Superman & The Authority #2

Superman & The Authority’s first issue was about two men coming from opposite ideological positions, one of them winning the other over for at least a temporary joining of forces. The second issue takes that same spectrum and turns it into a framing story, with an issue that begins in a kind of heaven and ends in a kind of – or perhaps the very one and only – Hell. Along the way, we see members of the team take on medium-sized threats, with technology as a recurrent threat across both issues.

The first words, “Fort Superman,” hearken back to the Silver Age, not 1963 but 1958, in the title of the classic “The Super-Key to Fort Superman.” That’s about as Silver Age as it gets, and that’s why Morrison chose that phrase, to begin the blend that we see from the squeaky clean to, well, right down to Hell. The moral decline begins as Manchester Black has a transgressive smoke in the Fortress of Solitude and it angers Superman’s squad of Kryptonian robots, but not to the point of their, well, killing Black, as he dares them too.

The second issue is built around a framing story, like many old JSA and JLA stories, where we see the parts of the team in side action (or so it seems) before they finally come together at the end. If you count both issues of the series, we have seen individual sub-teams in action four times, and these four encounters develop a couple of distinctive themes.

First, there is a noteworthy relevance of technology, and in particular networks of computer-linked minds, in three of the stories. First, Superman and Manchester Black face robots from the Phantom Zone – a peculiar twist from the usual setup where good, old-fashioned human (well, Kryptonian) villains escape. Second, Natasha Irons faces off against a particularly sadistic and highly realistic threat from an Internet hive mind with all of social media’s worst characteristics. Third, Midnighter and Apollo confront a beast possessing a network of minds. It is only the fourth confrontation, with June Moone, that differs from the pattern, involving a supernatural threat in character with the character’s history. Perhaps three instances is not enough to infer a pattern, but while artificial intelligence networks don’t make for an absolutely novel threat, it is a bit noticeable to have it come up in three cases out of four.

A more undeniable theme is that of duality, and conflict, between one “bright” personality and one “dark” personality on the side of the heroes. This is absolutely front and center in the scenes showing Superman and Manchester Black, and is moreover downright core to the concept of Midnighter and Apollo. Finally, it is equally apparent with June Moone and Enchantress, to the extent that Enchantress appears to be the villain in that substory. But, again, we have a theme that extends across just three of the four stories which perhaps makes us pay more attention to the one that doesn’t hold… Natasha Irons appears to have no dark counterpart. Still, it is obvious that the entire concept of this team is to bring together characters from opposite poles of the spectrum. It is virtually impossible to describe this series without pointing that out.

SonOfBatmann pointed out in the comments of my last post that Manchester Black, describing his disdain for Superman in the first issue, was serving as a stand-in for fans in the real world. This in fact was core to Joe Kelly’s original story with the Elite. In issue #2, the enemy facing Natasha Irons is even more obviously borrowed from the real world of ours; in fact, it has never been more blatant that the villain in a DC story is a reflection of some of the people who are reading the story (at least, if some sliver of the worst people on social media are also DC fans). Nat’s villains attack her with words and other forms of information rather than physical blows, body-shaming her posterior, insulting her looks, and threatening to send nude photos of her to her grandmother and her boss. And, amusingly, Morrison renders these trolls as literal trolls. She somehow defeats them with the combination of a heavy hammer and sharp words, which is unlikely to solve the same problem in the real world, but then that’s true of all superhero stories, isn’t it?

Midnighter and Apollo happen to be the only original Authority members in the issue, and their story, with the piquant title, “HARD,” begins with the kind of backstory that may be a colorful way of introducing their personalities or may just tie into the bigger story. We won’t know until later. But we see the two go into action and crush their threat so decisively that we have to suspend disbelief that such a formidable pair (and couple) could have existed in Superman’s world without having met him previously. I have to salute the issue’s four artists – whichever is appropriately to credit – in capturing Apollo’s expression with brows that communicate the combination of affection and consternation for his difficult and loyal (perhaps unfaithful?) partner.

Enchantress crossed paths with Superman’s world way back in 1980, as a sort of frenemy to Supergirl in Superman Family #204-205. Here, as there, Enchantress is the real threat in the story, at least while under someone else’s influence. Here, as there, her supernatural archfoe Dzamor (first appearing in the first Enchantress story in 1968) is the big bad behind the scenes. This time, the feeling is distinctly like the film Rosemary’s Baby (also from 1968!), with June Moone a horribly mistreated victim of the evil beings who try to corrupt her. Then, with a satisfying turn for the better, D’z’amor (now the name is spiced up with apostrophes) is punched offscreen by our hero; in what is presumably an oversight in the art, the punch comes from a bare arm, which doesn’t match Superman, Apollo, or anyone else, but is probably from Superman.

