PKJ Action Comics Discussion and Spoilers

[Quinlan58]

- Didn't like the opening scene. It overplays the whole "look at how good and humble Superman is, we should all be in awe of him!" thing. Honestly, if this were Clark instead of Superman, or if Glen had acted more confidently regarding their friendship, it might have made its "point" far stronger.
- I like the page of Clark just entering the Planet. Sandoval really sells the whole chaos of it, and the moment with Clark's offer of kindness getting taken advantage of was well done.
- I liked Lois here. She's the right degree of confident but also questioning whether she's really making the right choices. And Sandoval does her body language really well.
- And more praise to Sandoval: It's incredible how well he can convey "Meek-mannered reporter Clark the fake persona", as opposed to actual Clark from the previous pages, simply by drawing his hair a little neater. The forced smile is obviously what catches the attention, but I really like that incredibly small change in hair.
- And, of course, the smile is soon gone. It's incredibly effective at conveying just how seriously he takes the Blue Earth Movement; he can't even keep up the facade that he must have intentionally chosen earlier on.
- The green gem gets our attention. I'd like to believe it's not Kryptonite, since I'd assume Clark would be familiar with how that feel by now, but, well, PKJ was going to explore either "the secret of Kryptonite" or "Lightray Is", and there's no Lightray in this story since Warworld...
- Clark's and Norah's conversation is... well, it's great. Clark's "My folks were relieved when I graduated" and "I'm not hiding a lie detector" are both blatant lies (the first likely literally, the second in spirit), and his expression as he asks if they can start makes him look as dangerous as the actual villain. As for Norah... well, the narration boxes telling us when she's lying also make it very interesting when they don't appear. We don't know how loyal she actually is to her family. We can intuit she was telling the truth when she says they expect big things from her, but what about when she says she's not interested in the "family business"? Are we going to see her betraying her family?
- Interesting that PKJ went with Norah being as young as she looks.
- I also really like how Norah says that Superman is offering protection from "super-powered alien threats". It works in so many ways. 1) This is clearly her pitch to the people she recruits. 2) In-universe, this describes a lot of what Superman does, but it conveniently ignores how his one big enemy is very much Lex, who's been framed as an incarnation of very Earthly evils for a long time. 3) Coming from PKJ, the guy who started his run taking Superman away from Earth for a long time to fight a super-powered alien threat, it does feel like it may be commenting on his own work (though I assume this won't be the last we read along those lines).
- The actual "fight" (it's not one, but you know what I mean) flows well from the incredibly tense scenes before it. And the reveal of what I assume is Norah's plan is so much better than the simple "de-powered Super-family" thing described in the solicits (even if that's still a part of it).

Overall, a great start to the arc, as PKJ tends to do. His problems lay in actually finishing them (though his endings aren't bad, they're just... not as good as his starts). Let's see how this goes.

[Marvel Wars]

Really loved this issue, particularly the two double page spreads at the beginning.

[TheKryptonMan]

I also enjoyed this last issue too .
I really liked that Clark was very much involved in the start of this arc . We see so much of Superman but not that much of Clark , so that was cool . Norah obviously knows that Clark is Superman , so Luthor's " Trick " didn't work on everyone in the world .
Looking forward to how this goes and enjoyed the art as well . Everyone was surprised to see Clark sweat , lol ...

[manwhohaseverything]

That's not a very flattering comparison...

It's not meant to be.I might be an idiot..But,these guys(superman,batman..etx) are caped crusaders.They stink of dogmatic unquestionable belief systems.

[Frontier]

It's not meant to be.I might be an idiot..But,these guys(superman,batman..etx) are caped crusaders.They stink of dogmatic unquestionable belief systems.

I mean, it's literally Batman's title...

I don't think their ethics or belief are that far off the norm, personally.

[garazza]

For those interested:

[manwhohaseverything]

I mean, it's literally Batman's title...

I don't think their ethics or belief are that far off the norm, personally.

That's precisely the problem.Dogmatic unquestionable belief systems are the norm.It is ingrained in humanity even me.And "Superheroes/knights" represents the best of that or "us". Me personally am more Of a gladiator fan than knights.I seem to find it different and more acceptable.I view the "best of us " sucks.I don't want to have to follow that as my ideal.I would want to follow by choice something that i "get" or find "relatable"

[Vordan]

For those interested:

-Visited the Siegel House in Cleveland recently along with Cleveland Public Library and it’s Superman section, talks about the history of the house and what not
-Can’t go into details about Norah because there’s a twist coming (which I have kinda spoiled with my theory lol), but her design came from Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Adams (the goth vibe) and Greta Thrunberg (having a young girl be the leader of a movement in a way you wouldn’t expect)
-Point of the scene with Glen in 1057 was to show that Superman doesn’t just toss people into the broken justice system and forget about them. He keeps an eye on them while they’re in prison and when they get out. After Glen got out he helped Glen get a job at Steelworks and is helping the guy turn his life around. It was also inspired by All-Star Superman (jumper scene) and Kingdom Come (Superman walking into the bar with the anti-heroes)
-Been dying to do more Daily Planet stuff with Clark, wanted to show Clark using his powers in an interview.
-Believes that Superman stories should be philosophical. Other books can just be fun but Superman should try to be deeper and relevant. For the interview he wanted to touch on what happens when a journalist has to interview someone who may be hostile towards them, or be seeking to use the journalist as a way to reach a broader audience
-Clarifies that he didn’t intend for Metallo to be a good guy now, he just wanted to show that Metallo has desires outside of being a 1D villain out to kill Supes. Metallo tried to do better and failed.
-Says he’s not sure if he’ll get to do more stuff with the FS House of El, he wants to but it’s not been decided
-Loves MAWS
-Believes that a lot of the moments people remember are the conversations rather than the big bombast
-If he got to do a crossover he would do a Supes/Hulk crossover or a Constantine/Strange crossover

