Action Comics #1002 Review

Red Clouds and Yogurt

Written By: Brian Michael Bendis

Art By: Patrick Gleason, Alejandro Sanchez, Josh Reed

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: August 22, 2018

Let's dive back into this Bendis Action Comics and see if the book has picked up any from the previou issue, where it seemed that on top of random fires throughout Metropolis, we were also dealing with a small time operation of crooks, who wanted to stay off of Superman's radar.  Now that doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world when talking about stories, but for whatever reason, it just came off kind of boring to me last issue.  Let's jump into this issue and see if it picks up or if I'm just getting used to Bendis' writing of our Man of Steel.  Let's check it out.

First off, I'm not going to say that I'm totally on board with what Bendis is bringing to Superman, but this issue does at least make me feel that something can come out of the set up we were given in the previous issue and become an interesting story.  The random fires are put away now that the crook "Yogurt" has been taken out of the picture because of his incompetence and now we're just focused on this invisible syndicate that seems to have big plans for the Daily Planet and wants more than anything to keep Superman off their back.

The human elemet to this story is actually pretty cool, besides for a really weird momemt in the book where Superman has to fly off for two pages to go punch some astroids, it's the human element that keeps this going and between the hidden agenda of Robinson Goode and the cliffhanger reveal, it seems that it's going to be the human element that sustains this series as we go along.  I just hope that it continues to thrive with that and doesn't just fall into boring territory.

All in all, this issue is more interesting in than the previous one, where we get a plethora of guest stars making little appearances to further the plot along and while I like the art enough in this issue, for whatever reason I just wasn't a fan of the way that these colors looked in certain scenes with Patrick Gleason's art style. It's not terrible by any means, I've just seen it look so much better in the past.  With that, this issue gets me hopeful that things will pick up for me on the Superman front and I can get back on the trolley of the Man of Steel.  The biggest problem that I still have is some of the dialog feels really odd for these characters, but hopefully that fixes itself as Bendis continues the series.

Bits and Pieces:

This issue of Action Comics picks things up a bit for me compared to the previous issue and I'm happy as hell for that because I was really worried there for a bit.  Between the characters in this issue and the art that depicts them, you get a pretty decent installment to this comic that really starts upping the ante of the story with its cliffhanger.

7/10