Action Comics #7 Annotations

ACTION COMICS #7

Superman's Doomsday Decision

Written by GRANT MORRISON, SHOLLY FISCH; Art by RAGS MORALES, RICK BRYANT, BRADLEY WALKER; Cover by RAGS MORALES; 1:25 Variant Cover by CHRIS BURNHAM & NATHAN FAIRBURN

DC Comics, May 2012, Color, 40pgs, $3.99

Metropolis has been captured! To save it, Superman must push the limits of his nascent powers as never before!  Aboard the ship that has the city captive, The Man of Steel finds an important tool that may help him defeat Metal-zero and his boss!  And as Superman fights foes in the sky, Steel must do what he can to protect those still in danger on the ground in a backup story by Sholly Fisch and Brad Walker

Commentary

We now return you to our regular programming - the penultimate chapter of the Collector of Worlds arc - after the last two issues' time-travelling interlude.  This issue we get a lot more background on Brainiac/The Collector, the chronological debut of Jim Lee's redesigned Super-suit and another appearance of the mysterious little man.  Up, up and away!

Annotations

Cover - The debut of DC's much-discussed new logo and another one of those god-awful banners strewn across the top of the covers don't distract from Batman Incorporated artist Chris Burnham's superlative take on Superman covers of old.  Torn between Kandor and Metropolis, his Kryptonian and Earthly heritage, Superman is literally split down the middle between his blue-collar Earthly nurture and the majesty of his Kryptonese nature.  Burnham talked a bit more about the cover over at Comic Book Resources, including how it was inspired by a visit to this amazing scuplture display by Mike Kelley at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Philadelphia, and how he struggled to put his own spin on Gene Ha's incredible Krypton re-designs, something Morales has pretty much totally avoided tackling so far.

Morales goes a little more pedestrian in his take on 'city in a bottle', recalling Frank Quitely's cover to Batman and Robin #2.  Ironic given that, of the two, Burnham is the artist much more associated with the Bat books.  Across the bottom of the cover, stranded in the bottle city of Metropolis, we have Lous, Jimmy, either Casey or Zoft from issue one, Lex Luthor, and Galaxy magnate Glen Glenmorgan, whose WGBS TV station is advertised on the hoarding above them.  Both artists choose the most recognisable Metropolis landmark, the Daily Planet building, to give the reader a sense of the location.

Page 1 -Picking right up from where we left at the end of issue four; downtown Metropolis, along with a significant portion of its most prominent citizens, has been shrunk by the Collector of Worlds and teleported into a bottle onboard his spacecraft.  It's up to General Sam Lane, newly minted superhero scientist Steel, and Superman to contain the panic on the ground and to find a way to restore Metropolis to its rightful size and location...

Superman's 'Zoom vision' used to be called telescopic vision, but I suppose that term's a bit outdated now.  Still reads pretty weird though.

25,000 miles per hour is escape velocity, the speed required to break free from the Earth's gravity.  Of course we're still in the early days of Superman's career and he can't fly yet, so it's all about the running and the jumping here.

That must be quite the run-up he's taking to reach those sorts of speeds before he hits that trailer.  Maybe another little nod in the direction of the Smallville TV show, where, through most of the show's ten seasons, Clark was known to the media by the unwieldy epithet 'The Red and Blue Blur'.

Page 3 -The oxygen mask is probably a tip of the hat to Roger Stern's 'Exiled' story which began in Superman v2 #28, just after John Byrne had left the title.  The Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman had no trouble breathing in space; after Byrne significantly reduced his power-set in 1986's Man of Steel it was established that Superman could hold his breath for a very long time, but not indefinitely.

The satellite Superman is using to push himself off of belongs to Glen Glenmorgan's Galaxy Corporation.

Page 4-5 - Brainiac's ship, in fact his whole design ethos, combines elements of the Silver Age original and, more prominently, the geodesic hexagons and robot tentacles look of Ed Hannigan's iconic eighties redesign.  Hannigan's Brainiac first appeared in 1983's Action Comics #544 and played a large role in both the Super Powers mini-series' (and accompanying cartoon and action-figure line) and Wolfman and Perez's Crisis on Infinite Earths, before he was retroactively erased from continuity at the end of that series.  His post-Crisis replacement, who alternated between a fat guy in a top hat and a bald green man with a blond ponytail and a pink jumpsuit, never struck the same sort of chord with the readers, and was endlessly tinkered with and re-engineered prior to Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's initially promising revamp in the 2008 Action Comics arc 'Brainiac'.  Common consensus was that Johns and Frank dropped the ball by making Brainiac a hulking brute at the end of that arc, and Morrison has wisely decided to emphasise the more insectile otherness they suggested in the beginning of their story.