The team’s challenge in Hell is foreshadowed in the framing story’s title, “One Soul at a Time,” which out of context would imply a mission of saving sinners in a Christian sense, which makes Superman, in this story, an agent of God. We begin the issue expecting the recruitment of the new team, but at the end, it seems to identify June Moone as the poor soul who needs salvation but will surely end up being a member of the team fighting at their side, at least insofar as the Enchantress “is” June Moone, a tangled identity which is often a pair rather than an individual, which brings us back to the theme of duality among our heroes. Most likely, though (as we can see from the cover), Enchantress will be redeemed rather than eliminated.

The cover also reminds us that the Ultra-Humanite (in his big, white gorilla form) is part of the story, and it’s therefore remarkable that we reach the mini-series’ midpoint without him having done anything but talk in three panels, all the more remarkable in that the heroes (and antiheroes) will enter the third issue facing a threat that is – maybe – not even related to the Ultra-Humanite. The pacing of the mini-series, sadly, already, half over – highlights that it is transitional and more about putting this team together for future adventures than about a single four-issue battle against a single foe.

Perhaps the substory threats are disconnected sideplots, but we’ve seen Morrison before turn those seemingly disconnected elements into one big web. Either way, the Midnighter / Apollo case is full of familiar Morrisonian notes, such as kids with metahuman powers being abducted and utilized as an weapon (Final Crisis) and the genetic / biological engineering of a superpowered henchman (Final Crisis, Batman Inc.). This storyline echoes the origin of Midnighter and Apollo, who were biologically engineered by a villain – Midnighter reminds us, “That’s how they made me” while Black reminds us that Apollo came from a vat – and plainly indicates an unseen Big Bad somewhere offscreen. And if we’re looking for clues on who that might be, consider that the lab in Batman, Inc. – specifically 2011’s Batman: The Return – and in this story were both in Yemen, not a likely location to come up twice by coincidence. Could the person behind the scenes be, if not Talia herself, someone who’s taken over part of her operations?

Another choice element from another time is the Supermobile, which originated in Action Comics #481 in 1978. The in-story motivation was that the light of an exploding red star took away Superman’s powers just when he had to battle Amazo with all of the world’s other superheroes already beaten. The out-of-story motivation was to create a merchandising opportunity for a triple crossover between Superman: The Movie coming out that same year, the comics, and a toy and – yes – I owned one. When Manchester Black calls it Batman envy, he’s psychoanalyzing Superman, but the merchandising people were clearly copying the Batmobile as merchandise (and I owned one of those, too). Here, the Supermobile, like the limited speeds on Superman’s treadmill, reinforce the earlier claim, despite my suspicions of a ruse, we still see signs that Superman is losing his powers and needs any kind of help that he can get.

Now, with the team facing one crisis, recruitment not complete, and the big villain yet to appear in his fourth panel, this miniseries has to have a seriously packed final two issues. If there’s a lingering thread that’s yet to unspool, it’s that the Ultra-Humanite’s hate-filled spiel in the first issue is about Superman’s dishonesty, calling Superman’s double identity and more “lies” and he’s not strictly wrong to do so. When the Ultra-Humanite says that kryptonite will destroy Superman, I think we’re going to see that be about something other than the effects of radiation. In issue #2, Superman talks about atomic bombs having been utilized by idealists. While the first issue showed us Manchester Black being brought over to the light side, there are hints here, besides the black in the chest shield, that Superman’s going to show something of the dark.

Superman & The Authority #1

 

It feels like we’ve been here before, but where is “here”? Grant Morrison’s “Superman & The Authority” is an Elseworlds made of Elseworlds, with several worlds placed into a blender. It’s a world where the Justice Society – sans Superman or Batman – served during World War Two, but Superman is around early in his career to meet President Kennedy… that feels a lot like Darwyn Cooke’s DC: The New Frontier. Superman’s previous go-arounds in this continuity with Manchester Black are possibly much like the ones we saw in Joe Kelly’s issues of Action Comics. Superman tapping Manchester Black to serve on his team is a notion that Kelly entertained, briefly, in 2006’s “Superman, This Is Your Life.” A Superman who has long since retired to the [Ant]arctic, facing unsolvable problems, and wearing black in his shield, is how Kingdom Come begins. And heroes haunted by their failure to prevent the assassination of a President is the premise of Morrison’s The Multiversity: Pax Americana, riffing hard on Alan Moore’s Watchmen. With winks and nods, Morrison tells us that we’re visiting a world a little like all of these but exactly like none of them.

