Supermen of Different Worlds Face Different Problems in This Month’s SuperChat

Things change, things end, things begin again, but one thing remains—Superman fights for a better world, no matter which world it might be. 

On Earth, Jonathan Kent tries to stop a leviathan, but things get quickly out of hand when Bendix’s Gamorran task force shows up in Superman: Son of Kal-El #7, written by Tom Taylor, penciled by Cian Tormey, inked by Tormey and Raül Fernández, colored by Hi-Fi and lettered by Dave Sharpe. 

On Warworld, Superman and the Authority are adjusting to life amongst the gladiatorial Warzoons…but how much longer can they hold on to who they are in Warworld’s bloody way of life? Action Comics #1,039 written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, drawn by Ricardo Federici, colored by Lee Loughridge and lettered by Dave Sharpe. 

Meanwhile, over on an Earth living in a more classic timeline, Superman’s battle with Brainiac comes to a shattering conclusion in Superman ‘78 #6, written by Robert Venditti, drawn by Wilfredo Torres, colored by Jordie Bellaire and lettered by Dave Lanphear. 

Armaan Babu: I have just finished watching the latest episode of Superman & Lois. What a great show. It’s put me in a fantastic mood and I couldn’t be more excited to dive into this week’s selection of Super-stories. How are you doing, Tony?

Tony Thornley: I’m so behind on that show since we cut the cord and went all in on streaming. The CW needs to be on my TV!

Living Large with Leviathans

Armaan: So what we have here is, largely, a tale of Superman’s restraint, kindness and dedication to finding a better solution than violence. Jon goes up against a literal leviathan, and works with Aqualad (or wait, is he Aquaman now?) to try and find a peaceful resolution—but as the opening pages imply, things go bad pretty quickly.

Before we get to that, however, we’ve got some focus on Jon’s civilian identity, or, more to the point, his lack of one. With his dad having revealed the Kent family Super-secret to the world, Jon’s got very few places he can hang out, unrecognized, to just be human. His last attempt was disastrous, but Jay presents Jon with a better option.

It is a job on board the out-at-sea crew of The Truth, a place so dedicated to the anonymity of its sources and reporters that many on board choose to wear masks. It’s amusing, seeing Jon have to resort to a mask for a civilian identity to hide his unmasked superhero persona when it’s usually the other way around, but it is also refreshing to thing that Jon’s going to be in a place where people aren’t constantly trying to figure his identity out—anonymity is the point.

I also enjoyed seeing Taylor bring some of the kids from his Suicide Squad run onto the ship. I liked that group. I’m always happy to see more of them. 

Tony: If it hasn’t been apparent through our writing for the last couple months, I’ve been struggling with this book. It has these glimmers of what it could be, but then pulls back or pushes it too fair. It’s been trying to find a balance that it can’t quite reach. Well, in this issue, I think it gets there. Or at least closer than it was before?

A big part of that is definitely what you’re talking about Armaan. Jon needs a bit more of a supporting cast. While I’d love for the series to include a bit more classic supporting cast- like those we saw in Action’s back-ups: Jimmy Olsen, Guardian, Bibbo, etc- giving him his own away from Clark is a good move. The Truth kids, both those we met in Suicide Squad and others- are a good fit for it. They tie Jon to a modern version of the DCU, while evolving the traditional journalism-centered role of Superman’s secret identity.

We only got a moment with them, but it was good to see their story continue in a really influential and unique to Jon way. I also really enjoyed Jackson’s appearance. I know he’s on his way to becoming Aquaman (oh, is that literally why it’s Aquaman: The Becoming?) and seeing him here instead of Arthur is a big step towards that. Know what didn’t sit right with me though? Henry Bendix. He really just feels like a dull Lex Luthor lite (alliteration not intended), which is even more confounding when Taylor’s much more engaging take on Lex is literally sharing scenes with him.

Armaan: The problem here is that Lex is a more nuanced villain—and Bendix is not. Nuance in storytelling is always going to be more engaging, which is why the Luthor annual we read was some of the best Jon Kent storytelling we’d read from Taylor. With these two villains side by side, Taylor could not have made things more clear: he is never going to choose nuance when outlandish villainy is an option. If heroes are defined by their villains, then Taylor’s giving us a Jon Kent who is the goodest of the good for opposing the baddest of the bad.

