Review: Steelworks trade paperback (DC Comics)

I have a lot of affection for the Steel John Henry Irons character, who — looking back on it — is probably among the first characters that I was there for their debut, through to the present day. I’m pleased to see the character still getting spotlight and so from the start that makes actor Michael Dorn’s Steelworks miniseries auspicious. Equally it’s a pleasure that Dorn’s story pulls from the breadth of Steel’s past, from the Louise Simonson/Jon Bogdanove days on through to the present.

Unfortunately, Steelworks' story doesn’t much distinguish itself. Dorn hardly treads new ground nor makes a strong case for why the problem du jour is a job for Steel and not just Superman. Too, I’m not sure to what extent the whole team has considered the general ideas of the book and how they relate to the story’s resolution. And the relative newness of writers Dorn and Dorado Quick feels apparent in the comic’s sometimes-awkward construction.

Fortunately, Steel’s been around so long at this point that I’m unconcerned one boilerplate miniseries will tank the character, and indeed we see signs Steel’s about to appear elsewhere in the DCU. But if a miniseries like this hurts the chances we’ll see a Steel by Christopher Priest collection one of these decades, that’s all the more tragic.

[Review contains spoilers]

To give a sense of the push and pull here, Steelworks starts off with Quick’s Action Comics backup stories, and specifically Steel fighting rogue cyborg Amalgam. That’s an antagonist from back in Bogdanove and Simonson’s Steel series, reimagined to be fighting Steel for the first time, which is great — I’m happy to see Quick dusting off and updating those old characters. But then Dorn’s book makes reference to that same old issue of Steel where John Henry fought Amalgam and a kid named Spiral was killed in the process. It’s great everyone’s going back to the source material, though better if they were all using it the same way, and I’m not sure an uninitiated reader could make heads or tails of it.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

Like most of DC’s characters, Steel’s origins vary based on who’s writing him. Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Action Comics Vol. 1 just referenced John Henry’s role in Metallo’s creation a la Grant Morrison’s New 52 Action Comics introduction of Steel, incompatible with the original “Amertek” origins that form the basis of Steelworks. Of these, of course, I’m partial to John Henry having refused to make weapons and then falling afoul of Doomsday, so I’m pleased that’s the route Dorn takes.

There’s also a lot of this book that involves Lana Lang-as-Superwoman, and even a mention of Lex Luthor’s sister Lena as a tech-infused Ultrawoman from that series. On one hand, I rather adore the continuity here, Steelworks essentially picking up from the last place John Henry was featured (there’s even an Atomic Skull cameo in the end!). On the other hand, it feels like Dorn was given a stack of Steel-related comics to read before writing this book without necessarily having the connective tissue (or lack thereof) between the books explained to him, how or what anyone now knows of Lana’s powers and so on. That’s, in a way, kind of lovely, but also makes for a book that’s a weird stew of incongruous ideas.

Again, awkwardness unfortunately abounds, what feels like the general newness of the creative team. Quick’s John Henry lectures to a boardroom with panels upon panels of dialogue, and art by Yasmin Flores Montanez has characters variably moving incongruently around the room but then also looking past each other when they talk. I enjoy main series artist Sami Basri very much, but in a couple fight scenes the characters' actions are inscrutable, there’s a few large panels of characters just standing around, and a truly ill-considered layout meant to emulate an elevator going upward (Will Eisner would have notes!). All of that might be on Basri, but having seen his work before, I’m inclined to wonder whether Dorn delivered sufficiently in the script.

At the center of the book, Dorn has an interesting idea. Steel is a superhero, but having received from Superman an alien power source capable of revolutionizing energy consumption, he looks to create a future where people won’t need superheroes to save them. It’s a needle John Henry has to thread carefully, essentially asking Superman and the new Super-family to actively contribute to their own obsolescence and to some extent grant that despite their good deeds, they’re not good for humanity. There is some pushback, but I think Dorn rightly leverages John Henry’s depiction as a wise and level head in the Super-family to ultimately get their buy-in.

Of course it wouldn’t be superhero comics without the superheroes, so Dorn has to tank it. He does so through the conceit of the “Supers” ending up allergic to the power source; they’d be both hurt and hurt others with exposure, so John Henry has Superman throw it into the sun. That's as opposed to exiling themselves, a potential solution the story of course can't approach. It’s an irony that the story doesn’t suggest Dorn wholly grasps — the point is to free humanity of the superheroes' influence, but when the power source would actively create that separation, John Henry has it destroyed.

Extending the metaphor further, John Henry — the only African American and non-powered person among the Supers — has a plan to liberate his people from their often patriarchal dependence on the Supers, but then abandons it as soon as it inconveniences those in power. That’s the wrong lesson, suggesting to me the book doesn’t have a good grasp on the implications of its own story.

I’m a sucker, you know, for books that weave all in and out of one another, so the triptych of Action Comics Vol. 1, Joshua Williamson’s Superman Vol. 1, and Michael Dorn’s Steelworks is a thrill in that way too; all three books, as we say elsewhere on this site, contain spoilers for one another. Of the three, however, only Superman has really impressed, with a confident and modern direction for the Man of Steel. I’m always pleased to see Steel headlining a comic, but Steelworks struggles clearly.

[Includes original and variant covers, including by Jon Bogdanove. Grok V. Ken Marion’s 1990s-characters variant, too!]

Rating 2.0