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Action Comics #899 – Review

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By: Paul Cornell (writer), Jesus Merino (artist), Brad Anderson (colorist)

The Story: My, those are some big black balls you’ve got there, Lex Luthor.

The Review: It’s been a long, wild journey we’ve had, following Superman’s arch-nemesis on his quest for ultimate power.  He’s faced off against some of the baddest of the baddies in the DCU’s canon of villains; had numerous near-death experiences; and traveled some of the most exotic locales on the planet.  Considering the epic scale of his story so far, it’d be a waste for the conclusion to be anything less than enormous.

Cornell certainly delivers a pretty grand finish, what with an ultimate showdown between Luthor and Brainiac in (deep?) space and the appearance of some Galactus-like entity from a giant Phantom Zone portal.  And you surely can’t say you expected any of what happens in the final pages.  And definitely Cornell has things set up so Superman will already have a huge task at hand when he finally returns to this title.

All very impressive, but to be honest the whole thing comes so out of the blue that it feels a little too convenient somehow.  It’s not just that this cosmic being is entirely brand new, so you had no way of predicting its coming.  Cornell had dropped all kinds of vague clues about the power at stake in Luthor’s quest, but none of them, in retrospect, led very naturally to this creature.  The plot threads don’t really gel together as well as they could have.

Maybe you just get thrown off by the confusing logistics Cornell throws at you.  There’s a lot of re-explaining of past events, like the reason why Luthor plays right into Brainiac’s hands is Robot-Lois injected nano-worms into Luthor’s bloodstream when she treated his head wound six issues ago.  It has the same feeling as when comics characters die and then come back to life, saying, “Well, what really happened is…”  You have to humor it to let the plot unfold.

If I were to take a guess, I’d say Cornell knew what the finish had to be and the kind of story he wanted to tell in between, but had trouble figuring how to link the two.  That doesn’t take away from the huge leaps in development Luthor’s had.  Rubbing shoulders with other villains has allowed us to see a more approachable side to Lex, but in this final stage, all the megalomaniacal elements that make him such a terrific villain come to the forefront.

Now that Lex has gotten his hands on some real, universe-changing power, the last step is seeing what he’ll do with it—whether he’ll lift mankind to greatness or use it for his own ambitions.  His choice will determine the ultimate characterization Cornell has been crafting out of him, and that, perhaps, is really the sole purpose to this series: figuring out what makes Luthor tick.  The energy spheres and villain cameos merely provide an interesting venue for us to do it.

Merino’s art isn’t quite on par to Pete Woods’; he does a solid job, but his style looks sketchier and more textured, rather than the smooth, polished lines we’ve gotten used to.  Possibly the most distracting shortcoming is the overly dramatic expressions he gives the characters, which makes sense at the beginning, but later look silly—Robot Lois’ wide-eyed shock springs to mind.

Conclusion: The issue relies on a lot of comics “please don’t think too hard on this” magic to get itself together, but sets up a pretty amazing stage for the big #900 and Superman’s return.

Grade: B+

- Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: - Lois has had that heavy-bangs look for so long that I find it really weird she changed it to loose and flowy for her trip to space.

- “—I’m really such a terrible actor.  Well, one can’t be good at everything.”  You know what else you’re not good at, Luthor?  Hairstyling.  Burn!


Filed under: DC Comics, Reviews Tagged: action comics, Action Comics #899, Action Comics #899 review, Brad Anderson, Brainiac, comic book reviewsw, DC Comics, Jesus Merino, Lex Luthor, Paul Cornell, Robot Lois, Superman, Weekly Comic Book Review

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