Action Comics #6 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (writer), Andy Kubert (penciller), John Dell (inker), Brad Anderson (colorist), Sholly Fisch (feature writer), Chriscross (feature artist), Jose Villarrubia (feature colorist)

The Story: Now you know where all those little voices in your head are coming from.

The Review: I don’t think I’m the only one, but I sometimes give Morrison a lot of flak for being purposely obscure in his writing.  The combination of his strange ideas, highly stylized choice of words, and loose playing with time and space often leave me bewildered, unsure if I’m reading genius or gobbledygook.

After reading this issue the first time around, I sat back, my mouth slightly agape, and murmured aloud, “Am I high, or is he?”  Maybe I read it too quickly or too carelessly, but I could not make head or tail of it.  On the second reading, I sat back again, this time my mouth pursed in thought.  All the pieces I had found so disjointed, wordy, and confusing the first time around had come together and made a deep impression on me.  Or, to be accurate, I should say it impressed me.

For one thing, Morrison amazes, as he regularly does, with the boundless enthusiasm and scope of his ideas.  Who else would come up with a plot involving tesseracts that allow objects to be bigger inside themselves than out, allowing Superman’s enemies to hide and plot within his very brain?  Who else can give a rocket ship character, actually making you feel invested in its fate?  When it comes to sheer creativity, this issue beats all preceding ones by a mile, and that alone makes it truly memorable for the first time since this series relaunched.

That’s not to say there aren’t flaws.  It’s still baffling why Morrison chooses to tell this particular tale smack-dab in the middle of a story arc where T-shirt Superman already has his hands full against the Collector of Worlds.  The fact that his rocket ship plays a significant part in the issue also throws you off track, since up until #3, the military still had it in their possession.  Also weird is the presence of Drekken, or Erik, or whoever that shapeshifting foe is; he doesn’t do much other than get in Superman’s way, and you never find out where he came from.

WCBR’s Top Picks

Dean’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: The Unwritten #33.5 – It’s nice to give a call out to this series that has been consistently “very good”, but hasn’t had a singularly excellent issue in awhile.  This was it.  Yay!  For the last couple of months, the series has double-shipped with the “regular” issues following the normal story and the .5 issues showing this fascinating set of flashbacks into some of the deep historical background of The Unwritten’s universe.  This issue showed us the nasty nun/puppeteer Ms. Toller/Rausch as a little girl in one of the Germanic kingdoms in the late 1700’s.  Given this girl’s childhood, it’s no wonder she turned out BAD.  The other thing setting this issue apart was the inking work done by Vince Locke.  I think if you looked back at this site (and other sites), you’d notice a direct correlation between Locke being present for inking duties and the reception to the issue.  He’s one of those artists who isn’t content to put down a smear of black ink or to do an ink wash…..it’s just him and his fine brush making a rat’s next of crazy lines when he wants a shadow.  It looks GREAT.

Most Anticipated: Rachel Rising #5 – This new(er) series from Terry Moore has been just splendid since he launched it a few months back.  It follows a girl named Rachel who has climbed out of a grave after being murdered (?) and the truly bizarre things going on in her hometown.  Weirdness is afoot as some kind of mind control is causing people to kill their loved ones.  Issue #4 really started to pull some disparate elements of the story together and while it isn’t clear where the story is going yet, the basic flavor and tone is becoming obvious.  And….of course….the art is glorious.  Not a lot of artists could pull off the type of art that Terry Moore is laying down here.  The wizardry of his work is in the subtle little expressions that allow him to say a LOT in a single panel without cluttering it with a word balloon.  Not only is he good…..he’s also confident that he can nail these scenes from an artistic standpoint.  It’s special….hop on now!  Plus, I think you can get it digitally via Comixology and that’s important because very few comic shops will order shelf-copies of this series.

Other Picks: I Zombie #22, Sweet Tooth #30, Alpha Girl #1, Fatale #2, Amazing Spider-Man #679, Uncanny X-Force #21

Alex’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: Fantastic Four #602 – Epic space battles!  But the real beauty here is how the pieces are all coming together together beautifully and in massive scale.  This issue also passed the “chill test”:  if a book gives me chills, it’ll probably be pick of the week.  This book did it twice.

Most Anticipated: Winter Soldier #2 – As stoked as I am about Ed Brubaker’s other book this week, Fatale #2, I’m giving it to Winter Soldier.  This is simply one of those books where all the stars align perfectly.  It’s a team-up of two of my favourite characters (Bucky and Black Widw), written by one of my favourite writers (Ed Brubaker), drawn by the perfect artist for a book like this (Butch Guice), and colored by one of my favourite colorists (Bettie Breitweisers).  And to make it even more perfect, it’s $2.99!

Other Picks: Fatale #2, The Punisher #8, Animal Man #6, Swamp Thing #6, Uncanny X-Men #6,  Action Comics #6, Sweet Tooth #30, Amazing Spider-Man #679, Defenders #3