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ACTION COMICS #4
Superman and the Men of Steel
Written by GRANT MORRISON; Backup story written by SHOLLY FISCH; Art by RAGS MORALES, RICK BRYANT and SEAN PARSONS; Backup story art by BRAD WALKER; Cover by RAGS MORALES; Variant cover by MIKE CHOI; 1:200 B&W Variant cover by RAGS MORALES
DC Comics, February 2012, Color, 40pgs, $3.99
Is 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!
Commentary
Commentary
Mike Choi's variant, solicited last month but bumped by Gene Ha's unsolicited Jor-El variant, appears on this issue instead. The Steel backup was originally solicited as by I, Vampire's Joshua Hale Fialkov and Matt Camp, neither of whom make it into the published comic. Given Morrison's oft-stated love for all things Batman: The Brave and the Bold, its good to see that he's 'hand-picked' Fisch as his wingman, a writer better known for his work on kid's comics and tie-ins to DC's various cartoon series. I'd bet Fialkov's none too pleased about it though. Morales has managed to sufficiently catch up that he can pencil the whole issue this time around, and he gets two months to draw the next installment as Andy Kubert comes on board for a couple of done-in-one's.
Morrison is still not letting up with the Action, as this issue features another knock-down-drag-out fight between Superman, Metallo, the New 52 Steel and Brainiac's Terminauts that's so action packed, part of it runs over into the (pretty good) back-up strip. A bit less to annotate this month than usual as a lot of the finer storytelling gets lost in all of the fighting. Good news for me I suppose as Batman:Leviathan Strikes is out in a fortnight...
Annotations
Annotations
Cover - Morales' cover, as usual, is okay. I like the colours, but I don't like the Steel logo or the fact that it looks like Steel is the big monster robot man. Choi's cover, as with all of the variants so far (apart from Gene Ha's last issue), isn't for me. It's too Photoshopped and doesn't really look like Superman. Neither cover has anything on it that even vaguely needs annotating. Feel the power as I flex my critical muscles.
Page 1 - Presumably that's the rocket that Superman travelled to Earth in under the tarp. His staying with the rocket probably assures Lex's presence when Superman and Brainiac meet up for a beatdown when the story continues.
Sergeant Corben/Metallo appears to have grown much bigger since he was wired in to the Metal-Zero suit (ah... Metal-0 = Metallo, I get it now), or Emmett Vale - the suit's designer who Corben is dragging around by his face - has gotten much smaller.
Page 2 - Self-replicating nanobots on a gigantic (human-sized) scale, the Terminauts appear to be able to construct themselves out of anything.
Page 3 - We haven't seen Mayor Maxwell Minor before. Unlike in the corrupt-politician-heavy Gotham City of the Batman books, the mayor of Metropolis is rarely seen, though Nick Spencer did introduce a black female mayor, Mayor Fleming, in his prematurely curtailed 'Jimmy Olsen' backups from the pre-reboot Action Comics. It doesn't look like she's survived the New 52 relaunch, though we are still 'Five Years Ago' at this point...
John Henry Irons, aka Steel, DC's own thinly-veiled version of Iron Man, looks like he may be fostering a Tony Stark-style drinking habit of his own. That is a rather prominent bottle of vodka in the foreground wouldn't you say?
Steel was created by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove and first appeared in 1993's Adventures of Superman #500 as one of four replacement Supermen haunting Metropolis in the weeks following the 'Death' of Superman. Inspired by the African American folk hero John Henry and the afformentioned Iron Man, Irons is a genius scientist with no super powers, though he does wear a suit of super hi-tech armour and carry a big hammer. He was popular enough to carry his own solo title for 52 issues in the nineties, and even managed a jump to the silver screen with the Shaquille O'Neal vehicle Steel in 1997, written and directed by Bionic Woman and V creator Kenneth Johnson.
In the New 52 DC Universe, Irons is a senior scientist working with the US military on the Steel Soldier project, though there's some confusion over whether Metal-Zero is Irons' or Emmet Vale's baby. Though I don't think much to the new Metallo suit, I like the connection between Metallo and Steel that Morrison has established, so I'm willing to forgive a bit of nondescript design in favour of a more interesting dynamic amongst the supporting players.
Like all us folks who keep super-powered military exo-skeleton's in our house, John sensibly stores it behind a bookcase to keep it out of reach of the kids.
Page 6 - I like the subtle change in the Super-suit. The white shirt has a bit more pop. Blake, Casey and Zoft finally get their man, at the worst moment possible
Page 7 - Any excuse to shoot Superman with a tank...
Page 9 - Again, the scale of Corben seems totally off. Where would you need to be stood in order to look like that through a car's windscreen?
Perhaps in homage to a more innocent Silver Age gone by where all the crooks wanted was the loot, the Terminauts are stealing jewellry, and money from an ATM, alongside the more precious art treasures
Page 10 - Of course Corben's middle name is Wayne... Lois' Spam story may not be working on Corben, but it made me laugh.
Wonder what Braniac means about Lois breaking his heart on another planet? It seems to be very clear that this is Brainiac speaking and not Corben. Metallo's look is very Brainiac in the last panel. I love how Morrison is bringing all of these disparate elements together and forming a cohesive whole out of them.
Page 11 - Though Corben's love of Pinnochio is fittingly bittersweet given his current predicament (and maybe hints at redemption for him once this ordeal is over?), all sympathy evaporates when we learn his favourite band is the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Booo.
Page 14 - As we said last issue, the Dwarf Star bit is straight out of The Atom's playbook.
Page 15 - Are the spider's on the outside of the bottle or in the next bottle along? Some sort of preserving agent as Brainiac implies on page 18? Either way, Morrison is returning to the idea of insects as symbolic of the evil and otherworldly (see also Doom Patrol, The Invisibles and Seven Soldiers).
Page 16 - Despite what the credit box says on page four, this page doesn't look like it was drawn by Morales.
Page 17 - Steel and Metallo shuffle off into the back up strip to finish their fight.
Page 18 - So, inside the bottle we have Lois, Lex, Jimmy, Glen Glenmorgan, Casey and Zoft (and presumably Blake offscreen somewhere), along with the whole of the Daily Planet building. Oh, and half of the rest of Metropolis too. As Davide helpfully pointed out, if anyone's still alive in the Kandor bottle then Superman's aunt Zora and his grandmother should be in there too.
Keeping with the otherworldly insect motif, Brainiac looks to be some sort of dreadful robot centipede. Its a redesign that draws on how he first appeared in Geoff Johns and Gary Franks' version from the recent (pre-reboot) 'Brainiac' storyline, Quietly and Morrison's redesign in JLA: Earth 2, and probably the insectoid design for the aborted Tim Burton Superman Lives movie project.
Page 19 - Sam Lane, Lois dad and stock untrustworthy military sort, finally gets on-side and asks for Superman's help...
Page 20 - ...and we'll see where all of this goes in three months time when the story picks up again in Action Comics #7.
An enjoyable little back up tale from Sholly Fisch (though he does crib the USB-stick takedown from the 'World War III' arc of Morrison's JLA). I like the Richard Feynman bit and the art's pretty good too, though Brad Walker seems to have that same weird size thing going on with Corben that Morales does in the main story. I don't know, maybe it's deliberate.
Come back in a fortnight for Batman: Leviathan Strikes! Then onwards and upwards to next months Action, guest starring the Legion of Super-Heroes!!
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