Joe Casey's Adventures of Superman Supplement: The Big Noise

Our Worlds at War Aftermath!: Casualties of War!: The Big Noise: "Rumble Face" / "Benediction Redux" / "Righteous Destroyer" / "The Final Solution"

Superman/Batman #68-71 (Mar.-June 2010)

Writer: Joe Casey
Co-Writer: Joshua Williamson
Pencils: Ardian Syaf and Jay Fabok 
Inks: Vicente Cifuentes, David Enebral, Norm Rapmund, Marlo Alquiza, Prentis Rollins, Rebecca Buchman, Derek Fridolfs, and Walden Wong
Colors: Ulises Arreola and Pete Pantazis
Letters: Rob Leigh
Assistant Editor: Rex Ogle
Editor: Eddie Berganza 

Joe Casey's return to his run on Adventures of Superman slots in, as far as I can tell, between issues #596 and 597 of his original run. The details seem to line up fine: Earth in general and Metropolis in particular are rebuilding in the wake of the Imperiex War, Luthor is president, the JLA uses a Watchtower on the moon, and so on. The discontinuity that I noted is that Superman's chest logo uses a yellow backing, rather than the black one he adopted in mourning in #596. Maybe it was felt that would be confusing to casual readers. Though if they were worried about casual readers, maybe they shouldn't have marketed it as a tie-in to an eight-year-old event. (I did like the retro trade branding on the cover, admittedly.)

Anyway, this is kind of a bog-standard Superman story with a not very important role for Batman that ultimately becomes terrible. So far in reading Casey's Adventures of Superman, I'd say we've moved between Big Events like Return to Krypton and Our Worlds at War (where Casey can't really cut loose, though he did manage a really good installment of All-Out War!) and intriguing one-issue stories like "Don't Cry for Me, Bialya" (#590) and "Shipbuilding" (#596). So I was interested to see what he might do with a four-issue story of his own devising.

from Superman/Batman #71
(script by Joe Casey, art by Jason Fabok and Prentis Rollins,
Rebecca Buchman, Derek Fridolfs, & Walden Wong)

The answer turns out to be: not much. Superman discovers the hijacker of the ruined ancient Kryptonian star destroyer is on Earth, a shapeshifting Durlan (of Invasion!, Legion, and L.E.G.I.O.N. fame) disguised as a secretive financial backer of S.T.A.R. Labs. The Daxamite, Anderson Gaines, sends a bounty hunter after Clark Kent. Superman fights the bounty hunter, Batman goes to space, Superman and Batman win. Somehow this all takes four issues. The dialogue is often terrible; the bounty hunter tells the robots guarding the Fortress of Solitude, "If you two are searching your database for any info on me, let me make it easy for you-- I'm filed under NRG-X! Next time you'll know." Later when NRG-X tells Superman he doesn't know the meaning of "surrender," Superman even calls out they've descended into cliché... but I think calling your bad superhero dialogue "cliché" is as much a cliché as writing it at this point. There are lots of big fight scenes with no creativity or interest to them.

The story sets up interesting ideas that go nowhere. Batman insists that since Gaines is battling like a traditional insurgent, they should use usual counterinsurgency tactics instead of bringing in the JLA. This is an okay idea, of Superman having to be more Batman-like in fighting a Superman threat that uses Batman-like tactics... but not much of interest is actually done with it. Gaines's "insurgency" is to send a flaming fire man after Superman; Batman's "counterinsurgency" is to lure Gaines into space. Genuine character work is pretty minimal.

from Superman/Batman #68 (script by Joe Casey,
art by Ardian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes & David Enebral)

Plus the story has some weird dead ends. There's this whole thing in the first issue about how Clark interviews Garrison Slate, a redheaded reclusive S.T.A.R. Labs backer with bad facial hair... who is different from Anderson Gaines, the redheaded reclusive S.T.A.R. Labs backer with bad facial hair that Superman is fighting. Why? The other guy doesn't even add anything to the story, and in a later issue, it's claimed Clark interviewed Gaines, so even the writer got them confused.

There were times it clearly aspired to saying something about something, but this was tedious by its end. Mediocre decompressed hollow action comics at their worst. I don't know why this was written or what its point was imagined to be, and I look forward to getting back to the real Adventures of Superman soon.

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