The monthlong journey through Superman’s electric era was fun, but I’m ready to mix it up again and get back to some different types of stories. So this week I’ve decided to go without a theme. I’ll grab random stories to enjoy each day, without any overarching plan or goal. I’ll get back to themes in October. And I’ve got plans for October.

And as always, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman Archive!

Wed., Sept. 24

Comics: Superman #162, Taste of Justice #12 (Krypto Appearance), Harley Quinn in Paradise #37 (Cameo), Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #13

Notes: With the saga of Electric Superman behind me, I realized that there’s one thing I should have read that I forgot to include. Like “The Death of Superman,” the long-running epic of Superman Red and Superman Blue was not a unique idea to the Triangle Era, having drawn a little inspiration from a Silver Age “Imaginary Story.” Today, even though I’m purposely leaving this week open for random readings as the mood strikes me, I wanted to go back and read the original story of Superman Red and Superman Blue from 1963. I read this story for the first time when I was a kid, included in the delightful Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told trade paperback, which now that I think about it, may be the first trade paperback I ever got. I wonder how the contents of that would change were they to make a new volume today.  

Anyway, in “The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue” by Leo Dorfman, with art by the immortal Curt Swan, we start off with a discussion of Superman’s many failings. The publisher of the Daily Planet puts out a post listing raises for every employee except for Clark Kent (in fact it specifically says “Clark Kent: No Increase,” like that time on The Simpsons that the power plant announced layoffs in alphabetical order and only said “Simpson, Homer”), and before the bruising has even subsided, he’s summoned to the Fortress of Solitude where the citizens of Kandor are pissed that he hasn’t gotten around to enlarging them yet. And while they’re on the subject, why hasn’t he found a cure for Kryptonite poisoning or eradicated crime on Earth? Is he a Superman or isn’t he?

I gotta be honest, the Kandorians kinda seem like assholes in this one.

At any rate, they give him six months to try to accomplish all of these feats or they’re going to have him switch places with a Kandorian citizen and let the new guy try to do it. Superman, apparently forgetting the fact that he is – relative to them – the size of the Empire State Building, agrees to their terms. He tells Supergirl that he’s invented a “brain evolution machine” that could theoretically improve his mental power a hundredfold. The catch is that the machine is powered by radiation from all different colors of Kryptonite, so there’s a significant chance that something could go wrong. As it turns out, though, something goes extraordinarily RIGHT. The machine splits Superman into two beings, each 100 times smarter than the original. Unlike the last time this happened under the influence of Red Kryptonite, though, this time there’s no evil twin – they’re both still good. 

The two super-geniuses quickly put their brains to work solving the issues that Kandor set forth for them, beginning with repairing Brainiac’s enlarging ray (which he’d never been able to do before) and restoring Krypton by causing a chain reaction that magnetically draws every chunk of Kryptonite in the universe to the planet and, at the same time, neutralizing their harmful rays. Kandor is enlarged on its rebuilt homeworld, and the first two problems on his list are solved just like that.  

Before they can move on to the next item on their list, they get a telepathic signal from Lori Lemaris. The Atlanteans saw what they did for Kandor and ask them to help them find an uninhabited ocean planet to live on, since they’re “tired of being considered freaks here on Earth.” This is kind of a crazy notion – it’s not like the existence of Atlantis was common knowledge at the time, so who exactly was calling them freaks? It’s also weird that nobody ever stops to consider what Aquaman has to say about all this, although I suppose you need to remember that at this time, DC didn’t care nearly as much about continuity as they would later. 

Once that’s taken care of, it’s crime time. The Supermen invent a ray that can “erase all thoughts of evil” from the minds of the world’s criminals, which they swiftly deploy through a series of satellites. Instantaneously, every villain on Earth is reformed. Bank robbers return their loot, escaped prisoners turn themselves in, the Soviet Union dumps all its missiles into the sea! Even Brainiac, coming from space to attack Superman again, has a change of heart when he gets in range of the satellites. And GEEZ, is this a story that would take on a different aspect if it were written today. If you were reading comics in the mid-aughts, you probably remember Identity Crisis, the DC event which revealed that certain members of the Justice League had agreed to use Zatanna’s magic to essentially brainwash certain criminals over time, removing memories and – in the case of Dr. Light – turning him from a serious threat into a buffoon. The revelation of their actions caused a schism in the League that nearly destroyed it before it was rebuilt in the wake of Infinite Crisis. One could argue that what happens in this story is far worse. Sure, there’s no more crime, but it’s at the cost of effectively brainwashing the entire planet. These are our HEROES, folks.