From the start, and befitting the titular characters, Morrison hits us with rapid-fire alternation between optimism and pessimism. The first panel shows the last leaves falling off a tree and a caption that informs us that John F. Kennedy is about to die, while the doomed President speaks of “tomorrow dawning.” Superman asks if Kennedy will need his protection in Dallas. We know that the answer is yes, but Kennedy says “No.” All of Kennedy’s words in 1963 speak of a bright future and limitless potential, but his imminent assassination is just the first of things to go wrong. While JFK’s sunny aspirations give us detailed exposition of the superheroes’ history in this Elseworlds, a few other details check off how this world is and isn’t like the real world of 1963, with the objective of sending astronauts to Mars rather than the Moon before the end of the Sixties, and an ominous reference to ending all wars – a hope that never works out in the real world, and didn’t in this world, either.

Then the framing of the panels tells us that this is the history of this world as seen in newsreels, or – as Manchester Black wakes up – Black’s dream of history, a dream that ends as he is awoken by a police raid that overcomes his considerable abilities.

Morrison has long maintained that Superman is most interesting when he’s strong, which makes one of this issue’s surprises the fact that Superman is now – apparently – physically weak, an unexplained (and misleading?) exact 180° from Kingdom Come. But this Superman is morally as strong as ever we’ve seen, with an optimism that pays off when he is – apparently – able to win the acidic Manchester Black over to his side in a moment of super crisis. I slather on the “apparently”s because I see possible deception everywhere, and in the one panel where we see Superman while Black is unconscious, the hero lands dramatically – and seemingly powerfully, but the artwork keeps that intriguingly ambiguous, with a mighty fist joining his feet in a three-point landing that could project either power or (by Superman standards) weakness.

When Black awakens, he gets the pitch: Superman needs his help. There’s a war, but first there’s a battle. Superman needs Black’s help in a larger sense, a strategic sense, and Black isn’t prone to agree, but first there’s an imminent, urgent and arguably worse crisis with a massive breakout of Phantom Zone robots due to occur in minutes. Again, it feels like possible deception: Superman’s Pollyannaish recruitment speech to Black served only to alienate him, as Superman must have anticipated. The imminent Phantom Zone breakout, on the other hand, was an urgent crisis in which Superman and Black inarguably faced a mutual enemy, and gave Black no time to think the matter through. Black needed either to accept Superman’s pitch, or to reject it and in so doing possibly risk his own life, should the Phantom Zone escapees ravage the entire planet after they’d beaten Superman. And it seems a bit of a coincidence that this singular existential threat would arise “exactly twelve minutes” after Black awakens. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we are to learn that Superman manipulated the situation and showed a bit of deviousness on his own part. In any event, even if the timing were coincidental (and existential threats to the DCU have a way of showing up at least daily if not hourly), the outcome is the same – after Black contemplates, with the minutes that he has left, whether or not he and the Phantom Zone prisoners are on the same side, he chooses to back Superman and, with a savvy nod to the Silver Age, he tries to defeat the escapees with a Kryptonian Thought Beast. Guess when those first appeared in publication: 1963, a year that is brought up over and over again in this issue. Did Morrison choose that 1963 reference knowingly? I don’t know.

I’m also not sure if it was on purpose, when Superman first mentions that year in the present, that Morrison curiously quotes every note of a line from the Eighties Dream Academy song, “Life in a Northern Town”: “In Winter 1963, it felt like the world would freeze, with John F. Kennedy and the Beatles.” This refers to a notoriously severe wave of winter cold that hit the UK in early 1963, when the native Scotland of Morrison, just then turning three years old, had subzero (Fahrenheit!) temperatures. So much is coming together here that ties Morrison’s biography with this story that we should pay careful attention to the author’s place in the story – presumably on a symbolic level. The story features an acerbic, sarcastic, cynical Brit coming face to face with the symbol of American idealism and power. The story begins in the early 1960s. After decades in which things go variously well and poorly, there is a time of reckoning in which the Brit decides just how much he believes in the god-hero of American superheroes, and we can ask, perhaps thumbing through the autobiographical pages of Supergods just how much this story is about where Morrison’s viewpoints, and possibly the world’s current geopolitical status are now in 2021. Perhaps it's Morrison and not Manchester Black who's referencing "Amazing Grace" in asking whether or not Superman can "save a wretch like me."

The plot itself, on the surface, is brimming over with pregnant details and mini-mysteries presented by the shadowy villain who not revealed in the story, but the solicits promise us that he is the Ultra-Humanite, a choice which takes us back to the absolute origin of DC supervillains, and moreover hints at another one-and-done Elseworlds series with an ampersand in its title, Superman & Batman: Generations. All of the little expository details slipping from the dialogue of Superman, Black, and the Ultra-Humanite set the stage wonderfully, as Morrison has done in his Batman run, Action run, 52, and elsewhere, mixing details that are respectively from canon and contrary to canon, freeing the author to tease us with hints, then go back on those teases later, or confirm them as they see fit. Perhaps kryptonite in this reality is nothing like it is in any reality that we’ve seen before. Or perhaps it’s exactly the same. Perhaps Superman really is losing his powers, or perhaps it’s all a big ruse and, like in Kingdom Come, he’s stronger than ever. We just don’t know, but we have to consider both – all – possibilities, which is wonderful.

