Towards the end of last year, as my most stalwart of followers certainly remember, I wrote a column about all of the movies that had come out in 2024 that I hadn’t gotten around to seeing yet. To no one’s surprise, I still haven’t gotten to see most of them. There are just so many things to watch, so many movies and shows that are pulling at my attention, and I’ve got a kid running around that not only limits what I can watch while he’s awake and paying attention, but also means that there are a LOT of sports on TV in our house. Not to mention the fact that I’ve been doing my “Year of Superman” thing since January, so a not-inconsiderable amount of my viewing time has been devoted to that in one way or another.
To date, I have seen 50 percent of these films.
2025 has not been different from 2024: there are dozens of movies that hit the box office (or streaming services) this year that I sincerely intend to watch, but simply haven’t gotten around to yet. Before I delve into those, though, let’s do a quick list of those movies I DID watch from last year’s list and, ultimately, what I thought of them:
Venom: The Last Dance-Not bad, but probably the least impressive of the trilogy.
Deadpool and Wolverine-Funny and full of the kind of delicious meta-commentary that only Deadpool can make work.
Red One-Cute, unremarkable, but not deserving of some of the hate it gets on the internet.
Despicable Me 4-Better than 3, but I still probably wouldn’t bother with these movies if my son didn’t like them.
Flow-Technologically and visually, a masterpiece, although I thought the story was weak.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3-Make it make sense that this series keeps being entertaining.
MoviePass, MovieCrash-Intriguing look at how a system that was always doomed to failure wound up failing.
Music By John Williams-Nothing particularly revelatory in this documentary, but still a lovely watch.
Godzilla/Kong: The New Empire-Much as I love giant monster movies, this one felt like more of the same.
Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice!-Not as good as the original, but as far as legacy sequels go, it’s a pretty good one.
A Quiet Place Day One-Probably the most character-driven film in this series so far, and that’s a plus.
The Substance-Incredible and absolutely worth every bit of praise it’s gotten.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare-Made me want to read the book, which you can imagine, is high praise.
Alien: Romulus-If you’re going to keep making Alien movies you gotta find something new to do with them. I haven’t watched the new Hulu series, but I suspect that it was better than this film.
The 4:30 Movie-Tender, sweet, without being saccharine. When Kevin Smith really speaks from the heart, there are few that do it better.
Madame Web-The internet told me this was the worst movie ever made. They were wrong. It’s really more bland and generic than actively bad.
Joker: Folie a Deux-This was a thing that happened.
You know, looking back, I actually got around to more of last year’s list than I would have expected, which is a nice feeling. Of course, while I was busy watching the movies that came out LAST year, movies from THIS year just started piling up on me. Most of the reasons I don’t go to the movies as much as I used to haven’t changed: price, time, availability, and so forth. One thing, however, HAS changed. My son is eight years old now, and he’s gotten better about making it through a movie, especially a movie he’s excited about. This year my wife and I managed to take him to both Superman (naturally) and Fantastic Four: First Steps, in addition to the usual assortment of kids’ animated movies.
I consider it a legitimate moral failure that I haven’t seen this movie yet.
One such movie we did NOT get around to, though, was The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie. Much as I wanted to support it in theaters, time was not on my side, and it’s still on my list of end-of-year films I haven’t gotten to yet. As is Pixar’s newest, Elio, a movie that seemed to come and go with no notice whatsoever. But I’ve heard from a few people who actually saw it that they liked it, and I’m hoping I can get Eddie to join me for a viewing before the year runs out. He’s also excited about Zootopia 2, so we may make a movie date out of that one. I would also like to show him director Steve Hudson’s Stitch Head, which looks to be kind of a kids’ take on Frankenstein. And although it doesn’t really seem like my kind of movie, everybody on the planet except for me seems to have gone wild over K-Pop Demon Hunters on Netflix, and I feel almost obligated to watch it out of curiosity, if nothing else.
Stop trying to tell me this was a bad movie. You didn’t see this movie. NOBODY saw this movie.
This year also brought – as years tend to do – a bunch of sequels. And if it’s a sequel to a movie I actually like, I’ll watch it. But I’m also the kind of nerd who prefers to re-watch the previous film (or films) in a series BEFORE watching the sequel, especially if it’s been a long time. So that, in addition to the usual problems of availability and time, are the reason I have yet to get to the “requel” of I Know What You Did Last Summer or the more direct sequels like 28 Years Later, Black Phone 2, Nobody 2, the Disney hit Freakier Friday, or the Disney flop Tron: Ares. A brief note about Tron: I love the original and I greatly enjoyed Tron: Legacy. I know Ares crashed and burned at the box office, but this has absolutely no impact on my desire to watch it. I don’t despise Jared Leto just because the Internet tells me to and, once this movie lands on Disney+, I fully intend to watch and evaluate it on its own merits. And you can’t stop me. Nyeah.
There’s also Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Movie, which hasn’t dropped on Netflix yet, but is on my list. The first Knives Out was absolutely astounding, one of the best mysteries I’ve seen in ages (and perhaps THE best mystery/comedy I’ve ever seen). Glass Onion, the second Benoit Blanc mystery, still entertained me, but I didn’t quite find it up to the level of the original. I’m hoping that Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig bounce back with this third installment.
Netflix, as a studio, has absolutely loaded me with mystery movies this year that I just haven’t gotten to yet. In addition to Wake Up Dead Man, I’ve also got my eye on The Woman in Cabin 10. This one stars Keira Knightley as a journalist who sees a passenger go overboard on a cruise ship, then gets caught up in the question of what’s going on. Chris Columbus directed The Thursday Murder Club, a crime comedy about a group of senior mystery enthusiasts who get swept into a real life murder. The cast is incredible – Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie, David Tennant, Naomi Ackie – why the hell haven’t I watched this yet?
It’s Netflix’s fault I haven’t watched this yet, not mine.
I can tell you exactly why I haven’t watched Netflix’s Frankenstein yet: because they dropped it in NOVEMBER. What a dumb move. I couldn’t be more excited to watch Guillermo del Toro’s take on my favorite monster of all time, but I’ve had my hands full the last few weeks. Why on Earth wouldn’t they put this out in October and play up the Halloween angle? Granted, they’re the ones running a billion-dollar streaming service and I’m the guy writing blogs about it for free, but I think we can all agree that I am far wiser than they are.
Speaking of horror, Frankenstein isn’t the only movie that slipped past me this year. Good Boy, the horror film told from the point of view of a loyal dog, has been on my radar for a few years now, ever since I heard the premise. It’s gotten rave reviews, and with a runtime of only 73 minutes, I’ll be kind of mad with myself if I don’t sneak it in before the end of the year. Similarly, I’m interested in the slasher throwback Marshmallow, the Shudder film Night of the Reaper, and the survival horror video game adaptation Until Dawn.
I’m saving this one for a day where I want to reduce myself to a mewling infant.
And the documentaries! I haven’t even GOTTEN to the documentaries yet! Prime Video has given us John Candy: I Like Me, a movie that seems to have left everybody who has watched it so far in tears. I’m probably going to wait until school lets out for Thanksgiving and then do a double feature of this one with the movie that gave us the title quote, the brilliant Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
I’ve got no such excuse, though, for sleeping on Jaws at 50, a documentary about one of the greatest movies ever made, or George A. Romero’s Resident Evil, which is a documentary about a movie that was NEVER made. That’s a relatively small subgenre of entertainment documentaries, but it’s one I’ve always enjoyed. Prime Video has also given us When We Went MAD!, a documentary about the history of the magazine that we all thought was hilarious when we were nine years old. I’ll be honest, I fell out of love with Mad Magazine ages ago (and re-reading some of their stories this summer during my Year of Superman did not reignite the love affair), but a documentary about comics is always going to get a view from me.
Saying that this one “aged like milk” may actually be considered a compliment.
Speaking of comics, I did a lot better this year at watching the superhero movies that came out…well, either that or there just weren’t as many of them. But looking at my list of movies that I missed this year, there are only three superhero movies I didn’t get around too, two of which are animated Batman movies. Batman Ninja Vs. Yakuza League and Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires are both “Elseworlds”-style takes on the character, plucking him out of Gotham City and putting him into feudal Japan and the time of the Spanish conquistadors, respectively. The concept of Batman, in and of itself, is flexible enough that these things are usually at least interesting. Then there’s the long-awaited remake of The Toxic Avenger, which has finally been taken off the shelf and released after two or three years of languishing. I’m very curious to see if the legendarily cheesy Troma Studios hero will hold up to a larger budget.
OOOOH, because if you take the “e” out of the parentheses the title is — NOW I get it!
As for low budgets, there are several indie movies that got my attention this year, movies I read about online or heard discussed in podcasts, that I haven’t watched. Jonathan L. Bowen’s The Comic Shop, for example, or the British comedy Bad Apples about a teacher who accidentally abducts her worst student and then finds that suddenly her class is more manageable. Dropout comedian Isabella Roland wrote and starred in the comedy D(e)AD, about a woman whose family is haunted by her father’s ghost – everyone except for her. There’s also Hamnet, a drama about the tragedy BEHIND William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and John-Michael Powell’s crime drama Violent Ends. I can’t tell you too much about any of these because I don’t KNOW much, except that I heard enough about them to have my curiosity piqued and put them on my watchlist.
Whatever bastard designed this did the human equivalent of putting a dog on the poster. You know what you’re in for.
Finally, in case you didn’t know, I’m kind of a fan of Stephen King. And this year has been awash in King content, with the new It TV prequel Welcome to Derry now running on HBO Max and no less than FOUR big-screen adaptations of his work, of which I have seen exactly one. The Monkey. Which I liked, but which was VERY different from the short story it’s based on. That means I still need to get to The Life of Chuck, based on a novella that I thought was pretty good, but the film is directed by Mike Flanagan, which means it’s probably brilliant. Francis Lawrence directed The Long Walk, an adaptation of one of King’s bleakest stories (originally published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym), and I look forward to seeing Mark Hamill playing the bad guy again – because despite most people thinking of him as Luke Skywalker, real ones know he’s actually the best Joker. And lest I forget Edgar Wright directed a remake of another Bachman book, The Running Man, a sci-fi action film rather than horror, but with trailers that look like an awful lot of fun.
The point is, I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO WATCH ALL OF THE MOVIES.
As always, I’m going to do my best to get through as many of these (and the two dozen or so other movies that are on my list that I didn’t mention) between now and the time my Christmas vacation ends in early January, but who knows how many I’ll actually get to? In the meantime, if there are any particularly good movies that came out this year that I didn’t mention that you think I haven’t seen yet, let me know. What’s adding a few more films to a list I’m never going to reach the end of anyway?
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. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He needs to go to the opposite of that planet from Interstellar, some place where he can be there for five minutes and have time to watch 12 month’s worth of movies. He hears Detroit feels like that sometimes.
Superman is often credited as being the “first superhero,” and as big a Superman fan as I am, I don’t know if I can necessarily agree with that. Admittedly, the word “superhero” didn’t exist before him, and there’s little doubt that the term borrowed the superlative from his name specifically, but when you think of the things that MAKE a superhero, there are definitely earlier examples. I started the year, if you’ll recall, reading Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator, which many believe was an influence on Superman himself and definitely had several of the elements we attribute to Superman: superhuman powers that he kept a secret, which he attempted to use to do good (at least sometimes). Other elements, like the costume or the secret identity, could be found in characters that were around pre-Superman as well, such as Zorro or the Phantom. By most definitions of the term, there are a lot of characters prior to Action Comics #1 that you can rightly call a superhero.
That said, Superman is the character that first brought together most of these elements, and that started establishing “superhero” as a specific genre. Prior to Superman, and even after him for a while, characters that fit the bill of a superhero were considered an extension of other genres – adventure, science fiction, westerns, and so forth. In fact, I think that’s the reason that even now, you can select virtually any genre of storytelling and find an example of a superhero story that crosses over with it.
Once Superman was there, though, he became THE big name in the genre, and as such, he quickly became imitated. Some imitators just took the bare bones of the concept (costume, secret identity) and did something totally different with them, like Batman or Captain America. Later imitators would start to copy his powers and appearance with characters like the original Captain Marvel. Eventually, once the superhero genre was firmly established, we reached a point where kids who grew up reading them started to do their own twists on it, giving us characters that don’t even PRETEND they’re not a version of Superman. Sometimes they’re created for one-off stories or parodies, as in The Pro. Other times they’re populating an entire world of characters that pay tribute to earlier heroes, as we’ll see in a few of the books I read this week. In any case, these are the characters that we’re going to focus on this week: those heroes who are…almost Superman.
Notes: I’m going to kick off this week with two of my favorites. First up, Robert Kirkman’s Invincible. The first issue starts off with a bang – a young man in a black, blue, and yellow uniform flying through the air carrying someone with a bomb strapped to his chest. He throws the man into the air and the bomb explodes, killing the bearer (something, it should be noted, that Superman would never do) and the young hero expresses slight exasperation at his lot in life. Then the “how did we get here” flashback kicks in, introducing us (in the bathroom) to high schooler Mark Grayson. He’s going about his day, getting ready for school, attending class, going to work at a burger joint – when he accidentally hurls a sack of garbage into the stratosphere. He smiles and says “It’s about time.” Mark’s father, Nolan, is secretly Omni-Man, one of Earth’s mightiest heroes, and after years of waiting for it to happen Mark has finally inherited his dad’s powers. At school, Mark is unable to contain himself when he sees a kid getting bullied and steps in, nearly putting the assailant through a locker. Although the principal understands his actions, he cautions Mark not to get into fights with people so much bigger than him. “You’re not invincible,” he says.
He’s wrong, of course, and later on a bank robbery introduces Mark Grayson to the world with his new costume and his new name.
I’ve read the entire Invincible series, but I’m only dabbling in the first issue today (because there’s not time to read 143 of them). That said, like I did with Irredeemable in “Superman Gone Wrong” week, I’m going to talk about the broad scope of the series, complete with spoilers. If you’re watching the TV show and aren’t familiar with the comics, you may want to skip down to the next comic I’m reading today.
Invincible is an interesting way to start off this week. On the surface, of course, we’ve got Omni-Man, the obvious Superman analogue in Mark’s world, and it feels in this first issue that we’re reading about what it would be like to be the son of Superman. (This was in a pre-Jon Kent world.) In a few issues that’s all turned on its head with the big reveal of the series: Omni-Man, like Superman, is an alien hero sent to Earth. Unlike Superman, though, he is the point man for an invasion force, sent ahead to prepare Earth to one day be conquered by his people, the Viltrumites. When he learns about this, Mark turns on his father and, following a particularly graphic battle, Nolan flees Earth.
For a time, I considered using this book for “Superman Gone Wrong” week, since Nolan seems to fit that template perfectly. I decided to use it here instead, though, for two reasons. First, later in the series Nolan goes through a redemption arc, wins back his son’s trust, and joins him in the defense of Earth against their own people. And it’s a testament to the talent of Robert Kirkman that the redemption arc lands – eventually, the reader comes around to accepting Nolan as one of the good guys again, despite some of the terrible things he does early in the series.
The other reason I saved it for this week is because Omni-Man, although the clear Superman analogue, isn’t the actual star of the series, Invincible is. And Invincible is a different sort of character: Superman-like powers but with a tone that’s more evocative of Spider-Man. At least, that’s how it is at the beginning of the series. As it goes on, he sort of grows out of that template and becomes his own kind of thing, a character very different from either of his respective “parents,” and one of the few characters in modern times to break into the mainstream, thanks to that series on Prime Video.
And the show is very good, don’t get me wrong. But as is so often the case, I like the book better.
The other character I’m going to get into comes from one of my favorite series, from the first issue of that series, and from one of the finest comic books I’ve ever read: the Samaritan from the first issue of Kurt Busiek’s Astro City.
Coming off the wild success of Marvels, in which he and artist Alex Ross showed the Marvel Universe through the eyes of a bystander, Busiek launched Astro City in 1995. The idea this time is that the main character of the title is the city itself, a fully-realized world populated with superheroes and villains, many of whom are quite similar to those that we are familiar with. However, there’s no single anchor character – every issue or arc shifts perspective. Sometimes the main character is a hero, sometimes a villain, sometimes a loved one or a victim or a bystander. You never know quite what you’re going to get in any given issue of the book, and for that reason among any others, it’s one of my favorite comic book series of all time, and I eagerly anticipate its promised return.
The first issue, “In Dreams,” introduces us to the Samaritan, and it does so in a simple “day in the life” format. The Samaritan is woken up by an emergency alert early in the morning, popping him out of a dream in which he is flying. He suits up and rushes off to use his considerable powers to prevent a tidal wave in the Philippines from destroying a city, a trip that takes him 6.2 seconds from his hometown. As the day goes on, we see him take care of other assorted disasters, thwart assorted crimes and supervillain schemes, and have a meeting with the Honor Guard (if Samaritan is the Superman of this world, the Honor Guard is the Justice League or Avengers equivalent). We see him at work, as a fact-checker and proofreader for a magazine rather than a reporter. We also get a recap of his origin: he was sent back in time from a dying Earth to prevent the tragedy that led to its sad current state – the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger. In saving the world, the future he came from no longer existed, and he resigned himself to staying in the modern day and acting as one of Astro City’s superheroes. We see his life, and we see how incredibly lonely he is.
Throughout the issue, Busiek seeds little bits and pieces that begin to build the world of Astro City. We meet assorted other heroes and villains, get references to others. We learn that Honor Guard member MPH has an extraterrestrial nervous system for some reason, and learn a little of the story of a villain called the Living Nightmare. All of these little things make the world feel more lived in, and a lot of these little elements would pay off in later stories over the years.
The other thing that happens is that as Samaritan zips from each scene to the next, he keeps a running tally of how much time it takes to fly from one place to another. When he gets home that night, he calculates a total of 56 seconds of flight time for the day, “the best since March.” And then he goes back to sleep and resumes his dream of flight.
There are a lot of stories about Superman (or his copycats) that focus on the loneliness of the character, about how alienating it would be to be the last of your kind, to live in a world where there’s nobody else quite like you. That’s a legitimate take, of course. But too often, I find that stories that use this approach do so at the expense of Superman’s humanity. They treat him as an alien first, and to me, that misses the core of the character. Busiek’s Samaritan leans on the loneliness, but does so in a remarkably, beautifully human way. The story is sweet and sad and perfect, and it’s kept me a fan of the series ever since.
Both Invincible and Astro City are available in massive compendium editions (called “Metrobooks” in the case of Astro City) from Image Comics. If you’ve never read them, do it. There are few comics out there – besides Superman, of course – that I can give a higher recommendation to.
Thur., Nov. 6
Comics: Icon #1-3, New Adventures of Superboy #36, Blue Devil #4 (Guest Appearance), Justice League of America #37, DC KO: Knightfight #1 (Cameo)
Notes: When Milestone Comics was launched in 1993, an entire imprint of DC featuring characters and creators that were predominantly people of color, it was a pretty big deal. It shifted assumptions and preconceptions about how comics work and opened up the world of comics to audiences that would never have been interested before. Of course, like most storytelling experiments, it wouldn’t have worked if the stories being told weren’t actually GOOD. Fortunately, they were. And my favorite of the original line – this should surprise virtually no one – was Icon by Dwayne McDuffie and M.D. Bright.
The story opens in outer space in the year 1839, but in deep space, as we see an alien escape a doomed ship in an escape pod. The ship crashes to Earth and the alien shifts his form to imitate an infant form of the first Earth creature it encounters – who happens to be a slave in the American south. The alien takes the form of a human baby and is taken in by the woman who found him.
Time skips ahead to 1993, where the alien has been living on Earth for a century and a half under the guise of Augustus Freeman and his various similarly-named ancestors. Now living as Augustus IV, he’s become a highly successful lawyer in the city of Dakota, but finds himself dwelling on a recent encounter with a teenage girl. Raquel Ervin got drawn into some criminal activities with friends of hers who tried to rob Freeman’s house. When they ran into the man himself, he flew after them, shrugging off their bullets and warning them never to commit another crime. Raquel was astonished by what she saw and returned to Freeman later, urging him to use his powers to help people. She even designed a uniform for him and insisted she make him her sidekick, calling the two of them “Icon and Rocket.” Her words sway Freeman, and he gives her a belt to give her force field-based powers. They test out their new paradigm by responding to the news of a situation at city hall. Unfortunately, the cops don’t see a pair of heroes show up – just a strange pair of African-Americans in weird costumes, and they place them under arrest.
In issue two we get more information as to the situation: the mayor of Dakota has been taken hostage, and the cops were there to handle the situation, but the building is full of men with guns. The cops, with a unit called SHRED (Special Heavy-Equipment Rapid Emergency Deployment) are there to take the bad guys down, and they DON’T want help. Icon attempts to comply with the police request and explain themselves, but Rocket begins fighting the cops. Ico is stuck in the unenviable position of preventing Rocket from hurting the police and vice-versa. Once he gets Rocket to safety, he surrenders himself to the police to quell the situation, but he’s forced back into action by an explosion in city hall. He and Rocket save some of the police, then make it into City Hall where they learn that the man holding the Mayor hostage is one of the “Bang Babies,” people given powers by a strange gas during a recent event in some of the other Milestone titles, and he turns himself into a monster.
In issue three, Icon and Rocket face the monster – calling himself Payback, whose claws are capable of cutting Icon’s skin. Payback flees into the sewers and Rocket follows while Icon, injured, stays behind to clean up the rest of the human gunmen. He catches up to Rocket and Payback in time to hear the latter plead his case, how the mayor used the tear gas to prove she was “tough on crime” but wound up mutating innocent people. Icon promises that if he turns himself in, he will see to it that there’s an investigation into the “Big Bang” incident, and the people responsible will be held accountable. Bringing Payback in convinces the authorities that Icon and Rocket are on their side. At the end of the issue, though, he tells Rocket that she’s going to have to work from the sidelines for a while – with his super-senses he’s discovered something that she has not: Raquel is pregnant.
Such a great title. Amazing, unique characters and beautiful art made Icon stand out from other books on the stands, even from other Milestone titles. But that’s one of the things that made Milestone great – each title had a different perspective and point of view. Icon wasn’t like Static wasn’t like Hardware wasn’t like Blood Syndicate, and that was all to the good. What I particularly like about this title is the bait-and-switch, though. Icon is the title character. He’s the obvious Superman analogue. His powers, origin, and costume are all deliberately evocative of the man of steel. But it’s Raquel who’s actually the protagonist of this comic. She’s the main point-of-view character, she’s the one who starts Augustus on his journey, she’s the one who makes everything happen. And in fact, in the most recent iteration of the Milestone universe, they finally shared billing on their title: Icon and Rocket.
Like many of the books I’ve read so far this week (and it’s only Day Two) I find myself wanting to go back and read more. Maybe 2026 will have to be the Year of Characters Who Are An Awful Lot LIKE Superman.
Fri. Nov. 7
Comics: Love and Capes #1, DC Vs. Vampires: World War V #12 (Supergirl, Steel Appearance)
Notes: I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it lately, but I am a geek lucky enough to be married to another geek. My wife doesn’t share all of my geekdoms, nor I hers, and where there IS overlap they’re usually at different levels (she’s more into Star Wars, for instance, whereas I prefer Star Trek, but we watch ‘em both together). All that is to say that, as she isn’t AS big into comics as I am, she never lets me forget that she’s the one who first introduced me to Thom Zahler’s Love and Capes.
Mark Spencer is the Crusader, the big, strong, flying guy with the cape. He hangs out with a shadowy avenger of the night called Darkblade. He used to date a powerful warrior woman called Amazonia. And as we soon learn in issue #1 of this delightful series, he’s head-over-heels in love with a perfectly ordinary bookstore owner named Abby Tennyson. In this issue, Mark decides to tell his girlfriend that he loves her, but also, share with her the secret of his dual identity.
And thus begins the series that Zahler refers to as “a heroically super situation comedy.” Love and Capes is the superhero romcom you never knew you needed. While Abby isn’t exactly a Lois Lane, Mark is clearly his world’s Superman (down to the glasses he wears to protect his identity), and this first issue explores a lot of the questions that would naturally arise in any such a pairing. Once Abby learns his secret we see her struggle (and fail) to keep her sister from finding out, feel her bristle with insecurity when she learns that Mark and Amazonia used to date, and sit with her on the couch in quiet horror as she watches the Crusader fighting a supervillain on TV, realizing that she’s never seen him bleed before.
The wonderful thing about Love and Capes is just how naturally Zahler weaves the superhero story in with the kind of real life drama (and comedy) that comes in any relationship. Over the course of this series we see Abby deal with all sorts of things that would naturally come along with being a superhero’s girlfriend – evil doppelgangers, time-travel, meeting the rest of the superhero team and so forth. We also see Mark deal with simple, common relationship stuff, like trying to find time for one another when one of you is a workaholic, blending your friend groups, and ultimately (spoiler warning here) the challenges of marriage and parenthood.
Interestingly, Zahler leans away from the superheroics of the universe. Sure, we see Mark using his powers all the time, but we virtually never see any superhero fights or adventures, merely the aftermath, as the relationship between Mark and Abby is what’s actually important. That gives this series a perspective that completely sets it apart from every other not-quite-Superman on the market.
It’s only fair to admit that I’m an enormous fan of this book. In fact, for the Mark and Abby’s nuptials in issue #13, I took advantage of a “wedding” package Zahler made available to fans to get yourself drawn onto the wedding scene on the cover, so if you’ve got that issue, you can actually find me with (my then-girlfriend, now wife) Erin attending Mark and Abby’s wedding. What’s more, Zahler and I have struck up a friendly acquaintance over the years, and he even name-dropped me as the owner of a po-boy shop in New Orleans in his series Cupid’s Arrows. I say this not to brad, but to be quite clear that am not unbiased in my praise for this series.
But I hope you believe me when I tell you that I would be just as effusive a fan even if it weren’t for any personal connections we have. It’s just a sweet, lovely book, and every so often when he brings out a new miniseries or special, I’m as gleeful to pick it up as I was the first time.
Sat., Nov. 8
Comics: Adventures of Superman: Book of El #3, Absolute Superman #13
Notes: I’m going to hit this week’s new Superman comics today – only two of them, but they still count. And I’m starting with the third issue of Adventures of Superman: Book of El. Trapped in a future that believed him to be lost, Superman and his last descendant, Ronan Kent, return to the Fortress of Solitude to find a way home. Unfortunately, Brainiac’s legion is on his trail, and determined to keep him in this distant future instead of allowing him to go home and prevent this world from happening. There’s also a nice reveal at the end, a hope spot that’s subverted and sets the stage for the rest of this miniseries.
Reading this book is a little frustrating to me. I should like it. I honestly should. There are tons of little elements that work well – a time machine that looks like it was dropped out of H.G. Welles, a giant turtle Jimmy Olsen…and Phillip Kennedy Johnson completely understands the characterization of Superman. There’s a point where he tells Ronan “As long as you wear that symbol, your strength doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to those who NEED you.”
And yet somehow…I’m just not engaged. I think it’s the nature of the project – Superman is stuck in a future where he was lost. He wants to go home to prevent that future from happening. And since we know that DC isn’t going to allow him to stay in the future forever, his successful return is a foregone conclusion. It doesn’t matter how high the stakes get, in the end, it still feels so inconsequential. At least in an Elseworlds story you know that the consequences for THAT universe are real. I don’t get that here, and that’s dulling my enjoyment considerably.
Absolute Superman, on the other hand, not only feels like the consequences are real, but also that – in this Absolute universe – virtually anything can happen. As Lazarus begins its attack on Smallville, Kal-El orders Sol to override its original programming to protect him and, instead, expend its energy becoming a shield surrounding Smallville. But the resources of Lazarus and its Peacemakers are too much, even for Kal-El, and the small town is overrun. As he struggles against their forces for weeks, Lois and Jimmy try to broadcast the truth about what’s happening in Kansas to the rest of the world.
