Joe Casey's Adventures of Superman Supplement: The Harvest

"Seeds" / The Harvest, Parts One–Three and Conclusion

Action Comics vol. 1 #801-05 (May-Sept. 2003)

Writer: Joe Kelly
Pencillers: Tom Raney, Tom Derenick, and Pascual Ferry
Inkers: Walden Wong, Bob Petrecca & Norm Rapmund, and Cam Smith
Guest Artist: Jason Pearson
Colorists: Gina Going and Guy Major
Associate Editor: Tom Palmer jr
Editor: Eddie Berganza 

Up until now I've only read the other Super titles when they directly crossed over with Adventures of Superman. However, since I was already planning on reading two storylines guest starring Traci Thirteen, Lost Hearts and Supergirls (Action #806-08), I decided it made sense to read the storyline she appeared in between those two, The Harvest, in Action Comics. Plus I really liked the look of the covers. So I took a side-step away from Joe Casey to see what the other Joe was up to...

from Action Comics vol. 1 #801
(art by Tom Raney & Walden Wong)

The first issue, "Seeds" (Action #801), is a prologue about people all across the United States spontaneously becoming metahumans. Superman has to deal with people suddenly gaining powers they can't control. It's an okay story: I liked that the plot of the issue turned on Superman inspiring a scared kid to live up to Superman's legacy, and use his seemingly monstrous powers for good.

At the end of the issue, it's discovered that this was a targeted attack. Less than a month later is when "The Harvest, Part One" (Action #802) picks up, with the discovery that the perennial DC "rogue nation" of Bialya is at fault. (The Hollow Men story in Adventures #614-16 takes place during these weeks, and Superman reminds President Luthor about its events here. Not sure about this editorial choice to have the storylines overlap: surely so many Americans getting superpowers undermines the excitement of finding a community where everyone has superpowers!) Superman goes to Bialya to investigate, but discovers that General Zod, the Pokolistani general, has devastated the nation already.

A solution to the crisis of rampant superpowers is devised: Superman and Zod purposefully work together to turn the sun red to neutralize all the superpowers until the mutations can be reversed. At first people think Zod died and Superman lived, but it turns out that Zod surgically altered himself to look like Superman and switched places with him, so now Zod is the only powered metahuman, and he conquers the world.

Honestly, it's all a bit much. There's probably a good story to be told about Superman dealing with an outbreak of superpowers; this isn't it. There's probably a good story to be told about Superman purposefully turning Earth's sun red; this isn't it. It's one of those stories that moves too quickly to actually engage with anything. The events here should be hugely consequential, but are anything but. It's spectacle without substance.

from Action Comics vol. 1 #803 (art by Pascual Ferry & Cam Smith)

The main thing it accomplishes is to establish a relationship between the Pokolistani Zod and the Kryptonian Zod, but why do I care if this version of Zod is just a snarling monster, with none of the awesome severity of the film version. And it didn't matter in the end, anyway. Nine months after this storyline ended, a new, properly Kryptonian General Zod was introduced in For Tomorrow. And then just eighteen months after that storyline ended, a new new properly Kryptonian General Zod was introduced in Last Son. (DC keeps trying to translate the import of Terence Stamp to the comics page and largely failing; almost all of the comics takes on Zod have been damp squibs.)

Oh, and if Superman is a pacifist now, as per Adventures #616, there's no evidence of it here, as he reacts in anger to finding out about Bialya's involvement, and punches his way to victory over Zod!

As for Traci Thirteen? She has two small cameos, just establishing the she's moved from D.C. to Metropolis in order to set up Supergirls. She looks weird, which I thought was a thing penciller Pascaul Ferry was doing on purpose, but then when Lois Lane turns up in "The Harvest: Conclusion" (Action #805), she also looks weird, because Ferry apparently just doesn't know how to draw bangs. So reading it turned out not to be a particularly worthwhile endeavor. Oh well, such is life as a fan of shared-universe comics.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

Joe Casey Joe Kelly's Adventures of Superman #611: Lost Hearts

Lost Hearts: "Lost" / "Heartbroken" / "Giving In" / "Heart Song"

The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #611 (Feb. 2003)
DC Comics Presents: Superman vol. 2 #2 (Jan. 2011), reprinting Action Comics vol. 1 #798, Superman vol. 2 #189, Superman: The Man of Steel #133 (Feb. 2003) 