The title hides one such alternate possibility, which is likely rife with meaning. While Manchester Black was the leader, in Joe Kelly’s DC stories, of a group called The Elite, it was based on Wildstorm Comics’ The Authority; here, Morrison uses the inspiration’s name for, presumably, the version of the group in this reality. But why? Maybe the answer is a superficial “just because” but it makes the title say something that we ought to listen to with common nouns instead of proper nouns: The story is about Superman and the authority (small “a”) that he has. Whether he really has lost his powers or is only pretending to do so, this story clearly brings into question whether or not Superman has authority (small “a”) that comes from his qualities as a leader, as an inspiration, and not simply whether or not Earth’s yellow sun has charged his muscles with incredible power. And that promises a much more interesting story than a title that promises us meditations about Superman and the elite (small “e”).

The Rebirth Antagonist

Some of the comics that came out on August 10 had a familiar feel. They had a familiar sound in the dialogue, too. Compare the following passages:

Action #962, Lex Luthor, speaking of the mysterious craft that brought Doomsday to Metropolis: "This tech is foreign to me. I've worked with nearly every alloy known to man, and I've never seen anything like this before."
Action #962, Superman, speaking of the mysterious men who arrive to take Doomsday away: "With capabilities I haven't seen before. People I haven't seen before."

Superwoman #1, Lois and Lana, speaking of a mysterious laboratory where they encountered a something akin to a female Bizarro: "It's a lab of some kind." "But I've never seen technology like this before."

Flash #4, Meena, speaking of the mysterious lab where they encounter Joseph Carter / Godspeed: "This isn't S.T.A.R. Labs equipment. This is like… no technology I've ever seen."

Not only is the same idea articulated in all of these cases, even the words generally match.

The specific technologies look similar, too. The labs from Superwoman and Flash appear at right, rendered by two different art teams. In both panels, we see a clear cylinder that descends from a metal cylinder and goes down into the floor. There are also incapacitated workers/guards lying on the floor in both cases. This is an eerily similar pair of panels in two comic books released the same week.

Additionally, each of these situations introduces different antagonists who wear generally circular symbols on their chests and have their eyes obscured. They also involve enemies (Doomsday, a Bizarro, and the speed-stealing Godspeed) who duplicate the various heroes' powers. This is time for an obligatory, "Coincidence? I think not."

 

It is moreover worth noting that, as the lackeys in Action are working for Mr. Oz, that those circles may be the letter 'O' rather than an arbitrary design.

We already know that Action and Superwoman are linked – a cameo tied them together. If all of these similarities are not coincidental but design, then Flash is drawn into the intrigue as well. And if Flash is being attacked by the master plan as Superman, we are seeing the beginning of something that has to turn into a major crossover with Mr. Oz as one of the central players. As Superman says as he watches Doomsday being taken away, "Whatever this is, there's something bigger at play."

And what is that something? Early in the Superman-Doomsday battle, Mr. Oz, looking on from afar, says, "Rarely do the pieces fall into place so quickly. Much will be learned. Much will be gained." Later, he says to his telescreens, "Think, Kal-El – What will you do next? Only then can I make my move." What does 'Kal-El' do? He tries many battle tactics, and pursues Doomsday outside of the city, helping to protect his wife and family. None of this stands out as terribly surprising, but it seems to serve Mr. Oz's purpose, who later orders his team to "isolate" Doomsday. Why?

One of the stories in the Action arc is titled, "The Doomsday Protocol." That's a phrase that was used way back in 2005's Action #825. The term referred to a plan to vanquish a Doomsday-level threat by sending such a foe to the Phantom Zone. That appears to be what Mr. Oz is about to do. Why? Did he desire that this battle take place for a while but then end with the villain beaten? Is the plot of Flash showing another facet of the same master design?

It has been much speculated that Mr. Oz is really Ozymandias from Watchmen. There are also subtle hints that he could be Kryptonian: He has access to remarkable technology, he sent New 52 Superman a notebook bearing the 'S' symbols, which is Kryptonian in origin, refers to the current Superman as "Kal-El" and is, perhaps, about to access the Phantom Zone. Regardless of his origins, what is his plan? He has now overseen the destruction of a Lois and a Superman, reducing this universe's number of each from two back to the normal one. Looking like the similarly-robed character Destiny, he seems to be trying to orchestrate things on a grand level. Perhaps he really is Ozymandias and is playing against his erstwhile antagonist Dr. Manhattan as the two of them warp reality in the current DC Universe – That would certainly be, as Superman says, "something bigger."

