Action Comics #32 – Review

By: Greg Pak (story), Scott Kolins (art), Wil Quintana (colors)

The Story: Superman finds it hard to save others when he can’t save himself.

The Review: Now that Doomed has entered its second phase (“Enemy of the State”), I think it’s say that the arc is living up to all my worst fears about a Doomsday storyline, i.e., there really isn’t that much story to tell. Doomsday is a mindless killer, and it isn’t any less so in the form of Superman. In that kind of scenario, there’s really only one way for the plot to go: unbridled panic from the world at large, not unlike the chaos unleashed from a Godzilla attack or alien invasion.

As if a hybrid Superman-Doomsday isn’t perilous enough, this issue confirms that his very presence is murderous, setting trees ablaze and killing off “millions of living things…insects, protozoa, microbes,” turning Superman into a walking plague on top of everything else. Thus the story cycles through the same three beats over and over: Superman’s horror of himself, everyone else’s horror at what he’s becoming, and the competing loyalty from his most diehard supporters. The reactions are quite natural, but terribly monotonous; as in any disaster story, they serve only to kill time until the disaster inevitably escalates once more.