Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Superman: Action Comics Vol. 3: Revenge of the Demon is perfectly passable Superman. If the goal of Action is as I perceive it to be — maybe offer the promised “action” of the title and otherwise don’t get in the Superman title’s way — Johnson’s Action succeeds handily. But I do perceive something lesser to Action, especially as Joshua Williamson’s Superman on the other side gears right up to lead into the House of Brainiac crossover and from there to Absolute Power.

Reading these Action issues month to month, I imagine the surprise villain was actually quite a surprise, and good for Johnson for sticking with it; an issue dropped in here out of sequence, however, telegraphs that surprise for trade readers, leaving Superman to bumble around for three issues when the audience’s already got the trick. Also, my own fault, I was hoping for someone else; also, there’s surely an audience for Johnson’s “Super-Twins,” but I’m not near so enamored of them as the narrative hopes; also, even wrapping up in an annual, it sure seems like Johnson had to dump some details to bring this one to its conclusion.

It’s also troubling that the villain here is so steeped in another character’s mythology that this is Superman’s problem only incidentally. You fight who attacks your city, of course, but I couldn’t help feel a pall over this whole thing, that the culmination of Johnson’s Dawn of DC year on Action Comics is ultimately rooted in another franchise with bigger, cooler problems. Williamson’s Superman is bright and bubbly, interesting and surprising; Johnson’s Action is very good but increasingly not equal to its counterpart.

[Review contains spoilers]

I’m pleased to see the Batman/Superman: Authority special collected here, if only because it was omitted from smaller versions of Johnson’s previous Action Comics “Warworld” volumes but included in the omnibus and such. I wonder how “knowing” that omission was, given that it obviously fits in this volume (despite no explanation given for the time shift between stories); the threat of the mulitiversal al Ghuls from the Authority special manifests in the anti-alien campaign of Norah Stone, secretly the alt-Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul’s daughter Sister Shadow.

The distance between early 2022’s Authority special and mid/late-2023’s Action Comics issues was surely enough for Sister Shadow not to be top of mind — not to mention that the funny business around Grant Morrison’s version of Superman and the Authority coming and going was enough to make this reader think we probably wouldn’t ever see that story followed up on. In that way I imagine Sister Shadow’s revelation was quite engaging and Clark stumbling around saying, “I know [that] I know her from somewhere” deepened the mystery, though again with the Authority special at the front of this book, that effect dissipates. Instead, we know who Norah Stone is immediately, and that Clark can’t remember her makes me miss the days of super-recollection a la Kurt Busiek’s Camelot Falls.

Also, Triangle Title-ers, follow me here: Action introduced a goth-looking woman who sets up her cult inside an abandoned Metropolis cathedral and the volume where all is revealed is called “Revenge of the Demon.” Right, ever since I read Action Comics Vol. 1: Rise of Metallo last summer, I’ve been hoping to Norah Stone would turn out to be Blaze. No one to blame for my disappointment but me, but Superman fighting essentially a multiversal Batman analogue is less exciting by comparison.

Johnson, to be sure, writes good Superman. The sentiment that bookends the main story, that Superman regularly eats lunch with an ex-con he once put away, is lovely, and — insofar as this is possible — Johnson did a nice job wrapping up the “Metropolis is prejudiced against aliens” storyline. The whole early sequence where the Daily Planet lands a rush interview with Norah is fun journalism-in-comics. Johnson and artist Rafa Sandoval also present a startlingly violent fight right after, where Superman proclaims to be hit so hard he can feel his “organs shuddering, stopping, [and] starting again.” There’s plenty excellence of this caliber that keeps the book going.

But the plot turns in the end on Norah’s attempt to corrupt one of the Warworld orphans, Ortho-Ra, and I didn’t find myself as engaged as I think the book wants. Superman calls Ortho his “daughter,” and though no small amount has been made of that, in the past 10 or so issues I’m not sure I’ve really seen Clark interacting with the kids so much as they’ve been with Bibbo or other members of the Super-family to make this emotionally concrete.

Not unlike Wally West’s children at times, the kids seem prone to mess up — when the plot needs someone irrationally angry or easy to corrupt, etc. — in a way that feels narratively lazy. Jon Kent, in his youth, was written as more well-rounded, but the Super-Twins haven’t been more than one note for me yet, and I’m skeptical they’ll stick around beyond Johnson.

As well, Revenge loses a step as it reaches its finale. Equally well done is Superman’s team-up with John Constantine, but that issue ends with Superman thinking he hears Otho and picking up a magic hourglass even though Constantine tells him not to, and then finding himself condemned to Hell. Johnson simply forgets Constantine at point, and if the hourglass is malevolent and not just a random, errant magical artifact, we don’t know it.

That all connects Superman to Etrigan the Demon and the new Bloodwynd, who are being abused by Norah in ways never quite clear to me. Bloodwynd’s presence here ought also be a headline for readers of a certain era, but we get no scene of Superman particularly recognizing or not recognizing him; disappointingly, it could as easily be any other supernatural hero.

At the same time as this volume, we’re getting the shocking return of certain characters over in Superman who are assuredly going to factor in to upcoming events. In contrast, Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Superman: Action Comics Vol. 3: Revenge of the Demon is self-contained — sometimes good, but here in a way that suggests “inconsequential,” and this in what might be Johnson’s final in-title Superman work. It was rumored Johnson might return to Action, though I think those rumors were conflated with his “House of El” sequel, but frankly I’d be more interested to see some of this carry over to Johnson’s Batman and Robin.

An attack by Batman and Talia’s child from the Dark Multiverse? What we really have here is a Batman story for which Batman’s too busy and so Superman takes over, and I hardly think that’s the best use of the Man of Steel.

[Includes original and variant covers]