ACTION COMICS #989 Discussion and Spoilers

[Miles To Go]

Ugh, Jurgens being "topical" with fake news references, still, it segued into a lovely moment where Lois reaffirmed that the Planet stood for truth.

Ah, Steve got shot, it's a shoulder wound, but the stakes are real here.

Because Clark is occupied with the evils of humanity, Jor-El saves Lois from one of his own recruits, Lois is shocked, but inquisitive, but he swiftly takes off to find Jon and bring him to the fortress.

The Fortress crystals can put the future on display...and Jon is shown an image of the "Super Earth" Jor-El wants to take the Kent family too, with plenty of super powered people flying over a beautiful city.

Now, is this Earth one of the many Terra-like planets recently discovered in our universe, or one that belongs to a parallel reality?

[Jackalope89]

Well, good to know that depsite Jor-El's disdain for humanity as a whole, he likes his daughter-in-law, and is perfectly fine with Jon being half-Kryptonian. Though, how does he feel about Clark/Kal being best friends, brothers even, with Bruce? I don't think he's touched on that.

But, man. Papa El is kind of a jerk.

[AntoKent17]

Can you guys really say this story-arc is good? Really?

That baffles me. Because the story is really really horrible.

Poor Jor-El and the myth of Superman and Krypton.

And please... can someone put a stop to this never-ending "let's corrupt the son of the son of Krypton" plot?????

[GreatKungLao]

Jor-El takes "overprotective" to a whole new extreme level.

[Dolores - The Worst Poster Ever]

Considering Jurgen's own views on "fake news", the Daily Planet scenes could have been a lot worse. While I don't think it was written well, he gets credit for doing something in the vein of what Tomasi & Gleason should have done with Lois during the Eradicator confrontation, instead of that Hellbat nonsense.

Superman comes off as so incredibly naive here. Oz shows him all the terrible stuff going on and Superman acts shocked. Newsflash, terrible stuff is happening all the time.

Bogdanovic's art looked a little rushed in places, but he could have just been trying something different.

[The Learner]

I liked the future Jon cameo also the planet Jor-El wants to take Clark and his family.

[GreatKungLao]

So what Jor-El discovered is a world where people don't have to hide who they are and everyone is acceptable, which sounds really nice in comparison to our homophobic, racist, corrupted by money, politics and ecomonics Earth, where poor have no value and rich can act as Gods breaking all the laws as many times as they want. Superman really needs to find a legit reason why such planet deserves to be lived on and to be saved. I'm sure a lot of people actually ask this question themselves on daily basis and sometimes it's really hard to find a reason to keep going with everything bad that happens around the world in personal lives of every human being. What if it will never get better as you were told to? I really like how much this arc makes me think about real life stuff and I'm eager to see what kind of solution Action Comics or Doomsday Clock will come up with in order to restore humans desire to live in this world no matter its sins.

[Jody Garland]

Part of me suspects that the planet shown at the end is Earth-48, from Morrison's Multiversity. The one with Lady Quark and whatnot.

[TruthAndJustice]

Considering Jurgen's own views on "fake news", the Daily Planet scenes could have been a lot worse. While I don't think it was written well, he gets credit for doing something in the vein of what Tomasi & Gleason should have done with Lois during the Eradicator confrontation, instead of that Hellbat nonsense.

Superman comes off as so incredibly naive here. Oz shows him all the terrible stuff going on and Superman acts shocked. Newsflash, terrible stuff is happening all the time.

Bogdanovic's art looked a little rushed in places, but he could have just been trying something different.

Earth-Zero isn't our world. I always assumed it was much better overall, with fewer wars and mass killings and such (let's leave Gotham City etc. out of the equation.)

So why shouldn't Superman be surprised that suddenly there's so much tragedy going on all at once, little to none of it involving supervillains?

I'm not fond of Bogdanovic's art. Get Ryan Sook on as regular Action Comics artist. Or bring Karl Kerschl back, he was great on Adventures of Superman.

