Superman! That's Right... Superman!

Welcome everyone to another John Garrett Stuff newsletter!

This is another comics related issue, but before I get to that stuff, I'm going to give a minor life update.

CAR WARS

The last couple of weeks of my life has been consumed with buying a new car. And by "new", I mean "new to me". I can't afford a new car in the current U.S. market.

To be able to get a brand new car you have to be as rich as Tony Stark combined with Bruce Wayne and... well who else is rich in the comics? I don't know… Iron Fist! Yeah, that works.

But anyway, I finally got something I could afford without also having to live in it, so now I can safely resume my practice of paying for a conveyance which I use primarily to take me to a place I don't actually want to go to... my day job.

Ahh, the vagaries of life and the Human condition.

Hey, you guys know which comic character doesn't have to worry about having a car...

... Superman, that's who!

I know that segue was pretty tortured, but I'm struggling here give a guy a break...

ACTION COMICS #1059 REVIEW (and other Superman thoughts)

So. Where to begin?

First, let me just put my thoughts on Superman as a character out there.

I really like the idea and the character of Superman. This is a guy who could take over everything, or at the very least disregard all the rules of society and just take and do whatever he wanted.

Instead, he mostly binds himself with the rules of society (obviously ignoring any laws that forbid vigilantism) and devotes his life to helping people.

That’s pretty cool to me.

However, I feel as if he's rarely written in a way that lives up to the potential of Superman.

Therefore, I only rarely buy Superman or Action Comics, because I either find them boring or frustrating to read.

This particular comic was a bit of both. Which again, is why I don’t buy these regularly, but every once in awhile I check back in with characters I'm not currently reading in case there's anything I should be seeing.

Here’s DC Comics’ solicitation blurb for this issue:

As the forces of Norah Stone’s Blue Earth take control of Metropolis, Superman dusts off his Warworld weapons and armors up alongside Steel to take their city back! Can even the House of El defeat this potent new threat? Meanwhile, the shocking true identities of Norah Stone’s mysterious family are revealed, building to a battle royale for the ages! A pivotal issue not to be missed!

Ok, it's got Steel in it - a character I like a lot, who I even did a drawing and 3D rendering of back in the day, I'll post those here.

So Steel being in the comic is a good reason for me to check it out. And also I see Superman wearing a suit of armor. What's that about? Why does Superman need armor?

It reminds me of the "New 52" revamp from over 10 years back where they put Superman in some armor and it didn't quite make sense.

But what about this specific issue?

Well, to recap (spoilers abound ahead, so be warned):

The comic opens up with some criminals corralled by members of "Blue Earth", which appears to be some kind of bigoted organization that is opposing illegal alien immigrants from settling on Earth. Apparently there are many refugees from Warworld now looking to relocate to Earth.

The story seems to be made to resonate with current immigration issues in the U.S. and worldwide.

And while I'm not up on the current Warworld story, Warworld itself is a long running staple of Superman's mythos that is ruled by his enemy Mongul (there's been a couple of Mongul's over time).

Anyway, the Blue Earth guys are prepared to use lethal force against criminals, until Steel and armored Superman show up to stop them and protect the criminals.

The Blue Earth force say something about draining Superman's powers and taking them for themselves, and now we see why Superman is in that suit of armor. The Blue Earth guys literally have his powers.

The two heroes are about to get beat up, when the cavalry arrives - a whole GANG of Super-people who for some reason decided to hang back and let de-powered Superman and Steel possibly be killed.

The sight of all the super-people kind of shocked me. I obviously knew Supergirl, and then Jonathan Kent, Superman's son. I even knew Kong Kenan, the Superman from China - he's not Kryptonian, but somehow got Superman-level powers from receiving an infusion of Superman's life force (I know, I know, but it's a comic so just go with it). But the two smaller kids I didn't know. I didn't like the inclusion of the kids in here, and I'm not sure how exactly they were introduced.

To be honest, the only actual children (not teenagers) I ever liked in comics were Power Pack from back in the 80's. Aside from that they could be left out as far as I'm concerned.

But back to Action Comics -in the rest of the issue, we see further attempts to re-power Superman, Supergirl saying she feels weaker (I assume she's the next to be drained of her powers), the kids horsing around, and a lot of political maneuvering to stop the leader of Blue Earth, a woman named Norah Stone.

