Reviewed: Action Comics #766 by Joe Kelly and Cary Nord
The plot: Superman, suffering from Kryptonite poisoning, goes to Batman to ask for help in the search for his missing wife.
The relationship between Superman and Batman since John Byrne's 1986 Man of Steel relaunch has fascinated me. It is utterly logical that the two would have an uneasy relationship, and while I loved the two of them in the buddy-buddy pre-Crisis days, the edge between them in current continuity is frequently one of the best things in stories they appear in together. Hell, their team-up in the three-episode "World's Finest" segment of the Batman/Superman Adventures cartoon remains one of my all-time favourite tales of these characters in any format.
I am not a regular reader of Action Comics, but based on my love of the relationship between these heroes, I picked this one up. There are a lot of problems with it.
While Cary Nord has done some interesting work in the past, he seems out of his element here. His Superman is a little too old and a little too bald, and in some panels Nord really drops the ball. Check Superman's face in the full-page panel where Batman drags Superman up the hillside, or the utter lack of impact in the panel where Superman is finally reunited with Lois Lane.
As far as the story itself, I have no idea what the hell is going on. I knew going in that Lois had been missing, but no explanation is given for why Superman is suffering from Green K exposure, and the revelation of Lois's kidnapping is a big bore. Why was she kidnapped? Maybe it was explained here, but if it was it's already faded from my memory.
There's a nice moment where Batman explains to Superman why he doesn't allow himself to think of crime victims as people until their cases are resolved, but the ongoing narration by Batman in clipped, clinical terminology makes him come off as nearly as nuts as Rorschach from Watchmen, and seems pretty out-of-character.
The fact that understanding this issue depends on having read the previous week's Superman title, whatever that was, is even more annoying given the complete lack of explanation here for how that issue's story affected events herein. The fact that it ends on another idiotic cliffhanger (oh, no, Superman is dead! What will we do?!) is the icing on the cake. Months ago we were promised a reboot that would allow readers to understand what was going on without reading all the Superman titles. What we in journalism call a bunch of bullshit.
I found this issue a big disappointment overall, and can't really recommend it to anyone except diehard Bat-fans willing to accept mischaracterization of the Dark Knight with a few nice moments thrown in.
