Batman/Superman #3.1: Doomsday – Review

By: Greg Pak (story), Brett Booth (pencils), Norm Rapmund (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: It’s more than a no good, very bad day—it’s Doomsday.

The Review: I won’t hold back in my opinion of Doomsday as a character.  You ready?  Here we go: I don’t care for him much.  Whew—I usually don’t speak so much out of turn, but I just can’t help myself in this case.  My prejudice with Doomsday comes mostly from how shallow he is.  He’s not really motivated by anything except an animalistic desire to destroy, and apart from his power levels, there’s nothing distinguishing him from other forgettable beasts of his kind.

With so little to work with, Pak had every opportunity to reimagine Doomsday from the top-down, but he apparently finds it easier to just reduce the monster to an incidental figure in its own issue.  There’s nothing here about Doomsday’s origins—where he came from and what made him as he is.  There’s nothing about how he arrived on Krypton, how he was disposed of, and how he wound up crossing paths with Superman.  At best, you get a vague outline of the Death of Superman that conveniently avoids any need to compromise the story’s timing with the new continuity of the current DCU.

What this issue mostly boils down to is a reiteration of all the points and themes Pak made in his Zod one-shot about two weeks earlier—which is unacceptable.  Villains Month may be an overblown and silly promotional campaign, but it nevertheless has a clear mandate which sets up certain expectations for the titles included under its banner: offer insight into the featured villain.  It is not okay for Pak to side-step this fairly simple goal even if Doomsday seems too shallow a character to dig into, and it’s definitely not okay for Pak to simply regurgitate a bunch of material from another issue he wrote.

Action Comics #13 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (story), Travel Foreman (art) Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: Who knew that aliens have ghosts of their own?

The Review: I have my grievances against Morrison as I suspect even his loyalists do.  I’m well aware he can be deliberately obfuscating and bewilderingly abstract.  I have recently heard his writing style described as “improvising,” which certainly feels true, but anyone who listens to jazz or has been to a Second City show knows that even the best improvisers risk falling flat from time to time.  But even then, you can’t deny they’re always striving for originality.

Who else, I ask you, will give you a sci-fi ghost story?  That’s exactly what you get in this issue; despite its trappings of aliens and pseudo-science like “ecto-technology…powered by pure consciousness,” it essentially is a tale of vengeful spirits targeting the living.  Morrison can often make what would otherwise be a rather straightforward story sound better simply by casting it in a different light.  Using Halloween as a backdrop for the hauntings of an imprisoned, alien mad scientist definitely gives off an interesting flavor, no?

Action Comics #5 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Invasion of the Space Babies!  They’ll overwhelm you with their cuteness!

The Review: The coming of Superman to Earth as a babe rocketed from the doomed planet of Krypton is probably the origin story of origin stories, one which still retains a lot of its purity and sense of wonder to this day.  There’s just something inescapably poignant about the idea of a mother and father doing all they can to save their child, putting their trust in an unknown world to foster him, and him becoming its savior in return.

It’s a great story, but one that’s been told and retold so often, and with so little variation in the telling, that it’s become a bit tiresome to hear.  Weariness is the predominant feeling you get when reading through the first half of this issue.  For anyone who knows anything about the Superman mythos, nothing Grant Morrison writes will surprise you.  The classic details are all here, untwisted, and while that’s a relief on a lot of levels, it’s also rather dull to read.

The changes Morrison introduces to the story are few and subtle in nature.  Lara has a more critical role in Kal-El’s sojourn to Earth; she helped Jor-El build the saving rocket, and she’s the one who arrives at their last, desperate option to save their son when Jor-El freezes.  You discover that before they put Kal into the rocket, they attempted to save themselves by escaping into the Phantom Zone, only to find it already occupied by the worst of Krypton’s sadists.

While a lot of the issue is at least readable, if not refreshing, Morrison dives into some very exotic turns of phrase when writing the voice of the rocket’s Brainiac A.I.  I’ve never liked it much when Morrison puts on his beat poet hat; it just seems distracting and sometimes confusing: “Then blinding gulfs of superspace.  Of un-time.  Exquisite calculations.  The last son of Krypton dreams.  And searching.  And now!”

