Villains are white meat, right?

This week in Action Comics, Superhero Captain Pilgrim (Dan K.S. Givingston) turned Lex Luthor into a turkey and then unleashed a certifiable feast of pain on him.

Okay, none of that happened, just an excuse to use a Thanksgiving-related cover redo. The issue in truth concerned a long term prophecy Vandal Savage has been waiting to see come about and pitted Savage against Luthor in a battle that will continue next month. It was great to see these two villains, who’ve previously had little cause to brush up against one another, interact and Paul Cornell deftly handles both the characters’ histories as well as the history of the DC universe to weave a new tale in an old context. This is the kind of retroactive continuity you can appreciate, one that derails no previous stories and instead just layers them with new content. Through his run, Cornell has seemed eager to weave a path, using villains mainly, through the DC universe, showing the spectacular character of Luthor’s brilliance and megalomania while giving each space he visits a loving spotlight. I’ve seen complaints here and there about the absence of Superman in Action Comics, but I think this headlining comic is doing just what it should: playing with the whole shared universe while showing why Superman, and in this case his villains, are at the center of it. With Superman’s own comic floundering, it’s something we can be thankful for.