Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, famously said he believes one of the keys to an iconic cartoon character design is whether the character is recognizable just from their silhouette. Think about it – if you show pretty much anybody anywhere in the world the mouse-ear shape, they’ll instantly recognize Mickey Mouse. The same can be said for characters like SpongeBob Squarepants, Phineas and Ferb, Bugs Bunny, and a lot of the other cartoon all-stars. And Groening himself is legendary for utilizing this tactic with the signature nine spikes on Bart Simpson’s head or the trademark antenna on the top of Futurama’s robot character Bender Bending Rodriguez. But as insightful as this piece of wisdom is, I don’t think it applies only to cartoons. In truth, any truly great design should have elements that make it instantly recognizable. And with Halloween only three weeks away, this week I’m going to help you all make your costuming decisions by applying this reasoning to horror movie icons.
Of course, the silhouette isn’t the only thing that makes for a horror icon. There are several factors to take into consideration. The overall design, in addition to just the silhouette, needs to be memorable. The characters themselves should be interesting and unique. A character should be popular enough that people will recognize them and you won’t have to spend the entire Halloween party explaining what your costume is. And when you’re talking about Halloween costumes, above all else, they should be fun to play. So let’s go over some of the all-time great horror movie icons and see just how they stack up to this metric before you suit up for your Halloween party.
Every one is a winner.
We’re gonna start old-school with the Universal Monsters. The great thing about these characters is that they are all INSTANTLY recognizable, even to children who were born 90 years after the movies were released and have never seen any of them. Characters like Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Invisible Man are all based on classic literature and are not Universal originals, but when you ask somebody to picture them, they invariably envision the versions popularized by Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Claude Rains, respectively. In fact, those designs are all copyrighted (at least for the next few years). If you were to make a movie about Frankenstein, you couldn’t give your monster the flattop or neck-bolts, because those are all owned by Universal Studios even though the monster himself isn’t. So these classic horrors all meet the standard of memorability and recognizability. The only caveat comes with the Mummy and the Wolfman. Although those are, of course, classic monsters, the designs here (while still amazing for the time) aren’t as immediately attributable to the Universal designs specifically. It’s very easy to mistake Im-Ho-Tep or Larry Talbot for a generic mummy or werewolf. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with being a generic werewolf. But if you want to be the Lon Chaney Jr. Wolfman specifically, you may need something like a silver wolf-headed cane as an accessory to drive the point home.
I don’t think even a mother could love that face.
The 70s and 80s gave us our next great wave of horror movie icons, and many of them have persevered. Leatherface, the killer from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was probably the first great iconic character of the era. He’s got an easily-identifiable apron, a mask made of human skin, and – of course – a chainsaw to whip around his intended victims. He arguably started the trend of slasher movie icons that would explode in popularity in later years. He wouldn’t necessarily be my first choice to cosplay as, however. To be blunt, his appearance is a lot scarier than some of his successors. That’s not always a deal-breaker, of course, but you have to consider your audience. I’m a dad, and if I’m going to any sort of Halloween event there’s a 99 percent chance that there will be children in attendance. Leatherface is immediately frightening in a way that even the likes of Freddy and Jason are not. Of course, if you’re going to an adults-only event or to something like a horror convention, that’s less of a concern, but you should always keep in mind who’s going to see your costume. There’s also his signature weapon to consider. Having a prop to use as part of your costume is a plus, but you have to remember that you’re going to be keeping track of the thing all night long. Do you really want to spend the entire party looking for places to put your chainsaw?
Eh, my money is still on the Gorn.
Michael Myers from Halloween is a really simple costume – all you need is a jumpsuit and a mask. A bladed weapon is recommended, but optional. And that’s all it will take to be a character that 99 percent of people will recognize whether they’ve ever seen one of his movies or not. The question now becomes: how dedicated are you to staying in character? Michael is a silent killer. He stalks and he tracks you like an unstoppable monolith, and he never says a word. The closest thing you get to an emotion from him is when he tilts his head quizzically to look at the victim he’s just pinned to the wall. If you’re the type of costumer who enjoys not only dressing up, but also embodying the character that you’re playing (minus the actual murder part, of course), you have to be prepared to spend the evening being very restrained, slow, and deliberate with your movements. It’s not a dealbreaker, but you should definitely check if four out of five dentists recommend Michael Myers or somebody else.
“Yeah, I slept on Mario Lemieux’s couch for like six months after I got drafted…”
Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th has a similar concern. Again, the costume is pretty simple – virtually any ragged, ratty slacks and shirt will be suitable as his clothing, and an easy-to-aquire mask and machete will complete the ensemble. And as far as iconic characters go, I would say that Jason is perhaps even more recognizable to the general public than Michael Myers is. Michael has a William Shatner mask that’s spray-painted white, but almost ANY hockey mask will evoke feelings of Jason. Like Michael, Jason doesn’t talk. Unlike Michael, though, he’s much faster and more brutal, expressing his emotion through his actions rather than words. It can be a fun part to play depending on how willing you are to commit.
The absolute worst dream analyst in the phone book.
The great slasher triumvirate is completed with Freddy Krueger of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Iconic, indeed. Everybody knows Freddy on sight, with his classic red-and-green sweater, fedora, and bladed glove. The tricky thing with Freddy is his face. The character is a burn victim, and although he’s so ubiquitous in pop culture that I don’t really have the same concerns about him being too scary for kids that I have with Leatherface, the burns present a different problem. You see, Freddy – unlike Jason or Michael – is a talker. His quick, dark sense of humor is integral to the character, and if you’re gonna dress up like Freddy you’re going to want to throw out bon mots all night long, with an emphasis on extra “bitch”es should you encounter anybody at the party dressed like Rick and Morty. If you wear a Freddy mask, though, that talkiness becomes more difficult and cumbersome. Wearing a rubber mask makes it more difficult for people to understand what you’re saying, and actually speaking under the mask increases the temperature beneath the rubber roughly ten degrees per “bitch.” If you live in a climate like I do in Louisiana, that ten degrees may be the difference between life or death. The alternative to a mask is makeup, which can be time-consuming, difficult to apply, and easy to mess up. Please understand, I’m not saying any of this to discourage someone from playing Freddy – I just want to point out some of the possible concerns that come with such a costume.
“Chuck, look, I’ve thought it over and… well… I’ve decided that, no, I do NOT want to play.”
The last great slasher icon of the 80s is probably Chucky from the Child’s Play franchise. When my son was five years old, we took him to Spirit Halloween and we toured all the costumes before finally asking him which one he wanted. He jumped in delight and exclaimed “CHUCKY JUMPSUIT!” I actually took out my phone and recorded him saying it because I knew nobody would ever believe he picked it on his own.
My wife Erin and I are both horror movie fans, but we’re not idiots – our five-year-old son had never seen any of the Child’s Play movies, and the 8-year-old he is now STILL hasn’t seen any of them. But that doesn’t matter – Chucky is one of those ubiquitous characters that even kids recognize. His bright blue overalls and multicolor sweater, a shock of red hair, and freckles across his nose all give us a nice, friendly image that kids enjoy. That is, of course, the point of the character – he’s a child’s doll that is possessed by the spirit of a serial killer, so of COURSE his image is something that would be appealing to children. However, this also leads to a problem: it’s hard to wear this costume as an adult without coming across as creepy, and not in the right way. Five-year-old Eddie was the most adorable little serial killer ever, but if a 35-year-old puts on the jumpsuit, he needs to be DARN sure he’s got a receptive audience before he shows up, or he’s going to be getting strange looks all night.
Still groovy after all these years.
Not every horror icon is a villain, of course. Ash Williams, Bruce Campbell’s hero from the Evil Dead franchise, is another solid costume choice. Most of the costume is relatively simple too – slacks, a blue shirt, a bandolier, and some blood splattered across your face. The most iconic part of Ash’s appearance, though, is the most difficult: in Evil Dead 2, Ash’s hand becomes possessed by a Deadite and he is forced to amputate it, then top off the stump with a chainsaw. Now you’ve got all the same problems as cosplaying Leatherface with the added difficulty of finding a way to keep a chainsaw attached to your hand all night. Alternatively, you could go with Ash from the third film, Army of Darkness, in which he replaces the chainsaw with a mechanical hand. It’s certainly easier than the chainsaw, but it’s FAR less iconic and less likely to be recognized. And honestly, even WITH the chainsaw, Ash doesn’t have the cultural penetration of a Freddy or a Jason. If you’re wearing the costume to a horror convention, people will know you immediately, but for the office Halloween party, be prepared to explain your costume over and over again.
