Just as it was a year ago, so is it today. Here at ComicBook.com, we wanted to take a look at DC Comics’s The New 52, one year later (not to be confused with One Year Later, the event that took place following the DC Comics event called 52), to see how things look and whether these prequel stories really work as prequel stories to the 52 new #1 issues that rolled out last September (give or take, since some of these newly-released zero issues are prequels to stories that didn’t come out last year).That said, we won’t be trying to soak in quite as much here, so don’t expect the page-long analyses of each issue that we went into with the first issues. With the relaunch, it was important to consider a number of factors. With these zero issues, we just want to see whether the zero issue is a good comic, whether it fits with the #1 and what it might say about the future of the title.Action Comics #0Grant Morrison is entering the home stretch here, and he does so in fine form. While nominally exploring the first public appearance of Superman and looking back at the day Clark decided to open a strange, new chapter in his life, the issue focuses quite a bit of attention on what separates the Man of Steel from other costumed crimefighters. This is far more the hero of All-Star Superman than anything we saw from Grant Morrison in the first year on the title, and if we can get just one story like that out of him before he leaves superhero comics for the time being, that’s a win.Ben Oliver on art was a strange choice; he seemed like a poor match for a Superman book, frankly, and by the end of the issue I wasn’t completely won over. Still, there were a few beats in here where the emotion on a character’s face needed to be just right and Oliver hit a home run, so while it often seemed like a misallocation of his talent on a book for which he couldn’t provide the best possible look, there was certainly something there that’s hard to argue.
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