I Had Issues! My Old Review of Action Comics #6

Full disclosure: I screwed up this review. Not only did it originally read like I shat it out in five minutes, but I also made a factual error  that Jim Lee was the designer of the New 52 costumes. It was Cully Hammer. I took all my Jim Lee jabs out in this version (though if you wanted to find it, the original is still up, with all my sins on display). Originally published February 3, 2012. Edited for MUCH needed clarity.

Enough of the "52 pick up" puns I've been coming up with for titles. Action Comics is a title that deserves to be graded on its own merit. And it deserves straightforward criticism: Lose the new Superman costume. Now.

I feel a feeling that Grant Morrison must feel as badly as he did back during his JLA days, writing all the scenes he had been waiting to write (Superman fighting an angel, pulling the moon) all while the character was wearing that ridiculous electric boogaloo costume. It doesn't even matter that the costume looks particularly bad with Adam Kubert drawing it.

Morrison must be holding his nose a little when he has to write the adult Superman in this fashion disaster. Both he and Kubert seem much more at ease and much more on point when we go back to the young Superman with the tied "S" cloth on it that almost looks like a towel tied around his neck. The family scenes, including the very last page of Morrison's story, keep the book worth going through. The action scenes with the Kryptonian whatever armor and, well, you just strain through them as you try to work through Morrison's plot.

That said, I love Morrison's spin on Clark's first meeting the Legion of Superheroes. I will love it more if DC allows Morrison to give this book the Smallville treatment and keep Clark out of costume until the last issue of the run.

I'm not sure why Morrison is not including more of the sentimental tone that was in All-Star Superman, but I'm glad Sholly Fisch is there to pick up the slack with flashbacks to young Superman's younger life, and that Chriscross is there as the artist for the second month in a row. I want to see Fisch on a regular high profile title somewhere.