Greenscreen backdrop of an 80s New York skyline sold separately.
Of course, as far as 80s monster movie heroes go, there’s nothing more iconic than the Ghostbusters. This has become a classic choice for a Halloween costume because it ticks all the boxes: it’s simple, it’s recognizable, and it’s fun. You need two things: a jumpsuit with a Ghostbusters patch and a name tag, and a proton pack. The jumpsuit is readily available in any costume shop and easy to make if you’re so inclined. The proton pack is more difficult, but there are inflatable ones that are lightweight and are usually included with commercial costumes, or more expensive and detailed ones that you can buy or assemble yourself. It’s also a highly adaptable costume. There are the classic khaki jumpsuits from the first movie, the gray variants from Ghostbusters II, the 2016 jumpsuits, multicolored costumes from The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, the red parkas from the Frozen Empire movie, versions from other cartoons, video games, toys…the list goes on. And fans often come up with their own original variants and designs. In fact, similar to the 501st Stormtrooper Legion (a Star Wars fan collective that has expanded far beyond just cosplay to things like public appearances and charity work), there are Ghostbusters chapters all over the world of fans who enjoy this sort of thing. I don’t have the time, talent, or money to be a really good cosplayer, but I’ve always said that if I DID have the opportunity to join such a group, it would be the Louisiana Ghostbusters.
“Stabbity-Stab-Stab-Stab!” -Ghostface in Scream 7, probably.
Moving on from the 80s, let’s look at the most iconic horror character of the 90s: Ghostface. The killer from the Scream movies is unique in that the costume is the only constant – a different set of villains wears it in every movie. In fact, over the six Scream movies to date, over a dozen different characters have donned the mask to engage in murderous shenanigans. But this lack of uniformity hasn’t been an obstacle for Ghostface becoming an icon – in fact, it’s probably the STRENGTH behind it. More so than any other character, anybody can wear the Ghostface mask.
It’s also unique in that the costume itself didn’t actually originate with the movies. It was part of a line of Halloween masks produced by a company called Fun World. Director Wes Craven liked the mask, put the character in black robes, and entered into a licensing deal with Fun World that has had them rolling in cash for nearly 30 years now. Not everybody may know the name “Ghostface,” of course, but we all recognize “the guy from Scream.” A few weeks ago my sister told me that my 11-year-old nephew – who is even less likely to have seen the movies than my 5-year-old was, because my sister is NOT a horror fan – has declared his intention to be Ghostface for Halloween this year. I’m very proud as an uncle and I can’t wait to see him when my sister and I take our kids trick-or-treating together. I just wish the boys had collaborated on being movie killers in the same year, because that would have been cute. (Eddie isn’t going as a murderer this year – he wants to be Superman. This is the proudest moment of my entire life.)
Since the turn of the century there have been several efforts at creating new horror icons. And while characters like Victor Crowley of the Hatchet franchise, Trick ‘r Treat’s Sam, and Leslie Vernon of the woefully underrated Behind the Mask are great and have many of the trademarks that make for a classic icon, the only recent monsters that have reached the degree of cultural penetration that the classics enjoy are a pair of clowns.
Nope, no nightmare fuel here.
In 2017 we got a theatrical version of Stephen King’s It. The first dramatization of It, a TV miniseries from 1990, featured Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown, and he was magnificent. Curry in general is magnificent, of course, and his makeup as Pennywise is suitably creepy when Tim Curry is wearing it. But Bill Skarsgard from the 2017 version – let’s be honest here – has broken into the mainstream in a way that Tim Curry’s never quite did. The design of the makeup is creepier, and Skarsgard’s performance is unsettling in a more insidious way. A lot of people would recognize you if you dressed as Tim Curry’s Pennywise, but EVERYBODY recognizes the Skarsgard version. Either version is relatively easy to cosplay – you need the costume and the wig, which are readily available. Skarsgard’s makeup is more complicated, though, and if you don’t want to subject yourself to the same masking problems you’d have with Freddy, make sure that you – or someone you trust – is capable of making that transformation.
Llllllllllllllllllladies.
The most recent character to break into the echelon of horror icons, though, is probably Art the Clown of the Terrifier franchise. Art was originally played by Mike Giannelli in a series of short films and anthology segments, but Giannelli retired from acting and the role was taken over by David Howard Thornton for the first full-length Terrifier film in 2016. A malevolent clown with a stark black-and-white costume and makeup that is immediately recognizable, Art has risen to iconic status faster than anybody since Ghostface. As far as horror icons go, Art is perhaps the darkest, most brutal, most sadistic character ever to crack into the public consciousness. He’s more violent, more aggressive, and while the voiceless beast DOES still have a sense of humor, it’s so dark that it makes the likes of Freddy Krueger look like an episode of Bluey by comparison.
Naturally, he’s become a huge favorite among horror fans.
In terms of costuming, again, Art is relatively easy. Costumes and masks are available, and since Art doesn’t talk you don’t have to worry about being muffled. On the other hand, makeup is more expressive and less restrictive than a mask, so if you’ve got the skill (or someone with the skill to help you) I would always prefer the makeup approach. Something else to consider is that Art – while huge among horror fans – is not necessarily someone that the average person on the street will recognize, at least not YET. On the other hand, even if your audience doesn’t know ART the Clown, the general appearance of the character is more than sufficient to give the idea that this is NOT a funny clown, and the mystique is preserved.
There are plenty of other characters that we didn’t quite touch on, of course, and you should always go with whatever is comfortable and fun for you. Hopefully I’ve given you a few tools you can use to evaluate your own costume choices when you’re making the decision. You’ve got three weeks left, folks – get started.
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. Since Eddie is Superman this year, he’ll be wearing his own Kryptonian pajamas come Halloween night. Scary can wait.
As you may know if you read my other blogs and watch my videos, I love Halloween. I love the last three months of the year, really, it’s the best part of the year and sometimes just waiting for it to happen is what makes me happy. And even here in the Year of Superman, I’ve got plans for October that will allow me to dip into the darkness, starting today with VILLAIN DEBUT WEEK. For the next seven days, I’ll be looking at the first appearances of some of Superman’s greatest – or at least most memorable – foes. And I gotta tell you, putting this together wasn’t as easy as you might think. As great a hero as Superman is, his rogues’ gallery doesn’t have as deep a bench as Batman, Spider-Man, or the Flash. What’s more, I’ve already covered the first appearances of several of his villains this year – Darkseid, Metallo, Doomsday, and the Cyborg Superman have all had their origins show up already. Others, like Conduit, had a long, protracted first storyline that I didn’t want to devote that much time to this week. Still more, also like Conduit, flamed brightly, but briefly, and then faded to obscurity. That said, I’ve picked what I think are enough memorable baddies to fill out the week, and I’m going to cover them in chronological order of first appearance.
Notes: I’m gonna start off Villains Origin Week with the first supervillain Superman ever fought, followed by the character who is now revered as his greatest enemy. We’ll begin in Action Comics #13 from 1939 – the first appearance of the Ultra-Humanite.
He had more work done than the entire Kardashian family.
The story starts pretty simply – Clark Kent is taking a cab to work at the Daily Star when he gets rammed by another taxi. He discovers that there’s a cab company exercising a protection racket against the other cabbies in town, trying to force them to sign up. After Superman busts Reynolds, the guy in charge of the racket, Reynolds is freed from a police transport. Superman takes off after him, chasing him to a cabin in the woods where his balding boss awaits. He introduces himself as the Ultra-Humanite and declares that a scientific experiment has given him the “most agile brain” on Earth, which he intends to use for world domination.
World domination, as we all know, frequently begins by muscling cab drivers for a percentage of their fare.
The Ultra-Humanite jolts Superman into unconsciousness with enough electricity to kill “five hundred men.” The waylaid hero is strapped to a board and driven into a circular saw, but the blade splinters on Superman’s skull and sends shrapnel around the room, one of the fragments piercing Reynold’s throat and killing him instantly (a pretty rare death indirectly caused by Superman). When Superman regains consciousness, the Ultra-Humanite flees in an airplane. Superman leaps into the air and smashes the plane’s propeller, sending it plummeting to the ground. When Superman examines the wreckage, there is no trace of the villain.