Most of the issue bounces around non-linearly from the beginning of the war to the “present,” six weeks later, showing different conflicts and encounters both on and off the battlefield. Jimmy and Lois reflect on how the appearance of Kal-El is what made them turn against Lazarus, which is just one of the things I really like about this issue. The thesis of the Absolute Universe is that this is a world fueled by Darkseid, where “hope” is always the underdog…and yet this is where the hope shines through. Kal-El, Superman, even in this dark world is held up as a beacon. There’s a scene where he confronts someone who – well, did him wrong, let’s just say – and for a moment you wonder just where Jason Aaron is going to take the scene, but in the end, he does the Superman thing. And I just love it.
Feature Film: The Iron Giant (1999)
Notes: Anyone who loves The Iron Giant knows already why I’m watching it for this week’s theme. Anyone who hasn’t seen it – I envy the fact that you’ll get to experience this for the first time. Because of all the stories that do NOT actually feature Superman, there is none that more fully captures the Superman ethos than Brad Bird’s 1999 animated masterpiece.
In 1957 Maine, a lonely boy named Hogarth finds an enormous robot alone in the woods. Hogarth befriends the Giant, who has a dent in his head that seems to have damaged his programming, leaving it with no memory of its origin or purpose. Hogarth begins to teach the Giant about humanity, playing games with it and showing him his comic book collection – including classic issues of Action Comics, and the robot finds a role model. But the military, naturally, is searching for the Giant as well, fearful of what it may represent. An agent named Kent Mansley tracks him down, but is unable to convince his superiors that the threat is real.
Playing with the Giant, Hogarth points a toy gun at him, temporarily causing his original programming to kick back in and it reveals him to be a weapon of some sort of alien civilization. Broken-hearted at learning the truth about itself, the Robot flees, and Hogarth follows. When a pair of boys fall off a roof in town, the Robot reveals itself and saves their lives. The town watches him in awe, but Mansley and the army turn back around to combat the threat. They open fire on him in the middle of the town while he’s holding Hogarth, and he flees. Each attack continues to bring his programming to the surface, but he fights against it until they hit him with a missile, blasting him from the sky. Hogarth is knocked unconscious in the crash and the Giant’s programming takes over, turning on the army and attacking with the full force of his weaponry. Mansley convinces the general to target the Giant with a nuclear weapon, then in his panic hijacks a walkie-talkie to order a strike that will wipe the small town and all its innocent citizens off the map. But the Giant overcomes his original programming, remembering the lessons Hogarth taught him. In the end, he makes a decision that proves him not only worthy of the “S,” but that – like Superman himself – his alien origins are irrelevant. His soul may be among the most human of us all.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched this movie, but I can tell you how many times I’ve watched it without crying, and that number is zero. Director Brad Bird, who would go on to much greater acclaim at Pixar with movies like The Incredibles and Ratatouille, uses the era of the Red Scare as a backdrop here. It’s a shorthand to amplify the fears of the townspeople of the Giant, making the concerns put on display a bit more justifiable and somewhat removing the need for a more traditional antagonist. To be certain, the military in this movie are the ones who are acting against the Giant, even threatening his life, but none of them are doing it from a place of evil. Mistrust, misunderstanding, sometimes even arrogance, but everyone who tries to destroy the Giant does so out of a sincere belief that he’s dangerous. Mansley is the most villainous character, lying to the general, telling him that the Giant has killed Hogarth (as far as he knows, the Giant is merely CARRYING Hogarth) in order to get them to continue their attack, and generally being a jerk. Even he, though, sincerely believes that this giant alien robot is dangerous, and it’s hard to disagree with the logic behind that fear. Honestly, it’s not even like they’re wrong – had his original programming not been subverted when he came to Earth, it seems quite likely that he WOULD have laid waste to the entire planet. So yeah, this is one time where the antagonists kinda have a point.
That said, what makes this work so beautifully is the way the Giant grows beyond what he was originally built for. Anyone who’s seen this movie can remember two lines from Vin Diesel (voicing the Giant in his most lifelike performance outside of Groot). One, when Hogarth tries to make him the bad guy in his game, is the adamant declaration: “I AM NOT A GUN.” The other comes at the end, as he makes the choice to sacrifice himself for the lives of the people below him – not only Hogarth, but the very ones who chased and attacked him. As he takes to the air to save them all, he closes his eyes and smiles and whispers the name he has chosen for himself: “Superman.”
There’s another line that echoes in the film: “You are what you choose to be.” Harry Connick Jr.’s character says it to Hogarth, and later Hogarth says it to the Giant. Then, 26 years later, Jonathan Kent says something very similar in James Gunn’s Superman. It may be a coincidence, but only in that two storytellers who intimately understand the Man of Steel chose to use the same sentiment to get that idea across.
I don’t like pop culture gatekeepers. I don’t think anybody has the right to dictate what a “real” fan is to anybody else. That said, I find it very difficult to conceive of anybody who truly understands Superman without being utterly in love with this movie. It’s one of the greatest superhero movies ever made.
TV Show: Superman and Lois Season 3, Ep. 2, “Uncontrollable Forces”
Sun, Nov. 9
Comics: Supreme #1-6
Notes: The works of Rob Liefeld can sometimes be…well…divisive. And to be perfectly blunt, I’ve never been a fan. But this summer, I happened to come across the first six issues of Liefeld’s Superman pastiche, Supreme, while rummaging in a dollar bin in a comic shop in Mississippi. Knowing that “Almost Superman” was on the docket for later in the year, I decided it would be worth the six bucks to get a taste of it. Now I know that most people say that the best Supreme stuff came later, when Alan Moore wrote the title, and would probably suggest it’s more beneficial to read THAT run than Liefeld’s original. To those people, I simply say: the Moore stuff wasn’t in the dollar bin.
Liefeld shared both the writing and art chores with Brian Murray for this book, which oddly enough is labelled as “Volume Two” even though, as far as I can tell, there was never a “Volume One.” In “Second Coming,” Liefeld’s premiere superhero team Youngblood is summoned to outer space when a strange figure approaches Earth. He claims to be Supreme, a hero who apparently vanished 50 years ago, and after a very 90s scuffle, they accept him as who he claims to be and return him to Earth. Although offered a place with Youngblood, he leaves and returns to orbit, looking down on Earth and crying. Issue two begins with Supreme lamenting the loss of the heroes he fought with 50 years prior and looking down at the heroes that exist on Earth now: Youngblood, Spawn, Savage Dragon, Cyberforce, WildC.A.T.S (it’s a “Who’s Who” of early Image). He’s upset that the heroes of today seem to be created and funded by corporations (this is clearly NOT true of Spawn), then drops in to a prison to murder somebody named Grizlock. Grizlock seems to be his arch-enemy, his “Lex Luthor” if you will, who killed Supreme’s equivalents of Jimmy and Lois some 50 years prior. Before he can get his revenge, he winds up fighting some superhumans called Heavy Mettle who appear from that magical space between panels, because nothing else makes sense. After several pages of Supreme battling characters that I could swear were designed to deliberately lose a bet, they convince him to hear out their boss, Jason Temple, explaining why Grizlock should get to live.
At this point, friends, I’m going to give up on the play-by-play, because any attempt to continue with that exercise would be to imply that anything that happens in this comic book series makes the slightest bit of sense. I read six issues of this nonsense, and here’s what I can tell you: Supreme spends several issues fighting some guy called “Khrome.” Yes. “Khrome.” Who apparently was formerly his ally, but now they’re trying to kill each other, because it was the 90s. Khrome is as boring and generic a villain as you can imagine, which means he fits in with the rest of this comic book like a jigsaw puzzle with a picture of a dog peeing on a fire hydrant. Every character is dull and generic, with designs that look like somebody spilled a box of Lego minifigs and assembled the pieces entirely at random. The names and powers are forgettable, and the motivations are nonexistent. It’s a lot of punching and blowing things up at the expense of anything resembling a plot or characterization.
My intention, this week, has always been to compare the kinda-Supermen to the real deal, but there’s not even enough of Supreme to do that. He seems sad to have lost people in his past, but his callous disregard for the lives of the bystanders to his pointless battles defies anything that could be considered Superman-like. There simply isn’t anything THERE. This is one of the worst things I’ve ever read, and I don’t just mean in comics. This is the first time I’ve ever read the letter column of an old comic book and felt the urge to seek out the people who wrote in and praised the book to ask them if they ever sought out the psychiatric help they so clearly deserved.
From what I can tell, Alan Moore’s run on this comic started with issue #41. It is a testament to the money-printing machine that was the earliest years of Image Comics that this book ever even made it that far, because it was an utter, absolute, incomprehensible mess.
All that said, it’s still better than anything AI could make.
Mon., Nov. 10
Comic: Big Bang Comics #2, Mr. Majestic #1, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #18, Infinity, Inc. #6 (Team Member Power Girl)
Notes: Today I’m going to move on to a series that’s as delightful as Supreme was frustrating: Big Bang Comics. Big Bang is a publishing imprint created by a revolving group of writers and artists who have crafted a shared world that pays tribute to all eras of comic books. Their universe is populated by thinly-veiled homages to the all-stars of DC and Marvel Comics, with stories set in – and emulating the styles of — the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Modern ages of comics. There are legacy heroes and names passed down from one generation to another, and in the 30 years of its publication they have played host to numerous ongoings, specials, and miniseries featuring their assorted heroes, such as the Knight Watchman (their Batman analogue) and the Round Table of America (no points for guessing what that might be). They were originally published by Caliber Press, then had a nice run at Image Comics. These days, they self-publish, and new installments are still released a few times a year.
To represent this world I’m digging into 1994’s Big Bang Comics #2, the first comic with a story starring their Superman representative, Ultiman. (This issue also contains stories of their Flash substitute the Blitz, and the Human Sub, who’s kind of a mashup of Aquaman/Sub-Mariner and Bulletman, but Ultiman is what we’re going to focus on.) Writer Gary Carlson and artists Jon Schuler and Don Simpson craft this Golden Age-style tale of Ultiman, “the Ultimate Human Being,” as he battles the “Sub-Oteurs.” The Nazis, it seems, have developed a drilling craft with the ability to tunnel underground, which they are using to attack freight trains delivering supplies for the war effort. When he hears about the attack, Ultiman (who apparently sits around his house in full uniform listening to a radio with his emblem on it) leaps into action from his home in Empire City. Just as Golden Age Superman couldn’t fly, Ultiman hitches a ride on the outside of a passenger plane that takes him to the scene of the attack, then rushes to save miners trapped in a nearby cave-in. Rescuing the miners, he discovers an odd tunnel with tank treads on the ground, following it to the German “submarine” that’s attacking a dam. Ultiman uses a car and his “thermal vision” to seal the cracks in the dam, then sets out to tackle the Sub-Oteurs. He captures the Nazis and sends the empty sub on a trajectory to drill straight to the center of the Earth.
This is an almost flawless representation of the Golden Age of comics. All it would take is redrawing Ultiman and maybe adding a page of him as Clark Kent hanging out around the Daily Planet and it would be virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. That’s the charm of Big Bang, the way they so lovingly recreate the worlds of classic comics. This isn’t a parody or a satire, nor is it a deconstruction. It’s just a new world that mimics the classics.
Later Big Bang stories would develop Ultiman’s world much more, giving him a secret identity and an origin, related characters, and even using the multiple Earths concept to have two Ultimen (those of Earth-A and Earth-B) come into contact with one another. I wish there was some sort of omnibus of the entire universe, but alas, no such thing yet exists. Still, if Gary Carlson or anybody at Big Bang is listening, there are at least some of us who would be really happy if here was an easy guide to buying and reading the entire universe, even digitally. (The new stuff is available digitally, I should mention, it’s the older stuff that’s harder to find.)
The most important takeaway here is that if you’re trying to find classic stories in the style of Superman from various ages (or Batman or Captain America or any of a dozen others), Big Bang Comics has what you’re looking for.
Moving on, let’s look at Mr. Majestic #1, from Wildstorm Comics. Wildstorm began at Image Comics before Jim Lee sold the company to DC and became one of its executives, and it was at DC that their one of their Superman analogues, Mr. Majestic, got his first miniseries. (The other analogue would be Apollo of The Authority, but Majestic is more “classically” Superman.) As Wildstorm became more integrated into the DC multiverse, Majestic met Superman several times and even temporarily took his place in Metropolis during one of those periods when Superman went missing for one reason or another. I’m going to look at the first issue of his first series for today’s entry.
Written by Joe Casey and Brian Holguin with art by frequent Superman artist Ed McGuinness, “Cosmology” begins at some point earlier in the 20th Century with the alien hero Mr. Majestic in space, taking care of the sort of extraterrestrial menace that superheroes have to take care of, before returning home to his secret lair inside of Mt. Rushmore. With the help of a boy genius named Desmond, Majestic determines the probe he fought in space was engaged in the task of mapping Earth’s solar system in exquisite detail, for a purpose that he fears goes even beyond a simple alien invasion…something, he says, that is likely to occur within a century. He gathers a braintrust and begins making preparations, spending decades seeking a way to somehow hide the entire solar system, ultimately deciding upon moving various heavenly bodies and altering the appearance of others in a sort of camouflage. In the end, the thing the probe was summoning arrives, and Majestic can only watch to see if his decades of effort have been worth it.
I very much enjoyed this one. Majestic is like Superman in a lot of ways, not only in his power set, but in his sheer determination to protect Earth, which comes across very much as a Superman sort of thing to do. And while the editors of DC Comics would never have approved a story where Superman sets himself forth on a single task that lasts for decades (at least not without some sort of timey-wimey reset button at the end), it’s very much the kind of thing he WOULD do if he deemed it necessary. This first issue of Mr. Majestic is a perfectly encapsulated standalone story that showcases a Silver Age style problem and response with a Modern Age execution. Like Astro City and Icon, I’m left wanting to continue and read more of his adventures.
Tues., Nov. 11
Comics: Squadron Supreme #1, Justice League of America #38 (Team Member), Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #15
Notes: To close out this week, I wanted to end with arguably the most successful otherworld Superman in comics – Marvel’s Hyperion of the Squadron Supreme. The Squadron was first introduced in the pages of Avengers in a story by comics legend Roy Thomas, who reportedly just wanted to do a story in which the Avengers fought the Justice League. This was before the era of crossovers though (and even once that era arrived it still took over two decades for JLA/Avengers to come out), so Thomas had the Avengers cross over to another universe where they met the Squadron, a team of characters who were an awful lot LIKE the JLA. Nighthawk was their Batman, Power Princess was Wonder Woman, Golden Archer was Green Arrow, and so forth. Their leader, Hyperion, was in reality Mark Milton, the final member of his universe’s race of Eternals, which obviously calls into question the name of the species.
Anyway, the struggle I had with this was figuring out which story to read for Hyperion. In most of their appearances, the Squadron has usually appeared as a team, with little focus on solo stories for the individual members. There was eventually a Hyperion miniseries or two, but those were part of the Supreme Power line, which was essentially the Ultimate version of the Squadron, and honestly not the one I’m interested in. After a bit of prevarication I decided to go with the first issue of the legendary Squadron Supreme limited series from 1985, which is almost certainly the best story ever told with these characters, even if it isn’t Hyperion’s story specifically.
Squadron Supreme #1, by Mark Gruenwald and Bob Hall, opens in a very Supermanly way: Hyperion in outer space, struggling to prevent the collapse of the Squadron’s satellite headquarters as it’s falling to Earth, and ultimately steering it to the ocean where it won’t hurt anyone. He meets up with his fellow Squadron members, Amphibian (Aquaman), Dr. Spectrum (Green Lantern), and the unfortunately-named Whizzer (the Flash) to bring it from the ocean and find a resting place for it. The destruction of their satellite turns out to be symbolic – the entire world has crumbled around the Squadron in recent years, and things on their Earth are getting worse and worse. We see the other Squadroners dealing with things like riots, blackouts, and a refinery on the brink of an explosion. How could things have gone so wrong?
The next few pages give us the recap. Nighthawk, in his secret identity of Kyle Richmond, had decided that he could do greater good in politics, running first for congress, then president. And it was President Kyle Richmond who was taken over by an alien invader called the Overmind, who then proceeded to take control of the rest of the Squadron – save Hyperion – and use them to conquer the world. Hyperion, with the help of “other heroes” (notably some he brought over from Marvel’s Earth-616) defeated the Overmind, but the world is still in dire straits after what happened to it. Hyperion reflects on the human parents who raised him, and how they taught him to use his powers for good, but not to interfere too much in the development of humanity. His parents, Hyperion decides, were wrong. At his urging, the Squadron decides that the only way to clean up their mess is to take control and do it themselves – in other words, superheroes taking over the world. All of the Squadron agree to his proposal, except for Amphibian and Nighthawk, and Nighthawk quits in protest.
A series of vignettes shows each of the Squadroners reconnecting with their civilian loved ones – in the case of Hyperion, letting down his Lois Lane analogue by telling her he “used to masquerade” as Mark Milton, he’s abandoning his human identity, and he’s sorry about leading her on for all those years. The next day, Richmond resigns as president and, moments later, Hyperion steps up and announces his plan for the Squadron to save the world by taking it over themselves. They ask the people of Earth to give them one year to conquer “hunger, poverty, war, crime, disease, pollution, and oppression,” and swear to voluntarily give up power if they cannot do so in 12 months. Then together, the Squadron removes their masks and promises a “new age of trust and friendship and unity for all the Earth!”
Spoiler alert: it didn’t go that well.
Coming out in the mid-80s as it did, Squadron Supreme is often overshadowed by the likes of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns in the conversation about great deconstructions of the superhero genre, but I’ve always felt like it belonged right on that same tier next to them. In fact, in some ways I think it’s even more reflective of what superhero comics actually WERE at the time. Watchmen was an alternate history and Dark Knight was set in the future, but Squadron Supreme was in the here and now (or at least the now) and showed what the consequences in the modern world would be of having a superhero team that actually followed through on the logical fear that critics of the genre have about superheroes – what if they just decided to take over?
Hyperion comes off as much colder than Superman here. His ideals are similar, but the way he dismisses his human parents and the woman who apparently loved him (who I’m pretty sure never shows up again in this series, although it’s been some time since I read the entire thing) is very harsh. Even in the Silver Age, when Superman treated Clark Kent as a disposable disguise, even when he would put Lois Lane through ridiculous turmoil in order to “teach her a lesson,” it came from a place of genuinely wanting to make her better, with at least a token effort made to protect her feelings. Hyperion has no such concerns for Lonni, and in fact, shows far more emotion about the defection of Nighthawk, who even crafts a bullet out of Hyperion’s local equivalent of Kryptonite, but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger
This is a great look at a different type of world, and it’s one that would come back and be relevant to the Marvel Universe again many times and in many ways over the years. Plus, it’s just an excellent story.
It was a fun week, guys. I’ve taken a look at a lot of cool, interesting variations on the Superman theme, and I also read six issues of Supreme. But as great as many of these stories are and as interesting as the faux Supermen have been, I’m going to be happy tomorrow to get back to the original, because when you get right down to it, there’s nothing like the real thing.
Considering how many times it’s been shattered and reassembled by bombshell pop culture announcements, it’s kind of surprising that there’s any internet left to break. But lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened this week when news was announced that Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz would be returning for a new movie in The Mummy franchise. The two co-starred in the beloved Mummy remake in 1999, then again in 2001’s The Mummy Returns. Weiz declined to return for the third installment in 2008 and was recast, but the new movie will reportedly discard that installment and only treat the first two as canon.
The movie is gonna star these two and, I think, some kind of monster or something.
This is, not to oversell it, an announcement of the kind of cultural relevance that is usually only reserved for things like the election of a new Pope or the return of the McRib. Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy was not only a fantastic movie, but it cemented Brenden Fraser as a real movie star back when such a thing still meant anything. The way he’s had a career resurgence over the last couple of years has made people absolutely salivate at the prospect of him coming back and playing Rick O’Connell again, and the news that he’s not only doing it but bringing Rachel Weisz with him…well, as The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor proved, even the McRib just isn’t the same without the special sauce. I should know better than to write these columns before lunch.
Anyway, I am obviously pleased at this news. It even made me think of a blog post I made a few years ago, when the possibility of this franchise coming back seemed like a pipe dream, about how I would have handled the return of The Mummy. But although it’s (relatively) certain that Universal Studios isn’t going to use my ideas, I’m going to float three wishes for the new movie, three things that I – and probably most other fans – hope that they DO bring to the table when the new Mummy movie hits theaters.
#1: Keep the Family Together
If the movie starts by breaking this up, we riot.
Fraser and Weisz’s characters met and got together in the first Mummy film. By the sequel, they were married with a child. (By the third, that child was grown up, and that’s reportedly one of the reasons Weisz declined to return – she didn’t want to be seen as old enough to have an adult son, especially just nine years after the first movie came out.) The relationship between those two characters, even more than fighting ancient Egyptian forces of evil, is why people fell in love with this franchise. There’s more chemistry between those two than a high school science lab.
But think about how many movies end with a couple getting together only to see that they’ve broken up when the sequel rolls around. Is that EVER satisfying to the audience? (Lookin’ at YOU, The Force Awakens.) I get why it happens – some filmmakers feel like there’s not enough drama to be wrung out of portraying a happy couple in a story. I would like to submit, however, that this notion is a pile of rabbit doots. Just because you have a couple that’s happy with each other doesn’t mean there isn’t room for conflict. Couples disagree. Parents disagree. Maybe they disagree over whether their kid should be allowed to play football. Maybe one of them has a drinking problem that the other one wants to help them through. Maybe your wife keeps forgetting to put the blueberries back in the fridge after she makes our son’s breakfast and I find them sitting on the stovetop almost every single day when I get home from work. You know. Hypotheticals like that.
These are all just examples, of course. There are thousands of ways to tell an entertaining story with a happy, loving couple and still have a satisfying narrative, as proven consistently by the very existence of Gomez and Morticia Addams. I can’t think of anything that would turn the fans off faster than starting the new movie only to learn that Rick and Evie haven’t spoken in ten years.
And it’s just not a reunion without the disreputable uncle.
In the same vein, we want to see the WHOLE family together. John Hannah played Jonathan Carnahan, brother to Rachel Weisz’s Evelyn character, in the prior three movies (even the one without Rachel Weisz). While Fraser and Weisz get most of the love when people talk about this franchise – and deservedly so, they’re both excellent – I feel like Hannah deserves more credit than he gets. Fraser and Weisz are both talented actors, capable of action and comedy at the drop of a hat. But Hanna’s Jonathan is a nice sort of foil for the two of them – cowardly where the other two are fearless, and capable of being more self-centered and deceptive than the O’Connells, whose love for each other is evident in every frame. But somehow, he’s still charming and entertaining. The third film proved that this franchise without Rachel Weisz just isn’t the same. I think you COULD make another Mummy movie without John Hannah, but assuming he’s willing to come back, why would you want to?
#2: Keep it Family-Friendly
Family friendly, y’know? Like this.
When the Universal Monsters went through their first cycle in the 30s and 40s, they were intended to be scary. Over time, though, they became so popular in our culture that it’s almost impossible to find them legitimately frightening anymore. Writer/director Stephen Sommers understood that, and when he was tasked with remaking the classic, he didn’t even try to bring the chills. Instead, the Fraser/Weisz Mummy movies are action-oriented monster movies that anybody can enjoy. When Universal tried to use a new Mummy with Tom Cruise to kick off their “Dark Universe” line in 2017, they leaned more in the other direction – less comedy and a darker tone. I’m not saying that’s the ONLY reason the Tom Cruise movie failed, but it’s undeniably ONE of the reasons.
We can probably come up with a few others.
The new movie is being developed by the directing team of Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, the duo collectively known as Radio Silence, and I think that’s a very good thing. I’ve seen four of their movies so far – the thriller Ready or Not, the two most recent Scream films, and the bloodthirsty ballerina flick Abigail – and I’ve enjoyed all of them. Each of those films straddles the line between horror and comedy, and they do it really well. Ready or Not is, as I said, more of a thriller, but there’s plenty of humor in it. The same goes for Abigail, which is unabashedly a monster movie, but also has strong, compelling characters and some really amusing segments. And of course, anybody who’s ever read my blog in October has heard me talk about my love for the Scream franchise, a franchise built ENTIRELY on using meta humor to deconstruct horror movies, and I feel like Radio Silence did that franchise right.
But The Mummy is different. When the new movie comes out, my son will probably be around ten years old (which sounds like a typographical error, but there you are), and I would LOVE to take him to see it. He hasn’t watched the previous films, but I feel like if I can ever get him to stop watching YouTube videos of somebody shredding things for ten minutes, he would enjoy them. As much as I liked the previous Radio Silence movies, though, none of them are the kind of thing I would watch with Eddie.
“Whaddaya mean it’s not a kids’ movie? She’s a KID, ain’t she?”
That said, just because their previous films have all carried an R rating doesn’t mean that we should expect that here. First of all, I doubt that Universal would want to resurrect this franchise if they didn’t intend to try to please as many fans as possible. Second, it’s stupid to assume that just because you’ve only seen a storyteller do one kind of story that means it’s the only kind they’re capable of. Wes Craven directed four Scream movies and created Freddy Krueger, but he also directed Meryl Streep to an Oscar nomination for the biopic Music of the Heart. Actors like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey started their career known only as comedians, but both received acclaim for dramatic works like Dead Poet’s Society or Man on the Moon (respectively). John Cena, that wrestler you can’t see, has proven himself to be both a great comedic actor AND capable of a deeply emotional performance in Peacemaker. And although enough people have learned this fact that it isn’t quite as shocking as it once was, I always enjoy the look on the faces of the uninformed when I tell them that the uplifting prison drama The Shawshank Redemption is based on a story by Stephen King. Yeah, the clown in the sewer guy.
I think Radio Silence is well aware of their audience, and I think they’re smart enough filmmakers to understand that they are the stewards of this franchise, not its masters. Of my three wishes, this is the one I feel most confident will come true.
#3: A Portal to a New Universe
Well not THAT one. Okay, MAYBE that one.
The Brendan Fraserssance that has swept up Hollywood over the last few years is certainly a factor in this movie getting made at all, but I think another important element to consider is that Universal, for years, has desperately wanted to turn their classic monsters into a legitimate franchise again. After all, they may have been the first studio ever to even TRY the shared universe concept in movies back in the 1940s when Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Wolfman started showing up in each others’ films. The fact that everybody and their mother is doing a cinematic universe and they haven’t been able to get theirs off the ground must be incredibly frustrating.
And in fact, even the Tom Cruise movie wasn’t their first attempt. Four years before Marvel proved that it could work with the first Iron Man, Universal gave us Van Helsing – written and directed by Stephen Sommers, he who made the first two Fraser/Weisz Mummy films. Sommers reportedly intended Van Helsing to be set in the same universe as those movies, and it brought in the elements of the other Universal Monsters, but a planned sequel was never made. The film was only moderately popular at the box office and was lambasted by critics, but in the two decades since it was released people have started to appreciate some of the fun charm of the film.
A shared “Monsterverse” (I’m sorry, Universal, but the name “Dark Universe” is stupid, no matter how successful that corner of your Epic Universe theme park may be) is a natural extension of this franchise. Sure, there’s gotta be a Mummy in there, because that’s what Rick and Evie are known for fighting. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room to plant the seeds for a vampire, a werewolf, a gillman, or any of the other classic monsters that made Universal Studios what it is.
I’ve been saying for years now how much I love the Universal Monsters, and that I thought the best way to bring them back on a major scale was to tie them in to the ONE property that has been loved by everybody in the past few decades – the Brendan Fraser Mummy franchise.
Now there’s a chance to do that.
I guess I’m really just wishing that they don’t blow it this time.
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. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Bringing back Oded Fehr would be pretty sweet too.
As I write this, it’s Oct. 29 and I am still very much in the Halloween mood. I know, however, that this isn’t going to be posted until Nov. 5, and I respect the fact that you guys have probably shifted gears by now. So I’m going to do another random week for you, bouncing from one story to another at will and not beholden to anything in particular. You may still see a vampire or two, I make no promises.
Well, except for the promise that you’ll see a picture of my kid in his Halloween costume when we get to Friday. I can absolutely promise you THAT.
