Art Imititating Art

Joining the ranks of Captain America's death, Spider-Man's (temporary, as it turned out) public unmasking, and Barry "Silver Age Flash" Allen's return from the dead, we now have this week's Action Comics # 870 (cover shown here). For those who don't want to know any more, stay away from various news sources who are reporting the story this week... and stop reading now!

We'll get back to what had Superman comics in the news this week, but first I want to ramble on a bit about the 5-part "Brainiac" storyline that this issue wrapped up (and provide a little more spoiler space for those who didn't heed my warning up above).

In a word: Wow! There was such a palpable sense of terror in this arc, especially thanks to the way Johns used Supergirl and the fact that she knew of Brainiac from her days in Argo City (after Krypton was destroyed). I absolutely loved the atmosphere created by just how terrified she was of what was going to happen, and based on what we saw over the last few issues: with good reason! Here's a great exchange between cousins Kal-El and Kara Zor-El on that very topic, as Superman tries to convince his fellow Kryptonian survivor to save the Earth from Brainiac's attempt to cause our sun to go supernova while he dealt with the villain himself:

Kara: I-I'm not fast enough.

Kal: Yes, you are.

Kara: I can't do it.

Kal: Yes, you can.

Kara: I'm scared.

Kal: It's okay to be scared.

And then she flies off to save the day, with more determination and maturity than we'd frankly seen out of the character since they revived her several years ago.

This was also new and refreshing take on Brainiac, although incorporating elements from the past fifty years or so, not the least of which is his modus operandi of shrinking alien cities and putting them in bottles! Recent Superman lore has added the wrinkle that ol' Brainy then destroys the planet from which he stole the city, but that's just cuz we're all grim and gritty these days, don'tcha know!

All in all, this was a marvelous arc, even better than the Legion of Super-Heroes tale that preceded it. The seriousness of just what a threat Brainiac posed was really accented in # 870's final pages, though, with the death of Jonathan "Pa" Kent (as the result of a heart attack when Brainiac attacked the Kent farm). That's right, following in the footsteps of the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie, the Smallville TV show, and others, writer Geoff Johns this week killed off Superman's Earthly foster father. In the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths mythology, Ma and Pa had both died when Clark was still a teen (Superboy), and the adult version of the Man of Steel had had to soldier on without any parents (Earthly or Kryptonian) to further guide him. With this latest development, the post-Crisis Kal-El is now done to one.

So, how do I feel about all of this? Well, I'll miss Pa Kent, to be sure, but the character had been used rather sparingly of late anyway. More worrisome to me, though, is Johns' tendency to idolize those 1970s Superman movies in his work of late. Sure, he's a good friend and former assistant to the director of the first and (uncredited) second film (Richard Donner), and it's kind of touching that Action Comics artist Gary Frank draws Clark/Superman just like Christopher Reeve, but do we have to re-tread that material yet again? Bad enough that Brian Singer turned 2006's Superman Returns into a love letter to the first two films... do we need to do the same to the flagship comic title? As Boneman said to me today, all we need now is for Superman in the comics to fly around the world really fast and turn time backwards! Enough looking backwards already!

Still, I'm a big enough fan of Geoff Johns (and Gary Frank) that I'll get past any reservations I have about the nostalgia angle. Right now, Action Comics is probably better than it's been in... well, practically forever! And that's a very good thing, especially for the title that started it all!

Post-script: I forgot to mention above that the reason Superman wasn't able to hear his foster mother's anguished cries as her husband fell to the ground was that his ears were being assailed by the sounds of Kandor, "Krypton's bottled city," being restored to full size somewhere in the Arctic. Interesting use of irony there by Johns, as the former "Last Son of Krypton" is occupied witnessing a hundred thousand actual relatives of his (the same species, at least) getting a new lease on life and freedom at the same time as one of those closest to him, but no blood relation, loses his own life. And yes, that means there are now going to be thousands of super-powered Kryptonians running wild on the Earth... at least for awhile!