Wow, what a different story than the Superman we see today.
Not only is Superman far more cavalier about things like Reynolds’ death (even if it isn’t Superman’s fault), but he’s far more reckless when he causes the plane to crash. As for the Ultra-Humanite himself, he’s a far cry from the villain he would become. His schtick these days is his ability to leapfrog his mind from one body to another, with readers being most familiar with the albino gorilla body he uses most of the time these days. Not only is there no trace of his mental abilities, even his claim of having the “most agile” brain in the world doesn’t really hold up to much scrutiny here, as he doesn’t appear to have any greater intelligence than any other villain Superman had faced up to that point. He returns in issue #14, having escaped his death and once again nearly getting Superman in a deathtrap, but Superman got away again. I don’t know if Jerry Siegel – who wrote these stories – was deliberately trying to position the Ultra-Humanite as Superman’s greatest foe, but a lot of the elements inherent in this version of the character would soon be swapped with another, far more memorable villain.
Because Action Comics #23 gave us the first appearance of Lex Luthor.
Proof that sometimes losing your hair is a glow-up.
In a story that definitely feels like it inspired James Gunn at least a lil’ bit, Superman discovers evidence that a war between two nations is being spurred on by the machinations of a mysterious profiteer named Luthor. When Clark Kent goes public with this knowledge, Luthor goes on the attack. Although not as drastic as the change between the embryonic Ultra-Humanite and his later form, this early Luthor is much different than the one we would grow to know and love to hate. His first name is never mentioned, and he comes across as more of a war criminal than the mad scientist or ruthless businessman he would later evolve into. He also has his famous red hair in this one. The story goes that when Luthor was brought back in a later story, the artist looked at this original for reference and mixed up Lex with his bald-headed flunky, changing the course of comic book history. It’s amazing, though, how time changes all these characters. Looking back at this original story, one could hardly believe this character would grow into one of the greatest supervillains of all time.
Notes: When I made my list of which villains I intended to include in this Villains Origins week, I decided I would go through that list chronologically. Upon doing so, though, I noticed an interesting pattern. The villains in Superman’s life – obviously unintentionally – seem to have been introduced in themed phases. Yesterday, Luthor and the Ultra-Humanite gave us the evil genius era. Today, in the early 1940s, we’re going to visit a trio of villains that all happen to fall under the category of what I’d call “pests” rather than legitimate threats. These are crooks who all are more of a nuisance than actually evil, out to have a little fun and sow a little chaos – although that doesn’t mean that, in later (and darker) eras of comics they weren’t used for more malicious purposes. I’m talking, of course, about the Prankster, the Toyman, and everybody’s favorite fifth dimensional imp, Mr. Mxyzptlk.
Prankster turns up first, in Action #51 from 1942. The story begins with Superman foiling an old-fashioned bank robbery, but the crooks narrowly escape to meet up with their boss – a goofy, big-eared, buck-toothed crook in a bad suit that calls himself the Prankster. He embarks upon another robbery loaded with the kind of jokes that kids think are funny – a handkerchief that stains your face with black ink, guns that shoot corks or water instead of bullets, and so forth. He even leaves a ticking bag at the scene of a crime, a bomb that the police are terrified to approach. Of course, Lois Lane has no such fear, marching right past Metropolis’s finest to open up the bag and cause a harmless noise-making explosion in a bag full of money. The Prankster’s goons are baffled by why their boss is leaving money BEHIND at the scene of their crimes, but keep going along with it. At the scene of their third crime Superman rounds up the gang and the cops charge Prankster with robbery and assault with a deadly weapon – both charges which are swiftly dropped when the Prankster reveals that his gun only shoots toy parachutes and that, far from stealing from his victim, he has GIVEN him $30,000.
I have to admit, I’ve never wanted so badly to be a crime victim as I have while reading this story.
Prankster keeps going with his bizarre scheme, giving away thousands of dollars time and again, before finally showing up at the Metropolis National Bank. The bank manager, thinking he’s in for a windfall of his own, opens up the vault for the Prankster, who proceeds to relieve him of millions of dollars in currency and jewels, far more than he’s given away. Superman goes after him, saving Lois (because of course she got herself kidnapped) and fighting a variety of traps before the Prankster himself is seemingly killed in a cave-in. Superman was a hell of a lot less curious about the apparent deaths of his foes in those days. But to the credit of the writer, this time they don’t even PRETEND the villain is really dead – in the last two panels we see the Prankster hiding in his cave and planning his next scheme.
Of the three nuisance villains we’re reading about today, I have to admit, I’ve always found the Prankster the least interesting. He’s like the Riddler without the smarts or the Joker without the charisma. That said, I’ve never read his first appearance before, and I’m surprised. His scheme is actually pretty clever, and he also comes across more menacing than I expected, killing one of his own goons in a trap because the man dared question him. He became less and less interesting over time, I guess, but for a Golden Age villain origin, this is solid.
Pictured: Pure, unmitigated evil.
About a year after the Prankster’s debut, the Toyman showed up for the first time in Action #64. Lois and Clark are walking through the park when an automated Superman doll runs past them. Clark catches it and returns it to the creator, a goofy looking dude in a Little Lord Fauntleroy getup calling himself the Toyman. Impressed at his work, Lois asks if she could write an article about him and his shop. Lois doesn’t know, of course, that not all of his toys are so benign. Toyman sends a troop of toy soldiers into a bank (never trust your money in a Metropolis bank) where they expel knockout gas, allowing him to loot the cash drawers, getting away on a flying pogo stick. For his next trick, Toyman uses a toy fire truck to start a fire at an expensive apartment building, leaving him free to rob the penthouse at the top as Superman is busy rescuing people from the flames. He even sends a letter to the Daily Planet to brag about his third crime, using a toy truck to blow up a bridge while his men in scuba gear empty a real armored car that fell into the water. Superman catches the divers, but Lois is caught (OF COURSE SHE IS) by the Toyman and his toy battleship. Superman ultimately tracks him to his hideout using his super-senses, and Clark shows up to untie Lois – but not before he beats her to writing up the story of the Toyman for the newspaper.
I really like the last bit, where Clark gets the better of Lois for once. As for Toyman himself, this is a character who’s been reinvented many times. At least three different characters (one of them a hero) have used the name, and the original Winslow Schott has been at turns a child-hating creep, a child-loving creep, and a third stage that made him – in the 90s – one of the darkest foes Superman ever fought. We’ll get to that story later this month.
Me: Is it weird that I kinda prefer Mxyzptlk Version 1.0? My wife: For you? No, not at all.
In 1944, Superman #30 gave us the debut of the character we would come to know as Mr. Mxyzptlk, although it’s spelled “Mxyztplk” here, and the spelling changed later. I wanted to make sure I was clear about that – I’d hate for anybody to get confused. It all begins when a little man wearing a derby hat walks in front of a speeding truck and is seemingly killed. The paramedics can’t budge him, though, and he shocks the hell out of them by sitting up and encouraging them to try harder before stealing their ambulance, driving it straight up the side of the building, and making it explode. He next appears in a museum, loudly interrupting the unveiling of a new sculpture by howling for his friend “McGurk.” After disrupting the show, the sculpture is unveiled and comes to life, following the imp away. Superman finally chases down the little goober, but he vanishes. He continues to pop up in and around Metropolis causing chaos for several pages before slowing down long enough to tell Superman that he’s from another dimension and he thought using his powers in ours would be fun for a little while once he learned the magic words that could transport him back and forth. Superman deftly tricks him into saying the word that sends him home (“Klptzyxm,” natch) and he vanishes, but not before one last prank. Clark comes back to the Daily Planet to find that, rather than Clark’s story about Mxy’s pranks, he published a story mocking Lois Lane’s new hat.
This is a funny story, with great visuals and sight gags that click with this embryonic Mxyzptlk. There are even lots of little background jokes to populate the pages, like a kid telling his mom he wants to grow up to be like Superman only to be admonished that he has to eat his vegetables. It’s a great intro and no wonder that the imp was brought back time and again. He’s gone through a lot of incarnations as well. Sometimes he’s more malevolent, sometimes he’s more childlike, occasionally he even comes across as wanting to be Superman’s friend. Whatever the case, though, having him around is always amusing.
