Action Comics #2 Annotations
ACTION COMICS #2
Superman In Chains
DC Comics, December 2011, Color, 40pgs, $3.99
Written by GRANT MORRISON ; Art by RAGS MORALES, BRENT ANDERSON and RICK BRYANT; Cover by RAGS MORALES; 1:25 Variant Cover by ETHAN VAN SCIVER; 1:200 B&W Variant Cover by RAGS MORALES
In his weakest moment, Superman is taken down – but by whom? And if the world wasn't ready for a man with super powers, they're utterly unprepared for the rage of a Superman cornered! The cornerstone character of the new DCU continues his debut adventure!
Commentary
With the first issue set-up out of the way, Morrison brings us and extended action sequence and a further peek at the overarching plot in this second issue of the revitalized Action Comics.
Its nice to get the behind the scenes back-matter, with a glimpse at Gene Ha's Krypton designs coming up next issue and some insight from Morrison and Morales on their script and art choices, though how many of the book's casual audience will tolerate that as a justification for their extra dollar remains to be seen.
The art this issue isn't as accomplished as last time round, though Brent Anderson's fill-in job is pretty much indistinguishable from Morales own stuff. As usual, Morrison's script shines through though - very few of his comics have been blessed with truly spectacular art, and are much more often graced with this sort of functional fare.
Thanks to the crew at the Comic Book Resources message boards for pointing out that a lot of this issue seems to be inspired by this 1941 strip, Luthor, Master of Evil, from the Superman Sunday comic-strip - filtered through a distinctly Guantanamo Bay-coloured lens. You can read the whole story, and lots of other Seigel and Shuster Sunday strips, here.
As seems often to be the case with second issues, this one's a bit light on the info-dumping compared to last issue. Still a few nuggets here and there though. Onwards and upwards!
Annotations
Cover - Morales turns in another good cover, emphasising the vulnerability of this new take on Superman. The eyes seem a bit off mind, even more so on the black and white variant. What with Flashpoint #2 and now this, it seems DC has got "superhero in electric chair" pegged as the new must-buy cover image for the discerning comic-book lover, finally toppling gorillas from the coveted top spot after fifty-odd years.
I'm struggling to say anything that's not ferociously unkind about Ethan Van Sciver's variant. He's aiming for the iconic, recalling Neal Adams' famous 'Kryptonite Nevermore' cover from Superman #233 - Adam Hughes' recent tribute to the same image for one of the Action Comics #900 covers was much better - and Superman's face looks... pretty weird, like he's just had a facelift. Still, on the bright side, van Sciver manages to resist the temptation to have the broken chain links spell a rude word...
Page 1 - Just like last time, Morales is employing a much more 'comic-book' layout for his pages than many of his contemporaries, saving the usually ubiquitous 'widescreen' panels for emphasising the action sequences.
Picking up from last issue, Morrison and Morales' Superman can bleed, he can be hurt. His newfound vulnerability adds an element of danger - and reader engagement - that's been missing from the pages of Superman comics for a long time. In keeping with Morrison's stated aim of recalling Seigel and Shuster's original Superman, the electric chair shares a 1930's aesthetic sensibility with the gangsters, high speed trains and wrecking balls seen in the first issue.
Page 2-3 - Luthor insists on calling Superman 'it', tying in with his motivation in his other Morrison-penned appearances in JLA and All-Star Superman. Luthor is the best mankind has to offer, and yet he's upstaged by a being that calls himself a man but isn't even from this planet.
"Doctor Luthor... he's X-ray opaque" - Eagle eyed commentator Davide Giurlando pointed out that the scientist saying this seems to be the weasly little man from issue one. With those distinctive glasses and that sneer, they certainly seem to be the same man if you compare this issue and the last side by side. Davide, who suggested he might be Thaddeus Killgrave last month, now thinks he's Mr. Mxyztplk, but I'm still not convinced...
Interesting that Superman himself would be X-ray opaque (i.e. X-rays can't pass through him) - lead, crystal and some types of glass are all x-ray opaque in real life. I wonder if the Kryptonian crystal seen later in the issue is some sort of organic compound that shares properties with the the people themselves - physically a part of the dead Kryptonians as well as spiritually.
Fluoroantimonic acid is the strongest of the so called superacids and, basically, the baddest ass acid there is. Its 20 quintillion (that's 20 followed by eighteen zeroes) times stronger than 100% sulphuric acid.
Enter stage left Sergeant John Corben and Dr John Henry Irons...
Page 4 - Corben and Irons, as mentioned in last issue's annotations, are (or soon will be) pre-reboot Superman villain Metallo and armoured super-scientist Steel. Their partcipation in Sam Lane's Steel Soldier programme seems to be tying their origins together, perhaps with Steel playing heroic opposite to tragic Metallo. According to the solicits (though Batman Incorporated's were far from reliable), it looks like Metallo and Steel will both make their debut proper in issue four, with Steel spinning off into a back-up feature by I, Vampire's Joshua Hale Fialkov and Matt Camp.
