ACTION COMICS #901
What did the
iFanboy
community think?
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Art and Cover by KENNETH ROCAFORT
Variant cover by DAN JURGENS
Size: 32 pages
Price: 2.99
This review contains spoilers, click here to read
Huh…where to begin. I normally don’t like to do full recaps in my reviews, but with Action Comics #901, I feel that it’s absolutely to give you readers some sort of context regarding my thoughts on this truly unique issue. Unfortunately, I’m using the word “unique” with a rather negative connotation.
We start out with the 2 Live Superman Crew aboard a mysterious spaceship, being attacked by several Doomsday clones. In this case, the crew consists of Superman, Superboy (with the midriff of his shirt ripped off, exposing his Fabioesque super-abs), Supergirl, Steel, The Eradicator and Cyborg Superman. You know…pretty much the main cast of the Death Of Superman era plus Supergirl. So anyway, the Supercrew is being attacked by several Doomsdays, who were cloned by a captive and unconscious original recipe Doomsday. The fighting isn’t really providing any worthwhile results since the Doomsday clones are countering everything that the Supercrew is throwing at them, so they decide to retreat. Whilst in retreat, Superman takes Cyborg Superman out of commission by ripping out his robot heart and carries both the heart and CS’s lifeless body around like luggage, as well as RESCUING THE UNCONSCIOUS DOOMSDAY since Superman was in one of his altruistic Superhippy modes again. The retreat ends when The Magnificent Seven reaches the control room and find out a horrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrifying fact: the ship has been traveling in dimensional wormholes, and is on a collision course for Earth! OH SHIT! Right then, two things happen: first off, CS’s cyborg heart comes to life and integrates itself into the ship’s computer to alert the Doomsday knockoffs to the location of the Super-Amigos. Second, right when plans are made to change the ship’s collision course, we have an amazingly telegraphed “I Believe I Cannot Allow You To Do That” moment where the main baddie is revealed: it’s the all-new all-deadly DOOMSLAYER!!! An armored version of Doomsday, he proclaims himself to be The Death To Doomsdays (who, considering that’s his moniker, keeps an odd company of cronies). So him and Superman proceed to have a gentlemen’s disagreement about the state of Earth: Doomslayer wants it obliterated, and Superman does not. And with that, the first part of this arc closes with The Eradicator (I always hear Bruce McCulloch from Kids In The Hall screaming ‘ERRRRRADICATOR!’ in my head whenever I see him) being like “Yo bitch, I can take this punk ass on!” and Doomslayer being like “Oh no you DIDN’T!”, and then rips him apart.
Sooooo yeah. This was crazy. This was X-Men Forever crazy, in that every action in every page gave you a big case of unintentional chuckles. It’s a story that couldn’t have possibly been the brainchild of a writer who wants to tell an entertaining story, but instead one of a nostalgic editorial staff who saddled a writer with toys from the past and a loose story guideline. I have no doubt that Paul Cornell was tasked with this project by being told “The story is called Reign Of Doomsday, and all the Death Of Superman crew has been attacked, beaten and captured by Doomsday…go!” So most of my blame for this weird storyline is being aimed at this typical editorial move, but as much as it pains me to do so, I gotta lump in Cornell as well. Yeah, it seems he got saddled with an unwinnable project. The story even, at times, seems like a parody of a ridiculously convoluted 90’s storyline. I don’t doubt that this was the intention, as Cornell is an incredibly smart writer. The problem is that he made the story emulate shit to such a degree that it actually started to be shit. That line between satire and intentional was awfully blurry. The minutia writing details were even a bit wonky, as it was not only questionable why Superman would want to save the life of Doomsday (a feral unstoppable killing machine who…you know…KILLED HIM), but when Supergirl confronted him about the questionable rescue, he more or less slapped his knee and said “HA! You got me good!” Cornell’s script was ridiculous all around. I will admit, though…the panel with Obama pointing at the readers and saying “Superman, your country needs you!” was AWESOME (No doubt inspired by that whole stupid citizenship controversy).
I really enjoyed Kenneth Rocafort’s art here, as even though the story ranged from ridiculous to ridiculously bad, he made every scene quite explosive and dynamic. However, I’m noticing an odd trend in DC books lately where the originally solicited artist only does work on half the book. I really didn’t mind the fill-in artist since he pulled his weight quite well, but this has to be at least the third time this has happened lately in a DC book that I have read. I’m kind of curious to know if this is more than a coincidence.
So yeah, this was quite bad. However, there’s no way in hell that I’m skipping this arc. Like X-Men Forever, it’s too crazy to be ignored. If the editorial staff wanted a nostalgic story that harkened back to the 90’s, they sure have it here…just not in the way that they probably expected it. Let’s see where this goes.
Art: 3 - Good
Good snyopsis and spot on review. This was bad, and honestly, made me consider dropping the title for the first time in 12 months. You’re probably right that this editorial driving this hot mess. It does not seem to fit in with what Cornell was doing with Lex. Here’s hoping that once this wraps up that Cornell can regain his form.
(Note: I am worried that this Reign of Doomsdays storyline was hatched as some sort of Flashpoint tie-in. If you’ve read Booster Gold #44 and seen the advanced solicits, you’ll notice that Doomsday is involved w/ Flashpoint. I am not sure how I feel about this, especially after this fiasco.)
It was stupid but I can honestly say I enjoyed reading it the one time. It wasn’t anywhere near POTW, but it wasn’t one of those books that I couldn’t even finish the first half of from being so terrible. I’m not gonna mention any names.