Not to say it’s all bad. Once the rays hit Lex Luthor and reform him, he whips up a serum that, after the Supermen distribute it into the world’s drinking water supply, instantaneously eradicates all disease from the Earth, even allowing him to grow his hair back. Yes, they even eradicate male pattern baldness.

The final chapter of this three-part “novel” shows us the end of the Supermen’s career. With Krypton restored and crime wiped out, Supergirl releases the Phantom Zone criminals (who are immediately reformed by the rays) and together they decide to go back to live on New Krypton, but not before the Legion of Super-Heroes pops in to say goodbye to her, and also give her a spaceship. Remember that, people, good friends are the greatest treasure. The Supermen then decide to turn their attention to the greatest danger of all: women. Superman, it seems, had always struggled between two girls, Lois Lane and Lana Lang, and unable to make a decision, kept them at arm’s length. Now that there’s no crime to endanger Superman’s wife, there’s no longer any reason to stay single. For the first time it turns out that Red and Blue aren’t EXACTLY alike – Red prefers Lois, while Blue is conveniently Team Lana, so each of them goes to reveal his identity and propose to the girl he loves. They each agree immediately to marry Superman (they most certainly would NOT have married Clark, let’s be honest), but are stunned when they discover that there are two of him.

Have they not been watching the news? I…I feel like the two Supermen who eradicated crime and spread Lex Luthor’s serum to cure all disease would have made the news.

Wait, LOIS AND LANA would have made the news, they BOTH WORKED for news organizations.

Anyway, their double wedding is disrupted when Best Man Jimmy Olsen and Maid of Honor Lucy Lane decide to tie the knot as well, making Lois and Lana considerably more understanding than any bride who was ever featured on TLC. Red decides he wants to retire to Krypton, taking Lois, Krypto, and Comet the Super-Horse with him, while Blue stays on Earth to devote his life to science while his robots take over the job of patrolling the Earth for natural disasters and accidents, which surprises me inasmuch as Dorfman didn’t have him invent an anti-Earthquake ray or something. The end.

This story…It’s been several years since I read it, and I have to admit, it hits a little differently than it used to. I still enjoy it. It’s got that sweet, naive charm of the Silver Age, and I’ve got a heavy chain of nostalgia that makes me appreciate it. At the same time, though, there’s a lot of stuff in here that very much would not fly today. In fact, I’m kind of surprised that nobody has latched on to this for one of the far-too-frequent “evil Superman” stories, returning to this “imaginary world” (which is now just considered part of the multiverse) to look into the consequences of actually manipulating the brains of the entire planet the way these Supermen do. There are several other things in the story that are a little iffy, but nothing as awe-inspiringly wild as that. 

It was a different world 60 years ago, wasn’t it? 

Thur. Sept. 26

Comics: Adventures of Superman #473

Notes: When I started this year, I compiled a sizable document listing the assorted theme weeks I had planned or was considering, along with another list of specific stories that I wanted to include for one reason or another. With the end of the year coming faster than it seems, I’ve decided to pepper these weeks that aren’t adhering to any particular theme with more of these random stories that made the list because I remember reading them and I wanted to visit them again. Such is the case with Adventures of Superman #473.

This issue came immediately after Lois and Clark’s engagement in Superman #50 which – if you recall when I wrote about the whole “Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite” storyline months ago – is the story that actually locked me in as a regular Superman reader. That makes this one of the earliest Superman stories that drew me into this incarnation of the character, as well as the one that showed me a bit of what was then the status quo of the Green Lantern Corps, which at the time didn’t really exist. It was kind of foundational for my entry into the DCU.

Plus, that Dan Jurgens cover just slaps.