Fri. Oct. 3
Comics: Action Comics #242, Superboy #68
On his first cover, one could easily picture Brainiac singing “Neener neener neener.”
Notes: By the 50s, the era of the super-nuisance seemed to have passed, and the next batch of memorable villains to join Superman’s rogues gallery were of a more sci-fi bent: the alien Brainiac, the quasi-clone Bizarro and the cyborg Metallo. Metallo, coincidentally, made his first appearance in Action Comics #252, which I covered here several months ago, as it happens to be the same issue as the first appearance of Supergirl. But today I’ll look at Brainiac and Bizarro.
In Action #242, Brainiac comes to Earth to shrink its greatest cities and steal them to repopulate his own home planet, which was wiped out by a plague. After getting Paris and New York, Superman waits in Metropolis for his home town to be stolen as a way onto Brainiac’s ship. On board, the tiny Superman another city that was stolen: a city from his homeworld of Krypton – but upon entering the bottle, he loses his powers under the stimulated Kryptonian environment. He seeks help from a scientist named Kimda who happens to be his father Jor-El’s college roommate (I know that sounds like a joke, but I swear to God, that’s exactly what happened). Outside the bottle, Brainiac goes into suspended animation for his trip back home and Superman manages to escape the bottle. Using Kimda’s findings, Superman restores the cities of Earth, but then discovers that ray has only enough charge left for one more enlargement – either Superman or the Kryptonian city. Although he plans to restore the city, Kimda intervenes and turns the ray on, making Superman grow so that Earth would not be deprived of its greatest hero. Brainiac’s ship continues on its way while Superman brings the city to his Fortress of Solitude with a vow to find some way to restore it someday.
This is such a weird story to me. Brainiac has changed so much over the years that you almost wouldn’t recognize him – he’s usually painted as far more menacing and malevolent these days, and later incarnations would identify him as an artificial intelligence that occasionally uses flesh and blood bodies. Kandor itself would get massive development over the years – in fact, until I started to write this recap I didn’t even notice that the city was never identified by name in the original story, it was just “a Kryptonian city.” It’s really weird and fascinating to look back on these things, elements of Superman’s lore that would go on to become so important, and see how humbly they began.
This issue am worthless! Me no get it slabbed in plastic!
Bizarro first showed up in Superboy #58 later that same year. When one of Smallville’s seemingly infinite number of scientists asks Superboy to help him test a new “duplicator ray” he’s invented, he accidentally strikes Superboy with the beam and creates a “non-living” duplicate with a strange faceted skin and a feeble mind, but all of Superboy’s powers. Dubbed “Bizarro” the creature stumbles around Smallville for a while trying and failing to fit in, finally making friends with a young woman named Melissa who isn’t terrified of his appearance. The dim Bizarro, however, doesn’t realize that the girl is blind. When Bizarro decides to seek her out at Smallville High, Clark is forced to do some secretive super-feats to prevent the creature’s bumbling from accidentally killing half the class.
Superboy finds a chunk of Kryptonite and tries to use it to stop Bizarro, but it has no effect. He uses a marionette of Melissa to lure Bizarro to a military range, where the army fails to destroy the creature with heavy artillery. (Really, Clark, the creature obviously has all your powers, what were you thinking?) Bizarro returns to the real Melissa, where he discovers that she’s blind, and only his friend because she can’t see his real face. At the same time, Superboy learns that the irradiated pieces of the original duplicator ray have a Kryptonite-like effect on Bizarro. He approaches the creature with a piece of the metal and Bizarro hurls himself into it, exploding into a rain of dust. Somehow, the vibrations of his explosion trigger Melissa’s optic nerve and restore her sight, leaving her to wish she had seen the “kind face” of the creature who sacrificed himself for her.
This story goes to great lengths to remind us that Bizarro isn’t alive, over and over again, despite all evidence to the contrary. Doesn’t matter that he moves and thinks and has feelings and willingly sacrifices himself for the betterment of his only friend. None of those things are evidence of LIFE. After all, if he WERE alive, that would make Superboy a murderer, which probably would have been frowned upon. But alive or not, this Bizarro already carries a lot of the elements that the character would embody later, including his backwards thinking and speaking. He was brought back a year later, when the experiment that created Bizarro was duplicated on the adult Superman, creating a second Bizarro. This one would ironically go on to dub himself “Bizarro #1” when he created a whole planet of duplicates of himself and the Bizarro culture became fleshed out. John Byrne would also bring back the idea of Bizarro sacrificing himself to restore sight to a blind girl – this time Lucy Lane – when he rebooted the character in Man of Steel. The blueprint was there from the beginning, but it’s been greatly expanded over time.
Sat., Oct. 4
Comics: Superboy #83, Adventure Comics #283, Justice League: The Omega Act Special #1, Absolute Evil #1
It’s not the worst dream his parents could walk in on him having.
Notes: The next point we reached with the introduction of memorable villains seems to have brought us to an era of threats from home – specifically, Krypton. Superboy #83 brought us the debut of the Kryptonite Kid, who first appears to Superboy in a dream. The Kid, with a body (and a dog) made of Kryptonite vexes the sleeping Superboy. Even more baffling, Superboy soon figures out that Krypto is having the same dreams as he is. The dreams come true when they encounter the Kid at a playground. The Kid chases Superboy, demonstrating his ability to transform things into Kryptonite with a touch – a playground slide first, then the lead culvert Superboy tries to use for cover. The Kid warns Superboy and Krypto that they have to leave Earth or he’ll kill them, then flees the scene. After a few more encounters, one of which winds up with Smallville High School itself turning into Kryptonite, the Kid reveals his secret origin. Turns out he was an inmate at a prison in space who volunteered for an experiment in exchange for the commuting of his sentence. He wound up with the ability to turn things into Kryptonite and decided to use it to attack Superboy. (Projecting himself into Krypto and Clark’s dreams are evidently a natural ability of his alien race.) Just when it seems that Superboy’s down for the count, the Kid is zapped away by – of all people – the young imp Mxyzptlk. After all if Superboy dies, there’ll be no one left for him to play with.
What a bizarre story. The origin is pretty generic, and in the end Superboy has no hand in saving himself – the only reason he survives is because Mxy didn’t want him to die. It’s also interesting to note that, by this point, things had been retconned so that Clark first encountered Mxyzptlk as a kid in Smallville rather than an adult in Metropolis. Kryptonite Kid wasn’t the most memorable of villains, but he did pop in to vex Superboy several more times, and at least once after they were adults. But there would be other villains who picked up the name Kryptonite Man later and made it more fearsome.
Ma and Pa couldn’t understand why Clark ghosted them.
Clark was also Superboy in Adventure Comics, where he met perhaps the second greatest enemy he’d ever have, after Luthor himself: General Zod. It begins when a box falls to Earth in Smallville with Kryptonese writing on it. Superboy reads the inscription to learn that the box contains several weapons that were deemed too dangerous to leave lying around Krypton, so they shot them into space on a trajectory that would eventually cause them to fall onto a far less developed planet, because for all their scientific advancement and planetary harmony, the Kryptonians were kinda dumb. Among these devices, which Superboy learns were created by his own father, Jor-El (there were approximately seven people on Krypton when it exploded and they all were connected to the Els), is the infamous Phantom Zone projector. Superboy learns the history of the device, including how General Zod was banished into the Zone when he tried to stage a revolt on Krypton with an army of Bizarro-like duplicates of himself. The device is activated when a lizard steps on the button and turns Superboy into a Phantom, because — and I cannot reiterate this enough — Kryptonians were kinda dumb. The Phantom Superboy is forced to zip around Smallville – invisible and intangible – trying to find some way to get somebody to turn the device on and restore him. He finally gets a message to Jonathan Kent, using his super-brain to transmit a message to an electric typewriter. This works because earlier in the issue Lana Lang theorized it would. That’s the only reason.
Zod’s appearance in this issue is minimal, appearing only in the flashback that shows how the Phantom Zone projector works. Both he and the Phantom Zone would come back and become much more defined, although Zod himself was fairly unimpressive until the late Terrence Stamp played him in the first two Superman movies, elevating him to the A-list of Superman villains. Most versions of Zod in the comics since then have been based on the Stamp version of the character. The Phantom Zone, too, would be dramatically changed from merely turning the victim into a phantom into being a portal to a literal other dimension. There was a lot of refinement to this concept before it became what it is today.
Superman poses for a lot of covers where he holds a dying blonde in his arms.