And that’s before you get to the completely baffling sequence involving a time-traveling chase of the Anti-Superman Army by Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and grown-up, body-suited Superman (as opposed to folksy Superman).  This scene not only breaks into the middle of the “Collector of Worlds” arc (which doesn’t continue this issue), it delivers puzzling language of its own: “This, all the K in the universe—the colored isotopes synthi-K and Kryptonium…”

Action Comics #3 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (writer), Rags Morales (penciller), Rick Bryant (inker), Gene Ha (guest artist), Brad Anderson & Art Lyon (colorists)

The Story: Corrupt people rabidly spouting nonsense on TV—what will fiction think of next?

The Review: Anybody who’s read much of Superman has wondered this question at some point: which is the real alter-ego, Superman or Clark Kent?  For most superheroes, their secret identity serves as a mere cover for their vigilantism; their true selves emerge when they spring into action.  For a while now, interpretations of Superman have gone the opposite route.  When Clark slips on those tights and spit-curls his hair, he’s still Clark at heart, only more so.

In this issue, we spend most of our time with him out of costume, getting to know him beyond the proletariat grandstanding he does when he’s got his cape on.  If anything, Clark the man is even more stridently principled than Clark the Superman.  As a citizen, his powers can’t come into play, so his indignation becomes more hot and vocal: “You need to be the cop you wanted to be when you were a kid…  Back to cop school, guys!”

It makes perfect sense that at this younger segment of his life, Clark would be rasher, bolder, and more competitive, all of which makes him a more compelling figure now than the endearing but slightly straight-laced reporter of DC past.  You just relate to him more, like when he says in exasperation, “Aliens on the news!  This is what I’m saying…”  If you’re a reader who finds the media at large a mind-boggling place to be these days, you know what Clark means.

Actually, that line builds upon a mystery from last issue, namely how much Superman knows about his origins.  Judging from his scoffs at the sensational reportage of “space monsters,” he really seems to have no clue.  This, of course, explains why he demonstrates such a singularly human lack of self-restraint in his temperament, and why he has such passionate, folksy ideals.  Once he learns the truth, he’ll have to re-evaluate both these qualities, and it may be rough, especially since the public negativity has him already doubting this whole Superman thing.

Superman: The Last Family of New Krypton #1 – Review

By: Cary Bates (writer), Renato Arlem (artist), Allen Passalaqua (colorist), Rachel Gluckstern (assistant editor), Mike Carlin (editor)

The Story: What would have happened if Jor-El, Lara and Kal-El all escaped the destruction of Krypton?

What’s Good and What’s Not So Good: Right off, I really enjoyed Arlem’s art. He puts rich texture and detail onto the page. Even with a computer, Arlem must have spent hours and hours and hours to stipple (put down little dots to denote texture and/or shadow) on the bedspread, wallpaper and chair on the last page (to say nothing of the people). Or, check out the panel where Lara tells Jor-El she wants to be alone. The Quitely-like level of detail is worth the price of admission. Arlem’s expressions evoke emotion and the action, and even the environments, are dynamic. Arlem is hereby invited to draw any book I buy.

On the writing, I want to split the technical, tactical telling of the story (the dialogue, the panel-by-panel unfolding, the character choices) from the strategic, editorial choice (the premise and the DC’s decision to tell this story over some other one).

On Bates’ telling of the story, I’m mostly pleased, with one significant exception. Bates delivers crisp dialogue and a well-paced story; although the jury is still out for me on whether to buy the motivations he’s selling for the characters, especially the all-important choice to foster Kal-El to the Kents. There’s obviously conflict there, between Lara and Jor-El, but also within Jor-El, but Bates takes the easy way out (for the writer) by dismissing the characters’ doubts without showing us why they would do that. To me, it seemed patently obvious that the decisions deserved more explanation. Still, if I forgive his tactical short-cut, I’m left to enjoy the execution of the story.