Action Comics #1003 Review

Purse Full of Kryptonite

Written By: Brian Michael Bendis

Art By: Yanick Paquette, Nathan Fairbairn, Josh Reed

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: September 26, 2018

It's back to the hustle and bustle of big city journalism with this title, you know, since we deal with Daily Planet stuff in Action Comics.  Yeah, it sounds like I'm making fun and I guess I am a little, but between this and the Superman title, I'll take this every time because while you do get the mundane, you're also getting a very interesting concept about how the smaller criminals of Metropolis work in a city that's protected by our Man of Steel.  Let's jump into this issue and see if we get any answers to Robinson Goode getting Kryptonite or Superman's run-in with Lois, who he believed to be off in space.  Let's check it out.

Right off the bat, I'll tell you that I really enjoy the dialog in this book as long as it's not anyone in the Daily Planet because for some reason, when you get Jimmy, Perry, Robinson and Clark all in the same room, they kind of feel off, but besides that, like the stuff with the secret syndicate that Robinson is working with, they all feel really good and my biggest complaint about them is that we don't see enough of them in this issue.

Really, the biggest problem with this issue all around besides for some dialog is that we don't really get enough of anything.  There's interesting scenarios throughout this issue, but right as it starts to get good and you think that you're going to get more of background behind Lois Lane being in this book, or why Robinson Goode needed Kryptonite or why the Red Cloud went after one of her own Lieutenants, the issue just kind of moves on and the part of the book that felt like we took the most time with was a scene where Clark was exposed to Kryptonite and everyone had to make jokes about how big he was, how fragile he was and so on and so forth and I just wanted that to stop so we could get onto more important things because not only did it feel like it went on too long, but I didn't find it all that funny either.  

In the end, I'm still all on board with learning more about this secret syndicate that Robinson Goode is working with because they're the most interesting aspect of this book and I'm really enjoying the art that we get here as well.  It's just that I want to get more out of the characters that we deal with in each issue because it feels like they're just being less than themselves to stretch out the arc and because of that, they don't really feel all that natural in their behavior or their dialog.  Hell, we don't learn anything new about Lois this issue besides that she gets another visitor by the end of the issue and that's really disappointing.  Really, we don't move all that much further here because a threat is brought in this issue and resolved before the end and it didn't feel like it meant all that much to the plot at hand, besides for exposing a character as a baddie to Superman prematurely.

Bits and Pieces:

While this is still my favorite Man of Steel title that we have right now, this issue felt a bit forced in a lot of its actions and off in a lot of its dialog.  With that, we still have a really cool situation going on with our antagonists in this series and I look forward to seeing more of them.  I just wish that we'd get more out of each individual character because it feels like they're really not doing much each issue.

7.0/10