Comics:Superman #410, 412, 413, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #16
Notes: With the end of the year looming, I’m going to try to tick off some of the more random comics on my list that I haven’t gotten around to, books that don’t fit into any particular theme or week, but that I want to read for one reason or another. And I’m going to start in 1985 with a three-part Lex Luthor story that has become a minor classic.
Superman #410 starts normally enough, with Superman saving Honolulu from a plunging satellite. With Hawaii safe, Clark returns to the Daily Planet office and dutifully types out the story, turning it over to Perry White to put on the front page of the paper. As the evening edition hits the streets, though, Morgan Edge comes to Perry with horrifying news – the satellite Superman supposedly stopped is still in orbit, making the story he “told” Clark Kent seem fake. Superman zips to space to investigate and finds the satellite he clearly remembers catching floating in orbit where it belongs. Superman is faced with a horrible choice – tell Edge the truth and have people believe Superman is losing his grip on reality, or allow him to think Clark falsified the story. Given a choice between shattering peoples’ trust in Superman or in Clark Kent, he allows Edge to think Clark was at fault. Edge and Perry immediately fire Clark from both the Planet and WGBS news. As Clark tries to find the truth about what happened, we see Lex Luthor in a secluded island hideaway, boasting to his minions how he has found a way to broadcast false memories into Superman’s mind.
The trilogy skips issue #411, the legendary tribute to Julius Schwartz issue, and resumes in Superman #412, which begins with a humiliated Clark Kent on the unemployment line. He’s called away just as he’s about to be served, as Superman is needed to prevent a nearby construction disaster. Meanwhile, as Perry, Lois, Jimmy, and Lana agonize over Clark’s dismissal, Luthor is gloating over how Superman “allowed” his old pal Clark to take the fall for his own false memories. Lana, in fact, tears into Superman the next time she sees him for the same reason. Clark turns to his old friend Steve Lombard – who now owns a sporting goods store – for work. They’re hanging out when Luthor arrives in Metropolis, planting a series of “Scrambler Rods” around the city and nearly impaling Steve in the process. As he catches up to Luthor, an enraged Superman drives his fist into Luthor’s chest, killing him. When he withdraws his hand, Luthor’s armor explodes in an atomic wave that destroys the entire city of Metropolis!
For, like, a panel, before Superman finds himself clinging to the top of a skyscraper, having hallucinated the entire encounter. Luthor, meanwhile, has finished planting his rods, ready for the final phase of his “Ultimate Revenge” plan.
The final chapter picks up just seconds later, Superman still at the top of the building, having lost all faith in his own grip on reality. Even though he’s certain that Luthor is behind all of his current troubles, he no longer trusts his own senses, destroying his effectiveness as Superman. He stumbles back to Steve’s store, where Steve receives a phone call from Lois with a plan of her own. She has Steve invite Clark to a “charity bash” that evening, to which he reluctantly agrees. As he ponders his future, another hallucination hits – Steve’s store seems to vanish, then the entire city block, then the entire city, including his friends. Clark is missing, then, when the “charity bash” begins – actually a dinner in honor of Clark thrown by the people who still believe in him. While his friends give testimonies in Clark’s honor, Superman watches in horror as Luthor makes him believe he is obliterating the entire planet Earth. While Luthor has Superman captive, suffering from his hallucinations, Clark’s friends are growing worried, searching for him, wondering where he’s gone. When Superman’s hearing picks up on their fervent pleas, it breaks through Luthor’s spell. He goes after Luthor, but a strange vortex plucks Luthor from his clutches before he can bring him to justice. Superman joins Clark’s “other” friends at the dinner, claiming the whole thing was part of a plan of his to smoke Luthor out, thanks Clark for going along with it, and says he’s SURE Clark is looking forward to getting back to work.
I’ve said several times that the late 70s and early 80s were kind of a pallid era for the Superman comics. The villains and stories felt recycled and pointless, and although there were attempts at change (Lois “breaking up” with Superman, Clark dating Lana, etc.) none of it felt particularly important or consequential. But in the last year or so before the John Byrne reboot, they took some chances, and this story is one of the better ones. Although the conclusion still puts everything back in its neat little box, the journey to get there is an interesting one and I like the whole concept of everybody coming out in support not of Superman, but of Clark Kent. This was a time when Clark was usually still written as the disguise and Superman as the real personality, so having people in Clark’s corner for once was fresh and satisfying. Luthor’s getaway is a little irritating, but the knowledge that the vortex was sucking him up to participate in Crisis on Infinite Earths helps a bit. I almost wish they hadn’t given Clark his job back at the end – with the reboot on the horizon it wouldn’t have really made much of a difference, but may have made this story even more memorable.
Thur. Oct. 30
Podcast: Totally Rad Christmas, Episode, “Superboy-Young Dracula (w/CM Chuck)”
Notes: It’s the day before Halloween, so I decided to take a break from my usual Star Trek podcast on the way to work and see if the Totally Rad Christmas podcast had dropped any Halloween episodes this year. To my delight, I found that Gerry D and CM Chuck had gotten together to review an episode of the 1988 Superboy series in which young Clark faced off against…well, Young Dracula. I haven’t really gone back and watched this series in a long time, and I’m not sure at the moment where to find it. I own the first season on DVD, but not the subsequent ones, and although I know at one point it was available on DC Universe, that before it was merged with HBO Max and before Warner Bros. lost their collective minds and started throwing their IP to the four winds in the hopes of finding somebody desperate enough to buy them. The whole situation is ridiculous.
But anyway, the podcast. I don’t really remember the episode they’re discussing, and I wish I had it readily available to watch, as I’ve still got so many other Superman/vampire encounters fresh in my mind. I was glad to see that Gerry did enough research to unearth Superman #180, which I talked about last week, and how it demonstrated that a vampire biting a solar-powered Kryptonian wasn’t the best idea for the vampire. But that was a side conversation, not about the show itself, and the scattershot nature of this particular podcast does a nice job of emulating a conversation hanging around the comic shop, but isn’t exactly comprehensive in its coverage of the topic at hand. I’ll have to find this episode on my own somehow.
Comics: Superman: Silver Banshee #1-2, Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League #3 (Cameo), Saga of the Swamp Thing #24 (Guest Appearance), Justice League of America #36 (Team Member), Flash Vol. 6 #26 (Guest Appearance), Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #12 (Team Member)
Notes: In the comments to last week’s blog, Ben Herman asked if I’d ever read Dan Brereton’s two-issue Superman: Silver Banshee miniseries from 1998. And I know I have, I bought it when it came out and it’s still in my collection, but I probably haven’t read it SINCE the original publication. And as it, too, is a Halloween story (which I had forgotten, or I would have included it last week), this seems like an excellent opportunity to revisit it.
On Halloween Eve, Lois Lane gets a tip that will help her uncover a notorious gang of art thieves called the “Trickertreaters.” At the same time, in the Netherworld, Silver Banshee learns that there is one remaining descendant of the MacDougal clan, the clan responsible for her curse, and that she will never be free until the last MacDougal has perished. On Halloween, though, there are other options – she can go to Earth again, and if she uses the power of “good works,” the final MacDougal can lift the curse freely, without need for further death. Lacy MacElwain, her target, now lives in Metropolis (because of course she does) and the Banshee sets out to find her, but instead is snared by a summoning spell cast by the devil queen Hecate. Hecate – as it happens – is the one who lured Lois Lane with the promise of catching the Trickertreaters, whose newest member happens to be…oh come on, you can guess…yep. Lacy MacElwain herself.
Funny how things work out sometimes.
Anyway, Hecate’s stooge Thorpe knocks out Lois and ties her up as the art thieves arrive with their newest acquisition, an amulet that has no apparent monetary value, but that Hecate needs so she can do evil witch stuff. She tries to dismiss them without payment, but they take offense to that and wind up battling Thorpe, who turns out to be some kind of were-demon-thing. That’s an industry term, peeps. Lacy manages to get her hands on the amulet, which she brings to the mystic web where the Silver Banshee is held captive. The two of them are transported away from Hecate’s lair, and the Banshee tells Lacy that she will be freed of her curse if Lacy destroys the amulet, but it turns out to be fairly powerful. Thorpe tracks them down, but Superman (who got a little concerned when he found a dead body in the church where his wife was supposed to be meeting an informant) has caught up to them and saves her. As he confronts Hecate, Lacy flees for home, but the Banshee follows her, demanding she destroy the amulet. Unfortunately for Lacy, Hecate’s demons – including the transformed Trickertreaters – have trailed her as well.
In issue two, the Banshee tries to defend Lacy from the attack, but is forced to merge the two of them into a single body to prevent her death. In their shared form, the Banshee promises Lacy that destroying the amulet will set them both free. Unfortunately, Thorpe has his hands on it now. Superman, meanwhile is trapped by Hecate’s magic, and she plans to use Superman and Lois in her scheme. She gets the amulet back from a reluctant Thorpe, and the Banshee/Lacy hybrid attacks. The Banshee’s wail is surprisingly effective against Hecate, but she can’t free Superman or Thorpe from the Puppeteer demon that is holding them. In the battle, Lacy is killed, and the Banshee is freed from her curse, but unwilling to allow Lacy to sacrifice herself, she follows her into the afterlife, where the two of them are consumed by light. When the light fades, Superman, Lois, and a back-from-the-dead Lacy are all that remain. Lacy goes home, only to find that in saving her, the Banshee is now bound to her…no longer merged, but more of a regular haunt.
I’m really glad that Ben suggested I read this one again. The Silver Banshee has always been an interesting sort of anti-villain – she does bad things (murdering people, y’know) but she doesn’t do them out of actual malice or evil, merely out of a desire to free herself from a torturous curse. Once that curse is lifted, you can take the character in different directions, and this two-issue story is a nice sort of capstone to the status quo John Byrne first established for the character. She’s been used periodically ever since, sometimes as a villain, sometimes almost as a hero. I don’t recall offhand how long Lacy stuck around, but I don’t think she’s currently a factor when the Banshee shows up. Still, if there can be THREE ongoing series starring Batman bad girls who keep straddling the line between villain and kinda-sorta-hero, I think it’s well past time the Silver Banshee got at least another miniseries or something to give her the spotlight.
Notes: I don’t have a ton of time to read, though, because there’s trick-or-treatin’ to do, so I pulled the 2010 Supergirl annual, in which Kara is accidentally bounced 1000 years into the future and encounters the Legion – but NOT the Legion SHE knew. This is her cousin Kal-El’s Legion (recently restored in Action Comics) when they were teenagers. Brainiac 5 wants to find a way send her back immediately, worried about her disrupting the timestream the way he always worries when Superboy shows up, but it’s not that simple. She’s there for a month, joining the team and lending a hand, and learning – tragically – the circumstances of her own death. When a horned villain calling herself “Satan Girl” attacks, Kara and Brainy bounce four days into the future to see that Satan Girl has destroyed Metropolis, possessed the Legion, and taken over the world. It gets worse when she realizes that Brainy himself summoned her, but is arrogantly dismissing his own part in it.
An epic battle ensues between Satan Girl and the possessed Legion, with Kara, Brainy, and an army of animatronic Jimmy Olsens on the other (it makes sense in context). In the end, Brainy manages to send them back and prevent himself from summoning Satan Girl in the first place, then brings Kara home. In the process, they erase her memory of the future, including that of her own death, but Brainiac swears to do something to save her.
I like this story for a lot of reasons. Don’t ask me to explain why, but the various versions of the Legion that have flirted with a Supergirl/Brainiac 5 romance over the years have always appealed to me, and this one plays with that element as well. I hate it when people get into “shipping wars” over their preferred pairings, but I have to admit that I have a few of my own, and this is one of them. It works for the characters as they were at the time, and I hope that when the dust settles around the whole All In/DC KO thingamabob and we have a new, proper Legion again, this is an element that will be touched upon.
That said, I’m a little bummed because the reason I chose this particular issue is that the DC Universe app describes it as a Halloween story and…it ain’t. I mean, it was released in October and there’s the whole “Satan Girl” thing, but there’s no mention of Halloween in the story whatsoever. I assume that most of the listings on the DC app are copies of the original solicitations for the comics, especially for something as relatively recent as this, but that gets me a little grumpy that I skipped over a chance for some prime Halloween content.
There are greener – relatively speaking – pastures with the Halloween story from Superman/Batman #65. The story begins with Superman trying to save a falling plane as he’s done thousands of times. And this one, of course, has Lois Lane on it, as it has thousands of times. But it also has Perry White, his parents, Jimmy Olsen – and Superman watches in confusion as the plane goes down, killing everyone he loves. The scene shifts and we see that Superman is actually unconscious, as are Batman, the Joker, and Lex Luthor, all of whom had been engaged in a battle, then all taken down by an outside force. We watch the Joker live through his worst nightmare – a place where people actually treat his terrors as a joke. Lex Luthor’s worst nightmare, it turns out, is living out the bland, boring life of a subservient, specifically Jimmy Olsen. And Batman has a nightmare of a family – married to Selina Kyle, a son named Richard, his parents alive — and then watching them all gunned down by Alfred so he can bring things back to “the way it has to be.” The dream is nightmarish enough for Batman to wake up and realize all of them have been captured by – and are about to be buried alive by – the Scarecrow. Superman comes to next, stopping Batman from going too far in his revenge, and in the end we see a glimpse of the Scarecrow’s own worst nightmare – a land where he’s just an ordinary man of straw, one without a brain. It’s a cute story, and definitely one that feels more seasonally appropriate than the Supergirl one. But I think that’ll do it for Halloween in this blog. Until next time, anyway.
Halloween Bonus: I know you won’t believe me when I say this, but I had no influence on my son’s choice of Halloween costume this year. Well, not directly anyway. Obviously, his sphere of reference is influenced by proximity to me, and I wasn’t exactly subtle when I told him how happy it made me to bring him to watch the new James Gunn movie back in July. But at no point did I deliberately try to influence or manipulate him when the time came for him to select a Halloween costume.
“Eddie,” I asked him during one of our 27 trips to the various Spirit Halloween locations in our area, “What do you want to be for Halloween this year?”
“SUPERMAN!” he announced.
“Nobody is ever gonna believe I had nothing to do with this,” I said.
We wound up getting his costume at Walmart rather than Spirit, since they somehow got an exclusive on costumes from the movie. But we got the black hair color spray from Spirit, and I finally got a chance to wear the Superman pajamas he and his mom got me for Father’s Day back in June.
And I may be a little biased, but amongst all the arguing about Reeves and Cavill and Corenswet…well, with all due respect to those gentlemen, I may have a new favorite Superman.
Sat., Nov. 1
Comics: Superman: Red and Blue 2025 Special
Notes: This summer, during my family’s annual trip to Pittsburgh, I used the time to read over a lot of collected editions of various Superman books that didn’t quite fit in anywhere else. One of those was the collection of the delightful anthology series Superman: Red and Blue. I was quite happy when DC announced that they were bringing the concept back this year for a one-shot special with four new stories.
First up is “Priceless,” written by Paul Dini with art by Mirka Andolfo. Dini’s story features Superman on a mission to collect a rare mineral he needs to bail Supergirl out of an alien prison. It looks as though Dini is maintaining the characterization of Supergirl from the movie – a sort of hard-partying girl who gets into a little trouble with her dog. The story is funny and the art is wonderful, but there’s a nice little turn at the end that shows us that things weren’t exactly what Superman had assumed – and, in fact, family is everything.
“All the Time in the World” by Michael Walsh is a pretty simple story, a day in the life of Superman set in the era when Jonathan was still a toddler and Clark is desperately trying to find the time to be a husband and a father in a world where the demands for Superman’s gifts are neverending. This one…hits. I mean, there’s nothing world-changing or anything going on here, but it’s a theme that is particularly significant to me, right now, at this moment, where I’m looking at a schedule and trying to figure out how to fit in my son’s choir rehearsal and his basketball practice and his speech therapy and my own job and my wife’s job and if it is even possible, in the entire totality of the universe, to carve out even a single afternoon where I’m not going to be pulled into yet another thing that I don’t even know is going to happen now but it going to turn out to be of universe-altering consequence approximately 30 minutes before it has to happen. I may not have any literal fires to put out or people to catch as they fall off a building, but this is real. I know nothing about Michael Walsh, but I have to assume he’s a parent, because how the hell else could he understand this so well?
Next is Dan Abnett and Caitlin Yarsky’s “Out of the Ordinary.” When Superman saves a small town in Canada from a giant robot – you know, like you do – he is approached by a reporter for the tiny local paper who sheepishly asks for an interview. And to the surprise of absolutely nobody who understands Superman, he graciously agrees to one. The bulk of the story is just a quiet conversation between Superman and this young woman in a small-town diner, about what it’s like to be him and what it means to be “ordinary.” It’s a lovely story that really does nail the character, and in fact it functions very nicely as a (Clark Kent-ian polite) kind of rebuttal to Quentin Tarantino and anybody else who thinks that Superman is the “real” identity and Clark is a mask.
Last is “Red-Letter Days” by Rainbow Rowell and Cian Tomey. On Lois and Clark’s anniversary, Superman is summoned away by one of those regular world-threatening crisis type events. By the time he gets back, Lois has gotten a tip on an enormous story that deserves front-page coverage, but it’s going to take her and her husband staying up all night to get the sources and get the news straight. This isn’t a Superman story, it’s a Lois and Clark story, and I love it for that. We see the two of them doing what they do best (when Clark isn’t wearing a cape, that is) and in a way that isn’t interrupted by supervillains, alien invaders, time travel, or any of the other thousands of things that screw up a superhero’s life on a daily basis. It’s a story of a loving couple that struggles a little sometimes to find time for each other, and it’s delightful.
Superman’s the greatest hero there is, I think I’ve fairly well established my position on that by now. But for all the stories where he saves the world or the universe or a cat in a tree, there aren’t enough stories like the ones in this anthology. Four stories that lean on the man part of his name rather than the Super. There aren’t enough of these, and I hope that the Red and Blue anthology comes back again and again.
Sun., Nov. 2
Comic: Brave and the Bold Vol. 3 #16
Notes: Sundays aren’t days of rest for teachers. We’ve gotta get ready for the week, and I’ve got a ton of stuff on my plate today, so I decided to look for a one-off story I could read without sacrificing a huge chunk of time. I decided on this issue from the 2007 reboot of DC’s Brave and the Bold, which in this incarnation was a team-up title without a specific anchor character – there was never any telling which two characters would wind up with each other on any given issue. And as you can tell from the look on Superman’s face, this team-up with Catwoman surprised him as much as anybody.
Written by our old pal Mark Waid with art by Scott Kolins, the story begins with Superman responding to a bat-signal, telling Gordon that Batman asked him to cover for him while he was out of town. Gordon asks him to look into a rumored underworld auction, and Superman’s hearing picks up a burglary nearby. He finds Catwoman stealing an enormous jeweled egg, and Catwoman – a little smitten with the Man of Steel – tells him she needed it to get into the same crime auction. The evening’s prize is allegedly a map that leads to a certain hidden cave outside of Gotham City. Superman reluctantly agrees to work with Catwoman to stop the map from falling into the wrong hands. Selina dresses the two of them up to go undercover at the auction and a comedy of errors follows, most of them based on Superman’s attempts to sidestep actually giving any sort of aid to the criminal element around them. In the end they manage to prevent the contents of the cave from being used for nefarious purposes, and their encounter ends in a bit of a stalemate…but one that leaves Catwoman smiling.
I really enjoyed this issue. Batman never makes an appearance, but the story is essentially about him – specifically about how Superman and Catwoman, respectively, each feel about the Dark Knight and how that common ground allows them to put aside their differences and work together. And while you don’t get the impression that Catwoman’s flirting with Superman is entirely serious, it doesn’t seem as though she’s entirely joking either. After spending her life playing with the bad boys, a “date” with the ultimate good guy seems to be a refreshing change of pace for her, and even when Superman gets a little bit of an upper hand on her in the last few panels, she doesn’t seem to mind all that much. It’s just a simple, charming little story, the likes of which we could certainly use more of.
Mon., Nov. 3
Animated Feature: The Batman/Superman Movie: World’s Finest (1997)
Notes: When I woke up this morning at around 2:30 with a rumbling in my stomach I had every intention of going to work. However, as the rumbling continued to have pointed conversations with me for the next several hours, I eventually resigned myself to a day on the couch. And since getting off the couch to find something to read didn’t seem like a fun time, I decided that today’s Superman fare would consist of something I could access via my remote control. Bizarrely, The Batman/Superman Movie: World’s Finest doesn’t appear to currently be streaming anywhere, not even on HBO Max. Although I could theoretically have watched the individual episodes of Superman: The Animated Series that were cut together to make the film, I once again am grateful for my adherence to physical media and how I’ve used that to meticulously populate my own Plex server.
Younger people reading this blog (and of course, we all know how popular it is with the kids) may not realize just what a big deal this movie was. Today, when everybody and their brother is trying to create a cinematic shared universe, it seems like a film of this nature would be a no-brainer. But in 1997, despite the fact that these characters were all owned by the same companies and their shows were worked on by the same people, there was still relatively little crossover. Batman: The Animated Series was a smash hit, and when the same creators put their work into a Superman series this is exactly what everybody was hoping for, but it was far from a foregone conclusion that we would GET it, at least not until it got gotten.
The movie starts off with the Joker and Harley Quinn stealing a jade dragon from a shop in Gotham City. Batman’s examination of the crime scene sets off some alarm bells, and he makes plans to head to Metropolis. In Superman’s town, the Joker and Harley rather forcibly coerce Lex Luthor into a partnership, presenting him with the “jade” dragon, which is actually made of Kryptonite. Lois and Clark are on-hand when Bruce Wayne flies into Metropolis for a business summit with Luthor, and feeling like she’d made a fool of herself in front of Superman earlier, Lois finds herself smitten with Bruce, who invites her out to dinner to discuss his plans in Metropolis. Although Bruce and Luthor have a business deal in place, Bruce pulls back from parts of it that are intended to create militarized robots, something that burns Lex.
That evening, as Batman roughs up some hoodlums in a bar to find information about the Joker’s whereabouts, Superman bursts in to stop his “vigilantism.” He’s shocked when he uses his X-Ray vision to peer through Batman’s cowl to see Bruce Wayne’s face, and Batman warns him about the Joker’s Kryptonite by taking out a shard to hold him back, allowing him to escape. When Clark returns to his apartment, he gets two surprises: a phone call from Lois informing him that she’ll be having breakfast with Bruce tomorrow, and a bat-shaped tracking device on his cape that alerts him to the fact that he was followed, and that Batman is watching him from a nearby building, his own identity revealed.
The next day, as Bruce arrives at the Planet to pick up Lois, he and Clark briefly compare notes on the Joker’s schemes. Clark is also a bit concerned about Bruce’s burgeoning relationship with Lois, to which Bruce replies, “It seems to me you had your chance.” At their date that night, though, the Joker swoops in and kidnaps her, despite Bruce’s efforts to keep her safe. The heroes go to her rescue, but despite knowing they’re walking into a trap, the Joker manages to get the upper hand and nearly kills them all before escaping.
Lois’s relationship with Bruce gets more and more serious, with her even requesting a transfer to the Planet’s Gotham office, but when she discovers he’s Batman (during an uncharacteristic moment in which his mask is yanked away) the brakes are put on. The heroes naturally team up to stop the Joker and Luthor, complete with his army of murderbots, and ultimately have to save both Luthor AND Metropolis from the Joker’s lunacy. Lois breaks up with Bruce, with the supreme irony of her not wanting to be in a relationship with a man with a dual identity, and Bruce and Clark part perhaps not as friends, but at least with respect and cooperation.
At the time this movie was released, the comics were still in a kind of nebulous state for Superman and Batman. The antagonistic relationship they had in the early years of the post-Crisis reboot had largely vanished and they were teammates in the Justice League again, but they had not yet re-forged the friendship that they’d enjoyed in years past. The movie does a quick job of fast-forwarding through that relationship to get them to a more stable place: when Batman and Superman first encounter one another in costume, they’re antagonists. The next day, each of them having learned the others’ identity, they immediately begin working together, if grudgingly. The cast is top-notch, of course. Tim Daly and Kevin Conroy ARE Superman and Batman for so many of us, but perhaps even better than the two of them together are the interactions between Mark Hamill’s Joker and Clancy Brown’s Luthor, perhaps the two greatest villain voices in animation history. I loved this movie when it first came out, and I still have fun watching it today.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my stomach is doing that thing again.
Tues., Nov. 4
Comic: Batman Adventures #25, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #29 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #17
Notes: I went back to work today, although I’m still not really at 100 percent. But I’m a teacher, and if you ask any teacher they’ll tell you that it’s sometimes easier to go to work feeling like garbage than it is to prepare for a class without you in it. At any rate, after the classing is done, I still need to work in something Superman, and I want it to be something quick. Continuing the theme from yesterday, with the World’s Finest movie, I decided to take a peek at Batman Adventures #25 from 1994, the first team-up between the animated Batman and Superman. Well, kinda, anyway. This comic came out before there was a Superman: The Animated Series, and the Superman that appears is based more on Superman as he appeared in comics at the time, long hair and all. Still, writer Kelley Puckett did an admirable job, and the artwork by the brilliant (and gone far too soon) Mike Parobeck make this issue a delight to revisit.
The story opens with Bruce Wayne at a party, unaware that there are crooks planting a bomb in the kitchen. Among the people he schmoozes with at the time is a Lex Luthor with long, red locks and a beard (befitting his “Lex Luthor Jr.” persona from the books) and a ponytailed Clark Kent. LexCorp and WayneTech are competing for a military bid, but the discussion is lost when Clark’s superhearing picks up the ticking bomb under a table. Bruce also notices something amiss and the two of them dismiss themselves, Superman appearing moments later to dispose of the bomb. While he takes it into space, Batman apprehends the crooks who planted the bomb in the first place. Superman comes down to help finish mopping up, and the two icons meet for the first time.
Maxie Zeus sends Commissioner Gordon a video taking credit for the attack and promising to blow up Gotham City if he doesn’t get the “proper tribute” by midnight, and although Zeus is clearly insane (demanding such ransom as “five hundred head of oxen” and “two hundred vestal virgins”), Gordon is clear that he doesn’t bluff. As the heroes search for Zeus’s explosives, Luthor offers his military hunter robots to aid in the search. Superman and Batman find Zeus’s lair, along with the controls of the bomb, just as Luthor’s robots crash in and attack everyone, including Superman, which he tries to explain away as saying the robots “mistook him for an enemy” – but shoot, isn’t it impressive that their weapons can slow him down? They defeat Zeus, but Batman soon deduces that the whole thing was staged by Luthor to secure the military bid. He confronts Luthor with the evidence, telling him to withdraw his bid or he’ll present the evidence to the military. In the end, he and Superman part on terms a bit friendlier than they did in the later movie.
It’s fun to go back and look at this sort of embryonic animated Superman here. Setting the story in Gotham gets them out of having to deal with elements like Lois, Perry, or the Daily Planet, with only Superman himself and Lex standing out as being from that world. And truly, visuals aside, they’re not that far off. Give each of them a haircut (and a shave, in Lex’s case) and tweak the dialogue a little so that this no longer comes across as their first meeting; you could quite easily make this canonical to the animated series. The relationship is slightly warmer, without the initial antagonism we saw in the movie, and is a little more in line with who they would become once they joined the Justice League together. The story works nicely as a little bit of a time capsule, looking at the world of Batman: The Animated Series before that world had a Superman in it and kind of guessing how he would fit in. The later Adventures in the DC Universe series would do the same thing with lots of characters, which made the whole thing kind of out of sorts when those same characters eventually appeared in different forms in the cartoon…but it was no less fun.
It was a nice week off from themes, folks, but we’re running out of 2025 and I’ve still got several themes left that I intend to tackle. So next week, I’m going to mirror something I did in October with “Superman gone bad.” Starting tomorrow, I’m going to spend seven days exploring the Supermen of Other Worlds – and I’m not just talkin’ Elseworlds, my friends. See you in seven!
