Clark Kent has a fantastic life. He’s got a great job as a reporter for The Daily Planet. He’s married to the love of his life, fellow reporter Lois Lane. They have a great son, Jonathan, who is a good kid though he’s still sulking a little bit following the move to Metropolis. And of course he has his rewarding second life as Superman.
It’s perfect. Too perfect.
Superman can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong with his life. This leads to his examining the history of what he remembers and what is recorded in the databanks of The Fortress of Solitude. An apparition of the elusive figure called Mister Oz warns Superman away from further investigation but Superman is almost immediately distracted by more urgent concerns. Specifically, the destruction of his secondary citadel and the escape of the villain Blanque—a psychic with deadly telekinetic powers who sees murder as the ultimate art-form.
This is but the first in a series of escapes, which unite Superman’s greatest enemies under one banner. Blanque soon joins the intergalactic despot Mongul, the Kryptonite empowered robot Metallo, the artificial intelligence known as The Eradicator, and Hank Henshaw, the machine-manipulating madman known as The Cyborg Superman. Together they free Superman’s most powerful enemy, the would-be despot General Zod, who once sought to turn Krypton into a military state. Now he seeks to destroy the Earth and build a new Krypton on the remains of the human race.
Any one of them would prove a formidable threat to Superman alone. Together, they are the ultimate Superman Revenge Squad. Thankfully, Superman is not without allies of his own. But can even the assembled might of his cousin Supergirl, the energy-manipulating Superwoman, the brilliant technologist Steel, Krypto the Super Dog, and Lex Luthor protect the Earth from them?
The New World is made up of two separate stories. The first affirms the new Superman timeline in the wake of the Superman Reborn storyline which preceded this one. The second is a good, old-fashioned, beat-em-up that teams Superman and his allies against some of his greatest foes. Dan Jurgens manages to keep the battle fresh, however, with some sudden but inevitable treachery on the part of the villains as plots within plots are brought into action. Strangely enough, though this is the fourth volume of Action Comics in the Rebirth Era, a new reader could pick this volume up and not have to worry about not having read the first three volumes.
Ian Churchill and Patrick Zircher do a fantastic job bringing Jurgens’ words to life. Churchill’s artwork has matured in recent years, developing beyond what once seemed to be an imitation of Michael Turner. Now Churchill is a skilled artist with his own aesthetic and Zircher’s work here matches the quality of his earlier work on Action Comics.
This volume is rated 12+ for teen audiences and I believe that rating to be accurate of this book’s contents. There’s no violent content inappropriate for that age level, no harsh language or sexual content. It is every bit as wholesome as you would expect a Superman graphic novel to be.
Superman: Action Comics, vol. 4: The New World
by Dan Jurgens
Art by Ian Churchill and Patrick Zircher
ISBN: 9781401274405
DC Comics, 2017
Publisher Age Rating: 12+
