DC Comics

"Braniac: Conclusion"

Dave Wallace:

Thom Young:

Dave Wallace I get the feeling that I'm somehow missing something with Geoff Johns’ and Gary Frank's Action Comics. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that it's a bad comic. I'd go so far as to say that it's generally an above-average book, particularly where the artwork is concerned. But I can't recognise the greatness that so many others have seen in this "Brainiac" arc.

At best, there are glimmers of great ideas in Johns' writing, such as the scene in which Superman gently inspires Supergirl with the courage to do what she needs to do in order to stop Brainiac from destroying the Earth, or his depiction of Brainiac as a clean-freak who can’t cope with his exposure to the contaminants of Earth. However, they take a back seat to an otherwise generic and by-numbers conclusion to the “Brainiac” storyline.

Johns has often been criticised for clunky dialogue, and for his tendency to opt for emotional resonance at the expense of plots that make logical sense. Unfortunately, both of those flaws are evident here.

The dialogue often feels a little stilted--especially the exchanges between Superman and Brainiac--and there are a couple of very cheesy moments that cheapen the story. I don’t mind occasional moments of cheesiness--after all, I’m still reading superhero comics after all these years--but I do mind them when they come at the expense of consistent plotting or characterization.

Here, we have Superman beat Brainiac with brute strength (when previous issues have established that Brainiac is more than his physical equal). And, later in the book, we have Superman’s sarcastic quip of “Welcome to Earth,” coupled with a kick to Brainiac’s head--literally kicking his enemy whilst he’s down, which just didn’t ring true for the character.

Thom Young: I agree. The plot details are a bit trite, but nothing stands out as exceedingly bad. Too, some of the dialog is overly melodramatic--particularly in the scenes in which Brainiac and Superman are fighting--but nothing stands out as extraordinarily bad dialog.

Overall, Action Comics #870 is just a typical superhero comic book that has a “startling conclusion” that was actually spoiled in the mainstream news media (undoubtedly due to a DC Comics press release to mainstream outlets) just before the issue went on sale.

Fortunately, it does have some really nice illustrations by Gary Frank. His work on this issue seems to be slightly less “textured” than his work in other recent issues has been--which means the “odd facial expressions” that some readers have mentioned don’t show up here as much.

Dave Wallace: Yes, Gary Frank's artwork stands out as one of the major strengths of the title. Although it’s interesting that you note a slight difference in “texture.” I also noted one or two places where the inking seems inconsistent. This issue was inked by two artists, rather than by Jon Sibal alone, which is probably the cause of the differences (which are particularly notable in the last few pages of the book).

Thom Young: Ah, I wasn’t even paying attention to the inking. I was just noticing that Frank doesn’t seem to be as intent here as he was in the earlier issues of this arc in trying to achieve verisimilitudinous textures in the clothing and facial expressions. Perhaps that’s the result of the inking, but I thought it was just in Frank realizing that Johns’s writing isn’t suited for that level of textured details in the illustrations.

Dave Wallace: That could be the case, as there’s definitely a general sense that Frank’s work here is a little flatter than usual. It could be an intentional stylistic choice, I guess -- but it seems odd for an artist to make that switch halfway through a story arc. I wonder whether the artwork was slightly rushed, in order to prepare the book in time to set up the big “New Krypton” crossover for the Superman titles that this conclusion lays the groundwork for.

That said, aside from the occasional inconsistency with the inking and textures, Frank’s visuals are very strong, giving each character a real sense of substance and consistency, and conveying the intense emotions of Johns’ script effectively. His storytelling is clear, and there are a couple of standout single panels of action--such as the dynamic shot of Superman streaking towards Smallville with his hair plastered down over his face.

Brad Anderson’s colours are also solid, maintaining a certain consistency with Dave McCaig’s previous work on the book with his occasional use of fairly pale, almost washed-out hues, but utilising more vivid, primary colours when the scene demands it.

I’m still not in love with Frank’s redesign of Brainiac. However, aside from that (and the inking problems I mentioned), the book’s artwork is generally pretty good.

After the Brainiac plot is wrapped up, Johns bring us a final development involving Pa Kent that strives for poignancy, but unfortunately falls flat.

Thom Young: Yes, the event most of us knew was coming finally arrived at the conclusion of this issue. In the second issue of this “Brainiac” arc (Action Comics #867), there was a scene between Clark and Pa Kent in the barn that bordered on sappiness. Then, last issue, there was the scene on the cover that showed Clark and Pa drinking root beer on the Kent farm while Ma and Lois look on from the porch in the background.