That’s basically it for Supes in the first part, I’ll listen to the second and share if he says anything else.

Second part:

-Someone asked if he was a fan of Jon being Superman II over Conner or Kara. He said it was less about who deserved it and it was more about trying to find a niche for Jon. In his eyes the King Supergirl mini made Kara equal to Superman.
-Does empathize with Conner fans, Jon pushed Conner to the back, does want to do more with Conner in either a solo capacity or with the Legion
-Wouldn’t say no to doing a Legion run, someone at DC actually asked him about using the Super-Twins with the Legion
-Comicron and ICV2’s numbers are “made up”, he knows first hand that their numbers don’t match reality
-He’s heard that Marvel attrition rates following #1 are more steep
-If he had to write a DC horror book that wasn’t already a horror book he’d choose Aquaman.
-He’s almost done with his army service, says he’ll be done in a year to a year and a half
-End of the interview had him mention he needed to write an email tonight to Waid both to get his opinion on something and because there’s something PKJ wrote that he thinks is relevant for Waid. He knows what Waid is doing next and says it’s a huge honor to play in the same sandbox as Waid.

[Kuwagaton]

Thanks for cliffing these.

I don't know why the biggest thing for me is mentioning the attrition rates but I gotta say, I live in an area with three comic shops and none of them ever seemed to care about getting the comics in after the big flashy #1. I'd have something on my list for months before the debut and nope, didn't get #2.

Ultimately I'm still a little bummed that the story felt short but I did enjoy how intentional it was with its space, as always. And yeah no more damned previews

[Frontier]

Every Super kid joins the Legion at some point .

He does seem to have an affinity for Aquaman.

Sounds like he and Waid are playing off each other for something.

[Kuwagaton]

The horror trend in superheroes is a little worn and doesn't need to be yet another gimmick tacked onto Aquaman. The best thing about Johnson's Superman is that it doesn't suffer from, "well I actually always wanted him to be more like this." If he did an Aquaman who was actually Aquaman then he'd get my money as always.

[Lairston]

The horror trend in superheroes is a little worn and doesn't need to be yet another gimmick tacked onto Aquaman. The best thing about Johnson's Superman is that it doesn't suffer from, "well I actually always wanted him to be more like this." If he did an Aquaman who was actually Aquaman then he'd get my money as always.

Yeah. I'm still waiting on my Flash #1 to arrive and I am concerned about this horror aspect that has been mentioned in interviews for the new direction of the title. I'm not really interested in horror. If the horror is really overbearing, there's a good chance I'll me asking the subscription department to move my issues elsewhere.

[Mantis-Ray]

Every Super kid joins the Legion at some point .

He does seem to have an affinity for Aquaman.

Sounds like he and Waid are playing off each other for something.

See these are the potential crossovers I'm interested in.

Unlike the fracaucta nonsense going on over in Batman.

[Kuwagaton]

Yeah. I'm still waiting on my Flash #1 to arrive and I am concerned about this horror aspect that has been mentioned in interviews for the new direction of the title. I'm not really interested in horror. If the horror is really overbearing, there's a good chance I'll me asking the subscription department to move my issues elsewhere.

Flash is generally too campy for me, so I mostly liked that new start. But at the same time I didn't feel like the exact "horror" quirk was necessary (as opposed to a novel approach in general) and if I liked typical Flash comics, it would probably seem like a bit much.

For what it's worth I didn't pick up PKJ's Knight Terrors and although I'm sure I will eventually, I'm in no rush with the same kinda sentiment.

[Vordan]

Every Super kid joins the Legion at some point .

He does seem to have an affinity for Aquaman.

Sounds like he and Waid are playing off each other for something.

HssH’s guess that they’re working together on the Brainiac event before Waid takes over Action makes sense to me. Action 1050 had Williamson, PKJ, and Taylor co-writing, for the Brainiac event maybe they just swapped Taylor out for Waid (an upgrade if there ever was one).

The horror trend in superheroes is a little worn and doesn't need to be yet another gimmick tacked onto Aquaman. The best thing about Johnson's Superman is that it doesn't suffer from, "well I actually always wanted him to be more like this." If he did an Aquaman who was actually Aquaman then he'd get my money as always.

Horror is a more natural fit for Aquaman, there was that great JMS story a while back about Arthur stopping Cthulhu from rising which showed that. Ocean is a scary place full of all sorts of freaky things the deeper you go, and at the very least it would press pause on Arthur losing/regaining the throne plots. An Aquaman run that leans into the magic would get my money.