Future State: Superman: Worlds of War #1
Writers: Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Brandon Easton, Becky Cloonan, Michael W. Conrad and Jeremy Adams
Artists: Mikel Janin, Valentine De Landro, Gleb Melnikov and Siya Oum
Colorists: Jordie Bellaire, Marissa Louise and Hi-Fi
Letterers: Dave Sharpe, Travis Lanham and Gabriela Downe
So, OK.
Before we get started, I need to tell you a story. A few weeks ago, Phillip Kennedy Johnson termsearched me. It happens. I am a working critic and I have a Twitter account (which you absolutely should NOT follow) and it just happens. It is the cost of the job at this point. I was termsearched stating my worry at PKJ being announced as the incoming writer of Action Comics (my favorite, favorite, favorite Detective Comics Comic).
He told me not to worry about the incoming Action Comics as he had it in hand and hoped I liked the book. I told him I did too because I DO! I don’t want to hate any comic ever, much less one of my favorite titles of all time. I tell you all of that to tell you this: if Superman: Worlds of War #1 is any indication or statement of intent about the incoming Johnson Era of Action Comics, then I am 1 million times more worried about everything now.
Though armed with some truly charming backup stories starring cult-favorite characters Mister Miracle (Shilo Norman), Midnighter and super-BF Apollo and a brand new take on Jack Kirby’s Black Racer (who’s literally haunted by images of the original design), it is squarely on the shoulders of the main story’s action, centered on an Earth mourning the “loss” of Superman, where the problems are held.
Just to make sure I don’t sound too negative about this whole affair, the WHOLE issue looks tremendous. Mainly anchored by Mikel Janin’s picturesque but cinematic pencils, all of the art teams really show off here, providing this Wave III Superman title another strong sense of visual cohesion just like Superman of Metropolis. I have some specific problems with some sequences (which we are ABSOLUTELY getting into later), but overall Worlds of War looks fantastic. Maybe not $8 fantastic, but I will always appreciate a book with backups (multiple even here) feeling like a solid visual experience even throughout disparate stories and creative teams.
The other scripts, all centered on Warworld and Superman’s subsequent imprisonment under its red sun, give us the same fun flavor of the same section of DC real estate. All firmly connected to the events of Superman of Metropolis, specifically Jon Kent’s “bottling” of Metropolis, faves like Becky Cloonan and Brandon Easton ping readers off engaging, loosely connected vignettes of various cult fave heroes literally falling through space into the wilds of Warworld and drawn into a vast whisper network to rescue Superman and bring him home to the warmth of the yellow sun. AGAIN, tremendous idea and a wonderfully canny use of the way Superman inspires the superhero community and can bring them rushing to aid with just a word.
But man, oh, man, that main story. Reader. Trust me when I tell you. It Bad.
So bad we have to take it point by point just so you don’t think I am projecting or trying just to be contrarian (which I generally am NOT, but am ESPECIALLY not here). So we open a number of years after the bottling of Metropolis. Superman, meaning Clark Kent/Kal-El, has been missing for the majority of those years, and Smallville has become a sort of … pilgrimage point for people across America, drawing some sweaty parallels between Clark’s birthplace and Mecca. But specifically, Smallville is attracting “Metropolis Refugees” (what they are literally called in the text) who have been displaced by Jon Kent’s actions and largely embittered to the Son of Steel.
But the real point is the “shrine-ification” of Smallville, which comes complete with its own commodification and idolization of Superman, down to there being a sort of mawkish shrine erected at the very point in the field of his touchdown on Earth (which cults then sell necklaces made of the stones from in the town square). This sort of “cult of Superman” stuff is not a new idea. Our very own Cori McCreery, over at Comfort Food Comics, is going to be exploring that in a far more eloquent and incisive way than I ever could in the coming weeks, and Kennedy threads through some fun texture in the world of this new Smallville that adds neat detail to the story, stuff like native-born townsfolk making their own eerie signs of plea to Superman on water towers and in crop fields.