We come to find out that Norah Stone is the daughter of Batman and Talia Al'Ghul (daughter of Ra’s Al’Ghul), except she’s from another universe. The editor drops a note saying that she appeared in the Batman/Superman: The Authority Special, a crossover with the comic The Authority, which was actually pretty darn good. I gotta see if I can find that special...

No idea why Norah is so hellbent on harming our heroes, but as a last act in the comic, she straight up steals one of the Super-kids and it looks like she needs her for some kind of ritual.

The next-time blurb at the end of the comic says John Constantine (aka Hellblazer) and The Demon will be appearing in the next issue, so if that doesn't scream magic, then nothing does.

However, I will not be sticking around to see how this story turns out.

THOUGHTS ON THIS ISSUE

First let me say that Superman is a tough, tough character to write for. Someone that powerful has very few legit threats.

Your only options are:

1. Make the bad guy so tough that even Superman can't win (Doomsday, The Parasite - can't do this too often)

2. Make the bad guys so smart they can offset Superman's abilities (Lex Luthor, Brainiac - writer has to be extra clever)

3. Put someone else in danger (Lois Lane or Jimmy - gets really old)

4. Use kryponite or magic (feels kind of cheap)

5. De-power Superman (ugh)

We got option 5 here. Man, I hate when they do this.

You always have to think "If Superman had his powers, this whole thing would be over already"

Which in this case then begs the question, why doesn't Supergirl just handle it?

A lot has been made of Supergirl being stronger than Superman due to the way that female Kryptonians process sunlight more efficiently than the males.

It took Superman until he was in his early teens to begin gaining his abilities. It took Supergirl literally hours, maybe even minutes before she did.

Oh, right, she's being de-powered too. Although you’d think it would be more difficult to drain her powers.

Not that it matters, the way the story is going my guess is she'll be in a suit of armor in one or two more issues.

But the thing that really struck me was the fact that all those Super-people were just hanging out in Metropolis anyway.

Don't you guys have somewhere else to be?

There's horrible things going down all across the world at all times. To have that concentration of "Supers" in that one city is not only irresponsible, but somewhat shameful and disgraceful.

I know what you're thinking... "but John, they can move at the speed of light, they can be anywhere on the planet!"

Well, why aren't they anywhere? Anywhere but Metropolis. Even if they live in Metropolis, they should get up in the morning and immediately leave town looking for trouble that other heroes can't deal with, because Superman has Metropolis covered.

Instead these guys are sitting around having family time, laughing and joking while who knows what kind of bad stuff is going down around the world.

I've noticed that this whole "family" thing has become a staple of recent comics, especially on the DC side of things.

First we have the Super-Family, then Batman has a veritable legion of followers, most of which are his actual adopted family.

If it's not Nightwing (Dick Grayson the original Robin), it's Damian Wayne (Batman's biological son who is now Robin), or it's Tim Drake's Red Robin, and if it's not Red Robin, it's Jason Todd's Red Hood and if not him then it's The Signal (Duke Thomas, a young black kid Bruce dragged into his orbit).

The Flash (Wally West), has actual kids, and even Green Arrow has a "family" of sorts, so there's no escape.

The bottom line is it doesn't matter if you just bought a solo hero's book, you WILL be reading a team book, so just deal with it.

ALL TALK, NO ACTION

So with my complaining out of the way, what is to be done?

In my opinion, the main problem with Superman these days is that he's weighed down by a literary avalanche of useless, boring, space-wasting supporting characters.

The biggest offender is of course, Lois Lane, Superman's wife. But she's followed closely by loser characters like Jimmy Olsen, who hasn't been interesting since... well, ever. And anyone else who's working at the Daily Planet. Perry White was always rather boring, compared to his counterpart J. Jonah Jameson over at Marvel's Daily Bugle.

To add insult to injury, now these new children, including Superman and Lois’ biological son Jonathan, are also wasting space.

If I was magically given the job of writing Superman, all those characters would disappear. I wouldn't kill them (if I did, they'd just come back to life a year later), but I'd simply fade them into the background.

If they must be married, every once in awhile I'd end a story with Clark coming home to domestic bliss with Lois, but she would only get a few blurbs of dialogue.

