Action Comics #12 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (story), Rags Morales, Cafu, Brad Walker (pencils), Rick Bryant, Bob McLeod, Andrew Hennessy (inks), Brad Anderson & Gabe Eltaeb (colors)

The Story: Superman gets his hands bloody and finds a potential new career path.

The Review: Much of what this title has been about is building up the legend of Superman for a new generation of admirers, if there are any to be had.  While Morrison’s changes to his powers and mythology can’t be overlooked, it’s the re-definition of Superman’s character that’ll prove most crucial.  Quite frankly, the iconic hero of yore had become avuncular and preachy, too far prone to lecture us and remind us of our smallness.  It’s hard to connect to someone like that.

The new Superman is a guy who hasn’t got it all figured out just yet, so he can’t really hold himself above the people he helps out.  At the same time, the very core of his being gears so tightly to goodness that even by instinct alone, he just always does the right thing.  Who else would not only put himself in harm’s way to save the people who just beat him down seconds earlier, but doesn’t even hesitate to do so?  I mean, what a guy—what a hero.

Action Comics #11 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (story), Rags Morales, Rick Bryant, Brad Walker (art), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: Superman, at some point, you have to realize that a cat is just a cat.

The Review: Say what you like about Morrison, but he is a man with a plan.  Now, whether his plan results in something worthwhile is a completely different question, but you can always reliably depend on him to deliver a big revelation or moment which had its seeds sown issues earlier.  Not a lot of people can pull that off; indeed, not a lot of people have Morrison’s creative license to pull that off.

He’s certainly earned it.  This is a guy who has such awareness of everything he writes (his “inventory,” as writer Ron Carlson so likes to put it) that he can use a throwaway detail as the basis of an entire storyline, like the hamsters from last issue and their newest owner, Lois’ niece Suzie.  No one could possibly have predicted this cute-as-a-button girl would turn out not only to be precocious, but a member of an entirely new species, “A nutant.  Neo-sapiens—born one hundred thousand years ahead of our time…”

Action Comics #10 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (story), Rags Morales (pencils), Rick Bryant (inks), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: Don’t kid yourself—Superman loves all pets, not just cats.

The Review: One of the great hallmarks of Morrison’s writing style, one for which he is both revered and reviled, is his fragmented sense of narrative.  His habit of switching in and out of storylines, juggling various settings and periods, is loose, bordering on erratic.  Because this is Morrison, no matter how disjointed his story is, it all comes together at some point, but it could be a frustrating reading experience along the way.

In this issue, we have almost six, arguably seven, different plot threads going at the same time.  While there are definitely some connections among them, all too frequently you’ll turn a page and run smack-dab into a scene which has no bearing on what you’d been reading.  Complicating the issue even more is for the most part, all the scenes have some kind of interest going for them, so Morrison does himself a disservice by minimizing each of them to make room for the rest.

Action Comics #8 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (writer), Rags Morales, Brad Walker, Rick Bryant, Bob McLeod (artists), Brad Anderson & David Curiel (colorists)

The Story: Watch out, Brainiac—Superman’s gonna blow your mind.

The Review: Back in 2006, NBC premiered two new shows, both premised on the backstage activities of a sketch-comedy show.  One was Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a powerhouse production created and written by the great Aaron Sorkin, with veterans of both big and small screen, Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford, starring.  The other was 30 Rock, a frugal sitcom led by Alec Baldwin and SNL’s former Weekend Update co-anchor, Tina Fey.

I bring this up to illustrate the fact that you can never predict what creative projects will work out in the end.  Suffice to say, no one would’ve expected Studio 60 to get canned within a year, while 30 Rock years later (and still running—I won’t say “strong”) would bring on Sorkin as a guest to mock him for his costly failure.  It just goes to show that A-list producers and ideas don’t always translate to quality material.