The story starts with Lois and Clark telling Jimmy the news of their engagement over lunch – a lunch disrupted when an enormous Green Lantern symbol appears in the sky over Metropolis. When the symbol morphs into an S-Shield, Lois rushes to write up the story that one of the Lanterns is trying to contact Superman, leaving Clark (who still hasn’t told her his identity at this point) the opportunity to sneak off. He flies to New York to find Guy Gardner, but Gardner didn’t send the signal. Gardner uses his ring to track the signal to a location in Wyoming where Hal Jordan is being held by a giant alien whose ship crashed on Earth centuries ago. Hal is helpless, his ring’s charge having been spent just as he signaled Superman, plus the alien is siphoning energy from his power battery. They find him beneath an air force base where Hal escapes and recharges his ring, then with the addition of Superman’s will, they take back the emerald energy he stole. The alien is despondent, believing himself trapped on Earth, but Superman and the Lanterns take pity on him and restore his ship to space with enough energy to finally, after centuries, return home.

This is a nice self-contained issue, with the only major link to the ongoing storylines being Lois and Clark’s engagement and a few references to the still-fresh wound of the death of Jerry White. But the book turned out to be pretty fundamental to me. As I said, I was still relatively new to DC at the time it came out, and this served as something of a gateway for me to both the Justice League America series that Guy was a member of, as well as the then-new Green Lantern series featuring the down-and-out, gray-templed, globetrotting Hal Jordan that existed at the time. I knew who the Justice League and Green Lantern were, of course, but at this point my perspectives on the characters were built primarily around pre-Crisis comics that my uncle had given me and the way they were depicted on shows like Super Friends. With this book my eyes were opened to a larger world. I became a fan of these properties, especially Green Lantern, and I’ve been a faithful reader of that comic ever since (with the exception of one writer whose run turned me off so much that I dropped the book until it ended – but the less said about that bleak period the better). 

This book is also a great glimpse at the way the characters were written at the time. Gardner, for example, had the same stupid, brash attitude that Nathan Fillion made so much fun in the movie, although he’s perhaps even a little more dimwitted. There’s one point, for instance, where Superman shows his exasperation that the alien has allied himself with two old sparring partners of his named Dreadnaught and Psi-Phon, and Gardner takes that as a cue to go after them with a power ring-generated chainsaw. There’s some interesting contradictions here as well – he’s jingoistic enough to casually wish for a new war so he could show what he can do, but too dense to realize that the airplanes attacking them are American. Fortunately, this particular facet of the character has dulled over time.

Superman, meanwhile, is all him. When the alien believes himself to be stranded, Superman hits him with a classic observation: “How come extraterrestrials are always coming here and causing all kinds of trouble instead of asking for assistance? All you have to do is ASK!” The giant alien is suitably ashamed of his behavior before Superman helps him out anyway, because of course, he’s Superman.

A fun book from early in Jurgens’ run, and I enjoyed revisiting it again after all this time. 

Fri., Sept. 26

Comics: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #139, 141, All-Star Squadron #36 (Team Member)

Notes: Here’s a fun, weird one that should have been worked into the week of Superman’s Strangest Team-Ups. Jack Kirby, who at this point was doing pretty much whatever he wanted with this title, had made Project: Cadmus a regular co-feature of Jimmy Olsen’s adventures. This is the issue where the Project unveiled the Guardian, the clone of the Golden Age hero who became a regular member of Superman’s supporting cast in this same basic form during the Triangle Era. Guardian changed a bit before the 90s, though. In this one he’s much more focused on being a clone, even commenting how it’s always an “experience” to meet an “original” human like Clark Kent. (That’s what we call dramatic irony, by the way, kiddos.) By the Triangle Era, Guardian had shed the conceit of making his status as a clone such a big part of his identity and was just the original Jim Harper in a new body. 

