Action Comics #775

In 2001, The Authority was the comicbook du jour. We’ll explore that comic more fully in the not-too-distant future but, in a nutshell, the Authority took the idea of super-powered vigilantism to its extreme. As their name implied, they became the moral arbiter of the world; not ruling it, but not worried concerned with sovereign rules when a threat or injustice reared its head. This type of “superhero” is diametrically opposite a superhero like Superman. As the title of Action Comics #775 says, Superman stands for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, but the quaint relativism and jingoism of that sentiment was all too apparent (if not obviously stated) to comicbook audiences of 2001. A group like the Authority would laugh at such naiveté. But if that sentiment was naïve, and if such sentiments were at the very core of a character like Superman, then what did that say about Superman himself?

Issue 775 was Joe Kelly’s attempt to answer that question. In this issue, Superman confronts the Elite, Kelly’s Authority analogues. It’s amusing to see how Kelly apes the tone of the Authority. He has the Elite, attacking Authority-style level threats (all nods to Japanese Manga which influenced the storytelling of The Authority) and making bombastic statements that they’ll do things their way and not care about the collateral damage (summed up with: “Be good, or we’ll blow your house with a fifty-megaton clod-seeking cluster bomb”—what is “clod-seeking” anyway?). This type of story-telling, with nothing-but-bad-ass-dialogue and gonzo high-concept villains is not Kelly’s normal forte but he does a good job parodying the style. It certainly reinforced the idea of the Elite as cutting-edge and Superman as old-fashioned.

Unfortunately, Kelly deals from a stacked deck. For most of this issue, Superman is behind the curve. He shows up too late to stop one threat; he gets trounced by another before the Elite come in to save the day. When he does stop a threat, the Elite’s leader, Manchester Black, berates him for his solution being a temporary stop-gap as opposed to fixing the problem permanently. This all culminates in a showdown between Superman and the Elite, and at first they wipe the floor with Superman, seemingly obliterating him. Only they didn’t, because right when the Elite appear triumphant, Superman takes them all out with shocking efficiency. Which begs the question: if Superman was that good all along, why did he get his ass kicked for the previous 30-plus pages?

The problem is that Kelly’s argument basically boils down to “Superman is better than the Authority because . . . he’s Superman.” But an argument is, as the philosopher Monty of Python once said, “a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. It isn’t just contradiction.” Kelly spends his time contrasting, but that in itself doesn’t prove why one is better than the other. The closest he comes is when he deals with the topic of killing. Superman’s belief that all life is sacred is certainly a core value, and seemingly diametrically opposed to the Elite’s nonchalant attitude towards killing. But there really isn’t any meaningful discussion of the merits or faults of either viewpoint. Kelly pokes a little around the edges of it a little, using the example of the children who wanted to pretend to be a member of the Elite because it would be “fun to kill bad guys”, but he never gets into the nitty-gritty of discussing the point/counter-point of when is killing justified.

Now, perhaps Action Comics is not the place to begin a frank philosophical discussion on such a topic. But if this issue is Kelly’s answer to the question of whether Superman’s values still mean something in our jaded 21^st century world, why couldn’t he have shown us why instead of just saying “it does”? Why couldn’t we see Superman struggling against the Elite, rallying due to his inner strength, or outsmarting them by tricking them into a scenario where their philosophy backfires?   Superman beats the Elite by . . . well, not holding back.  Kelly plays this off as something noble—Superman can be cruel and relentless but his superior morality means he doesn’t have to. And yet, with both Tripoli and Tokyo devastated by some truly awesome threats, I can only wonder: if Superman is as powerful as the Elite, and can be as ruthless when the need arrives, why couldn’t he have done it sooner and maybe saved civilians on the collateral damage?  Why not take out the Elite as soon as they start fighting? That Superman beats the Elite by tricking them, humiliating them in front of a global audience and then gloats about how much better he is just makes Superman look like . . . like the Elite.

Next Issue: It’s my final post about Superman comics . . . for a little while, anyway. Joe Kelly takes another swing at explaining what makes Superman so great, I take a look at what Superman is like in 2011, and then feel the spirit of ’76, Elseworlds-style.