The stories collected in Superman: Action Comics: Superstars Vol. 1 were published specifically just before the Superman: House of Brainiac crossover and then again just before the “Phantoms” weekly storyline. Which is to say, I feel like something of a grump not gushing over what I understand to be well received stories by Jason Aaron and Gail Simone, but it’s hard to see them as much more than placeholders given some gaps in Action’s schedule between creative teams.

I was interested, therefore, but not particularly moved. Of the two, Aaron’s appealed to me more, a Bizarro story set in the here and now with disaster movie vibes, though I ultimately thought Aaron was approaching something strong that he never quite reached (surprising, given his superlative Absolute Superman). Simone and artist Eddy Barrows do a fine homage to the 1970s work of Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams, though that comes too with some of that era’s excesses, and it went on a little longer than my interest held.

Further, I’m surprised the collections editors didn’t separate Simone’s story and the backups from the same issues by Rainbow Rowell into two separate, independent sections, but rather left them interspersed. You can flip back and forth in your own book, of course, but it’s an atypical miss, one that I’m surprised to see in a volume DC would like to pitch, at least, as a Superman anthology book.

[Review contains spoilers]

Again, Aaron’s Bizarro story holds a lot of promise, from the inspired idea that Bizarro wouldn’t share Superman’s vulnerability to magic to the horrific sequence showing the self-destructive actions of a Bizarro-ified Metropolis. In the frightening vein of DCeased, it would be interesting to see this premise taken to its full potential — if a Bizarro World involves patients operating on doctors and firefighters burning down structures, how does that civilization function a few years later? What would be the plight of regular people trapped there?

But explicating that clearly isn’t Aaron’s goal. Moreover, though the entire story is predicated on Bizarro having lost his wife, family, and all of the latest Bizarro world in one multiversal crisis or another, we start after that and end with Bizarro in a mad rage defeated by Superman. Bizarro’s soft, confused heart is the emotional center of the story, but it feels as though Aaron loses that as the story goes on.

Indeed in the end Superman seems more intent on saving the newly sane Joker than he does Bizarro. Though I did find fascinating artist John Timms’s choices in altering the appearance of the “good” Joker, we’ve seen the the Bizarro/Joker/“going sane” connections in Superman: Emperor Joker and JLA: Rock of Ages, among other places. Those are all comics around 25 years old, so I grant this might all feel fresher for fresher readers, but there was little of the resolution that felt new or went other than how I was expecting.

I am not well versed enough to catch every reference in Simone’s story, though I know there’s a lot of them, from O’Neil and Adams' Superman vs. Muhammad Ali on out. It reminded me too, favorably, of John Byrne and Curt Swan’s Superman: The Earth Stealers (though that may speak to that story’s similarity to the former). Like Earth Stealers, there’s a big role for Lois and Jimmy here, giving the story a classic feel. Simone delivers some iconic moments — Superman and Lois’s romantic interlude and the moment the “united world” comes together both had me imagining John Williams’s iconic themes.

But the hodgepodge of it all grated a little, the 1970s fashion atop the Fleischer S-shield and businessman Lex Luthor felt a bit all over the place, versus something just set specifically during the WGBS era. (I wonder if editorial did not trust that readers would understand the story took place outside continuity without the altered S-shield.)

Simone’s jokes are great as always (“In the pelvic region, Earthman”), but narration fills panel after panel — era-authentic, but still a lot. Nor was I quite sure what happens to the Kandorians in the end — are they free? Are they regular size? And though Eddy Barrows does a good Adams impression, there’s a few odd pages where reading order of the panels isn’t intuitive or the perspective is weird — see Lois meeting the Daxamite, where at one point we’re looking at Lois while also looking through her eyes into the jail cell, forward and backward flattened into one image.

Rainbow Rowell’s romcom “Lois & Clark: In Love. At Work” noodles with that age-old question whether it’s right or fair for Clark Kent to write stories about, even get “quotes” from, Superman. It’s cute, done fine, and the “Lana” joke is hilarious, but there’s too much the story has to ignore to make it work — that Lois is wondering what Perry would do, when indeed there was a period where Perry knew Clark was Superman and his example can be followed; that Lois is just as culpable as Clark of having “interviewed” Superman on occasion; that surely familial journalists have worked together before and have handled potential conflicts with HR contracts or etc. There’s also a “You would never would have won a Pulitzer [if not for me]” gag at the end that’s supposed to be a joke, but was maybe close enough to the truth to be problematic?

All of which is to say, I can see how the stories in Superman: Action Comics: Superstars Vol. 1 might each appeal to someone, but I’m having a hard time separating “anthology” from “index stories to fill pages.” The second and final Superstars is coming in November; I’ll read it, of course, for completeness, but I’m looking forward to Mark Waid’s Superman: Action Comics: Phantoms far more than I’m looking forward to that.¹

[Includes original and variant covers, cover sketches]