By the time this is posted it will be the afternoon of Oct. 31st, which of course is the day that all of us – people of all shapes, sizes, religions, creeds, and soda preferences – come together and celebrate that most important of occasions, the birthday of Vanilla Ice. For many of us, though, it’s also Halloween, and at this VERY moment (assuming you read this as soon as it’s posted) I am scrolling through the options on my Plex library trying to decide which cartoons to watch with my son to get us ready before it’s time to take him trick-or-treating. This is harder than you may think. You see, while there are plenty of creepy cartoons to choose from, on Halloween itself I like to limit myself to those cartoons that actually take place ON Halloween…and the number there is smaller than you may realize. Christmas, as I always say, is easy. There are a thousand Christmas specials and hundreds of thousands of Christmas episodes of various TV series. Halloween, though, for all its popularity, doesn’t have quite as many to choose from. In an odd way, I sort of blame that on the universality of the holiday. You can put on any ghost story or monster movie and get a Halloween feel, which means there’s less of an impetus to evoke the holiday itself.
But I wanna evoke, dammit. I wanna get my impetus out and evoke something. So as you put together the goodie bags for the trick-or-treaters, carve your turnips into Jack-O-Lanterns (or pumpkins, for you provincial types), and iron the wrinkles out of your Dracula cape, what are the best cartoons to put on in the background? I’ve looked at the list and picked my top four. There will probably not be any surprises on this list, but that’s not the point – in the pantheon of Halloween cartoons, these are the greatest, the most iconic, the most seasonal. In my humble opinion, of course, which is the only one that actually matters here, since this is my blog.
Here we are: the Mount Rushmore of Halloween Cartoons.
“The Great Pumpkin flies out of the Pumpkin Patch and brings us an OBSCENE amount of merchandise.”
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)
I told you up front there weren’t going to be any surprises, and it would be disingenuous of me to pretend otherwise. This was the third special based on Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip (following A Charlie Brown Christmas and the lesser-known Charlie Brown’s All-Stars) and is considered by many to be the best of them all. On the night it first aired, a whopping 60 years ago this week, it was watched by 49 percent of American homes that were watching television. That means that if you lined up everybody in America on Oct. 28, 1966 and asked them if they watched Charlie Brown the night before, nearly HALF of them would ask you who the hell you were and how you got the authority to make them all line up like that.
We all know the story, of course – on Halloween night, Charlie Brown and the gang are making their preparations to go trick-or-treating…all except for Linus, that is. The wisest of the characters in Schulz’s strip, Linus has somehow conjured up an entire mythology surrounding the Great Pumpkin, who chooses the “most sincere” pumpkin patch to rise out of on Halloween night and give presents to all the children who are there waiting for him. The special raises a number of theological questions, most glaringly that of how one measures the sincerity of a pumpkin patch, but that’s not the point. Little Linus, dauntless in his faith, heads out to the pumpkin patch with Charlie Brown’s sister Sally, spurred on by a crush on him that no doubt would have gotten her into serious trouble if these characters were ever allowed to grow up and go to college.
As Linus and Sally freeze in the pumpkin patch, the rest of the kids go trick-or-treating. The neighborhood adults all for some reason have rocks just to give to that round-headed Brown kid (you can tell it’s him because his ghost costume has too many holes), and Snoopy puts on his World War I Flying Ace outfit to have an imaginary dogfight.
The special is a classic for a reason. From a standpoint of loving the characters, this is one of the most perfect encapsulations of the Peanuts gang and who they are – Charlie Brown is down on his luck, Lucy yanks the football away from him, Snoopy’s imagination is in overdrive, and of course, Linus and Sally’s story showcases them better than any other. The animation is gorgeous and the music, by Vince Guaraldi, is nothing short of iconic. The version of “Linus and Lucy” – which most people just think of as the “Peanuts theme” – is perhaps the greatest version Guaraldi ever recorded, adding in a flute part that perfectly mirrors the main theme. And you genuinely care about the characters. After the special aired, the studio actually started getting packages of candy in the mail from viewers who were upset that all Charlie Brown got when he went trick-or-treating was a sack full of rocks. That means that if you lined up everyone in America on Oct. 28, 1966, and asked them if they felt bad for Charlie Brown, nearly half of them would ask you to stop lining them up, for God’s sake, what kind of bizarre godlike powers do you HAVE, anyway?
What’s more, this was the first Halloween special ever broadcast on television, and opened the floodgates for all the others. There had been a few holiday specials before, most notably the original Charlie Brown Christmas and assorted Rankin and Bass Christmas specials, but nobody had put forth that kind of effort on Halloween before. But not only did It’s the Great Pumpkin give birth to the Halloween special, it also put a spark under the concept of Halloween itself, a holiday that had gone into decline during the lean years of the Great Depression and World War II, and had only gotten a recent bump thanks to another cartoon that we’ll mention later on in this list. But once families had an annual dose of Charlie Brown to look forward to, Halloween began to take off again. Not only is this a great special, but in a real way, it may have saved Halloween itself. And it’s also — fun fact — the film I have logged most often on Letterboxd since joining the platform back in 2014 — a whopping 18 times. Well, probably 19, by the time you read this.
“I TOLD you not to eat lasagna after 11 p.m.”
Garfield’s Halloween Adventure (1985)
Nineteen years after Charlie Brown taught us to love trick-or-treating again, Jim Davis’s Garfield told kids across America that it was okay to be scared. This special originally aired on Oct. 30, 1985, and I remember many years growing up when it was paired with the Charlie Brown special, making for a delicious hour of cartoon goodness every October. On the morning of Halloween, Garfield is woken up by Binky the Clown, the world’s most obnoxious kids’ show host (until Blippi, anyway) telling him that this is the night when he can go out to the streets and load up on candy. The prospect of free food is all it takes to get Garfield to put forth a little effort, and he decides that if he ropes Odie into going along with him he can get TWICE as much candy. The two of them put pirate costumes and head out into the night, loading up on sweets. The classic Garfield greed kicks in, though, when he decides to take a boat across the river to hit even more houses, only to get stuck on an island featuring a rundown old mansion. Inside that house is a very old man with a very, very scary story.
People mock Garfield today. The comic strip, they say, is stale and unfunny. Jim Davis perfectly formulated the comic to be as inoffensive as possible, appealing to the widest number of people, and as such sacrificed any edge that it may have had. These people are right, and I’m certain Jim Davis weeps profusely over his choices, wiping his tears with the plethora of million-dollar bills he has lying around as he stares out the window of his private jet, eating Waygu steaks off gold plates and drinking 190-year-old wine out of diamond-encrusted goblets. In the earlier days of the strip, though, there WAS still an edge, and that was especially true of the animated specials. They put Garfield’s legendary cynicism front and center, with no posturing about goodwill or making things fun for everybody, no waxing nostalgic over Halloweens past. No, this is a hero who is in it for one thing and one thing only: candy. He makes no apologies for this, and we love him for it.
But over the 24 minutes of this cartoon, that classic Garfield hunger is forced to take a back seat when we get to the mansion and we enter one of the most legitimately creepy scenes I’ve ever seen in a kids’ show. The old man weaves a story of a band of pirates who buried a treasure on that very island 100 years prior, with the promise to return that very night. Garfield and Odie are suitably disturbed and try to leave, only to find HOLY CRAP THIS CARTOON ABOUT A CAT THAT EATS LASAGNA IS FULL OF GHOSTS! And we aren’t talking about Casper and his buddies, friends, these ghosts are creepy, chilling, spectral apparitions that makes you long for the days when network television was actually willing to put images into a children’s animated special that would potentially give them nightmares the way that God intended. These nautical spooks look like the Pirates of the Caribbean ghouls, only creepier, because one of them looks like he’s going to eat Odie.
In addition to the surprisingly effective story and phenomenal animation, the special is full of fantastic music as well. Composed by Ed Bogas and Desiree Goyette, we get three classic songs – two sung by Lou Rawls and one by Garfield’s voice actor Lorenzo Music – that are absolute bangers that deserve to be on your Halloween playlist, except for the fact that for some insane reason none of them appear to be on Spotify or, for that matter, anywhere else except for this special…which for some reason also doesn’t appear to be streaming anywhere. This is why you can’t abandon physical media, friends.
“This is an intervention, Don. We’re here to talk to you about your anger management problem.”
Trick or Treat (1952)
I mentioned before that It’s the Great Pumpkin helped bring back the custom of trick-or-treating after it kind of faded during the 30s and 40s. It didn’t do it alone, though. The tradition had gotten a bump several years before, and without the 1952 Disney short Trick or Treat, it’s conceivable that the practice may have died off entirely before Charlie Brown managed to take it off of life support in 1966.
On Halloween night, Donald Duck’s nephews are trick-or-treating when their uncle decides to prank them, putting firecrackers in their bags instead of candy, dumping a bucket of water on them, and then sending them away laughing. Donald was kind of an asshole in these old cartoons, if you didn’t know. Anyway, the whole thing is observed by a witch named Hazel – voiced by the immortal June Foray – who decides to help the boys get a little payback. When Donald tries pranking Hazel, not realizing she’s a REAL witch, she whips up a magic potion that allows her to control Donald’s legs, and then the fun REALLY begins.
This is Disney at its peak, with some of its best animation (courtesy of director Jack Hannah), and an amazing title song by Paul J. Smith that warns the listener you need to be generous on Halloween night or face the consequences. I don’t know that Michael Dougherty was inspired by this cartoon when he made his 2007 Halloween anthology movie Trick ‘r Treat – a film with slashers and werewolves and vengeful revenants which is most certainly NOT for kids – but they share the same thesis, so I choose to believe the connection was deliberate.
Technically, he’s still having a better Halloween than Laurie Strode.
Broom-Stick Bunny (1956)
Just four years later, June Foray would voice Witch Hazel again…but not for Disney. This time it was Warner Bros. director Chuck Jones who would recruit her for the Bugs Bunny Halloween short Broom-Stick Bunny. This is perhaps not as well known as the other three cartoons on this Mount Rushmore. In fact, it’s not even my favorite creepy short from the Looney Tunes catalogue. It is, however, the greatest Looney Tunes cartoon that is specifically about Halloween, rather than just co-starring Gossamer or a vampire or something, so it cuts to the head of the line.
In this one, Witch Hazel is conjuring up a potion when she gets a visit from Bugs Bunny, wearing a witch costume, as he’s trick-or-treating. Hazel mistakes him for a fellow witch and is disturbed when her magic mirror suggests that he (or at least, his mask) is uglier than she is, so she invites him in with a plan to hit him with a beauty potion to protect her own reputation. The cartoon devolves into one of those wild, madcap Bugs Bunny chase scenes as Hazel goes after him with a meat cleaver, because back in the 50s you COULD have a cartoon character go after somebody with a meat cleaver without being worried about “offending” somebody. The cartoon ends with Hazel accidentally drinking the beauty potion and – in a joke that there’s no chance in hell a modern kid would get – transforms into a gorgeous redhead that is actually a caricature of June Foray herself.
This was the first time Foray did a voice for Chuck Jones, who supposedly thought it would be hilarious to cast Disney’s Witch Hazel to play his OWN Witch Hazel. Foray went along with the gag, although she differentiated the two by using a British accent for the Disney witch and an American accent for the Looney Tunes version. More importantly, this short struck up a collaboration between the two – Jones began using Foray more and more often and became a regular not only in his work, but also at Warner Bros. animation until her death in 2017.
As always, friends, recommendations are welcome. What are some cartoons set on Halloween that you would place on your own Rushmore?
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. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He regrets to this day that Who FramedRoger Rabbit? didn’t take the chance to have June Foray do a Witch-Off between the two Hazels.
It’s the last full week before Halloween, and I’m going whole hog on the spooky content, friends. This week we’re going to find ourselves encountering some of the creepiest crawlies there are. Vampires, werewolves, mummies, and Dr. Frankenstein’s bouncing baby boy are all coming your way week, along with a few Halloween specials. We’re gonna wrap up October in classic Abbott and Costello fashion with Superman Meets the Monsters!
Comics:Superman: The Man of Steel #14, Superman Vol. 2 #70, Young Justice #3, Wonder Woman Vol. 6 #25 (Cameo)
Notes: We’re going to kick off this week with a two-part story from 1992 in which Tim Drake – at time the newly-minted Robin – pays a visit after news that an odd “blood plague” has jumped from Gotham City to Metropolis. Tim suspects that the victims, drained of blood and left to die, were the targets of a vampire, and he’s determined to hunt them down. Tim, being the smartest member of the Batman family, is absolutely right: we see the vampire appear in the home of the ill Lucy Lane whose boyfriend (at the time) Jimmy Olsen is at her bedside when he appears. The vampire pulls Lucy from her window to feast, his appearance constantly changing and cycling through various famous movie vampires, before Jimmy drives him off with the flashbulb of his camera. The next day he shows Lois the photo he took of Lucy hovering in the air, proof of the attack because vampires can’t be photographed. Dozens of people start disappearing, including Jimmy’s friend Babe (I didn’t name her, folks), a rocker girl who hired him for a photo shoot.
Since Superman is out of town dealing with a series of disasters and calamities, it’s up to the rest of our cast to do something about the situation. The next night, Jimmy, Lois, and Ella Lane (Lucy and Lois’s mom) treat her room with garlic and prepare to look out for her. Jimmy, meanwhile, goes full-out Monster Hunter with a kind of ridiculous getup that I can’t believe never made it into an action figure. Jimmy and Robin encounter each other on a rooftop (their first meeting) as they both track their suspect, the mysterious “Dr. Ruthven.” (Ruthven, by the way, I believe is an old Bulgarian name which means “Obviously I’m a vampire in disguise, I mean, come ON.”) But when Ruthven turns out to be more they can handle, Jimmy activates his signal watch, summoning Superman to his side. He manages to grab Ruthven as the sun is rising, and they watch him disintegrate. Their victory is short-lived, though, as they hear Ruthven laughing, mocking them, saying that sunlight can’t kill a “modern” vampire.
The story continues in Superman #70, with Superman and Robin patrolling the city and Robin trying to convince Superman that vampires are undead, and the usual no-killing rules therefore do not apply. Superman, meanwhile, isn’t convinced that driving a wooden stake through someone is the way to go. Jimmy, hospitalized from his own injuries fighting Ruthven, implores Superman to save Lucy. As he seeks her out, Jimmy and Robin begin making plans. That night, Superman is distracted by a subplot just long enough for Ruthven to return to Lucy’s apartment and take her away, but Jimmy and Robin trace him to an old cemetery where he’s gathered dozens of people he’s infected, including Lucy. Lucy is about to bite Superman (and, as her vampire powers are magical, it would probably work), and Jimmy tackles Robin to prevent him from staking her.
As all this is going on, the situation is being observed by the demon Blaze, an old foe of Superman’s who is concerned that there are certain dead people whose souls were marked for her, but are still in the land of the living, trapped in their undead forms. Blaze floods the cemetery with light that burns the vampire virus out of the victims. Ruthven falls onto a statue of a soldier with a bayonet, essentially staking himself. All seems to be well until the final panel, when we see a face in Babe’s eye that reveals she is not as free of the vampire influence as we would have hoped.
The Babe situation would become a running subplot for quite some time, not resolving itself until some time after Superman’s death and resurrection, so it clearly wasn’t the end of this particular storyline. But that’s how it was during the Triangle Era – this little two-parter set up lots of pieces that would pay off later. The Babe story was one of them, the Blaze storyline would flare up just a month later, and there were even seeds for the two-part “Crisis at Hand” story we read here a couple of weeks ago. It’s fun to see Jimmy hanging out with Robin as well, although there’s never any real explanation as to why Batman would have sent him to Metropolis to deal with a friggin’ vampire without any backup. This was during the period where Tim was enjoying a few miniseries before graduating to his own solo title, and the red-hot popularity of the character explains his appearance in a meta sense, but not in a story sense.
As we’ve seen before, though, it bothers me that the heroes didn’t actually win this one. Without Blaze’s intervention, Superman may well have been bitten and turned into a vampire. Ultimately, it’s hard to call this one a victory for the good guys, no matter how much fun the story actually was.
For a bonus bit of Halloween fun, let’s look at Young Justice #3 by the late Peter David with art by Todd Nauck. Tim’s back again, this time with his pals Superboy and Impulse, having fun at a Halloween party with their brand-new superhero team. Unfortunately, a cult nearby has – in an attempt to summon a demon – accidentally plucked a teenage Mr. Mxyzlptlk from back in time. He encounters the kids and, hearing about his future shenanigans from Superboy, resolves never to use his powers frivolously. Unfortunately, it’s one of those “would you kill Hitler as a baby?” scenarios – it may sound like a good idea, but the ripples through time turn out to be disastrous. Young Justice is then tasked with teaching Mxy HOW to be a prankster in order to save the world.
David’s run on Young Justice was simply a delight. It was a series that had plenty of humor and laughs, but at the same time, never once skimped on characterization. Early in this issue, for example, there’s a scene where Superboy defends Robin from a jerk at the party, not because he doesn’t think Robin can handle himself, but because as someone who hangs out WITH Robin, he’s afraid that if Robin comes off as a wimp it’ll make him look bad. There was a lot of character growth done in this series, and by the end of it Tim and Conner were fast friends, but that bond didn’t exist yet here. There’s also a subplot with Red Tornado, who was acting as a sort of senior advisor to the team, reconnecting with his daughter as she goes trick-or-treating. These little character moments were a trademark of David’s writing, and whether he was writing a cosmic epic or a goofy story about a Halloween party, either way it elevated his work and helped make it more than the sum of its parts. It’s only been a couple of months, but I miss his stuff already.
Notes: Today I’m going to tackle a couple of comics that only a Mummy could love, starting with Superboy #123, “The Curse of the Superboy Mummy.” The story begins in ancient Egypt, when an oracle sees a vision of the future with Superboy demonstrating his amazing powers. The oracle tells the royal magician how to create a potion that will turn his son Seth into a super-boy, even crafting a costume to match that in the vision. Neferti, daughter of the pharaoh, takes an interest in Seth, but he spurns her as he had no interest in her before he gained his powers. She turns to a rival magician for a charm to make Seth love her. He gives her a jade scarab, but the magician tricks her and the scarab strikes Seth down, causing both he and Neferti to drown in the sea. The two are mummified and buried together. In sorrow, Seth’s father carves a warning inscription into his son’s tomb about a calamity the oracle predicted, but he is driven out before it can be finished.
5,000 years later, Lana Lang and Clark Kent are digging up a pyramid in modern Egypt (this isn’t quite as random as it sounds – Lana’s father was an archaeology professor) and happen to unearth the mummies of Neferti and Seth who – wouldn’t you know – happen to EXACTLY resemble Lana and Superboy, whose costume Seth is still wearing. Lana doesn’t know what the inscription on the tomb says, but Clark knows ALL ancient languages, because when you’ve got super-speed you need to find some way to pass the time. It reads “Mighty Superboy! Behold Seth, the super-youth of our day, and Neferti, who slew him by mishap. Heed the warning of the magic shield which predicts that you, too, will be killed by the maid, Lana, of your time, unless you first destroy her…” The mummies crumble into dust, and Clark dismisses the prophecy. Upon returning to Smallville, Superboy gets a sudden chest pain when he picks up Lana the next day. It happens again every time he gets near Lana, which is frequent, as she seems even more trouble-prone than Silver Age Lois Lane. Together they crack the mystery – Lana foudn and has been wearing Neferti’s scarab, which is affecting Superboy much like Kryptonite. The inscription, which was never finished, was supposed to say “unless you first destroy her SCARAB.”
This is why it’s always important not to bury the lede, guys.
It’s a fun story, though, and although it has a lot of the sillier tropes of the era, it presents them in a fun, more unique way than a lot of the comics of the time. Superboy doesn’t actually FIGHT a mummy, I guess, but he’s almost killed by one, and that feels like it fits in with Halloween to me.
Clark would encounter a mummy again in the John Byrne era, in Superman #5, “The Mummy Strikes!” Clark comes in to work where Perry White shows him a video that Lois sent covering an archeological dig in South America. The video cut out, and Perry orders Clark on the next flight down there to find out what happened – of course, the fastest flight happens to be Air Superman. When he arrives he finds he camp safe, allows Lois to think Superman dropped him off (it’s not TECHNICALLY a lie) and discovers what’s going on. The archaeologists have uncovered a metal cylinder that seems to have been made by advanced technology, but is at least 6000 years old. What’s more, the pyramid they are excavating was built over a technological structure that predates human civilization. As they search the caverns, a gigantic creature wrapped like a mummy bursts through the walls and attacks them. Clark manages to “get separated” from the group so he can use his powers against the mummy, but it knocks him out. Lois finds him and the creature, whose trappings have fallen away to reveal an enormous robot. The story continues in issue #6, where Clark wakes up to find Lois holding up his Superman uniform. She tells him that he has been unconscious for “two solar days” and refers to Clark as a “handsome stranger.” Clark realizes that Lois, and the rest of the camp, have had their bodies taken over by alien forces. He learns that these creatures belong to a race that existed on Earth before humans, but who abandoned the planet when struck by a plague. About 500 of them chose to stay and placed their minds in the body of their robot, which would awaken when the race that replaced them reached a sufficient level of development, then take their planet back. Superman battles the robot, which still has the minds of most of the lost civilization, and forces it to release Lois and the rest of the team, who conveniently have no memory of their captivity. He tricks the robot into trying to download its consciousness into his Kryptonian body, which short-circuits the transfer sequence, causing the robot to explode. Superman gives Lois the story this time, “Clark” having been returned to Metropolis already.
I enjoyed this little John Byrne two-parter with its appropriate seasonal goodness. The first half, with the mummy, has some classic monster movie tropes, although the science fiction underpinnings show through the seams from the very beginning. The second half does away with those trappings (literally and figuratively), but the notion of a pre-human civilization trying to wipe out humanity is another classic trope that you could find in the sci-fi invasion films of the 50s, giving the entire thing a nice, old-school feel that’s wildly apropos for the season. There’s also a funny little runner about Clark having neglected to shave and trying not to let Lois notice that he and Superman are sporting the same five o’clock shadow. I know I usually defend Lois in the old days for not figuring out that Superman and Clark were the same person, but I have to admit, stories like this one make that tough sometimes.
I’ll close off today with the curious little book that is DC Comics Presents #53. Presents, as you may recall, was the Superman team-up book, with Superman partnering up with a different guest star in each issue. In this one, his guest star is House of Mystery, an odd choice in that it’s not exactly a CHARACTER. House of Mystery and its sister title, House of Secrets, were a pair of horror anthology comics hosted by the brothers, Cain and Abel, similar in concept to classic comics like Tales From the Crypt, but not quite as intense. In this issue, Mystery’s host Cain pops in to present to us the Superman story “The Haunting Dooms of Halloween.” The story starts with a kid – little Ricky (who probably not coincidentally looks like Ricky from Superman III,which had been released earlier that year) trick-or-treating in a Superman costume when suddenly, without warning, he turns into Superman himself. He rushes to Metropolis and bursts into Lois Lane’s Halloween party, where he abducts Lois. At the same time, Jimmy transforms into Thor – the costume HE was wearing – and tries to save her by…making it rain. Clark, wearing a Green Lantern costume, pretends that whatever magic is affecting Jimmy has struck him as well and uses his “power ring” to fly after the fake Superman.
Back at the House of Mystery, Cain is settling in to tell another story to a group of children when he gets a visitor – Mr. Mxyzptlk (Mxy seems to just LOVE Halloween), who brings in the fake Superman and Lois. He restores Ricky to normal, then starts zapping the other kids to become the monsters and ghosts they’re dressed as. The real Superman (in his own costume now) tracks them down and enters the House, and a voice warns him that he must find Lois by midnight or she’ll be lost forever. He stumbles through the house, facing not only his own fears, but assorted monsters that he’s reluctant to hurt when he realizes that they’re transformed children. As the clock strikes midnight, Superman stands in stark horror at his failure…until Mxy reveals himself, and he starts to laugh. Cain is confused until Superman explains – the whole thing is obviously a joke. Mxy may be a pest, but he wouldn’t actually HURT anyone. This is a WILD swing, by the way, as there are plenty of Mxyzptlk stories where he DOES hurt people, but in this case it seems to be right – Lois is freed from her own prank (being stuck in a room full of comic book artists chained to their drawing boards and begging her to set them free), and Mxy begins to plot his next Halloween stunt. He’s foiled not by Superman, but by little Ricky, who feeds Cain a clue to trick Mxy into banishing himself for another 90 days.
This is a really silly story, far more lighthearted than your typical House of Mystery fare, and Cain plays a more active role than he usually does. It’s very much in keeping with the Superman stories of the era, though, and a joy to read as part of my Halloween windup. I didn’t anticipate having two Mxyzptlk stories in two days, however. I suppose Halloween WOULD be his favorite time of the year, though. Hey, DC, if you’re listening, I’ve got an idea for NEXT year’s anthology theme…
Fri., Oct. 24
Comics: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #44, 52
Notes: If there’s one thing you can say about Jimmy Olsen, it’s that his life is NEVER boring. Whether he’s getting elastic powers or turning into a giant turtle, some sort of nonsense is ALWAYS happening to him. Today I’m going to take a peek into a couple of his hairiest adventures, beginning with Jimmy Olsen #44, “The Wolf-Man of Metropolis.” Superman, who has apparently learned nothing from all the times Jimmy has turned himself into a turtle, drops off a box of ancient bottles and jars that he recently uncovered, including one that purports to contain a potion that can turn someone into a “wolf-man.” When Lois asks Jimmy if it’s real, he decides to prove it’s just a superstition by drinking the contents of the bottle. (Side note: whether werewolves are real or not, is it really the best idea to drink from a bottle that’s been underground for centuries? This is why Jimmy is still a junior reporter after 85 years.) That night, the potion kicks in and turns him into a werewolf just before he’s supposed to take Lucy on a date to a masquerade party. He avoids admitting he’s a werewolf by getting her a Red Riding Hood costume, and they even win the costume contest. Over the next few nights, though, he keeps changing into a wolf and having to find increasingly unlikely explanations for why he’s still wearing the makeup. Lois immediately catches on to what happened and tells her sister, but Jimmy keeps evading the question instead of just fessing up and asking her to break the curse for him, as the bottle says it will end if he gets a kiss from a pretty girl. Jimmy gets desperate, even attempting to pay random women in the park to kiss him (had this story happened today it would be all over social media and Jimmy would be cancelled FOREVER) before Superman brings Jimmy into a dark room and gets his cousin, Supergirl, to give him a smooch and put him out of his misery.
This story makes Jimmy look so remarkably stupid that you can’t help but love it. From drinking the potion to refusing to admit it even after Lois has told Lucy about the boneheaded thing he did this time, Jimmy doesn’t make a single correct decision throughout the entirety of the tale. He doesn’t even know, at the end, that Supergirl is the one who saves him, because this is during that period when her existence was still being kept a secret, which is why Superman asks her to kiss him in the dark. I would love to have listened in when Superman called her to help with this one: “Hey, Linda, it’s Clark. My idiot friend drank a potion that – yes, AGAIN – a potion that turned him into a werewolf. Will you kiss him for me?”
Incidentally, in the backup story in this issue, Mr. Mxyzptlk disguises himself as a leprechaun. It may not be a Halloween story, but if this keeps up I may have to re-name this “Mr. Mxyzptlk” week.
