Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #8 – “Superman Meets…The Collector of Worlds”! This issue concludes the “storyline”, and I cringingly use that term loosely. In the previous installment, Superjerk launches into space to go after the aliens who shrunk and bottled up New Troy. While he’s on the alien ship full of other bottled-up civilizations, the aliens taunt him with his own personal past and demand that he chooses between saving Kandor, the Krypton city full of his own people, or saving New Troy, the neighborhood of Earth’s Metropolis full of people who fear and hate him. He’s going to save both.

Let’s wrap this turd up.

Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #8 [June, 2012]
Written by: Grant Morrison
“Superman Meets…The Collector of Worlds”

“To Battle Brainiac…for the Fate of Metropolis!” says the cover. OOooOOOoo, CHILLS! *farts* Go suck a dick.

Brainiac is what they call the Internet on Krypton, it’s the nefarious entity that’s collecting bottled-up worlds. See, I’m paying attention!

Inside Metropolis Bottle, Lex Luthor is being a whiny little bitch about the idea of being saved by Superman. He talks about how he, himself, all by his lonesome, single-handedly, was attempting to save the Earth from being caught in the crossfires of two warring alien civilizations. BUT, given the choice, being bottled up and preserved forever sounds like a sweet deal! Meanwhile, Glenmorgan is freaking out thinking he’s in some sort of movie where they’re all in hell and the bartender is the devil, and even though some guy tells him that THERE’S NO BARTENDER HERE AND THERE NEVER WAS, we all know the truth!

I guess Superman is in the middle of battling this so-called “Collector of Worlds”, which took over John Corben’s steel-suit-wearing body. I’m going to just call him the Internet. So, the Internet is mocking Superman (“NOTHING’s faster than a speeding bullet!” he says erroneously. What about LIGHT, moron? You don’t even need the internet to know that! Rockets? Space probes? Come on. Ha, whoops, I should’ve read the next panel, even Superman schools him on light), and then Superman blasts the Internet with his laser eyes.

Superman throwing out gender roles as a means of ridicule. Not very super, man!

Internet pushes Superman away and the John Corben within begins to start talking to Lois Lane. “Just so you know, I’m the reason Metropolis is saved! I’m the one who convinced the aliens to spare you guys! It was meeeeeeeeeeeee! And Superman is a jerk and if you die it’s his fucking fault!” he whines, still trying to futilely get his bone on with Lois Lane in front of goddamned everybody.

Luthor is still insisting that Superman is the enemy here. Glenmorgan is losing his marbles quickly, ranting about the “little man” and how he’s the devil punishing him.

It seems that during the fight, John Corben’s humanity is starting to be seen as a threat by the machines trying to take him over. “Seven minutes to bottle city — permanent microstasis” announces the Internet (the non-John Corben part of it, the John Corben part of it doesn’t care much about anything other than boning Lois Lane it seems). Superman is still attempting to save everyone and everything at once with such little time. Corben “Bernsen” Steel-Man throws Superman against one of the bottle-worlds, you know, one of the useless ones that doesn’t matter anyway. It looks like it has frogs with clothes on inside of it! Superman, though, is horrified, and he’s had enough at this point!

By now, the machines are completely terrified of Corben’s humanity coming through and they ramp up the efforts to protect their collections at all costs. Superman seems to be no match, as he keeps getting thrown around like a Kryptonian ragdoll. Now there are only five minutes left until permanent microstasis. Superman hears his ship calling out to him again, which it has done a million times already in the last few issues. Corben breaks through just enough to do a bit of cheerleading.

Oh yeah, uh, I wasn’t gonna…but now that you said something, fine.

Glenmorgan starts freaking out even harder when he sees Superman’s giant hand break through the Metropolis bottle to reach the army truck holding his talking spaceship. The Internet tells Superman, for some reason (I don’t know what this enemy gains by divulging anything), that Krypton is #205 out of 333 worlds slated for the “Death-List of the Multitude”, whatever the flying fresh fuck THAT is now. I’m exhausted trying to keep up with all of this. Superman isn’t playing anymore; he tells the Internet that he’ll destroy each and every single one of these bottles if he has to. Of course, I, the reader, know that Superman is bluffing! I think they made an issue in 1943 where he killed a bug by accident and cried for 56 pages. The Internet, though, is dumb, and starts going “Nononononono! NO! No oh god no! Please no! Stop! No! Don’t do it, waaahh! Ahh! NO! NONONONO!”. Superman regains his cool, and calmly tells the Internet that now it’s time to negotiate.

So help me god I will JERK YOU OFF into oblivion, sir!

