Superman & The Authority #3

Superman & The Authority #3 begins with a cinematic opening. Six tall, slender panels neatly enclose June Moone and no one else, and then the camera pulls back, ending with a wide panel bringing her into company. When this ends with a caption – not the first and not the last time that the story has said this – “FORT SUPERMAN” it’s time to notice that there’s a reason why Grant Morrison has rejected the conventional name for this place, because it’s a place for community, almost a home, the headquarters of a team, and in sum, not in any way a fortress of solitude. In fact, the story’s first word performs a similar change in perspective, naming the location of the fortress not “the Arctic” but “Alaska” – not a place defined by barrenness and being uninhabited but a real place with a real name and a population to boot (although it’s a fair bet that Superman’s fortress is more remote than just sitting at the end of a cul-de-sac outside Anchorage). In the meantime, we see June subtly – easy to miss – dress herself by making her clothing levitate and float to her, contradicting the sense from earlier than June is powerless and the Enchantress side of her alone has power (which is subject to wickedness). Along the way, there’s a nod to The Wizard of Oz when June’s recollection of her Hell-dream includes “and you were there.”

Personally, I found the story of June’s peril and subsequent rescue powerful. In a genre where internal conflict is often the struggle between a character and some factor that we can’t relate to, because it doesn’t actually exist (a hex, mind control, a Black Lantern ring), June’s despair stems from guilt. To be sure, her predicament begins with something mystical, but at heart, she is trapped by the feeling that she’s “too weak” and has “done everything wrong.” D’z’amor takes glee in her frailty. Superman’s message? We all make mistakes. Every moment is a fresh opportunity. And Manchester Black’s advice – use your strength, have it be on your side. In a miniseries where the enemies lash out with abusive language as much as with fists and ray-beams, where elements in the story keep mapping onto elements in the real world, I wondered if Morrison had some situations close to home in mind with this scene; either way, as unreal as June’s situation was in the details, the emotions rang true. This scene was interestingly divergent from the famous scene in All-Star Superman #10 when Morrison shows Superman rescuing a girl from suicide not with the powers he gets from Earth’s yellow sun but with caring and understanding and a message of hope. Here, Manchester Black makes the connection to the situation and a “Suicide Hotline” call, but takes a different tack, and Morrison is showing us that Black’s style of pep talk can work, too. In the meantime, Superman dissolves D’z’amor with an argument about good and evil a bit reminiscent of the way Superman defeated Emperor Joker; the Joker could not imagine a world without Batman and, evil as he wants to be, D’z’amor can not truly operate without imagining something good.

When Enchantress has been saved and redeemed, the issue takes off on three new adventures, each of which is unresolved and going badly by the final page. We see that Lightray, moments before she would have been recruited by Apollo and Enchantress, is herself suicidal and is teleported off by Eclipso. The team of Manchester Black, Midnighter, and Steel is blindsided by a quartet of Ultra-Humanite’s team, and is suddenly outnumbered four to two even while a rain of missile-men bombard Dubai. Then, Superman is subdued by the Ultra-Humanite himself, in the form of Ultra’s superior brain in the body of Solomon Grundy – a bit reminiscent of the “Doomsday Wars” story, in which Brainiac’s brain took control of Doomsday’s body. Somehow, the situation in an issue that began with the characters in Hell managed to get much worse – or so it seems.

Thematically, the inclusion of Eclipso interplays interestingly with Apollo and Midnighter – all combinations on dark vs. light – Lightray, and Enchantress who is, like Eclipso, the pairing of a light and dark personality. And, as noted in my commentary of earlier issues, this theme was already evident in the contrasting styles of Superman and Manchester Black and Morrison’s project in this work is one of rehabilitating and redeeming the dark, making Manchester Black a force we can root for, as Apollo and Midnighter are, in their origin, weapons of a villain who have been redeemed. The details of Eclipso’s background have been retconned over the years, and his post-Infinite Frontier nature might be up for grabs; it would not be surprising if Eclipso is defeated not with punches but by some sort of incantation or even argument that nullifies his evil and lets the good / light side take over.

But before Eclipso shows up (such as he does, always cloaked in shadow), Lightray – Lia Nelson – has a gun aimed at her head and we don’t know whether her depression is a consequence of her natural mental state or the influence of Eclipso; her comment that she is “so sad all the time” hints that this may be unrelated to the doings of supervillains. Once again, as with the Nat Irons subplot, the darkness of social media in our real world (our real online world) may be the subject that Morrison is really addressing, not fictional people in tights involved with super science and magic; Lia’s "world that’s falling apart” may be ours.

Overarching the horrifying situation with Ultra-Humanite ready to put his brain into Superman’s body is a single, pregnant detail – before the team split up, Superman told the team that he himself would serve as bait, a hint that being attacked by Ultra is not really a surprise and not really contrary to Superman’s expectations, and his defeat might not be a real defeat. What he says to the team after calling himself “bait,” we don’t see, but we see him subsequently walk through the teleportation portal with the team before being back in the Fortress for Ultra’s attack, indicating that we’ve missed at least two phases of preparation that were almost certainly not irrelevant. This recalls the quick interaction during Apollo and Midnighter’s mission in issue #2, wherein Midnighter announced that he had already determined the certainty of his and Apollo’s victory, but then expressed alarm that their foe was outthinking him, but then it turned out that his confidence was well-founded in the first place. That may foreshadow what is happening here, where Ultra’s belief that he has launched an unbeatable surprise attack seems to be less informed than Superman’s confidence that his seeming vulnerability is merely “bait.”

Whatever happens in the battle, it seems sure that the good guys will win – but what are good guys? This is perhaps the most important question in the miniseries and answering that seems to be the statement that Morrison wants to make as they exit from DC superhero comics. Is Manchester Black a good guy? Obviously, he’s now on Superman’s team and we’re rooting for him. Similarly, Enchantress has suddenly come around from being a wicked nightmare plaguing June Moone but is now, also, on the team. But this series does not simply whitewash the wicked, giving them a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. It also owns up to the imperfections of the good, accepts their faults, and redeems them. Superman’s secret identity was all along, as Ultra-Humanite opines (and as others have throughout the decades) a “lie” from a man who claims never to lie. Superman is, Ultra also observes, no longer required to pose as a paragon of virtue now that his son is taking greater importance. Superman owns up to the weaknesses and faults of his allies in issue #1 – their overconfidence, their underperformance, their failures.

Superman is a character whose history is much bigger than the portion of it in Morrison’s hands, and even Enchantress is a character with considerable definition in the past, so perhaps we learn the most about the miniseries’ message by looking at Lia Nelson, who seems to be all shining beauty goodness and optimism, but aims a gun at her head, proclaiming existential despair hidden from the world. Her birth was celebrated as one of the most special and wonderful ever, but in truth, her parents raged at one another and we learned of their infidelities. These are details fully in Morrison’s control and they’re chosen to package what Morrison is saying about Superman and all the DC “heroes” in this send-off: They’re not perfect and perfection is always just an illusion. What these fictional heroes have to teach us is not that being perfect and spotless is the way to live but that surviving one’s own imperfections is something we can do – as June Moone did in this issue, as Superman is doing in this miniseries, and as Lia Nelson has to do – if she can – in the next issue. Superman’s final message to us, with Morrison penning the words, is not that sunlight can make a man incredibly mighty but that every moment is a fresh opportunity to do something worthwhile.