Action Comics 827 Review

There are three initial reasons which might make you pass up buying Action Comics #827:

1. Superman is fighting a master of magnetism. Hardly a threat to someone who is invulnerable, right?
2. John Byrne is the new artist. He can’t possibly draw this better than he did back in the 1980s, right?
3. Gail Simone is the new writer. A woman can’t possibly create one of the best Superman stories of the year, right?

If you those assumptions, you would be wrong on all three counts. Let’s start in reverse order, with Gail Simone. She’s revived Birds of Prey, one of the best ongoing series set in the DC Universe, by turning around the status quo for Black Canary, Huntress, and Oracle. Like Geoff Johns, Simone has an excellent knack for taking older DC heroes and villains and updating them for the modern age. With a wink to the old timers, she knows about the key moments in each character’s life, and exploits those in her stories. For example, a classic Green Arrow story involved Black Canary getting captured and tortured by a group of mercenaries; in one of Simone’s stories, the same thing nearly happens again, but sharpened by her previous experiences, Canary figures out a way to survive the ordeal and overcome her tormentors.

In her debut on Action, Simone shows that she knows how to breathe new life into Superman as well. We first see Superman defending humanity—not in Metropolis, but Africa. It’s new and completely relevant to the situations in countries on that continent. Then we see a refreshing scene between Superman and Lois Lane, and Simone depicts it in such a way that makes me glad, for the first time, that they did get married.

And then there is John Byrne. He’s back and he’s not inking his own work, and it makes a nice change. I like Nelson (the inker), and the depth he gives to some of Byrne’s faces and figures. He’s a very detailed inker who does a lot of line work. I think the best inker for Byrne remains Jerry Ordway, who did an outstanding job on the JLA six-part story from 2004, but Nelson is a close second. One thing that has never diminished with John Byrne is his pictorial storytelling ability. Unlike many of today’s artists, he knows how to tell a story using multiple panels per page, while still bringing dynamics to all of the action scenes. It’s rare that Byrne ever works with a writer who does both plotting and scripting—in the recent past we’ve seen Byrne handle at least the full plotting chores on all of his series—but it’s extremely refreshing.

Finally, there is the source of the conflict in this story: a new master of magnetism. She shows up on the first three pages in an explosive manner, and she resembles Betty Page. She’s much more of a threat to Superman than you might think. When you get to the last page (and you must read them sequentially not to spoil a secret) you’ll be wondering if Superman can really survive this encounter.

Action Comics just got added to my subscription list. Bravo to Simone and Byrne, let’s hope we ain’t seen nothin’ yet!