I should have dropped this comic a while ago, really. But how do you drop Superman? He’s the first superhero, you know? Regardless, I eventually found my wits and took this off of my pull-list. I was less than impressed with what was supposed to be a DC flagship title. I’m giving this book one star.

The hard part about this review is trying to explain what it is about this comic that completely turned me off. There was not one big flaw that made me hate it but rather a  lot of little ones. Little things that I take for granted in other comics were missing from this title and it’s a shame. Action Comics was supposed to be a flagship title, this is the comic that gave birth to Superman! Perhaps it was entirely my fault? I loved Morrison’s run on JLA when I was younger, maybe I grew up too much to enjoy what he’s done with the character? Was there too much change for me to recognize Superman? Was it too different from what I knew? Was the art super-duper-ugly? (Yes. Yes, it was)

This Superman isn’t the boyscout we’ve grown to love over the years. Morrison took him into a new direction. A fighting-corruption-in-the-papers-by-day-and-doing-Superman-shenanigans-by-night kind of direction. That was strike one, I suppose. I’m not against making Superman a little more bad ass, I’m not! But part of his charm was that he was raised on a small Kansas farm and kept a little bit of that small town mentality no matter where in the universe he travelled. This new one is . . . different(By that I mean he’s a giant dick. It works for Lex, not for him). There’s no charm despite how much the other characters faun over him. Seriously, every other character kept talking about what a great guy Kent was and he seemed like a rare combination of douche/dork. I didn’t like him. Superman was a prick and Clark Kent was an even prickier prick. The old Superman could be condescending, he’d just give you a look when you shot him that made you feel stupid for even trying. The new Supes is actively telling his enemies what he can do and daring them to do it: he comes off as a petulant, egotistical child.

The story is . . . there is a story, I suppose. Superman is fighting the corruption of Metropolis (because they needed to steal something from Batman) and an alien invades. And Lex is there and he looks horrible but that’s not his fault; all the characters looked horrible. There are flashbacks to Krypton. Steel shows up somewhere, that part was rather badass. Then, before the story line where Metropolis is bottled like Kandor and the Collector attacks Earth is finished, we’re given a whole new story! It is just as uninteresting and involves Superman being poisoned by Kryptonite in his memories or something and a team of heroes from the future needs the past Superman to save him. Really, it’s not even interesting to read and it’s even more unpleasant to look at.

The only thing I can say about the art is this: There are some good things. But the artist has been able to draw every one of their characters as completely unattractive.

If you’re a die-hard Supes fan I suggest you steer clear of this title for fear it ruins him for you. If you must read it (because you like torturing yourself, I’d imagine) you can check out the trade which came out last month. I implore you, however, to avoid it and go read something else.

Let us know in the forums what you thought of this title!

Tags: Action Comics, Clark Kent, Grant Morrison, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Superman