Jor-El: Secret Origin
Written By: Dan Jurgens
Art By: Ryan Sook, Hi-Fi, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: September 27, 2017
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
Now that the cat's out of the bag and everyone and their sexy ass Mamas is running down the street yelling Mr. Oz is Jor-El, it's time to find out how the hell that is possible....... and hopefully, the Oz Effect arc dives in deep and makes everything make sense......... unlike what Superman: Reborn did. Previously, we saw that people on Earth are pieces of shit and that Mr. Oz was all about making Superman finally see this fact and after facing terrible thing after terrible thing, leading to Superman not being able to save people, Mr. Oz stepped in and revealed that he's Supes' dear old Daddy. Let's jump into this issue and see how that plays out.
Explain It!:
Our issue begins with Superman telling Mr. Oz to get out of town to the reveal that he's actually his father Jor-El, but it turns out that Oz isn't going to get out of town and instead is going to use the Crystal Font to show Superman exactly what went down leading to and after Krypton's destruction.
For some reason, we have to do a bit of retconning to get Lor-Van into the picture on Krypton, who's Superman's grandfather on his mother's side and show that he backed Jor-El's research into saving Krypton and was furious with his son-in-law when he found out that Jor-El intended to make "space arks" with his money...... since space travel is forbidden and all. So yeah, Lor-Van has Kelex delete Jor-El's research, calls Jor-El an asshole and leaves...... making this a point where Superman's father believes that this was the beginning of the many betrayals done upon him. So yeah, Jor-El goes and makes a rocket for Clark and sends him to Earth, but as Krypton was being destroyed, he was plucked off his world........ after seeing Lara fried and sent to Earth himself, where he was taken care of by an African family.
In the end, after Jor-El began to heal and tried to help the family by stealing food from the local warlord, the family's young son turned him in and the warlord got the boy to murder his family so that he could become one of the powerful men of the village. It seems that whoever plucked Jor-El out of time and space wanted him to see this because once again, he's plucked out of there and then forced to watch on a shit load of TV's, Robot Chicken style the atrocities of mankind. As our issue closes, Mr. Oz tells Superman that humanity doesn't deserve him again and that he's to pack his shit because they're getting out of there.
That's it for this issue of Action Comics and while you need to see how Mr. Oz is actually Jor-El, this story moved about five minutes from where we were in the previous issue and by the end I just wanted to know what the bigger picture was for Jor-El's father-in-law Lor-Van because that seemed like an odd thing to add for it not to mean anything bigger in the long run. The biggest problem with this issue, besides for Jor-El's hair being white as soon as he was on Earth....... which actually goes into what's wrong with this issue, is that we don't get any sense of time here or how all of this led up to Jor-El being all cryptic as shit as Mr. Oz for the past two years. Just another story showing that people are pieces of shit and I get that already, let's move on and find out some shit we don't already know. The art in this issue is decent, besides for the choice to just give Jor-El white hair as soon as he's on Earth. I just hope that this story picks up the pace a bit moving forward because nothing is really happening.
Bits and Pieces:
Well, if you wanted to know a single incident that happened to Jor-El once he was saved from Krypton's destruction, then you'll get exactly what you want out of this issue and while I understand we have to have some setup moving forward, this seemed to move at an even slower pace than I ever expected it to and we really haven't moved that much forward in this story besides for Superman seeming like he may believe who Mr. Oz says he is.
6/10
I'm really confused right now where they want to take this story, it's weird after getting a Superman origin story in this run already, we now get a slightly different one. The pack your bags cliffhanger also lame , umm Dad I have a son and wife who aren't pieces of shit and you recently helped, can we maybe get them? Wtf is going on here
ReplyDeleteThis is really a stupid story is all I have to say , I thought Jurgens was better than this but I guess not . The art was outstanding and the brief glimpse of Krypton was welcome but the rest is just trash .
ReplyDeleteP.S. What a waste of the great art and cover . Sad .
Delete“Liar” as spoken by Kal-El to the man who claims to be his father. This is the first word spoken in this issue of Action comics, and probably the most essential word in all of Rebirth.
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to believe that Dan Jurgens is the most important Superman writer since Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created the character. He just seems to have a love and understanding of all things Kryptonian and also seems to know how to use that to tell a compelling story.
I could really use the Lasso of Hestia to get some truth here. Either Mr. Oz is not Jor-El and we'll find out his true nature and motivations soon or he is Jor-El and this story is adding yet another important element to the Superman mythos.
Originally I was against the idea of Jor-El being alive and especially being anti-human, but after this issue I'm beginning to come around. After being saved by an unknown force just before Krypton's destruction, Papa Supes was whisked off to Earth where he was found by citizens in a war-torn place run by a leader known as Kassam. Someone I suspect is either Dr. Manhattan or a magic genie played by Shaquille O'Neal.
After witnessing the atrocities of humankind including intentional starvation, civil war and Robin Williams' stand-up comedy Jor-El realizes that humans are simply undeserving of his only son.
I found the art in this to shift between good and serviceable. I really liked the old old old school Kryptonian ship, but probably just because I'm an old old old person. I had a blast reading this and on a scale from -12.62 to 7462.479 I'd give it a solid 5037.645. Basically a 7.5.