(At least on the original cover of the issue Clark and Pa were drinking root beer. You may have heard about that issue having been recalled, pulped, and re-printed with a revised cover that showed them drinking the generic “SODA POP” instead of “ROOT BEER”--because, of course, Superman is too wholesome to drink “root beer.”

Ginger ale would have also been out of the question, but perhaps they could have sipped on a couple of bottles of sarsaparilla.)

The problem with that cover on Action Comics #869 is that there was no such scene in the actual issue--not even as a flashback. Superman spent the entire issue inside Brainiac’s spaceship. I expected there to be a flashback of good times on the Kent farm drinking sarsaparilla with Pa as Superman’s life flashed before his eye. Instead, the only “father” in the issue turned out to be Supergirl’s pa--Zor-El in the Bottle City of Kandor, whom Superman briefly mistook for his own father (as opposed to his own “pa”), Jor-El.

See? There’s a motif here.

Pa Kent on the cover drinking sarsaparilla with his adopted son, Superman inside momentarily believing that he hears his dead father from Krypton, and Supergirl’s believed-dead-father from Krypton discovered to be living in a bottle (with his wife, but the mothers aren’t a major part of the motif). It’s all fitting into place as we realize that last issue’s cover was purely symbolic but also a way of leading us into this current issue.

As it turns out, this current issue also has a symbolic cover. It depicts a scene that doesn’t appear in the story either--Clark and Lois dressed in mourning clothes on a late fall or early winter evening as the sun sets behind them in the west and Clark pulls open his shirt to reveal that Superman was powerless to prevent the death that he and his wife are mourning.

Inside, of course, we get more of the motif as Superman almost tells Supergirl that her father, Zor-El, is alive. However, Brainiac interrupts him before he can complete his sentence: “Yes, Kara, and your fath--” (page 7 panel 4).

Ah, Kara’s father is alive, but by the end of the issue, someone’s pa isn’t alive--an event that was prophesied in Brad Meltzer’s Justice League of America #0 twenty-seven months ago. At some point now, Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince should be showing up at the Kent farm to console Ma while Clark fills in the secret tunnel that led from his boyhood bedroom to some nearby woods.

He used to use it to leave the Kent farm as Superboy without being seen by . . . well, by the cows on the Kent farm, I guess. I enjoy these nostalgic nods to the comic book stories of my youth when a teenage Clark would fly through his secret tunnel so that people wouldn’t spy Superboy leaving the Kent farm.

Dave Wallace: Talking of that scene from Justice League of America #0, I was also reminded of a scene from another Meltzer-penned comic--but, instead, it’s one that seems to contradict the events of this issue.

The recent DC Universe: Last Will and Testament (which is meant to take place on the eve of “The Day Evil Won” during Final Crisis) features a scene with Clark and his Pa having a chat. However, as I understood it, all current DCU books (including this arc of Action Comics) are taking place prior to Final Crisis until the event is over.

This apparent contradiction made me wonder whether Pa Kent could perhaps still be alive after this issue. Or maybe that scene in Last Will and Testament was meant to be a “ghost,” or just an imaginary conversation. Then again, it could just be an editorial mistake or a continuity glitch that I should just try not to think about.

It's not the kind of thing that really detracts from the book, for me (it's an outside element that was probably beyond Geoff Johns' control), but I'd be interested to know if any explanation will be given for the apparent discrepancy--or if it's a hint that Pa Kent isn't as dead as he appears.

Thom Young I didn’t read Last Will and Testament, but you’re right--Morrison specifically said in an interview with Dan Phillips at www.ign.com:

Pretty much every storyline that's currently running in a DC book is happening before Final Crisis, because the events of Final Crisis are so big, that we didn't want to see its influence destabilizing major stories already running in the other comics. The whole story of Final Crisis is in that one book and its few tie-ins, and then when Final Crisis ends, the entire range of DC books will be dealing with the aftermath. So if you look at it that way, everything that you're reading that comes out during Final Crisis tends to be happening the week before the story takes place.

Of course, this “Brainiac” arc in Action Comics is not being billed as a Final Crisis tie-in, but Last Will and Testament is a Final Crisis tie-in.

