Action Comics #1018 Review

Mish Mash

Written By: Brian Michael Bendis

Art By: John Romita Jr., Klaus Janson, Brad Anderson, Dave Sharpe

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: January 1, 2020

It's time to head on back to Metropolis to see what Brian Michael Bendis has in store for us as The Truth is about to rear its ugly head into Action Comics, not to mention all the background nonsense that we've already gotten that never seems to be resolved, only pushed aside so that we can move onto something new.  That something new right now is the Legion of Doom attacking the Justice League and a bunch of other heroes for some reason, even though it seems like they've got their hands full with what's going on in Justice League.  Time is weird in comics though so maybe this will work out as it does seem to take place before a lot of the current Justice/Doom War, but even that idea raises some problems.  Either way, let's jump into this comic and see what's what.  

Like the previous issue, the way that this story is told is all over the place and back and forth through time, where we see that the Legion of Doom has already defeated Superman and the Justice League.  This time around though we need to throw in a really disappointing origin story for Red Cloud out of nowhere and the reason it's disappointing is it doesn't feel like there's any ramifications to what happened here in Robinson Goode's hometown of Star City or why this even happened to the rookie reporter, who was then picked up by the Daily Planet six months later.  

Since we're dealing with the Truth right now we also have to throw aspects of that in with Melody Moore, the new Fire Chief, who now as aspirations of becoming Mayor, but since this is taking place before the big reveal in Superman, this is just a small piece of the story, where Superman talks about when he plans on revealing his secret to the world, until he's interrupted by the now attacking Legion of Doom.  It's weird though because it really seemed from Justice League that Lex wanted to keep his Apex Predator thing a secret and even went far enough to fake his death, but here everyone knows it's Lex Luthor and we're left with a cliffhanger that just doesn't feel like it belongs with what we've been dealing with from the Justice/Doom War.

All in all, John Romita Jr's art doesn't do this wonky writing any favors because it's just not up to par with what we've been getting out of Action Comics and I'm just personally not a fan of his style.  Art aside though, this issue feels thrown together without any real sort of plan and only gets interesting by the cliffhanger, but that too feels off from what we've been getting from the Justice League books.  I don't know if Brian Michael Bendis just wanted to play with what Scott Snyder's got going on right now that Event Leviathan is over now, but if that's the case he just forced his way in in a way that feels so weird to the whole of DC Comics and beyond that, nothing in this book came off really interesting or really all that well thought out.  Hopefully once this series catches up with what's going on in Superman it can become something interesting, but right now it's play second fiddle to that book and sadly, that book isn't doing anything that really interests me either.

Bits and Pieces:

Action Comics continues to disappoint this issue with not only its art, but also in its wonky way that it wanted to tell this story....... and by story I mean a hodge podge of different ideas just thrown at the page.  Nothing about this issue felt good or really thought out and by the end I just hoped that our cliffhanger reveal leads to something interesting, but from what I've seen from this title and the character revealed, I'm not expecting much.

3.5/10