Superman #681

Wow, this is some ugly, ugly art in this book. This book has been my introduction to Guedes, and I had hoped he was doing some kind of thematic thing with the Atlas/Superman fight in the last book. Alas, I was wrong. Every character in this book has about 8 more lines on his face than he needs. And I don't know if it's the inking or shading or what, but everyone's face either looks stretched entirely too tight, or like its going to completely droop off of their skulls. I can't even imagine reading this and trade and going back and forth between this and Gary Frank's art. The New Krypton Special was weird enough... that will be just completely jarring.

Anyway, the story was really good. If you can slog through the art, this is definitely worth the read, and I'd assume you'd want to anyway in order to get to the Johns/Frank issues without missing anything. One thing that I've really liked about Johns' run on Action is that he's given a really good voice to Superman, specifically emotionally, and Robinson has continued it fairly well in his few issues so far.

I used to think the key to any good Superman story was finding the right balance between Superman and Clark Kent. But these Johns/Robinson issues have made me rethink that a little bit. For instance, Clark Kent wasn't even in this issue, yet I didn't realize that until I was going over the issue again for this review. I wondered how I could have missed that the first time through, when that's usually a deal breaker for me, and it dawned on me that Geoff Johns has been writing Superman and Clark Kent as the same person/character for the entirety of his run.

That might seem like a ridiculously obvious observation, but I can't think of any other writer who's done that (with the possible exception of Morrison on All-Star Superman, but that's a whole 'nother animal). Usually Clark and Superman are written as two distinct personas of the same person, but here, I really felt like Clark is Superman, and Superman is Clark. He's finally being written as the same man, both in and out of costume, and I couldn't be happier about it.

One minor quibble I had, and I don't know if this was the Guedes's decision or if Robinson told him to do this, but I hate, hate, HATE when real life people show up in comic books. And the president in this comic book was George Bush. I hate that. It completely takes me out of the story and forces my own opinions about President Bush into the story, where they have absolutely no place belonging. (I hated/couldn't finish "The Ultimates" because he and his administration played such a prominent role in the story.) But, whatever, as long as he's not in it any more, I'll be fine. But if he gets kidnapped by Doomsday or held hostage at New Krypton or whatever, we're going to have problems.