Action Comics 14 Preview / Discussion (Spoilers)

[Superlad93]

If you'll recall, Superman's mother was also a scientist AND she was a kick butt fighter. I wouldn't ignore her contribution to the Man of Steel, if I were you. As for this being your or anyone's version of Superman, all I can say is that he wasn't NOT my Superman in what I've seen from the previews and panels posted on Tumblr. However, it sounds like he was more Doctor Who than Superman in this issue. With that being the case, at least for me, I'd say what was missing from the issue was a Doctor Who type of companion. Too bad a vivacious Earthling with intelligence wasn't incorporated into the story. Not that it was necessary, but it might have made it more interesting.

I'm aware of his mom.....this issue was focused on his dad so I talked about his dad. Also you can like whoever and whatever you want......I like this Superman just fine.

[Superlad93]

As cool as Morrison's reimagining of Brainiac was, Vyndktvx is his biggest accomplishment of this run. Not since the Cyborg Superman have I enjoyed a new villain to Superman's rogue's gallery. This guy is awesome.

I'm calling that Vyn does something to Superman that ends up putting him in a position to heal Myx, and he ends up being intstrumental in helping Superman win.

My big question though is, why did Vyn wait so long to attack? Earth was next on the list for five years, so what's the correlation between him setting Superman up for a massive fall before he took out Earth? One would think that, especially in his lower powered days, Vyn just could have attacked and taken out Earth and Superman with it in one fell swoop.

And with all this in mind now, can the Collector be seen in a new light? Can he be seen as an intelligence just actively trying to rescue what he can from Vyndktvx?

well it's been said that he just plan hates Superman so maybe he wanted to hit Superman at this point because he thought he's had enough time to grow and all and his fall will be even bigger.

Also time means nothing to Vyndktvx because he lives in the 5th D. He could have just seen Superman being born on krypton one moment then turned and fought him on Mars the next.

[Desaad]

Time does come into it, there's just no linearity to the time. He still has to operate within the boundaries of the page (time and space), but he can hop from one point to another.

True, insofar as his interactions with Superman are concerned, at least, he still has to interact with the 3D/4D universe, but it isn't just that there is no linearity; it's that is no distinction. Everything is happening, all at once, simultaneously. He isn't just entering the timeline at a specific point, he is standing outside and inside an infinite series of universes, one for every moment.

Thankfully, no matter where/when he goes, the universe's tendency towards goodness turns his own machinations against him (destroy the Metalek home world, maybe hoping to have them go destroy Earth = the Metalek's are there on Mars to help fight him off). It's the idea of evil versus the idea of good. But goodness is inclusive, whereas evil is not.

The Good is communal. The Evil is egocentric--it cannot work with other free agents; it can only oppress them.

Absolutely, and it's an interesting distinction; evil as the All-In-One, good as the All-FOR-One. Superman thinks he's fighting a great host, but in fact it's just the literal right hand of the devil, one will manifesting as more. Where as, as the boy puts it, humanity, Superman, the Metaleks, and I'll bet even Brainiac/the Collector all have a 'common goal', and can work together towards it. This same conflict arose with Darkseid vs the DCU in Final Crisis, his evil New Gods referred to as mere emanations of his presence at various points, the entire population of Earth his voice, hands, eyes, etc. One will, immense, pristine, perfect vs a patchwork of desire, fear, pain, nobility, imagination.

Which brings us to Batman RIP, and our current predicament. How do you defeat a 5th dimensional entity? You attack it in the fifth dimension. How do you get there? You use your imagination, which is presumably what Jor El and what the next gen people of earth (Captain Comet, Suzie, etc) are capable of doing, because imagination IS the 5th dimension. And sometimes imagination can run amok, can become a dark thing/think, and I guess that is what our boy here is.

No matter how big he is in 3-Dimensions, we're bigger in 5. Our collective perspectives are bigger than his one perspective. We connect the dots around him, constantly adjusting ourselves to counter his manifestation at any given point.

Imagination

We're a picture constantly redrawing ourselves, so no matter how many points he draws onto the paper, eventually (across the page) we draw our image around him. We include and transcend him. Good includes and transcends Evil.