Action Comics #18

The final installment in Grant Morrison's extended Superman story is like a piece that fit just as it must, in the shape of the hole the unfinished puzzle was missing. Surprises? Not so many. There was no doubt Superman would beat Vyndktvx, and the way he did it, well that didn't matter so much. In fact, what was it? Or did he beat him a thousand times?

For anyone looking to be deeply invested in a linear plot, this multidimensional story about a 5-dimensional villain left them hanging, although the past several issues should have made that clear. The 18-issue run gradually turned more and more into a fractured, postmodernist experience that used science fiction to explain the twisted structure which was about the science fiction it was describing, a self-writing meta story which has been Morrison's vision in his previous Superman works. In that regard, there was nothing new here, and the greatest difference from Action #14-17 and Action #18 is that the cliffhangers all convert into victories, as we knew they must.

To the extent there is a story, it is this: Vyndktvx, being a 5-dimensional being, attacks Superman not just in space but in time; Superman wins when he realizes that from Vyndktvx's perspective, there is only one attack he will ever make against Superman, and by beating him once, Superman beats him many times, and every time. So of the many fronts on which Superman and his allies are fighting Vyndktvx, which of them is crucial? One, all, or none, but Superman's victory is preordained, and as he starts doing stuff to one-up Vyndktvx, it all works at once, ending in a definitive defeat of Vyndktvx, and saving every life that was jeopardized along the way, including those which earlier seemed to have been lost. Does the Legion of Super Heroes' plan succeed? Yes. Did Mrs. Nyxly really die? No, and we see her live happily ever after with Mxyzptlk. Did the little boy and other colonists on Mars die? No, because the one wish Mrs. Nyxly had left was used on something red (Mars) to set them all right again. And of course, Superman and Krypto survived, and there the story ended, like a final panel from the Sixties, with the man and his dog in a definitive happy ending.

And in many ways, it was from the Sixties, and the happy ending was definitive. As with Morrison's Final Crisis, Superman Beyond, and All Star Superman, the story has too many references to serial storytelling structure for us to miss the larger message. The story of Superman isn't a lot of stories. It's basically one story, where the strong and just man defeats evil. From 1938 until the Sixties or so, Superman most stories happened in circular time, time out of time, where everything was always put right back where it started at the end of the story. As a Superman mythology grew, Superman began to live in linear time, with some stories changing his world in significant new ways, with new Kryptonians and other major changes coming along, gradually writing a larger narrative with a beginning and middle... and at last, in 1986, an end. Which led to a new beginning, and recently, another end. Because Superman is still in circular time, and if the circles take 25 years to come around where they started, that's still a circle. Superman Beyond reminded us that Superman's epitaph is "To Be Continued." Action #18 observes that all of Superman's victories are just one victory, and if he has to do the impossible to accomplish them, then the impossible is what has to happen.

The last point repeats a meta observation made in 1987's "The Greatest Hero of Them All", in which that story's Superboy performs a feat that's seemingly impossible, and notes in his death scene that maybe he always could do anything he needed to. Perhaps the most meaningful reference to earlier stories is that the villain here was styled after Doomsday, the villain who killed Superman in 1992, but this time, despite the title of Action #16's story, "The Second Death of Superman", cannot finish the hero off. In an alternate timeline seen in Joe Kelly's 2005 story "This Is Your Life", Superman simply refuses to die in the Doomsday battle, and reflects that for Superman to die points his universe in the wrong direction. Morrison's epic emphatically agrees, and this Superman never dies. Perhaps the choice of Doomsday here is to inoculate the post-Flashpoint Superman from ever having that death story re-told by future writers. As with Morrison's desire to liberate Superman from a commercial, faceless shell (as Vyndktvx says here, with "$" in place of "S"), his power to control the future is limited, but he does make a heroic bid to do right by the Man of Steel with these creative moves in a run that will inevitably be remembered.

