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.

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #7 – “Superman’s Doomsday Decision” • “Meanwhile…”! Yet another two-story issue, but I’m TOLD (or else) that we’re returning to the events of the main story. In the previous two installments (Issue #5 was the better of the two, Issue #6 was a dreadful abortion), we got some backstory about Superman’s sole journey from his destroyed home planet Krypton and his crash-landing on Earth. We also got a bit of backstory on Jonathan Kent and Martha Clark, Superman’s adoptive parents, and their history of infertility. There was also this whole fucking story about Superman’s ship getting its Kryptonite engine stolen and the Legion of Superheroes time travelling to help get it back that really ruined my enjoyment of life and reading and having eyeballs and I hope to never encounter such an atrocity again.

The real story, the one that is now continuing from Issue #4, involves some sort of Krypton virus thing that infiltrated Earth and corrupted a bunch of robots. There was a battle with robots that ended with most of Metropolis disappearing into some alternate-reality alien preservation containment thing. Superman is outside of this alien preservation containment thing, and Lois Lane and Lux Luthor are not, and Sam Lane wants Superman to help rescue these people (ESPECIALLY Lois Lane, being his daughter and all, not necessarily Lex Luthor, but whatever I guess, if you must).

And here’s the rest of that story.

Action Comics (Vol. 2), Issue #7 [May, 2012]
Written by: Grant Morrison
“Superman’s Doomsday Decision”

♫ City in a Bottle, yeah ♫♫ I’m sending out an S.O.S ♫♫ I’m sending out an S.O.S… ♫

The issue starts on the bridge, hopefully where we last left off on that particular part of the story, but this is Grant Morrison’s House of Whims and Chaotic Storytelling, who the fuck actually knows? Superman says he can see the alien spaceship that bottled up the city with his zoom vision, which Sam Lane snorts at and asks him to at least take some guns. “Guns are for sissies, General Lane” responds Superman, which gets him cancelled quicker than a *slur* on a *slur*! Sam Lane is still skeptical of Superman’s abilities and KINDLY REMINDS HIM that he can only go 600 mph anyway, and Dr. Irons estimates a needed velocity of 25,000 mph to do whatever the hell it is that he needs to do. Superman’s all “Challenge Accepted!” and starts galloping away.

As he runs at full-speed toward a make-shift launch ramp fashioned out of a flatbed dump truck, his shoes are hella falling apart, but I guess that doesn’t matter much otherwise to show the audience that he ran really, really fast. He successfully runs 42 times faster than he ever has in his life and makes it into space. He’s outfitted with a dang oxygen mask even though the rest of his body is completely exposed, which would render the mask completely pointless. But hey, I’m not the one writing this shitty comic book.

He gets absolutely fucking electrocuted on his way to the robot octopus ship, but he otherwise makes it there uneventfully. Once he’s there the robots immediately attempt to subdue and bottle him up, but Superman shoots his eyeball lasers at them. Other robots continue their battle cries of “SECURE.”, “PRESERVE.” and “COMPLETE THE COLLECTION.” while Superman looks for clues as to the whereabouts of the missing city. He wanders into a room full of giant jars with entire cities sealed and kept fresh, not a trace of botulism. That’s some nice canning.

He peers into one that houses a familiar city. “This is the place from my dream.” he says, brow furrowed like the amazing genius he appears to be and constantly proves time and time again. He has a brief glimmer of a memory about his life as a Krypton baby.

Kevin Spacey maintains his snark in even the most dire of situations. Now try it after getting #MeToo’d.

Meanwhile, in the Metropolis pickle jar, Lois Lane shakes her accusing finger at Lex Luthor. “I should have known you’d be involved in this, you bald bitch!” she should have said. Luthor remains calm and makes a snarky comment about how all the New Troy residents ended up on the streets of New Troy at the same time during a crisis. I don’t remember hearing about New Troy before but I’m sure it was name dropped 500 times over the last few issues and I was too busy drooling catatonically. One of the army soldiers that was with Luthor says “Hey, it’s just like Under the Dome or the Simpsons Movie”, so it’s nice to see that Stephen King exists in this universe. Luther tries to assess the situation, noting that he recognized the phrase “dwarf star lensing” as only being used by some smarty man named Professor Raymond Palmer during testing related to…uh…shrinkage. Luthor surmises that they have been shrunkaged. While Lane borrows Luthor’s binoculars, bowlcut Jimmy Olsen tries to point out the robot spiders that suddenly appear to be advancing on the hapless, bottled-up gang of sad-sacks. Panic ensues.

A group runs to the Glenmorgan hotel where Glen “Morgan” Glenmorgan himself is having a drink at the bar, wondering what the FUCK all the ruckus is about. Meanwhile, I don’t even care about that, I learn in this scene that his name is ALEXANDER Luthor! Are you kidding me? AHHHHAHAHA, JESUS! I never thought about that before. Luthor pulls out a phone, declaring that he has “the alien’s cellphone number on ringback”, whatever the hell that means in 2011, and Lois gets indignant and suspicious again about Luthor’s involvement in this whole dang mess.

Damnit, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter! I will double-bullshit you right back!

While Lex Luthor talks to some alien or something, Glenmorgan has a conversation with the bartender. Glenmorgan recognizes him. The bartender agrees that he should indeed recognize him. They start talking about silk ties, whatever, I don’t have time for this! Luthor argues with the alien that they had a deal: his survival in exchange for Superman. The alien argues that the deal has been honored. A robot spider breaks into the hotel; the army men shoot it with bullets from their bullet-shooting guns. Just outside the window the crew sees a giant motherfucking Superman guy. It’s Superman. Superman is peering into the bottle holding Metropolis or New Troy or Gotham City or Riverdale or who gives a shit.

