7. Action Comics, Volume 1: Superman And The Men Of Steel
Writer: Grant Morrison Artists: Rags Morales, Andy Kubert
Action Comics is the longest running monthly comic in the world and in 2011, as part of their New 52 line-wide reboot, DC renumbered the series for the first time since 1938, bringing all of the comics back to #1. Following this decision, the series was relaunched with writer Grant Morrison and artist Rags Morales telling the story of a young hero called Clark, before the world knew him as Superman. DC's New 52 timeline is confusing as they launched 3 Superman titles at once without clearly marking when the stories took place. Initially Justice League took place 5 years in the past while Action Comics took place even earlier, before Clark adopted the New 52 Superman armour and developed his powers to their full potential. The highlights of this book include seeing Superman become once more a symbol of justice and hope for the working man, standing up to exploitative businessmen while wearing jeans and a home-made Superman t-shirt, while the sequence on Krypton is also fantastic as we see Superman's parents prepare to send him off of their dying planet. Morrison also plays a brilliant visual joke in this book, riffing on the famous Superman line - "faster than a speed bullet, more powerful than a locomotive" - by combining the two and having Lex Luthor aim a bullet train at Superman. Luthor however isn't the main villain in this book - the classic Superman adversary, Brainiac takes that role as he attempts to take Metropolis and add it to his collection of cities in jars, a fate that befell Krypton's city Kandor.
Rags Morales' art felt a bit rushed in some of the issues and he made Clark look a bit Harry Potter-ish in some panels, but otherwise this is a solid start to Morrison's Superman run which only got better after this somewhat patchy start. Morrison understands the character perfectly and the series is well worth reading especially as Volume 2 has just been published.