We first saw the ship at the end of issue two and, thanks to last issue's glimpse into the (near) future, we know that it will soon become Superman's 'first' Fortress of Solitude.

Page 6 -Later in the issue, Morrison posits Brainiac as the internet gone bad, but his obsessive hoarding of 'Kryptoniana' smacks more of something like comics' grading mafia, the CGC.  They should totally adopt the Collector's "Secure. Seal. Preserve." as a motto.

Page 7 -As noted previously, the yellow sun of Earth's solar system is one of the sources of Superman's powers, or 'super-endowments' if you'd prefer.

I assume Superman can hear the distress call Metropolis Radio are broadcasting from inside the bottle (as 'heard' on the next page), and uses this to make a pun at The Collector's expense.

Page 8 - Though K-MET is, for some reason, a popular name for a Metropolis radio station in Smallville fan-fiction, it doesn't seem to have been mentioned in the comics before.

Page 9 -Metropolis is in the bottle on the far right and Kandor is right in front of Superman in the centre.  Inbetween the two of them is the Kryptonian armour that will soon become Superman's new costume.  Though the cloak in the top centre bottle is reminiscent of the Gallifreyan robes the Time Lords wear in Doctor Who, it doesn't look like Morales has taken the opportunity to fill the rest of the bottles with Easter eggs, which you may or may not consider a good thing.  Saves me some work I suppose...

Does 'Eoeo' mean Krypton in its native tongue I wonder?  As per last issue, I will get around to looking at all of this Kryptonian/Kryptonese soon and see what these words that come up over and over correpsond to.

In keeping with Morrison's long-standing use of insects as an alien 'other' (see also Doom Patrol, The Invisibles, The Filth etc.), the bottles all seem to be infested with tiny (robot) spiders

Page 10 - Back to Jimmy, Lois and Lex inside the bottle.  As previously, New Troy is the central commercial district of Metropolis, and was first named as such when the Superman titles were rebooted post-Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman and John Byrne.  Hobbs Bay was another district named around this time, though it had been featured in the comics since at least the 1970's and was better known by it's nickname, 'Suicide Slum'.

Under The Dome is a 2009 novel by Stephen King, where the residents of a small town in Maine are cut off from the rest of the world by a mysterious invisible dome.  In 2007's Simpsons Movie, Springfield is placed under a giant glass dome by the Environmental Protection Agency.  Hi-jinks ensue.  King was accused in some quarters of cribbing his plot from said Simpsons movie, which he vociferously denied, producing a manuscript he'd written in 1983 about people trapped in an apartment building as proof he'd had the idea first.  Yeah, that didn't make much sense to me either...

The truck Jimmy is nosing around in is carrying the rocket that brought Superman to Earth, as seen in issue three.

"Dwarf star lensing" is how The Atom (also known as Professor Ray Palmer, as mentioned here by Lex) controls his shrinking powers.  Ivy University featured heavily in The All New Atom, an attempt to revitalize The Atom as a viable property that launched out of 2006's post-Infinite Crisis Brave New World one-shot.  Grant Morrison provided the series bible and a number of plot ideas, which were then picked up by series writer Gail Simone.  Morrison clearly has a lot of time for the character and The All New Atom was a fine series, marred by Simone leaving under a cloud and the normally dependable Rick Remender rushing the series to an unsatisfying conclusion. 

Morrison first teased the connection between Brainiac's shrinking technology and The Atom in the Krypton flashback that opened issue three.  You read it here first folks.

Page 12 -Glen Glenmorgan, the corrupt industrialist we first met in issue one of Morrsion's run, is a hotelier as well as a broadcasting magnate and public transport contractor.  He's holed up in his own hotel bar with Officers Zoft and Casey and Inspector Blake of the Metropolis PD and - surprise surprise - the little man from issue one behind the bar.

Lex goes straight for the energy drinks.  It was established in issue two that Lex was in communication with the Collector via his cellphone before the ship reached Earth.

Page 13 - The little man took Glenmorgan's tie after their meeting on the first page of Action Comics #1.  The peculiar ritual-like language he employs here when talking to Glenmorgan brings to mind the, similarly diminutive Man From Another Place from David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks - "Your favourite gum is coming back into style.".  His chat with Glenmorgan here seems to imply some sort of Faustian bargain.

Page 14 - Yod-Colu (or just plain Colu as it's usually referred to), the home of the Computer Tyrants, is generally described as Brainiac's homeworld.  It made its first unnamed appearance in 1964's Superman #167, the famous 'Team of Luthor and Brainiac' story by Edmond Hamilton and Curt Swan, from a plot by teenage fanboy and future comics scribe Cary Bates.  Yod - Hebrew for Iodine -  was given as the name of the planet in a subsequent appearance, but its been consistently Colu since then.  A letter column response had it that Yod is the Coluan's own name for their planet, whilst the rest of the galaxy refers to it as Colu. 

