Action Comics #971 Review and *SPOILERS*

Role Reversal 

Written By: Dan Jurgens

Art By: Stephen Segovia, Art Thibert, Arif Prianto, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: January 11, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Lex Luthor has sure gone and got himself in quite a predicament with this story arc because intergalactic doom sayers came to Earth and snatched his ass back to their home planet so that they can judge him for being some kind of cosmic genocide machine in the future and much to Superman's dismay, he has to go and save the New 52 version of his worst enemy.  That was the plan originally though because as we saw in the previous issue, it looks like our Man of Steel has changed his mind about the innocence of Lex Luthor once his captors, L'Call and Zade showed him that they found a mother box on Lex.  Yeah, we all know that this mother box is powering Lex's battle armor and that it was built for him by the people of Apokolips........... you know, since he's their god and all, but apparently Superman isn't too hip on this and we ended last issue with Clark thinking that Lex was guilty and deserving of death.  Let's jump into this issue and see what the sitch is and if Superman will get back to being the hero we all know and love.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with me realizing that I've apparently been saying the name of L'Call and Zade's home world wrong this whole time because where my blind ass thought I was seeing "Mideesi", I was in fact seeing "Nideesi".  Okay, now that that is all cleared up, we move into this issue and see Superman where we left him, all accusatory and seemingly calling for Lex's head.  It's when L'Call offers Superman his weapon so that he can execute Lex for his future crimes that we realize that Superman was simply trying to buy some time for Lex and him...... So he breaks the weapon and starts fighting L'Call and Zade again so Lex can get away from Zade and thus get away from his dampening powers, which are apparently working by clouding Luthor's mind.

With Superman kicking ass and taking names.......... not to mention him being able to get a hold of Luthor's mother box, our two heroes quickly open a boom tube and get the hell out of Nideesi while the gettin' is good.  Too bad that L'Call is able to somehow disrupt the tube, making it collapse before Superman and Lex could reach Earth and depositing them on some alien planet far from home.......... which L'Call seems to know the location to.  Yeah, it seems like we have some really convenient stuff going on here, but since we don't really know L'Call's power set I find myself not really worrying about it and just going with the flow.

In the end, we get a great role reversal from what we saw in the previous issue once Superman realizes that the planet that Lex and him are on orbits a red sun because where Superman had to go and save Lex previously, now Superman needs Lex to come to his rescue, especially after L'Call and Zade show back up.  We also get a great callback to Superman: Lois and Clark, where Superman was investigating Lex in the hope that he could find out that his former foe was up to no good because when Luthor finds out about it here, he's furious and compares our hero to their pursuers because he was doing exactly what they did in judging him before he actually committed a crime.  While all that's going on, back on Earth, Lois has to take Jon to her double's apartment so that she can do research on the missing Geneticron building and when Jon runs to the door expecting Chinese food for lunch, he instead comes face to face with the human Clark Kent, who really wants to know what's going on.

That's it for this issue of Action Comics and I found myself really digging this issue because of the role reversal that Lex and Superman took here, not to mention Lex's stance on how Superman's been a judgmental Judy this whole time.  Yeah, we've known that Superman's been looking into Lex's going-ons, but hearing it from Lex here actually made it feel wrong for the first time to me.  On top of all that we also get a great section with Lois and Jon that moves our "human Clark" development forward and we get to go an issue without seeing more of L'Call's backstory.......... which at this point is a welcomed change.  I really dug the art in this issue and can't wait to see where we go from here in both stories we're dealing with and how the events of this arc will change Superman and Lex's relationship from here on out.

Bits and Pieces: 

While we still get a shit load of fighting in this issue, with our previous cliffhanger just being a clever ruse to buy some time, I like the direction that this arc is taking and love the fact that we keep moving between our Superman story and our Lois story....... because really, we have a lot of things to deal with in this series and constant movement isn't a bad thing.  The art in this issue is really enjoyable and I can't wait to see what else Jurgens has in store for us.

8.5/10