Action Comics #963 Review and *SPOILERS*

What A Scoop!

Written By: Dan Jurgens
Art By: Patrick Zircher, Arif Prianto, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: September 14, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Now that Doomsday is taken care of.......... or at least gone for the moment, it's time to start rebuilding Metropolis and getting to the bottom of who this strange ass Clark Kent is, who apparently doesn't have powers and has never been Superman.  Crazy right?  Well, it's about time in my mind because while Superman was punching Doomsday in the face, all I cared about was finding out about how Clark Kent could be watching the action....... and of course what Mr. Oz was up to, but we don't get any of that here, so I shouldn't even bring it up....... Lousy peeping Tom Mr. Oz.  Anyway, with all the threats to Metropolis temporarily taken care of, let's check out who this mild-mannered reporter really is and if he actually is the real Clark Kent and everything we thought we new about the DC Universe has been a lie.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with everybody getting a great big eye full of Clark Kent because since everyone saw the man, who was supposed to be Superman...... and who was also supposed to be dead, around a big ass fight, where another Superman was present....... Well, of course there are questions and Lex Luthor has some of his own and plans to get to the bottom of it.  This apparently means a big ass press conference, where Clark Kent tells his story to the public, but before he could get into details about why everyone thinks he's Superman, someone is out to prove that he's a liar and the whole shebang is shut down when a gun is brandished and Clark's life is put in danger.  What we do get before that though, is that Clark was doing research on the Geneticron Company and according to him, Superman told him to go into hiding so that Superman could replace him as the mild-mannered reporter because apparently the company was coming after him for things he was snooping into.  Now he's back though and from what we get in this book, it's going to take awhile for everyone to get on the "Clark Kent isn't Superman" trolley.  

With Clark back in action, he wants to put all this Superman stuff behind him and get back to looking into Geneticron......... Which he does after getting a polygraph test, apparently administered by Batman in disguise, which Clark finds out later, but when Clark gets back to work, boy does he get back to work!  I mean, I know Clark Kent was a decent reporter and all that, but goddamn does he go balls to the wall to get his story.  First off, after going to Geneticron to get an interview from the company head, Mr. Bandu....... who may or may not be some sort of re-imagined Shadowdragon, just because of the name, Clark is met with a less than stellar start to getting to the bottom of things, when Mr. Bandu tells him that there are no records of Clark Kent ever having an appointment for an interview, which tells me that either Clark is using this for an excuse to get into the building or the memories he has aren't real....... and with a name like Geneticron, there's got to be some sort of cloning facility going on there........ right? 

In the end, after Mr. Bandu tells Clark to piss off, he uses people leaving the office as a cover to sneak onto the elevator and make his way through the facility........ kicking ass and taking names along the way.  This is what I'm talking about, Clark Kent, while yes, is a big dude, I never thought of him as someone who would break into someplace and assault security guards.  Maybe Clark should have thought this through a little bit too because when he makes his way to the roof, a security guard gets the upper hand on him and actually tries to murder him by throwing Clark off the roof....... Which leads to Superman saving him and the two realizing that they have to talk.

That's it for this issue of Action Comics and for all the questions we had about this mysterious Clark Kent during the last story arc........ we don't get anything really new in this issue about it.  Yeah, we see that Superman supposedly told him to go into hiding and that he's never been Superman, but besides for the fact that he was investigating Geneticron, the company where Doomsday escaped from, there's nothing really new to this story....... Well, besides for the populace of Metropolis reacting to Clark Kent being alive and not the Man of Steel.  That last part actually was the most important aspect to this story in my mind because while we have this Geneticron angle going on, it's the people in the long run who will have to believe that this man was or wasn't their hero all along and it worked great here, especially when a nut pulled a gun on him to prove that he was a liar at the press conference.  So yeah, while the story didn't really move all that much here, the parts we did get were executed great and the art in this book was fantastic throughout.  All in all, I really want to know who this Clark Kent is and how he'll affect this series........ and the DC Universe.

Bits and Pieces:

While you might have come to this issue looking for a Superman story, what you get instead is a Clark Kent story and that's probably more interesting, especially from what we saw during the last story arc.  I can't wait to get to the bottom of this mystery and hope that things aren't drawn out as much as they were with Doomsday because I can't wait another arc to get a dollop of information.  That being said, there was enough interesting things to this story to keep me upbeat and the art was great.

7/10