Action Comics #8

Seeing as how Brainiac's ship was Superman's original Fortress of Solitude, I'm pretty sure I know who is going to win.

There's a lot going on at the beginning of this comic. Lex Luthor doesn't want Superman to save them because he believes the end of the world is now imminent and the only way to survive is to stay preserved in the bottle. The human head of the Brainiac creature is yelling at Lois through the glass to convince her that he is the reason Metropolis is being saved. Superman is just trying to beat the crap out of it. Lois and Jimmy Olsen are taking notes to turn this into a great story. And Glenmorgan is freaking out about the Little Man.

I knew there was something weird about that little man!

Oh! I just realized that the human part of the Collector of Worlds is that guy who loved Lois and wore the experimental Steel armor! The Metal-Zero crap! No wonder he was talking to Lois and trying to get her to believe it was his idea to save Metropolis! So he's been incorporated into the Brainiac Unit to create the Human Centuarpede look it has! Although now that I've figured it out, Superman has ripped the human part out of the rest of it. And the Collector has been infected with EMOTION by the human and the metal-zero! Now Superman can make it cry!

See? Even the Centuar part of the creature knows it's a Centipede!

Lois Lane's military ex finally decides he doesn't want to be Brainiac's puppet so he begins to fight it alongside Superman. After tackling it, he tells Superman to save them if he can! Perhaps being pulled off of the Centuarpede caused him to get a piece of his mind back.

Superman finally threatens to destroy Brainiac's collection and it stops Brainiac short since he's spent millennia saving these bits of destroyed worlds. Brainiac doesn't understand why Superman doesn't want salvation. It looks like Brainiac knows the Terminauts are coming because they have a Master List of 333 worlds to be destroyed. And Earth is next on the list. So it looks like Brainiac and the Terminauts are definitely separate entities.

Brainiac doesn't believe Superman will harm it and Superman probably won't. But he flicks his tiny baby rocket at Brainiac like it's a bullet so that it can interface with Brainiac and Superman can take control. Superman collapses after this but crawls into a patch of sunlight shining through the window of the Brainiac Satellite and begins to recuperate. And once his Baby Rocket interfaces with the Collector, Superman gives it a voice command to reinstate and magnify Metropolis. It is put back on Earth.

Once everything in Metropolis calms down a bit and people begin to forget (or at least go on pretending nothing cosmically catastrophic just happened to them. You know, the way we all do every single day but only certain people labeled schizophrenic seem to remember clearly), Clark Kent ends up talking with his boss at the Daily Star. He's proud of Clark for bringing Glenmorgan down although Kent is sorry that Glenmorgan lost his mind while in the bottle. Of course, Clark doesn't know anything about the Little Man that was the cause of it all! But Kent's boss decides Clark has bigger things in store for him than being a reporter on a tiny paper like the Daily Star.

Isn't a Star bigger than a Planet?! Let me check the internet. Hum de dum. It is!

Clark Kent has also been getting huge leads via a mystery man named "Icarus". Kent asks him if he's Superman, to which the other person says, "Superman? Just call me Icarus." It is, of course, Lex Luthor. I'm sure he was glad to help put Glenmorgan down so he could come up and fill the vacuum. I like that Clark asks his lead if he's Superman. Nice obfuscation, Kent!

John Corben (that's the name of the guy that was part of the Human Centuarpede and is Lois Lane's ex) is being held in sedation by the military. The Metal-Zero armor has fused to his central nervous system. He's alive but nobody knows how. Lane's father wants to make sure he gets nothing but the best of care. Who knows what horrible villain he'll come back as! Probably the next iteration of Brainiac.

Finally, Clark's landlady has a talk with Clark about his secret identity as Superman. She found his costume when the police were searching his place for Glenmorgan and she kept it safe so they wouldn't find it. Of course Clark wants to make sure his secret is safe with her.

This is just a good all around page.

Superman receives a Giant Key to Metropolis and tells the reporters a little bit about himself. It's actually stuff even he has just learned. He's from Krypton. He actually looks like a human. The t-shirt and jeans look is over now that he's recovered this formal and indestructible suit that's also from Krypton. And he explains that he's there to stand up for people that can't stand up for themselves. He's there to stay.

After that, he flies off to the Smallville Cemetery to speak with his parents. At first I thought they fixed the spelling of Cemetery over the entrance gate:

See? Fixed!

But then:

What?! I guess it must be a separate entrance! Or seperete? Zing!

And the story finishes up with Superman back on Brainiac's satellite and speaking with it in Kryptonese. So I guess Superman is taking care of all the little worlds now. And they'll all be transferred to his Fortress of Solitude in time.

The issue finishes up with a two page prologues. Pshaw! Stupid Grant Morrison! You can't finish with a prologue! You're such a stupid head! I mean, sure it's a prologue to a future storyline! Or maybe it's the prologue at the end of the book for the story that appeared in issues #5 and #6! Now that's a mind fuck!

Oh man! I forgot that I was going to explain the Nimrod the Hunter thing in Issue #6 when one of the Legionnaires mentioned that Nimrod the Hunter shot the Tesseract into Superman's brain! But now I don't have to because Morrison did it for me. Although I still haven't explained how Bugs Bunny turned the term 'Nimrod' into an insult! Because he was just using 'Nimrod' sarcastically when he was calling Elmer Fudd a Nimrod since Nimrod was supposedly a great hunter, Biblically speaking. As this Nimrod points out. And Fudd sucked so Bugs used it mockingly. But people just picked up on the idea that it was an insult. "What's up, Nimod?"

Man, that was a long caption! The Little Man is apparently hiring this hunter, Nimrod, to shoot that tesseract into Superman's head! So this prologue is for a story that's already happened. Nice. Although it's probably a prologue for more story than just the tesseract. That Little Man is just completely up to no good!

Action Comics #8 Rating: No change. This comic is just fantastic. But I'm not going to put it up over Batman as the #1 comic. Not on its own, anyway! This story arc is good enough to put Action Comics at the #1 spot. But only if Batman's story arc declines in quality! So it's up to Scott Snyder and Batman to put forth the effort to maintain the #1 spot. And who knows? Maybe Wonder Woman or Aquaman will sneak up on them both! Although I don't have any great hopes for DC Presents: Challengers of the Unknown!