Colu is also home to the Legion of Super Heroes' Brainiac 5, the villains' 30th Century descendant, who, way back in 1966's Adventure Comics #340 built a robot assistant named Computo that went beserk and killed the first Invisible Kid, in a tale by Jerry Seigel and Curt Swan that preceded the first appearance of Marvel's similar Ultron by a good couple of years.

'Noma' is a gangrenous disease that eats through a sufferer's cheek, similar to the infection that Morrison has described at length, in various interviews and in Supergods, that he contracted whilst writing the first volume of The Invisibles.  He also contracted pneumonia at the same time.  His use of Noma and Pnuemenoid here may be a curious throwaway reference to an episode in his life that I'm sure was deeply unpleasant, or it may be a total coincedence.

Bryak is a clever nod to Brainiac's very first appearance in Action Comics #242 where, rather than a malevolent android, he was framed as an alien warlord form the planet Bryak who needed the cities he shrank and bottled to re-populate his devestated homeworld.  This was all revealed as a ruse in his next appearance, the above-mentioned Superman #167, and, up until now, Bryak has never been referenced since.

Page 15 - The idea of Brainiac as the Kryptonian equivalent of the internet - an artificial intelligence that sits at the very heart of the society itself - was first explored in Bruce Timm and Alan Burnett's Superman - The Animated Series.  That version of the character went on to appear in the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited cartoons, and even made an appearance in Static Shock.  Timm - not a fan of the comic book Brainiac but mindful of his status as one of Superman's only premier league foes - tried to re-imagine both the character's appearance and motivations through a Jack Kirby-esque filter.  Morrison has stated in interviews in the past that he's much more a fan of Timm's version of the character than the traditional comic-book version, so the inclusion of the link to Krypton comes as no surprise.

"On Earth... we were Internet" - There's a similarity here to Bronze Age JLA villain The Construct, an artificial intelligence who spontaneously formed out of the electromagnetic waves broadcast from Earth.  The Construct was created by Steve Englehart and Dick Dillin and first appeared in 1977's Justice League of America #142.  I'm convinced The Construct made a throwaway cameo appearance at the beginning of one of Morrison's JLA issues, trapped in some sort of virtual green prison, but I haven't managed to find it yet... Any ideas internet?

Page 16 -In the New 52 DC Universe it seems Superman learns the details of his Kryptonian heritage through this conflict with The Collector, rather than from the ship itself or through some unlikely feat of super-memory, as in the past.  Notice the male and female Kryptonian battle suits in the bottle, alongside one of the Kryptonian robots featured in issue three, which sports the triangular Brainiac device from the various DC animated series' on its front.

Superman's must make a Sophie's Choice-style decision to save Kandor or Metropolis.  Morrison (alongside Mark Millar) also used this plot device in the first arc of their Vampirella run.

Page 17 - 'Condition Null' is presumably the micro-stasis that the Collector goes on to mention.  It seems in this continuity Superman will be the custodian of a Kandor that lies in suspended animation.  The Collector isn't kidding when he says that the truth of Superman's origins lies there either.  As we saw in issue three both his grandmother and his aunt were in Kandor when it was forcibly removed from the planet's surface.

Page 18 - The Collector seems to imply here that some other malevolent force is coming to obliterate the Earth, and that his is an act of mercy; collecting and preserving the last remnants of doomed civilizations.

Page 19 -The implication that there are larger forces at work here - the Collector is targeting his preservation efforts according to 'The Masterlist', a checklist of worlds earmarked for destruction - is reminiscent of the approach to overarching storylines adopted by the revitalized Doctor Who after its return in 2005.  Both former show-runner Russell T. Davies and current Who-Svengali Steven Moffatt favour building the anticipation for a season's climax with the odd line here and there of precisely this nature.  It's especially reminiscent of what Moffatt's tried (with mixed success) to do over the last couple of years of Who with The Silence.

The chronological debut, and de-facto origin, here of Jim Lee's redesigned Superman suit, which seems to have some sort of as-yet undefined unique link to its user as it colours itself in.

Page 20 - So, the Collector is a giant green brain with a robot-insect body and a crazed but no longer mustachioed cyborg riding on its back...  Business as usual in the 'curious re-design decisions' department for Brainiac then. 

As ever questions, comments, additions, corrections or anything else are always welcome.  Next time around its the conclusion of Morrison's first arc as Superman takes on the Collector of Worlds in a final showdown.  Be seeing you!

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