In other words, it’s an editorial/continuity glitch as I’m pretty certain that Pa Kent is supposed to be officially dead now. However, I’ve long preferred the original continuity that had Ma and Pa Kent both dying of a rare tropical disease (for which there was no treatment) after a trip to the Caribbean to celebrate Clark’s high school graduation.

Instead, of course, we are given this current issue’s nostalgic nod to the first Richard Donner Superman film and “Reckoning”--the fifth season episode of Smallville in which Pa Kent died of a heart attack. That’s okay, though, since we are dealing with the revised continuity that John Byrne introduced in which Ma and Pa Kent didn’t die from a rare Caribbean disease.

Yet, in keeping with the nostalgia and the father motif, I’m surprised that we didn’t see a young Vril Dox in Brainiac’s spaceship. Seeing Brainiac as a father to the Coluan boy would have probably prompted me to raise the bullet score I gave this issue. As it turns out, the threat posed by Brainiac in this issue seems to be nothing more than the vehicle that drives us to the “startling conclusion” that this story arc has been telegraphing almost from the start.

Dave Wallace: It’s interesting that you mention so many previous examples of Pa Kent dying, because I think that the fact that this development has happened so many times in alternate continuities makes it feel particularly uninspired here. Not only have we seen this moment several times before in various incarnations of the Superman story--including a recent issue of All-Star Superman, which handled the development far more effectively--but it's given very little time here to make an impact, tagged on to the end of the story almost as an afterthought.

Although it sets up an interesting guilt complex for Superman--who was distracted by personal, Kryptonian interests at a crucial moment (although I don't really understand why his super-hearing only kicked in at the convenient point that it did)--it doesn't really bring anything to this story. As a result, the issue--and the arc as a whole--ends abruptly, feeling as though the story has been cut off mid-flow.

Thom Young: Yeah, I agree--and the many deaths of Pa Kent over the years has lessened the impact of this story for me (even if this event had not been telegraphed almost from the start of this arc). Yet, I suppose the event might have resonance for newer readers who might only know of Pa Kent’s death on Smallville and might have been wondering about the continuity glitch between the TV series and the comic books.

However, even though I knew the death of Pa Kent was imminent, this event does seem to just be tacked onto the issue rather than feeling like it was a natural story point within this arc--and this “Brainiac” story concluded with and ending that seems anti-climactic, partly due to Pa Kent’s death taking over the ending and partly due to the way we were hurried through the defeat of Brainiac and his plot to destroy the solar system.

It’s not that the Brainiac threat isn’t given much space--several pages are devoted to it. However, the threat is handled far too easily considering how significant this “first meeting with the true Brainiac” was supposed to be within the current version of the Superman mythos.

Superman breaks out of the techno-cocoon (or whatever you want to call it) after seeing Lois trapped in the Bottle City of Metropolis while she is telling him through the glass how much she “lov--” (Brainiac keeps interrupting people before they can complete their sentences). However, Superman knows that Lois was going to say, “Please know how much I love seeing you break out of techno-cocoons and punching bad guys in the face.”

And so he does just that--fired by his wife’s desire to see it happen.

Dave Wallace: Again, I thought that that was a very cheesy scene. The cliché of Lois Lane’s declaration of love empowering Superman to overcome Brainiac’s restraints felt like Johns taking an easy way out of the corner that he had painted himself into by establishing that Braniac is Superman's physical equal.

Thom Young: Exactly, and suddenly this “first appearance of the true Brainiac ends up not being as significant as it was supposed to be. Johns simply returned the character to being a biological Coluan who used technology--as he was in the first Brainiac story fifty years ago in Action Comics #242. However, that “biological Brainiac” is not really the “classic Brainiac,” and the entire concept of the first meeting with the “true Brainiac” did not play out as the classic story that it should have been.

Dave Wallace: Yeah, there’s definitely a sense that this is an anti-climax for what had been built up as such a significant story. Personally, I had hoped that, after establishing that Brainiac was a physical match for Superman, Johns might have his hero use his intelligence to beat his rival, rather than a simple punch in the nose or kick to the head. Maybe I've been spoiled by Grant Morrison's superior take on the character in the pages of All-Star Superman, but this finale felt as though it reduced Superman to a dumb brute for the purposes of a quick, easy wrap-up to the conflict between Superman and Brainiac, when a more cerebral and peaceful route may have been more satisfying.