Jimmy’s monstrous problems weren’t over, though. Just eight issues later, MYXYZPTLK COMES BACK! I am UTTERLY DELIGHTED. Mxy, dodging taking his own girlfriend out for a birthday date, comes to Metropolis and falls head over heels in love with Lucy Lane. Trying to find a way to sabotage Jimmy, he sees the b0ttle of wolf-man potion in Jimmy’s trophy collection and makes him drink it, but further uses his magic to turn the potion into water. It doesn’t affect Jimmy, but he doesn’t know that. Instead, Mxy places his own curse on Jimmy, one that is immune to the kiss of a beautiful girl. When the sun comes down, Jimmy becomes a wolf-man again. Once more, Superman summons Supergirl to make out with Jimmy in the dark, but it doesn’t work and he’s still stuck as a wolf. The next night, he’s working late at the Planet office when the sun goes down and he once again wolfs out. Lois takes pity on him and gives him a kiss, but once again, nothing happens. On Night Three, Lucy insists on Jimmy taking her to the zoo at night, because that’s apparently something girls did in the 1950s. Jimmy changes again, and this time Lucy kisses him (with her eyes closed, trying to pretend he’s somebody else), but again, no avail. It keeps going – Lori Lemaris, Lana Lang, nobody’s kiss saves him! Until a veiled girl on the street rushes up to him and gives him a smooch that turns him normal again. She whips off her veil to reveal the less-than-gorgeous face of Miss Gzptlsnz, Mxy’s spurned girlfriend, who enchanted her own lipstick to break Mxy’s magic. She tricks Mxy into going home and follows him, then he goes back to Lucy to tell her he’s normal again, but this time she spurns him because he’s kissed too many girls this week.
I have no notes. This story is perfect and, although I haven’t actually looked it up, I assume it won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Sat., Oct. 25
Comics: Superman #143, Action Comics #531, Green Lantern Vol. 8 #27 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Green Lantern Corps Vol. 4 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Green Lantern Vol. 8 #28 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Action Comics #1091, Superman Unlimited #6, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #44
Notes: Today we’re going to spend a little time with Superman and his encounters with my favorite creature of them all – the Frankenstein monster. The creature has been in the public domain since the dawn of comics, and he’s showed up everywhere. In modern times, the DC version has even become a secret agent and adopted the name “Eric Frankenstein.” But we’re going to look at earlier versions this time out, starting with Superman #143: “Bizarro Meets Frankenstein!”
On Bizarro World, the Bizarro kids love Earth movies – terrifying monsters like Charlie Chaplin and comedies starring the likes of the Wolfman and Mummy. But Bizarro #1 is outraged when he sees a commercial advertising a new Frankenstein movie as starring “the world’s scariest monster.” Determined to prove that he, Bizarro, is scarier than Frankenstein, he zips to Earth, scaring the crap out of a Yeti just to prove that he can before he makes his way to Metropolis. First, he finds the actor wearing the monster makeup and chucks him out of the window, then makes his way to the movie set. To his shock, though, instead of being terrified of him, everyone laughs and the actresses even line up to give him kisses. Unbeknownst to him, the director saw Superman on set earlier and told the girls that he must have put on Bizarro makeup to stir up publicity to his Frankenstein movie. I assume this story must take place on an alternate Earth where that kind of logic makes sense.
Bizarro’s attempts to generate terror continue to fail. A few actors on a western set shoot at him to make him dance (having accidentally chewed a loco weed that’s growing on the movie lot) and a couple of kids don’t fear him, but treat him like Santa Claus (Bizarro doesn’t know that the kids’ parents are part of a circus freakshow, so ain’t nothin’ gonna creep them out). Finally, he gets back to the Frankenstein set, where he starts tearing stuff up, but once again, there’s no fear on anyone’s faces. Superman finally drives Bizarro off by playing a recording to make Bizarro think someone is screaming in terror and a static electricity machine to make the actors’ hair stand on end. Back on Bizarro World, Bizarro decides to celebrate Halloween (Dec. 24, of course) with his kids with a marionette of the scariest monster on Earth – Superman.
My goodness, what a delightfully absurd story. Perhaps the funniest thing is that Bizarro himself isn’t the one acting backwards this time. His goal of proving that he’s the scariest monster of them all is actually pretty straightforward, and in truth, is more logical than most of his stories often are. But even for the Silver Age, the set of contrived coincidences that keep people from fearing him over and over again just stack up to a point of utter absurdity. I love this story for what it is, though: ridiculous, cheesy fun.
Action Comics #531gives us “The Devil and the Daily Planet!” Morgan Edge is making preparations to sell the Daily Planet to a sleazy tabloid publisher named Mort Waxman, a decision that has Clark and his colleagues quite upset. As he’s being shown around the building, Waxman is attacked Scooby-Doo style by a ghost who tells him to get out. The staff begins searching the building, and Lois and Clark run afoul of a Frankenstein-type monster dead set on getting Waxman, whom he calls his “creator,” and Jimmy and Perry wind up fighting a horde of demons that attack a mysterious woman in the printing room. The whole thing turns out to be the work of the ghost of the Planet’s original printer’s assistant, who loves the newspaper and refuses to see it destroyed by Waxman. In the end, Edge is convinced that the paper is too important to turn over to a profiteering scum merchant like Waxman, marking one of the few instances in comic book history of Morgan Edge demonstrating something like integrity.
Marv Wolfman and Joe Staton are responsible for this one, and it’s pretty good. This is from 1982, that era when the Superman comics as a whole were kind of stale, but this was a different sort of story. Superman wasn’t quite the hero in this one, facing a supernatural threat where he was confused as anybody else, but the story holds up the ideals of the character very well. I also really like Staton’s Frankenstein Monster – it’s a nice design that is more evocative of the original Mary Shelley novel than the more popular movie rendition, and it really works well for the character here.
In addition to the creepy content, I’m also going to read some of the recent Superman comics today – it’s been a couple of weeks, and I’ve got several of them built up. Action Comics #1091 continues Mark Waid’s Superboy story with Sam Lane trying to capture young Clark. He escapes easily, but the realization that the military is after him leaves Clark rattled, especially since he was sent there by Captain Comet. When he confronts him, Comet tells Clark he knew that Lane would try to catch him and he wanted to see how Superboy would handle a problem he couldn’t simply punch. Clark soon realizes there’s more going on than Adam Blake is telling him. I said an issue or two ago that I hoped Mark Waid wasn’t taking the route of turning Captain Comet, one of DC’s longest running heroes (maybe never an A-list hero, but still a hero) into a villain. The reveal in this issue is really well-planned, and the final pages between Superboy and Captain Comet are magnificent. It’s perfectly in character for both of them, and it’s wonderful to see a story where a Clark this young starts learning the lessons that will make him the greatest hero of them all.
Dan Slott and Rafael Albuquerque (with Mike Norton this time) continue their story in Superman Unlimited #6. A visit to the Kryptonite-rich country of El Cadero to retrieve a Kryptonian sunstone runs into some problems as Clark’s lead suit is ripped open, exposing him to the incredible amount of Kryptonite radiation permeating the country. At that moment, of course, the Kobra operatives choose to take action. This is the sixth issue, the half-year mark of the title, which is traditionally where the first trade paperback collection will end. That makes it a decent time to take stock of where the series as a whole is going. Slott has set up a really interesting status quo, with a potentially hostile nation having control of the largest Kryptonite stockpile on the planet, Superman discovering a new power, and of course, the return of the Supermobile. The last page also is extremely promising, setting up future storylines for a couple of characters who have been underutilized lately. I’m hoping the second half of this title’s first year is as good as its first, because it’s been a strong addition to the Superman family of titles.
Waid is back for Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #44. Superman and Batman decide to send Robin (Dick Grayson – remember, this series is set in the past) to investigate a company that may have ties to LexCorp. Concerned about his safety, though, they ask Supergirl – who hasn’t held the highest opinion of Robin since their disastrous and hilarious date back in issue #12 of this series, to keep an eye on him from a distance. When the facility they’re in turns out to be experimenting with a synthetic Kryptonite, the fight gets a lot harder, and funnier. I absolutely love the antagonistic attraction Waid laces into the interactions of these two characters. It’s a funny dynamic to play up that’s pretty unique in pairings between the Superman and Batman families. I hope, at some point, we get to see Waid write a contemporary story with the two of them to see how the grown-up Nightwing and Supergirl get along these days.
Sun., Oct. 26
Comics: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #142-143, Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #5, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #3, Supergirl Vol. 8 #6, Justice League Red #3, New History of the DC Universe #4
Notes: More monsterly fun begins today with Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #142, part of Jack Kirby’s run, in which Jimmy and Supes meet “The Man From Transilvane!” A vampire called Dragorin casts his spell on Laura Conway, secretary of Jimmy and Clark’s boss, Morgan Edge. When she passes out in the office, they quickly discover her vampiric affliction, and Dragorin appears to interrogate her about her previous employer, Dabney Donovan. Jimmy and Clark go to investigate Donovan’s old lab, where they face off with a werewolf, causing Clark to duck out and Superman to take his place. Together, they figure out that Dragorin is seeking information about a cemetery called Bloodmoor. They track Dragolin to Bloodmoor, where they find his secret – the miniature planet Transilvane, buried beneath his mausoleum! The story continues in issue #143, where we learn that Donovan created the entire planet, complete with its monster-like inhabitants, as one of his experiments. They find Dragorin in what looks like a coffin, but Superman realizes they’re more like decompression chambers, helping them make the transition from Transilvane to Earth. The monsters put Superman in a torture device, hoping to force him to reveal Donovan’s whereabouts. Unfortunately for them, Superman doesn’t know, and also, he’s Superman, so the torture device isn’t all that effective. Donovan’s machines are about to unleash a “Genocide Spray,” cleansing Transilvane’s surface of all life to prepare it for new experiments. Superman manages to stop the spray and send the Transilvanians back home. Together, he and Jimmy figure out that the beings from Transilvane were “copiers” – creatures of a fluid atomic base that transformed into monstrous forms because Donovan flooded their planet with images from horror movies. Superman decides to give them a more peaceful world, and they switch the movie in Donovan’s machine to Oklahoma.
There’s a reason they called Jack Kirby the King of Comics, and I suppose that reason is that no other man on Earth could have gotten away with starting a story by showing a vampire attacking a secretary and ending it by having Superman convert the entire population of a miniature planet into devotees of musical theatre. Kirby had no hesitation to take wild swings, and the more I read of his Jimmy Olsen run, the more convinced I am that this series showcased that better than anything else. Still, for all the fun I’ve had so far this week, I’ve seen relatively few legitimate monsters. There was a robot wrapped up like a mummy, an actor in Frankenstein makeup, kids turned into monsters by Mxy-magic, Jimmy turned into a wolfman without losing his inherent Jimmytude…and now this alien that’s kinda like a vampire. I feel the need for REAL monsters. Fortunately, I’ve got a few more comics lined up that may understand the assignment a little better.
Halfway through the Saints/Buccaneers football game, I decided that if I was going to cry this afternoon it should be for a GOOD reason, so I picked up Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #5. The final issue of Ryan North and Mike Norton’s miniseries is just as flawless as the first four issues as Krypto, still wandering, stumbles upon a family in trouble. Remembering some of the hardships he’s endured since coming to Earth, he comes to their rescue, and then something miraculous happens.
This is, simply put, a beautiful comic book. North has a pipeline right to the heart of the reader, tapping into emotion that greatly outstrips any other comic on the market right now. His Krypto never says a word, but nevertheless proves over and over again what kind of hero he truly is. Norton, meanwhile, is putting forth his A-game in every panel, filling Krypto’s canine face with courage and emotion.
This is the best miniseries of 2025. I’m putting it out there right now. It’s perfect.
Of course, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum may be a close second. The third issue of W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo’s Black Label series starts with a Superman who has been reduced to a teenager after exposure to a new kind of Cobalt Kryptonite, so the Justice League places him in the custody of one of the few people who can relate to what he’s going through: Billy Batson. As Batman tries to seek a cure to the Cobalt K’s effects, he stumbles upon a surprising revelation about the Rainbow Kryptonite in his possession. Billy and Clark, meanwhile, decide to visit a local amusement park that turns out to be a trap set by their respective foes, Dr. Sivana and the Toyman. Hilarity ensues.
Well, not “hilarity,” actually, but “existential drama ensues” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Prince layers his story with the same kind of deep questions and introspective moments that have made Ice Cream Man such a hit, but at the same time, respecting the characters and crafting a tone that feels kind of like the Silver Age taken a bit more seriously. It’s All Star Superman played for drama. And all of that is a good thing.
Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl #6 give us a brand-new Halloween tale. Kara is being plagued by bad dreams about her own past: her time as a Red Lantern, the time she was manipulated by Darkseid, and her own death in Crisis on Infinite Earths. As her friends try to figure out what’s wrong with her, Supergirl faces a demonic being called Nightflame who claims to be a facet of Kara’s own personality. It’s a quick, self-contained story, but there’s a lot to like about it. Campbell reflects a lot of elements of Supergirl’s past that seem to be intended to help differentiate which of her stories and versions are still in continuity these days (in addition to the previous stories I mentioned, her father’s tenure as a Cyborg Superman and the epic events of Woman of Tomorrow are both referenced). I have to wonder if DC disseminated Mark Waid’s notes for The New History of the DC Universe to its writers as they were coming in, because Campbell works hard to reflect the reality that miniseries has given us. But it doesn’t just show us the tough times in Supergirl’s past – it’s a story about a girl who has confronted her own demons and is working past them. For the most part, this series has been pretty lighthearted, but Supergirl is a character who has endured an awful lot of trauma (arguably much more than her cousin) and Campbell isn’t shying away from showing that.
Nightflame, by the way, is yet another Character from Supergirl’s past, and the cover is even an homage to her prior appearance from Adventure Comics #421. You’ve gotta appreciate the attention to detail.
The mystery deepens in Justice League Red #3. As Cyborg and Green Lantern try to save Red Canary from the Church of Blood, Power Girl confronts Red Tornado over the “gift” he offered her at the end of last issue. Red Tornado is starting to come apart – he’s afraid he’s losing his humanity and, at the same time, using his algorithm to try to predict future catastrophic events that his newly-assembled strike force is intended to prevent. But there’s one future – one REALLY bad future – that he’s got his eye on, and this issue he tells us what he’s going to need the team to do. I like the premise here, of Red Tornado putting together a red ops – um, black ops – team that does jobs he can’t divulge to the rest of the Justice League. I just hope writer Saladin Ahmed can pull it off without permanent damage to the character. I suppose it’ll all come down to how the rest of this miniseries shakes out.
Mark Waid finishes up his romp through the multiverse with New History of the DC Universe #4, with Barry Allen bringing us from the events of Blackest Night right up to the most recent events in the DCU. I’m a little surprised that he didn’t try to touch upon the Legion of Super-Heroes more, but I suppose that’s being saved for the regular comics. I did like how the notes at the end touch upon virtually all of the many potential futures of the DC Universe. There are a lot of great characters out there, and it would be kind of a shame to decanonize any of them. The book works well in terms of trying to explain the reason behind the assorted contradictions of DC history, if not explaining the contradictions themselves. By the end of it all, I feel like we have a solid foundation and understanding of just what stories matter, with a real pathway to the future. I’m going to have to go back at some point and read these four issues (and the extensive notes in the end) in one fell swoop.
Notes: There was more blood-sucking goodness to be had in Superman #344 from 1980, “The Monsters Among Us” by Paul Levitz and Curt Swan. Lois and Clark are sent to cover a seance at an old castle that is intended to summon the spirit of mystic Roland Randall on the 50th anniversary of his death. The medium, a blind woman named Cassandra Craft, tells Clark that she senses an “inner strength” to him, something he quickly denies. When the seance begins, Cassandra cries out and faints, waking up to say that Randall’s spirit is terrified of something. Clark spots two figures in the storm raging outside and ducks away so Superman can investigate. The two shapes burst into the room, appearing as Dracula and the Frankenstein monster, and they’re after Cassandra. After a quick battle with Superman the monsters escape, vowing to return. The next day, after a bizarre vignette where the Frankenstein monster steals some cakes from a bakery truck and briefly tousles with Superman, they return to the castle seeking Cassandra. He manages to fight them off, setting the creature on fire and creating a miniature sun with a hydrogen balloon to cripple Dracula. With the monsters out for the count, the Phantom Stranger appears out of nowhere and spirits them away.
No, really, that’s how it ends. No explanation, no rationalization, not even a “to be continued.” Dracula, at least, says something like “Not again!” but that doesn’t actually tell us ANYTHING. On the one hand, I’m glad that Superman actually had the monsters beaten already by the time the deus ex machina showed up, but on the other hand, what the hell, Paul Levitz? A good story with a very frustrating finale.
In Action Comics #577 by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming, Superman faces off with “Caitiff, the first vampire!” The Metropolis Center for Disease Control reports a number of “suspicious deaths.” Seeing a news report promising footage of what’s going on, a creature named Caitiff decides to stop it from airing again on the evening news, which means he’s going to target the WGBS anchor, Clark Kent. Clark, meanwhile, is reluctant to show the footage, which he believes to be the work of a vampire. (Isn’t it refreshing, by the way, that in most of these stories Clark doesn’t waste any time with the whole “vampires aren’t real” nonsense? The man is an alien, his best friend is an Amazon goddess, he frequently does battle with a pint-sized wizard from the fifth dimension – vampire skepticism would be absolutely absurd in the DC Universe.) Caitiff attacks Clark on the air but, as a vampire, his image doesn’t transmit over the broadcast, so he’s visible to the people in the studio. He vanishes into mist and Clark – as Superman – takes after him, further exacerbating the indigestion his frequent disappearances cause his director, Josh Coyne. Superman inhales the mist that makes up the vampire, but Caitiff attacks him psychically, stirring up feelings of immense loneliness and causing Superman to black out long enough for him to escape. He tracks the vampire to a subterranean lair full of desiccated skeletons. At first Superman is horrified, believing them to be Caitiff’s victims, but Caitiff reveals that these are the remains of his own family, his own people, who were exterminated by humans over the years, Catiff is the last of them. He slips away and Superman is left to pity the creature who, like Superman, is the last of his kind.
This is a dark tale, and really genuinely sad. It evokes the feeling of some of the great monster movies like The Wolfman or the original Frankenstein, where the creature comes across less as a demon and more like a victim of circumstance. Caitiff seems to have no true malice within him, only a well-justified fear of humans and their actions towards his kind. The panel where he talks about how human scientists dissected his own child is particularly chilling. This works very well as a sad meditation on humanity, which is something you often get out of good monster stories.
Superman faced a Lord of Darkness yet again in 2002, in Superman #180 by Jeph Loeb, Geoff Johns, and Ian Churchill. Lois, Clark, and Jimmy visit the home of the mysterious Count Rominoff “somewhere in eastern Europe.” Rominoff, an admirer of Lois’s work, has invited them to his castle where he promises a rare interview in light of the recent annexation of a nearby country by General Zod. That night, Lois is roused from her slumber and she roams the grounds, where Superman appears just in time to save her from a werewolf attack, then the appearance of a vampire. She passes out and wakes up in the morning with no memory of the late night excursion, which has Clark understandably worried. That night, as Rominoff’s thrall Elizabeth goes after Jimmy, Rominoff is revealed to be Dracula himself and clashes with Superman over Lois. Dracula reveals that he invited Lois specifically because he wanted to lure Superman to his castle. He uses his magic to hypnotize Superman and bites him, only to find himself suddenly in agonizing pain.
Remember what a vampire’s main weakness is? That’s right, the sun.
Remember Superman’s power source? That’s right. THE SUN.
Biting Superman turns out to be like biting into a solar battery. Dracula howls in pain and disintegrates, and Superman snaps out of it none the worse for the experience. Jimmy, meanwhile, has just managed to escape Elizabeth, but as the Planet staff goes home, we see that Elizabeth has found a new home of her own amongst the Creature Commandos.
The interesting thing about this is that, despite feeling like a mostly one-off story, it’s highly intertwined with plots that were running through the books at the time. The Zod thing is the most obvious part, but we also see that Lois is still bitter at Clark for choosing to save Wonder Woman’s life over that of Lois’s father during the recent Our Worlds at War crossover, and that friction between them persists throughout the issue. On the other hand, even though Superman doesn’t actually “beat” Dracula through his own agency, I absolutely LOVE the way Loeb wraps up the conflict. Connecting Superman’s solar cells to Dracula’s fatal weakness is the sort of little bit of cleverness that makes a story far more enjoyable to me. I’m sure that, in the 23 years since this story was written, Superman MUST have faced another vampire, but I’m not sure if this has come up again. I know it didn’t during the DC Vs. Vampires series, but that’s an Elseworlds. I want to believe this is a canon vampire immunity for the main line.
One last Super-family/Dracula clash came interestingly, in Batgirl #14 from 2010. This issue was part of Bryan Q. Miller’s excellent, underrated Batgirl run, which starred Stephanie Brown and was derailed by the New 52 reboot the following year. But one of the running subplots he had was a friendship between Stephanie and Supergirl. I really enjoyed that, and it’s a shame that they haven’t touched upon it again since Stephanie came back from comic book oblivion a few years ago. In “Terror in the 3rd Dimension,” Kara drops by Gotham City to have a girls’ night with Stephanie. Kara, who was still written as being new to Earth at the time, is in love with Stephanie’s relatively “normal” life, living with her mom and attending college, and she’s hoping to share in some of those experiences. They wind up deciding to take in a 3-D revival of a vampire movie. As they’re watching the film, an experiment at the campus super collider (of COURSE they have a super collider on a college campus in Gotham City) causes several Bela Lugosi-style Draculas to leap from the screen and terrorize the crowd. Batgirl and Supergirl find that the lab’s experiments in “hard light” force fields lasted one second, creating 24 Draculas – one for each frame of the film that played during that second. One of the science students who was behind the experiments gives them a set of control rods that will destabilize them if they, y’know, stake the Draculas through the heart.
It’s the sort of premise that’s so ridiculous that only works if the story KNOWS it’s ridiculous and refuses to take itself seriously. Fortunately, that’s a perfect description of Miller’s run on this book. Sure, it’s a Batman-family book, and sometimes it got dark, but Stephanie herself was kind of the antidote to that. It came out of the time when Bruce Wayne was believed to be dead and Dick Grayson took over as Batman, and the books as a whole were consumed with darkness. This title specifically, and her friendship with Supergirl in particular, made this feel like a light in that darkness. You’ve probably seen Mike Maihack’s delightful Supergirl/Batgirl comics online (how DC has yet to commission this man to do a graphic novel is beyond me). Although that’s the Barbara Gordon Batgirl instead of Stephanie, it’s got a similar tone to this book, and the relationship between our two heroines is lovely. Somebody pass this issue over to Sophie Campbell – I want this dynamic back.
DC’s latest crossover event has also begun, and it’s time to play a little catch-up on DC KO. The time-tossed heroes from the Omega Act special have come with dire news. Darkseid has placed a “Heart of Apokalips” at the center of Earth, something that will overrun the planet with Omega Energy and give Darkseid the power to reshape reality as he wishes. The only hope is for one of the Justice League to take it first – and the only way to get through it is through personal combat with one another, for reasons that writer Scott Snyder explains much better than I can here. Is it a comic book-y type of excuse to have a bunch of heroes fight each other? Heck no! Because the bad guys find out about it and sneak their way into the tournament, so it’s a comic book-y type of excuse to have a bunch of heroes AND villains fight each other!
That’s snarky, I know, because it’s all a little convoluted, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. Snyder does a really good job of selling the stakes and having the heroes prepare to do battle with each other without it seeming out of character. There are even some nice surprises in this one, including one character who doesn’t make it into the first round of the contest, something that’s going to surprise everyone. So far so good.
The spin-offs are hitting as well. In Titans #28, the Titans are tasked with evacuating Earth, assisted by Jonathan Kent. Superman #31, meanwhile, is not only tying into the crossover, but seriously paying off the assorted storylines that have been going on in this title since DC All-In started. Before leaving for the KO tournament, Superman consults the simulation of Jor-El at the Fortress of Solitude for any knowledge Krypton may have had about Darkseid and the Omega Energy. Failing that, he helps coordinate LexCorp’s resources – along with Brainiac’s miniaturization tech – to help facilitate the evacuation of Earth. After he leaves, Lois isn’t satisfied and makes her way to the Fortress to interview Jor-El herself. Her conversation with the Kryptonian archives brings unexpected fruit, and a surprise visitor to the Fortress turns everything on its head. It’s always nice, during these crossover events, when it feels as though the story has been planned out. Ever since the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, events have been plagued by “red skies” crossovers – issues with the event labelling but nothing to do with the story except the color of the sky to indicate something big is happening elsewhere. This feels like the opposite of that – a comic that has told its own story very well, but at the same time, contributes to the overall crossover AND uses it to extend its own storylines. It’s great stuff.
Tues., Oct. 28
Comics: DC’s Zatannic Panic (Cameo), DCU Halloween Special #1 (2008), Taste of Justice #15 (Starring Jimmy Olsen)
Notes: Let’s close off this week with some seasonal stuff, starting with the annual DC Halloween special. This year, the marketing people who come up with the titles for these things continue to earn their paycheck with Zatannic Panic, which – shockingly – has no stories starring anyone from the Superman family. Superman DOES make a brief appearance in the delightful Ambush Bug story that serves as a nice meta-commentary on the Halloween special as a whole, but that ain’t enough for me. So I dipped back into the DC Infinity archives and pulled out the 2008 DCU Halloween Special, a title that would last for three years, then fade away before the annual specials returned in the Rebirth era with a different wild title each year. (My favorite, by the way, is still the 2021 special, Are You Afraid of Darkseid?)
The 2008 special – hosted Cryptkeeper-style by the late Ralph and Sue Dibney – starts off with a Superman story. In “Deadline: Halloween” by Mike Johnson and Tony Shasteen, Clark is working late after the Daily Planet Halloween party, where Perry warns Clark to take it easy before he ends up like “Old Man McCampbell,” an old reporter who died before finishing his last story. Clark hears some odd noises, and when he investigates, he finds himself facing what appear to be ghosts of some of his greatest enemies. After getting knocked around a little, a ghostly Lex Luthor pulls him into a framed newspaper, which changes to a picture of Clark with the headline “Reporter Missing.” With him tapped in the paper, the ghost of McCampbell appears and commandeers Clark’s computer to finally finish his last story. Clark awakens at his computer, believing he finished his story in his sleep, then goes home where he greets a trio of trick-or-treaters dressed like Batman who mock Clark’s fake-looking Superman costume.
The nature of these specials sometimes works against the stories being told. I feel like there’s a good story here, something that would have worked well in a longer tale, but in seven pages there’s not enough buildup, not enough development of the McCampbell ghost to really feel like we’ve got a satisfying payoff. Looks like I will, yet again, have to seek some Super Halloween content elsewhere.
Animated Short: Krypto Saves the Day: Halloween Havoc
Notes: The second of the new DC Studios Krypto shorts just happens to be Halloween-themed, and even though it dropped a few weeks ago, I held off on watching it until this week so I could include it as a seasonally-appropriate addition to the blog. Halloween Havoc, written and directed by David Gemmill, in this one Clark Kent (dressed as Frankenstein) realizes he’s running low on Halloween candy and leaves Krypto in charge while he goes out to get more. This turns out to be a drastic mistake as Krypto is almost immediately distracted by a black cat and goes, once again, on a citywide chase trying to get his quarry, causing havoc (hey, I bet THAT’S where the title comes from!) and potentially ruining Halloween for children everywhere in the process.
Like the first short, “School Bus Scuffle,” this one is really cute and clever. The gags land and there are even a couple of Easter Eggs for DC Comics fans who are paying attention. The final punchline is perfect, and even helped to answer a concern I found myself thinking about as the short went on. And special mention has to go to musical composer Paul Fraser, who I imagine was given the instructions “Make it sound like The Munsters, but not enough to get sued.”
After two chase scene shorts, though, I’m very curious about the other two that haven’t dropped yet. Will they go in a different direction next time, or is Krypto going to be DC Studios’ answer to Tom and Jerry, every episode being a chaotic and futile effort to get his quarry before realizing the error of his ways and proving himself to be a good boy at the very end?
Hope you’ve enjoyed “Superman Meets the Monsters” week, friends. There are still three days left in October as I write this, but the next blog isn’t scheduled to be posted until Nov. 5, so I’m not going to do any more Halloween focus – although you may still get bits and pieces. Hope you all have a fun, safe, and (dare I say it?) SUPER Halloween!
