by Bob Bruno
Thwarted in his attempt to rescue denizens of Subterranea, an enraged Superman rockets towards Tower Command to confront its mysterious Commander, a woman named Harrow.
Warning: Minor spoilers for the issue follow.
Greg Pak’s Superman encompasses much to love about the character. Using the New 52 to its full advantage, Pak gives us a Man of Steel with all of the ideals and optimism, but without the seasoning of his Pre-Crisis/Post-Crisis counterparts. This Superman, with a touch of arrogance and recklessness, is daring: Daring to save everyone; daring to take a chance on people; daring to trust; daring to do what’s hard and what’s right in the face of being criticized as naïve or weak. That combined with an exuberance for embracing his power, gives Pak’s Superman a welcome and compelling freshness, difficult to achieve and often absent from the character.
Thwarted in his attempt to rescue denizens of Subterranea, an enraged Superman rockets towards Tower Command to confront its mysterious Commander, a woman named Harrow.
Warning: Minor spoilers for the issue follow.
Greg Pak’s Superman encompasses much to love about the character. Using the New 52 to its full advantage, Pak gives us a Man of Steel with all of the ideals and optimism, but without the seasoning of his Pre-Crisis/Post-Crisis counterparts. This Superman, with a touch of arrogance and recklessness, is daring: Daring to save everyone; daring to take a chance on people; daring to trust; daring to do what’s hard and what’s right in the face of being criticized as naïve or weak. That combined with an exuberance for embracing his power, gives Pak’s Superman a welcome and compelling freshness, difficult to achieve and often absent from the character.
As Pak’s opening arc on Action Comics draws to a close, it’s difficult not to draw parallels between this series and Snyder & Lee’s concurrent series, Superman: Unchained, which sees the title character at odds with a similar clandestine agency, The Machine. On the issue of repetitiveness, I would argue that there’s plenty of room for both storylines to occur simultaneously. As a conscious actor on the world stage, past, and arguably wiser incarnations of Superman frequently opted for inaction, rather than create international incidents. The New 52 iteration however, does what he believes is right, and lets the chips fall where they may. Though there are virtues to both methodologies, it’s easy to see how the latter would provoke the ire of not one, but multiple organizations tasked with protecting the world. The narrative atmosphere created by both the Action Comics and Unchained story-arcs working in tandem, puts our now not-quite-as-celebrated-hero on the back-footing, with forces mounting against him, and gives us a sense of the future consequences in store for his actions.
In addition to revealing new layers to the Man of Steel, Pak has brought the same strong characterisation to supporting character Lana Lang, as well as treating us to a number of original characters, including Baka, Ukur: The Beastmaster, The Ghost Soldier, Kokya: Queen of Subterranea, & Harrow: Commander of the Tower. Harrow, capable of raising an army of ghosts to do her bidding, proves herself more than a physical match against the most powerful being on Earth, and like all good villains her ideology isn’t wholly without merit.
Since the New 52’s inception, the Superman line has been fraught with creative shifts and a lack of overall direction, but Under Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder, the ship has finally ben righted. I look forward to what comes next. Also, in this issue: Doomsday vs. polar bears in the arctic. Check it out!
Since the New 52’s inception, the Superman line has been fraught with creative shifts and a lack of overall direction, but Under Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder, the ship has finally ben righted. I look forward to what comes next. Also, in this issue: Doomsday vs. polar bears in the arctic. Check it out!
RSS Feed
