Action Comics #984 Review and *SPOILERS*

Get In The Zone

Written By: Dan Jurgens

Art By: Patrick Zircher, Hi-Fi, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: July 26, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time to finish up our Superman Revenge Squad arc and see what new hell this group will unleash on the world if they get their way and set Zod's phantom army free from the Phantom Zone.  In our previous issue, we saw the majority of our Super League sent to the zone after the villains totally kicked their ass, but that's not all.  It seems that Zod just can't turn on the projector and find his army, he needs someone to go in and lead them out and the two who got the short end of the stick on this one are Cyborg Superman and Eradicator.  So yeah, we have a bunch of heroes and two villains in the Phantom Zone, while Zod and the rest of the Revenge Squad have control of the Fortress of Solitude and an unconscious Supergirl.  Let's jump into this issue and see how our heroes will prevail and if Cyborg Superman gets to keep his Oblivion Stone.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us finding out, not surprisingly, that Lois and Jon are indeed alive and only sent out the Kryptonian flyer as a distraction to Zod when he shot it down with his heat vision.  So yeah, Lois and Jon are A-OK, but are not separated in the Fortress of Solitude, where Zod begins laying the smack down on the other members of the Revenge Squad, who seem to be questioning his new leadership.  Yeah, Metallo's the first to speak up against Zod, which gets him backhanded and then Mongul begins to chime in before Zod punches him into outer space.......... and while I've never liked Blanque...... it seems he gets it the worst of all because he's forced to keep contact with Eradicator using his telepathy, but doing so while Eradicator is in the Phantom Zone seems to be too much for the villain to handle and in the end, it looks like old Blanque doesn't survive this issue because of it.

So yeah, the Revenge Squad seems to be broken up and while that's all going on, the Super League are trying to stop Eradicator and Cyborg Superman from finding Zod's armies in the Phantom Zone and while the majority of this part of the book is done pretty well, there are some inconsistencies that just got on my nerves, like Eradicator using his powers, then later Superman telling him that he doesn't have powers in the Phantom Zone and even Superman just getting his eye sight back because of being transported in the Zone and maintaining it after he escapes.......... it just felt like an odd way to make Superman less than what he is until we don't need to anymore.   While the Super League are distracted by taking down Cyborg Superman, Superman goes after Eradicator, but he's too late.  The villain finds what Zod was looking for and it turns out it was his wife Ursa and their son Lor-Zod that Zod wanted this whole time and once Eradicator sends word that they're found, Zod opens the Phantom Zone, thankfully Superman tags along for the ride home.

In the end, we see that Supergirl and Jon in the Kryptonian battle armor kept Zod busy this whole time and even managed to injure him to the point that he decides to retreat once Ursa and Lor-Zod are free of the Phantom Zone and Superman uses the projector to free the rest of the Super League, leaving Cyborg Superman inside to think about what he's done.  As our issue closes, we get to see that the mysterious voice that we saw the previous issue and here that helped Jon fight Zod was actually Mr. Oz and that Zod, Eradicator and his family aren't done remaking Krypton, it just seems like they'll settle on doing it on another planet all together.

That's it for this issue of Action Comics and while some of the Phantom Zone stuff felt a bit wonky with how it was portrayed and Superman just getting his eye sight back all willy nilly felt a bit forced, I have to say that I found myself enjoying this issue for the most part because it went in a direction I didn't see coming by the end and even seeded events for future stories to come.  The art in this issue was great and I loved the colors, I just wish that the rest of the Superman Revenge Squad would have been a little better utilized because Metallo essentially didn't do shit this entire arc and Mongul didn't do much more and were just throw out of the story because they weren't needed anymore and with that, it seems like their only use was to add to the number of Revenge Squad members to make the roster look more impressive.  

Bits and Pieces:

While I enjoyed this issue more than I thought I would, there's still a bunch of problems with it in the long run and a lot of elements to this issue just came off forced to get us to a conclusion and setting all our characters back to their proper status quo so that we can move on from here.  The art was amazing though and there's a bunch to like about this issue, but overall, it wasn't the best conclusion to this arc.  

6.4/10