The rest of the story involves “Goody Rickels,” WGBS employee with an uncanny resemblance to Don Rickles. Morgan Edge can’t stand him and tries to manipulate things to get rid of him, and honestly, it’s hard to blame him. It’s a really weird little story and, despite the promise on the cover of “Two Rickles,” the real Don doesn’t appear until part two of the story, which comes in issue #141. (Issue #140 was a giant-sized issue of reprints.) The second part begins with the bold cover proclamation: “Kirby says: Don’t ask! Just buy it!” Jimmy, Guardian, and Goody have been given a meal with a toxin that will activate and cause them to explode within 24 hours if they don’t get the antidote. As Guardian searches for it, Jimmy and Goody wind up at WBGS where the real Don Rickles is in a meeting with Morgan Edge. There’s a big dust-up and Goody is on the verge of exploding when Guardian shows up with the antidote. This also happens to be the issue where Clark Kent, in space with the New Gods, gets his first-ever glimpse of Apokolips, which is an interesting historical note for a comic book with Don Rickles on the cover. 

Sat., Sept. 27

Comics: Superman Unlimited #5, Superman Vol. 6 #30, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #11, New History of the DC Universe #3, Aquaman: Yo-Ho-Hold on To Your Hook #11 (Guest Appearance)

Notes: Once again, today I’m picking up the new Superman-related comics for the week, including two new issues of the ongoing, Justice League Unlimited, and a return to the reshaping of DC’s history.

We’re starting it off with Superman Unlimited #5. The Daily Planet gets word that the Kult of Kobra is operating in El Caldero, the “Kryptonite Kingdom.” What’s more, the Calderan mining operation is about to uncover a Kryptonian Sunstone, the same kind of technology that built Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Donning a suit of Kryptonite-proof armor and catching a ride in one of the most gloriously anachronistic pieces of Superman tech, he heads to Caldero to try to get the Sunstone before Kobra. The story seems to be picking up a little here. Previous issues have been largely one-off stories that connect to the larger story of the Kryptonite Kingdom, but this one gives us a nice little cliffhanger. It looks like the story is opening up, and I’m excited to see where it’s going to go. 

The story of Darkseid’s Legion continues in Superman #30. Superman’s supposed ally, Superboy-Prime, has turned (insert surprised Pikachu face here), joining Darkseid’s Legion and capturing him, along with the long-suffering Booster Gold. The issue wraps up this (surprisingly short) storyline, but also acts as a lead-in to the upcoming DC KO event, and although I don’t want to get into too much more detail about what happens, Joshua Williamson pulls off a hell of a trick. There’s a brilliant reversal of expectations in this book, leading up to a climax (before the epilogue) that felt positively stirring. There’s a reason Superman is the greatest hero there is, and it’s got nothing to do with his powers. It’s about what he represents, what he stands for, what he means to other people. And boy-howdy, does this issue understand that. I love Superman, I love the Legion, I love Booster Gold…and I love what this issue does with all three of them. 

We also, incidentally, get to use Prime’s meta awareness to give us what is objectively one of the most funny panels in a Superman comic all year. You’ll know it when you see it. 

Justice League Unlimited #11 is another prelude to DC KO, this one starting off with the Justice League Watchtower being invaded by an army of Parademons. At the same time, beneath the country of Markovia, a League squad including Power Girl and Captain Atom find themselves in battle against some of Darkseid’s Legion. The battle goes poorly on both fronts and we get Leaguers down before a last page that ties very nicely into this week’s issue of Superman. I love when comics pull off tricks like this one, two stories that happen simultaneously and tie together in the end. It’s a nice way to make the shared universe conceit work, and theoretically, you don’t HAVE to read both of them to understand either one. It sure makes it more satisfying when you do, though.

And Waid returns with a plethora of artists to bring us New History of the DC Universe #3. Picking up on the aftermath of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, Barry begins to recount the era of the DC Universe that made for my foundational years – the late 80s and early 90s – all the way up to Barry Allen’s resurrection in Final Crisis. As Barry is, in fact the narrator of this series, you could simply call this issue “stuff that happened while I was dead.” Once again, I’m impressed at how Mark Waid has gone about smoothing over certain elements of the combined/rebooted/revamped DC Universe. For instance, when Supergirl came back in 2004, she was introduced as though she were a brand-new character, her death in the original Crisis being removed from continuity. Waid has it both ways here – Supergirl DID die in the crisis, and the story we read in Jeph Loeb’s Superman/Batman run has been retconned slightly – rather than introducing her to Earth to use her as a weapon, now Darkseid actually resurrected Supergirl for the same reason. Waid also, once again, brings in elements of the Milestone Universe, specifically the 90s incarnations of the characters, marking them as denizens of the DCU proper in such a way that certainly makes it seem as though there are plans afoot to bring them back again. 

