Action Comics #1019 - discussion & spoilers

[Frontier]

I'm finding that there's a weird inverse relationship between the Action and Superman title right now: the greater received one is, the worse the other one is.

Now that you mention it, it seems like people were initially really loving Bendis' Action more then Bendis' Superman, and now it's the other way around.

Huh.

[rpmaluki]

People may have loved Action more but it has never outsold Superman. Honestly, I prefer both books be good instead of the quality seesawing between them. Whatever this Legion of Doom/Leviathan is, it needs to die a quick death. And get JRJR off the books, I like stylised art at times but never on a Superman book.

[Ying Ko]

Romita's art... is pretty bad.

[DragonPiece]

Now that you mention it, it seems like people were initially really loving Bendis' Action more then Bendis' Superman, and now it's the other way around.

Huh.

Bendis is at his best with his down to earth stories and his daily planet stuff always gets it just right. So it makes sense when he started focusing the daily planet stuff in superman instead of Action, the quality shifted.

[manwhohaseverything]

Legion is pretty out there. It's decent even with all the speech bubbles to gazillion characters in just a panel. So, it depends on what he is writing.Bendis is a decent world builder. If that is there then book will have atleast a passable quality.

[Ilan Preskovsky]

I finally read this and it was just unspeakably poor. I'm a Bendis fan. I enjoyed Event Leviathan. I really enjoyed Action Comics for a while there and am currently greatly enjoying Superman. The Super books, in general, haven't been in such a good place for a while. And yet, between the ghastly Year of the Villain nonsense rearing its head here, the feeling that the Red Cloud has already overstayed her welcome, and the mind-numbingly boring story being told here, these past two issues have been, by a huge distance, the absolute worst things Bendis has done since coming to DC. I'm done with this book until I hear this particular storyline is over.

And then there's the art. Romita has never really been my cup of tea but his work on stuff like Gaiman's Eternals miniseries and his run of Wolverine were genuinely pretty excellent. His isn't just a bad fit for Superman but his art here, even with Klaus Janson on inks, is so bad that it's flat out unprofessional. Every single panel looks, at best, half-assed, and I truly believe that if this was anyone but a genuine comics legend like John Romita Jr, there is absolutely no way DC (even at their worst "house style" days) would print something with such substandard artwork, especially not on one of their biggest titles. This was, in no uncertain terms, an incredibly ugly comic that just looks all the worst when you hold it up against literally any other of the other Super books. So, despite what I said earlier, the fact that Romita is still listed in the May solicits means that even if this particular storyline is over, I still won't be jumping back on board until he leaves.