The whole “What Qualifies as a Christmas Movie” debate has been at a fever pitch for several years now. Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Iron Man 3 – each of these has defenders ranging from people who genuinely appreciate their holiday content for what it is to edgelords who think they’re somehow better than other people by picking Riggs and Murtaugh over Rudolph and Frosty. Strangely, though, Halloween has never really fallen victim to this sort of heated, brutal, occasionally family-schisming battle royale. People are eager to accept certain movies as part of their standard Halloween fare even if nothing in the film has any direct ties to the holiday. And I think we should embrace that philosophy.
Art.
Some of my favorite movies fall into this category. As anyone who has seen the posters in my living room knows, one of my favorite movies of all time is Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I love the Universal Monsters, I love Bud and Lou, and this film fused those two brands at their respective heights into a hilarious film that nevertheless holds up the Universal Monsters as icons that they are. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula! Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolfman! Glenn Strange’s Frankenstein Monster! (Okay, it stinks that they couldn’t get Boris Karloff to come back to the play the monster one last time, but of all the actors who wore the makeup for Universal, Strange was #2 after Karloff.) And I watch this movie at LEAST once every October as part of my Halloween wind-up. There’s a masquerade party in the third act, but it’s not specifically noted as being a Halloween party, and the film doesn’t seem to have any indication of what time of year it takes place. But the gestalt of having the finest incarnations of the Universal Monsters is enough to place it on my list.
That’s one of the great things about Halloween – the inclusivity of the concept. You can get away with almost anything as a Halloween costume, even if what you’re dressing as has no Halloween link. You can be a superhero or a princess, you can make a costume based on a pun, you can be a character from your favorite TV show or you can dress up as your friend who you know is going to be at the same party and watch them stew about it as you imitate their mannerisms flawlessly. All of it counts. And because of that, it’s much easier for a character or a movie to be elevated to iconic Halloween status even if there’s nothing strictly Halloweenish about them.
My other top two movie franchises that fall into this category are, of course, Ghostbusters and Scream. None of the Ghostbusters films take place at Halloween, and Scream didn’t touch upon the holiday until the sixth installment, but both of them are eagerly accepted as standard Halloween costumes now, much like any other Universal Monster, 80s slasher, or Beetlejuice. And, in fact, I try to work them into my Halloween viewing rotation almost every year. (If I don’t get around to Ghostbusters I’ll save it for December – Ghostbusters II is a New Year’s movie, after all.)
Halloween movies are like pumpkin spice. Pumpkin spice doesn’t actually taste like pumpkin, it tastes like cinnamon and the other assorted ingredients you add to a squash to make it taste like a pie instead of…well…a squash. Similarly, there are a lot of great movies that may not have any Halloween ingredients to them, but nevertheless, deliver hard on the Halloween flavor.
The Stuff (1985)
Still can’t get enough.
I remember seeing the poster for this in the video store every time my parents took us there to pick out a few movies when I was a kid. I knew my mom would never let me rent stuff like this, but it never stopped me from looking at the poster and wondering what it was all about. Once I was old enough to seek out the movies I wanted myself, I found that this Larry Cohen film was ridiculous and delightful at the same time. “Mo” Rutherford (Michael Moriarity) is hired by a dairy company to investigate a new product called “The Stuff,” a creamy substance that is obliterating sales of ice cream and other traditional desserts. Nobody knows what’s in it or what it’s made of, and when Mo learns the truth, the answers are horrifying. The Stuff has the feel of a 50s sci-fi alien invasion movie, it’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers mixed with The Blob mixed with a Baskin-Robbins commercial. The tone is perfectly appropriate to blend in with your Halloween viewing – silly and over-the-top with an antagonist that is absurd on the face of it. As far as Halloween costume potential goes, there’s not really an iconic character for you to dress up as, but if you were to whip up a costume that looks like a “Stuff” carton, you’ll immediately figure out who the cool kids at your Halloween party are. If nothing else, this movie is the quintessential argument for food nutrition labels.
Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988)
Pictured: 2016.
True story: Last year on November 1st, after Spirit Halloween put everything at 50 percent off, my wife picked up the 12-foot inflatable Jumbo the Clown from this, one of her favorite cheesy movies. Jumbo sat in his box in the closet until this September, when I told her it was time to test out our Halloween decorations to make sure they still worked and she remembered buying this thing. It wasn’t until he was plugged in for the first time that we realized just how tall 12 feet actually is.
Eddie for scale.
Totally worth it, though, because this movie is a delight. In Killer Klowns, alien clowns come to Earth and begin abducting people in cotton candy traps and taking them to their ship, which happens to resemble a circus tent. The story is ostensibly about a bunch of young people who band together to fight them off, but nobody is watching the movie for the humans. The clowns are the stars, lovingly created by the Chiodo Brothers in a fashion that evokes the finest puppet work of the Jim Henson company. The Chiodos actually repainted and reused some of the clowns a few years later for the trolls in a legit Halloween classic, Ernest Scared Stupid.
It may not be a Halloween movie per se, but there are few things in the world that feel more Halloweenish than a good ol’ creepy clown, and the ones from this movie are some of the best. The iconic looks make for great costumes, and the movie itself is a ton of fun.
It (All versions)
Georgie for scale.
Similar to the Killer Klowns, Stephen King’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown is one of those characters that feels as perfectly suited to Halloween as Ebenezer Scrooge does to Christmas. The Creepy Clown Coefficient is in full effect here, whether you’re looking at Tim Curry from the 1990 TV miniseries or Bill Skarsgard from the 2017 and 2019 films and the new Welcome to Derry streaming series. Pennywise isn’t silly like the Killer Klowns, of course. He’s a much darker threat and can be legitimately frightening, whereas it’s hard to imagine anyone being anything but charmed by the Chiodos’ creations. The movies lean on the darker side of Halloween, but that’s okay. The darker side is more pronounced here than in any other holiday, and that’s kind of what we love about it.
The Addams Family (All Versions)
If Taylor Swift had referenced Gomez and Morticia in her songs instead of Romeo and Juliet, maybe she would have made something of herself.
I wonder what Charles Addams would think if he could see the cultural phenomenon his little one-panel gag comics have become. The original Addams family came from a series of comic strips that mixed comedy with macabre elements of a monster movie, and although some of the characters became regulars, they didn’t have names or distinct personalities until they were adapted into a TV series in 1964. While it was a popular enough show, and fondly remembered, Addams died before the property really exploded with the 1991 film starring Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci. Since then we’ve had multiple cartoons, three live action films, two animated movies, a Broadway musical, and a new streaming series focusing on the Addams’ daughter Wednesday. But although Wednesday may be the breakout star, virtually every member of the family has become iconic. Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Cousin It, even Pugsley all have a distinct, unique look to them, and you can throw on any of the movies or any of the assorted TV shows and get a beautiful blend of creepy and comedy that is a perfect fit for the season.
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Because this is what it feels like going to WORK, amirite?
Edgar Wright’s comedic send-up of zombie movies has the perfect sense of scary and silly that you’re looking for. Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a retail jockey struggling with a girlfriend who wants more out of life than he seems willing to give, a mother whose husband he constantly clashes with, and a best friend who is enabling his arrested development more than anything else. He’s ALREADY living like a zombie even before the dead start to rise. Like a lot of the all-time great horror/comedies, Shaun works because the zombies themselves are played absolutely straight – nothing silly or goofy about them. The human characters, however, are funny and highly relatable. One could make an argument for virtually any zombie movie as being part of your Halloween rotation, but I’ve always felt that the more comedic ones fit in more with the fun of the holiday. And although there are plenty of zombie comedies out there, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that this is probably the best. It’s definitely the most iconic. Zombie costumes are easy, but cosplaying as the HERO of a zombie movie is often tough – they are, by the standards of the genre, usually kind of dull, generic, everyman types. But you can cosplay Shaun easily – a white shirt, crimson tie, a nametag, and a cricket bat are all you need. And make sure to get a little red on you.
Labyrinth (1986)
Where the hell is Fozzie?
Jim Henson’s fantasy film from 1986 may have flopped at the box office, but today the fans are devoted, dedicated, and legion. A young Jennifer Connelly plays Sarah, a teenage girl whose frustration at babysitting her infant brother inadvertently leads to his abduction by Jareth, the Goblin King (David Bowie). But Jareth offers her a chance to get him back – make her way to the Goblin City at the center of his remarkable Labyrinth before time runs out and she can take him home. The film is lavish and gorgeous. The characters, too, are memorable and loveable, with some of the finest work Jim Henson’s creature shop ever did. Even the bad guys have distinct personalities and witticisms that make them a joy to watch. And as the movie, technically, is all about monsters, it gives off those Halloween vibes any time of year.
There you have it, friends, a few non-Halloween flicks that you can throw into your rotation and feel perfectly seasonal. What are some of your favorites?
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. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He didn’t mention the Munsters because lord knows he doesn’t feel like stirring up THAT can of worms yet again. The scars still haven’t healed from the last time.
“Evil Superman” has become a popular trope. In movies, video games, and – of course – comic books, people love to pick into the greatest hero in fiction and postulate what would happen in a world where he WASN’T a hero. I suppose it’s an extension of the Lex Luthor mindset, really – some people simply cannot fathom the notion that somebody with Superman’s powers would REALLY use them to do good. As such, they instead rewrite the world so that the hero is the bad guy. When done poorly, it’s tiresome and stale. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done well. This week, we’re going to take a look at some of the stories that have turned Superman bad and others where we see a faux Superman that goes down the wrong path.
TV Episodes: Justice League Season 2, Episodes 11-12, “A Better World” Parts 1 and 2.
Notes: In this classic two-parter, we begin with the Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman assaulting the White House where President Lex Luthor is in control. After battling his way to Oval Office, Superman hesitates as Luthor mocks him, telling him that he’s never had the guts to stop him the only way that could work for sure. Downstairs, Batman and Wonder Woman catch a whiff of something burning. When they find Superman in the slag of Luthor’s office, the president dead, Superman smiles and says he feels “great.”
We realize quickly that this isn’t OUR League, but we watch this group – the Justice Lords – as they take over their world and impose a strict, fascistic regime without the time for luxuries like elections. As they impose their will, their Batman finds a portal to other dimensions, glimpsing our world, where they’re surprised to see that the Flash is still alive, unlike in their universe. They decide to “help” the other world by extending their regime, and cut into our universe to capture our Justice League, leaving their Batman behind to keep things in line. With our League taken out of the picture, the Justice Lords begin to impose their own version of justice on a second world.
Our League manages to escape on the Lords’ world and begins looking for a way home, which finally comes when our Batman convinces theirs to turn. Their Batman concedes that the death of their Flash was a turning point, and that losing their group’s conscience sent them the wrong way. The League returns to their own world, engaging their counterparts in battle. As the League and the Lords battle, the evil Superman hesitates when he’s confronted by the Flash. Although he’s ready to kill this remnant of his conscience, he’s stopped when our Superman arrives with the concession he decided to make rather than lethal force – he’s brought his Lex Luthor along with a power disruptor that allows them to stop the Lords and send them home. The kicker is that, in exchange for his help, Luthor has been given a full pardon for his crimes. At the end of the episode, he announces that he’s given thought to trying his hand as politics.
This is an excellent two-parter, and it really does have Superman at the core of it. The Justice Lords version of the character is cold and bitter, but at the same time you get the sense that he was once not that different from the Superman that we know. That’s the trick that a lot of the “evil Superman” stories miss – they start out with a character so removed from the real Superman that any commentary they’re attempting to make falls flat. Although we don’t actually see the Flash’s death in their world, it’s easy enough to imagine that moment of darkness (in a universe that is otherwise relatively bright, Batman: The Animated Series notwithstanding) would be a breaking point for a Justice League that had been forced to endure too much. We wouldn’t ever accept a “real” Superman behaving this way, but the story is structured such that we buy it from the “other” Superman.
There are other nice moments in here as well. I’d forgotten that this was the episode that specifically pointed Lex Luthor down the road to his presidential run in this version of the DC Universe. It’s also kind of fun, I have to admit, to watch the Justice Lords facing off against the likes of Doomsday. The glimpses of the villains of the other world – a Joker and Poison Ivy who seem to have been essentially lobotomized – are really chilling when you compare them to the versions of the characters we know. It’s the old morality debate here – this brainwashed Joker is inarguably less dangerous than the one we usually see, but is it worth the price of a hero’s soul to make it happen? (This two-parter, it should be mentioned, originally aired in 2003 – one year before the main DC Universe would grapple with this same question in-continuity in the Identity Crisis storyline.)
But I think the gold star for this episode has to go to – you know it – the second-greatest character in the whole Superman mythology. Even before people realize that the Justice League has been replaced by their evil counterparts, Lois Lane sniffs out that something is wrong and, bold as brass, gives Justice Lord Superman a verbal cutdown that shows what she’s really made of. I’d like to think that even Justice Lord Superman admired her a little bit for that.
All that said…despite the fact that he’s a Superman gone wrong, I have to admit that Justice Lord Superman’s black-and-white costume is actually pretty sharp.
Comics:Aquaman Vol. 9 #9 (Guest-Star)
Thur., Oct. 16
Comics: Injustice: Gods Among Us #1-6
Notes: In 2013 we got the video game Injustice: Gods Among Us, and while it would be kind of neat to include a video game playthrough here in the Year of Superman, I’m not really a gamer. I don’t own a console and I wouldn’t even know where to look for this game 12 years later. But I read the tie-in comic written by Tom Taylor, which turned out to be way better than it really had any right being.
I don’t have time to read the entire five years’ worth of the comic for this project, so I’m going to stick to the six issues (or 18 of the digital comic, where it actually premiered) collected in the first trade paperback. It’s worth noting, though, that the entire first year of the series is available in DC’s handy-dandy Compact Comics edition, and it’s worth checking out.
The story begins as tragically as you can possibly imagine. On the night that Superman tells Batman that Lois Lane is pregnant, she is abducted (while working on a case, of course) by the Joker and Harley Quinn. They also murder Jimmy Olsen, but people forget that part. Batman mobilizes the League to try to track them down and Superman finds them on a submarine, where somehow they’ve managed to corral Doomsday. As Superman battles his foe, the rest of the League arrives and Batman unlocks the Joker’s real scheme: he’s blended some of the Scarecrow’s fear toxin with Kryptonite, making Superman susceptible. Superman believes he’s bringing Doomsday into orbit, but it’s really his own wife. The icing on the cake is that the Joker rigged a nuclear device in Metropolis to Lois’s heart. When she dies in outer space, Superman’s entire city is engulfed in a mushroom cloud.
This is, arguably, the nastiest Joker of any world in the Multiverse. And it just gets worse from there.
In issue two, Superman gives Lois’s body to Diana and takes off to Gotham, where Batman has taken the Joker. The rage has overtaken Superman, and he rips the Joker’s heart out in front of the Dark Knight. Green Arrow, meanwhile, finds Harley and takes her captive in his Arrowcave. Superman, consumed with grief and guilt, decides to never allow any tragedy to happen again. He starts in the country of Bialya, stopping a war and bringing its president to the United Nations, where he reveals his “Earth name” WAS Clark Kent, and that he’s going to stop all hostilities everywhere in the world, whether the world likes it or not.
Issue three shows us the government response: worried about Superman overreaching, they recruit Mirror Master to abduct Jonathan and Martha Kent. Rather than keeping Superman in check, though, the League mobilizes behind him in a rescue attempt. In Quaraq, meanwhile, one of the few places that has ignored Superman’s call for a cease-fire, Ares makes himself known in battle against Wonder Woman, a battle that does not go well for the God of War. Issue four is where things really start to go wrong – as Superman confronts Batman over the years he let the Joker live, a Japanese whaling fleet is attacked by forces of Atlantis. The League faces off against Aquaman, who intends to resist what he calls Superman’s coming reign, but Superman replies by having the League uproot Atlantis and drop it in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Aquaman buckles, and Superman has Batman’s Justice League communicator disconnected. The message is clear.
Issue five has the League put down a protest in Australia in a way that leaves the Flash shaken to his core, then decide it’s time to get rid of the Arkham inmates for the good of the world. When they arrive, Batman and Nightwing stand against them, but Robin decides to join Superman’s cause. As the two sides face off, Batman activates a virus he implanted in Cyborg years ago to immobilize him and reduce the League’s advantage. At the same time, Green Arrow has decided to bring Harley back to Arkham, but she takes advantage of the chaos to break out and start a prison riot. Robin, lashing out in the midst of the riot, accidentally killing Nightwing. This is, in many ways, the point of no return. Up until now, there was still the possibility of a peaceful resolution, but Dick Grayson’s death causes a schism that cannot be bridged. Superman and his Justice League – including Robin – begin consolidating power across the world, while Batman and Catwoman begin gathering a resistance movement against him.
Tom Taylor is a pretty big name in comics now, having a legendary run writing Nightwing under his belt, amongst his other triumphs. But I think it was his work on this series that really got him the attention he deserved. This story shares a lot of DNA with Kingdom Come, having virtually the same inciting incident, only amplified. But whereas Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s story showed a Superman who retreated from the world, Taylor’s version (the video game version, to be clear) decides to push his agenda forwards. That’s how “bad Superman” stories usually go, of course. They take what Lex Luthor claims is his greatest fear about Superman and make it fact, showing him imposing his will on a world that is helpless to resist.
What makes Taylor’s story better than most of those is the nuance. His Injustice is a remarkably slow burn, beginning five years before the events of the video game and showing everything that leads up to it. What’s more, Superman (at least at this point) is still a sympathetic character. Like Magneto and Dr. Doom, one of the things that makes him a compelling antagonist is the fact that the reader can understand his motivations, even if they can’t condone his actions. And as Superman’s humanity is slowly chipped away, we get moments where he keeps trying to bring it back. For example, after Nightwing’s death, Superman is the one who goes to Catwoman and urges her to go to Batman, knowing that he’ll need someone. It’s subtext, but the story feels like Superman is trying to get her to save Bruce before he loses his own humanity the way that Clark Kent has. Batman, on the flipside, isn’t painted as flawless – he makes his own errors in judgment — such as the virus he uses against Cyborg — which may not contribute to the tragedy directly, but at the very least hastenes it.
Of all the “dark Superman” stories that have been told, this is one of the smartest, most intelligent ones, one of the ones that goes down the dark path without utterly betraying the character. And if you’re the kind of person who wants to sit down for a long read, there’s plenty here – a full five years of comics, plus assorted annuals, spin-offs, and a sequel that went with the second video game. I haven’t even finished them all, but re-reading this first volume has put them back on my radar to get to the end of the story. Because despite preferring my Superman in the light, this story is honestly very good.
Fri. Oct. 17
Movie: Brightburn (2019)
Notes: Today we’re going to get to one of the first Superman “analogues” I’m going to be covering this week. While DC can – and obviously has – told their own stories of a Superman gone wrong, that hasn’t stopped other storytellers from putting their own spin on the concept with characters that aren’t REALLY Superman, but come on, let’s be honest here. One such character is Brandon Breyer, the main character of director David Yaroevsky’s 2019 film Brightburn. The story starts out in a VERY familiar way: a farm couple in Brightburn, Kansas, Kyle and Tori Breyer (David Denman and Elizabeth Banks), find a baby that seems to have fallen from the stars, and as they’ve been unable to conceive a child of their own, they take him in as their own. When Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) is about 12 years old, though, he begins acting oddly – mumbling in strange tongues as he struggles to open a door in the floor of the cellar, then waking up with no memory of what he was doing. Later, as he struggles with the motor of a stubborn lawnmower, Brandon finds himself strong enough to hurl it across the pasture and suffers no injury when he places his hand in the spinning blade.
The first real sign of trouble is when his aunt and uncle give him a rifle for his birthday. When his father takes the gift away, insisting that he doesn’t want him to have a gun at that age, Brandon pounds the table, disrupting the entire restaurant, and they bring him home. Later, after finding some disquieting literature under his mattress, Kyle tries to have “the talk” with him. It doesn’t go well. Brandon begins using his powers to stalk and harass a girl from school, later breaking her hand, and the chickens on the farm are found mutilated, although Tori insists it must be the work of a wolf. Although Tori continues to defend him, Kyle is growing increasingly terrified of his son, who has never been hurt, but now seems to be hurting others.
Finding a spacecraft in the cellar, Brandon insists Tori tell him the truth about where he came from, and she tells him a story that could have come word-for-word from Martha Kent. But rather than accepting his truth with the usual grace we’ve come to expect from Clark, Brandon lashes out, outraged at his parents for lying to him for his entire life. A message from the spacecraft echoes in Brandon’s head until he finally translates it into English: “Take the world.”
This moment happens a little less than halfway into the film, and from there, it’s a straight slide into darkness. Brandon uses his powers to begin taking his revenge on those he views as having wronged him, wearing a hand-stitched hood and cape he designed himself, but which makes him look more like a horror movie icon than a superhero. And this, to me, is where it really gets interesting. The film takes the familiar superhero tropes and approaches them from a completely different angle. Just how terrifying WOULD it be if someone – especially a petulant child – had Clark Kent’s powers but not Clark Kent’s ETHICS? The result is a movie that takes the elements of a superhero origin and instead applies them to a story that plays out like a slasher movie instead. Nobody is safe, not even Brandon’s parents. The whole package is suitably and appropriately chilling, and it leaves you coming away with an appreciation for the character we actually have. I’ve often said that the luckiest thing that ever happened in the DC Universe is that Kal-El’s rocket was found by Jonathan and Martha Kent instead of somebody else. This movie really drives that point home.
This movie has a very interesting pedigree, but only in retrospect. It’s written by Mark and Brian Gunn, cousin and brother (respectively) of one James Gunn, who also produced this movie several years before he got the job of running DC Studios and making what is perhaps the brightest, most optimistic Superman movie of all time. The film also includes a lot of James Gunn’s usual staple of actors – he’d worked with Elizabeth Banks and Michael Rooker before in Slither, Denman and Rooker appeared in season two of Peacemaker, Stephen Blackehart and Terence Rosemore played some of Lex Luthor’s entourage in Superman, and future Peacemaker regulars Steve Agee and Jennifer Holland (who married James Gunn a few years later) both have small roles in this one. As a fan of Gunn’s work in general, I always enjoy seeing members of his entourage turn up.
The first part of the film clings pretty close to the Superman pattern. If you filmed the scenes with less ominous lighting or more upbeat music, you could use the same dialogue in a Superman origin movie. What’s more, they take pains to show that the Breyers aren’t bad people. They’re parents trying to do the best they can in what turn out to be truly unprecedented circumstances. Tori even talks about how her own parents neglected her, and how she’s determined not to let her own child feel that way. But the child they’re trying to raise is unlike any other, and once his powers begin to develop, it quickly spins out of their control. The Breyers, from what we could see, weren’t BAD parents, although once Kyle starts realizing how bad things are, he starts to freak out and make some…let’s say “questionable” decisions. But the Kents were EXCEPTIONAL parents, capable of taking a godling and making him a force for good. There also seems to be an element of Bad Seed-ism in here as well. Although the psychic influence of his spacecraft was certainly a factor, the film gives us the impression that Brandon was fated for darkness no matter what.
Ultimately, the difference between Brandon Breyer and Clark Kent is that Brandon views himself as “special,” and in his mind, that places him above everybody else. Clark, on the other hand, views himself as human first, and doesn’t consider himself above ANYBODY, which makes the things he’s capable of all the more miraculous and amazing.
The film ends with a bit of a sequel hook, implying that this universe also plays home to dark, twisted versions of Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and possibly others. It’s a little surprising that it hasn’t been followed up anywhere. I suppose the notion of a superhuman serial killing child is a bit of a non-starter for a major franchise, which is probably why most of these dark Supermen wait until adulthood to break bad. It seems unlikely that James Gunn would touch this world again any time soon – he’s a little too busy shepherding the real DC Universe to spend much time on its evil mirror counterpart. But if someone were to come back to this world, I enjoyed this movie enough to want to see where it would go next.
Comics: Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #15, Action Comics #3, Justice League of America #32, DC Comics Presents #72
Sat., Oct. 18
Comics: The Boys #19-22
Notes: Garth Ennis is kind of an odd duck. An acclaimed comic book writer, he also has a very vocal and open disdain for superheroes. In fact, most of his superhero work has been intended to deconstruct and mock the genre. Despite this, though, he DOES have an affection for a very small number of characters, among them, Superman. Early this year, in fact, I covered an issue of his DC series Hitman, which was as tender and effusive a love letter to Superman as you could ever want to read.
However, his series The Boys is as brutal a condemnation of the superhero genre as one could ever want to read. Both the comic and the hit Amazon Prime franchise based on it are about a group of super-powered “heroes” that are as petty, cruel, and evil as any villain you can name, and the titular outsider group that is dedicated to destroying them is only barely better. Many of the “heroes” in the book are clear parodies of DC or Marvel characters, including the leader, an obvious Evil Superman type called Homelander. Due to the popularity of the TV show, Homelander is probably the best-known of all the bad Supermen out there, and I felt like I had to include him, but it’s not easy to distil exactly what makes him such a miserable excuse for a human being into one comic or story – to get the full picture of what a bastard he is you really need to read the entire series. But for the sake of discussion, I decided to go with the four-part “I Tell You No Lie, G.I.” from The Boys #19-22.
In this four-parter Hughie – the newest member of the Boys and the point of view character for most of the series – is told the history of superpowers in their universe. Without getting too deep into the lore of a series you may not have read, here’s the short version. Although the public is told stories of standard superhero origin stories, the truth is that Homelander and the rest of his team, the Seven, are powered by a substance called Compound V developed by their corporate sponsor, Vought-American. Rather than using their powers to rule the world, though, Vought is smart enough to use them for corporate supremacy – more money and less resistance. But the plan is angling towards weaponizing supers for the military, which we’re told is related to one of the big questions of the series to date – the reason there’s no more Brooklyn Bridge. In this universe, the events of Sept. 11, 2001 went somewhat differently. While some of the planes that were on their murderous trajectory were shot down, the Seven were sent in to divert one of them – and that turned out to be a disaster.
Homelander and Queen Maeve (this world’s answer to Wonder Woman) go into one plane to stop the terrorists, and instead just prove how utterly incompetent they are. Homelander, spewing racist slurs, pulverizes the terrorists in the cockpit into paste, but realizes too late that nobody there knows how to land an airplane. What’s more, attempts to catch the plane don’t work because the world of The Boys adheres at least somewhat more closely to actual physics than your usual comic book universe. And while things like saving the spaceplane in John Byrne’s Man of Steel or Brandon Routh’s rescue of the plane in Superman Returns make for great stories, the truth is that a real airplane would completely fall apart if someone tried to “catch” it the way that superheroes do so frequently. As the passengers on the plane plead for help, Homelander abandons them to their fate of spiraling into the doomed bridge.
The history lesson is intercut with scenes in the present day of the series, where Homelander is having a bit of a summit with Butcher, leader of the Boys, over some of the recent hostilities between the two groups and how their peace accords have been breached. In the course of this, Homelander is trying to find out why Butcher seems to hate him so much – not supers in general, but him SPECIFICALLY. Turns out that Homelander had a history with Butcher’s wife, something that ended poorly to say the least and gave him the fuel for Butcher’s hatred of Supes that was one of the building blocks of the entire series.
Although I don’t typically agree with Ennis’s pessimistic, nihilist stories, that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the fact that he’s good at what he does. The Boys is a well-crafted, brilliantly-scripted takedown of the superhero concept in general. Homelander specifically, though, doesn’t feel like Ennis is attacking Superman. Sure, in the world of the comic (and TV show) the public looks at him the same way that the people of Metropolis look up to Superman, but the character himself shares little with our hero except for a powerset. He never had a real childhood, as he’s just a product of Vought-American. Despite his power, he never really had much agency of his own, never really had a chance at heroism. He was only what his corporate masters made out of him. While Brightburn showed us how a Superman could go bad, Homelander is more of an amplification of what nihilistic people THINK Superman would be in the real world, as opposed to who he really is. Fans love to debate what would happen if Superman and Homelander ever got into a fight. The answer is really simple: Superman would stop Homelander from doing whatever it is that needs to be stopped, the entire time consumed with disappointment that somebody with such incredible gifts would waste them on being so selfish.