This series really is a nerd’s dream. And as a nerd, I approve. 

Sun., Sept. 28

Comics: Superman #125, DC Vs. Vampires: World War V #11 (Appearances by Supergirl, Steel, Lois Lane)

Notes: Let me tell you something about my family. My son is a football nut. Like, he’s crazed. If there is an NFL game on, he is insistent upon watching it, to the point that he begged me to take him to church yesterday on Saturday afternoon so that he could stay home this morning, Sunday, and watch the Steelers/Vikings game in Dublin at 8:30 am. He also gets up and gets VERY excited and VERY hyper, and the point is, by the time the early game ended and the noon game began, I was already exhausted by this little creature which I am emotionally, biologically, and legally responsible for. I didn’t really have it in me to get into any deep Superman lore today, so I scrolled through the DC app looking for the silliest, most ridiculous one-off comic I could find. The winner turned out to be Superman #125 from 1958.

The first story, “Lois Lane’s Super-Dream,” begins with Lois falling into a coma when she falls from a ten-foot ledge trying to sneak into the Metropolis Science Fair a week early, which has got to be the stupidest way she’s ever almost gotten herself killed, even in the Silver Age. She gets a blood transfusion to save her life, but her subconscious mind thinks she got it from Superman, and she has a dream where his blood gave her powers as well. In the dream she puts on a red wig and starts calling herself “Power Girl,” and she’s actually fairly effective until – again, in the dream – Clark Kent is nearly killed in an explosion. Power Lois gives Clark a transfusion of her blood, and now HE’S got powers too. Go figure. So she makes him a Power Man costume and the most comically ridiculous mustache anyone not named Oliver Queen has ever worn and makes him join her as a superhero. But Power Clark, in Lois’s subconscious, keeps screwing things up due to a combination of cowardice and ineptitude. The whole story kind of makes Lois look bad, showing not only what she really thinks of Clark, but the particularly cruel way she treats him as her sidekick.

“Clark Kent’s College Days” is next, the beginning of an “Untold Tales of Superman” series. I’ve read this story many times, as it too was included in either the Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told or Superman From the 30’s to the 70’s books (I honestly don’t remember which) I read so many times as a kid. Clark gets an invitation to his college class reunion and begins to reminisce about his early days at Metropolis University, where he’s putting on his weakling act and letting the upper classmen haze him. The seniors aren’t the real problem, though – in year two, Clark’s teacher Professor Maxwell catches Clark using his vision powers to weld a seam in a robot and immediately deduces that one of his students must be Superboy. In this next class, he begins hooking his students up to a lie detector and asking if they’re Superboy, which makes you wonder what the hell he’s supposed to be teaching. Clark barely escapes being interviewed before class ends, and Maxwell begins a series of schemes that could make Lucy Ricardo proud, attempting to prove that Clark is Superboy, even to the point of exposing him to Kryptonite. But Clark winds up outsmarting him every time, and finally escapes the Professor’s attention by strapping in and letting him ask if he’s Superboy. Clark says “No,” and passes the test. Is it because of his powers? His Kryptonian physiology being incompatible with the machine? Nah, it’s because he decided, right at that moment, that it was time to consider himself an adult and start referring to himself as “Superman.” 

The cover story that got me to read this issue comes last, “Superman’s New Power.” Superman finds a pocket of fires in the core of the Earth that are causing tremors above in Metropolis. As he stabilizes the fires, he uncovers a tiny space ship that seems to have been embedded in Earth’s crust for eons. The ship blows up, and he later realizes his powers have changed. His normal powers (except, conveniently, invulnerability) have vanished, even as he gains the new ability to shoot a tiny replica of himself from his fingertips. The mini Superman has all his normal powers, so Superman’s career as a crimefighter shifts to being more of a puppeteer, sending Lil’ Superman into danger instead. While he proves just as effective as the real thing, Superman finds himself feeling emasculated at sitting on the sidelines while his teeny proxy goes into danger. The story ends when Tiny sacrifices himself to save Superman from a chunk of Kryptonite some crooks hurl at him. The Kryptonite makes Tiny vanish and Superman’s powers return to normal, ending with a panel where he contemplates whether Tiny had a consciousness and will of his own and made the sacrifice deliberately.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the 50s were a wild time.  

