Action Comics #866 Review

ACTION COMICS #866
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Gary Frank and Jon Sibal

I'm pretty sure Superman has the most retcons in the history comics. To be honest, I don't even know what his origin is these days. Maybe he was the last son of Krypton, maybe he wasn't. Was Krypton super advanced and peaceful and ignored Jor-El's warnings or were they a war mongering race that ended up confined to their own planet by Brainiac? Did he go to school with Lex? Was he a jock or a nerd? Did he have powers as a kid or not?

It seems like every "all new era" of Superman when a new writer comes on board heralds a new origin for Superman, Krypton or one of his major villains. Johns has changed all three since teaming up with Donner a couple of years ago and I'm still not even sure what's being retconned or whether it existed, was retconned out and is not being brought back in again and this Brainiac story is pretty much in the same boat.

Brainiac, to me, has been a machine for as long as I remember. He's had upgrades and different looks, but was always a machine. It's only been one issue, but Johns has set Brainiac up as a living being, similar to Brainiac 13, I suppose, and I believe he is trying to tell us, much like in the recent Toyman retcon, that Brainiac's previous incarnations were merely imposters and machines he controlled from affair.

We don't see much of this Brainiac and, frankly, he was only in about two or three pages, less if you don't count the flashback to Kandor being bottled up, so it's hard to gauge what Johns is trying to do here, but I'm intrigued.

But, if you came looking for only Brainiac in this issue, you came away disappointed. Johns focused most of the issue on the new Daily Planet cast, in the form of returning gossip columnist, Catherine Grant, and the new sports editor, Steve Lombard. It's a humourous scene where Clark Kent really shined. Lombard made a sexual crack about Lois and Clark immediately busts out the heat vision on Lombard's chair, sending him crashing to the floor.

And when Grant, fresh off a boob job and in a low cut shirt, tries to put some moves on the bumbling reporter, Clark shows more restraint than me by looking Grant right in the eyes and never even taking a glance at her chest as she flaunts it right in his face. She storms off in anger with a cute, "You're from another planet, Clark.", line.

That's all followed up with some nice Clark / Lois interaction before Superman goes into action for an unidentified object entering the atmosphere. Turns out it's a Brainiac robot that immediately attacks Superman. It manages to get a small cut on his forehead, which it promptly analyzes, and then shuts down after transmitting the data back to the "real" Brainiac aboard a giant floating Brainiac robot head. He's in a room filled with bottled cities and I hope this signals we'll finally get a resolution to the damn Kandor bottled city. After all these years, I'm tired of seeing that bottle and Clark make promises to try and restore them to full size.

Verdict - Must Read. It was a lot of fun reading the scene with Clark and the new members of the Daily Planet and the new Brainiac has me intrigued to the point I want to know more about how this fits in with everything we already know.

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