I also grabbed this week’s new Superman comics today, including a pair of one-shots that are connected to the larger story of the DC Universe. The prelude to DC KO is presented in Justice League: The Omega Act Special. Superman has brought the lost Booster Gold back to the League, but he and the Doomsday/Time Trapper – along with the Flash – take a quick trip through time to discover what really happened when Darkseid died in the DC All-In Special. The upcoming conflict with the Absolute Universe is about to change everything, but Booster has been changed as well. And in addition to Booster, we get flashbacks to Krypton’s past when Lara (Superman’s mother) and Ursa (Zod’s wife) made a discovery that might change everything we know about a certain member of our cast. I’m really excited to see where this story is going.
Absolute Evil #1 is the a one-shot special celebrating the first anniversary of DC’s Absolute line, focusing (naturally) on the villains. Hector Hammond is summoned to a summit that includes Veronica Cale, Ra’s Al Ghul, and the humorless creature this universe calls Joker. Cale reveals how – in this universe – certain forces have operated to prevent the rise of costumed heroes, either through violence or temptation. We’re given glimpses of the would-be heroes of this world’s Golden Age and what happened to them, as well as an understanding of what these terribly powerful people have planned now that things have changed and superhumans are beginning to appear that are beyond their ability to control. The issue has a pretty decent recap of the broad strokes of the Absolute Universe to date, for those who maybe want to play catch-up, and there’s a pretty startling final page that leaves me scratching my chin and wondering where they’re planning to go with all this.
Sun., Oct. 5
Comics: Absolute Superman #12, Adventures of Superman: Book of El #2
“Dammit, he’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
Notes: I had a lot on my plate on this Sunday, so I’m going to hop in real quick and read the other two new Superman comics from this week, starting with Absolute Superman #12. “The Battle of Kansas” begins as Kal-El retreats to the one place on Earth he’s ever felt safe: Smallville. Lois and Jimmy have the same idea, seeking refuge in a diner where a face the readers will recognize immediately confronts them about their association with Lazarus. We also get some flashbacks to fill in a bit of Kal-El’s time on Earth, even as Ra’s Al Ghul prepares his revenge on the alien who dared to defy him. This may be my favorite issue of this series to date, with a real look at character and a bit of the flavor of hope we expect from a Superman story. The whole thesis of the Absolute universe is that “hope” is the underdog, and the whole world runs on darkness and conflict as befits a world spawned by the power of Darkseid. But even in a world this dark, this issue shows us how the light of this character shines through, and it feels really good.
I feel less good about Book of El #2. Superman is in the distant future with his descendant, Ronan Kent, seeking a way home. Meanwhile, the world has been taken over by one of his greatest foes. This issue explores that a little bit, but in a way that I frankly find irritating. Some science fiction writers have people in the future talk exactly like people do today, even though logically we know that’s not right. Language changes and evolves, and people from 1000 from now won’t talk exactly as we do any more than we talk like people from 1000 years ago. So other writers conjure up a “future speak” to address the issue. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t it can come across as REALLY annoying. Realistic or not, sometimes it’s better to just keep the language simple.
As a soulless monster who leeches the life force from unsuspecting victims, he went with “Parasite” because “Insurance Claims Adjuster” was just too evil.
Notes: Back to Villains Week. The Parasite was the next significant Superman villain to show up, in Action Comics #340 from 1966. Like many of the villains we’ve talked about this week, he’s gone through a lot of changes over the years, and several people have used the name (although the powers haven’t changed significantly). Let’s see what kind of tomfoolery the original got up to.
The story, by the late Jim Shooter, kicks off hard, with the opening narration declaring that the Parasite was “the most powerful foe Superman has ever faced!” And in this pre-Darkseid, pre-Doomsday world, that may not be hyperbole. The story starts with Superman helping out in a government science lab, conducting experiments with radioactive elements that would kill an ordinary person. When the facility’s janitor Jensen, is tapped to dispose of the waste from the experiment, he remembers a rumor he heard that sometimes labs ship their payroll inside of containers marked “radioactive waste” to fool criminals. Instead, he proves that criminals are fools by opening up the container and exposing himself to the toxic material. Jensen’s skin turns purple and deformed and he collapses, as if all his energy has been spent. When one of the scientists finds him, Jensen finds himself absorbing not only the man’s energy, but also his scientific knowledge. He fights his way to freedom, absorbing the strength and minds of everyone he comes across. Although the energy he absorbs doesn’t last long, he begins to plan a new life as a human Parasite.
He later picks up a little of Superman’s energy as the Man of Steel flies past his hideout, and he gets the idea to hunt him down. When he feels an enormous surge of energy coming from Clark Kent, the Parasite figures out a secret that Luthor and Brainiac had been struggling with for decades. When Superman tries to stop him from robbing a bank, the Parasite defeats him with his own power and threatens to expose his secret identity if Superman refuses to fight him to the finish. He’s shocked that, no matter how much power he drains from Superman, he still keeps getting up and he keeps absorbing more and more until finally his mortal body is overloaded by Superman’s power and he explodes.
We’ve talked before about how unimaginative people complain that Superman’s powers make him “boring,” but it IS true that it’s hard to come up with a suitable physical threat for him. Like Kryptonite Kid, this was an effort to do so. But like Kryptonite Kid, in the end, Superman’s victory is a passive one. He survives not because of anything he DOES, but because the Parasite simply bites off more than he can chew. The Parasite would become a recurring foe for Superman over the decades, and although he remained dangerous, they also started to play up the fact that he wasn’t all that smart, and subsequent victories gave Superman a bit more agency. Still, it’s kind of disappointing that their first tete-a-tete ended the way it did.
“No, my name is NOT JOHNNY BLAZE. Why does everybody keep ASKING me that?”
Next we jump ahead to 1978 and the first appearance of the Atomic Skull in Superman #323. Although the Skull has never quite cracked into the ranks of Superman’s A-list villains, he’s a B- (or, if I’m being honest, maybe C)-lister that I’ve always had a fondness for. Of course, I remember him better in his vastly different post-Crisis version that showed up in early issues of Superman: The Man of Steel. The original Skull appears in “The Man With the Self-Destruct Mind” by Martin Pasko and Curt Swan, and shows up on page one destroying a Superman statue and vowing to kill the real thing. Superman, meanwhile, is in space – he’s wearing a suit of lead armor trying to investigate a sudden preponderance of Kryptonite that’s been falling to Earth lately and coming into the possession of a group called the Skull Crime Organization. He soon discovers that “Krypton-Two,” a planet he once made out of chunks of Kryptonite, has somehow been destroyed and is showering Earth with Green K once again. The Skulls, meanwhile, kidnap a STAR Laps scientist and reveal that their craft is powered by their leader, the Atomic Skull, whose brain is creating miniature nuclear reactions. Furthermore, he is unmasked as former STAR Labs scientist Albert Michaels. (Michaels, it turns out, had made previous appearances as the leader of the Skulls – this is his first appearance with his new powers and costume.) As it turns out, Michaels has a rare nervous disorder that short-circuits his brain’s electrical impulses. A treatment for his condition only made it worse – not only does he still have seizures, but they are accompanied by energy bursts that are killing him, and he hates Superman because he’s jailed the only scientists (mad, I presume) who could have saved him. His plan involves loading up a rocket with the Kryptonite that’s falling to Earth and detonating it in the atmosphere, blanketing the planet with enough Kryptonite particles to remove Superman’s powers no matter where he is on the globe. And on the last page he plays his trump card – holding Superman at bay with the powers of Titano, the Super-Ape as he sends the rocket to blow up.
Part two of the story picks up in Superman #324, as Titano hits Superman with the rays of his Kryptonite vision. Superman manages to neutralize the ape by wrapping lead around its eyes, then takes out the Atomic Skull by redirecting one of his own energy-bursts. This leaves him with the problem of what to do with the Kryptonite missile, which he can’t approach to stop without exposing himself to fatal doses of Kryptonite. Titano comes after him again and, with his X-Ray vision, Superman determines that the Skull is controlling the ape via a device implanted in his brain. He manages to corral the ape and then use the Supermobile (God, I love the stupid, ridiculous Supermobile) to vacuum up the Kryptonite from the atmosphere.
Does James Bond have a car with robot fists? DOES HE?
