THIS WEEK: Superman Superstars kicks off as Jason Aaron and John Timms begin a new Bizarro-centric storyline in Action Comics!
Note: the review below contains spoilers. If you want a quick, spoiler-free buy/pass recommendation on the comics in question, check out the bottom of the article for our final verdict.
Action Comics #1061
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: John Timms
Colorist: Rex Lokus
Letterer: Dave Sharpe
Cover Artist: John Timms
This week DC Comics kicks off the “Superman Superstars” initiative in the pages of Action Comics. The initiative will see four different all-star creative teams take the reins for three-issue runs on Superman’s debut series over the course of 2024. Kicking things off is the team of writer Jason Aaron and artist John Timms, with “I, Bizarro,” a three-issue tale featuring Superman’s imperfect duplicate.
Part of what makes a Bizarro story unique is deciphering what the character’s backwards ‘Bizarro Speak’ means. Depending on who’s writing the story, that can either be really fun or really frustrating. Thankfully, Jason Aaron’s handling of the task of writing Bizarro’s dialogue falls into the ‘really fun’ category. Writing Bizarro Speak is hard, and writing any volume of Bizarro Speak that actually makes any sort of sense? Just forget about it. So it’s really impressive that Aaron writes Bizarro’s dialogue in a way that is consistently easy to follow and also has understandable meaning. He does eventually find a way to have Bizarro speak semi-normally for the exposition dump in the latter half of the issue, and even that unexpectedly becomes crucial to the plot and the issue’s cliffhanger.
Another pleasantly unexpected aspect of this story is the presence of magic. Bizarro and magic are two things that have never gone with each other, but here Aaron brings the two together in a way that feels organic and exciting. Learning that the name of the touchpoint for all magic in the DCU is a place called Zerox is also pretty entertaining – what better place for a copy of Superman to go? Part of me wouldn’t be surprised if Aaron learned about Zerox, thought of Bizarro, and went from there (which is not a bad thing).
Bizarro has frequently in the past been a character steeped in pathos, with the character played sometimes as a rejected monster looking for acceptance somewhere, and other times as a deteriorating clone who just wants to be as good as his source material. Here Aaron uses recent continuity and the DCU’s semi-regular multiversal shenanigans to give the character a truly tragic motivation, one that makes the issue’s cliffhanger feel almost inevitable. It’s a smart approach to the character, executed well.
Artist John Timms is no stranger to the man of steel, having illustrated the lion’s-share of the Jon Kent-starring Superman: Son of Kal-El series. Magic isn’t new to him, either, as he drew much of the 2019 Young Justice storyline that heavily featured Amethyst and Gemworld, both of which are name-dropped here. Timms’s artwork provides a sort of visual bridge between the two worlds, and he and colorist Rex Lokus deliver outstanding work on this issue. The confrontation between Superman and Bizarro is epic, and Timms and Lokus bring that scale to life throughout, whether it’s on Earth or in the far reaches of space. The action is kinetic, and the dialogue-heavy sequences are presented in a visually interesting manner that never slows down the pacing of the issue. If you weren’t sure John Timms was a superstar coming into this issue, it just might change your mind.
Action Comics #1061 is a fantastic start to the “I, Bizarro” storyline. Jason Aaron and John Timms come together to kick off a character-defining arc for Superman’s perfect imperfect duplicate that’s both highly emotional and extremely fun. The cliffhanger that closes the issue is a great hook for the rest of the arc, and it’ll be exciting to see what else this team – and the rest of the Superman Superstars – have in store for Action this year.
Final Verdict: BUY.
Round-Up
- Damian Wayne’s high school adventure continues in Batman and Robin #5. Joshua Williamson is joined by his Future State: Gotham collaborator Nikola Čižmešija for this issue, which finds Bruce Wayne helping out at a pancake breakfast, the dynamic duo investigating the high school principal, and Damian taking on a new extra-curricular activity. This book is great.
- Green Lantern #7 finally addresses why Earth – and all of space sector 2814 – has been quarantined by the GL Corps new masters, the United Planets. Jeremy Adams and guest artist Amancay Nahuelpan present the flashback tale, which also reveals the fate of Kilowog. Necessary backstory, if a little predictable. Looking forward to (hopefully) getting back to Hal’s present-day status quo next issue.
- Tom Taylor & Lucas Meyer‘s Titans: Beast World #4 is an escalation, and a tragic one on many levels. Still, after two issues of the heroes largely trying to contain Garro without actually doing anything to stop him, I suppose it was nice to see someone do something? Even if what they did was pretty terrible. Alas, poor Chunk.
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