Jonathan Kent can go off into his own book and not take up valuable real estate in Superman's comic (Jonathan actually does go by 'Superman', just to confuse things. There's another distinct character, Conner Kent, going by Superboy who was not in this issue. Which was too bad, because I actually like him).

Moving on, those two smaller kids would discover that they have relatives somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away like the Vega system with The Omega Men or something, and they'd leave Earth.

Then Supergirl could go off into her own comic and leave this one alone.

That would leave just Superman to have cool, interesting adventures without the Super-Family hanging around and cramping his style.

As for the type of stories I'd write, I loved the stories by one of my favorite writer-artists, John Byrne, starting from back in 1986 with the Man of Steel limited series and moving into the Action and Superman comics.

There was a new threat every issue, and none of those 6-issue story arcs like now. Check this out:

Man, just look at those covers. They really make you want to read those comics!

And back then, the vast majority of the stories were contained to one issue, so you could jump right in and immediately know what’s going on, unlike the current book discussed here.

Nowadays they need these stories in at least 6-issue arcs so they can repackage them and sell them again as trade paperbacks. I understand why, but it can be a hindrance to onboarding new fans.

Regardless, in my stories, the Daily Planet would never get more than one page of story if I could help it.

Maybe that kind of writing can't survive now, but something has to be done, because this particular iteration of Superman is one that I find myself recoiling from.

I don't know what the actual sales are, but if we look here:

https://www.comicbookrevolution.com/october-2023-single-issue-comic-book-sales-rankings/#superman

we see that the previous issue of Action (1058) was #64 overall of the month of October.

Superman #7 was in the #10 spot, so it scored a top ten position, however that issue was a big deal as it was actually Superman #850 in real time, and had some extra content packed in and 9 variant covers along with it. So they kind of cheated there.

DAWN OF DC

If you examined that Action Comics 1059 cover closer you saw a banner at the top that states "Dawn of DC".

Ok what the heck is that??

Well, this is DC's attempt to bring a lot of younger heroes to the forefront and tell some lighter tales. This link explains the whole shebang.

https://www.dc.com/blog/2022/11/18/dawn-of-dc-starts-in-january-2023

Here's a blurb from that link:

DC Comics is embarking on a yearlong storytelling initiative: Dawn of DC. Following the events of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths and DC Universe: Lazarus Planet, the world’s superheroes have emerged from the biggest, most devastating battles of their lives and are reinvigorated in their fights against evil. With epic new storylines, over 20 exciting new titles, superstar creative teams, and villains that will push the heroes beyond their limits in bold adventures, this line-wide, multievent narrative initiative kicks off with January’s Action Comics #1051.

All year long, DC will be celebrating the classic characters while also embracing the next generation of new heroes, as we’re going to need everyone to help fight against the darkness. Dawn of DC will shine the spotlight on a number of fan-favorite superheroes and super-villains that haven’t been front and center for some time.

Oh.

I suppose I should have read Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths and DC Universe: Lazarus Planet, but these days I tend to recoil in horror from these huge crossovers. When every event is the biggest, most horrible threat ever it kind of desensitizes you from the danger, and you lose the engagement with the characters.

In the same vein, I similarly try to avoid the younger heroes as well. I just don't think DC (or Marvel) have done a good job at making these characters compelling, so I feel they can be safely ignored.

BACK IN ACTION

Speaking of ignoring super-kids, that brings me back to this issue of Action Comics.

I have to say while I don't think it's in any way badly written, what they have chosen to focus on and write about I find to be fairly boring.

So I wouldn't pick up the next issue of Action Comics or any current issues of Superman, since it's obviously going to be jam packed with characters that I don't care about.

I would not recommend reading this either. You’d have to read a lot of previous material to understand it.

These stories are for the completionists out there, those people who have been collecting Superman for a long time and will continue to do so because that is what they have always done.

Now I know this newsletter is a bit more negative than my usual tone, but this issue got under my skin, and not in a good way, so I felt I had to write about it.

Still, it's not all bad. In fact it could be a lot worse...

...we could be reading about The Fantastic Four.

Let that sink in.

Well that will bring us to the end of this issue, let me know your thoughts if you actually read this comic, or even if you didn't I'm always down to discuss comic stuff.

Take care all and I'll see you in the next newsletter!

-John G