Action Comics #6

I still have a lot of early New 52 books to read. I'm on the #5's and #6's with most of the titles that I kept following. I read up to #7 on most of those, and that was when I realized that the comics were stacking up unread again and I stopped buying them regularly.

Title: Action Comics
Issue: 6
Date: April 2012
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Grant Morrison, Sholly Fisch
Penciler: Andy Kubert, Chriscross
Inker: John Dell, Chriscross
Colorist: Brad Anderson, Jose Villarrubia
Letterer: Patrick Brosseau, Carlos M. Mangual
Editor: Wil Moss, Matt Idelson
Cover: Rags Morales, Brad Anderson

Superman gets some help from time-traveling members of the Legion of Superheroes to deal with a threat that is hiding in plain sight. This story had a lot going on, and a ton of plot twists. Some of the paths taken to get to the end were a bit awkward and overly complicated, but the good moments were really good, including a really awesome Superboy/Legion ending.

Backup story is another look into the past. This time, it's Clark Kent's last day in Smallville before heading to college. It's sweet and sentimental, with some amusing bits of dialogue.

This was worth the slogging through all of the time-travel silliness.

Rating: 8/10

Action Comics #5

Title: Action Comics
Issue: 5
Date: February 2012
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Grant Morrison, Sholly Fisch
Penciler: Andy Kubert, Chriscross
Inker: Jesse Delperdang, Chriscross
Colorist: Brad Anderson, Jose Villarrubia
Letterer: Patrick Brosseau, Carlos M. Mangual
Editor: Wil Moss, Matt Idelson
Cover: Rags Morales, Brad Anderson

Variant cover is pictured.

This issue is almost entirely made up of retellings of bits of the Superman origin story. It's effective, but not terribly groundbreaking. There's some retconning, of course, but again, nothing that is all that shocking.

When we finally get into current plot, it's a messy time travel story that doesn't really go in any direction except toward the needlessly complicated.

Backup story is more Superman origin stuff, this time focusing on Jon and Martha Kent in the early years of their marriage and their struggles with infertility. It's generally good, although it very quickly goes down the path of "everything happens for a purpose" which is pretty much the least interesting thematic direction this could have been taken in.

All of that being said, there are some good details throughout the issue, and it does a nice job of laying seeds for future stories.

Rating: 5.5/10

Irredeemable Volume 4

Here's another find from the going-out-of-business sale at my local Borders.

Title: Irredeemable
Issue: Volume 4
Date: September 2010
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Diego Barreto, Paul Azaceta, Emma Rios, Howard Chaykin
Colorist: Andrew Dalhouse, Matthew Wilson, Alfred Rockefeller
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Cover: Chriscross

This is a trade paperback collection that includes issues 13-15 of the comic series, plus the Irredeemable Special. The basic premise is that Superman (represented here by a character called the Plutonian, who is for all intents and purposes Superman) has "snapped" and gone very very bad. Bad as in entire cities destroyed, populations wiped out, and brutal murders of his fellow superbeings (who were never really in the Plutonian's league power-wise).

Alan Moore did this same story much better in Miracleman.

There. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I did find Irredeemable to be fairly entertaining. There are some likable characters, and not all of them are used as cannon fodder (some are, though). There is a pretty complex set of subplots, which serve to add a nice level of suspense to the storyline, even though they also mire the story in the cliches of the genre that it is attempting to rise above.

Thanks to the presence of the Irredeemable Special in this volume, I got a nice recap of the story, as well as some background on characters that appear in the regular issues, which helped make it easier to jump right in with Volume 4.

The artwork is generally quite good. There are a few moments of unnecessary gore (well, I'm sure they were seen as necessary to remind the reader that this is a superhero story for grownups), and there were some fight scenes where it was a bit hard to tell what was going on, but the artistic handling of a very tricky climactic sequence involving a bullet and a teleportation effect was brilliant work.

I wasn't too impressed when I first heard the premise of this, so I would have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the degree to which I found it entertaining.

Rating: 6.5/10