Thom Young: Of course, the other part of Brainiac’s threat is handled by Supergirl as she pursues the “solar-aggressor” missile that Brainiac fired at the sun at the end of issue #869. He said then that it would take “less than fifty-seven minutes” for it to reach the sun.

(Apparently, the solar-aggressor would then cause the sun to become a red giant and incinerate the Earth as it expands out beyond one astronomical unit, or Earth’s orbit. At least that’s what I inferred from the information we were given since Geoff Johns doesn’t actually have Brainiac explain what his solar-aggressor missile will do.

However, Superman later tells Supergirl that it will cause the sun to become a supernova, which our sun should not be able to do--so I’ll just go with my red giant inference since our sun could do that if the missile somehow affected the sun’s composition and changed the nature of the nuclear reaction from one of hydrogen fusion to helium fusion. Plus, the development of the sun into a red giant would kill any Kryptonians on the planet when the Earth is incinerated. This type of explanation is what was needed--and more--in the “Legion of Super-Heroes” arc that Johns wrote for Action Comics last year.)

Anyway, for Brainiac’s missile to reach the sun in “less than fifty-seven minutes,” it means it would have to travel at about 0.15 lightspeed (one-seventh the speed of light, approximately). By my stopwatch (yes, I actually used one), the missile has about a three-and-a-half-minute head start on Supergirl--which means it has traveled more than 19.5 million miles by the time Supergirl takes off after it. Thus, Supergirl is going to have to travel almost one-sixth the speed of light to catch the missile.

And she does it! With about a minute to spare!

Of course, since she’s a super-powered Kryptonian, I don’t have a problem with Supergirl being able to travel this fast--but the whole thing was handled in such a clichéd fashion.

Dave Wallace: Again, I think it’s an example of Johns opting to focus on the more emotional elements of the story first and foremost, and giving slightly less regard to internal logic (just like Superman’s super-hearing kicking in at the exact moment that he’s too late to save his Pa).

As I finished reading this issue, I found myself wondering whether the end of this arc was substantially rewritten to set up the “New Krypton” crossover. It would make a lot more dramatic sense for the development with Pa Kent to occur during Superman's fight with Brainiac, rather than after Brainiac had been defeated. Johns could even have had Superman make the difficult choice between sending Supergirl to save the planet, or to help his father.

Instead, Johns has Superman pursue a personal agenda involving Kandor, which distracts him to such an extent that he can’t hear what’s happening to his father until it’s too late. It feels like a contrivance for the purposes of good drama, and one that exists as much to set up the next big Superman event as to give this arc a solid conclusion--and it makes the final pages feel hollow, rather than giving them the impact that they deserve.

Thom Young: Rather than “good drama,” I’d call it bad melodrama--or clichéd melodrama if not exactly “bad.”

Initially, I thought the “Brainiac” arc seemed destined for greatness. In the end, rather than great, it’s merely a good story with several clichés thrown in. However, this final issue to the arc should have been a great issue as it not only showed Superman’s first defeat of the “true Brainiac,” but also showed the death of Pa Kent.

Instead of a grand slam homerun, Johns and Frank got on base with a single up the middle--maybe a double--but with nobody on. The appearance of Vril Dox as a “son” to Brainiac would have either made it a triple or had someone in scoring postion.

Ah well, back to the baseball playoffs.

Dave Wallace: Or, for soccer-loving nations like the UK, it’s a no-score draw, even after extra time, that has to be settled by penalties.

As I said at the start of the review, I feel as though I’m missing something with this book, considering the praise that it seems to be getting from many readers. The “Brainiac” arc is the third time that I’ve given the title a chance (after the disappointments of the “Last Son” and “Legion of Superheroes” arcs), with Gary Frank’s artwork pulling me back for more every time that I try to drop the book.

However, at this point, I’m not even sure that Frank’s great visuals can keep me interested in the title, as the flat nature of the stories--coupled with the upcoming inter-title crossover that is hugely off-putting to a casual reader like me, who only reads one Superman book--means that the book is at best a pretty-but-hollow read. As such, I think that this final issue of "Braniac" may be the last issue of Action Comics that I pick up for the time being.

Thom Young: Yeah, me too. I didn’t enjoy the one issue of James Robinson’s Superman that I read, and the idea of the two Superman titles going back to the “diamond numbering” system they used in the 1990s as DC essentially merged the titles into a bi-weekly series crafted by two separate creative teams is not appealing to me at all.

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