Among this short-lived series, I liked Superman: Action Comics: Superstars Vol. 2 better than the first. John Ridley and G. Willow Wilson are both authors whose recent work I’ve enjoyed, and while there’s some awkwardness that signals neither being Superman’s regular writer, I still found both anthology tales interesting.

Ridley’s story swings from being heavily involved in Superman continuity minutiae to being completely devoid of any modern sense, and those swings are wild. As someone who read the stories this is based on 20+ years ago, I appreciated the look back, and too I was surprised by some unexpected “Superstars” continuity. Wilson’s part is less connected; if, as a “topical” story, “Solitude” is a bit on the nose, then other anthology stories have certainly committed the same sin.

[Review contains spoilers]

Ridley’s “Force Majeure” involved Major Disaster returning to a life of crime after having been a hero, specifically in Joe Kelly’s 2001 Action Comics #783 when Superman gave Disaster a second chance and then into Kelly’s JLA run. Among others, Superman checks in with Scorch about Disaster’s change; I’m fuzzy on how much Scorch and Disaster actually interacted almost 25 years ago, but they were contemporaneous in Kelly’s JLA, so obviously Ridley’s got some particular issues in his pull pile. I enjoyed Kelly’s later Justice League Elite that involved some of these characters, so for me it was a fun old home week (no Manitou Raven or Dawn, unfortunately).

But clearly Ridley did some more Major Disaster research, because this story also includes Minor Disaster, created by Sam Humphries and only appearing in three issues of Humpries' Harley Quinn in 2018; Ridley even recasts a scene from the Harley book to fit this current narrative. Tying together a comic from 2001 with a comic from 2018 in 2025 goes a long way with me. Plus, I was very surprised to see Ridley pick up on the recent instance of also-reformed Atomic Skull going bad in Rainbow Rowell’s “Lois & Clark: In Love. At Work” backups to Gail Simone’s stories in Action Comics: Superstars Vol. 1. Rowell’s bit about the Atomic Skull was odd, but I didn’t imagine another Superstars author would resolve it — that the Superstars stories would have continuity between them, as it were.

“Force” is and isn’t a fair mystery; if you recall Major Disaster has a daughter, maybe you can guess he’s working to protect her, but it’s not as though Superman says, “What about your daughter?” to clue in the uninitiated. Equally there’s a surprise reveal halfway through that Bruno Mannheim(!) has been sapping power from the villains, which equally has no plot antecedent and also I’m not quite sure what Mannheim’s status is in this continuity, having not been seen for a while. Here, Ridley betrays perhaps less familiarity with the Superman here-and-now, pulling a reference that’s more obviously outdated.

Across “Force”’s three issues, Ridley has two good cliffhangers, Clark Kent getting legitimately mugged and then the arrival of some interesting-looking villains. Ridley’s story would have been better at two issues instead of three, however; the “Foreverers” turn out to be rather thin, one-note bad guys that Ridley spends nine pages on for a fight scene before getting to the better familial drama with Disaster and his daughter. Ridley also doesn’t always have the characters voices, as when Lois goofs about “mah’man” and when Clark talks to Atomic Skull about going “back on the hustle.” Artist Inaki Miranda is sometimes great, as with Minor Disaster Penny, and then sometimes Superman is drawn loosely and without much detail.

Ridley and Wilson’s stories both have points to make. With Ridley, Mannheim and the Foreverers represent a certain “money makes right” aesthetic; the supposed moral dilemma is whether the lives of criminals should be worth as much as lawful citizens, though there’s no suspense as to whether Superman’s going to agree. Wilson’s story goes at a similar argument from an environmental perspective, as the villain Kilg%re invites Superman to join him in taking advantage of climate change; Kilg%re calls saving the melting polar ice caps a “doomed mission” that Superman should be profiting from instead of trying to prevent. Here again, of course, Superman declines.

It’s interesting to see Wilson writing on environmental topics with Superman, given that her current Poison Ivy is quite steeped in environmentalism (I wouldn’t have minded an Ivy cameo, really). This is a fine one-off Superman story, set when Clark and Lois are married and Perry White runs the Daily Planet, and I thought Wilson did especially well with bits of Clark “being Clark” (Lois sneaking up on him at his desk, Clark getting airsick in a plane) when we all know there’s a Man of Steel underneath. It is only Wilson’s choice of Kilg%re that’s unusual; when Superman says, “Kilg%re! I should have guessed it was you,” I could not imagine at all why that should be. I did particularly like Gavin Guidry’s art here, with shades of Tom Grummett (who provides a variant cover!) and John Timms.

Arguably John Ridley’s and G. Willow Wilson’s stories are more straightforward and less experimental in Superman: Action Comics: Superstars Vol. 2 than Jason Aaron’s and Gail Simone’s in the first volume. Maybe that’s lesser in some way, but for me, the hero-villain, present-tense, and, in Ridley’s case, continuity-heavy worked better than the other. “Superstars” didn’t last long and didn’t make much of a splash, I don’t think, but at least it ended on an up note.

[Includes original and variant covers, variant cover gallery]