In Morrison's Batman run, it was asserted that all of Batman's past eras, as diverse as they were, existed as part of one timeline, and he created a belabored explanation within the story for the many sharp changes in tone between those different eras. In Action, he has an easier time of accomplishing much the same result because Superman's science fiction underpinning makes alternate timelines a straightforward consequence of fifth-dimensional villainy. Morrison has included characters and scenes from 1938, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, the Byrne era, and a plunge from the sky oddly reminiscent of 2006's Superman Returns. Mrs. Nyxly, speaking with a Red-and-Blue Superman from the Nineties (which was itself an echo of an earlier era's "imaginary story") tells this timeline's Superman that he'll never know what he was giving up. Being fifth-dimensional, she knew as we do that the adult Kents have been virtually killed by this reboot. This and other nods to other Superman continuities make it appropriate that fifth-dimensional character were in the forefront in this run, because, as Morrison's Bat-Mite told us, "Imagination is the fifth dimension." Morrison has essentially written a 32-story Superman epic that began in the All Star Superman continuity, continued in the post-Byrne/post-Infinite Crisis continuity, and ended in this post-Flashpoint continuity, but folds all of them together in a way that we, and fifth dimensional characters can see as one. And now we shall see where the next generation of writers take the rebuilt Man of Steel.

Action #17

With next month’s Action #18, Grant Morrison’s run on Superman will come to an end, wrapping up the extended story that redefined DC’s flagship character.

Defining and redefining Superman has been a quagmire for DC over the last 15 years. This was true only three years ago when I expounded on the topic in my review of Geoff Johns’ Superman: Secret Origin #1. That series redefined Superman’s past in a way that summed up changes which had been in progress since Infinite Crisis. It was only to serve as the status quo for two years before being discarded for another, total, reboot. And in fact since then, we have also seen another heavily-sold out-of-continuity Superman origin in J. Michael Straczynski’s Earth One version of Superman, and a fleeting glimpse of a Superman who dies young in DC’s current Earth 2 title. If that’s not confusing enough for fans, the “2” and the “One” in those titles do not serve as part of a sequence, and they are piled on top of earlier Earth Ones and Twos (or 1s and 2s). The nomenclature alone produces vertigo if not nausea. Yet another out-of-continuity story called DC Universe Online (but it was not online) showed yet another Superman for 52 issues.

A new Superman in Grant Morrison’s hands had been long-anticipated. Morrison wrote Superman as part of his Justice League run starting in 1997, and shortly thereafter was part of a pitch called Superman 2000 which did not come to pass. In 2005, Morrison began a 12-issue run on All Star Superman, a fantastically popular mini-siries taking place in its own continuity, which in many ways was a prequel for the Superman we finally saw as part of the 2011 DCnU that is the main continuity of DC’s stories, for now.

With this series at the pause between the penult and ultimate issues, it stands as a single body of work which does not fail to reflect plotlines we’ve seen in all of those other Superman redefinitions mentioned above, a quilted kaleidoscope of stories and storylines which are rehashes of stores we had just seen. Brainiac double-crossing Luthor? Seen it in Online. General Lane directing a US Army plot against Superman and Superman’s tight association with the Legion of Super Heroes? Seen those in Secret Origin and other Geoff Johns stories in then-current continuity. Clark Kent beginning his journalistic career as a poor young man in the slums? Seen it in Earth One. Yet, it is hard to fault Morrison for reworking those almost-current stories: If he avoided every storyline in those several retreads, he would have had to write a story by negation, leaving holes in Superman’s DCnU history just to spite those other works. Morrison did not choose that path, and so we have a maxi-series from Morrison that looks like a blend of half a dozen other recent works.

And that includes Morrison’s own. Morrison’s Action employs elements from his All Star Superman title, including a key role for characters from Mxyzptlk’s Fifth Dimension, which provides the key villain in Action. Morrison has also used the Fifth Dimension in his JLA run and with his use of Bat-Mite in Batman.

Structurally, the run strongly resembles Morrison’s runs on Batman. In Morrison's first run on Batman, in issues #655–681, the hero faces a single dominant threat whose plot is at first hidden, from both the hero and the reader, surfacing in a series of smaller threats, calculated to test the hero without toppling him, before culminating in a final showdown between Doctor Hurt and Batman in Batman R.I.P. Morrison's Action run has a parallel structure, with the Little Man, who appears in the very first panel, proving to be the ultimate victim who confronts Superman directly only in the final issues. Both Doctor Hurt and Vyndktvx make pretensions to be the Devil, using the word "deal" like it's going out of style. Vyndktvx is often drawn three-faced, like Satan in Dante's Inferno. However, while the Batman story was fundamentally the story of a single plot by Doctor Hurt calculated to topple Batman, the Action story is a series of Superman adventures primarily featuring independent menaces, a few of whom Vyndktvx recruits for a single assault. Both stories are spread widely over time. Both wrap the events of much older stories into their telling. Both villains have identities held out as a mystery. Ultimately, The Little Man seen in the very first panel of Action #1 is given a complete backstory in terms of Fifth Dimension intrigue. There is no longer mystery regarding who he is, but we await the ending of a climactic battle, which began to crescendo in the final pages of Action #14.