I appreciate that they were trying to up the ante for the villains at Superman at this point. The late 70s and early 80s are really, for me, one of the dullest periods in the character’s history, with few memorable stories or characters appearing. The Skull is an exception. He’s a little generic – the mad scientist with atomic powers – but the idea that the powers are slowly killing him gives it a little more weight. I don’t think they did that much with the idea, though, and it’s been largely dropped from future versions of the character. Now, especially, where his head is encased in atomic fire, people write him off as a Ghost Rider knock-off. There’s more to it there, and I think the right writer could really make him into a top-level threat.
Thank God Dave Gibbons taught him correct posture.
In 1980, Len Wein and Jim Starlin gave us DC Comics Presents #27. This issue of the Superman team-up book paired him off with the Martian Manhunter and gave us the first appearance of the world-conquering Mongul. Superman is alone in Clark’s apartment when he receives a message from outer space – a yellow-skinned alien who reveals that he has kidnapped three of Clark’s colleagues – Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, and Steve Lombard – and threatens them if Superman refuses to retrieve for him a crystal key that is being held on the fifth planet in the Cygnus system. At this period, the Martian Manhunter has left Earth, establishing a “new Mars” on Cygnus’s FOURTH planet, and when Superman approaches the crypt where the key is being kept, J’onn shows up and tells him that the world is off-limits. J’onn tells Superman that the key must remain where it is or countless worlds will be in jeopardy. The key is the only thing that will allow someone to get past the defenses of an ancient and incredibly powerful satellite called Warworld, and thus it may be the most dangerous object in the universe. Although Superman sympathizes, the two friends come to blows. Each of them attacks the other with their weakness (Kryptonite for Superman, fire for J’onn), and ultimately Superman retrieves the key. When Mongul arrives, though, he refuses to turn it over. J’onn saves the hostages, but Mongul manages to get the key and escapes.
There’s good and bad in this issue. On the plus side, Mongul is a great villain. He’s the most fully-formed of all the villains I’ve read about this week, the one who is most like who he becomes from the very beginning. He’s cold, manipulative, and ambitious, all qualities that make him one of the greats. On the other hand, I really dislike the way Wein paints Superman and J’onn. The two of them have been friends forever at this point – the fact that they went straight to fighting instead of trying to work together to find a way out of this dilemma does a disservice to them both.
The story continued in the next issue, when Superman recruits Supergirl to help him track Mongul to Warworld. (Why J’onn didn’t come along, considering how important he considered the key to be, is a mystery.) They find the planet and are dazzled by the enormity of it, but Superman manages to defeat Mongul by outlasting him – he reasons that the aliens that created the satellite died one by one because the control helmet was too much for them and that it would eventually wear Mongul out, and he’s right. It does make one wonder, though, why the hell the aliens would make their entire weapon fueled by a device that would not only cause their own extinction, but do so in what seems to be a matter of minutes. Who the hell ever thought THAT was a good idea? Even in the real world, it takes us much longer to destroy ourselves.
Tues., Oct. 7
Comics: Action Comics #595, 645, Justice League of America #31
Notes: You may have noticed something about the villains I’ve covered so far this week. I know my wife certainly has. They’ve all been men. I refuse to take the blame for this. It’s not my fault that for five decades, the writers of Superman never seemed to come up with an interesting continuing female villain. I think part of it is the idea that you can’t have Superman punch out a lady – it’s not a good look for the strongest man in the world to punch out a woman. In fact, go back and look at any early Justice League issue where the team fights a villain GROUP – there’s always one female villain so that Wonder Woman has somebody to fight.
In an outfit like this, she ain’t no lady.
But eventually, it seems, people decided to address that, and in my chronological journey through Superman’s rogues’ gallery, the last three significant villains I’m going to talk about all happen to be female.. We’re going to start with Action Comics #595 and the first appearance of the Silver Banshee. This was part of the John Byrne era, coming out in 1987 during the period when Action Comics was the Superman team-up book. This particular issue, though, didn’t divulge who Superman’s guest-star was on the cover, leaving a string of question marks where the second hero’s name usually went. It’s a striking cover nonetheless – a stark black-and-white villain with a skeletal face standing over Superman’s dead body while his spirit comes at her from behind. That’s a book that’ll get your attention.
The story starts with the Banshee walking through Metropolis, invading bookstores where she casually touches bystanders, drains their life force, and leaves them dead. And when Superman arrives, she does the same to him. The world is stunned by the hero’s sudden loss and he’s placed in state in a glass casket for a memorial as the Banshee escapes. At the funeral, though, everyone witnesses Superman’s ghost rise from his body and take off after the Banshee. Jimmy, meanwhile, has tracked her down to yet another bookstore. She’s about to touch him when Superman’s ghost appears and engages her, shocking her when she realizes she can’t hurt him anymore. The Banshee unleashes her scream, trying to destroy Superman, but winds up exploding. (Superman villains used to explode a LOT.) Jimmy is pulled from the debris by a LIVING Superman, and watches in astonishment as the ghost Superman transforms into J’onn J’onzz, making his second appearance in Villains Week! Give the man a box of Chockos! On the last page we get an explanation for everything – the Banshee’s ability to kill was based on her knowing her victim’s identity (because magic), so she was helpless against the shapeshifter. Jimmy also figured out that she was targeting bookstores that had recently received a shipment of books from a certain castle in Ireland. That, of course, is the sort of thing that comes back later.
The Silver Banshee has always been one of the most memorable new villains from this period. She’s got a phenomenal look, first of all – a really unique appearance that’s totally unlike any of Superman’s other villains. Also, considering how everyone remembers his vulnerability to magic, it’s surprising that he doesn’t have more enemies for whom magic is their usual shtick. Later stories would flesh out the character more, revealing a tragic backstory and making her more sympathetic. In recent years she’s wavered between villain and antihero, and she’s even (in her human form) dated Jimmy Olsen. In fact, I think she still is – Jimmy’s been a little out of focus in the comics lately, they really should address that. Anyway, the point is, she’s a good character.
Stalker with a crush, anyone?
Maxima, the warrior queen from the planet Almerac, made her first appearance in Action Comics #645 by Roger Stern and George Perez. I’ve written about Maxima in the Year of Superman many times, of course. She was a member of the Justice League during the Doomsday storyline, broke bad again in the electric era, and she’s had a smattering of other appearances over the last ten months. Today, though, we’re going to see where she came from in the first place.
The story begins with a stunning redhead strutting the streets of Metropolis and being accosted by a few gang members, one of whom quickly (and fatally) learns that pulling a knife on her isn’t a good idea. Maxima, along with an attendant named Sazu, is looking for Superman, and winds up at the Daily Planet office after being told he has connections there. Superman isn’t in attendance, though, and after leaving the entire staff in a trance, she leaves. Clark shows up, fresh from a fight with the Parasite in Starman’s comic (Stern was writing both books and liked to tie them together), shows up and snaps them out of it. They tell him about their attacker and he finds her pretty easily, as she’s now at City Hall holding the mayor hostage. When he arrives, she puts him under mental assault as a means of testing him. She’s testing Superman’s “worthiness” and finds him acceptable, but Sazu revolts. She claims that Superman is “unworthy” and unleashes her own mental powers against Maxima, who…explodes.
No, really.
Sazu is taken into custody and Superman is left confused, but the last page clues the reader in to the fact that the Maxima who blew up was just a simulacrum. The real Maxima is in outer space and now, dang it, she’s gonna have to come to Earth herself to make Superman hers.
And she did show up again, and several times after that, as her motivation was revealed: she was seeking a consort of superior bloodline with which to procreate and extend the line of the Royal Family of Almerac. As villain motivations go, it’s a lot more flattering than wanting to destroy him because he thinks it’s Superman’s fault that he went bald. It’s also interesting how the gender roles are inverted here. When you consider the revelation about Kal-El’s parents in James Gunn’s movie, it’s not all that different, but it’s definitely more controversial. Part of that, of course, is because Jor-El is usually portrayed more benevolently, but even were it a brand new character I think people would have found it more insidious than they did when Maxima shows up wanting pretty much the same thing. There’s probably a whole dissertation that could be written about the differences here, but that’s somewhat above my pay grade. At any rate, it makes Maxima one of the more memorable villains of the era, and she’s had the kind of longevity that it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see her show up in a new movie or TV show. There’s something interesting about this character that’s fun in a cheesy sci-fi sort of way.