Sun., Oct. 19
Comic Book:Batman: The Devastator #1
Notes: In 2017 DC had one of Its frequent crisis events. This one, Dark Knights: Metal, revealed the existence of a “dark multiverse,” in which the different worlds played host to alternate versions of our DC heroes, but these were versions that specifically went “wrong.” I always found that concept sort of funny– there are plenty of worlds in the “bright” multiverse that aren’t exactly a basket full of kittens, after all. But this series gave DC a chance to take some wild swings. This included a series of one-shots starring Batman (because that’s where the money is) “merging” with different characters in some way or another, and those mergers had some gut-wrenching consequences. The Devastator was the book that gave us a dark knight that influenced by a man of steel (sort of) to disastrous results.
In the world featured in this issue (Earth Minus One), Superman went bad. Nobody ever found out how or why, which the Batman playing narrator tells us is the most frightening thing of all, but he went on a murderous rampage, slaughtering not only his world’s heroes, but even his own wife, that world’s Lois Lane. This, Batman tells us, is the point where hope was lost, and Batman decided the only way to stop Superman was to transform himself into the only one who’d ever beaten him: Doomsday. His plan succeeds – he kills the evil, rampaging Superman. But the transformation leeches any vestiges of hope and compassion from him, leaving a creature who – like Doomsday – sees reality purely in terms of threats that need to be eliminated. It gets worse when he’s approached by the Batman Who Laughs, another dark multiversal denizen who is a hideous amalgamation of Bruce Wayne and the Joker. He asks the Devastator Batman if he would like a shot at a world where people still think Superman is a hero, someone to admire…our world.
The Devastator comes to Earth-0 and, pretending to be our Bruce Wayne, infects our Lois with the same Doomsday virus that he used to transform himself. As she struggles against her transformation, she throws her son Jon (still ten years old at this point) into a Kryptonian-proof panic room she and Clark had built in preparation for the worst. The Devastator, meanwhile, goes to war against Supergirl, Superwoman (Lana Lang) and other heroes, while our Superman remains missing.
This story is only a fragment of the Dark Knights: Metal storyline, and honestly, the whole thing is far too detailed and intricate for me to really get into here. I’m more interested in the Superman angle anyway, after all. I find it interesting that the writers decided to avoid the question of WHAT made this Superman go bad. And for the purposes of the story, it makes sense. Their focus is on what happens to Earth Minus One’s Bruce Wayne, so the exact circumstances of their Superman’s corruption aren’t necessarily pertinent. I’ve got a different agenda, though, and it’s hard for me to conceive of a Superman so like our own going so totally, irrevocably bad, especially to the point of murdering Lois. It’s simply not any Superman that I can conceive. On the other hand, that’s probably the point. At any rate, the reaction to this evil Superman is suitable, I suppose. One of the hallmarks of a modern Batman is the way he’s so ridiculously overprepared for any given circumstance, so the idea that he would have devised a way to transform himself into Doomsday for just such an occasion isn’t farfetched at all. The idea of a Superman so evil that such a transformation would be necessary is the chilling part, the kind of thing that will keep you up at night.
Geez, maybe it’s for the best that we don’t know what exactly happened here.
Mon, Oct. 20
Comics: Irredeemable #1, Justice League of America #33
Notes: If you’ve been following this blog with the religious fervor it so richly deserves, you already know of my love and appreciation of the work of Mark Waid. Waid is currently shepherding Superman in three separate ongoing DC titles – Action Comics, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest, and Justice League Unlimited. He’s also literally rewriting history with the New History of the DC Universe miniseries, doing the best job anybody could hope to do of making some sense out of the past nine decades of continuity. Back in 2009, though, during a time when he was estranged from the current editorial leaders at DC Comics, he did his own take on the “evil Superman” trope with his masterful Boom! Studios comic book, Irredeemable. The series is 37 issues long, along with a spinoff series called Incorruptible. Both are excellent reads and well worth diving into – but as with The Boys, I just don’t have time to do the whole thing justice. So today I’m going to read the first issue of Irredeemable again, then discuss in broad strokes the series as a whole.
The story begins with the Plutonian – the bright, bold, caped hero that everyone knows and loves, engaged in an act of stalking and murder. He sweeps into the home of a hero called the Hornet (kind of this universe’s answer to Batman) and kills Hornet’s wife and infant child. Hornet and his older daughter flee to the cave beneath the house, but Plutonian finds them quickly. Although Hornet begs for his daughter’s life, Plutonian makes quick work of him, then turns to the daughter and says to her, “Do you know who I am, Sarah? I’m a super-hero.” The page turns and we see him flying away from the home, which has been reduced to cinders.
A quick time jump takes us to a week later, when the world’s remaining heroes are interrogating the Plutonian’s partner, Samsara, trying to figure out what could have gone wrong. Sam struggles with his memories, recalling a few times when Plutonian started to seem off, like he was going to unravel, but the pain of trying to access the memories proves to be too great. The camera pulls back to reveal that Sam is in his grave, dead, murdered by the Plutonian, who also seems to have carved out parts of Sam’s brain that access the memories of what made him go bad. One of the other heroes managed to briefly reanimate Sam for the interrogation, but as they realize it’s fruitless, they allow him to return to peace. As they begin to debate their next course of action, Plutonian finds them and attacks. They flee into a set of portals, but Plutonian smiles as they escape, and a comic book fan’s favorite words scroll across the bottom of the page: “To Be Continued…”
There’s so much to unpack in this series that it’s hard to know exactly where to begin. Let’s start, I guess, with a brief comparison to The Boys. Although both series have a similar conceit – heroes gone wrong – they approach it from very different angles. Garth Ennis’s series is a takedown of superheroes as a concept, a disdain for the very idea. Mark Waid, on the contrary, clearly loves superheroes (one need only read a few issues of his runs on comics like The Flash, Captain America, or JLA to fully embrace that supposition). Irredeemable, then, is less of a condemnation of superheroes and more of an examination of some of the darker possibilities.
As the series goes on we learn more and more about the Plutonian and what made him go wrong, and Waid plays up the parallels to Superman FAR more than Ennis does. Plutonian, like Superman, is not from Earth. He’s got a “human” secret identity and a human “girlfriend” that both factor into the story. And like Superman, he was considered by most to be the apex of what a hero should be. But there’s an incompleteness in Plutonian, a hole in him that doesn’t exist in the Man of Steel. And whereas Superman doesn’t do what he does for applause or accolades, we come to realize that Plutonian’s “Start of Darkness” is triggered by a growing realization (thanks to hearing and vision powers similar to Superman’s) that not EVERYBODY loves and cherishes him. He hears these mere humans talking about him behind his back, and those that are less than complimentary start to wear on him. How dare they – how DARE these pathetic mortal creatures show him anything less than pure adoration?
To be fair, this is by no means the ONLY factor in what makes the Plutonian turn bad, but I think it’s the one that shows most clearly just what makes him distinct from Superman. There have been plenty of stories over the years where public opinion has turned on Superman, but never once (at least not in an in-continuity story) has there been one where he’s considered breaking bad over it. It bothers him sometimes, but in a very human way. Rereading this comic now, it actually makes me think of the interview scene in James Gunn’s Superman, where Lois jibes Clark just a little about the way the trolls on the internet talk about him. It bothers Clark, even though he pretends it doesn’t, but there’s never a point where you’re afraid that he’s going to go out and turn his heat vision on the Justice Gang.
I find that each of these “dark Supermen” – the ones that aren’t Kal-El, at least – succeed in revealing some of the things that make Superman who he is. In Brightburn, Brandon’s initial flaw is embracing the idea that his powers make him better than other people. Plutonian’s need to be worshipped causes his undoing. Homelander is, in many ways, a soulless homunculus given Superman-like powers but without any of his humanity. Each of them proves something that I’ve always believed wholeheartedly, and that Superman detractors just can’t seem to accept. The powers do not make the hero. Kryptonian strength, heat vision, flight…these aren’t the things that gave us Superman. It’s the soul of Clark Kent, the child reared by Jonathan and Martha to be completely selfless and giving, that is the foundation of Superman. Every single Superman gone wrong is fueled by the absence of at least PART of that, and the consequences are disastrous. This week, for me at least, has proven that more than ever.
Irredeemable really is a great series, and I recommend reading it in concert with its spinoff. Incorruptible is its opposite – one of the Plutonian’s most bitter enemies sees what the hero has become and decides to try to balance out the scales by becoming a hero, only he doesn’t exactly know how to do it. The two books tell different stories, but interact nicely. And when you reach the end of it all, in the final issue of Irredeemable, there can be no doubt that this was written not as a condemnation of Superman, but as a tribute to who and what Superman actually is. It’s a love letter composed by Superman’s biggest fan.
Tues., Oct. 21
Graphic Novel: JLA: Earth 2, Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #314 (Supergirl, Team Member), Justice League of America #34 (Team Member)
Notes: For a week all about Superman gone bad, it wouldn’t seem right not to include perhaps the first such character, Ultraman. In the original DC Multiverse, Ultraman was a member of the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3, a world where the heroes of our world were reimagined as villains. Superman’s counterpart was Ultraman, Batman was Owlman, Wonder Woman was Superwoman, and so on. The tricky part is that there aren’t really any great stories ABOUT Ultraman. He, and most of the Crime Syndicate, rarely appear outside of their ensemble. And in the early days of the characters, when they appeared as occasional antagonists in the annual Justice League/Justice Society storylines, they weren’t exactly fleshed out and well developed.
So to get a solid look at what makes this evil Superman cook, I decided to go with Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s 1999 graphic novel JLA: Earth 2. Years before this creative team would bring us the remarkable All Star Superman, Morrison wrote this one-shot graphic novel as a spinoff of the main JLA comic. This was still during the period where DC’s “official” policy was that the multiverse no longer existed, except of course for when they wanted it to, so the “Earth 2” moniker was both a nod to the past and a reflection of the fact that no other worlds had TECHNICALLY been discovered in this continuity. In fact, in the story the title is only dropped as the name the Luthor from another universe uses to classify OURS. Nice reversal. Let’s get into the book, shall we?
After a pair of vignettes – one at a Watchtower that’s not quite like our own and a second where a ship crashes into a cornfield only to crack open to reveal a battle suit-wearing Lex Luthor – the story begins with the Justice League trying to avert a plane crash. Despite their best efforts, they find that everyone on the plane is already dead. Even more strange, several things on the plane don’t make sense – they carry money where George Washington’s picture has been replaced by Benedict Arnold, for example, and a cursory examination shows that their hearts are all on the wrong sides of their bodies. Perhaps most startling, when Aquaman recovers the tail of the plane from the ocean, he finds an insignia of a burning cross.
The League visits Lex Luthor for information, but he’s engaged in some – for him at least – unusual activity, such as diverting funding from his arms division to charities and giving his employees gargantuan raises. A quick interrogation reveals that this is NOT the Lex Luthor they know, but Alexander Luthor of another universe, a world he says is the reverse of our own – the sun orbits in the other directions, seasons are reversed, and the heroes of one world are the villains of the other. Ultraman, he reveals, was the first superhuman in his world: a human astronaut whose ship was damaged in hyperspace. An alien force rebuilt him with a superhuman body, but he returned to Earth with a horrific, twisted perspective that he used to raise up his Crime Syndicate to take over his world. Alexander is here to ask the League to return with him and overthrow the Crime Syndicate, but the League is divided. Batman feels that they need to focus on their own world, but Alexander promises that his plan will take only 48 hours to change his entire world.
Back on that world, the CSA have discovered that Luthor escaped to another universe, which they see as another world to conquer. The CSA isn’t the united front that the JLA is, though. Their Flash analogue, Johnny Quick, is essentially a drug addict, hooked on the compound that gives him his speed. Green Lantern’s counterpart Power Ring is a cowardly sleaze that’s possessed by the spirit called Volthoom that powers him. And Owlman and Superwoman are carrying out an affair behind Ultraman’s back. The League, meanwhile, is horrified by conditions on this world and quickly prepare their assault. They trap the CSA in their space station, and Wonder Woman goes on TV to announce that they have arrived to free the people of this earth from the tyranny of the Crime Syndicate: disarming hostile nations, providing food for the hungry, and in Gotham City, helping Commissioner Thomas Wayne Sr. finally try to clean up the streets.
In captivity, though, Owlman is cool and collected, having figured out that the plane crash we saw at the beginning was actually a swap between the two universes. The universes HAVE to balance themselves, and 24 hours after the JLA arrived on their world, the CSA vanishes and is sent to ours. Aquaman and J’onn J’onzz, who stayed behind, are toeing the line against the entire CSA as they attack Washington, DC. Both teams come to the same conclusion – the “good” characters cannot sustain a victory in the “evil” universe, and vice versa. Meanwhile, with Ultraman gone, his stooge Brainiac escapes – a computer conscience, he lies beyond the concepts of “Good” and “Evil,” and is poised to destroy both worlds by making them collide. The only way to win finally comes in the most unlikely gambit of all.
Ultraman is still part of an ensemble here as opposed to a solo star, but Morrison gives much greater depth and detail to this iteration of the Crime Syndicate than any previous version. We get a long look at this world and how diseased it is: “Boss” Gordon being the mafia lord of Gotham City, for example, or the horrific way that Lois Lane – aka Superwoman – treats her Jimmy Olsen. The conceit is unusual too, the idea that the JLA is incapable of victory in the CSA’s world just as the CSA can’t win in our own. Morrison treats “good” and “evil” not as abstract concepts here, but as something tangible. Morality almost has agency and is treated as though it were a law of physics rather than a philosophy. This is actually pretty in-keeping with a lot of Morrison’s work, and it’s executed well. In a way – and I know this is an odd comparison to make – it almost makes me think of the Final Destination films, where Death is not a physical being but an inexorable, invisible force that one way or another will have its due.
Hope you enjoyed “Superman Gone Wrong” week, friends. Next week is the last one before Halloween, and I’m going to have fun with it. Be back in seven days for “Superman Meets the Monsters!”
If you read last week’s column – and obviously you should have, because it was a masterpiece – you may remember me mentioning that my 11-year-old nephew is planning to be Ghostface for Halloween this year. This is amusing to me because his mom, my sister, is very much NOT a horror movie fan, and I know for certain my nephew has never seen any of those films. It’s just evidence of how pervasive the Ghostface icon has become. But a few days later I got another nice surprise when my sister asked me if I thought her daughter, who turns 15 this weekend, was old enough to watch the Scream movies.
When I tell you I wanted to squeal with delight…
I smiled bigger than this.
I get questions like this a lot. I suppose that my multiple qualifications as a teacher, father, writer, and geek pundit all make people confident that I have a good idea of what media is appropriate for what age group, and I’m flattered by the faith they have in me. On the other hand, the question isn’t always that simple. Age-based ratings like your PG, PG-13, and R from the MPAA are a decent enough guide, but that’s all they are: a GUIDE. The truth is that every kid is different. There are 13-year-olds who can handle the same scary movies that would give their same-aged classmates nightmares for a week. So when I’m given these questions, I always give a general opinion, but I couch it in the caveat that “You know your kids better than anybody else, so use your best judgment.”
But in this case, I know my niece really well. She’s grown up to be a fan of the morbid and macabre, she is slightly obsessed with all permutations of Five Nights at Freddy’s, and she’s smart enough to separate fiction from reality. When I got hit with this question, I had no doubt that she could handle it. The bigger question, honestly, was whether my sister would be okay with it.
“As far as the Scream movies go,” I told her, “There’s not any nudity. There IS violence, but compared to a lot of other franchises it’s relatively tame. There’s language, but she goes to a public high school, so I guarantee there’s nothing she hasn’t heard before. They’re all streaming on Paramount+, so yeah, I think it’s okay.”
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Scream is – as I’ve stated many times – my favorite horror movie franchise, mainly because I think the writing and characterization are heads and shoulders above most of the other ones. But I still wouldn’t suggest that my niece be allowed to watch them if I didn’t think she was ready for it.
A few days later, I happened across a link to an article from Letterboxd that listed 20 PG-13 horror movies, films that were suggested as sort of “starters” for people who are just getting into the genre and didn’t want anything TOO intense. I’ve seen most of the films on that list and I agree that many of them are good choices – The Sixth Sense, for example, or Night of the Comet. And I was surprised at just how tonally diverse the list was, including things as chilling as The Ring and as family-friendly as Monster Squad.
I forwarded the link to both my niece and her mom, and my niece replied that she’s already seen Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and now she has an excuse to watch the others on the list. I love this kid.
For the kids.
All this is to say, I’m really looking forward to helping usher her into the world of horror movie fandom, because I find that by and large horror movie fans are some of the nicest, kindest, most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met. Compared to certain other fandoms I could mention, like those from a galaxy far, far away, horror fans are usually very respectful of differing opinions and eager to listen, able to have conversations about their favorites and least favorites without devolving into name-calling or anger, and are extremely generous and supportive of the movies and creators that they enjoy. I know my niece would be positively embraced by this community, and it’s really important to find your tribe. I’m not saying that everybody in the world should be a horror fan, but I AM saying that if more people BEHAVED like horror fans, the world would be a much better place.
So if you’re into horror, or if you’ve got a teenager in your life that’s drifting in that direction, check out that Letterboxd list I linked to above. It’s a good starting place. And here are a few more suggestions for movies that didn’t quite make the Letterboxd cut, as well as other non-movie media sources that a burgeoning horror fan could start getting into this spooky season.
This is why dads mow the lawn every other morning.
The most glaring omission from the Letterboxd list – and my wife pointed this out almost immediately – is Little Shop of Horrors. It’s the chilling tale of a little New York flower shop where a young man finds and cultivates a new breed of plant that turns out to be an alien invader that thirsts for human flesh. Fun for the whole family! The Roger Corman original from 1960 is a cheesy schlockfest – it’s fun to watch, but only if you’re really into “good bad movies.” However, the 1986 musical version directed by Frank Oz is a masterpiece. The music is phenomenal, the performances are fantastic, and it’s just one more reason to love Rick Moranis. The puppetry by Jim Henson Studios holds up brilliantly today, and it’s impossible to imagine anyone walking away from this movie without having a new favorite song. My niece is already a geek for musicals, so I know this would be right up her alley. I just hope my sister is ready for weeks and weeks of her kid casually singing “Dentist!” and “Suddenly, Seymour.”
“Do you think you’ve got the CHOPS for this one, kiddies?”
Although it’s more intense than the stuff on the Letterboxd list, I have to give a strong recommendation to the legendary HBO TV series Tales From the Crypt. Based on the classic EC Comics (which themselves are well worth reading), this anthology series presented a half-hour morality tale each week, a different story with a different twist that usually involved a bad person doing bad things and getting a karmically appropriate comeuppance. The show adapted stories from the original comic book as well as some of its sister series, The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror, and others. It also gave us one of the all time great horror icons in the Cryptkeeper, the John Kassir-voiced puppet who served as the host of the show with a ghoulishly gleeful sense of humor at the beginning and end of each episode. The general content level is a step up from Scream – there was sex sometimes, and the violence was kicked up a notch. At the same time, though, the violence was often treated very nonchalantly, brought up to an almost cartoonish level and hard to take seriously, which is part of the charm.
HBO treated this series very well, bringing in big-name guest-stars and directors like Martin Sheen, Brooke Shields, Catherine O’Hara, Christopher Reeve, Steve Buscemi, Tim Curry, and tons of others. The show gave us seven seasons with 93 episodes, as well as three theatrical films and a more kid-centric animated spinoff, Tales From the Cryptkeeper. There’s fun to be had in all of them.
“I know I look like the Cryptkeeper, but I don’t really talk. I’m animated beautifully, though.”
I also have to give a recommendation to its spiritual successor, Creepshow. In the original Creepshow movie from 1982, director George Romero (of Night of the Living Dead fame) teamed up with Stephen King for a film that was inspired by and tonally reminiscent of the original Tales From the Crypt comics years before the TV show brought it back to the public consciousness. The first Creepshow was written entirely by King, and he even starred in one of the anthology segments himself. The first sequel also adapted King stories, although both he and George Romero were absent entirely from the third installment. The legacy of the film persevered, though, and in 2019 the Shudder streaming service brought it back as an anthology TV series that lasted for four seasons and a few specials (including a Halloween special and an animated Christmas special). What’s more, the TV shows spawned a new comic book anthology series from Skybound (the company owned by Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead), bringing the whole style of tongue-in-cheek horror with a dash of dark comedy back to its original format. All of these are worth indulging and, as they’re anthologies, can be picked up one episode or installment at a time without requiring a huge binge to get through an entire story like some TV shows, comics, or film series.
The Ditko version was a lot cleaner.
Finally, if you’re looking for a horror tinged-take on characters you already know and love, there are several options available. Marvel fans may be aware of the recent Marvel Zombies animated series, but they may not know that it’s based on a line of comic books, which themselves were started by Robert Kirkman before he left Marvel and devoted himself entirely to his own company. In the original Marvel Zombies, an old-fashioned zombie virus struck the Fantastic Four, turning them into flesh-eaters. It spread out from there, and once it hit the super-speedster Quicksilver, any chance of stopping it from being a global pandemic was lost. In the Marvel Zombies universe, the undead retain their human intelligence, although their zombie hunger overtakes their former heroic morality. It’s a fun series that has had many permutations. The hard part for a newbie would likely be just keeping track of which order to read the many assorted graphic novels in and figuring out which ones are part of the main continuity or standalone.
Well, the end of everything until next issue.
DC Comics has also given us two horror-themed worlds to explore in recent years. First was DCEased, a book that I have to believe was given the greenlight primarily on the strength of the pun in the title. In the main DC Universe, Darkseid has spent 50 years or so trying to find the “Anti-Life Equation,” a formula that would give him control over all life. In DCEased, the equation is cut loose, transforming anyone it touches into a mindless killing machine. It’s not TECHNICALLY a zombie story, but it uses many zombie tropes to tell what turns out to be a generational tale of broken heroes desperate to find a way to save their world.
“Okay, but that’s just a placeholder title, right? We’re gonna come up with something more clever before it’s published, right? Right? Guys?”
Finally, there’s DC Vs. Vampires where – once again – some of DC’s best and brightest are turned into creepy-crawlies. This time, we wind up with a world where Batgirl becomes queen of the vampires and the heroes are divided into dead and undead and are embroiled in a civil war that engulfs their entire world. The most recent (and possibly final) volume of this series just ended, and the paperback edition should be coming soon. Like Marvel Zombies and DCEased, it works as a fun horror take on some familiar characters.
So there you are, friends – a few gateways into the world of the macabre. I’m sure you have suggestions of your own, and I’d love to hear them in the comments. With two weeks left until Halloween, it’s time for the Creepy Content to completely take over.
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. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He skipped over recommending Plants Vs. Zombies. They know what they did.
Our descent into darkness continues. Last week, we spent some time in the earliest days of some of Superman’s most dastardly foes, and also the Prankster. This week we’re shifting the focus to Superman himself, looking at Superman’s darkest hours. These are going to be some of the hardest, toughest, most heartbreaking moments the Man of Steel ever went through. Not surprisingly, there aren’t really a lot of early stories here. In the Golden and Silver Ages, the formula of the stories didn’t really allow for the kind of darkness I’m examining. The formula insisted that the heroes always won and the villains got their comeuppance. And to be fair, even in the stories we’re about to talk about, the world didn’t end. Well, except for the one time that it did.
These are all in-continuity stories, by the way. I’m not doing Elseworlds or alternate realities, because that’s a little too easy. There are MUCH darker stories in some of those worlds, because writers sometimes see that Elseworlds label as a license to blow everything up. But I don’t feel bad about excluding them either, because for the most part, I find those ultra-bleak Elseworlds fairly forgettable. And the ones that AREN’T forgettable…well, I’ve either already covered them or I have plans for them somewhere else before the year is out.
Comics: “The Supergirl Saga,” Superman Vol. 2 #21, Adventures of Superman #444, Superman Vol. 2 #22
Notes: We all know that, after the death of Supergirl in Crisis on Infinite Earths and John Byrne’s Man of Steel reboot, the edict from DC Comics was that there were to be no other Kryptonians – Superman was the only one. They even had to do a whole story with the Legion of Super-Heroes involving a pocket universe to explain how Superboy had been a member of the team when, in the main comics, we were told that Superboy never existed. As he was preparing his departure from the Superman titles in 1988, John Byrne gave us a story that played with these ideas and reverberated with the title – and the character – for a very long time.
In Superman #21, Superman finds himself being trailed in the air by a mysterious pursuer. After some midair showmanship, he manages to catch the person who’s been chasing him, shocked to find a woman wearing a variation of his costume. The girl changes her face and turns into Lana Lang, who tells her her powers are different from his, and that they were given to her by Lex Luthor. When he tells her that Luthor is a criminal, Super-Lana gets confused and attacks him with a telekinetic blast. The battle takes them to Lana’s farm in Smallville, where Superman finds the REAL Lana and his parents tied up in the basement. Superman pieces together that this is the Lana from the pocket dimension he once visited with the Legion, and shows her his Metropolis and its version of Lex Luthor to help clear her mind. Slowly she remembers where she came from, and tells Superman that it’s been ten years since he visited her world, even though for him it’s only been a few months. She brings him back to her universe where he meets their greatest hero, the redheaded super-scientist Lex Luthor, who needs Superman’s help to prevent the end of the world.
Shocking stuff in here for the time, although it’s hard to divorce the story from what we now know about the Matrix Supergirl and what happens in this universe. She – and the reader – truly believe she’s that world’s Lana Lang, which makes the story all the sadder in the telling. This issue is also interesting to me personally, in how it ties in to other comics I’ve read recently. Considering the brutal way Lana was treated in Superman #2, her appearance is a real shock before the truth is revealed. And in a subplot, Jimmy Olsen is keen to go to Ireland to continue investigating the mystery of the Silver Banshee, whom we read about just last week. I like these little unplanned moments of synchronicity in my reading, it helps me feel like the whole life of Superman is more of a rich tapestry rather than a hodgepodge of random pieces being thrown together.
The story continues in Adventures of Superman #444, which is neat because this is technically BEFORE the “Triangle Era” in which all three (and later four, and even five) Superman titles were tied together into a neat little serial, although that concept would come soon and really began here. This issue he’s joined by penciler and co-plotter Jerry Ordway for a story that begins with Lex, Pete Ross, and Super-Lana showing him the graves of the Kents of the parallel reality. That’s only the beginning of how bad things are, though, as we soon learn that in this universe Smallville is encased in a force-field, protecting it from the devastation that has destroyed the rest of Earth.
We get a more detailed retelling of how the Time Trapper created the Pocket Universe here, all as part of his trap for the Legion, and clipping out every planet that had intelligent life except for the two he needed: Earth and Krypton. This means that there were no extraterrestrial heroes – no Green Lanterns, no Hawkman, and so forth – nor did the Trapper allow for the origins that created the rest of Earth’s protectors. In this world, the late Superboy was the ONLY superhero. Lex came to Smallville believing he’d found a cure for Kryptonite poisoning, only to learn that Superboy was gone. Pete and Lana took Lex to Superboy’s lab, where he discovered a device that allowed him to communicate with a trio of Kryptonians trapped in what one of them calls the “Survival Zone.” Believing he’s found heroes to replace Superboy, Luthor frees them only to learn that General Zod, Quex-Ul, and Zaora were no heroes at all. Zod declared himself King of the World and, for the next ten years, the Kryptonians brought death and devastation to anyone who opposed them.
Luthor built a resistance base in Smallville and found a way to give Lana powers, but despite that, it wasn’t enough. Hope seemed lost until he found a way to our dimension and our Superman, sending Lana to him for help. At the same time, though, the Kryptonians tired of individual battles and bored straight to the core of the Earth, blasting the atmosphere off the planet. The only life left is the Kryptonians themselves and those under Luthor’s Smallville dome. At the end of the issue, Superman stands with the battered resistance, ready to do anything to stop the terror of Zod.
