Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Action Comics #900
DC Comics
Cornell, Woods, Merino, Dini, Donner, Frank, Goyer, Johns, Lindelof, Sook & Stelfreeze
The giant-sized, anniversary issue of the oldest periodical (numbering wise from the big two) ships this week with a strange choice for a main story and several smaller stories to provide an array of creators in hopes of bringing more casual readers to the table. For the most part, this issue provides a very entertaining read, but will undoubtedly be remembered for one little nugget hidden away in one of the smaller stories. There's a lot to like in here and I think this issue helps to give casual readers a sense of the state of the character while giving the regular readers of the title something to satisfy their needs.
The main story, "Reign of Doomsday", is the conclusion to a six part story arc that behaved like a crossover spanning multiple titles. I was very wary about reading fifty-some pages of a story that I hadn't picked up the first chapters to but it turns out the story was entertaining and satisfying on its own, without the preceding chapters.
Essentially Doomsday was rounding up various characters that wear the "S" on their chest. Doomsday, though, hadn't tussled with Superman yet and it turns out Doomsday isn't alone in this plot in more ways than one.
Superman fights the one that is truly behind all of the Doomsday activity and eventually finds where his friends are hidden. This story leaves a good cliffhanger for the next arc titled, "Reign of the Doomsdays" – plural.
It's a good story. Actually, I found it to be the best in the issue. Crisp writing, terrific art filled with plenty of action. If this is the only Superman story you read this year I think you will get all you need to know about the big guy. This definitely has me interested in the rest of the work Cornell is doing in this comic book series and I think that is a good thing.
"Life Support" is a ten page story by Lindelof and Sook. I enjoyed this as well because it deals with activity on Krypton in the days prior to its destruction. It's a good representation of the characters and what some of those moments might have been like for them.
"Autobiography" is a four page story by Dini and Silva that has Superman interfacing with a creature he'd saved that now lives in his personal sanctuary. It's a good story that shows the parallels between this creature and Superman.
"Friday Night in the 21st Century" by Johns and Frank is a fun story about Superman's relationship with the Legion of Super Heroes. This could have gotten ugly if too much continuity or personalities of the supporting characters were dragged into this issue but thankfully Johns stuck to Lois and Clark. It's a fun read.
"The Incident" by Goyer and Speulveda is the story that everyone will be talking about. I had to revise my review about this story because of the fallout over it. This is the story where Superman announces he is no longer a citizen of the United States in the larger context of him visiting a protest in Tehran. The odd part, for me, was this peon talking to Superman like he was a rank and file nobody and not the citizenship issue. However, I was confused as to whether or not this was in actual continuity. I couldn't remember if when he left to live on New Krypton if a similar occurrence already happened which further confused me about this action. I thought it was odd but I moved on. Then the backlash came from the news outlets and the political debate started. My feeling about this story was that a) this isn't new because Superman has done this before and b) it never made sense for a super hero of his abilities to limit himself to a country, let alone one city. If this leads to more interesting stories than good, but I also don't want to see Superman living on Mars like Doctor Manhattan.
"Only Human" by Donner, Hoffman and Camp was puzzling to me. It was advertised as a movie storyboard but it seems to have artist directions in it as if it were a comic book as viewed with the script in the margins. The story is basically Superman against a man in a super suit. It's a decent story but it's nothing new. What was odd was how smitten Lois got with the new guy. I'm not sure how this all fits into Superman continuity, if at all. Still, I'd like to see Donner do more work with Superman in comics.
"The Evolution of the Man of Tomorrow" by Stelfreeze is just a fun look at how the Man of Steel has changed over the years. I actually like the mullet look.
Overall this was a good book. I did miss that Dan Jurgens wasn't involved in some capacity and that the book lacks a satisfactory amount of Lois Lane content. I hated the six dollar price point, but ultimately, I got what I was looking for about of the issue and then some. If you do pick up the issue solely on the story where he leaves his US citizenship behind then I hope you read the rest of the issue because it is a good look at the character, and that particularly story may be the worst of the bunch. Basically you get a great book with only a couple of mediocre stories in the lot. I definitely recommend picking this issue up.
4 out of 5 Geek Goggles