TV Episode: Superman: The Animated Series Season 2, Episode 5, “Livewire”
She’s got an ELECTRIC personality! Haha! Get it? Ah, I’ll show myself out.
Notes: The last villain we’re going to discuss on this avenue of animosity did not make her first appearance in comics, but rather on TV. No doubt trying to duplicate the smash hit they had when they created Harley Quinn on Batman: The Animated Series, the producers of the Superman cartoon introduced this new female foe in 1997, an electrical harpy called Livewire. Although she hasn’t QUITE had the degree of cultural penetration that Harley has (and to be fair, who HAS?), she, too, made the leap to comic books and has crossed swords with Superman occasionally ever since.
In “Livewire” we’re introduced to Leslie Willis (voiced by Lori Petty), a radio shock jock who’s riding a ratings high she’s getting off of trash-talking Superman. She goes through with her show’s anniversary celebration in Centennial Park despite a thunderstorm pouring down on them, and suffers the consequences when lightning overloads her equipment. Superman tries to shield her, but Leslie is bombarded by electricity, bleaching her skin white and her hair blue. When she wakes up in the hospital, she discovers she’s developed electrical powers, including the ability to control electronic devices, and attempts to hold the city of Metropolis hostage. She attacks the city’s hydroelectric plant, where Superman comes in to hold her off. After a pitched battle, Livewire blasts a hole in the dam and is washed over with water, causing her to EXPLODE!!!
Just kidding.
No, she stays in one piece, but the water DOES short-circuit her powers, allowing Superman to repair the damage to the power plant and bring her in. When we last see her, a radio voiceover tells us that Lex Luthor has volunteered (through the goodness of his heart, of course) to pay for her treatments, but the image we have of her strapped into a chair with wires all over her seem to indicate that she isn’t receiving the best of care.
I like Livewire, not just because Superman could use more female villains, but because she’s got a unique attitude. She’s not jealous of Superman’s popularity. She’s not out to prove that she’s more powerful than he is. She doesn’t want to outsmart him or outthink him, and she CERTAINLY doesn’t want to have his babies. Nope, Livewire is just a jerk, a loudmouthed radio asshole like Howard Stern, only more lifelike, and that’s an entertaining dynamic to play.
This first week of October was a fun one, but it’s just the beginning. Like I said, I intend to spend this month peering into the dark side (not to be confused with the Darkseid) of the Man of Steel, and I mean it. Come back next week for my discussion of Superman’s Darkest Hours.
In last week’s column, a work of foundational literary greatness which has already replaced things like the Magna Carta in terms of historical significance, we discussed the collapse of Diamond Distribution and the way its disintegration has disrupted things for the comic book world in North America. But that’s only part of the story. Like traditional books, the digital market for comic books has become a significant player. True, comic fans (even more so than readers of regular books) have a strong collector’s mindset and will probably never outgrow the desire for physical copies. But for comic readers, the convenience of digital is appealing to many.
REMEMBER. REMEMBER WHAT THEY TOOK FROM US.
Once upon a time, there was a great little app called Comixology. It wasn’t the only game in digital comics, but it quickly became the dominant one because it cut deals with virtually every major publisher and almost every minor one you could name. It had a gargantuan catalogue to choose from. There were a mountain of comics available for free as well – lots of first issues and special one-shots in addition to simple previews – enough to let you try almost anything before you started to think about whether you wanted to buy anything or not. There were sales every week, where tons of comics were reduced in price and others were made freebies temporarily. One time, Marvel had an event in which the first issue of EVERY MARVEL TITLE was free for a few days, and the response from people “purchasing” the digital comics was so great that the app crashed and they had to issue rain checks. They even had a program in which independent comic book creators – those making comics on their own without the benefit of a publisher – could submit their work to Comixology and make it available for sale on the biggest digital comic book platform in existence.
It was popular, is what I’m saying.
“Sounds great, Blake,” you’re saying. “What happened to it?”
Amazon bought it, of course.
Don’t you smile at me like you don’t know what you did.
Look, I’m not going to get into the various reasons that people hate Amazon. I’m not going to get into politics or the abusive nature of how they treat their workforce. I’m certainly not going to point out the fact that Jeff Bezos really, really looks like Lex Luthor. I’m going to focus on what’s actually pertinent to this column, namely the fact that when Amazon purchased Comixology, they turned it from a fun, easy app to use to read and collect digital comics into a system that – and here I am directly quoting St. Francis of Assissi – “sucks.”
Like many things Amazon buys, nothing changed…at first. But they slowly began to integrate Comixology’s functions with their own. They married your Comixology library with the library from the Amazon Kindle store, their own digital platform, and eventually they did away with the simple, easy-to-use, easy-to navigate Comixology website. By forcing you to access the digital comics via Amazon’s own website, they absolutely crippled its usefulness.
On Comixology, it was easy to track comics in various ways – title, publisher, creators. One could simply click on a single title – Amazing Spider-Man, for example – and add each issue that you wanted to your cart, then buy them. Amazon’s interface does NOT make this simple. When you do a search on Amazon your results are determined by algorithm, a word I am beginning to despise in much the same way I despise words like “smallpox” or “cauliflower crust pizza.” So instead of simply searching for Spider-Man and finding the various series of Spider-Man comics, now when I search for Spider-Man I get a dozen “sponsored” results, a couple hundred Funko pops and t-shirts, some movies and TV shows, and EVENTUALLY I’ll find individual comic books that have no logical sequence or arrangement that can be detected by the human brain. It’s an utter mess and nearly impossible to keep track of what you already own or to find what you’re looking for.
Even worse, Amazon eventually abandoned the Comixology app as well, fusing it with the Kindle Reader. The Kindle Reader is adequate for books, but as a platform for keeping track of thousands of individual comic books amongst hundreds of series, it is an absolute nightmare. I still have my “collection,” but it’s so rare now that I get a digital comic from Amazon that if they shut down the entire system tomorrow, it would be weeks before I would even notice. I DO use the Kindle Reader frequently, mind you, but I have to “hide” the comic books to prevent the app from crushing under the weight loading the ridiculous number of comics I accumulated during the years of Comixology’s existence. When Amazon killed Comixology, they abandoned one good app and made an adequate app less easy to use even when I’m not reading comics.
This is not to say that I’ve stopped reading comics digitally. Far from it – in any given week I probably read more comics on my tablet than I do on paper (especially with the whole Year of Superman thing I’ve been doing since January). It’s just that I’ve found other ways to do it. And in many ways, these alternatives are far preferable if your ultimate goal is not just to have a paper copy of every conceivable comic in the universe sealed in plastic. There are so many X-Men titles, for example, that trying to collect them all could bankrupt the average American. But with an affordable subscription to Marvel’s digital app, you can read as many of the books as you want if you’re willing to wait a few months.
Marvel and DC both have similar apps with a subscription that lets you read their massive back catalogue, but I think they’re the only two individual publishers that have such a thing. And that makes sense, honestly. The other players in the comic book game are either too small to have a bench deep enough to justify the subscription model (you could potentially read every comic Abstract Studios has ever produced in a couple of months, for example, and then why would you maintain the subscription?) or they are heavily reliant on comics that are owned by their creators (such as Image Comics) and IPs licensed from TV, movies, toys, and so forth (Dark Horse, Dynamite, IDW, and many other publishers have a long list of these). Having so many books owned by different copyright holders makes arranging a digital subscription service difficult and subject to having huge swaths of their catalogues suddenly vanish if their deal with the owner of the IP is not renewed.
Tunnel, meet light.
There are alternatives, however. GlobalComix, for example, is a service that has a lot of comics – including new comics – available for purchase, as well as a subscription service that gives you access to their entire library for $6.99 a month or $69 for a yearly pass. Their catalogue includes publishers including (but not limited to) Dark Horse, Image, Mad Cave Studios, IDW, anime publisher Kodasha, TONS of small publishers, and even selections from DC and (beginning on Oct. 15) Marvel. It’s not immune to the problems I mentioned before, of course. If a deal with a certain publisher or rightsholder expires and isn’t renewed, then the readers’ access will be cut off. But in this case, GlobalComix has deals with enough different publishers that the loss of any one specific publisher isn’t likely to cause the whole system to collapse.