Very Hegelian. I'll be curious to see if he goes in that direction.

God I love you two (desaad and retro).

Love you too, brotha.

[J. Robb]

Chris Sprouse and Karl Story are a great art team, but somehow the backup seemed a little off to me, maybe a little rushed. I would definitely like to see them work more on Superman, though. Bringing in Neil DeGrasse Tyson was a cool idea.

I liked the main story's opening, I could hear the John Williams overture as Superman took off for Mars. But the Little Man has been underwhelming to me, and the quick, not-so-impossible defeat of the multitude just continues that. It will be interesting to see how his past actions make sense in hindsight (or not make sense.) Hanging around Glenmorgan and a bunch of d-list villains hasn't been interesting yet.

[Quinnhop]

I don't know, them being basically the hand of Vyndktvx had a cool biblical feel to me, only slanted toward the evil side.

Exactly. It's funny because here it was the Left Hand, while typically it's God's Right Hand, adding to the idea of Vyndktvx being a kind of mirror image of God (aka, The Devil). Also, those going to Hell are shown on God's left side (they are the goats--fitting with Vyndktvx/Satan's traditional goat imagery).

"He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left."

Also:

The term originated in John Milton's Paradise Lost, where the demon Belial refers to God's red right hand, which can strike down vengeance upon the devils should they push the war in Heaven too far. Belial was arguing for peace, or at least not provoking a second war in heaven. In this context the red right hand signifies divine wrath. By extension, the red right hand can be applied to all the Holy Trinity, the Angel of Death, or any agent of Divine Retribution. Jesus Christ sits on God's right hand, so such a symbol could be used to mark a Messiah. However, since the mark of the beast is placed upon the right hand (or forehead), the red right hand might mark the Antichrist or his followers. From there it's a short jump to the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, Satan, and various demons and fallen angels.

So I think we have an instance of The Demiurge. There is a God--the God of "Us"--and there is a Demiurge--the God of "Its." The Demiurge created the material world. The creation of the world was itself the "Fall" from God. From a divine oneness. From the Good. And this false God demands worship. He demands man's blind submission. His ignorance. He therefore hates science, reason, invention, hope, aspiration, potential--goodness.

In the Apocryphon of John circa 120-180 AD, the Demiurge arrogantly declares that he has made the world by himself:

Now the archon (ruler) who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas (“fool”), and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, "I am God and there is no other God beside me," for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.

He is Demiurge and maker of man, but as a ray of light from above enters the body of man and gives him a soul, Yaldabaoth is filled with envy; he tries to limit man's knowledge by forbidding him the fruit of knowledge in paradise. At the consummation of all things all light will return to the Pleroma. But Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge, with the material world, will be cast into the lower depths.

In Pistis Sophia Yaldabaoth has already sunk from his high estate and resides in Chaos, where, with his forty-nine demons, he tortures wicked souls in boiling rivers of pitch, and with other punishments (pp. 257, 382). He is an archon with the face of a lion, half flame and half darkness.

It's why Vyndktvx hates Jor-El (the premier science hero) as much as he does. And why he hates Superman (the "man-God") for threatening his authority/rule with self-realization.

Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God and the demiurgic “creator” of the material. Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being: his act of creation occurs in unconscious semblance of the divine model, and thus is fundamentally flawed, or else is formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality. Thus, in such systems, the Demiurge acts as a solution to the problem of evil.

One Gnostic mythos describes the declination of aspects of the divine into human form. Sophia (Greek: Σοφια, lit. “wisdom”), the Demiurge’s mother a partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or “Fullness,” desired to create something apart from the divine totality, without the receipt of divine assent. In this act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him to be within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, concluded that only he himself existed, being ignorant of the superior levels of reality.

The Demiurge, having received a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior Pleromatic realm: He frames the seven heavens, as well as all material and animal things, according to forms furnished by his mother; working however blindly, and ignorant even of the existence of the mother who is the source of all his energy. He is blind to all that is spiritual, but he is king over the other two provinces. The word dēmiourgos properly describes his relation to the material; he is the father of that which is animal like himself.

Thus Sophia’s power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source.

