Action Comics #1,000,000 “Brave New Hero”

Creative Team: Writing by Mark Schultz. Art by Ron Lim and Jose Marzan Jr.

The Story: 20th century Superman flies to the 853th century so that Platinum of the Metal Men can tell him the whole story of Solaris in the intervening centuries. At the end, Solaris appears holographically to complain that the story was biased, and to invite Superman to come fight. Superman sets off to gather allies before the final confrontation.

My Two Cents: Finally we get the punch line to this series, and oh boy is it Morrisonian. But is it hubris or gloriously grand ambition? Grant Morrison just hijacked the whole DC universe. As told by him, the defining villain of the Superman saga is not Lex Luthor or Braniac. It’s not Darkseid or the Time Trapper or the Joker. It’s Solaris the Sun Tyrant, a giant Eye of Sauron, floating in space, whom nobody ever heard of before November 1998.

Morrison pulls the camera back, way back, so that we’re not looking at Superman in terms of individual issues or six part story arcs or even a single lifetime or a single millennium. This Superman is a cross-generational organism who has existed for eighty five millennia so far and shows no signs of stopping. Have you read my essays on Morrison’s “Here Comes Tomorrow” arc for New X-Men? Or even better, read the manifesto-cum-biography Supergods for yourself? Morrison sees humanity itself in this way: A single organism stretching out across generations and millennia. Quoting him again:


Along the way Morrison tries to tie in every major team in DC continuity, from the JLA and Teen Titans to the Legion of Super Heroes and even the Legion of Super Pets, the latter renamed the Legion of Executive Familiars to sound more majestic. Solaris is said to have founded two other teams: the overly violent Pancosmic Justice Jihad (equating Islam with intolerance and violence in a way that would not fly in 2018) and the Academy of Prescient Justice, a derided clairvoyant society seeking to stop crimes before they happen like the cops in Alfred Bester’s book “The Demolished Man” or Philip K. Dick’s “Minority Report.”



Now, Grant Morrison is said to be the overall plotter for the DC One Million event, but Mark Schultz is credited as the writer for this issue. What does that mean for an issue which consists almost entirely of a precis of Morrison’s grand 100,000 year plot?

In order to make this Grand Unified Solaris Theory work, Morrison will need buy-in from all the other DC writers to make Solaris an ongoing concern. I’m no DC buff, but I am not aware that such a thing happened, nor would it mean anything in the long run for reboot-prone DC. Still, I admire the confidence with which, for the moment, he is sticking the whole DC universe in his pocket and running away with it.

Morrison also commits himself to a late 21st century disappearance of our Superman, “Superman Prime,” to be replaced by Superman Secundus. Then hundreds of centuries from now, Superman Prime returns, filled with the knowledge of the universe and strange new powers, just like Arcturus Rann in Micronauts. he bequeaths these to his descendants, then sets up shop inside Earth’s sun, doing who knows what for many subsequent centuries. His imminent re-emergence is what drives the plot of this series, which has a final confrontation still ahead.



This story is not entirely without precedent, though. Its seed was planted by Jim Shooter, of all people. Back in Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #217 (1976), Superboy met one of his descendants, who apparently formed a continuous super-dynasty from the days of Clark Kent and Lois Lane on into the 30th century and beyond. This idea, like Morrison’s, does some injury to the usual Legion origin story that there were no super-heroes in the 30th century until the three original Legionnaires were inspired by the legend of Superboy to form a super-team.



DC One Million #4 “Death Star”

The Story: The big fight! Future-Superman punches over and over at the time barrier so that he and the future-JLA can return to the 853th and participate in the big showdown. He nearly depletes his solar batteries and dies of old age, but he succeeds and is restored to youthful vigor.



The spirit of the Martian Manhunter rises from the Martian sands to speak with the eternally dying Resurrection Man. He has been the caretaker of the hunk of green rock which future-Starman buried on Mars all those millennia ago, and which Vandal Savage has now delivered to Solaris to kill Superman Prime.



Solaris kills thousands of heroes, shooting death rays from his many spikes like a Beholder from Dungeons and Dragons. Everybody is in on the battle, from Comet the Super-Horse to an aged, bearded Fawcett Captain Marvel. But ultimately, the battle comes down to this: Green Lantern causes Solaris to go nova, then contains the nova explosion within a shield of Lantern power to protect the Earth and the heroes. Solaris shoots the Kryptonite at Superman Prime (our Superman, from the 20th century, but survived into the 853rd century), who is about to emerge from the sun. But oops! It’s not really kryptonite. The heroes figured out Savage's plan and switched the kryptonite for some other green glowing rock with a Green Lantern ring embedded in it. Superman Prime uses this ring to create a giant fist to crush Solaris forever.



Lzyxm Ltpxz, the Mzyxptlk Superman, uses interdimensional mojo to create an immortal version of Lois Lane to wed Superman Prime. They will live happily ever after on New Krypton, a fully populated planet which future Hourman creates, because he can apparently do that kind of thing. Resurrected Jor-El performs the wedding.

As a postlude, future-Vandal teleports to the past, expecting to find it empty of superheroes. Instead, he finds himself at ground zero in Montevideo, just before his own nuclear attack hits. Oopsie.

My Two Cents: This issue is mainly about Morrison’s lifelong love for Superman, the idealized man that even the other superheroes worship. He gets his “happy ever after” with everything lost restored. It’s kind of a fanboy story at heart, but if entertaining, who cares?

J’onn J’onzz introduces himself as “Maleca’andra… Planet Four.” This is a variant spelling on Malacandra, which is the planet Mars in C.S. Lewis’ 1938 planetary romance Out of the Silent Planet.

Green Lantern’s final attack against Solaris comes in the form of a Green Bart Simpson stand-in.



The future JLA has a really cool Atari-shaped logo in their table. I wonder whether Morrison designed it. Also, Batman has some amazing shoulder pads here, similar to the stylized look that Dave McKean gave him in Arkham Asylum.



Eternal Lois (that’s my name for her, not Morrison’s) looks a lot like Platinum. Is that on purpose, or was it just a “silver and gold” thing to complement the golden Superman Prime?  The next time we see Kal Kent, he too will have shaved hair, like Jor El here. This is the same hair style that the confused mutant teen Quentin Quire has in Morrison's New X-Men.



I got this far without mentioning the background on Vandal Savage. He first appeared as a caveman in Green Lantern #10 (by Alfred Bester) way back in 1943. There! Savage will recur in Morrison's more recent series Multiversity.