Mon., Sept. 29

Comics: Superman Vol. 2 #2, Justice League of America #30 (Team Member)

Notes: Returning to my list of random Superman stories that I’ve read at some point, here’s yet another that I remember reading first in the old Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told trade paperback. The second issue of the John Byrne reboot in Superman #2 is a good story, and it’s got one of the best Lex Luthor moments of all time…at least, “best” in the sense that it’s one of the greatest expressions of who Lex is as a character, not in that it makes him look good.

At this point, Superman had been active for a few years (mostly glossed over in the Man of Steel miniseries), and Luthor is looking for any clues that could potentially help him destroy the Man of Steel. He finds them, along with analyst Amanda McCoy, in the form of a red-haired woman who seems to keep showing up when Superman is active. As they search for the strange woman, Luthor turns to his frequent flunky Sidney Happersan, who is examining the Metallo cyborg they captured in Superman #1. Determining that the Kryptonite heart in Metallo’s chest is potentially fatal to Superman, Lex ruthlessly rips it from him even though Happersan warns him that it will kill the cyborg. (Don’t worry, he got better.) 

In Smallville, a pair of Luthor’s goons are looking for things that link Clark Kent to Superman, as Clark seems to be the one who gets all the big scoops. They drug Jonathan and Martha Kent then ransack their house, stealing Martha’s scrapbook of newspaper clippings regarding Superman. As they leave the house, they’re spotted by the passing Lana Lang, whom they drug and (realizing that she can identify them) kidnap. Imagine Lex’s glee, of course, when she turns out to be the very red-haired woman his people are searching for. 

Days later, Clark Kent comes home to find a series of bloody footprints leading to his apartment and Lana hiding there, having been tortured for information that she refused to give. Sensing Luthor’s involvement, Superman barges into LexCorp, only to find that Luthor’s got a new piece of jewelry – a ring with a glowing green stone that keeps Superman at bay. Stymied, and with no actual proof of Luthor’s involvement, he takes Lana back to Smallville. In Metropolis, Amanda runs all the data they’ve found through the computer, seeking the link between Superman and Clark Kent, and she arrives at one inexorable conclusion: Clark Kent IS Superman. 

And Luthor is furious at the absurdity of it. “I know that no man with the power of Superman would ever PRETEND to be a mere HUMAN!” he shouts, firing Amanda McCoy on the spot because “I have no place in my organization for people who cannot see the OBVIOUS.”

Ah, what a fantastic story, Mr. Byrne. This is the ultimate platonic ideal of who and what Lex Luthor is, especially at that time. He’s ruthless and cruel – his treatment of Lana, of Amanda, even of Metallo all demonstrate that. He’s intelligent, but not the super-scientist he was in the Silver Age or would become again. But he’s also so unbelievably arrogant that when the answer to all of his questions is served up to him on a silver platter, he rejects it because he cannot fathom anyone with Superman’s power being so good that he would “pretend” to be Clark Kent. Byrne actually used this as part of the punchline in his “Superbman Vs. the Fantastical Four” story from Marvel’s What The–?! #2, with the fake Dr. Doom telling Rex Ruthless that Superbman COULDN’T be a normal human because that would make him “nicer than us.”  

This story is also important in that it sets up a number of different elements that would be of tremendous importance later, especially the Kryptonite Ring. That little domino would set off multiple chains. Luthor would learn to his grave error that he was wrong about the radiation being harmless to humans, and that wearing the ring constantly gives him cancer. This ultimately leads to him faking his own death, cloning a younger body, and returning to Metropolis pretending to be his own son. Amanda McCoy came back later desperate to prove she was right, stealing the ring but being killed in an alley for it, leading to the Dark Knight Over Metropolis story where Superman gave the ring to Batman, a concept which has been a consistent part of the characterization of the two heroes ever since. 