Back in the comics world, we’ve seen this semi-paradoxical situation in Justice League, which, despite its tremendous sales numbers, will likely go down in history as a largely mediocre affair.  Lately, I’ve come to find a similar problem with this series.  You would think pairing Grant Morrision and Superman, with Rags Morales on art, would be a shoo-in for a sure win.  Yet somehow, for whatever reason, the talent hasn’t gelled with the story as much as anyone imagined, and the disappointment is all the greater since your expectations were so high.

Not to imply the story has been terrible, exactly—more like we’re getting just your garden-variety Superman origin story with some snazzy dialogue and a T-shirt thrown in.  Speaking of which, Morrison’s rapidfire style of speech has gotten a bit out of control.  Between Glenmorgan’s pill-laden breakdown (“It’s like one of those films where—those horrible films—they’re trapped in hell and the bartender is the devil…”) and Corben’s rage-induced malfunctions (“I read what she wrote about you.  About your eyes!  Search: ‘Faster than a speeding bullet!’  That’s Metropolis’ latest wonder of tomorrow…”), it gets a bit wearisome to read at times.

Action Comics #7 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (writer), Rags Morales (penciller), Rick Bryant (inker), Brad Anderson (colorist)

The Story: Ooh—I love your miniatures in a bottle collection.  Wait, is that my house in there?

The Review: I tend to feel Superman has the same problem as the Flash in terms of appeal.  The whole heart of the Man of Steel is he’s one of the finest and purest superheroes you can think of, a blank perfection which makes him respected and admired, yet also inaccessible.  To exacerbate matters, he’s just so darn powerful that he can afford to stick to his guns; if you have the ability to solve any problem without sacrifice, you never have the problem of making tough choices.

In All-Star Superman, Morrison overcame these obstacles by giving our hero big, Herculean challenges which allowed him to actually struggle.  Morrison’s attempting something like that here by taking away a sizable amount of Superman’s strength and knowledge, putting him on a lower footing than his problems.  It’s certainly raised the stakes for him across the board, but for us readers, seeing him wheeze as he jumps hurdles that wouldn’t have even made him blink some months ago has been a rather jarring gear-shift.

That’s why this coming showdown with Brainiac (I’m pretty sure we all saw him coming some time ago, so I won’t even bother calling this a spoiler) is a very welcome event.  Superman’s not only going to have to fight without the benefit of his peak abilities, he’s going up against one of his greatest foes of all time—don’t let that “1.0” designation fool you.  Brainiac, like Luthor, derives his menace from his mind, not his brawn.  Even though Superman spends only a very brief part of this issue physically fending off Brainiac’s various robo-guards, he’s under attack the entire time as Brainiac constantly strives to screw with his mind.  The climax of all this is Brainiac’s attempt to force Superman into one of those sticky choices that plagues so many of his heroic peers from time to time: save the people of his origin or those of his adoption?

Ultimately, while the question may be a nail-biter for the rest of us, it’s a moot point for our hero.  For one thing, Brainiac miscasts the decision as a “nature versus nurture” problem, as if Superman choosing to save either Kandor or Metropolis is a symbol of loyalty.  The issue is Clark knows nothing—or at least, very little—of his pre-Smallville life.  So the real question is whether his desire to learn more about his background is powerful enough for him to betray the life he lives now.  No matter how you slice it, the answer is probably not.  Besides, this is Superman; he would never allow anyone to force him into such a quandary: “I won’t choose between any one life and another!  All of these people are under my protection, you got that?”

Action Comics #4 – Review

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

The Story: Man of Steel, meet Man in Steel.

The Review: I’ve become a bit wary of DC’s backup and co-features over time.  The fact they hang on to a bigger, stronger storyline definitely poses some drawbacks.  Only rarely do they have a charm and intrigue of their own.  More frequently, they either serve as dead weight or lackluster sideshows to the main event.

Sholly Fisch’s “Steel” backup leans more towards the latter.  It doesn’t break out John Henry Irons by any means, nor does it offer much of a realized identity.  Fisch relies too much on obvious beats (“It wasn’t until after my parents died that I finally understood why they chose my name.  They wanted me to grow up to be like John Henry.”) to flesh out John’s narrative, and repeats them to the point of embarrassing predictableness (“I’m a steel-driving man!”).