Superman's indestructible hair is a weird relic of the Silver Age that has been a constant throughout - its why he needs to use his heat vision and a mirror to shave. Morrison seems intent on bringing it back front and centre, along with ever-present but oft-neglected concepts like the indestructable cape and his ability to thrive and survive without food.
Morrison and Morales mention in the back matter that this 'Five Years Ago' Luthor is meant to be a little thick around the middle and Morales does a good job getting that across here with the double chin in panel one.
Page 5 - The needle breaking against impervious skin is another classic Superman comic-book trope first seen in the 'extra pages' at the beginning of the original Superman #1. It was also seen a bit more recently in Bryan Singer's Superman Returns.
Again with Luthor and the energy drinks.
Luthor's shocking Supes with way more than your common or garden electric chair pumps out. Sources differ widely, though they seem to work somehere up to around 2000 volts and 12 amps, though a current of 0.07 amps is supposedly enough to stop a regular human's heart.
Page 6 - Superman's cape (and sometimes the rest of his costume) has been indestructible since at least the early fifties, probably before that. Even post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, John Byrne kept the costume indestructible (thanks to some cod-science 'aura' surrounding Supes), though the cape was a step too far for him. That didn't last long though and Mark Waid, in Superman: Birthright, and Geoff Johns in Superman: Secret Origin, both had the cape, as Morrison seems to have, as Supes' baby blanket.
Page 7 - We don't get a clear look at the base name, Camp D... something.
Lois, who's still wearing the same clothes she was wearing on the train last issue, tries to appeal to her dad. Superman is one of the good guys!
Page 8 - Sarin gas is a colourless, odourless posionous gas used as a chemical weapon. It was used by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing thirteen people and seriously injuring hundreds if not thousands more. Its been around for a lot longer than that though, and has been used by the US, UK, the former USSR and Iraq, amongst other military powers.
"...Noble gas... Number... 36" For anyone who slept through chemistry at school, Krypton is not just Superman's home planet, its also an element. One of the noble gases - odourless, colourless gases with very low chemical reactivity - it has the atomic number 36.
The Martian Manhunter, formerly one of Superman's teammates in the Justice League of America, now, post- New 52 a member of Stormwatch, was, as Luthor accuses Superman of being here, a shape-shifting alien who hid himself in plain sight for years, fighting crime in secret lest his alien appearance terrify the native Earthlings.
Page 9 - A space goat skeleton in pyjamas? Could this be Krypto, the dog that Superman's father Jor-El rocketed into space as a 'test flight' for Superman's own galaxy-spanning journey? Davide Giurlando suggested it could be a rondor, pre-Crisis Krytonian beasts wiped out for their horns - a key ingredient in an immortality serum - by scientist Nam-Ek, who was subsequently sent to the Phantom Zone for his crimes. Rondor's tended to be depicted more like rhinos than goats, but hey, this is the New 52, anything goes.
Pretty harsh of Superman to LOL at it so hard, whatever it is/was.
Is Luthor's look based on Brian Michael Bendis maybe? Just a thought...
Superman's 'microwave' vision is just fancy-dan science talk for heat vision. Superman's eyes have pretty much always emitted and absorbed all sorts of weird radiation - Morrison has been a particular fan of this since writing Superman in the JLA, where he was always quick to point out queer goings on in peculiar strata of the electrmagnetic spectrum.
That's definitely the little guy from issue one then, in the bottom right of this page. The 'many hands' art doesn't really make it too clear that its him, so its a bit up in the air as to whether we're supposed to 'notice' it or not.
Page 10 - Not much love for this panel of Lois pulling a face in internet-land. Her romantic history with Sergeant Corben was also an important plot point in Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's Superman: Secret Origin.
Page 11-12 - Putting the action back in Action Comics... Some folks calling the "...break your scrawny neck" panel as 'out of character' for Superman but it rings true for Morrison's characterisation so far. He's not the Punisher ferchrissakes, he's just a young guy with incredible superpowers trying to get results.
Page 13 - Presumably this, Luthor's physical and intellectual defeat at Superman's hands, will be a defining moment for the character.
The Kryptonian language has typically been written as alien symbols rather than phonetically transcribed into English as it is here. E. Nelson Bridewell, Silver and Bronze Age custodian of obscure Superman marginalia, invented a 118 (!) character alphabet called Kryptonese that was used in the comics until John Byrne's Man of Steel reboot, when it was replace by a different set of 26 symbols, Kryptonian; really just fairly easily-translatable English written in 'code'. Morrison, an admirer of Tolkien's meticulously crafted imaginary languages for elves, orcs and the like in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, could be following a similar path here; concentratng on the grammar rather than the 'letters'.