But it’s when he starts to push it further that it starts to reveal a real grating, thuddingly jingoistic feel. You see, as these refugees converge on Smallville, they are drawn to an older woman (never explicitly named, but heavily telegraphed to be either Lana Lang or maybe possibly even Lois Lane, revealing a further fault in never really making it clear to me, the reader, which she is) who leads a sort of talking circle about the Man of Steel. And the VERY first one to speak is a white lady who is saved from a suicide bomber while taking a pleasant vacay stroll with her family in JERUSALEM.
Now…I hope I don’t have you tell you how boneheaded this is, because it absolutely is just in general, but it also reveals a canny truth of Kennedy’s take on Superman. He is the kind of person who can and will unilaterally interfere in sovereign nations and spaces to save white Americans while also the whole sequence smacks of a feeling that we are unsafe beyond our borders at all times without Superman (and just in general, really). Doubly so if you are WASPy. Now, was this intentional? Probably not. But if I can even INFER that reading the text of the comic and processing the subtext of the script and the choices made therein and not even work that hard to get there, something has gone wrong.
IT THEN just gets doubled down on in the next stories. In particular a spacey yarn from a heavily coded as tripping hippie’s story that Superman isn’t really dead, but he’s ascended and become a “righteous wind,” sweeping throughout the world and keeping people (Read: America) safe from encroaching military forces (which again aren’t explicitly named but look pretty similar to a Middle Eastern/Russian tank crew in their uniforms and coloring).
Again, do I think this is intentional on Kennedy’s part? No. I am sure it isn’t. I don’t think he is the kind of person or creative to sit down to work every day at the keys going, “NOW to write something CRAZY problematic and crassly American!” But the text is there, most glaringly in this sequence, which constantly ties Superman explicitly either to functioning as a tool of the state or a gate shielding us (Reading/meaning America and Americans) from outside (i.e.: foreign) influences and conquering forces. Only to then return to us one day and possibly bestow upon a grateful human race a “genetically superior and fantastically altruistic” race of ubermenschen who will then lead us into utopia? This LITERALLY is posited in the text of the comic.
IT
IS
MADDENING. And just reeks of the kind of internalized bias someone like Kennedy, a U.S. Army veteran, will always come to the script with. Kennedy’s Superman is not a tool of the people. He is a tool of institutions. Of the state. Of military wisdom and superiority. NEVER a tool or beacon for the actual PEOPLE that make up the flesh body and human will of these institutions.
Which makes the stuff he gets RIGHT even more frustrating. Stuff like Superman connecting with his fellow captives on Warworld. Like Clark being just as effective a hero as Superman is, saving the world and life of our audience surrogate character not with the might of his fists but with the power of good, honest reporting. How even just a calm voice in the midst of chaos means more than the actual saving. All of it encased in gorgeous, made-for-splash pages artwork from Janin and Bellaire.
I truly wanted to like Superman: Worlds of War. I really wanted to have another fun Superman experience and know that my favorite section of Detective Comics Comics wasn’t going to actively frustrate me every time I pick up a book anymore. But Superman: Worlds of War didn’t give me that experience, and that’s precisely because of the pedestal-putting of institutions and unexamined imperialism that comes from a life unclouded by the un-examination of one’s own internalized full faith and credit in “America” as an unalienable and wholly good ideal.
NOT THAT THAT ISN’T VALID OR LESS THAN because God forbid I don’t want people @‘ing me to tell me how much I hate the troops and whatta beta loser shill I am, but at the same time, when your Superman only holds up one section of life, one track of thinking, and one empirical idea of a just society…
Then it isn’t a Superman for everybody. And if there is one thing we all know for sure, it’s that Superman is for everybody. Superman: Worlds of War will certainly be for SOMEbody. But it definitely will not be for everybody or me just yet.
Justin Partridge has loved comics all his life. He hasn't quite gotten them to love him back just yet. But that hasn't stopped him from trying as he has been writing about them now for a little over a decade. With bylines at Newsarama, Shelfdust, PanelXPanel, and more, Justin has been doing the work and putting in the time! Comics have yet to return his calls. Usually he can be found on Twitter screaming about Doctor Who.