This is, in essence, an issue-long infodump. It works, it tells us everything we need to know, and it gives us a bit more of this world (including a trio of would-be freedom fighters named Bruce Wayne, Hal Jordan, and Oliver Queen). The plot doesn’t really advance much, though, which makes this feel like kind of an anomaly in this quick three-part story. This is definitely the kind of story that, were it being told today, would take up at least a six-issue miniseries and a dozen spin-off one-shots showing what the other denizens of Earth-Pocket were up to during the Great Zod War. These little time capsules fascinate me.
John Byrne’s Superman run ends with issue #22 and one of the most shocking covers you could hope to see: Superman wearing an executioner’s mask and opening up a box of Kryptonite. The story starts after a time skip, where Superman is standing in the ruins of Smallville on a planet with almost life. A flashback shows us the final, pitched battle between the resistance and the Kryptonians, who made quick work of most of them and destroy Smallville station. They roast Supergirl into a blob of protomatter, and Lex sends Superman on a desperate quest to the ruins of Superboy’s lab in Smallville. Quex-Ul attacks and Superman is reminded that the Trapper made these other Kryptonians more powerful than he is. But he finds his goal in the rubble – a canister of Gold Kryptonite that takes away Quex-Ul’s powers, then he does the same to Zod and Zaora. He finds Luthor dying in the rubble, where he explains that Supergirl isn’t really Lana Lang, but a protoplasmic Matrix that he programmed in the hopes of luring her to this universe. He dies expressing his regret that he didn’t use the Kryptonite sooner.
Then we get one of the most controversial scenes in Superman history. He returns to the powerless villains, but Zod is still defiant, boasting that he will find a way to restore their powers and make their way to Superman’s world and repeat their holocaust. And so, to prevent such a thing, Superman opens a canister of Green Kryptonite and kills them. He finds the burned Matrix being in the rubble and brings her to his universe, to his Smallville, hoping that once again his parents can save the last survivor of a dead world.
This book was shocking as hell when it was published, and it’s a hot button topic even now. Superman killed three people, and not in self-defense. I am firmly, steadfastly in the camp of believing that Superman does not kill. However, I also believe that this story is exactly WHY he should not kill. He doesn’t do it out of anger or malice, but because he sees no other option. And doing so tortures him. Byrne draws so much pain in a panel with a single tear, and at the end of the issue you’re left with the feeling that Superman would never be the same. In fact, he wasn’t for some time. The trauma of what he experienced would lead him to develop a split personality and eventually exile himself from Earth for a time, in one of the first truly protracted storylines of the proto-Triangle Era.
What’s more, and I KNOW I’m gonna piss off some people when I say this, I think this issue justifies the Man of Steel movie. In that film (in case you hadn’t heard) Superman kills Zod in combat. A lot of people were upset about that, and rightly so. But just because a story choice upsets you doesn’t make it the wrong choice. Superman is not a killer, but I think that by doing it ONCE, you SOLIDIFY the fact that it’s wrong for him. It is a pain that nearly destroyed him in the comics, and a pain he can never bring himself to repeat. The films tried to play it the same way. While there are other things about the Snyder movies that I’m willing to debate, I never had an objection to that particular story choice. And the REASON I never objected to that moment of darkness is because I already knew about the darkness from “The Supergirl Saga.”
Thur., Oct. 9
Comic: Adventures of Superman #474, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #14, Batman: Gotham By Gaslight-A League For Justice #3 (Team Member)
Notes: Our tour through the most painful parts of Superman’s past continues with Adventures of Superman #474, a Dan Jurgens story called “Face to Face With Yesterday.” It’s a story that shows us one of the worst moments of Clark Kent’s young life and, paradoxically, it’s also one of my favorite Superman stories of them all.
The story begins on a snow-blanketed New Year’s Eve as Superman returns to Smallville, not to visit his parents, but so that Clark Kent can be at Lowell County Hospital for a bleak, tragic evening. Clark is there to visit a patient named Scott Brubaker, but the head nurse at the desk isn’t happy to see him at all. In fact, as she tells a younger colleague, Clark Kent is one of the people who was involved with the tragedy that caused Scott’s condition in the first place. He enters the hospital room where Scott’s parents are keeping a lonely vigil. They’re upset at first, believing that Clark is there for a story, but Clark assures them that he’s only there to say goodbye.
In flashback, we see ten years in the past, when Clark and Scott – both members of the Smallville High football team – begin to forge a friendship that was bridging the divide between the kids who live in town and farm kids like Clark and Pete Ross. Scott join Clark, Pete, and Lana Lang for a New Year’s Eve party where alcohol is flowing freely. Although reluctant to do so, Clark and his friends join in the drinking. At the end of the night, Scott volunteers to drive the farm kids home, despite having more booze in him than anyone else. The inevitable happens – Scott veers in front of an 18-wheeler and his car smashes into a tree. Clark, naturally unhurt, pulls Lana and Pete from the wreckage, but Scott is too far gone, and has been in a coma ever since.
Back in the present, Scott’s parents have convinced the courts to allow them to pull the plug on their son, having spent a decade in a vegetative state. Clark tells Scott’s parents that he blames himself, that he should have taken the wheel instead, and the Brubakers try to assuage his guilt. After all, Scott’s dad says, Clark had been drinking that night too.
This is what we call dramatic irony, folks. You see, even though Clark’s powers hadn’t kicked in yet, the reader knows fully well that even at 18 he was immune to the effects of alcohol and he was stone-cold sober. And Clark knows it too. As he talks to Scott’s parents, he realizes just how profound that night was on the rest of his life, setting him on a course to always – ALWAYS – do the right thing. He says goodbye and leaves. On the way out of the hospital, he overhears a couple planning to get into their car, a wine bottle in their hands, clearly drunk. But before they can drive away, they realize that somehow, in the midst of a blizzard, their tires have melted into the pavement.
On TV, a story like this would be what they call a “very special episode.” It’s when a character – usually, but not exclusively teenager – is faced with a moral dilemma and the viewer is supposed to infer the correct behavior. And these stories are often pretty schmaltzy. But this comic never felt that way to me. It wasn’t preachy, it wasn’t like some sort of stale Public Service Announcement, despite its very clear statement about drunk driving. Instead, it felt like it was giving us a missing piece of Superman’s life.
Allow me to explain. Unlike most superheroes – Batman, Spider-Man, the Punisher – Superman has no tragic inciting incident in his past. Oh sure, there’s the whole “my planet exploded” thing, but that happened in his infancy. It’s not an event that he remembers, not the thing that compels him to do good. Even in continuities where the Kents are dead before he becomes Superman, those deaths are almost always natural and don’t have a direct relationship to the moral core of the Man of Steel. (Their parenting sure does, but not their deaths.) And to be fair, Superman doesn’t exactly need a tragic backstory either. It is enough – certainly SHOULD be enough – to have a hero who does the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do.
That said, while I don’t think this story is necessary, and it hasn’t become an ingrained part of the character’s backstory like the deaths of the Waynes or Ben Parker, it does help very much to humanize Clark Kent. He’s Superman, yeah, but before that he was a kid. Before that he made a stupid decision that thousands of other kids have made, and like far too many of them, a price was paid for that decision.
I dunno, maybe part of the reason I still think this story is so profound is because I’m a high school teacher. I spend my entire day around other people the same age that Clark Kent was in this story, and I have known more than one in my years who was the victim of a stupid choice like the ones Clark and Scott made. So it’s important to me. It matters to me. And in an odd way, it also does something for the character that we saw in the “Supergirl Saga.” It shows us the consequences of a choice, and how it indelibly etches into the soul of a man determined to never let it happen again.
Fri., Oct. 10
Comic: Superman Vol. 2 #84, 85
Notes: During Villain Debut Week I wrote about the Toyman, and how he was always a relatively minor villain – annoying, but not particularly violent or dangerous. That changed in Superman #84 from 1993, in what was one of the darkest Superman stories I’d ever read. The Toyman has established a lair beneath the streets of Metropolis and he’s begun kidnapping children whose parents he believes are “bad.” His mind has completely snapped, and he believes that by imprisoning these children in his subterranean dungeon he is somehow protecting them from a harsh, cruel world. At the same time Clark – still fresh from his recent resurrection in the “Reign of the Supermen,” – is enjoying life by taking Lois off to Paris for an evening. As the two of them are in Europe, Cat Grant takes her son Adam to a Halloween party where he’s lured away by a promise of a room full of video games. The Toyman brings Adam to his lair, “rescuing” him from his “sick, embarrassing lush of a mother.” But Adam proves to be more willful and defiant than his other captives, and when tries to free the other children, the Toyman decides that he can’t risk Adam telling people about his lair. When Lois and Clark return the next morning, they are horrified at the news that Adam’s body has been identified.
The next three weekly issues of the Superman titles were a short storyline called “Spilled Blood,” in which Superman battled a new version of Bloodsport, among others. Although the Adam story remained an undercurrent, it wasn’t resolved until Superman #85 the following month. Cat approaches Superman in the street, outraged that he hasn’t caught the Toyman yet (the whole “Spilled Blood” thing kept him busy), and he begs her to find help for herself while he seeks the killer. More bodies have been found, and Superman manages to trace the Toyman to the harbor. The once-whimsical villain has gone completely off the deep end, wallowing in an oversized crib and having conversations with his invisible “Mommy,” Norman Bates-style. Superman bursts into the lair in anger, but when he sees how pathetic the Toyman has become, he takes pity on him, capturing him even as the Toyman destroys his own lair.
The story of his capture is told in flashback, though, cutting back to the present, where we see Cat sneaking a gun into the police station where Toyman is being held. Throughout the story, Cat’s running narration shows us the pain, grief, and rage she’s caged up, ready to unleash on her son’s murderer. As the Toyman rebukes Cat, calling her a bad mother and saying she raised a bad boy, she pulls her gun on him. He is defiant at first, until “Mommy” tells him that she really means it, and he’s reduced to pathetic groveling. When Cat pulls the trigger, though, a flag with the word “bang” on it pops out. Superman shows up, telling her she could be in a lot of trouble if he were to tell the police what she did, but Cat walks off, trying to find a way to live her life alone.
Even in 1993, when this story came out, I recognized it as being one of the darkest, bleakest Superman stories I’d ever read. I’m not sure who had the idea of turning the Toyman into a child-murderer or what the hopes of editorial were…was it an attempt to make a “darker,” “grittier” villain out of somebody who had long been a joke? Was it done in the hopes of giving Superman a more grounded, realistic foe than the likes of Doomsday or Brainiac? Or was it just Dan Jurgens feeling a compulsion to show a story where Superman’s power wasn’t enough? Regardless of the impetus behind it, the story that disturbed me when I was young absolutely slices through my guts when I read it now as a parent, with my own son about the same age as Adam Grant. I don’t want to, but I can’t help but think about how I would feel in Cat’s position, what I would do…and the truth is I don’t know. I don’t WANT to know. It’s a nightmare the likes of which I can’t even imagine.
Compared to THIS Toyman…give me Doomsday. Give me the Cyborg. Give me Darkseid. But don’t ever give me what happened to Cat Grant.
Notes: By 2005, the DC Universe was gearing up for a change. A lot of storylines that had been running in assorted titles turned out to be setting pieces in place for the upcoming Infinite Crisis event: the Rock of Eternity was destroyed, sending magic into disarray; Batman’s paranoia led him to create a satellite monitoring system called Brother Eye; and Maxwell Lord had been revealed as the leader of Checkmate, a spy agency that he’d turned into an anti-metahuman organization. His machinations when Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle, discovered that Max had stolen Brother Eye, so Max killed him. In the Superman titles, things had been growing appreciably darker for some time, and the four-part “Sacrifice” storyline was the point that led him into the crossover event.
The graphic novel picks up before the events of the crossover proper, with Superman #218. Superman’s old foe Blackrock is murdered by a new villain who wants to steal the rock that gives him his power. Blackrock 2.0 turns out to be more dangerous, laying waste to a large section of Metropolis before Superman is able to take him out with a heavy application of heat vision. The public sentiment, however, has been turning against superheroes for some time, and the sheer display of power necessary for Superman to take Blackrock down leaves people terrified of him, fleeing from what they perceive as his ferocity.
It gets worse in Part 1 of “Sacrifice” proper, from Superman #219. Following the destruction of the Fortress of Solitude (which happened back in “For Tomorrow”) Superman built a new Fortress in South America. “Sacrifice” begins with him waking up in the new Fortress with blood on his hands. In flashback, he remembers Brainiac in the Daily Planet office with Lois. Clark barges in, but the alien is gone. He tracks down Brainiac, but finds that he’s captured Perry, Lana, Jimmy, and Lois. Superman is forced to watch as Brainiac murders those closest to him and, in a rage, he decides to break his most sacred vow and kill his foe. The flashback ends as he looks at the blood on his hands and realizes it’s human – it can’t be Brainiac’s.
And that’s when the Justice League arrives, demanding answers.
In Action #829, J’onn J’onzz visits Lois – who is very much not dead – to ask for her help, given Superman’s recent “erratic” behavior. At the Fortress, meanwhile, the Flash, Green Lantern, and Black Canary are seeking answers. Superman again remembers the encounter at the Planet office, but this time it isn’t Brainiac with Lois – it’s Darkseid. Again, his enemy has Lois captive, and he forces Superman into personal combat…combat that ends with Lois’s death. Back in the Fortress, Black Canary tells Superman to examine the blood on his hands to see who it REALLY belongs to. In horror, they go to the Justice League Watchtower to see his true victim – Batman, who has been beaten within an inch of his life.
In Adventures #642, as Batman fights for his life, the League shows Superman surveillance footage of how he nearly killed Batman, stopped only at the last second by Wonder Woman. Superman’s memories have changed again – he remembers the fight, but this time it was Ruin he battled. J’onn theorizes that someone has planted some sort of psychotic episode into Superman’s mind. Bringing Wonder Woman with him, the two of them delve into Superman’s psyche and find evidence that Superman is being manipulated by Maxwell Lord. Max has damaged Superman’s mind, using the very mental barriers Superman placed in his own mind after he killed the Phantom Zone criminals. As they plan how to contain him, Max’s conditioning kicks in again: Superman suddenly turns paranoid and attacks the League, fighting through them while believing he’s searching for Max. Diana goes after him, finding Max in his hideaway and learning that his control over Superman appears to be complete.
“Sacrifice” ends in Wonder Woman #219, one of the most controversial comics of the era. Max uses his mind control powers to make Superman believe he’s watching Doomsday kill Lois, revealing he’s spent years subtly manipulating Superman, implanting tendrils of paranoia and terror. He has Superman attack Diana, believing her to be Doomsday. The battle is fierce and global, but she manages to distract him and get back to Max, tying him in her lasso and forcing him to release Superman. Max taunts her, saying that she can’t keep him in her lasso forever, and eventually he’ll set Superman loose again. Diana tells Max – under the power of the Lasso of Truth – to tell her how to free Superman from his control. Max’s answer is simple: “Kill me.”
And she does.
Although that was the end of the issues branded “Sacrifice,” the story wasn’t over. It continues a second later in Wonder Woman #220. Superman is horrified when he realizes what Diana has done, but before he can say anything a pair of disasters in different parts of the world call the two of them apart. As if that weren’t bad enough, when she goes to see Batman and he discovers what she’s done, he tells her to “Get out.” The fallout continued in Adventures of Superman #643 – we see the two issues of Wonder Woman from Clark’s perspective: his imagined fight with Doomsday, watching him kill Lois and countless others, then waking up from a nightmare just in time to watch Diana, his best friend, snap Max’s neck without a hint of remorse. Like Diana, he’s called away, and like Diana, he checks on Bruce. And while he doesn’t tell Superman to go away, his reception is almost as cold. Superman returns to Lois, broken, unsure what to do.
The graphic novel wraps up with Superman #220, in which Superman and Superboy team up to take on the Eradicator, but that issue really has very little to do with the rest of the story and I suspect it was only included because they weren’t sure where else to put it in the assorted paperbacks collecting the stories running up to Infinite Crisis. That’s what this is really about, after all. The conceit behind Infinite Crisis would eventually turn out to be that Alex Luthor of Earth-3, Superman of Earth-2, and Superboy of Earth-Prime had been watching the prime DC Universe ever since the end of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, and seeing how dark the world had become, Luthor decided to rewrite it. As such the stories before that were intended to amplify that darkness. Batman’s creation of a global spy satellite was enough to put him on everyone’s naughty list, but “Sacrifice” served to shove a wedge between all three members of DC’s Trinity, with Diana’s actions being condemned by both Bruce and Clark, Clark refusing to trust Bruce because of the aforementioned Brother Eye, and Bruce deciding that neither of the other two had gone far enough. Taken in and of themselves, these stories are all hard and bleak. As part of the larger tapestry, though, it really works well. I liked Infinite Crisis at the time and I still enjoy it. And I agreed with the main thesis – the DC universe HAD gotten too dark, and I was happy that the story ended with rays of hope, a promise that the universe would grow better again. The sad thing is that the DC creators themselves seemed to forget that. After a promising start, the stories again took a turn for the darker, and brightness didn’t really start to return until DC Rebirth in 2016. Even then it’s had its ups and downs since then. I’m glad to say that, at the moment, it feels like we’re in an upswing.
Sun., Oct. 12
Comics: Superman: The Man of Steel #16, Superman Vol. 2 #72
Notes: I’ve got a quickie today, the two-part “Crisis at Hand” from 1992 (which may well be the shortest “Crisis” DC ever published). This story hearkens back to some of Superman’s earliest Golden Age stories when Clark’s superhearing picks up the sounds of a man beating a woman. He’s shocked to realize that the assault is happening in his own apartment building – his neighbors Gary and Andrea Johnson. He bursts into the apartment and stops Gary from whipping his wife with a belt, but when the police arrive, Andrea defends her husband and asks the police to throw Superman out. The next morning Clark relates to Lois a story from early in his career, a nice recreation of the infamous “wife-beater” scene from Action Comics #1, when he stopped a similar crime. Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove extend the scene, though, showing Clark talking to his father later and questioning if he did the right thing. With the police unable to intervene unless Andrea is willing to press charges, part one of the story ends with Clark clutching his hands over his ears, helpless as he listens to Gary battering his wife yet again.
Part two came in Superman #72 by Dan Jurgens and Brad Vancata. Clark turns to Jonathan for counsel once again, then Lois, telling her the story of how the “wife-beater” episode ENDED all those years ago. Not long after Superman stopped the man from hitting his wife, Clark Kent got sent to cover his first murder case for the Planet only to find that the victim was the woman he’d just saved. When an enraged Superman tracked down the husband, he blamed Superman for not killing him when he stopped him the first time. The absurdity of the situation has resonated with Clark ever since, and he knows that this isn’t a situation Superman can solve. When he and Lois get back to his apartment, though, they hear crashes in the Johnson apartment. Although Clark tries to stay out of it, Lois refuses to do so. They burst in and Andrea tells Gary to leave. Lois stays with Andrea, giving her the number of a woman’s shelter and urging her to seek help (which she does), while Superman winds up finding Gary on a bridge and talks him out of committing suicide, taking him to get the help HE needs as well.
Like “Face to Face With Yesterday,” this story has the earmarks of the “very special episode,” although here it has the added element of it being a story about Superman having to face the fact that there are some problems he can’t solve. In the end, though, it’s a very human story, and as harsh as it is (especially the scene at the murder victim’s funeral, when the killer’s mother begs Superman to spare her son) it ends with an element of hope. As the best Superman stories always should.
Notes: The Geoff Johns/Gary Frank era of Action Comics wasn’t a particularly bleak one, although it did bring us to a heartbreaking conclusion at the end of the five-part Brainiac story, which begins with a flashback to Krypton. Before the destruction of the planet, we see General Zod and his army battling against an invading Skull-shaped spacecraft that seals the city of Kandor in a bottle and miniaturizes it. From there, we shift to the present day Daily Planet, where a few familiar faces are returning to the fold: boorish sports editor Steve Lombard and Cat Grant, who seems to have got down a rabbit hole of reinventing herself for the worse since the death of her son (even reaching the point of throwing herself at the now-married Clark Kent as she used to in the days before he and Lois got together). The conversation is interrupted by the incursion of a Brainiac drone into Metropolis. Superman fights it off with relative ease, but a message is sent to the Skullship in space, where we learn that Brainiac is seeking Kryptonians.
In part two, Johns does a little bit of continuity welding. Y’see, over the years Brainiac had taken on a LOT of forms – alien invader, human possessed by an outside force, robot, etc. Supergirl (who remembers pre-destruction Krypton) tells us that all of these versions are different “probes” created by the REAL Brainiac, and that no one has ever encountered his true form before. On Krypton Brainiac basically became a planetwide boogeyman after Kandor’s abduction, terrifying everyone. After a conversation with the world’s greatest dad, Clark takes a ship into space, planning to bring the fight to Brainiac for once. He finds him attacking yet another world, but is unable to stop him from destroying the sun of an inhabited planet, killing everyone there, and taking Superman captive.
Superman wakes up in Part Three, in the midst of the Skullship surrounded by other aliens in suspended animation, as well as shrunken cities…including Kandor. That’s when Brainiac attacks, of course. And he’s set his sights on Earth. Supergirl shows up at the Planet office, looking for Clark, and is with Lois when the shadow of Brainiac’s ship appears in the sky over Metropolis. In Part Four, Supergirl tries to fight the drones on Earth as Superman battles Brainiac in his ship. Superman manages to make contact with Kandor, including Supergirl’s parents, Zor-El and Allura, but Brainiac has the upper hand. He manages to reduce Metropolis to one of his bottle cities and fires a probe into the sky. On Earth, Jonathan and Martha Kent watch as the probe arcs towards the sun, ready to destroy it just like Brainiac did to the sun of Krypton.
In the final chapter, Superman faces Brainiac as Supergirl races through space to stop the probe. The battle falls to Earth, where Superman manages to disable Brainiac. But as he sets out to restore Kandor to full size, Brainiac sends a probe to strike at Superman’s heart: Smallville. The probe attacks the Kent farm, and Jonathan just barely manages to pull Martha away before the barn is destroyed. Their joy is short-lived, though, as the exertion triggers a heart attack. Superman hears his mother screaming from the other side of the world and races to Smallville just as Jonathan Kent dies.
Generally speaking, I prefer the continuities in which Jonathan and Martha Kent are alive for our adult Superman. There are too few positive portrayals of parents in superhero fiction (or fiction in general, for that matter), and having arguably the two greatest parents in history alive and available gave an added dimension to Superman. It’s probably my favorite single element that John Byrne brought to the table in 1986, and I was elated when Doomsday Clock finally made it clear that, in the DC Rebirth continuity, both Kent parents were alive again (they were both dead in the New 52 era).
All that said, none of those personal feelings of mine take away from the gut punch that Johns delivers at the end of this storyline. The death of a parent is one of the most horrible and most inevitable parts of life (I speak from experience here, friends), and it’s something we’d never really watched Clark Kent deal with before. In Action Comics #1, the Kents were already dead before Clark went to Metropolis, his mourning done away with in a single panel. Although they were considerably fleshed out in the years following via the Superboy comics, there’d never really been a story where we saw Clark Kent grapple with the loss. I also appreciate how Johns accomplished it. Having Jonathan’s death be natural – a heart attack, in most of the continuities where his death is explicitly portrayed – is a good reminder for the character that for all his power, there are some things that even a Superman cannot fight. On the other hand, having that heart attack brought on by an act of heroism is beautifully fitting for the man who raised Superman, and makes his loss all the more tragic.
Up until those last few pages, this story wouldn’t have made the cut for “Superman’s Darkest Hours” week. Most of it is good, but standard for the time. In fact, there are even several bits of light – a lot of humor surrounding Cat Grant and Steve Lombard, Johns and Gary Frank really hammering home their love and inspiration from the Christopher Reeve films, and a particularly inspiring bit with Supergirl where her cousin tells her that it’s okay to be afraid, and that reminder giving her the courage to overcome that same fear and save her adopted world. But no matter how great the victory, how incredible the triumph, the loss at the end makes for a moment that deserves a place in the worst moments of anybody’s life.
Tues., Oct. 14
Comics: Superman/Batman #26
Notes: The last stop on our tour of Superman’s darkest hours comics not from the dark moment itself, but more from its aftermath. Every comic book fan knows that a crisis-level event will, of course, include casualties. And we also know that these casualties, more often than not, turn out to be temporary. Still, if written well, even a comic book death can have an emotional impact. Such was the case with the death of Conner Kent, Superboy, in Infinite Crisis. But that’s not the moment I want to look at today – I want to delve into the aftermath, from Superman/Batman #26. This, frankly, is a comic book with a backstory even more heartbreaking than what’s on the page. Jeph Loeb, who had been the writer of this title since its inception, lost his son Sam to cancer. This book was made in his honor, packaging a plot that Sam himself had written with pages scripted and drawn by 26 of the biggest names in comics – Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, Tim Sale, Brad Meltzer, Mike Kunkel, and several others. It’s an all-star lineup that came together for the sake of a young man who left the world entirely too soon.
The story is packaged as Robin (Tim Drake) telling a story of one grand adventure he had with his best friend, who has recently died. Superboy and Robin are tasked with finding the missing Toyman – not Winslow Schott, but the 13-year-old whiz kid named Hiro Okumura who had straddled the line between villain and hero and, at this time, was making gadgets and vehicles for Batman. Superman and Batman know that Hiro is on the edge, and they hope the influence of Robin and Superboy will help keep him on the side of the angels. They arrive at his lair, which seems to have been broken into, and are immediately confronted by the original Toyman, claiming he’s taken care of the pretender. Robin quickly figures out, though, that the Winslow they’re talking to is a robot. The pair battle their way through a series of environments with robot duplicates of their friends and foes, the whole thing feeling like a real-life video game, until they finally find Hiro himself at the heart of it, manipulating the whole thing. When confronted about why he would do such a thing, Robin proves his detective prowess by intuiting that Hiro, simply, is lonely, and he wanted to have fun with some friends. The two of them invite Hiro to hang out with them sometime.
It’s a simple story, really. In any other context, it would be a one-off throwaway – fun, but not particularly memorable. But the circumstances behind its creation and framing story of Robin, in tears, remembering his friend make the entire thing heart-wrenching.
Jeph Loeb takes things one step further, though, with a back-up in which he reteams with his Superman For All Seasons partner Tim Sale to tell “Sam’s Story.” This one, narrated by Jonathan Kent, takes us back to Clark Kent’s school days in Smallville, hanging out with his friends Lana and Pete. But the focus is on neither of them, but on a heretofore unmentioned classmate of Clark’s called – of course – Sam. Sam was the the kid who could make Clark Kent laugh, made him happy in a way that was enough to sometimes even make him forget just how different he was from everybody else. But when Sam starts showing up to school sick – on crutches, losing his hair – and joking it off, Clark’s X-Ray vision immediately spots the culprit: a horrific dark spot in Sam’s bones. When Clark asks Sam what he can do, Sam’s reply is “Be my pal.”
On the day that Sam dies, Clark runs. He runs halfway through the night, finally coming home at 3 am and sitting on the porch with his father, asking “Why?” The story ends with a note written by Sam (Loeb) that feels like the kind of creed a Superman should live by.
When I read this story now, I imagine myself in Jonathan’s role, holding my own son and trying to help him work through his own grief. It hasn’t happened yet, thankfully, but it’s one of those inevitabilities of life. We all know it happens eventually. The one thing I can’t image, though, is being in the place of Jeph Loeb, writing this story as a eulogy for his own son. I can’t imagine it, but I admire him, for taking what must have been his worst nightmare and turning it into something sad and sweet and lovely.
Whoo. Despite the theme I went with this week, I didn’t really expect to finish off the blog with tears in my eyes, but that just goes to show you how powerful this issue actually was. Next week, paradoxically, will be a little less sad, although probably even darker. For the last few years there’s been a real push in the media to tell stories of a “bad” Superman, whether that’s in an Elseworlds-type story featuring Clark Kent or in other universes with a character that the writer is using as a Superman stand-in. Next week we’re gonna look at some of THOSE, examining their characters and what makes them so dark, and compare them to the real Man of Steel. See you in seven days for “Superman Gone Wrong!”
Blake M. Petit 