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In
an effort to make its stories more accessible to new

readers, DC recently launched The New 52, cancelling all of its existing titles

and starting 52 new series with revamped and rebooted versions of its major

characters. But how will the New 52 affect the DC universe? Will new readers

actually be attracted? Will old fans still be interested? Will the new titles

be fresh and new, or disappointing and unfaithful to the original continuity?

After buying and reading all but a few of the 52 new #1s that DC released over

the course of a month, I have set out to review some of the major ones and let

potential readers know which new titles are and are not worth reading. So,

without further ado…

Action Comics #1

Writer:
Grant Morrison

Penciler:
Rags Morales

Review
by Samuel N. Harris

In the year
1938, a new era was born. Action Comics #1 was published, featuring the
first-ever appearance of a character called Superman, the very first in a new
breed of action heroes and cultural icons who came to be known as superheroes.
People loved Superman for many reasons—he was larger than life, he always did
the right thing, and he always saved the day in the end. He was a hope and an
inspiration to many fans and readers. But as the decades wore on, times changed
and grew more complicated, and so did people’s views of the world and their
opinions of what a hero should be. It sometimes seemed like Superman’s iconic
do-gooder quality was old-fashioned and outdated and was being replaced by
darker, more modern heroes. Therefore, the people who wrote and drew Superman
stories had to come up with new ways to make Superman seem new and fresh and
exciting—and they’re still trying to come up with such new ways today. Enter
the new Action Comics #1, part of DC’s recent universal reboot, and the
company’s latest attempt to make Superman relevant and appealing to a new generation
of readers.

Within the first
few pages of Action Comics #1, we get to see Superman in action, and it’s
already a very different Superman than many readers may be used to. We see him
taunting and insulting criminals, defying police orders, and holding and
dropping criminals from far above the ground (although flying down to catch
them before they land) in order to scare a confession out of them. From the
beginning it is clear that this is not the same old Superman who has always
been an upright crusader for justice. This is a Superman who seems to relish
and enjoy the power he holds over criminals, is not afraid to use some very
forceful tactics to get what he wants out of them, and cockily yells “Catch me if
you can!” as he runs away from the police officers who try to arrest him for
his vigilante ways. Whereas the old Superman was always a model citizen and a
moral example in almost every area, this one has no qualms about placing
himself above the law that he claims to uphold or disrespecting those who do enforce
it legally. To be fair, I have heard some praise for this violent champion-of-social-justice
persona on the basis that it is closer to some of Superman’s original
appearances back in the Golden Age (from Superman’s first appearance up through
the late ‘40s or early ‘50s). This may be true, but I’m not familiar enough
with the Golden Age comics to testify either for or against that. All I know is
that it’s not a Superman I’m familiar with, and, quite frankly, it’s not one
that I’m very comfortable with either.

But let’s forget about Superman for a moment and
think about another important element of his story—his alter ego, Clark Kent. Midway
through the comic, the high-and-mighty Superman graciously decides to humble
himself enough to don the plain, loose-fitting clothes of mild-mannered Clark
Kent, a freelance newspaper reporter struggling to pay the rent in his modest
apartment, making friendly conversation with the gray-haired landlady about
this mysterious Superman character and how he recently threw an abusive husband
out a window and into a river. Yes, in this rebooted DC continuity, Clark Kent
and Lois Lane are inexplicably no longer married, leaving Clark as a young
bachelor again. We do get to see Lois for a couple of pages—she and Jimmy Olsen
are working on a story and are employed by a rival newspaper than the one Clark
works for. But gone is the decades-long relationship of Clark and Lois that
eventually led to a beautiful marriage. In its place is a newer, younger Clark
Kent who readers are supposed to be able to relate to more.

Call me old-fashioned if you must, but I’m really
not a fan of how Superman is portrayed in this comic—and, apparently, in the
new DC universe as a whole. Within the pages of the comic he goes from being a
brutal, arrogant vigilante to an unassuming, down-on-his-luck young bachelor,
very much in the vein of classic Peter Parker character. Not only is it not the
Superman I know, but the two different sides of his personality don’t seem
consistent with each other either (although I realize that he does have to act
lowly and unimposing as Clark Kent so people won’t suspect his alter ego). I
feel like the creators can’t decide whether they want Superman to be more like
Batman or Spider-Man. I say, why can’t we just let him be Superman? Is that
really too much to ask?

I’d also like to complain about another, albeit more
minor, aspect of this comic: Superman’s costume. Instead of Superman’s
traditional full blue costume, this issue features him in a short-sleeved
T-shirt with the Superman logo on it—and a regular pair of blue jeans and
sneakers. It’s the sort of costume that I would expect to see on a younger
character like Superboy, but not on the classic, imposing, larger-than-life
figure of Superman. Not only does the costume take away from the iconic nature
of the character, but it’s inconsistent from the costume Superman wears in
other newly rebooted DC comics such as Justice League and Superman. Is this an
oversight on DC’s part, or is there some reason for this inconsistency? I have
heard rumors that Action Comics #1
actually takes place ten years in the past of the new timeline—putting it five
years before Justice League #1—when Clark
Kent was just starting out as Superman and the world was just beginning to
learn about him. This would be one possible explanation, and I guess it would
mean that Superman started out in plainer clothes ten years ago, then
eventually donned a more ideal costume by the time of Justice League and into the present. But I haven’t heard this rumor
officially concerned by DC, and nowhere in Action
Comics #1 does it say that the story takes place in the past. Superman’s
new costume—and this comic’s place in the new DC continuity—continue to baffle
me.

In all fairness, not everything about this comic is
bad. I have no problems with the plot itself, and the story is at least somewhat
interesting. It features Superman trying to stop criminals and other crises
while Lois and Jimmy try to learn more about him, and while Lex Luthor and
General Sam Lane (Lois’s father) work with the government to try to bring
Superman down. It was fun and entertaining to see Superman in action while
other forces work behind the scenes. But “fun and entertaining” is about the
highest praise I’d be willing to give this comic; it’s not anything much deeper
than that. The plot of the comic isn’t bad, but it’s not particularly amazing
either, and for me, it doesn’t replace the fact that Superman’s character is
portrayed so differently than he ever has been before.

Before DC’s new reboot, Action Comics was one of the longest-running comic books still
around today, and it had the highest number of issues of any other superhero
book. It began in 1938 and continued until this year, when it became the first
superhero comic ever to reach issue #900. Personally, before I knew about the
DC reboot, I was looking forward to seeing Action
Comics #1000 hit the stands in a few more years—I didn’t know what they
would’ve done for such a milestone, just that it would have had to be something
huge and spectacular. But then the New 52 happened, the numbering of the issues
started over at #1, and a long, rich tradition of comics was casually swept
under the rug. I was disappointed to learn that DC's long-running titles, such as Action Comics and Detective Comics, were being restarted and re-numbered after so many continuous issues. I might be okay with that if the new Action Comics series lived up to or even surpassed the quality of its
predecessor—but based on what I can see from #1, it doesn’t. I realize that it’s
important to change characters and storylines sometimes, to make them more
complex and multifaceted, to let them grow and mature with the times—but I don’t
think that this is the way to do it. In my opinion, Action Comics #1 has taken away from Superman everything that
really made him Superman—not the superhuman powers, but the iconic, imposing
appearance, the larger-than-life heroics, and the uncompromising morality. It
doesn’t seem like Superman to me, and it doesn’t make me very eager to read Action Comics #2, or any of the other
issues after that.