DC Database
Register
Advertisement

"Only Human, Part 2: The Truth": Superman to continues to fight Lex, who has been infected by one of the Machinist's mind ticks. According to the Machinist, the mind ticks cause the victims to act on their basest instincts and reveal their most hidden desires. Upon being infected by the mind tic

Quote1 Do you want to know the truth, Lex? I'm afraid you won't like it very much. You are not him. You will never be Superman. Even when you try to do good, you cannot escape the base iniquity of your race. This is just who you are. No matter how hard you try. Crawling amidst the detritus. All of you. You are only human. You will only ever be human. And soon you will be gone. Quote2
Mister Oz

Action Comics #986 is an issue of the series Action Comics (Volume 1) with a cover date of October, 2017. It was published on August 23, 2017.

Synopsis for "Only Human, Part 2: The Truth"

Superman to continues to fight Lex, who has been infected by one of the Machinist's mind ticks. According to the Machinist, the mind ticks cause the victims to act on their basest instincts and reveal their most hidden desires. Upon being infected by the mind tick, Lex is acting on his resentment against Superman, who asks Lex to reassert control of himself. Unfortunately, Lex is being mutated by the Apokoliptian technology on his suit. His skin becomes grey and his eyes become red, with Superman noticing Lex is becoming more and more like Darkseid.

Superman takes Lex to low orbit and attempts to reason with him, but Lex gives into his anger again and attacks Superman with Kryptonite darts. The weakened Superman falls to Earth while Lex barely comes back to his senses. Realizing what he has done, Lex dashes to remove the darts from Superman's body and activates every single device on his suit, causing it to overload and fall apart. Superman quickly recovers and saves Lex before they hit the ground.

The Machinist is shocked that Lex broke free from the mind tick and Superman and Lex tell him that the mind ticks were designed to handle Apokoliptian technology. The activation of every device on Lex's suit broke the mind tick and allowed Lex to come to his senses. Superman quickly incapacitates the Machinist's troops and captures the Machinist, who has been hiding as one of the soldiers.

Later, as the militia gets broken up by the authorities, Superman asks Lex who provided the Machinist with Lexcorp resources. Lex doesn't know but he plans to find out. Lex returns to Lexcorp and investigates his recent findings. He notices one of the Machinist's henchmen has a strange tattoo on his arm. Suddenly, Mr. Oz teleports into Lex's lab and quickly erases Lex's data about the recent events. Lex was getting too close to discovering Mr. Oz's existence, forcing Oz to act directly. Oz reveals he was the one that stole Lex's designs and used a secret network built by Lex himself.

Oz says that Lex is still acting like a criminal, but Lex insists he built that network as a security measure against alien invasions. He attempts to attack Oz with his rebuilt armor but Oz easily resists the attack and uses a burst of heat vision to destroy the chestpiece on Lex's armor, all the while taunting and demoralizing Lex with the knowledge that no matter how hard he tries to be a hero, he will never be like Superman. By the end of the day, Lex is still human and humans will cease to exist. Oz leaves while Lex is left devastated.

Appearing in "Only Human, Part 2: The Truth"

Featured Characters:

Supporting Characters:

Antagonists:

  • The Anointed Ones (Unnamed) (Behind the scenes)
  • The Machinist

Other Characters:

Locations:

Items:

Vehicles:




Trivia


See Also


Links and References

Advertisement