Four-Color Wonders...

None has become quite as lethargic in the last few years than the... four-color world. Really. None.

Seeing, from the sidelines, what horrific and inane things they are dishing out, rehashing and belching (all packaged with attractive art, granted - but without the slightest substance at all) the exact same drivel that is, supposedly, meant to make fanboys marvel at these imaginary feats...!

And to think that hot new artist Ivan Reis (AQUAMAN)
pretty much started out with this sort of thing...
The true culprit for this is, of course, the writer
and the one responsible here is one Chuck Austen -
evidence that even the seasoned veterans
can commit atrocities to paper.
An embodiment, an incarnation of Sodom & Gomorrah -
in space suits, to boot.
Wow, Chuck - that one topped all the blunders
made by Dan Jurgens, Jeph Loeb, Kurt Busiek
and all the rest, at the same time...
But it is dwarfed by those blunders committed by
the current roster and the Didiot -
so, fret not (too much) Chuck!

In 2012's issue 819 of the old Action Comics series (old because DC has put the emphasis on ''the new 52'' at this point in their tortuous history - so this has to be made clear now that, this one, is not part of the ''new 52'' but is, really, one of the old, er, two? The big two - sort of.)

Sodom... and Gomorrah... versus Superman.

And to think that everyone thought Cary Bates was a boring dud with his ideas of pitting the so-called Man of Steel up against Alexander The Great and super-folk such as... Microwave Man.

At least they fit the bill a hell of a lot more than incarnations of decimated twin cities renowned for their considerably less-than-PG-13 attributes...

The jokes about Sodom going mano-a-mano with Superman must have fused... Maybe it is an in-joke, too, on the cover: the way Supes is looking over his shoulder and Sodom is there, with his loving wife looking on approvingly... Ahhhh! Why did you have to give this the green light, DC?!?

And why did you have to pen this, Chuck?

Of course, the pressure of producing a monthly story rife with sub-plots and entertainment value takes its toll on just about every scribe in that wretched business. There comes a point where you have no ideas left at all on what to do next, what is left to do or what ideally can be done! If you don't have a master plan, a major storyline guiding you and leading up to some kind of climax, you are doomed to commit such atrocities as this.

However, having said all this (and valiantly pleaded Chuck's case here) they are doing things these days that quite simply boggle the mind and makes one wonder, quite simply... ''what the hell are they thinking''...? Again.

Enough defending Chuck - it's not like he's Gerry Conway anyway!
Let's go on the accusing bench now!

They got out of their way, now, to get a ''real author'' (Paul Cornell - who? Never mind now: PC's at DC! Yay.) to pen the further adventures (yawn) of our Super-duper-man here, see? And all that said author, editors around him and the DC brass can come up with then is something as nonsensical as the ''Reign of the Doomsdays'' - culminating with a showdown between Soupsesy and some even bigger-than-Doomsday monster called... Doomslayer.

Doomslayer. My, is this Supes borrowing from Dungeons & Dragons like he borrowed from Astérix, back in the day...?

Fan Tony has much more common sense than the guy who commented on the previous issue: his comment starts with ''this is sooooooooooooo annoying'' - and it undeniably is!

A Sodomman and a Gomorrahwoman - or a bunch of ''Doomsdays'' stumbling around, not living up to their names...

 
What is truly worse here, I ask you?

This 'Reign' storyline can only be taken as a farce then - and maybe that is exactly what it is too! Place yourself in this author's shoes: Cornell... He's signed on to be the Super-writer. Hurray. He glances through the fabled history of the character: one storyline stands out and that is the one in which he DIES and is replaced by four virtual clones of himself: the ''Reign of the Supermen'' of the mid-90s. Like all other forms of make-believe, four-color crap is reduced to this now, of course: simply rehashing its old stuff in the vain hope of capturing lightning in a bottle once again - only problem is, they simply can't.

 
And it wasn't lightning the first time around, either!