It’s also a pretty good showing for Lana, proving – even under torture – that she’s a good friend and worthy of Clark’s trust, never betraying his secret. In Man of Steel, Byrne had turned Lana into something of a broken bird, heartbroken at the realization that Clark Kent was too big and too important to the world to be in her life the way that she wanted. It took a long time to rebuild her character, and this issue I think was the beginning of that. 

Even these short stories can be great sometimes. 

Tues., Sept. 30

Graphic Novel: Superman: True Brit

Notes: I decided to cap off this week with something relatively lighthearted – perhaps even a bit silly, and this 2004 Elseworlds graphic novel certainly fits the bill. True Brit brought John Byrne back to do artwork for the Man of Steel again, but this time in a story written by Kim Johnson “with some help” by Monty Python legend John Cleese, who of course is most famous for that one “Bicycle Repairman” sketch that we covered back in Parody Week. (There’s a brief shout-out to that bit in the book, as well.) Like many Elseworlds, it starts with a “what if” type of scenario – Jor-El sends his infant son to Earth. Instead of Kansas, though, this time his spacecraft lands in what Jor-El calls “their most advanced, most powerful nation – the British Empire!” Kal-El is found by a British farm couple, Jonathan and Martha Clark, who raise him as their son Colin. He struggles to control his powers, even after being told of his true alien heritage, and when the time comes to go off to University Mrs. Clark admonishes him to keep the powers hidden away in shame. 

Studying journalism, he becomes smitten with his classmate Louisa Layne-Ferret, but she doesn’t show any interest in him until he accidentally impales a classmate with a cricket bat just before graduation. He winds up using his powers to get stories for a sleazy rag called the Daily Smear, where he finds out the famous rock band the Rutles (another in-joke) are in mortal danger, forcing him for the first time to act publicly in a Union Jack-adored Superman costume. 

The Smear runs with it, making the Superman stories more outrageous and scandalous, to the point where the Clarks even move without telling Colin where they’re going. But his fortunes change when the Queen sets him some “impossible” tasks – making the trains run on time, reducing the wait time for hip operations (the solution, by the way, is to convince the surgeons to play less golf), and raising the quality of the programming of the BBC. But all his work may come to a screeching halt when he runs afoul of his greatest enemy: the Bat-Man.

The story is rife with gags and jokes that almost could have qualified this graphic novel for Parody Week in and of itself. For instance, when his adoptive parents think Colin can fly, they advise him to flap his arms like a bird, which causes a bit of amusing chaos and resultant property damage. When he finally does fly – with a horse – the poor animal has to be carted away to a veterinary hospital and treated for shock. An attempt to milk the cows with his super-speed and strength leaves them…let’s say “unhinged.” Perhaps my favorite joke comes when his mother tries to steer him into being a postman rather than a journalist, and he fires back with “I don’t CARE about respect! I’d rather be a REPORTER!”

Ah, maybe it’s just the ex-reporter in me that finds that hilarious, I dunno. But that seems to be the main thesis of this book. Rather than telling a story about Superman in another culture, True Brit comes across as Howard and Cleese giving a scathing indictment of the British media. Most of the book comes down to a heavy and brutal satire of the state of the British press, with the more lurid types of publications rising in prominence and the few legitimate reporters being buried. It’s a funny book, although I imagine a lot of the Britishisms are lost on an American audience. 

Byrne’s artwork is interesting here. While not as cartoonish as he used in his What The–?! story, nor is it as clean and straightforward as his usual style as seen in his Superman run. He somewhat splits the difference here, drawing a world that still feels like part of the DC Multiverse but, at the same time, having enough fun with it to allow some silly sight gags, outrageous facial expressions, and goofy poses.

This week was a nice change of pace, friends, but October begins tomorrow. And October begins my favorite part of the year — those last three months that I love so much. And this year being the Year of Superman, it’s gonna be even better. For the next few weeks, as we approach Halloween, we’re going to be looking at darker versions of Superman, Superman gone wrong, a focus on his greatest villain, and more! See you then!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. You can join in the Kryptonian Konversation every day in the Year of Superman Facebook Group!