Superman loudly demands to know who these alien entities are. They explain to him that they are colony of the Collector of Worlds are known as different names on different worlds: Yod-Colu -> C.O.M.P.U.T.O., Noma -> Pneumenoid, Bryak -> Mind2, Krypton -> Brainiac 1.0, Earth -> The Internet. Wuzza wuzza WHAAA?! They shove Superman into the side of the Metropolis/New Troy bottle, shaking the bejesus out of it. Superman asks what they want from him, and they simply say that the collection is incomplete without him. And, apparently, when these internet aliens tell him that he was born on Krypton, Superman is flabbergasted. I guess he doesn’t know this yet? Even I know this and I don’t know nuthin’! Keep up, smartypants.

The aliens refer to Superman as a “Level 8 Cuckoo raised on alien soil by Level 3 primitives”, which I think gives Earthlings too much credit. As an experiment of nature vs. nurture, the aliens decide to cut off life support for both the Kandor bottle and the Metropolis bottle, and instruct Superman to decide which one he’s more loyal to and wants to save. Kind of funny, you know, considering that all these aliens want to do is preserve these communities and now they’re playing some passive-aggressive game with Superman with them instead. Seems dumb. But hey, as I said before, I’m not the one writing this shitty comic book.

Superman gets all desperately high and mighty, refusing to choose. The aliens dangle the pros and cons in his face. If he saves the Kryptonian city, maybe someday he can restore the city, mingle among his people, and no longer be alone. If he saves the Earth city, ehhhhhh, I guess the people that are scared of him can continue being scared of him, making shitty weapons that don’t work to try to kill him all the time!

Stay tuned for more Feral Superman after these messages.

Since all the yokels in the Metropolis bottle can hear this conversation, they start manipulating this Level 8 Cuckoo by chanting his name over and over again. Personally, I’d smash that Earth bottle right then and there, but Superman is pretty stupid like a Level 1 Bog Beast and starts to feel slightly bad for all of them. Then he spots his beloved ship in the army truck in the bottle. “Okay. I made my choice.” Superman declares. The bottled-up Metropolis shitheads start getting mad thinking that Superman’s choosing Krypton-Bottle, but then Superman starts stripping and tells the aliens that bringing him onto their ship was akin to swallowing poison to see how it tastes. He’s still mad that these aliens were endangering lives to prove a point, so I’m guessing Superman’s going to start Hulking out or something. He takes the indestructible Superman suit that the aliens were holding onto, but I don’t remember that happening! I’ll take this issue’s word for it!

Luthor is still yelling into his phone. The alien informs him that both Krypton and Earth are doomed and their respective bottle cities are slated for permanent microstasis. Superman announces that he will be fighting for the honor of both worlds, and both cities have to go back to where they came from if he wins! The Level 2 Slugface is informed that the worlds are fucking gone, idiot. Well, Krypton is. Earth is not really fucking gone yet, but it’s getting there. Any second now. Yep…yeah…

Hold on, it’s happening…

Wait for it…

OK, in the next issue I guess.

“Meanwhile…”
Written by: Sholly Fisch

Ha, “Meanwhile”. Even Sholly Fisch is like “this is taking too goddamn long, it’s my turn again”.

Right away I’m thankful that Fisch explains to me what New Troy is. The heart of Metropolis! The center of business! The center of entertainment! Home to millions of people. MILLIONS! I’m new at comics, Grant Morrison, you gotta spoon-feed it to me instead of, you know, throwing characters at me named things like “Vxrpt” and “Kpl” while telling stories out of order.

This story is recapping the sudden disappearance of New Troy and Superman launching himself into space. While Superman is fucking around in space, there’s still stuff going down on Earth, and DR. JOHN HENRY IRONS takes this opportunity to start horning in on the superhero action! STEEL, baby. The DC Comics version of Iron Man, a literal ripoff who first appeared 30 years after Iron Man first appeared. Sad!

But, at this time, Steel doesn’t actually have a superhero name yet. He tells a guy on the bridge to call him “John”.

“There’s just one problem with suspension bridges: they start to fall apart when there’s nothing to suspend them.” he narrates, smartly.

As he’s avoiding falling debris trying to hold the bridge up — helmetless — he says he needs a helmet.

I promise I won’t drop it from thirty feet off the ground! Heh heh. Whoops! Uh.

When people approach the destroyed bridge trying to get into New Troy to see their families, that reminds “John” that he wants to call his family. He borrows someone’s phone and calls his niece. He spends a minute profoundly confusing her over the phone and then says “gotta go”.

As water starts flooding the hole left by the emptiness of New Troy’s disappearance, a ferry is caught up in the rushing waters. “John” uses the power of physics to push the ferry and redirect its course out of the way of the hole. “Who says you don’t need physics in the real world?” he says, like an asshole.

He realizes that there’s too much to do and being a superhero is hard. “Is this how Superman feels?” asks the guy who has been a self-labelled superhero for 15 minutes.

He sees the people of Metropolis pitching in to help each other out, which buoys his spirits. One guy is making a “what the fuck are you looking at?” face at him.

He concludes that it doesn’t take one hero. It takes millions!

I’m fucking puking right now.

Final Thoughts

I think I hate Action Comics! What a load of smarmy, cloying trash! Superman sucks shit! Steel is useless! I’m never reading this again!

See you in the next issue!