It’s a problem all these smaller features run into, sooner or later; with such limited space, writers feel the pressure to tell their stories rather than show them.  For all of John’s quirks (including a genuinely odd fixation with scientists who play bongos), he does little more in this issue than take down a second-tier villain so Superman can handle the real enemy at hand.  Besides rather admirable art from Brad Walker, this backup is mostly a forgettable “bonus.”

As for the real meat of this issue, Grant Morrison makes good on the series’ title and delivers plenty of action.  The animated mechas from last issue, dubbing themselves “Terminauts,” don’t go out of their way to harm people as their Kandorian counterparts did, but their very presence creates quite a bit of chaos in Metropolis anyway, and that’s before the city gets shrunken and bottled up by an entity with centipede limbs and a fondness for pairing pink with green.

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.

Action Comics #2 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (writer), Rags Morales & Brent Anderson (pencillers), Rick Bryant (inker), Brad Anderson (colorist)

The Story: We’re no Guantanamo, but we’ve got ways of making an alien in a T-shirt talk.

The Review: One thing Morrison does consistently well is place characters into unusual situations, and when it comes to iconic superheroes, that takes some doing.  These guys have been around the block in their long history, so nothing really takes them (or us) by surprise anymore.  So kudos to Morrison; certainly I never thought I’d see Superman getting relentlessly jolted in an electric chair.

That said, the whole interrogation sequence doesn’t really do much to advance the story, or even build Clark’s character.  Mostly he just takes the various tortures to the chin and stays readily, steadily silent, a pain-eating farmer to the core.  As a result, we don’t ever take his predicament that seriously; we know his escape will come, sooner rather than later.  He has less resilience now than we’re used to, but he’s still Superman, after all.

This issue has two moments which, taken separately, don’t seem all that important, but when you put them together, they bear a major revelation about this version of Superman.  One is when Luthor asks, “Does the word ‘Krypton’ mean anything to you?” and Clark merely replies, “…Noble gas…number…36…”  At first glance, you just figure he’s jerking Luthor’s chain.  Then you get a creeping suspicion when he seems completely baffled by the mention of a rocket.

It all comes together later in the issue, when Clark stumbles upon a rather slick-looking little rocket ship that speaks to him, then covers itself with impenetrable crystal when he tries to touch it.  You suddenly realize that, for whatever reason, he never had any contact with his alien heritage aside from his cape and consequently, he really hasn’t a clue what Krypton is beyond an element on the periodic table.

Action Comics #1 – Review

By: Grant Morrison (writer), Rags Morales (penciller), Rick Bryant (inker), Brad Anderson (colorist)

The Story: If he falls, a Superman has to get up, dust his jeans off, and hit even harder.

The Review: For those of you desperately attempting to push back the memories of Grounded into the far-flung recesses of your brain, don’t fear—I bring it up to make a brief point.  A lot of that storyline was about getting Superman back among the little people again, both figuratively and literally “grounding” him.  Yet despite rubbing shoulders with some of the homeliest homebodies in America, he wound up seeming more distant and out of touch than before.

On that note, we may call this series, “Grounded: Take Two.”  Morrison spoke a great deal of wanting to evoke the original, semi-socialist Superman, the figurehead of the masses, a man seemingly embodied with their collective strength.  An interesting premise, if nothing else, and Morrison certainly executes it well here.  Much as Superman’s powers unnerve both The Man and The Establishment, the everyday folk have an awed sense of pride over their bejeaned hero.

This public trust not only gives confidence to Superman’s actions, it actually affords him some physical protection.  His immature abilities give him some much welcomed vulnerability, and allows him to experience what we haven’t seen from him in a long time: peril.  Limitations may be hindrances, but they let a character display ingenuity and fortitude in overcoming them.  For Superman, we get to see him channel the tough, farmer boy inside to grit through his obstacles.