We may not enjoy Bendix as a villain, but the leviathan here was certainly something else. I really enjoyed the art on this; the leviathan felt appropriately grand, Jackson Hyde’s control over water looked both magical and cool, the superpowers on display were very visually appealing. I even really felt for Sparks, the member of the Gamorra Corps who messed everything up with their shoot first, ask questions later approach. Bendix uses some kind of genetic control to freeze Sparks in place as the leviathan, once enraged, attacks. The fear in Sparks’ eyes is pretty haunting. 

It does pretty effectively make me want to see Bendix get his inevitable comeuppance. I’m invested in this, now.

Tony: Yeah definitely. It’s a solid balance of the social awareness Taylor’s been wanting to weave into this series with a Superman story. You actually kind of feel for the leviathan too, both as it’s disturbed from its hibernation and as the Gammora Corps pushes him into a rage. If the series keeps up like this, I don’t think it’ll get to the heights of Action but it’ll definitely turn into a solid series on its own.

Brawlin’ with Brainiac

Armaan: We waste no time getting into the climactic battle in this issue. It’s giant Brainiac-bot trying to crush Superman to death. I liked this fight—less for its worth as an action sequence on its own, but as exaggerated expression for the conversation that Superman and Brainiac have. Superman’s role in this fight mirrors the way he argues and tries to get Brainiac to stand down; he’s calm, decisive, makes very strong points targeting Brainiac’s most vulnerable points, and he very simply refuses to back down. 

Brainiac, however, lashes out both literally and figuratively a number of times in this fight. I’m getting the impression that he’s never actually had to defend his beliefs before—he’s always been so much more powerful than the people he deals with he can ignore what they have to say. Superman’s power forces them into a conversation, and Brainiac’s fears of losing control are effectively exposed (to say nothing of his mech’s circuitry). 

Tony: I kind of thought this was the weakest issue of the miniseries, but I did enjoy Brainiac getting what he deserved. Hubris is a topic that I’ve come to understand in characters more and more. Seeing his hubris literally being his undoing works so well for me, even if the fight was just another (well illustrated) dust-em-up to me.

Armaan: The fight doesn’t come to a very satisfactory conclusion for Brainiac, but it does give Superman some great moments to remind us why we love him so. We’re given juuuuust enough information about how Brainiac works for a future writer to be able to bring him back, but also enough destruction for Superman to not have to worry about him as a threat for a while.

There’s still the matter of a falling Metropolis to deal with, though.

This series has had a lot of fun showing us Metropolis’ citizens, and it doesn’t stop here. I get the distinct impression that there are some cameos that have gone over my head here—were you able to recognize what I couldn’t?

Tony: There might have been one or two I didn’t recognize myself, but it was impossible to miss Mikey, Chunk, Data and Mouth from Goonies- another of original Superman director Richard Donner’s best known films. It took me a minute to realize why they were making a cameo, but when I remembered the Donner connection, it made me grin.

I’m actually glad as Metropolis fell that Superman didn’t stop it entirely- he only slowed it just enough that it didn’t destroy the city. It’s always good to have limits in Superman stories, even if that fall would have done a lot more damage than it did.

In the end, I’m glad we got this mini, even if I didn’t love this issue.

Armaan: On that we can agree; this series was great!

Kal-El, Warlord of Warworld

Armaan: I tend to avoid solicits for comics I’ve yet to read, even for ones I’m reviewing. I like to be surprised. And with the dramatic art change that happens, a surprise is exactly what I got. I loved this shift. From sci-fi superheroics to a more old fashioned, desert-tinted gladiator comic. As much as I love the Sampere-Lucas team, I feel like DC couldn’t have done better than Ricardo Federici and Lee Loughridge for this part of the Warworld Saga. It feels less like reading through a comic, and more like we’re reading true illustrations of a more classic tale. Do you think this should just be the default Warworld look and feel?

Tony: I’m missing Sampere, for sure. We’re three issues out of four in this arc without him now, and I’m feeling it. That said, Federici’s painterly inkwash style was a welcome addition for this deep exploration of Warworld. It draws a line between Frazetta and DC House Style, and in so doing creates a sort of Conan meets John Carter feel for Warworld. Loughridge completes that with colors that just drip of Frazetta or Julie Bell’s atmospheric paintings.

