Action Comics 800, 900

I like round numbers. In my review of Action Comics #600 I talked about the importance of milestone issues, how impressive and difficult it is for a title to reach 100 or 200 consecutive issues, to say nothing of 600. It had taken 50 years to reach that milestone, and another 15 years to reach #800. A lot had happened in the 15 years since then. In those intervening years, Superman had died and lived to tell the tale, had gotten married, and had much of the Silver Age trappings restored to his mythology. For the comicbook industry, it had seen the end of newsstand sales and the implosion of the direct market, with sales mere fractions of what it had been less than a generation before. And for me, I grew up, went to college, became an adult, and quit comics.

Quitting comics was mostly, though not entirely, a financial decision. I had lost my job in the Spring of ’02 and the job I found afterwards was paid significantly less money. Suddenly my $40 a week habit was a luxury I could no longer afford.  But I had also been culling the number of titles I was collecting throughout 2002. If my inventory database is to believed, I had reduced my comicbook buying by over 40% over the course of 2002. As these last few reviews can attest, there was a growing dissatisfaction with the stories being told --or at least in the stories being told in the comics I read. As I reach the titles I was collecting up until I stopped, I’m sure I’ll start to poke at the why’s and wherefore’s of this.  But for the moment I’m content to simply acknowledge that whatever satisfaction I was getting from comics was no longer enough for me.

But the truth is I’ve never quit comics completely. Yes, the weekly buying is gone, but I’m still picking up the occasional trade paperback, still browsing Wikipedia and various comicbook web sites to keep at least somewhat informed of the latest twists and turns. And every once and a while something happens that gets me into a comicbook store to buy an actual single issue. In 2003, that something was the 800^th issue of Action Comics. 

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?

Action Comics 760 - 766, 769 -770

It’s been over two weeks since I started writing this entry. I still can’t figure out why I can’t say anything about these issues, although the three rough drafts suggest that there is something to say, even if’s to provide an excuse to italicize as many words as possible. There seem to be three threads running through these drafts. Let me summarize them:

1. Explaining why I would begin collecting a comic after I had stopped collecting it.
2. Explaining the editorial shift in the Superman comics circa 1999.
3. Analyzing the relationship between Superman and Wonder Woman. Again.

Action Comics 710 – 717

In issue 711, at the climax of “The Death of Clark Kent”, when Superman confronts Conduit, he does something very dramatic: Superman takes off his costume, offering to fight his enemy not as Superman but as Clark Kent. After all, Conduit is really Kenny Braverman (subtle, huh?), Clarks childhood friend. It is Clark that Kenny has grown to hate; it is Clark’s life that Kenny has been systematically attacking for the last two months worth of comicbooks. It’s a powerful moment, as it clearly illustrates that there is a difference between Superman and Clark Kent. Except everything else in this story, as well as what follows, shows there’s no difference between the two at all.

Action Comics 701 – 703, 0, 704 – 709

What if each issue of Action Comics really was a month in the life of Superman? It would mean his life would be like this:

May: Stop Lex from using Kryptonian battle suit to ruin city

June: Fight Bloodsport on a bridge

July: Participate in semi-annual DC Universe cross-over event; meet an alternate-timeline version of parents; watch the universe get destroyed (again).

August: Fight old home-town friend now out to kill me

September: Track down Eradicator because I think he’s making me crazy

October: Continue to go insane; steal a body from S.T.A.R. Labs and fight the Special Crimes Unit.

November: Let Supergirl take the spotlight while I share a plane ride with Perry White

December: Fight hi-tech ninja but finish in time to spend New Years with Lois

January: Get caught in a trap with Mr. Miracle

February: Fight a possessed Guy Gardner

Whew. No wonder they needed skip weeks.

Action Comics 692 – 700

Now that I’ve read the next eight issues of Action, after being significantly bummed out from reading the “Reign of the Supermen” stories, I’m now feeling a little more confident in the decisions my 18-year-old self made. Granted, deciding to collect (or not to collect) a comicbook isn’t exactly on the same scale of decision-making as, say, what college to go to, or what career path to take. But if my run of Action Comics were to be an encapsulation of my collection in total, based off my reaction to the last batch of issues I reviewed, it would be disconcerting to think the majority of my collection would be something that doesn’t hold up to more adult scrutability. This isn’t to say these eight issues are shining examples of the best the medium has to offer, but much like A. Bizarro, I found them to be (mostly) enjoyable for what they are: fun, slightly breezy, entertainment.
 

