Action Comics #1072 online

Superman recalls a bittersweet moment from his boyhood, when a ship from the stars brought an explorer to Earth, a young man circumstances led him to believe was his big brother.

Today, Superman and Mon-El are reunited in the Phantom Zone, to which the Man of Steel has come to learn what twisted three inmates into one horrific, tragic creature.

Mon-El has a quest of his own. Disguised as the Zone’s most notorious prisoner, Dr Xa-Du – who he’s captured and locked in a cell – he’s piloting his prisoner’s ship, accompanied by other Zone dwellers who aren’t allied with Xa-Du.

Superman has been scratching his S-curl, wondering why what he first knew as a ghost realm has, over the years, become a more solid place. Mon-El has the answers.

Of course, it was inevitable that some of the criminals – the worst Krypton has to offer – would fall back into old ways. Aethyr went from friend to foe, punishing the prisoners as his own mind became ever more warped.

When he’s not listening to the story, using the solar bracelets which allow him to use his powers in the Zone, Superman is fending off weird creatures brought there by Aethyr.

Along the way, Superman finds that Mon-El isn’t the man he expected him to be.

While they’re talking. Xa-Du escapes, and reaches Aethyr before Superman and Mon-El.

Yipes. I guess now we know how the three escaped prisoners wound up a Pick and Mix Person in Action Comics #1070.

I enjoyed this third chapter of Mark Waid’s Phantom Zone story, even though it seems to have been derailed. I mean, do you think the original intention was to have five pages last issue (mostly a dull sequence of Kon-El and Kenan Kong playing baseball) and five more this time (the lads teleported from a burgled Fortress of Solitude) drawn by an artist other than Clayton Henry? It’s jarring to suddenly have Henry’s smooth stylings supplanted by Michael Shelfer’s angular, Manga-esque work?

My guess is that Waid and Henry were preparing their four-parter when the news came down that Action Comics was going weekly, Clayton hadn’t time to draw everything and Waid had to tweak his tale to allow for a mini-adventure starring Superboy and the new Super-Man of China (that’s China, Metropolis, apparently). I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.

The main part of the story is what I came for, a look at the mysteries of the Phantom Zone and a reunion a long time in the making. It’s clever of Waid to have the Silver Age Mon-El story have happened while folding in the current continuity business about Clark never having officially been Superboy.

Best of all, this issue firmly kicks the Brian Bendis Legion into another dimension – that team’s Mon-El was the descendant of Jon Kent. OK, Jon Kent is definitely part of the current story’s continuity, but my head canon says that when he went to the 31st century with the Legion of Super-Heroes Jon was travelling into a pocket universe – there’s certainly precedent!

Reconciling continuities is hard – in this storyline we’re told that the Aethyr who Superman and Wonder Woman had previously met was but an aspect of the real thing (similar to Geoff Johns ‘you’ve never met the real Brainiac’ back in the day), but if one of those Aethyrs birthed the Zone, as we’re told in the classic Phantom Zone mini-series by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan, the latest, ‘Ur-Aethyr’, would surely know. Also, Philip Kennedy Johnson already provided a great explanation for the differing presentations of the Zone only a few years back.

I’m sad that Mon-El here has had to resort to killing captives, but post-Crisis we had to accept Superman had no choice but to execute murderous Phantom Zoners, so again, precedent.

I’m happy that, somewhere in the Zone, there’s a cracking barber; I mean, how sharp is Mon-El’s parting? And those designs at the side?

It almost makes up for the fact we barely see Mon-El in his classic costume with the Big Yellow Fasteners. Mind, they do inspire his narration tag, a cute piece of work from letterer Dave Sharpe.

Clayton Henry keeps up the excellent visual storytelling, putting the weirdness of the Zone, and Superman’s believable reactions, before us. We also see the quiet anger that he’s not, initially, getting the whole truth from Mon-El and how disturbed Superman is as he realises this isn’t the playmate he knew. The panel of Aethyr’s casual twisting of his victims is chilling, and Xa-Du, aka the Phantom King, is as creepy as ever. The monsters and landscapes are fine, too.

It’s all beautifully coloured by Matt Herms, who also handles the fill-in pages by Michael Shelfer which, while not in a style I love, do have a certain dynamism.

Action Comics #1072 also carries the third part of a Supergirl serial written by Mariko Tamaki, drawn by Skylar Patridge. It’s less boring than last issue because Kara bashes a lot of space spiders, but it remains infuriatingly opaque. Information is kept from Supergirl, but what she does know, Tamaki refuses to share with the reader. We’re three quarters of the way through and still don’t know who the prisoner Supergirl is suppose to escort is, why she’s the person for the job, how the assignment is a threat to Earth… The stakes are supposedly high, but without knowing them, how can we care?

Tamaki’s Supergirl has an admirable determination, but is dour dour dour, which wouldn’t be so bad were we told why she’s feeling so hopeless. It all just makes me want to grab my copies of the two Daring New Adventures of Supergirl trades, in which Paul Kupperberg, Carmine Infantino and Bob Oksner present a Kara who has a life outside of superheroing, and manages to have some fun when she is in costume.

Patridge gives us some good layouts and sells the emotions – well, emotion, as I said, it’s gloom all day long – but it’s a shame she doesn’t have a more engaging script to work with. Then she might have been inspired to make Space Court more than a giant Christmas bauble that’s entirely empty bar an annoying robot.

Marissa Louise colours, Becca Carey letters and they do a good job.

This issue’s cover is a neat representation of the main story by Clayton Henry and colourist Tomeu Morey. While not an instant classic, Action Comics #1072 is mostly great, and I’m looking forward to the conclusion.