Joe Casey's Adventures of Superman #608-09: Ending Battle

Ending Battle: "Morning Twilight" / "Dawn's Early Light" / "In the Dark of the Noon Day Sun" / "The Thirteenth Hour" / "After School Special" / "Rush Hour" / "Nightfall" / "The Last Supervillain"

Action Comics vol. 1 #795-96, The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #608-09, Superman vol. 2 #186-87, Superman: The Man of Steel #130-31 (Nov.-Dec. 2002)

Writers: Geoff Johns, Joe Casey, Mark Schultz, and Joe Kelly
Pencils: Pascual Ferry, Derec Aucoin, Brandon Badeaux, and Duncan Rouleau
Inks: Cam Smith, Derec Aucoin, Mark Morales, Marlo Alquiza, and Mark Farmer
Colors: Tanya & Rich Horie, Rob Ro & Alex Bleyaert, and Moose Baumann
Letters: Richard Starkings and Ken Lopez 
Associate Editor: Tom Palmer jr.
Editor: Eddie Berganza 

Ending Battle is the second-last of the Joe Casey-era Super titles crossovers, and arguably one of the more successful. Unlike the two Return to Krypton stories, it bounces through each of the four Super titles twice; unlike Our Worlds at War, it doesn't sprawl too much, but stays contained. There's still a lot of action, arguably too much, but the story also has a decent focus on character, and has clearly been designed so that the overwhelming amount of action is, in many ways, the point of it all.

from The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #608
(script by Joe Casey, art by Derec Aucoin)

The story is a sequel to "What's So Funny about Truth, Justice, & the American Way?" (Action Comics #775), a satire on The Authority that thankfully I read many years ago. Manchester Black, after his role in Prelude to War! and All-Out War!, is back for revenge on Superman, but what he wants is nothing so mundane as Superman's death. Rather, Black wants to demonstrate that Superman is as prone to violent solutions as he is, and to push Superman to his limit. So, Black uses his mind control powers to make Superman's life-- or rather Clark Kent's-- hell. The first couple issues are just an onslaught of supervillains attacking key people in Clark's life, which keeps Superman busy to the point of exhaustion, and also lets him know that someone knows his secret identity. (That Black is behind it all isn't made clear until about halfway through the story.)

So Superman must protect Pete and Lana at the White House, then his parents (who have un-died at some point since Casualties of War!), then his high-school football coach, his dentist, his journalism professor, his local librarian, his optometrist, Jimmy Olsen, the Daily Planet office, and John Henry and Natasha Irons. Some of this works better than others. A lot of the supervillains are, quite frankly, C- and D-grade material. I guess that's kind of by design (I doubt Manchester Black could control an A-grade villain, and the A-grades he does control are saved for the climax of the conflict), but I'm not terribly into reading a whole issue where Superman fights a guy whose power is, apparently, "chains." Joe Casey handles it best in part 2 (Adventures #608), and Mark Schultz does a decent job of it in part 3 (Man of Steel #130). As one comes after another after another, we get a bunch of vignettes that amuse (the ridiculous of the villains in part 2 especially) but also raise the tension and demonstrate why Superman is Superman (he really does think everyone matters).

from Superman: The Man of Steel #130
(script by Mark Schultz, art by Brandon Badeaux & Mark Morales)

Each of those two writers also layers in details that make their issues sing a little bit more, make sure that they do more than play their part in the ongoing storyline. Casey parallels the action with a politician on the morning talk show circuit complaining that superheroes do more harm than good; I don't always like this kind of thing, but here it's thematically appropriate. Has Superman's insistence on facing Manchester Black his way just caused more problems in the long run? Schultz has the nice detail of Lois and Clark having a contingency plan for Clark's secret identity being compromised; like in his installment of Prelude to War!, Lois shines with her human determination in face of superhuman threat.

I also enjoyed the confrontation with Lex Luthor in Joe Kelly's part 4 (Action #795). Most of the villains don't know why they're attacking these people, they just are, but Luthor does know... and so therefore refuses to make use of the knowledge: "I was given the information -- [...] Your identity was given to me. On a platter. A mysterious file. A naive employee. No witnesses -- [...] I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth... but I have not done this. I refuse to be a pawn." As has been consistent throughout this era of Superman, putting Lex into a position of power has allowed for an exploration of some of the interesting aspects of his character.

from Action Comics vol. 1 #795
(script by Joe Kelly, art by Duncan Rouleau & Marlo Alquiza)

After a promising first seven-sixteenths, though, I found the storyline went downhill. Superman fighting the Elite again wasn't very interesting (I don't think the Elite are very interesting in and of themselves, only as tools of Manchester Black, and he's only interesting as an embodiment of the anti-Superman philosophy of The Authority), and then Metropolis has been taken over by Mongul, Bizarro, et al. I think it's only the third time since Joe Casey came on board that Metropolis has been hit by a massive disaster... but three massive disasters in less than two years of comics makes for an overused trope. Casey does manage to do something interesting with it all in part 6 (Adventures #609), but it feels like it's in spite of the actual storyline. There's some focus on the politician guy again, which I liked, and once again Casey delves into Superman's thoughts about the massive violence he's able to deploy whenever he wants to. But the actual plot is just another big throwdown.

The whole thing comes down to a battle between Superman and Manchester Black, where Superman thinks Lois Lane is dead, and Black mentally abuses Lois, either revealing or creating-- I wasn't sure-- memories of her abuse at the hands of her father. This seemed unnecessarily dark to me, and the whole conclusion (Action #796) doesn't quite come off. What Ending Battle wanted to be was Superman pushed to his limit, and he still doesn't snap... but you never feel like Superman actually would snap. All of these terrible things have happened to him in one awful day, but he just kind of shrugs it all off and does the right thing. Which, fair do, Superman should always do the right thing... but in life doing the right thing is rarely easy. Here's it's almost flippant how Superman is like, "You murdered my wife but I will take the moral high ground."

from Action Comics vol. 1 #796
(script by Joe Kelly, art by Duncan Rouleau & Marlo Alquiza)

I'm not sure how I would do it differently. I don't want to read a "dark Superman" story. But if you do all of this to Superman and can't make it seem like he could snap but doesn't, then really, I don't think you should have done the story in the first place. I liked Manchester Black and the Elite in "What's So Funny about Truth, Justice, & the American Way?", but they seem like a set of characters molded for one story and one purpose, and not flexible enough to keep reusing. The more they turn up, the less they seem like whatever they were originally supposed to do.

All that said, the story is one of the better of the Super title crossovers, which I guess is damning with faint praise. It has length enough to fit its scope, but doesn't sprawl; the emotional throughline is more thought out and thought through than in Return to Krypton, Our Worlds at War, or Return to Krypton II. Only Lost Hearts (still to come) was better, but on the whole, I feel like it was a format the writers and editors of this era never really worked out to its best.

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