The references to past Superman stories, both prominent and obscure, are more numerous than I will attempt to catalog here. Characters originating in Superman stories from every era from the Thirties through the Nineties have appeared in passing and in the foreground. I will mention, instead of the smaller facets, three larger stories that have impacted the narrative here in a very central way.

At the end of the pre-COIE era, two stories were published the same month wrapping up the pre-Byrne Superman. Both of these stories, on the surface unrelated, depicted a suddenly evil Mr. Mxyzptlk as the villain. By far the more famous of the two, Alan Moore's Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow? also had the structure of a larger villain (Mxyzptlk) throwing secondary menaces (as great as Luthor and Brainiac) at Superman before the hero and villain took each other down in a battle that undid them both, in different ways. A less well-known story by Steve Gerber in DC Comics Presents #97 showed a Mxyzptlk who had been punished by his own kind and who merged with the Phantom Zone and its villains before attacking Superman one last time. In this story, Mxyzptlk achieves a tactical and strategic victory, apparently poisoning the Earth with kryptonite (with the added horror of Argo City's dead bodies showering out of the sky), then leaving a defeated Superman behind in what was, technically, the last moments we saw of the pre-Byrne continuity. Morrison has based his run, thematically, where pre-Crisis continuity ended, with a new Fifth Dimensional villain posing the ultimate threat to Superman, so that Mxyzptlk's inherently benevolent nature can be preserved for future stories. By utilizing the same thematic menace as that of Moore's story, Morrison may be giving Superman a chance to face that threat that ended "him" before, and overcome it, just as he is with the Doomsday threat from yet another continuity. It will be interesting to see if the final issue makes more explicit reference to WHTTMOT?

A subsequent work, mending the pre- and post- Crisis worlds from the other side of the divide, Keith Giffen's run on the Legion of Superheroes dealt with the gaping hole in continuity that the LSH had been inspired by Superboy, but in the Byrne run, there had never been a Superboy. We promptly saw the emergence of another "Earth", the Pocket Universe, which led to Byrne's Superman going through a spiritual ordeal after killing that Universe's Phantom Zone villains. More germane to the present run, Giffen rebooted the LSH not once but several times in rapid succession, with the Legionnaires deliberately rebooting their own timeline to undo histories where one of their villains had triumphed as the undisputed master of the 30th Century. The Time Trapper, Mordru, and Glorith all have the capacity to become dictators of the Legion's universe, and so they reboot the universe until they create a timeline where a "Balance of Powers" leaves a free universe in which the LSH battles these villains, neutralizing them. In Action #17, Morrison seems to utilize the very same idea when the Legionnaires plan to "wipe out [their] entire history" and thus save Superman's life as well as "stop the rise of Universo." Morrison puts the LSH here in the same predicament they faced in Giffen's multiple timelines; this is, incidentally, a device he also used in his JLA story Rock of Ages where heroes overcome a despot villain's rule not by defeating him per se but by rebooting the timeline so that the victory by Darkseid never happened.

Another story serving as the template for this one is Morrison's own Final Crisis and its related crossover, Superman Beyond. The title page of Action #17, like the last page of Action #16, shows the Super-Doomsday creature poised to kill Superman just as the first page of Superman Beyond shows a flash-forward to the fateful battle between Superman and Mandrakk. Like the Bane Batman from Batman #664-665, it shows a meld of the hero with the Nineties villain who broke him. The creature incorporates elements of Mandrakk, the Nineties Doomsday with the armor Superman of Superman Beyond, the evil Superman from Morrison's Animal Man, and more generally every anti-Superman we've seen over the decades. Picking up the theme of Final Crisis as a story about story, the Super-Doomsday creature refers to itself as a "franchise", in a fourth-wall reference to itself as an alternate character that strives to defeat the DCnU Superman. It is a "thought" that we first saw in Action #9, where the Lois Lane of its parallel universe defines to it as the product of selling out, of a Superman "brand" designed by experts to have "maximum cross-spectrum, wide-platform appeal, a violent, troubled, faceless anti-hero... a global marketing icon." It sounds like Morrison has a very specific villain in mind, something that Warner Brothers might be creating and incorporating into video games right now.

In every aspect of this run, we see a Morrison trademark: postmodernism rendered in the terms of the comic genre. In his Batman run, Morrison delivered unconventional narratives that were explained in the story with Batman-appropriate devices such as hallucinogens and brainwashing. Here, as in JLA, All Star Superman and Superman Beyond, Morrison accomplishes the same postmodernist storytelling through Superman-appropriate devices such as time travel and multiple dimensions. The reader's experience, either way, is one of unreliable narration and dramatic irony. The vehicle for creating this is specific to the hero, and ties in with a heritage from past decades when postmodernism was not the aim.