Notice, at the end of the issue, Vyndktvx is blind in his right eye.

The first and highest aspect of God is described by Plato as the One, the source, or the Monad. This is the Good above the Demiurge, and manifests through the work of the Demiurge. The Monad emanated the demiurge or Nous (consciousness) from its "indeterminate" vitality due to the monad being so abundant that it overflowed back onto itself, causing self-reflection.

The Monad (One) that is many and true vs The Multitude (Many) that is one and false.

He is the oppressive power posing as the masses. He is a false multitude opposing the true masses that he fears. A twist on the Machiavellian Multitude.


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True, insofar as his interactions with Superman are concerned, at least, he still has to interact with the 3D/4D universe, but it isn't just that there is no linearity; it's that is no distinction. Everything is happening, all at once, simultaneously. He isn't just entering the timeline at a specific point, he is standing outside and inside an infinite series of universes, one for every moment.

True, true. He's always there doing something (always in the background, even if you don't see him). You just have to hope that what he does inadvertently serves his own undoing in the end.

Absolutely, and it's an interesting distinction; evil as the All-In-One, good as the All-FOR-One. Superman thinks he's fighting a great host, but in fact it's just the literal right hand of the devil, one will manifesting as more. Where as, as the boy puts it, humanity, Superman, the Metaleks, and I'll bet even Brainiac/the Collector all have a 'common goal', and can work together towards it. This same conflict arose with Darkseid vs the DCU in Final Crisis, his evil New Gods referred to as mere emanations of his presence at various points, the entire population of Earth his voice, hands, eyes, etc. One will, immense, pristine, perfect vs a patchwork of desire, fear, pain, nobility, imagination.

Yeah, I forgot to mention Brainiac/The Collector, but it fits in perfectly.

Which brings us to Batman RIP, and our current predicament. How do you defeat a 5th dimensional entity? You attack it in the fifth dimension. How do you get there? You use your imagination, which is presumably what Jor El and what the next gen people of earth (Captain Comet, Suzie, etc) are capable of doing, because imagination IS the 5th dimension. And sometimes imagination can run amok, can become a dark thing/think, and I guess that is what our boy here is.

Imagination

Exactly!

Very Hegelian. I'll be curious to see if he goes in that direction.

Love you too, brotha.

<3

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And I'm sure I'm behind on this, but woah: Ferlin Nyxly, Mrs. Nyxly's nephew, is a pre-established character. How'd I miss that?

[Froggy]

A big part of why I love this comic is because of the discussions it brings up.


What other comic in Marvel and DC spurs this type of discussion? Well, Batman Inc. at times, but it's from the same guy!


Oh, and the issue was fantastic!

this

I lurk most of the time to just read posts

awesome addition quinnhop, regardless of how well desaad and retro worked

holy crap this recent post with the right hand/left hand milton references

good lord i'm digging deep into these single issues

[Desaad]

I also like the way this is all sort of playing into this younger, more vital Superman.

Morrison's feelings on children vs adults are well know, I think. In brief...

"“Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.”

Throughout this narrative it is children, notably, that can tap into imagination, see the shape of things, and institute change. It is the boy who gives Superman the idea to cooperate with the Metaleks, brushing up against divine inspiration. It is little Susie, and a young Captain Comet, who see the shape of things to come. And impish Mxy and Batmite are absolutely the stuff of childhood fantasy.

Imagination is, in this narrative, the domain of youth, and that isn't necessarily the same thing as 'good' or 'purity' as we so often see in fiction; remember, Susie herself is bound for villainy, by all appearances, and we're confronting a villainous Imp as we speak, the Ultimate Villain.

Nothing about imagination is inherently good or evil, it just IS; we saw that previously as Superman is repurposed and revamped into SuperDoom, and we see that here. But coupled with will, compassion, cooperation, empathy and courage not even the oldest, greatest evil in the world can stand against it.

If 5th dimensional Imps are imagination come to impossibly large life, then its up to these folks to pool their mental resources and imagine something BIGGER. Something BETTER.

And that thing? That's Superman.

[Flash Gordon]

This is shaping up to be my definitive Superman story.