Page 14 - As Morales mentions in the back matter, the rocket is meant to evoke the Biblical Moses' basket. The Kryptonian symbols on it are evocative of the 'negative space' yellow areas of the 'S' shield on Superman's costume, also effectively employed by Morrison in the costume of Super Young Teams' Most Excellent Superbat, introduced in Final Crisis.
It also looks a bit like one of these Corgi Supermobiles. Morrison already brought the Jokercopter back in Batman #655 - here's hoping for the Penguin to turn up in one of these in Batman: Leviathan .
The rocket's Kryptonian speech is the first mention of many of the 'traditional' elements of Superman's Kryptonian heritage in the new series - his parents Jor-El and Lara, and Superman's 'real' Kryptonian name, Kal-El. Lor-Van was Lara's Kryptonian astronaut father, and presumably Vex is her mother, making Lara's full name "[her name]-[dad's name]-[mum's name]-[marital name]". Rao is basically Krypton's God, though they're usually shown as an intensely secular and science-based society.
El Eoeo, I got nothing. Sorry. El-Kor doesn't ring any bells either, though there was a Kor-El, Superman's hunchbacked evil twin brother who featured in a typically batshit insane Bob Haney two parter in World's Finest #246 and #247. Supposedly a deformed twin of Kal-El whom their mother Lara had sealed in a cave as a baby - a cave that somehow became an asteroid prison after Krypton's explosion - Kor-El appeared to off the real Supes and took over America, establishing a 'Big Brother' totalitarian dictatorship policed by gangsters Kor-El had pardoned and released from jail. Batman and Superman, disguised as turban-sporting Indian diplomats, eventually reveal Kor-El to actually be The Parasite in what is probably the most unbelievable and nonsensical twist ending to a comic-book I've ever read. Part two has the added bonus of this jaw-dropping Jose Luis Garcia Lopez 'Superman as Hitler' cover. They don't make 'em like that any more...
The crystals, spouting from the rocket at Superman's touch (?) are a call back to the crystalline architecture of Krypton, first introduced in Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie in 1978 and an intrinsic part of all interpretations of Krypton since, though Geoff Johns really brought them to the fore in his Action run of a few years ago. Judging from the Kryptonian designs in the back of the book, it looks like Morrison and company will be taking bits of Krypton from every era - thirties deco-futurist, fifties sci-fi, eighties power-dressing and movie crystals - and mixing them up into their own unique Krypton-gumbo.
Page 15-17 - More finely choreographed Action from Morales (and Brett Anderson - a pretty seamless fill-in from him this issue, where the wildly inconsistent art at least looks like it was all drawn by the same artist)
Page 18 - Lois and Superman's first (?) meeting leaves her slack-jawed while Superman bounds away with the assistance of some handy blimps, in a likely nod from Morales to Chris Ware's cover for Tom de Haven's It's Superman! novel. He seems to be straight back into the centre of the city here. Pretty unusual place for a military base...
Page 19 - As briefly mentioned in last months annotations, Professor Emmett Vale was behind Corben's transformation into Metallo in the 'old' continuity, both in his Silver Age debut and in the John Byrne reboot, so its only fitting he plays a part here. Metallo's motivation, a spurned lover, also apparently carried over from the recent Superman: Secret Origin, seems much more plausible than his original Silver Age 'crook with a grudge' backstory.
Morales gets a homage to the iconic original Action Comics #1 cover in, something he and Morrison seemed to go to great lengths not to do in the first issue, in one of the press photographs. Also, again with the leaping a tall building in a single bound action.
Page 20 - Shades of Gary Oldman in Luc Besson's Fifth Element as Luthor nervously chitter-chats to a seemingly cool and unsympathetic alien intelligence. It seems obvious that this will be Brainiac, given the hexagon designs and tentacles - both featured heavily in Brainiac's Bronze Age re-design - but you never know. It could be Vartox. Or the Scrubb from Superman vs. Muhammed Ali...
If it is Brainiac, pounds will get you pennies that Morrison draws primarily from the Superman animated series version, i.e. a robot intelligence originally hailing from Krypton, rather than previous comic-book incarnations. Though he had a substantially different anti-matter Brainiac playing the villain in the JLA: Earth 2 graphic novel, Morrison clearly has little love for the character as-was - despite being one of Superman's premier rogues, Morrison bypassed him entirely in All-Star Superman.
Page 21-28 - DC, clearly trying to muscle in on a bit of the lucrative annotations dollar, deliver 8 pages of 'behind the scenes' material. Its very good and pretty self-explanatory so I won't pick over it here. Suffice to say though, it makes my job slightly redundant... Looking forward to those Gene Ha Kryptonian designs appearing - I hope he gets to draw them too!
Get in touch here with any comments, corrections or to tell me about anything I've missed. See you next month for Action Comics #3!