Meh.

I’m hitting a really sad stretch comics-wise here. This is the third week in a row I haven’t felt anything was Pick o’ the Week worthy. (My shop didn’t get Captain America in this week… sigh…) But I can’t go any longer without writing any reviews. So here we go.

So, did it really took Superman 4 issues to figure out magic was involved with Atlas? I mean, really, Supes, you’ve been around long enough to figure this out. Do you really need to pull out a troubleshooting manual on this one? Are you getting your ass handed to you? Yes… Do you see any Kryptonite? No… So, what else could possibly be happening?

Basically, this issue pretty much just felt like DC told James Robinson to kill some time until Geoff Johns finished up his Brainiac arc so they could go forward together on this ‘New Krypton’ story. There wasn’t anything necessarily terrible about this story arc, and it was still James Robinson, true to form, but it basically read like an extended fill in issue.

Having said all that, I’m really looking forward to the upcoming Johns and Robinson collaboration. I love both of their writing, but they have very, very different writing styles, and I really want to see how they mesh. It’ll either be a complete disaster or an unprecedented piece of brilliance.

Just for an example, go back and read Green Lantern and Starman, which I would probably say are both writers seminal works, and take a look at the way they write inner monologues. Robinson writes Jack Knight’s monologues the way people actually think. Half formed thoughts. Short sentences. Tangents. It’s strange to get used to, but when it’s done well, it works very well. Johns on the other hand, writes Hal’s monologues like Hal is actually talking to himself. Everything Hal thinks/says is perfectly rational and reasoned out (or as much as Hal is likely to get). Hal Jordan speaks to the reader, Jack Knight speaks to himself.

So, yeah, I really want to see how the two of them work this out. I’m really hoping it’s a true collaboration where they both work on both books (Action and Superman). I don’t think this story will work if they strictly stick to their own titles. It just don’t think it will work to read a story where Clark/Superman is alternating back and forth between those two styles.