Yeah, I dig it.

Armaan: Superman may have been drained to powerlessness by Warworld’s red sun radiation, but he’s far from powerless. As the art makes very clear, Superman sans powers is still a hell of a fighter, and very, very, very ripped.

Tony: This is a kind of Superman that I like. He’s not just brute force, he’s got a level of intelligence and strategy that’s important to his success. He’s not a martial artist, but he is a skilled fighter.

Armaan: It’s Superman, OMAC and Steel in the gladiatorial arena now. OMAC is all in on combat even as she grieves the loss of Lightray. She couldn’t care less about Superman, or his cause. Natasha appears to be doing some scheming of her own, gaining the blacksmith’s trust as she upgrades her armor and gains more iron in every fight she wins.

What interests me here the most, though, is the chains. OMAC and Steel’s victories have won them some pretty long chains in a fairly short time (assuming they’ve been there a week or two, at most, going on a gut guess). Superman, however, for all his fighting prowess—his manacles are held together by a single link. He’s not really won a single victory despite all the battles he’s been thrown in.

Tony: Which, by the way, Johnson makes clear is for a specific reason. Clark isn’t fully losing his fights. He’s showing mercy, and is taking the brunt of the fight for it. It’s more nuanced than just “he’s getting his ass kicked.” He’s just not willing to cross lines that the Warzoons very much are.

Armaan: While that’s very much in keeping with the Superman we know and love, a fellow prisoner and Phaelosian convinces Kal-El that it’s time to stop fighting like an invulnerable superhero powered by sunlight and a righteous cause. Despite his training and having been depowered before, Kal still fights like someone who’s used to not worrying about dodging or blocking attacks. He’s not used to fighting like death can come easy to him—and this scene is an interesting parallel to Marvel’s Ikaris, who’s recently had to learn how to fight like someone to whom death shouldn’t come easy.

We’ve talked about how Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s writing continually comes close to, but gracefully avoids, the kinds of stories that neither one of us would be too happy with. I think this is another one of those moment—in the hands of a lesser writer, I don’t think I’d enjoy the thought of Superman succumbing to Warworld’s ways. It would feel like a corruption of his ideals. Here, though – and not everyone may agree with me on this – it feels less like a corruption, and more like Superman coming to understand Warzoons on their terms. Part of his plan in getting captured is to understand the people of Warworld, instead of simply forcing his ideals onto the populace after defeating Mongul.

Tony: Yeah, to save Warworld he has to succumb to some of its ways. It’s not a position Kal-El wants to be in, but he’s increasingly realizing why he has to do it. He’s limited in the good he can do otherwise. Plus he’s seeing the evil that Mongul is doing first hand on a level he’s never been able to see before.

Armaan: This issue spends a lot of time teaching us about the different kinds of people living on Warworld: the rebels and workers, the exotic species worn to extinction, and the children raised to idolize tyrants. There’s a wild diversity of people here, and Natasha Irons is actually two steps ahead of Superman in understanding that there’s no true understanding of another culture without accepting some of their ways. 

Tony: Yeah, exactly. It’s going to be interesting to see how Nat evolves over the course of this arc, especially since she’s been in character limbo so much lately. If anything this will be an arc that truly lets Nat shine, and I’m excited for that.

I’m increasingly curious exactly how this arc is going to go. It’s been a slow build that has absolutely captivated me.

Armaan: Let’s not forget that Midnighter also has a plan up his sleeve…and a captive lover with Superman-levels of power who isn’t weakened by red sun radiation, though we’re yet to see how that plays out. Next issue can’t come fast enough!

Daily Planet Headlines

• J’onn J’onzz is continuing to have a very bad day in the back-ups, but it continues to not be a great fit for an Action Comics back-up.
• Lightray and Enchantress are going to be coming back somehow, without a doubt.
• Jon Kent teaming up with legacy characters has been a lot of fun; wouldn’t mind a Justice League special with a roster of 100% legacies.
• The Warworld Saga would make a fantastic video game, especially from Natasha’s point of view. Gladiator fights, weapon upgrades, heavy moral choices reflected in a lengthening of your chain… DC, call us.

Armaan Babu

Tony Thornley

Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.