“Reverse your preservation process or-”… wait a minute, I don’t have to write it out! Check it out there on the panel there, yeah, that’s what he says! And then the Internet says that part right there below! OK, you’re caught up. Superman says, AGAIN, that he’s not going to let anything threaten him, his people, other people, all people, and various bugs, oh yeah and the planet. “You carry the Krypton moral imprint” the Internet notices, “you will not harm me.” Take that, Superman! “No, but I’ll put you to work for me.” Superman retorts. Like how, mowing his lawn or something?

Here comes the plot hole! Superman shows the Internet the tiny ship that he grabbed from the bottle and lets him know that the ship contains an indestructible “crystal computer system”. And then he flicks the fucking thing into the Internet’s brain, which causes him to suddenly go cuckoo nuts! He starts gibbering about failing the mission to collect, and then he turns into a big, spiky ice ball thing that I’m sure I’ve seen already before in this storyline but I can’t be arsed right now to look back and check. I don’t have time anyway! There are only 30 seconds left until permanent microstasis!

Superman collapses as a giant beam of light shines down upon him, then he dreamily and serenely instructs the computer system to restore Metropolis. And it does.

I didn’t start performing acts of heroism in order to be a hero! Get the fuck out of here, Sideburns!

Immediately, the town starts to get on with their happy lives like nothing completely weird and traumatizing just happened at all. Except for Lex Luthor, he slips away into a limo. “Get me the hell out of here. We’re all living in a very different world as of today. I need time to think.” he says, shakily.

As everything seems to be returning to normal, Clark Kent is getting an attaboy from his boss Mr. Taylor at the Daily Star. “Glen Glenmorgan was a bad, bad man, but none of us could ever get near him.” Clark responds with “I’m just sorry ‘Mr. Metropolis’ lost his mind, that’s all. Whatever it was he saw in the bottle, I guess he couldn’t handle it.” And then Mr. Taylor responds to THAT with “Wouldn’t be the first man who found God in a bottle”, which is stunningly clever compared to literally anything else anyone has said in this storyline (except for maybe a couple of good and sarcastic Lex Luthor bits, that guy’s a real riot!).

Clark has a sense of anticlimactic melancholy. He’s been going after Glenmorgan for his whole career, and now that he’s been taken care of he’s worried that someone else will take his place. Just like the Taliban! Mr. Taylor tells him to stop fucking worrying and go work at the Daily Planet instead and get the fuck out of his face!

At Clark’s apartment, Clark’s on the phone with his mysterious informant. Clark tells his informant that he was right about everything. He then asks his informant if he’s Superman. His informant turns out to be Lex Luthor (what a twist!), who you can tell is completely offended that anyone would ask if he was Superman.

Superman?? Hell no! But, hey, you can call me, uh…Superb Man. If you want.

At Army Bitch Headquarters, John Corben is unconscious. The Metal-Zero suit has fused with his central nervous system, and now he has no heart. Corben’s one sad motherfucker now.

Clark is shown talking to Mrs. Nyxly out on the roof. Remember when she asked him if he was from space? That’s one of the only things I remember! He was obviously confronted about this again, and he warns her that if his secret were revealed he would just disappear, relocate, and be someone else. She basically then compares his situation with homosexuals still in the closet and tells him “your secret’s safe with me”, which I guess is a good enough sentiment from Woke-Ass Nyxly over here. Jesus.

“I didn’t know cities had keys” says Superman as he is given the key to the city. See? Grade-A Dummy. He’s now wearing the real Superman outfit, the one he got on the alien ship, instead of his sexy, sexy denim. He gives a speech about helping people and no one is alone in this universe and some other happy gobbledygook. Lois Lane asks him if there’s anywhere he goes to be alone.

No caption necessary for this horseshit easy lob of a double entendre.

And I guess that’s Smallville, his podunk hometown. Clark’s talking to the graves of his dead-ass parents, letting them know that he’s content now and seems to have found a place in this crazy topsy-turvy world for him after all! He turns back into Superman and flies to that robot octopus in the sky that he now can use as his own personal base. Since he took it over and all.

And there’s a prologue too, because why not, this issue isn’t long enough as it is! On DINOSAUR ISLAND there’s the little man, AKA the devil bartender, AKA the guy that synthesized the green Kryptonite or some shit. He’s huntin’ dinosaurs with a guy named Zarov, and he tells Zarov that he’s got a challenge for the esteemed hunter: to kill a bullet-proof man. Zarov scoffs! There’s no such thing as a bullet-proof man! Then he shoots a dinosaur in the head.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Final Thoughts

Boo! Hiss! I’m done with Action Comics for a while. Time scrub my brain with Lysol for the next three months before I attempt another Superman-adjacent story.