Writers: Geoff Johns and Joe Kelly
Pencils: Pascual Ferry, Dwayne Turner, and Tom Derenick
Inks: Keith Champagne, Pascual Ferry, Kevin Conrad, Norm Rapmund, Walden Wong, Bob Petrecca, Sandu Florea, and Cam Smith 
Colors: Tanya and Rich Horie, Guy Major, and Moose Baumann
Letterer: Richard Starkings
Associate Editor: Tom Palmer Jr.
Editor: Eddie Berganza 

#611 is the third and final fill-in during Joe Casey's run on Adventures of Superman. Unlike #591 and 607, where my philosophy was that I would read them if I could get them at no extra cost and skip them if I could not, I intended to get #611 from the beginning. It's the second installment of the Lost Hearts crossover, but in this four-part story, Joe Kelly (regular writer of Action Comics) takes over Adventures. But I was intrigued by what I knew of its more personal focus, by its evocative covers, by the fact someone had bothered to reprint it (in DC Comics Presents: Superman vol. 2), and by the fact that it introduced Traci Thirteen, a character I came to love during the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle run.

from Superman: The Man of Steel #133
(script by Geoff Johns, art by Tom Derenick and
Norm Rapmund, Walden Wong, Bob Petrecca, & Sandu Florea)

Lana Lang, Clark Kent's childhood sweetheart and the vice president's wife, runs away to Hell's Heart, the worst neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and Clark goes after her. There, amid the growing cold of late year, he discovers rampant drug addiction, homelessness, sexual exploitation, and (of course) strange alien parasites. Clark finds his values tested; this is a place and a situation where he can't be Superman... but is Clark strong enough?

It has its moments, but something about it didn't quite click. Maybe it's that I'm always kind of wary of Superman comics getting too close to "real social issues"; maybe it's that the emotional throughline for Clark felt a bit muddled. Maybe it's that I'm not convinced of the need for a subplot about an exploitative photo shoot of Lana. It feels like the story kind of meanders to a conclusion more than it has an actual plot.

from The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #611
(script by Joe Kelly, art by Dwayne Turner & Kevin Conrad)

But I enjoyed a lot of it. Traci Thirteen is a fun character, you can see why she came back, even if she's not quite the same character as later. (She seems older and more detached than she was in Blue Beetle. I don't remember her having an iguana familiar in any other stories, and I don't think her dad can possibly be Doctor 13, as Architecture & Mortality would establish.) Some of the stuff about Superman coming to help Hell's Heart is, well, heart-warming, and fits in well with what Casey has been doing in Adventures.

from Action Comics vol. 1 #798
(script by Joe Kelly, art by Pascual Ferry and
Keith Champagne & Cam Smith)

It's nice to have a Superman titles crossover that's about, well, Superman-- not about big fights and Events.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part XXX: World War III

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2007 (contents: 2007)
Acquired March 2013
Read August 2014

World War III

Writers: Keith Champagne, John Ostrander, Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid

Pencillers: Pat Olliffe, Andy Smith, Tom Derenick, Jack Jadson, Keith Giffen, Justiniano
Inkers: Drew Geraci, Ray Snyder, Norm Rapmund, Rodney Ramos, Walden Wong
Letterers: Ken Lopez, Travis Lanham, Pat Brosseau
Colorist: Alex Sinclair

World War III expands on week 50 of 52, giving details of Black Adam's war on the world, and in the meantime answering question no one ever cared about, like how did Cyborg get restored to normal, when did Supergirl return from the 31st century, why did (not-Martian) Manhunter quit her job, where did Booster Gold get a different device than the one he turned up with in week 52, and... uh... well, I'm sure it answered some other questions. Really, this is just pointless: Black Adam smashes things (people, mostly), Martian Manhunter ponders whether or not to get involved (I thought he was a hero? isn't this obvious?). Focalizing this through Martian Manhunter is supposed to make it more meaningful, I guess, but aside from the scene where he bumps into his coworkers from his old police detective days, it literally did nothing of interest. A completist might think you need to read this as part of 52, but really, omitting it from the Omnibus was the right call. (I do like what ultimately happens to Black Adam, but that's an event that happens in 52 proper, even though it's reprinted here alongside World War III.)

There's some focus on the Teen Titans here, which results in a couple of them getting punched so hard they die. Why anyone involved thinks that stories about teenagers being brutally killed is something I read I have no idea. Oh geeze, was a comic book about a group of teens who live together and fight crime on their own with superpowers somehow in need of gritty realism? Thanks, Geoff Johns. (Actually, John Ostrander writes the issue in question, but I'm willing to bet the action is Johns's fault.)

