Action Comics #16 (DC)

writer: Grant Morrison
artist: Brad Walker, Rags Morales

(courtesy dccomics.com)

The title of this issue is "The Second Death of Superman," and that's just one indication of why I love it and this whole run so much.

Now, before you think that you missed a major comics event (which was the story of 1992), Superman doesn't die in Action Comics #16 (bonus points if you can name the issue of Superman where he did).  All along Grant Morrison hasn't only been telling a Superman story but rather one that looks at the complete legacy.  Earlier that meant employing the Legion of Super-Heroes, who famously made their first appearance of teenage heroes of the future who recruited the young Superman into their ranks.  This time it means acknowledging the equally famous, or perhaps infamous, "Doomsday" event.

Moreso than with his Batman stories, this is Morrison exploiting the history of a major character and ending up with stories that are all the richer for it.  At the time it was just a story that the writing team wanted to do, actually to delay the wedding of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, that turned into a huge media event and a years-long arc that of course saw Superman come back from the dead.  It was one of the first gimmick events.  Since that time deaths and other such crises have become a regular feature of comic books, guaranteed to make the news as people who have no regular contact with superheroes other than at the movies suddenly feel that they have to experience for themselves what's just happened to an icon.

Yet now it's just another thing that happened to Superman.  Doomsday, the monster whose sole purpose was to show up and kill the Man of Steel, isn't particularly relevant to Morrison's reference to the event.  It's more that it's become a part of his story, just the same as Krypton exploding and baby Kal-El rocketing to Earth, being adopted by the Kents and adopting two different costumes to operate in Metropolis (the one with the glasses and the one with the cape).  In Marvel very few things are forgotten but most of it still ends up being glossed over.  Nothing leaves a true lasting impact, with few exceptions.  This is different.  This is Morrison having a better grasp of what helps ground a fictional character, even if it means that said character came back from the dead, which doesn't happen very often in real life.

Yet Superman is supposed to be mythic as well as comprehensible.  That's what an event like his death and return helped make more clear, what makes that happening to him different from when it happens to other characters, and why it only makes him stronger for someone like Morrison to acknowledge it years after the fact.

The Legion returns in this issue, too, by the way, both in the main story and Sholly Fisch's back-up.  After Geoff Johns shaped a whole arc on Superman's continued link and relevance to the Legion, I thought for sure DC would finally figure out that at least as far as today's readers are concerned, something like this is absolutely necessary to maintain.  Otherwise the Legion is just a group of heroes set in a time that has no relevance to the rest of the comics a typical reader will follow.  It's fine to have a separate continuity, but the Legion is best defined by context, even if that context is a thousand years in its past.  There should be a member who idolizes Superman to the point of obsessive emulation.  (How am I the first person to think of this???)  Mon-El, or Valor, doesn't count, although even he is regularly misused.

Anyway, this is Morrison's second-to-last issue of Action Comics.  The pieces are coming together.  His enemies in this run are reaching their end game.  Although it's not really about the enemies.  With Superman, it's always kind of been that way, but few writers have been able to figure that out.  Most hero figures it's the villain who helps define them.  With Superman, as Morrison clearly understands, it's about his own context, about how the world reacts around him.  Superman is very grounded, but he tends to provoke others who aren't, like fifth dimension imps, bald madmen, aliens who otherwise wouldn't care about Earth, superheroes from the future.

Morrison clearly approaches Superman as an icon.  It'll be sad to see that image end.