Paul Cornell is really hitting it on all cylinders with his run on Action Comics. He’s redefining Lex Luthor as a character and villain plus he’s made incredible strides to make this a fun book to read. But every once and a while you do hit a bit of a bump on the way to perfection. Sadly, it had to happen on the penultimate issue of this Lex Luthor story.

Maybe it’s because the stuff that came before this issue was just amazing to read, but having this focus on Larfleeze just didn’t do anything for me. I said it on the site earlier in the week but I still stand by it: Larfleeze is the Jar Jar Binks of the DCU. He’s ugly to look at, he’s annoying as hell, and he’s a one note character. Not even Cornell could do anything to make this confrontation interesting. He’s done amazing work to improve Vandal Savage, Gorilla Grodd, and make me yearn for a Joker ongoing by him. But here it’s the same thing you could get with Geoff Johns writing the character. Plus I really don’t get how Luthor knew to create the sphere in this issue and there is also a pointless death in here that did nothing for me.

The art by Pete Woods isn’t helping here. Right off the bat you got a very ugly Larfleeze, even by the character’s standards. There are also points where Woods seems to slightly change his design and it got annoying to see it every couple of pages. There are a few touches here and there; I especially liked the detail of Robot Lois running towards Lex as Larfleezes gets closer to him. But really this issue sums up his participation in this epic run: It’s bland, somethings boring, and there is nothing worth remembering about it.

At least Cornell puts in a pretty good twist at the end of this issue to get me interested for the final issue. It’s not a bad issue at the end of the day, even though the writing was subpar and so was the art. It’s just a shame that Cornell couldn’t keep the high level of quality going for this issue as well. Maybe it also plays into the fact that Larfleeze is just not an interesting character to have a focus on other then the Green Lantern books.