Anyway, you’d hardly expect a significant (and likely temporary) downgrade in power levels would stop Superman from doing what he does best: saving innocents.  But more than just standing on the sidelines, waiting for an opportunity to do his work, this Superman is more proactive—activist, in fact.  He has a strict agenda and a bone to pick, both very good for a character who’s mostly shied away from taking sides and being personally motivated.

Flashpoint: The Canterbury Cricket – Review

By: Mike Carlin (writer), Rags Morales (penciller), Rick Bryant (inker), Nei Ruffino (colorist)

The Story: We’re going to need a real big can of bug repellent

The Review: Originality is hard to come by in fiction nowadays.  To even grasp at the tail end of novelty, writers need the guts to plunge into the weirdness pool and fish out whatever fresh ideas they can get.  Done right, those ideas can move beyond the strangeness of their conception and produce a great story on their own right.  Otherwise, you just get a hodgepodge of promising details that never gel their potential together into anything substantial.

That’s much the case with the Canterbury Cricket, an undoubtedly odd character with an equally bizarre origin.  But for all its weirdness, the retelling of how he came into existence is strangely unarresting, and it takes up the vast majority of the issue.  On the day of the Amazon invasion into Britain, chauvinist Jeramey Chriqui takes refuge in the Canterbury Cathedral, which the warrior women destroy.  From the ashes rises a shockingly well-mannered cricket-man, a transformation he claims is as divine as the place where it takes place.

Vaguely interesting, but sluggishly told, then unwisely followed up by a pointless anecdote about his first team-up effort.  Again, Carlin presents an idea that’s far more intriguing in theory than execution: a group of “Ambush Bugs,” whose roll call includes all the insect-themed heroes and villains in the DCU: Queen Bee, the Cockroach, Firefly, and Blue Beetle.  We don’t see how the group gathers, nor do we have a firm handle on their goals, other than to annoy the Amazons, which they carry out rather ineptly, resulting in their near-immediate defeat.

Cricket tells his sorry tale to some present-day members of the British resistance, a group whose most recognizable figure is the crusty Etrigan, the Demon (“Continue to make that infernal racket / and everything inside that heart / can be skilled from your skin-jacket / all ‘round these wooded parts!”), who leads the hair-extending Godiva, the Creeper-like Wicked Jinny Greenteeth, and Mrs. Hyde.  Colorful characters, to be sure, but since we only get to see a couple pages of them in action, they do little more this issue than act as Cricket’s rapt audience (better them than me!).

First Wave #6 – Review

By: Brian Azzarello (writer), Rags Morales (penciller), Rick Bryant & Phil Winslade (inker), Nei Ruffino (colorist)

The Story: If you happen to be fighting giant robots and dinosaurs on a floating city in the middle of a tsunami, you’ll get pretty down too.

The Review: Figuring out the ending to any kind of story is probably the toughest part of writing.  There’s an urge to neatly wrap it all up with a bow on top, but that’s not always possible.  Some endings take time to come together, making it rough for comic book miniseries.  Since there’s a definite cap to their space and deadline for their completion, they don’t have the luxury of letting the story meander along until it kind of finishes itself.

This last issue of First Wave definitely seems like a spare issue or two would have helped out a lot in pulling all its plot threads together in a tighter way.  Azzarello does his best with what he’s got, but the pace still feels rushed, almost furiously cobbled together.  Even to the very end, he introduces twists which never pan out—the serum that turns blood into gold, for example—which indicates he has a much grander vision in mind that what he ends up with.

Certainly a lot of the more emotional, pontificating scenes need more grounding to sell.  Anton Colossi’s childish breakdown would be more convincing had we seen more signs of his instability beyond a weird, but not totally off-putting devotion to his mother.  But his mad ravings are kind of an eye-roller: “I am sooooo [sic] done hearing can’t, when I can do any damned thing I want!”  You’re really left with the sense of him as an insignificant lunatic.