Guide to Action Comics, 1987 - Present (New for Patrons!)

I’m back today for a DC Guide for Pledgeonaut Patrons of CK, and this guide is a BIG DEAL – not only because it covers nearly 40 years of one of DC’s biggest ongoing titles, but because it marks a major milestone for Crushing Comics! Today I am very proud (and also very exhausted) to debut my Guide to Action Comics (1987 – Present).

Guide to Action Comics (1987 – Present)

This Guide to Action Comics covers every issue of Action Comics through its soft relaunch after Crisis on Infinite Earths, its year as Action Comics Weekly, the pre-Triangle period of three Superman ongoings, the entire decade-long Triangle Era (including Death & Return of Superman and Blue Superman!), the 00s as one of two Superman flagships (including the New Krypton / World Without Superman period), Grant Morrison’s redefinition of Superman in New 52, Rebirth’s streamlining Superman’s continuity, Brian Bendis’s takeover of the Superman titles, Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Warworld Saga, and the newly-launched Dawn of DC!

Whew! No wonder this guide took the most effort out of all the guides I’ve launched so far this year. However, it’s more than just my first modern Superman guide. It also finally fulfills a plan for CK’s comic guide coverage I first outlined over seven years ago!

I originally teased that I’d be launching guides to DC Comics back on Christmas of 2016 with the first and only animated gif I’ve ever figured out how to create, following up a week later with guides to all of DC New 52 and the at-the-time newly-launch Rebirth.

That initial launch was planned on an airplane on my way to see Lizzo play Austin City Limits in October 2016. At the time, I was a full-time stay-at-home parent to a 3YO version of Kid Krisis. The trip was meant to be a final vacation at the end of my sabbatical before heading back into working in Philly’s tech industry.

On the plane, I pondered… what if it wasn’t? What if I spent another few months focusing on Crushing Krisis as if it was my full time job? How much stuff could I create? Who would support me? Could it be profitable? What guides would I add with their support?

That yielded my November 2016 “Blog of Tomorrow” campaign, where I worked on CK more than full-time as part of the launch of my Patreon campaign to create 92 posts about a huge range of topics – music essays, live stream concerts, comic guides, retro comic read-alongs, children’s book reviews, and even installments of my first completed novel!

That month of working 80-hour weeks on CK didn’t garner enough Patreon support to truly become my full-time job. But, it did show me the potential to create better, tighter comic comic guides on a more-regular schedule that debuted first to a core of site subscribers. That convinced me to move forward with the next big part of my plan: 2017 would be the year I expanded my guide coverage to DC Comics!

Of course, another big life event happened in 2017. That’s the year our family immigrated to New Zealand! That permanently changed my life in many ways – and it meant I couldn’t focus solely on Patreon and knocking out a full range of DC Comics guides.

Since then, I’ve chipped away at adding new DC Guides every year – filling out the rest of the Justice League, more Bat-Family titles, and books for the wider DC Universe. But, I always knew to put a final bit of punctuation on that original expansion plan I would need a guide to modern Superman comics.

That felt so daunting.

Sure, I managed to puzzle out a way to cover all of Batman’s modern comic books. And, there’s a lot more Batman comics than Superman – and they’re not as well-coordinated! However, Superman seemed daunting exactly because it was so well-coordinated, including the legendary 90s “Triangle Era.” During that period, all four Superman ongoing titles had a triangle emblem on their covers indicating their explicit reading order within each year of releases.

As with all things in life, sometimes you just need to pick a spot to get started and GO. I decided that the way to begin would be to simply push through a guide to every issue of Action Comics spanning the period leading up to the Triangle Era, all of Triangle, the 00s, New 52, Rebirth, and beyond.

I still need to create a sibling guide to Superman (1987) & Adventures of Superman (1987), and once I do that might also inspire me to handle a guide to Triangle Era differently – perhaps with a full reading order! However, since every issue explains its own reading order right on the cover, it seemed less critical to perfect that approach in this first modern Superman guide.

What did I learn from crafting this Guide to Action Comics? That Action Comics often is the victim of an identity crisis.

It is meant to be one of the two biggest books at DC Comics – a comic focused on action! But, it also has a history as an anthology title headlined by Superman, with his core stories told elsewhere. Action Comics has been both of those things since 1987, sometimes at the same time. It has always sometimes been neither. There have been periods where it has focused on Metropolis politics rather than action-packed stories, and even a period where Superman disappeared from the title entirely.

I think the past three years of Action Comics have been some of the most-focused in its history – and also probably the best-received since prior to Flashpoint. Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Warworld Saga gave Superman his first truly huge solo story in a decade that wasn’t just continuity nonsense (or Bendis mucking around with no end goal in sight). Coming out of that, DC seems to have a firm vision for Action Comics: high profile creators telling stories with Superman and more of his now-massive Super-Family supporting cast.

I love it. I don’t expect every character to grow old with me, but I think it is perfect to cast Superman as a father and the head of a clan of his own family, Kryptonian refugees, and adopted found family. That story resonates for me more than ever now that I am seven years into my experience of living in a place where you feel like an alien despite looking the same as everyone else.

Want instant access to this Guide to Action Comics (1987 – Present) and every future guide to Marvel, DC, Indie Comics, and Doctor Who? Become a Patron of CK to gain access to this exclusive guide and nearly 100 other guides months before the general public gains access to them. Plus, in the past year I’ve also updated over 100 of my 200+ guides for both patrons and the general public – all thanks to the power of my Patrons.

Exclusives for Crushing Cadets ($1/month): 52 Guides!

DC Guides (7): Batman – Index of Ongoing Titles, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Birds of Prey, Green Lantern Corps, Green Lantern: Hal Jordan, Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner, Omega Men