet.
However, quakes scupper the mission which leaves Midnight now wanting to hijack emergency broadcasts or even blow the tower up. Zahn fights back against this because no matter which class, everyone needs these broadcasts up right now to figure out how to protect themselves. Sadly, he can tell now Midnight is taking a dark, desperate turn as they don't care about collateral damage or innocents being killed.
They're even willing to sacrifice their own, which poses the question of whether their secretive leader might be Zod himself. He's working with Jor-El and Lara to try to free up minds as he hates how the military's being used as fodder, sacrificed on terraforming projects that aren't working; all while the rich get richer. So in the second volume, these social justice warriors may turn into a full-blown army and lead a coup, leaving the Els and Zahn wondering how could their planet be saved without violence and sedition.
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