Superman & The Authority 4

Grant Morrison’s last monthly comic for DC Comics (for now, anyways) begins with a walk down memory lane as the Ultra Humanite asks Superman, “Remember the first time?” I doubt if any of us were reading back then, but it’s in the archives. The first – the very first – superhero–supervillain matchup was between these two, in Action

2021: Ultra-Humanite, Superman, and a Saw

#13, a story that began remarkably ordinary, with a taxi racket (a gang taking out competing taxis and their drivers with violence and other dirty tricks) that surprisingly and strangely ended up being the brainchild of a mad scientist with superhuman intelligence bestowed upon him by “an experiment.” In that story, Ultra strapped Superman to a table and attempted to kill him with a metal saw to the head – the first time that anyone (other than foolish, frustrated gunmen) tried to kill Superman. Morrison lovingly takes us back to 1939, and once again, Ultra’s attempt to saw Superman’s head open fails. Some things never change, hmm? In the present story, Ultra waxes nostalgic over his/her/its other schemes, with references to a purple plague, invisible car, and atomic disintegrator, all stories from the first year of showdowns between Superman and his first supervillain. Remember the “her” I just mentioned? Well, Ultra’s first brain-body swap was with a Hollywood actress, and eighty years before Mac gives us his pronouns in this issue, the Ultra-Humanite was referred to as “she” in a little bit of sci fi gender nonbinary identity.

Soon enough, the homages switch from the Golden Age to the Silver, as Superman and Lois tag-team and provide a shout-out to white kryptonite (the perfect weapon to use against Solomon Grundy’s swamp body). Lois shoots it out of a K-rifle with variant settings and makes a red kryptonite joke when she says that she’s glad she didn’t accidentally use the wrong setting and turn Ultra into something ludicrous and more dangerous. It’s a symphony of old classics – Superman winning a fight with his magnificent strength after not having really lost his powers (not in the same way that I predicted after issue #1, but to the same effect). Then, after Superman brutally wrenches off his enemy’s head (but nobody really dies), he discovers the real mastermind whom we saw speaking in computer-font green speech balloons last issue – Brainiac.

1940: Ultra-Humanite, Superman, and a Saw

A devilish-looking red Brainiac (inexplicably but marvelously in suit and tie, space-monkey on shoulder) and Superman then battle by… talking. All the issue’s main action shows Superman’s superior squad, the new Authority, taking down all the villains  with perfect mismatches (light vs. darkness, magic vs. science, compassion vs. cruelty, and expanded social consciousness vs. a literal Nazi). During a string of wins that eventually becomes as tiresome for Superman as it is noxious to his foes, Superman verbally whips the villains with quips and smirks.

The issue’s – and the series’s – key word occurs after those battles are over: “convince.” For all of the dynamic action with punches, kicks, magic spells, floods of subatomic particles, and flashes of light, from the first pages to the last, the good side ultimately wins more often than not by convincing someone – not necessarily a bad person – of something. Superman convinces Manchester Black to join him. Manchester Black convinces the team to join them. The team convinces Enchantress to save herself. Superman convinces D’z’amor of a contradiction. Apollo convinces Mac that they’re on the same side. Manchester Black convinces Coldcast that he doesn’t want to be on the same side as a Nazi. And ultimately, Superman convinces Brainiac that he is quitting the field of battle, thereby ending the conflict for now. Along the way, Superman becomes convinced that Manchester Black is redeemable, that Siv has good reason to be frustrated with her people’s treatment. The Ultra-Humanite, despite his rage, and Brainiac, despite his predatory goals, both speak of their lofty aspirations to save the planet better than an international council is managing to, and even the villains try to convince humanity of something. With the exception of the aforementioned Nazi, virtually every character in this story exists somewhere on the spectrum between good and evil, including the binary characters of Eclipso and Enchantress and a Superman who is not quite as much of a Boy Scout (ripping the head off his defeated foe) as he once was. This series from the start is about reconciliation, and that’s not just a way to make this four-issue miniseries work: Morrison articulates a vision here of how DC’s future might look thematically, and it’s an important parting message for a DC that has increasingly headlined super-evil versions of its heroes as their marquee titles each month.

And in a world where the characters are trying to convince someone of something, rather than (or in addition to) delivering a beat-down, the battleground becomes one of words, message, and communication, and this is explicit throughout the series and the final issue. It moreover becomes clear that this theme is a comment – an explicit one – on discourse in the real world, on the Internet. Iron Cross whines that his Nazi ideology doesn’t get a fair shake from those who celebrate “free speech.” Manchester Black warns Coldcast that for siding with a Nazi, he might end up “canceled.” Lightray decides to leave social media. Eclipso tries pathetically to convince her that he is famous, and includes “the dark web” among his passions. Can you picture Silver Age Eclipso sitting at a desk looking at a computer screen? Throughout the miniseries, Morrison calls out the toxicity of discourse on the Internet, and it’s a kind of toxin that the superheroes aren’t particularly equipped to solve.

