Written by Grant Morrison
Penciled by Rags Morales and Gene Ha“Superman, Go Home!” In a startling tale only Grant Morrison could bring you, the people of Metropolis turn on their new champion! But why? Plus, shocking secrets from Krypton revealed!
In Month Three of Grant Morrison’s re-imagining of Super-History, the dreaded “Putting the ‘Man’ into Superman” plot finally starts to rear its head, coming back into play for something like the eleventh million time. Can Morrison, Morales, and their co-conspirators overpower it on the strength of their revisions to Clark Kent’s world?
Probably. But you’ll have to read after the jump to get the real answer. Sort of.
Is there anything more boring than another trip back to Krypton? Of all the played-out tools in Superman’s arsenal, bringing Krypton back into the mix — whether to reinforce Clark Kent’s comparative humanity, or remind us of Kal-El’s implicit otherness — is by far the most shop-worn. The idea is damned further by its historical inconsistency, as every successive generation of Super-creators seems to feel some urge to go “well, actually, Krypton was like this.” We’ve come a long way from the days of Jor-El, Time Adventurer for Some Reason, in his green Peter Pan tunic and yellow Brooklyn-rock headband. Somewhere around Marlon Brando, though, we drove right into a cul-de-sac.
With that in mind, when I opened up Action Comics #3 to find, well, Krypton, my reaction was: “Oh, come on, again?” It’s a fun sequence, sure (for the death of a planet), and Gene Ha draws it beautifully, with Art Lyons infusing everything with a green glow that years of stories about Kryptonite have trained me to think of as foreboding and sinister. As last dances with Krypton go, however, it’s a bit spoiled by Grant Morrison himself having written the most beautifully succinct summary of the planet’s death in All Star Superman.
The plot of Action Comics #3, without getting too specific, is this: Superman is hated and feared as an alien presence by Metropolis, who are not used to that sort of thing yet. (The City of Tomorrow comes off as a bit of a literal name in the current climate, as opposed to the usual “City of an Ideal Comic Book Present” interpretation. Rags Morales in particular deserves credit for denying Metropolis any kind of wondrous sci-fi sheen.) After last issue’s strange experience with the craft that brought infant Kal-El to Earth, he’s now dreaming about Krypton’s destruction, and the force that caused it seems to have arrived on Earth.
The journey of Action Comics‘ initial storyline, I presume, is to document the journey of Superman from pariah to savior, godling to man-god, child to father, punk to buddha, et cetera. He can’t be a live wire forever, and he’ll have to grow up at some point and become the figure who accepts the burden of the world not out of obligation, but because it’s the right thing to do. Right now, he’s mostly doing things like saving little girls’ cats and shaking down the 1%. On an elemental level, the way to force Clark to grow up is to make him come to terms with his history. Now that the Superman costume is Kryptonian battle armor and blah blah blah, he’ll have to slip into it at some point. That’s what worries me about all this Krypton stuff. Not only have we watched the plate spin for years as it’s been passed from hand to hand, but it’s also just not as interesting as what’s going on in Clark Kent’s Earth-bound life.
Rags Morales is a great artist when it comes to facial expressions. He draws people emoting without filters or restraint, and more than once I’ve wanted to liken his enraged characters to Nic Cage going on a bugfuck tear. Even though he can’t decide whether Jimmy Olsen has a fashionable fringe or a 1995 Oasis mop-top, he makes conversation scenes lively and articulate, and he can add weight to lines that would die out of context (Lois Lane’s angry rebuttal of “You!” comes to mind). Where the Krypton stuff is rushing into the picture, the interactions between Clark Kent and his friends (and friends-to-be) unfold at a pace that’s confident but relaxed. The actual plot of the issue mostly occurs in fragments and little micro-scenes, like station idents between the songs on the radio. Morales keeps it all moving, giving clarity and visual pace to a script that an inexperienced artist would leave confounding.
Action Comics is a very good comic, and (for my money) the best of the New 52 by a wide margin, but I’m not quite sure it’s a great one yet. The revolutionary spark of reimagining Clark Kent as a firebrand leftie reporter living in a crap walk-up and Superman as his political-gratification alter-ego is still hot, but now it’s becoming threatened. Where previously the tone was in control, plot is making a strong resurgence, and it’d be a shame to see the latter engulf the former. After all, we’ve seen Superman become Superman a thousand times now, and come to terms with what it means to be Superman even more. Right now, Action Comics is still unique enough to keep its head above the water, but the shark fins are in sight.
Final Verdict: 8.0 / I’m at least glad the Kryptonians no longer wear lace-topped cowls or whatever those were