As with Final Crisis and Batman: RIP, the jump-cuts in narration may detract from many readers' enjoyment. In what now makes four consecutive issues, we have seen a cliffhanger with the first two simply put aside as the story picks up in the next issue. As the structure is so heavily borrowed from other Morrison stories, and the conventional payoffs blunted by his sleight of hand, the story is not likely to be remembered as a fan favorite nor as one of his milestones. What is most admirable here is that he worked his tricks, in many ways familiar and well-worn, in ways so specific to this particular character.

On two other levels, the story works assiduously and brilliantly to serve red meat to the fans: It does, after all, reboot Superman in ways that many fans yearned for. It overturns many aspects of the past continuity that overstayed their welcome. Perhaps to greater effect, it shows Morrison's gift for the flourish, the moment of perfection. When miniaturized Luthor looks out of shrunken Metropolis and sees Superman's symbol looming outside the jar, to the call "Look, up in the sky!" Morrison shows Superman winning every way at once. Inasmuch as Morrison has shown that he will let threads drop (or hang), we see Clark's vow to his father to wage a battle for justice.

In what is the final cliffhanger of Morrison's run, just as Super-Doomsday is about to kill Superman, Luthor arrives, saying "Nobody kills Superman but Lex Luthor!" If this seems familiar, it is not an accident. The very first monthly issue of John Byrne's run, in Superman Vol. 2 #1, ends with Metallo about to kill Superman when Metallo is suddenly teleported away. This is explained in #2 when Luthor says, "Of course I stopped you, Metallo. The killing of Superman is a pleasure reserved for myself."

The Morrison run in Action will have a lasting impact. It will serve as the definition of Superman's origin for untold years to come. And it is such an intricate story, it will be a work worth studying. It remains to be seen how much, in conventional terms as a comic, it will be enjoyed. While it is certain that Superman will, with help, triumph over Vyndktvx and Super-Doomsday, it is less clear that Morrison will triumph unconditionally over the commercial Superman that Super-Doomsday represents.

Action Comics #1

Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Yes, it's all there, and not by coincidence. The second Action Comics #1 visually-checks numerous elements of Superman lore without always name-checking them. And so, we get references to the Thirties in the form of the wife-beater who is thrown through a wall, the poor tenants who have their homes destroyed, and even (Neo) Nazis. We get a nod to the 1978 movie when Superman is asked if he can do something and he says he's never tried. From later eras, we see a photo of the deceased Kents, Jimmy Olsen holding a device that emits a zee zee zee, and of course, Lois Lane putting herself at risk and needing to be saved. Grant Morrison is aware of the elements he wanted to include, but unlike the Superman he portrays, he doesn't want to beat anyone over the head with them.

And conscious as he is of the little touches, he begins on page 1 by showing Superman overshoot his intended target. The seemingly countless elements of Superman lore that Morrison includes make it important to note which ones he avoids. This is not the Superman who is so used to holding back that he has forgotten what it is like to go all out. This Superman is going all out, frequently, and he's a bit of a bull in a china shop.

The china happens to be the powerful and the corrupt, who include Glen Glenmorgan, the Army of Sam Lane, and a Lex Luthor who is not a fugitive, but far from law-abiding, and whose use of electricity to stun, but not stop, Superman, channels the Ultra-Humanite from Action #13. Glenmorgan merges together in one person several powerful men whom Superman harassed in 1938's Action, including a magnate who is promoting arms in order to sell armaments and a mine owner who subjected his workers to unsafe conditions. He may also be based on Morgan Edge, as the owner of Galaxy, and the Earthly liaision of Intergang, and therefore of Darkseid. This, then plays on the Darkseid plot in JLA #1, and suggests that the matchup we saw in Final Crisis that nearly ended the last DC Universe is at the forefront as we begin this one.

Morrison excels in teasing future plots, and while the main action in Action #1 concerns Sam Lane and Luthor teaming to trap Superman (as in the recently out-of-continuity Superman Secret Origin) while the threat of Intergang looms, there is more. An object entering the solar system from afar is sure to be the focus of another plot. The diction resembles that used of the kryptonite asteroid from Jeph Loeb's Superman/Batman, but this could be just about any interplanetary friend or (more likely) foe. Clark Kent's landlady has a name that suggests the Fifth Dimension. The three friends -- two men and a beautiful blonde -- visiting Clark are almost certainly the Legion of Super Heroes. And as Clark now works for an editor named Taylor, he is probably at the Daily Star, which may go out of business if it is, as stars normally are, part of Galaxy. That would mean that by taking down Glenmorgan, Superman is taking down Clark Kent's boss. And the little man turning the tables is what Action #1 was all about. Both Action #1s.