Faster than a DC Bullet: Birds of Prey, Part VII: The Battle Within

Comic trade paperback, 237 pages
Published 2006 (contents: 2005)
Borrowed from the library
Read February 2013

Birds of Prey: The Battle Within

Writer: Gail Simone
Pencillers: Joe Bennett, Ed Benes, Tom Derenick, Joe Prado, Eddy Barrows
Inkers: Jack Jadson, Ed Benes, Bob Petrecca, Robin Riggs
Letterers: Jared K. Fletcher, Phil Balsman

The fourth collection of Gail Simone's Birds of Prey run is where her take really clicked with me-- perhaps because this collects twelve issues, a full year of her run, rather than the usual 6 or so, allowing one to really dig into her interweaving plots. This is odd, as I found the first few stories pretty disposable: the Birds, in their new mobile home Aerie One, travel to Dayton, Kansas, and Metropolis to rein in overeager vigilantes. I'm not sure why Barbara decided this was their new purpose in life, but there you go.

We get a few done-in-one (or -two) stories that are strong in character for the regulars, which is nice, but little else. It's nice to see Helena actually doing educational stuff, and there's one of my favorite moments in the whole series thus far when she crossbows a guy in hospital and shrugs it off. Zinda turns out to be a fantastic addition to the Birds, rarely at the center of the plots, but always fun in how she changes the dynamic. On the other hand, Kansas is portrayed in an utterly condescending way, and Tom Derenick and Bob Petrecca's art is so off that when a mystical creature ages Dinah twenty years in the middle of combat, you can't even tell.

The plot in the book's second half, as the Birds of Prey being to disintegrate and also take on some gangs internationally, was much more consistent. Helena leaves the group to do things in a way that combines her original one with Barbara's, and in doing so, we get our best understanding of her character in the series so far: someone violent and brash, but dedicated to doing good in whatever way works best. Helena trying to infiltrate the Gotham underworld (and tussling with Dick "Nightwing" Grayson, who is doing the same) is one of the series' most interesting undertakings. Meanwhile, Barbara must undergo surgery and Dinah has to organize the defense of Gotham City with just hand-on-hand combat. The interweaving of plot and character has never been sharper in the title, and I have never liked all three characters more.

Unfortunately, the story is let down by the series's weakest art thus far: Joe Bennett and Jack Jadson's women all have plastic faces incapable of displaying emotions other than wide-mouthed; Ed Benes might be cheesecakey, but at least his characters have facial expressions. Worse is the creepy way he draws all Asians. Ugh. One wonders why DC was never able to supply Gail Simone with an artist who could match her writing talent. At least Huntress's costume has lost the belly window.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Star City, Part XII: Green Arrow and Black Canary: Road to the Altar

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2008 (contents: 2007)
Borrowed from the library
Read November 2009

Green Arrow and Black Canary: Road to the Altar

Writers: Tony Bedard, J. Torres
Pencillers: Paulo Siqueria, Lee Ferguson, Tom Derenick, Nicola Scott, Christina Norrie, Joe Prado
Inkers: Amilton Santos, Karl Story, Rodney Ramos, Doug Hazlewood, Christina Norrie, Joe Prado
Additional Layouts: Mike Norton 
Colorists: Tanya & Richard Horie
Letterers: Pat Brosseau, Travis Lanham, Jared K. Fletcher

And the first volume of the new Green Arrow series begins! Most of this is taken up with a story setting up Dinah's decision to accept Oliver's proposal, which she does when he demonstrates his new ability to not think of himself for once. It's a good story-- Tony Bedard really gets both Black Canary and Green Arrow-- and I especially like getting to see Dinah work as a mother. Her foster daughter, Sin, is a lot of fun, too, so it's a shame this story basically serves to write her out because we couldn't possibly have a mother as the star of a superhero comic! I also am not convinced Black Canary should so easily accept the way Green Arrow manipulates the situation, but maybe it works. Mia gets some good material, too (no Connor, though). The art is pretty good, though I question the occasional choice of clothing for Dinah, especially given she's supposedly in her late thirties by now; the stuff she wears here looks more like what a sixteen-year-old would wear! And skirts of these lengths would be physically impossible anyway. (I have to admit that no artist since Phil Hester has actually drawn her at her proper age.) Overall, it's a very good story and a great start to Green Arrow and Black Canary.

There's a short epilogue that's Dinah's "wedding planner", showing her struggle to plan a quick, easy wedding. Of course, there's no such thing, and that's even less the case when you have to invite the superhero community! Decent fun, especially the interstitials between the main story. The section where she, Wonder Woman, and Vixen try on lingerie is about as gratuitous as they get, though, made all the worse that Lee Ferguson and Karl Story draw a profoundly unattractive Wonder Woman!