Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Action Comics #965 Review and *SPOILERS*



Doppelganger Land


Written By: Dan Jurgens
Art By: Stephen Segovia, Art Thibert, Arif Prianto, Dave Sharpe
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 12, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's back to Metropolis for mystery and intrigue as we desperately try to discover some clues to who this human Clark Kent is........ Well, maybe not for this issue.  Yeah, we've had a ton of mysteries thrown our way with little explanation about them and to make matters more confusing, we're starting another mystery with this issue.  Previously, we saw Superman try to get to the bottom of who this strange Clark Kent is, but ultimately our Man of Steel was left with more questions than answers and to top it off, while he was asking these questions, Geneticron, the company that was supposedly housing Doomsday was transported away.......... by another mystery character and all we know about him is that he has an affinity for wearing red ball caps.  Let's jump into this issue and not explore any of these things as Lois Lane gets to the bottom of what happened to the New 52........ Lois Lane.  Let's check it out.


Explain It!:

Our issue begins with what looks like Lois waking up in the woods outside of her property and while that's strange as hell........ and is never talked about again in this issue, it's even stranger that she's having dreams about the New 52 Lois Lane asking her for help.  Now while I'm all about getting down to the bottom of what happened to the New 52 Lois when she became Superwoman and then died in the very first issue, I'm now more concerned about all the weird ass dreams the Superman Family have been having because in the last issue of Superman, Jon had dreams that gave him the idea to build the device that transported Superman and him to Dinosaur Island and now Lois is having dreams about her doppelganger from beyond the grave...... Ooooooo!  After Superman finds his wife just hanging out in the woods for no good reason and doesn't ask if she's having some kind of fit or something, the two decide that Lois needs to get to the bottom of what happened to the New 52 Lois Lane, especially since we saw this Lois receive a letter from her in a previous issue, where we find out here it asks the Pre-Flashpoint Lois to finish the book about Superman she was writing if something happened to her........ plus some strange ass code that this Lois believes is a password to a computer.  With a new mystery on our hands and some information to do something about it, Lois goes to Metropolis and infiltrates her double's life to try and understand of what happened to her.


This section of the book, where Lois goes to the Daily Planet and sees how familiar yet different things are from how they were in her life is pretty fun and a bit interesting, but ultimately it goes nowhere when she's forced to see Perry White and Lex Luthor so they can find out what she's been doing for the past couple of weeks since she's been pretty much missing.  This is all covered up though with the simple explanation of writers block and the reason all of this was useless is because when she tries to go to this Universe's Lois' office to access her computer, the human Clark Kent shows up and........ well, he pulls a Clark Kent and accidentally spills his coffee on the desktop, destroying it.  Even if we didn't get any answers from the computer, Lois realizes that in the dream her double was on her home laptop and Lois leaves the Daily Planet to continue her search.  Really though, besides for the bit of fun we get seeing how things are different than how she knew things to be, the most interesting part of this section is seeing how unstable Clark Kent seems to be when he's asking Lois about what Superman told her about him and if she was in on the con that he's been using as an alibi about where he's been for the past few months.  Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but Clark came off a lot angrier than I felt he should when he was talking to Lois.


In the end, Lois goes to her double's apartment and before she can access the computer to see what kind of message the New 52 Lois has left her or see what she was working on before she disappeared, our current Lois is confronted by the Superwoman Lana Lang, who doesn't seem to pleased to see someone trying to take over her dead friend's life.


That's it for this issue of Action Comics and while I'm annoyed beyond belief that we're getting more mysteries to pile on top of the mountain of shit I already don't understand.......... I actually found myself enjoying this issue because while there are more mysteries being added, they're at least things that I've been wondering about myself and am glad that we're taking some time with this title to get to the bottom of it.......... especially since Superwoman is a monthly series........ who has time for that in a shipping twice monthly world that we live in now?  Even though I enjoyed this issue though, there were still a couple of weird things that came off odd that are never really talked about in this issue, like Lois Lane just waking up in the woods and then out of nowhere when Superman picks her up, her just stating "The Tunnel You Built...!".  yeah, I don't get it and I doubt it will ever be talked about again, but it doesn't hurt this issue too much.  Like usual, the art in this book is great and I can't wait to see where this mystery goes.......... as long as we stay on this mystery and don't deviate to add more or tackle another one. 

Bits and Pieces:

Yeah, this issue adds more mysteries to all the ones we already have, but even with that nonsense, this is still an enjoyable issue that puts Lois Lane front and center and if there's something that I love from bringing this Pre-Flashpoint Superman family into this continuity, it's Lois Lane........ Well, really it's the entire Superman Family, but I love this Lois too.  The art is great throughout and I hope we can stick to this story for awhile so we can get some closure somewhere from Action Comics.

7.5/10

6 comments:

  1. Maybe Clark spilled his coffee on purpose.. the plot thickens :)

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    1. I was thinking that a bit too.

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    2. I wish I had thought of that, lemme go read again ;)

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    3. Yea Clark is shown to be a clutz but this guy taking down a whole computer and he was super sketchy when he saw lois this is supposed to be N52 clark so loisis just a friend to him calling her dad flipping out all is a bit much

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  2. God Dann this version of Clark Kent has no game

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  3. But if this is new-52 Clark and Lois is "just a friend" to him, then is he in love with Wonder Woman? Or at least harbouring a secret crush? It seemed really odd to me that Superman could not figure out more about this mystery-new-52-Clark. There is so much inter-play between New-52 Clark and Superman that it would be virtually impossible to create or impose a New-52 Clark 'separate' from new-52 Superman; especially in such a way as to actually fool Superman. They should ask Batman to 'vet' new-52 Clark. That should reveal something.

    I suspect that Dr. Manhattan must be playing with reality in order to make this all come to pass. I thought initially that maybe 'Clark' IS Dr. Manhattan, but that would not make much sense because Dr. Manhattan would have to know that becoming 'Clark Kent' would draw too much attention to him. Or maybe that's what he wants?

    The plot thickens.

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