Action Comics #1035
Superman makes preparations to storm Warworld in Action Comics #1035, by writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson, artist Daniel Sampere, colorist Adriano Lucas, and letterer Dave Sharpe. In the backup, by writer Sean Lewis, artist Sami Basri, colorist Ulises Arreola, and letterer Dave Sharpe, Jimmy Olsen and the Guardian tackle a new threat to the teens of Metropolis. Both stories are entertaining romps and worth the price of admission.
Each story is honestly pretty straightforward. Superman decides to go to Warworld because of Mongul’s actions. The League comes and sees him and lets him know that he’s no longer on the team, and they part, but not before Batman asks Superman about the Authority. Superman says his goodbyes to Jon and Lois, then he and the Authority go off to face Mongul. In the backup, Jimmy calls in the Guardian to investigate something that is killing the teens of Metropolis. They discover it’s a digital life form known as Dismember and learn that it’s taken many teens into itself.
Since he first came on the book, Johnson has been building up to this issue. Sending Superman to battle Mongul is played as a big deal, and the issue brings up Superman’s weakening and the Authority, his little insurance policy team. The whole thing is given the gravitas it demands and works very well. It’s not an action-packed issue, but it gets the emotion across that it needs to.
While it can be a little cliche at times- Superman saying goodbye to Jon and Lois goes just like one would assume. It’s still well done, and it works. This is ultimately a pretty quiet story, which is why it works so well for what it is. It’ll be interesting to see how things play out on Warworld, and seeing the Authority stick around past Morrison’s Superman And The Authority is great. The backup is actually pretty intriguing, as it opens a great mystery of who and what Dismember is. These Tales Of Metropolis can be hit or miss, but this one is a winner so far.
Sampere does a bang-up job of capturing the emotion of this script, which is important. The opening few pages are the extent of the action he gets to pencil, but they’re great pages. Throughout the rest of the issue, his character acting carries the whole thing. Basri in the backup does a great job as well. Dismember’s design is pretty interesting, and even though his style can be cartoony, he can still turn on the frightening when he need to.
Action Comics #1035 downplays the action and replaces it with emotion in the main story and mystery in the backup. There’s a lot of good stuff in these two stories, and the creative teams do a bang-up job.