[Dolores - The Worst Poster Ever]

Earth-Zero isn't our world. I always assumed it was much better overall, with fewer wars and mass killings and such (let's leave Gotham City etc. out of the equation.)

So why shouldn't Superman be surprised that suddenly there's so much tragedy going on all at once, little to none of it involving supervillains?

Because even if the DCU had 50% less violent incidents than our world, it would still be way more than the ten incidents Oz showed Superman. In our world one person person is murdered per minute, and that's without including armed conflicts.

What Superman was shown wasn't even limited to murder either.

Besides, other comics throughout the years have shown that the DCU isn't a utopia of any kind. It's not like prisons are devoid of regular criminals in the DCU. Obviously bad stuff happens on a regular basis.

Ten terrible things happening at once in a world of over 7 billion people shouldn't shock him. Some of what he was shown were things like pollution. Did Superman go all these years without realizing pollution was a thing?

[Superlad93]

This issue was pretty good. My only real issue is that this is what we've been working up to with the Oz stuff (or at least a large part of it). Feels like just another Superman story--a pretty serviceable one so far, but ultimately not one that's proven it needed all that build up yet, and I don't think it will when all is said and done.

-Future Jon was cool. The suit seems to take some inspiration from 90s' Superboy, maybe some Kingdom Come, and Superman Secondus from One Million. All pretty appropriate. Better than his Beyond suit.

-The super planet feels like a call back to Kirby's Super Town, so that's dope.

-Some pretty dope Lois quick thinking. The whole deal at the Planet was actually pretty well done.

-I hope it's not, but it's very likely that the super planet Oz shows Jon is Zod's new world, 'New Krypton' if you like. If that's the case, I'm interested in where the other super people come from.

[Kuwagaton]

I guess it's part of the plan that Janet (miss Janet if you're nasty) was going on about.

I'm not fond of Bogdanovic's art. Get Ryan Sook on as regular Action Comics artist.

Drawing regular comics really isn't the most profitable use of the amount of talent it takes, never mind biweekly. Sook has never hunkered down out of sheer passion so I doubt there is a way to make him.

[Soubhagya]

Because even if the DCU had 50% less violent incidents than our world, it would still be way more than the ten incidents Oz showed Superman. In our world one person person is murdered per minute, and that's without including armed conflicts.

What Superman was shown wasn't even limited to murder either.

Besides, other comics throughout the years have shown that the DCU isn't a utopia of any kind. It's not like prisons are devoid of regular criminals in the DCU. Obviously bad stuff happens on a regular basis.

Ten terrible things happening at once in a world of over 7 billion people shouldn't shock him. Some of what he was shown were things like pollution. Did Superman go all these years without realizing pollution was a thing?

There was the scene at the Planet. Perry, Lois and Jimmy were discussing that. It was unusual. Or they won't even be discussing this.

[Sacred Knight]

Curious as to what this planet is. I wonder if there's any change they'll pay some homage to the Silver Age and Jor-El will call it Rokyn.

[superduperman]

So what Jor-El discovered is a world where people don't have to hide who they are and everyone is acceptable, which sounds really nice in comparison to our homophobic, racist, corrupted by money, politics and ecomonics Earth, where poor have no value and rich can act as Gods breaking all the laws as many times as they want. Superman really needs to find a legit reason why such planet deserves to be lived on and to be saved. I'm sure a lot of people actually ask this question themselves on daily basis and sometimes it's really hard to find a reason to keep going with everything bad that happens around the world in personal lives of every human being. What if it will never get better as you were told to? I really like how much this arc makes me think about real life stuff and I'm eager to see what kind of solution Action Comics or Doomsday Clock will come up with in order to restore humans desire to live in this world no matter its sins.

The whole point of Superman is that he is trying to turn Earth into that kind of world. I think if this is ultimately a story of redemption, that is what will come through. No, Earth isn't perfect, but everyone can play a part in trying to get it there.