ACTION COMICS ANNUAL #11Written by Geoff Johns and Richard Donner
Art by Adam Kubert
I'm at a loss as to how to treat this book. I felt the same way as I did when Ultimates 2 finally ended or any other random oft-delayed title finishes up a story after months and months of void. It's hard not to be bitter over the delays and at the same time I'd like to at least judge the book on its own merits before harping on the lateness.
In the end, I can't help but feel underwhelmed, even without the delay. First off, the art is subpar, by Kubert's standards. The colouring and inking help it a lot, but backgrounds are completely barren at times. Off the top of my head, when Clark rescues Lois, it's just ground and a blue background for every panel on the page. Maybe a little bit of generic crystal slapped in for posterity. It's not a major character moment or artistic decision either.
One double page splash with Superman and Lex talking consists of the same background copy and pasted in about a dozen or so separate panels. It's just rushed and / or lazy work. Also, many of the buildings seem like they were either "referenced" or digitally coloured over pictures of New York or any other real life city. The striking difference between them and the colouring of the characters really pulled me out of any images with them in it. Superman has like two blue and two red colours used for his costume and its shading, making him look pasted on the background instead of a part of it. Is it the artist's fault or the colourist's? I'm not sure, but I think it's whoever did the backgrounds and that's probably Kubert.
There are many pages like this and seeing that the delays are all Kubert's fault, seeing the art turn out like this is a disappointment. At least Ultimates always looked fantastic, despite the huge delays by Hitch. Note, the characters look fine, but it's almost like he drew the images and a ghost writer (ghost artist?) came in and did his backgrounds for him.
As for the story, I'm left a little unimpressed by its conclusion, but, for the most part, enjoyed it. We get the prerequisite brawl between the Superman Revenge Squad and Zod's army and Superman and Zod's fight has a lot of impact, but the ending just fizzles with most of the Kryptonians coming off as cannonfodder, even though they have the powers of Superman, and instead of any resolution, everyone just gets dumped back into the Negative Zone by Lex Luthor's tinkering with an escape pod and a random "reverse propolsion whiplash effect" that pulls anyone that was in the NZ back into it at the push of a button.
The things I did like, though, were mostly concerning Lex Luthor. This, and I don't recall him being written like this in the regular DCU before (I didn't read the One Year Later stuff if he began acting like this there), was basically an All-Star Superman version of Lex and I loved it. He's usually much less entertaining than seen here and his early verbal sparring match with Superman was great. Later, he has a similar chat with Lois concerning her choice in husbands that was great. Finally, I loved his "doing this for humanity" excuse and motivation for his hatred of Superman and some of his points about Superman not inspiring humanity to be better, but to only rely on his godly powers makes sense if you think about it. The last pages with Christopher Kent getting the credit for saving everyone instead of Luthor and his reaction to reading the article was great as well.
In the end, though, I never really felt any emotion or impact from this. I'm not sure if it's because of the writing or if I should blame the complete distatchment on the months since I last read this storyline and how my excitement for this issue coming into it was almost zero. For something as Earth shattering as a Kryptonian army invading and conquering the world, imprisoning all its heroes and destroying all human based resistence, this story had no impact on anything and makes the supposed threat seem laughable in comparison to how they try to build it up. Add in the ineffective Superman-like army that gets taken down by scrubs like Parasite and Metallo in seconds and how there is no actual conclusion to this fight other than everyone getting put back in the Negative Zone and it's as if this story, which could have easily been a major event for DC, is barely worthy of a footnote.
Verdict - Check It. It's not a bad issue, but not worth the huge delay either. Add an indecisive conclusion and it's really only worth picking up if you absolutely must read how this storyline finishes. Maybe it'll read better in trade or for people less jaded over delays.
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