We're going to be going from Superman fending off an army of angels and facing down the Demiruge itself, to H'El on Earth. What a thematic jump, and not one I'm looking forward to.

[Robotman4]

It is an issue of perspective.

A 5th dimensional being is to a 3rd dimensional being as you are to a dot, okay? That means he sees time - the 4th dimension - the way you see a line, or a piece of paper. It all exists at once to him, it's all one thing. He can do whatever he wants with it; hop in at one point, erase a section of it, smash up this line segment with that line segment.

The physical universe is a single dot on a piece of paper, and Vyndktvx is an artist with a grudge. He's drawing Superman's greatest failure and destruction. Time doesn't come into it.

Wow this makes Grant's structuring of this story even more brilliant. It seems like each issue has jumped around to different time periods of Superman's life. This gives us a slight glimpse as to how our 5th dimensional villain is viewing things. Being able to manipulate the 4th dimension with ease and seeing our timeline as happening all at once.

[Retro315]

This marks kind of the first big crossover of yet another theme between Morrison's Action Comics and Morrison's Batman. Of course it's no surprise that the themes were all there, all along, just kind of hidden behind the obviousness of the comic book medium. The Multitude is another form of Legion. Heroes should have very personalized devils (See: Tulpas, Grendel). Grant is still writing to the Art History Class crowd (I've been working on that thesis since I began Art School three years ago), and these personal Devils (Hey, if you can have your own, personal, Jesus ...) always seem to have some ties to your Family History, and some form of Legion to strike you with. See: Dr. Hurt, Talia al Ghul)

I had an idea to replicate a classic The Last Judgment fresco but replacing the Biblical characters with specifically Morrison's DC equivalents, and it's as relevant now as it was then in the midst of all the Dr. Hurt/Demonology. Maybe I'll accompany my thesis with that, and labels. Labels are fun.

There's this fluidity between higher-plane beings in the DCU where I'm curious to see where one influence ends and another begins. The Unity vs. Multitude thing connects for me with my earlier "God as a Super-Djinn" notion, I think ... I suppose in that way God is more like a Brainiac or the Internet - he's a central nexus or hub covered in USB ports, linking infinite separate, free-willed computers. He has no ego, he's a conduit. Djinn or Imps are egocentrists and can't attain that degree of universality. God can manifest his right hand into a million free-willed, independent thought-warriors because he's a culmination of all free wills, radiating on some spectrum outwards. Vyndktvx ... that just isn't the case, because at their core, he's like Darkseid, a black hole in the soul (because a soul is a thought-construct) - a negative imaginary entity that has to draw things/thoughts in like a spider in a web. In that he's incredibly typical of Morrison's current slew of manipulative villains, from Doctor Dedalus to Mandrakk.

A 5D Imp then becomes sort of a category equivalent to devils or angels, just with their own sort of niche and defining traits (they're tricksy). I suppose when the origins of Djinn are exposed that shouldn't come as a surprise, but coming from a Western pop culture background, somehow Djinn always struck me as a lesser magical order than your traditional Judeo-Christian fare, where everything has to choose sides in some partisan war between God's unity and Lucifer's selfishness, complete with thousands of continuity errors and redundant characters. And there we see the line of thought; "Djinn aren't inherently evil. But what if one were?"

I suppose the only reason we here in reader-land are unaffected by all-powerful Imps (to a degree) is because to tell the story, they too have to be reduced to from 5D to 2D alongside 3D-in-4D concepts like Superman. But then in some way, once reading them and them affecting our imaginations through some weird internal Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, they do affect us. Something, something, the argument for the virtue of ignorance vs. knowing evil.

[Retro315]

More pending.

[greatmetropolitan]

Both Morrison and Greg Rucka have used the 5th Dimensional imps in my particular favourite fashion - as stand ins for either the writer or "our" world, as us.

