More of Superman’s early days are explored with some rather intriguing twists once again.
What They Say:
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!
The Review:
With Action Comics still delving into the early career of Superman, Grant Morrison captures a lot of material in the second issue here by jumping to a different event than what we had in the first. Here, though circumstances unexplained, Doctor Lex Luthor has ended on a military base where General Sam Lane has in his possession the Superman himself. And not just for questioning, but chained up like he’s going to be executed by electrocution. Luthor’s got the small group of scientists on hand trying to do experiments on him to figure out who he is but also to enforce his view of things. Interestingly, Luthor knows of a rocket ship that crashed some time ago and he’s intent to prove that Superman is part of it. But he’s also there to try and reinforce the view of Superman that he has that he’s not human, but an alien and an “it” rather than a he. It’s an amusing correction he goes through at times with the others, but even he falls into calling him a he at times which undercuts his case (or is just a missed bit of writing/editing).
What we do learn here is that at least one branch of the military has been working on something called the Steel Soldier program, headed by Dr. Irons with Sergeant Corben slated as its prime candidate. But Luthor believes that program is now dead as they should instead be dissecting Superman in order to figure out how to build “warrior gods” from him. It’s a divisive moment among those involved since Luthor is essentially advocating torture, but not calling it that really since he doesn’t view Superman as human or Earth-born, so things don’t apply to him. We also get to see the other experiment that Luthor is running with Superman’s cape, which is certainly interesting since unlike the rest of his outfit, it can’t be damaged or destroyed no matter what the military is throwing at it at the moment.
This issue does bring in three things that are varying degrees of welcome. The first is that we get to see Lois Lane making her way to the military base to get a jump on the Superman story. Unfortunately, she comes across as a daddy’s girl too much here that feels forced as she tries to get what she wants out of him. The second is we get to see how Superman is still learning about his heritage, and how Luthor may know just a bit more as we see the rocket that’s mentioned and it’s like a light going on in Superman’s eyes. The visual presentation of it is really great as he’s almost like a kid in a candy store with it, showing how it’ll be a game changing event for him. The third, and arguably best part for me, is the ending itself as we see just who it is that’s feeding Luthor information and trying to get its hooks into Superman. I love that this particular villain is brought in at this stage and that it may be instrumental in really cementing Luthor’s hatred and Superman’s rise to public acceptance.
Digital Notes:
This Comixology edition of Action Comics contains three covers to it, with the main one of Superman in the chair by Rags Morales as well as the pencil version of it. In between the two we get a really neat variant done by Ethan Van Sciver where he has Superman against a white background breaking from a series of chains. We also get six pages that has a breakdown of the creation of the first two issues with commentary by Morrison and Morales with the choices they made. Even better is a two page spread with artwork by Gene Ha that teases some of the conceptual designs coming down the road in regards to Krypton. And similar to other second issues, we get an ad at the very end for the second issue of Superman.
In Summary:
I’ve really been very curious and very much dreading the reworking of Superman’s origin story and while I liked aspects of the first issue, the costuming and personality left me even more uncertain. With this issue, it shifts things up to a really intriguing section of the five years earlier storyline with Luthor’s involvement, his first encounter with the ship that may or may not have brought him to Earth and a look at the overarching villain that may be orchestrating things against Superman. There is a lot of ground covered here with some really neat little twists and even Superman’s personality is starting to grow on me more as his captivity here really worked well in getting me closer to him. Between this and the main Superman book in the present, I still haven’t gotten a real handle on who he is, but both of them are making me want to know more about him.
Grade: A-