Many of the battles end with reconciliation. with Natasha Irons and Superman offering sympathy for Siv and the Haven, with Midnighter and Fleur de Lis joking about pride parades and financial advice. Only the most evil are beaten down physically, both literally (Ultra-Humanite, Iron Cross) and symbolically (Brainiac) decapitated.

And on that final point, Superman’s declaration to Brainiac, is quite a stunner if we can believe it. Superman tells Brainiac that he doesn’t believe that the two of them will likely cross paths ever again, then ends both the battle and the conversation. Brainiac is confused though Ultra-Humanite seems not to be. Superman wins a point in a battle of minds with this move, but leaving Earth is something that he apparently has to do anyway. And then, in one of the series’s several endings, Ultra-Humanite declares that he will continue the battle against Superman’s son. This is reminiscent of Morrison’s final pages of Batman, Inc. with R’as al Ghul ranting to the camera about his next big plan to attack Batman. That’s a Batman plot that subsequent writers didn’t pick up, nor, likely, was Morrison expecting them to. The point wasn’t that Morrison was to choose the continued direction of Batman as they stepped away from their years of writing, but that the genre does that itself. There’s always a big villain plan coming next; back then, why not R’as and now why not Ultra-Humanite? This is Morrison putting the toys back in the toy box so the next creators can start fresh.

However, like Batman, R.I.P., this story has multiple ending scenes, one after another. And, one of the series’s other endings does tie in with what’s coming next, as Superman’s upcoming mission to Warworld in Action will be scripted by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and that is coordinated with Superman and The Authority… but loosely. Some of the details of the two series don’t quite mesh, but that’s nothing new for Morrison events – think of Aquaman returning in Final Crisis then not really being returned after that event ended. We can look past such tiny details as Superman’s graying temples and the timeline running from Superman’s meeting with JFK up to the story’s present, its hints that the vintage lineup of the JLA had left in defeat, and with the two works being written years apart, acknowledge that the plots match up well enough. At the very least, this issue explicitly mentions the correct issue number of the next Action issue, and the scene where Superman changes back into his classic uniform might be the last detail added – note that the dialogue makes no reference to the costume change while we see it take place in the artwork – that makes this work transition into what’s coming.

Two other plot points may – or very well may not at all – lead into the future of Superman comics. One, the repeated, murky, and in the end never resolved comments about kryptonite may mean that Superman’s departure from Earth has a motive pertaining to kryptonite, even though other titles’ discussion of Superman’s departure don’t include this… or do they? If Superman is gradually weakening, is this perhaps tied to some circumstance on Earth – and might we hope, potentially a reversible one – involving kryptonite specifically on Earth? I don’t think we should be surprised if we eventually get an explanation like that, or on the other hand if we don’t. Plans shift, creators add their own creative details, and the odds are fair that this detail is up in the air rather than being predetermined.

Finally, the issue’s final ending, with Superman revealing a message from the Source Wall’s Uni-Friend (a floating hand of fire, going back to the first issues of Kirby’s New Gods) telling us “Lightray Is.” This is, perhaps, just an extra looming plot, as if Morrison had ended their run with Batman by showing us a big, shadowy plot by R’as and then one by Two Face. The implication is that Lightray, obscure but glamorous character whom Morrison borrowed and then largely reinvented, could have a future role comparable to that of Darkseid. But here we have to remember the original Kirby Lightray, a male New God wearing white. Are the two linked by some sort of cosmic reincarnation? Is this a bigger DC plan that we’ll see in the future, relating, perhaps to all of the references to Great Darkness in Bendis’s LSH? Time will tell. It is a resounding connection with the comics’ past (Kirby dots in the artwork, recycled character name, and all), but may not show up again in the future.

And that’s the same note on which we say goodbye to Grant Morrison. Their goodbye to us was on the last page of The Green Lantern, with Hal’s zooming off into deep space, uncertain destination, symbolic of Morrison’s. Superman and The Authority was written first, but published afterwards, but however you want to think of the sequence of these two stories, whichever is really last, both of these two final Morrison works for DC ends with the superhero taking off into space for a new adventure. This one, like Superman Beyond, ends with the words “To be continued.”

I first picked up a Morrison story in the pages of Legends of the Dark Knight #6, cover date of April 1990. Here we are 31 and a half years later. Morrison will undoubtedly be asked to write some of those features that you see in big anniversary issues, where writers from the past, or even other genres jot off a story some four to eight pages long, something cute and out-of-continuity, and perhaps those will be coming down the road. Perhaps in a few years there’ll be a big rapprochement and DC will get Morrison back for some other “last” major commitment, say, a twelve-issue series about Barry Allen, or Ray Palmer. You can’t predict these things, and retirement announcements, even definitive declarations, have a way of being mutable over time. One way or another, for Superman, for Grant Morrison, for you, and for me: To be continued…