Morrison kicked it off with his JLA, when he revealed the genie in Johnny Thunder's pen was, in fact, a 5D imp. Compare that to your typical genie, stuck in a lamp. The idea is that the 5D imp is bound to our world through liquid - ink in a pen or oil in a lamp. But it's that first analogy that's the important one - ink. The 5D imps, or rather, the writer, is in the comic world due to ink, literally, the ink of the comic. The 5D imps are meta in the truest sense because they are us. Rucka used this well with an amazing issue of Superman, where Mxy warns Clark about upcoming dangers, and gives him a glimpse into a possible future with his daughter. There are also a few scenes where Mxy pops out of the comic world and into the real world, reading the script. Mxy, in this story, was Rucka. He liked Superman so much that he had to warn him that things were gonna get tough.

In this story, the benevolent writer or 5D imp, Mxy, is imprisoned and it's a darker narrative that's trying to take over. Perhaps a metaphor by Morrison about how various writers and editorial decisions seek to de-power or darken Superman. This idea that true goodness can't exist or be compelling. So this modern, dark writer, Vindictivix, comes in and makes a bunch of new, dark villains - the Hunter is surely a 90s pastiche, all guns and grit. Superdoom, for crying out loud, an honest to god Evil Superman engineered by a dark metatextual force.

But Morrison knows what we all know. You can't do that to Superman. Superman and his innate goodness are alive. The character will actively fight against efforts to darken him, even metatextual ones.

The next issue is Superman at the end of the world. I daresay the end of the world will be cancelled until further notice.

[Zionite1]

Read it.Thought it was okay.
Good-Loving the Concept behind the Multitude and Vyndictx.Quite frankly Vydndictyx is Morrisons greatest accomplishment in his run.Hes created a villain for Superman who I think will become an iconic memeber of his Rogues galley.The idea that the Multitude is literally is his hand is fantastic.I love that Morrison doesnt shy away from the big crazy sci fi stuff-This is kind of sci fi i love to read in a superman comic.I also love the "challenge accepted" attitude Superman sports.

The Bad-Multitude defeated too easily.2 dimensional characterisations.Story jumps about in time.

[nightrider]

If you'll recall, Superman's mother was also a scientist AND she was a kick butt fighter. I wouldn't ignore her contribution to the Man of Steel, if I were you. As for this being your or anyone's version of Superman, all I can say is that he wasn't NOT my Superman in what I've seen from the previews and panels posted on Tumblr. However, it sounds like he was more Doctor Who than Superman in this issue. With that being the case, at least for me, I'd say what was missing from the issue was a Doctor Who type of companion. Too bad a vivacious Earthling with intelligence wasn't incorporated into the story. Not that it was necessary, but it might have made it more interesting.

Scott Lobdell was the only one that wrote her as a kick butt fighter.

[Retro315]

Both Morrison and Greg Rucka have used the 5th Dimensional imps in my particular favourite fashion - as stand ins for either the writer or "our" world, as us.

Morrison kicked it off with his JLA, when he revealed the genie in Johnny Thunder's pen was, in fact, a 5D imp. Compare that to your typical genie, stuck in a lamp. The idea is that the 5D imp is bound to our world through liquid - ink in a pen or oil in a lamp. But it's that first analogy that's the important one - ink. The 5D imps, or rather, the writer, is in the comic world due to ink, literally, the ink of the comic. The 5D imps are meta in the truest sense because they are us. Rucka used this well with an amazing issue of Superman, where Mxy warns Clark about upcoming dangers, and gives him a glimpse into a possible future with his daughter. There are also a few scenes where Mxy pops out of the comic world and into the real world, reading the script. Mxy, in this story, was Rucka. He liked Superman so much that he had to warn him that things were gonna get tough.

In this story, the benevolent writer or 5D imp, Mxy, is imprisoned and it's a darker narrative that's trying to take over. Perhaps a metaphor by Morrison about how various writers and editorial decisions seek to de-power or darken Superman. This idea that true goodness can't exist or be compelling. So this modern, dark writer, Vindictivix, comes in and makes a bunch of new, dark villains - the Hunter is surely a 90s pastiche, all guns and grit. Superdoom, for crying out loud, an honest to god Evil Superman engineered by a dark metatextual force.

But Morrison knows what we all know. You can't do that to Superman. Superman and his innate goodness are alive. The character will actively fight against efforts to darken him, even metatextual ones.

The next issue is Superman at the end of the world. I daresay the end of the world will be cancelled until further notice.

Nailed it.