Action Comics #7

Pee in the jar! Pee in the jar!

The alien spaceship with the Terminauts or the Collectors or the Bottlers or whatever they want to call themselves (you know? the guys from three issues ago?) are quickly leaving Earth with a new collector's variant Bottle of Metropolis. Superman dons an oxygen mask and gets ready to run into outer space. Yes. Run. Because he can't fly, remember?!

He's running fast enough to break the Panel Barrier. That's got to be fast enough to jump into space!

Superman launches himself off the back of a flatbed tow truck which doesn't collapse at all from the incredible pressures he's generating by jumping fast enough to achieve orbit! It does bounce a bit because there has to be some believability in comic books! Although, I'd rather read totally outrageous stuff like this or totally incomprehensible bullshit like Mr. Terrific spews forth rather than always trying to convince the readers that what they're reading somehow makes sense in scientific terms. I'm an rationalist and an atheist but that doesn't mean I need my comic books to explain every thing to me nor do I care if the characters in the comic books are Gods or sons of Gods! It's all the same to be! It's fun fiction.

If that contradicts something I said earlier, just realize that I was probably talking about a comic book I really hated if I panned it for not being realistic! Like when Grifter makes an explosion using flour and a flame. I mean, seriously! That was just stupid! This is a man running into Goddamned space! Totally different!

And besides, Superman doesn't get enough momentum from just that! That would be ridiculous! So he gets a little added push from a Galaxy Broadcasting satellite.

He may not have needed the added momentum. He probably just wanted to send one of their satellites crashing to Earth because they are pricks.

Superman catches on to the side of the ship and is immediately fried by the ship's tentacles. He's taken inside because isn't that what you would do if a Mox Sapphire suddenly jumped onto the outside of your car? Who's going to throw away a perfectly good collector's item! After the ship brings him in, it tries to preserve him. Possibly in Hostess Twinkie Cake.

Superman is the new cream filling!

The Caking doesn't take effect because the dumb Collectornauts forgot that they had to compensate for Superman's Super Yellow Sun Powers. Supes escapes and smashes his way deeper into the ship following the sounds of Big Talk Metropolis Radio!

Back in Mini-Metropolis, Lois runs into Lex Luthor and blames the shit out of him. He mutters something about 'Dwarf Star Lensing' and 'Professor Raymond Palmer' before realizing, by utilizing his binoculars, that they've been miniaturized. And then some spider nanite robot things start crawling all over the streets of Metropolis.

Of course, she was right to blame the shit out of this asshole.

The little man from the first issue and, I believe, the man trying to sell the Kryptonite Engine is tending bar in the hotel which Lex, Jimmy, and Lois duck into. It's Glenmorgan's hotel and he's there as well. The little man seems to use some kind of hypno-power on Glenmorgan. I'm sure he'll be more of a major player than just the guy selling kryptonite at some point.

Superman finally finds the jar with Metropolis in it. The Collector's robots are still chasing him and trying to preserve him. Supes asks who has done this and the Collector spits out a bunch of names that he's been called across time and space. On Krypton, they called him Brainiac! So I was right way back when! And then on Earth, they were internet! So the Collector disguises itself as the information system for civilized planets, learns everything it can about the planet, and then collects specimens when the planet dies. Or maybe it kills the planet and then collects specimens. I'm not so clear about that part.

If Supes is a Level 8 Cuckoo, does that mean he threw Ma and Pa Kent's real kid out of the nest? Also, are these Dungeons and Dragon's levels? Level 8 is pretty good!

Brainiac decides to run an experiment on Superman now that he knows where he's from. Brainiac turns off the life support for the bottles of Kandor and Metropolis and tells Superman he has 15 minutes to save one of them. Which will he choose?

Really, Brainiac? You're such a dumb shit sometimes. He's going to choose to save both and kick your ass at the same time! Duh!

Earlier, Superman saw some clothing that looked familiar. Once Brainiac starts talking too much (big surprise, eh?), he mentions that the clothing Supes people wore was indestructible. So Superman breaks open the jar with the clothes and dons the suit. It was all white but then it changes into the costume everybody recognizes! Well, everybody recognizes now that Jim Lee got his rabid hands all over it.

I wonder why it makes the 'S'? Does the material read the DNA of the person wearing it and apply the appropriate family crest?

And after he dons this costume, the Collector of Worlds shows himself.

Uh-oh! A Level 15 Human Centuarpede! Can a Level 8 Cuckoo take him?!

The back-up story features Steel so it's, you know, boring. I need a good writer to make this guy interesting to me!

No way! Who the fuck needs physics in the real world?! I'm just going to jump over the house now and drive my car up a fucking tree.

Steel said that last caption when he did one of those things that really annoys me. Instead of just saving a barge that was rushing into a whirlpool in the river where the island that turned into Tiny Metropolis was, he explains how he can only save it by pushing it to the side and vector sums and calculations and derivatives and geometric rules. Just push the fucking barge to safety and stop proving how Goddamned smart you are! We get you're smart! You invented the Steel armor! Now just save the fucking boat and don't tell us people don't think they need physics in the real world ruled by physics!

At the end of the story, Steel realizes that it takes millions of heroes to help out in a crisis of this magnitude and not just one super hero. OH EMM GEE! I feel the tears welling up right now!

Action Comics #7 Rating: Same Ranking for the same reasons as before! This comic is really good (well, the main story) but it's $4 and Batman is only $3 because it doesn't have a crappy backup story every month! So Action Comics can't climb past Batman on purely economical reasons!