Written by Grant Morrison and Sholly Fisch
Illustrated by Rags Morales and Brad WalkerIs your mind prepared for an encounter with the deadly Terminauts? What awful master do they serve? What horrible fate awaits Superman and the city of Metropolis? The true scope of Grant Morrison and Rags Morales’ ACTION COMICS run begins to come into view, so get those sunglasses ready, ’cause it is gonna be blinding!
And in a backup story that spins out of ACTION COMICS #2, John Henry Irons takes his first steps toward becoming the hero known as Steel!
This is the first time I’ve been able to review Action Comics for this site. I hope I don’t mess it up.
Check after the cut for some thoughts. As a note, light spoilers about the end of the issue are discussed.
When it was announced that Grant Morrison was taking over Action Comics for the relaunch, I don’t think there was anyone who wasn’t excited for it. Morrison’s recent run on Batman/Batman and Robin/Batman Inc. was truly inspired, his ability to redefine characters legendary. Add to that the modern classic All Star Superman, and there wasn’t any conceivable way that Morrison returning to work on Superman could go wrong.
As we moved further in time to the actual release of the comic, Morrison’s mission statement for the book became more abundantly clear. He was taking Superman in his rawest form, when Kal-El was just discovering what it meant to himself to be Superman, and guiding Kal-El along this different take of ground retreaded far too many times count. On top of that, he was going to decisively put the “Action” in Action Comics, delivering a comic at breakneck pace that managed to simultaneously infuse the character with the ideals that would later inform the most inspiring figure and example of humanity in comics (and beyond) as well as combining it with scenes and set-pieces that would rub Michael Bay in all the right ways.
All the time Morrison has spent researching the history of comics is certainly paying off as he reinvents the character for his own, as the book pays tribute to that which came before whilst spinning things in a direction all their own. To that end, that is exactly what Action Comics has been: an action comic. This issue in particular finds the young Superman battling against robots who appear to be working for the new Braniac (who still, despite looking and acting exactly like the old Braniac, has not been referred to as Braniac anywhere) as well as a new and deranged version of Metallo, aka John Corben. The book exudes Morrison’s voice throughout; Luthor’s voice rings out in his few scenes, as he both attempts to escape the madness but can’t look away from Superman receiving a beat down. It’s the little moments like that, peppered in with the madness and destruction of the aforementioned action, that truly make this title one of the more entertaining books of the DCnU.
The only real downside to the book is that, for all intents and purposes, this is not one of Morrison’s more inspiring endeavors. At least, not right now, anyway. Things are building up to something truly epic in feeling (or rather, they will in two months or so after a random break is taken to tell Superman’s new origin), but some of the enjoyment of reading Morrison’s work with Batman the past few years is to see just how far he would take the character, and in which way. By drawing on years of history, reading Batman became more than just “reading Batman“; reading the comic alone was borderline an endeavor, as time had to be taken to truly analyze, connect dots, look up old references to old Morrison stories and beyond in order to help put together a puzzle that reveals what Morrison is hiding behind various curtains. Action at this point seems to be headed in one clear direction: Kal-El will move beyond a socialist unknown hero, rescue the stolen portion of Metropolis and become Superman. It’s not unentertaining, but I can’t help but wonder at what point the rug is truly going to be pulled out from underneath me.
Continued belowStill, in a heap of books in which only a handful truly stand out, Action Comics is right there near the top. The combination of Morrison and Morales has proven to be quite fruitful, as Morales brings an incredibly kinetic vibe to the book. Given that the book is implicitly about action, the fact that Morales’ art brings more to the book than simple poses and action “shots” is what keeps the book alive (literally). This issue suffers from some of the same problems that have come before, mainly in that there is more than one inker on the book, which creates an uneven vibe at parts. This is especially apparent in Superman’s face during several scenes, where one makes him youthful and in another slightly deranged. Even the coloring is slightly amiss, in which Superman’s blue shirt is suddenly white. However, Morales is ultimately the man who definitively puts the action viciously into the title like a knife to the stomach, and all admittedly unimportant ink/color slip-ups can be excused. (Really, it’s quite easy to enjoy Superman in any shirt and a few odd faces here and there.)
The back-up story, written by Fisch and illustrated by Walker, is mostly superfluous, but not ostensibly in a bad way. When the Steel back-up was originally announced, it seemed like there was some greater purpose to building up the character, but it turns out that someone somewhere just felt a scene needed some fleshing out. Full of expository thoughts detailing Steel’s battle both against and for Corben, the story seems to want to validate the character’s existence within the DCnU, and for all intents and purposes it accomplishes that task. There’s no great reason for it, however, outside of justifying a $3.99 price tag. There’s not enough space for Fisch or Walker to do anything truly great, because you imagine that this was rushed in at the last second in between editorial decisions. Instead we settle on something good enough, but its still similar to buying a ticket for a concert and having the band throw-out an encore not because people wanted it but rather because everyone does encores now.
The interesting thing about the back-up, though, is that if you stripped away all of Steel’s thoughts and left only the dialogue between him and Corben, then Fisch’s writing matches up rather well with Morrison’s within the gung-ho spirit of Action Comics. It’s a rather curious thing in and of itself, and is part of the reason that the back-up isn’t totally out of place in the comic. Unless a Steel book launches whenever DC unveils their second wave or Steel takes over Action Comics at some point, though, then there was no great reason to extend what was admittedly a completely forgetable sidebar in a barage of more interesting sequences.
Action Comics is oddly not the title I expected when it was first announced, but the book is slowly proving itself. The first issue started with a bang, and from that point on its acting as a slow burn, to the point that the main story is taking a break from itself to tell two separate interludes (which will hopefully play out better than the ones during “Grounded” did). Its not “typical” Morrison based on his body of war (if you can even define any of that as typical), but in a new era for DC, a new era for Morrison seems appropriate.
Final Verdict: 7.5 – Buy
