In a week where two books (FF and Avengers) exceeded my expectations in quality, the book I had been anticipating the most let me down big-time. And that book was Action Comics #894.

Sorry guys, but I'm calling it how I see it. I like Paul Cornell, and I loved everything Gaiman wrote in the '90s, but Death's appearance in this comic led to twenty-some of the most dreadfully boring and self-important pages I've read this year. There are few things more tedious than a mass of cliches pretending to be unique and profound, but that's what this issue was. It was completely lackluster and unoriginal, so in the end I can't help but labeling Death's appearance as a GIMMICK.

I still like the idea, on the surface of it. Lex Luthor meeting Death of the Endless. Sounds cool. But the way that Cornell shoe-horns it into his overall story is eventually revealed as nonsensical and pointless. It's revealed that Lex isn't really dead, and he "never" was..so why/how could Death have been there? This is awkward logic which Cornell could have easily avoided by saying that Lex did indeed die for a few seconds, but then came back to life. That isn't an outrageously rare scenario: many people in real life have been momentarily pronounced dead, but then their heart will start up again. And Lex certainly has enough technology, so some device could have simply restarted Lex's heart two seconds after it stopped (or whatever).

But, no, we're told that Lex actually never really died and that Death was just sent to check up on him and see where he's at. Huh? Since when is Death the errand-girl for the Universe, in regards to anything other than people dying? That's not her function. That's almost the reverse of her function: she basically works on behalf of THE PEOPLE, not the Universe. People are going to die anyway; her job is to help them accept the process. That's a lot different than Death being a spy for the Universe. Wouldn't the Universe (or whatever ya wanna call it) have a better way? Wouldn't it already know how Lex thinks? Because we don't learn anything new about Lex in this issue. No new defining trait. The characterization from Cornell is spot-on. But since that's the case...what was the damn point? Again, it just seems like a gimmick, an excuse to have Death show up. Because ultimately, it seems she shows up for no coherent reason.

You may say that my above complaints are looking into the minutiae too much, that I should just forget about the "why" and try to enjoy the story for what it was. But the problem was, the actual story didn't have much content to it, and certainly no originality. I wouldn't even be displeased with an issue of "Action" being nothing but a conversation...except the conversation we got was totally predictable and borderline inane. This seemed as lazy and cliche as you can get. Lex even asked Death where her scythe was. Groan. If you were going to run a rote program in your head and come up with off-the-cuff dialogue between someone who just died (apparently) and Death, then this is what you'd get. It's still an interesting scenario to pose, but there was NOTHING interesting in the actual dialogue. The idea is neat, but the execution was totally lackluster.

Yet it all had the sheen of "Ooo, look at this, readers! THIS IS PROFOUND STUFF!" So we're all just supposed to accept that it WAS profound even though it wasn't? Just because Death is supposedly an important, meaningful character, we're supposed to accept that the writing was good? It wasn't. I saw no originality or creativity from Cornell at all in this issue. This was as boring and predictable as a Death appearance could possibly be. There's literally no way to have made this comic more boring, or more predictable, or more routine than it was. Seriously.

Soon after Sandman ended, about 13 years ago, I remember that Daniel the Sandman made an appearance in Morrison's JLA. What was the story back then? Morrison had the Sandman help the JLA rescue a boy in an alternate/dream reality in which Starro the Conqueror had taken over. So it was the Sandman vs. Starro: Sandman assisted the JLA as proxies within the dreamworld, and Starro used those people he had commandeered. THAT's originality. THAT's creative use of Gaiman's mythology. But compare that to what we got here: we didn't get any new or creative scenario; we just got Luthor meeting Death in the most predictable way possible. Just a (the?) routine conversation.

The art didn't help. Pete Woods is more than capable, but he doesn't (get to) draw anything other than talking heads. I had to laugh when halfway through the issue Death takes Luthor to a more private location, for no real reason at all (she says it's so the conversation can get deeper, but it really doesn't). It seemed like Cornell knew how visually boring the issue was going to be, so he wanted to switch locations...but it's too bad that the void Death takes Luthor to is even more boring than the outdoors scene they had been in. When the most interesting visual element of your comic is an overstuffed leather chair...you've got a boring comic. Worst of all, when Death offers Luthor dreamlike visions of what heaven could be like for him...we don't even get to see them! We just see Death and Luthor's faces as THEY look at these visions! I guess Cornell didn't what to break up the streak of nothing but panels of the same two talking heads.

Ultimately, I don't think this was an AWFUL comic, just a completely underwhelming one. It worries me that we've gotten to such a point in comicdom where an issue like this is hailed as a great thing. Action #894 simply uses past greatness as a gimmick and puts forth no creativity or originality of its own. I remember reading Sandman and the Death mini-series in the '90s and marveling at how new, original, and thought-provoking those comics were. When Gaiman had Death talk to people, it was moving and actually profound. All Cornell gives us here is a lowest-common-denominator replay of that scenario without offering any compelling twist. Anyone who looks beneath the surface can see that (although if a reader has never read the original Gaiman comics, I guess you could be impressed here).

I think again of that Morrison JLA story. It wasn't even THAT much of a big deal at the time. Granted the hype-engine of the internet wasn't what it is now, but that story came out when Sandman was still a freshly hot property, and I don't remember it getting hyped nearly as much as this Action issue has been hyped and applauded. We've all been hearing about it for months and months on every comics website. I didn't even regard that JLA story as a "classic" or anything like that. But compared to this? It's just sad that something as thin, predictable and uncreative as Action #894 is generally being regarded as a creative triumph in 2010.

It's so uncreative that Death even looks the same. Anyone who remembers anything much about the character would know that she changes her appearance to match the time she's in! But it seems like Cornell and Woods wanted to be so predictable that they couldn't even put in the creativity necessary to update the character's look a bit.

I've liked Cornell's run up to this point. Here's hoping this issue was an abrasion.