Action Comics 687 - 691

I’m back! And so is Superman! Or should I say: so are the Supermen! It’s the “Reign of the Supermen” storyline and it truly is raining Superman. Including the Definite Article, this storyline has five kooky characters claiming to be the Last Son of Krypton, and if I could work in any more consonance into this sentence, you bet I would.

Action Comics 684 - 686

I remember the day I learned Superman was going to die. I was in some comicbbook store I had never been in before and the guy working the counter pointed to a small article they had posted up. I don’t know where the article was, but definitely some sort of trade magazine (Comics Buyers Guide, perhaps?) that announced DC was going to kill off Superman in the 75^th issue of his series. It was a small article, and it seemed so unbelievable that DC would truly kill one of the most widely recognized characters in the world.

A few months later my friend Scott Miller and I were at the Freehold Raceway Mall, checking out the mall’s comicbook store, Comic Relief. Superman #75 had been released and there was a massive line leading into the store. I think the size of the mob was also due to fact that the issue’s inker, Brett Breeding, was there to do a signing, although my memory may be playing tricks on me with that one. But the line was unforgettable. People who never read comics before were lining up to get a piece of history.  To witness the death of Superman.

Action Comics 662, 667, 674, 675

What is the difference between reading comics and collecting comics? Although, now that I’m asking, I realize that “difference” may be the wrong word to use.  I think the better question is: “what is the relation between reading comics and collecting comics?” I think it’s a Venn diagram, with collecting in one circle, reading in another, and me in the overlapping area. Such is the sort of things reading these next few issues of Action Comics have me thinking about.

As I’ve said before, I never began reading Superman stories because I liked Superman. I read them because I was hoping that particular issue would be worth money sometime down the road. But what soon started happening—and I see it happening in these four issues—is that while I first came for the collecting, I stayed for the reading.  Clark Kent revealing his secret identity to Lois—that’s a milestone that could be valuable down the line (it isn’t). All the double-sized issues celebrating the new Superman comics . . . well, that might be worth something for the Eradicator storyline (it isn’t). But buying all parts of “Panic in the Sky!”? Yeah, that one was definitely done just for the storyline.

Action Comics, #601

So here’s a hypothetical for you: You publish the longest running comicbook in America. It features one of the most popular/recognizable fictional characters of the 20^th Century. You’re about to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of both the comic and the character, and you want to do something to commemorate the occasion, beyond a single “special anniversary” issue. What would you do?

If your answer is: “I’d turn the comicbook into a weekly anthology featuring second- and third- (and occasionally fourth-) tired characters and put the previous main attraction in a two-page back-up,” well, you were obviously working at DC Comics in 1988.

Action Comics #600

As I mentioned in my first Action Comics post, I was more of a Marvel Zombie than a DC . . . um . . .what are DC fans called? Well, whatever they were, it wasn’t me. Just didn’t look interesting to my 12 year-old-brain. And yet, with the impeccable logic of a 12 year old whose head was spinning with the heady potential of collecting, the idea of having a comic that I bought today become valuable in the future had me willing to buy anything that had the potential to be worth money down the road. Such a topsy-turvy view of economics and investment strategy is why I majored in English and not Accounting.

Action Comics, #583

Now that I’ve reveled in Superman’s first story, let’s flash-forward forty-eight years later, to 1986 and read the last.

Continuity is the boon and the bane of superhero comics.  There’ll be plenty of occasions for this blog to ruminate on how stories were created, then contradicted or ignored, then attempted to be reconciled only to have those reconciliations be contradicted, ignored, or further reconciled. These revisions and the collateral damage they cause are part and parcel of reading comics, and it can drive you crazy trying to figure it all out. But I think was something elegant in DC’s mandate that, rather than reconcile everything, they would just pretend it never happened. They saw the futility in untying the Gordian knot and decided to simply slice through it.
 

Action Comics #1

Action Comics #1

Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere.

I was never a “DC-guy.” I’m not sure if such demarcations exist now, but even in as late as the 1980’s and 1990’s, it was still common to prefer one company’s stable of characters over another. And though there were a fair share of independent publishers putting out super-hero titles, it still came down to the two heavyweights, Marvel and DC. Marvel had Spider-Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor; DC has Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman.