Superman: Action Comics, Vol. 2: To Hell and Back

Action Comics (2016)

by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, Magdalene Visaggio, Gene Luen Yang

The Golden Age of Metropolis has begun for the Super-Family and Steelworks! However, when a nightmare looms over the city of dreams, which heroes will be left to defend it?

It’s a brand-new golden age for Metropolis. The City of Tomorrow is being defended by the Super-Family in the sky with Steelworks on the ground, hard at work on rebuilding. However, terrorist leader Norah Stone has other ideas. She dreams of a city without Kryptonians! After draining Superman’s strength, she unleashes an imposter Man of Steel tyrant on the city of Metropolis. Alongside Doomsday, the new ruler of hell, the city of dreams is about to become a nightmare.

Collects stories from Action Comics #1057-1059, Action Comics Presents Doomsday Special #1 and Knight Terrrors: Action Comics #1-2

Genres: Dc Comics, Comics, Superman, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book, Superheroes

152 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2024

About the author

Phillip Kennedy Johnson earned a Master of Music degree from the University of North Texas, where he served as Teaching Fellow for the Department of Jazz Studies, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Eastern Kentucky University. SFC Johnson has performed with the Lexington Philharmonic, Dallas Opera, Washington Symphonic Brass, and the Moscow Ballet, and was a member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra from 2004 to 2005. SFC Johnson remains active as a composer, arranger, teacher, and clinician, and also enjoys a second career as a writer of comics and graphic novels. His work has been published by DC Comics, Marvel Comics, BOOM! Studios, and more.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining for the most part with decent art but I wasn’t completely sold on some of the story elements.

A lot of people are complaining about Action Comics not being solely focused on Superman but, personally, I like it spending time on the other characters in the ‘Super-Family’. Clark has his own book, after all; he can afford to share the spotlight in Action.

3.4 stars.

[Khurram · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a very disappointing book. The best thing about this book is the front cover and the last two issues in the book. Each issue/chapter concentrates on a different member of the super family.

Doomsday special #1. Supergirl has been having dreams about Doomsday. Now, with the help of Martian Manhunter, she tries to confront her dreams but dragged into a nightmare. Trapped in hell?

Action Comics #1057. Kenan. How does he join the Super family, and why did he come to America? Conner Kent's teenage rebellion.

Action Comics #1058. The Super Twins are taken to their first earth parade. What can go wrong?

Action Comics #1059. Jon Kent is babysitting and trying to save his relationship with Jay as both of them have busy schedules.

Knight Terrors Action Comics #1 & 2. These are the best of the book. They could not save the book for me as I already read Knight Terrors. The Super Twins nightmare comes true.

[Molly™☺ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Action Comics suffers from the lack of flowing stories and cohesion, made even more apparent when pasted one after the other in a TPB. To echo the reviews that came before: 'who is this for?'. There's no satisfying arc or conclusion to any one of the issues, and whilst Action Comics has the leniency to focus on members outside of Superman himself, the distinct absence of the titular character is sorely felt. A horribly presented mess that serves to sink Superman's brand and turn away newcomers who decided to hop on during Dawn of DC.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Who are these comics even for? I can't see how churning out such mediocre and disjointed product helps DC in the long run.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars.
This Volume is very much a transitional one. We get the Knight Terrors tie-in, the Doomsday specials, and a few issues of Action Comics that setup other characters:
- Bloodwynd, the Superman of Hell (we need more from this character for sure!)
- Super-Man, now living in Metropolis instead of China
- The Super-Twins
- Conner Kent, dealing with an identity crisis... will he ever stop being SuperBOY?
- Jon, who is dealing with being away from Jay, as he now runs a lot at Steelworks
No sign of Clark...

Looking forward to the next Crossover and see how the Super-Fam handles the return of Brainiac.
Recommend.

[Andrew Olsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is good but kind of misleading as there is no main storyline from Action Comics included here. In this one you get the Doomsday Special, all the backup stories from issues #1057-1059 stories from the annual and the Knight Terrors issues #1-2. So we have one more volume that should conclude Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s run.

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just as this new Action Comics run gets going, it's derailed by an extraordinary assortment of one-shots of wildly varying quality. None are outright bad, but none really seem to matter? And none actually star Superman, just the (very) extended super-family.

I suppose the intro piece featuring Supergirl and Martian Manhunter battling Doomsday in Hell felt important, if only in laying the groundwork for a future event. The Knight Terrors tie-in featured stronger artwork than storytelling. The middle stuff was just like...who asked for this?

[Mariano · Rating 2 out of 5]

Este TPB podría haber sido un email. Puros especiales y backups intrascendentes. Lo mejor son los dos tie-ins de Knight Terrors, pero ni de cerca justifica comprar esto.

[Ada · Rating 1 out of 5]

***woensdag 20 november 2024***
⭐1 - I actually hated it

I am surprised by just how much I disliked this. With every story I actually hated it a bit more (see status updates).
This is not beginner friendly. At all. Some of the stories were better than others but only one left me wanting for more (the last one), and even then I had zero idea who everyone was.

I do wonder now just how much artistic freedom the creators actually have. Because some things were dumbed down, others just felt out of place and some choices were... questionable. As someone who actually enjoy short stories I am having trouble seeing why these just feel so off. These are not good short stories. It doesn't matter that it is a comic. Sometimes just 4 panels can tell a whole story. But even the Slice-of-Life stories felt inconsistent.

***Why?***
I am really not a Superman person. Ever since a kid I thought he was boring. The times I enjoyed him the most was when he was working with other people or the TV adaptations. The things I know are surface level.

Then I saw these two pages on a social media app:

And just like that I am interested in Superman. Now I have to find out where to start with this run... Which is the most annoying part of reading trying to American Superhero comics.

[Alex Sarll]

For some reason I thought this followed on from the Superstars volume with the lovely story where Planet editor Lois takes Clark off tbe Superman beat. It does not, being more a collection of bridging material following up other comics I've not read and trailing still more I've no intention of reading. Mostly it concentrates on Superman's supporting cast, some of whom I recognise (Bibbo!), others not so much: apparently he brought back from Warworld some twins who are basically Ben and Alicia's adopted kids from FF except less entertaining? There's now a Batman of China as well as a Superman, which I guess is fair enough since their Superman has moved to America? Oh, and of all the characters I wasn't expecting to see revived – Bloodwynd! I guess it's nice that Dan Watters has now written both the classic Vertigo versions of the Devil, but mainly this is a reminder of how impenetrable DC has become.

[Raul Reyes · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
All the issues (apart from the knight terrors stuff) were really good, especially the doomsday special, but not sure I like the direction they’re taking the new arc, it had a really strong start but after the last issue I bumped the rating from 4 to 3.5.

Now talking about knight terrors specifically, I have no idea why they decided to include it on this volume, considering they sacrificed the action comics arc not having an ending on this volume and make people reading this on trades read the house of brainiac stuff first before reading the conclusion to the arc. The power girl stuff was fine, it had a clear message but I just don’t care about power girl, and then the superman family sorry was really pointless, since the nightmare the kids have doesn’t make sense, (I don’t think the would distrust superboy) and the art made following the story hard at times.

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blue Earth finally gets a face (and leader) in this collection...

They're one step closer to taking out the Kryptonians in Metropolis. Clark scores a face to face interview with the leader of Blue Earth and she makes it clear that they're an 'Earth for Earthers' organization. We also have the Knight Terrors tie-ins included. With such a big family, they managed to share the focus among such a large group.

The anthology nature of this series is ...odd. It feels like they are putting TOO much effort into adding variety when they need to give more time to their main story.
---------------
Bonus: Superman...Iron Knight? Of course, Steelworks made armor for him.
Bonus Bonus: How did that 'Clark Kent is Superman' mindbomb resolve itself?

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty much a spare parts volume.

In some ways, it better that the previous PKJ volume, because it focused on individual members of the Superman family, rather than trying to jam them all together constantly. But the stories are really varied. There's a very good Superman of China story that finally explains his presence (and makes me want to read his original stories) and interesting identity crisis for Conner. But there's also a horrible Super-kids story and mediocre Supergirl and Jon Kent stories.

Oh, and we get the Night Terrors crossover, and like all of them, it's horrible too. Imaginary scary dreams that don't mean anything. Great.

A pretty skippable volume.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bit of an anthology collection - the back-ups from some issues, the Doomsday Special that leads into the conclusion of the run by reintroducing Bloodwynd of all people, and some Knight Terrors stuff, probably just to fill out the space.

Nothing to write home about, and nothing overly essential to the rest of the storyline, but these are okay. More of the SuperFamily is always a nice treat, and the shifting focus ensures us that DC haven't forgotten about anyone, from Kenan Kong to the new Super Twins.

Still, kinda disjointed. An odd little collection.

[Dr. T Loves Books · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection of hell-related short stories are almost entirely about the Super-Family members who are NOT Superman. And they all take place as part of some other overarching arcs. I found it unsatisfying. The arcs these come from sound interesting, but these slivers aren't very satisfying. There are characters with little or no background provided, so why I should care about their situation is lacking. It's basically a collection of action set pieces with no character development.

This feels like a one-off Halloween episode sort of book.

[Trevor · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not that stories here are even that BAD. But this can't help but feel like a filler volume, with a series of stand-alone stories about the Super-Family that just serve to tease future events. And I'm not a big fan of when these volumes also include tie-in stories to larger events, like the Night Terrors issues here, since it always feel like you're just getting a small piece of a bigger puzzle and missing some context.

[Chad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Clearly, this is where the left over crap from the Superman family goes to die. It's a bunch of terrible backup stories, none of which Superman is even in. In one of them Conner Kent is going through something and dyes a blue streak in his hair. That should definitely help maintain your secret identity. The last 2 issues are the Knight Terrors 2 parter, again Superman isn't in it and it's very pointless.

[Joseph · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried to give a half star but they wouldn’t let me. This 1 is rotten, worst Superman book ever. Just when you think it can’t get worse, it will. Main character hardly in the book despite being on the cover with his name on it. Can’t say enough bad things about this 1. Avoid like plague.

[Belfry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual rating: 4.5 stars

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Does anything of substance actually happen in this collection? Does Superman even appear in his own book anymore?

[Gyan Chansrichawla · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s no shortage of good stories in this book… but what even is this collection?

[Will Cooper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, it was just tiny stories of the Super-family and most of them were kinda boring.

[Néstor Vargas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting Doomsday story, but honestly I did not care much about all these stories. I have not been a huge fan of Otho and Osul so far.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first two storylines in hell were absolutely incredible! The other storylines were fun but nothing special. Overall, they average out to a 4 for the book.

[Nathaniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun enough.

[Elessar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un tome un peu décousu. Quelques histoires sympathiques ceci-dit mais un manque de suivi.

[Mateusz Nowowiejski · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 - 10.2025

[Daniel Butcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

A transition collection not focused on Superman Supes introducing an event and other titles.

[Kurt Lorenz]

Knight Terrors, ☆☆☆☆
Doomsday Special, ☆☆☆☆

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Y'know, I love the idea of Superman having a family of S-inspired characters working around him, but Philip Kennedy Johnson's work to build that group hasn't really clicked for me, because the other family members are always on the fringe and we know nothing about them. Who the hell in Kenan Kong I keep asking? So on one level, this book goes a long way to addressing the value of the family members by giving most of them some spotlight. On the other hand, the stories are so uniformly forgettable that I'm regretting getting my wish.

As a supporting character, Connor Kent is always a blast. As a lead, lately, all we get is "woe is me, I won't grow up to be Superman" pouting. The tale of the kids with Bibbo didn't come close to landing - was it trying to be funny? whimsical? I don't know. Mediocre artwork certainly handicapped the writer's ability to deliver.

On the good side, I finally know something about Kenan Kong. His spotlight was the most enjoyable chapter. By far, although that's more a dis on the other stories than praise for his. At least I have some idea what drives him, although I have no idea how he got his powers. Nor what his powers are. The clunky "everyone dies if they figure out Clark's identity" bit actually had some interesting impact on this story, which was interesting, as I figured it would be forgotten within minutes. (I forgot it within minutes.)

What else was in there? Oh yeah, those horror gimmicks - the Doomsday thing. A tease. Maybe it'll pay off. Maybe not. And the Cyborg nightmare thing ... I mean, I have no clue what they're talking about with the backstory and I have no clue what's going on with the nightmare thing they're trapped in. On its surface it was your basic "overcoming your fears" riff. I don't feel much investment in the kids (one day I suppose I'll remember their names), so it didn't matter much to me.