You can purchase individual comics to read if you don’t want the subscription, similar to how we all once built up our huge Comixology libraries, but the notion of a digital “collection” seems weird when a subscription is available. If it would cost more to buy two new comics this month than it would cost to buy an unlimited monthly subscription, why the hell buy the two comics? It’s not like you actually “own” them. As we’ve learned with things like licensed movies and music, you never really “own” digital content unless you’ve got it on a hard drive somewhere. All you “own” is a license to read it, and that can be revoked. I guess the only kind of digital exception to that would be something like an NFT, but the whole concept of NFTs is – and once again I’m going to quote St. Francis – “as stupid as a pig touring the Hormel plant.”
That said, there does seem to be a small niche appearing for digital “collectibles” of a sort, and that’s the concept of personalization. This summer, comic publisher DSTLRY announced that they were launching a new digital comics platform called Neon Ichiban. DSTLRY, it should be noted, was founded by David Steinberger and Chip Mosher, the guys who founded Comixology in the first place before selling it to Amazon in 2014. I guess after their decade-long non-compete clause expired, they decided that something had to be done about the mess that was made of their baby.
“We got out of our beds stuffed with Amazon money because SOMEBODY has gotta fix this mess.” — Steinberg and Mosher, probably.
The program is still in beta at the moment, but I’ve signed up for it and some of the things I’ve seen have been pretty promising. It’s not hard to find what you’re looking for on the site, or to add it to your collection. Technically, I should say, I haven’t actually purchased anything from Neon Ichiban yet. I’m a little reluctant to do so while it’s still in beta, even though I’m sure they intend to roll any beta purchases over into the finished version of the site. I have, however, “bought” several of the free comics available in order to test out the functionality, and it’s not bad.
There are definitely things that need to be improved, primarily the fact that they need to roll out a dedicated app for the service. At present there is no app, and customers have to read their comics through the Neon Ichiban website. The interface is okay, but not nearly as convenient as having an app will be, especially when reading on mobile (which is preferable – to me, at least – to reading on a computer screen). The service is also still fairly new, the Beta only launching in August, so they’re working on building up their back catalogue. I’m impressed by some of the publishers they’ve already partnered with, though, including the juggernauts of Marvel and DC, as well Dark Horse, Vault Comics, Kodansha, and others, with the promise of more to come in the near future. Each week since the Beta has launched they’ve added that week’s new comics from the participating publishers to the service, and they’ve all been slowly adding older books to the library as well. The last time I checked Marvel (not surprisingly) had the largest back catalogue on the site, and although it’s not nearly the number of comics available on Marvel’s own app, it’s not inconsiderable either.
Still, all of this is similar enough to GlobalComix that it would be hard to recommend one service over the other, at least as far as purchasing individual comics goes. And for those who don’t care about “owning” a digital copy, Global’s subscription model gives them the edge. But Neon Ichiban has something that I haven’t heard of before that will probably get people’s attention: some of the comics in their catalogue are labeled “Remarque-able.” Spelling aside, I dug around trying to figure out what the hell that actually means, and from what I can tell, it’s an interesting idea. It seems that “Remarque-able” books will be available to be digitally altered, adding things like digital autographs or commissioned sketches to the comic, similar to the way you can get an artist to sketch on a blank comic book cover now. The idea of a digital autograph seems a little silly to me, to be honest, but if I could commission – for example – Dan Jurgens to draw a one-of-a-kind sketch of Superman on a digital copy of Action Comics #1000…well, I’m not saying I would do it OFTEN, but I admit I understand how such a thing would be appealing to a portion of the audience. There is the question of what – if any – restrictions are in place. If I pay an artist to draw Batman on the cover of a blank Spider-Man, most of them would do it (even if such a request seems odd). Would the same thing apply to a Remarque-able comic, or would they have tighter restrictions on what could be drawn there? Would there be limitations regarding graphic or adult content? And if so, what would they be? I don’t know yet, and those questions need to be answered. Whether I ever did it myself would depend entirely on what artists and books are available and how much it would cost, but it’s something I would at least consider.
So while people in the real world are falling over each other trying to figure out how to get comic books in stores again, there are fortunately already systems in place to keep the digital flow going, and many of them are far superior to what we’re seeing from Amazon. That is, of course, an extremely low bar, but it’s a bar that’s being hurtled nonetheless.
The future of comics is in flux, I can’t deny that, but I’m not one of those people who think the future is fading either. Comics aren’t going away. They’re evolving in several areas, but people are doing things to get them to the readers, which is where they belong. And like in the physical distribution front, I think having a few different competing digital services is probably a good idea. As much as I liked Comixology, had there been any serious competitors at the time, it wouldn’t have been such a disaster when Amazon ruined it. I haven’t gone all-in on either GlobalComix or Neon Ichiban yet, but knowing that they’re both out there is honestly pretty comforting.
At the moment, though, I’ve still got 90 years of Superman comics to get through first.
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. Now he’s thinking of commissioning Scott Shaw! to draw a Spider-Ham/Captain Carrot mashup. Really, people, the time has come.
The monthlong journey through Superman’s electric era was fun, but I’m ready to mix it up again and get back to some different types of stories. So this week I’ve decided to go without a theme. I’ll grab random stories to enjoy each day, without any overarching plan or goal. I’ll get back to themes in October. And I’ve got plans for October.
Comics:Superman #162, Taste of Justice #12 (Krypto Appearance), Harley Quinn in Paradise #37 (Cameo), Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #13
Notes: With the saga of Electric Superman behind me, I realized that there’s one thing I should have read that I forgot to include. Like “The Death of Superman,” the long-running epic of Superman Red and Superman Blue was not a unique idea to the Triangle Era, having drawn a little inspiration from a Silver Age “Imaginary Story.” Today, even though I’m purposely leaving this week open for random readings as the mood strikes me, I wanted to go back and read the original story of Superman Red and Superman Blue from 1963. I read this story for the first time when I was a kid, included in the delightful Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told trade paperback, which now that I think about it, may be the first trade paperback I ever got. I wonder how the contents of that would change were they to make a new volume today.
Anyway, in “The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue” by Leo Dorfman, with art by the immortal Curt Swan, we start off with a discussion of Superman’s many failings. The publisher of the Daily Planet puts out a post listing raises for every employee except for Clark Kent (in fact it specifically says “Clark Kent: No Increase,” like that time on The Simpsons that the power plant announced layoffs in alphabetical order and only said “Simpson, Homer”), and before the bruising has even subsided, he’s summoned to the Fortress of Solitude where the citizens of Kandor are pissed that he hasn’t gotten around to enlarging them yet. And while they’re on the subject, why hasn’t he found a cure for Kryptonite poisoning or eradicated crime on Earth? Is he a Superman or isn’t he?
I gotta be honest, the Kandorians kinda seem like assholes in this one.
At any rate, they give him six months to try to accomplish all of these feats or they’re going to have him switch places with a Kandorian citizen and let the new guy try to do it. Superman, apparently forgetting the fact that he is – relative to them – the size of the Empire State Building, agrees to their terms. He tells Supergirl that he’s invented a “brain evolution machine” that could theoretically improve his mental power a hundredfold. The catch is that the machine is powered by radiation from all different colors of Kryptonite, so there’s a significant chance that something could go wrong. As it turns out, though, something goes extraordinarily RIGHT. The machine splits Superman into two beings, each 100 times smarter than the original. Unlike the last time this happened under the influence of Red Kryptonite, though, this time there’s no evil twin – they’re both still good.
The two super-geniuses quickly put their brains to work solving the issues that Kandor set forth for them, beginning with repairing Brainiac’s enlarging ray (which he’d never been able to do before) and restoring Krypton by causing a chain reaction that magnetically draws every chunk of Kryptonite in the universe to the planet and, at the same time, neutralizing their harmful rays. Kandor is enlarged on its rebuilt homeworld, and the first two problems on his list are solved just like that.
Before they can move on to the next item on their list, they get a telepathic signal from Lori Lemaris. The Atlanteans saw what they did for Kandor and ask them to help them find an uninhabited ocean planet to live on, since they’re “tired of being considered freaks here on Earth.” This is kind of a crazy notion – it’s not like the existence of Atlantis was common knowledge at the time, so who exactly was calling them freaks? It’s also weird that nobody ever stops to consider what Aquaman has to say about all this, although I suppose you need to remember that at this time, DC didn’t care nearly as much about continuity as they would later.
Once that’s taken care of, it’s crime time. The Supermen invent a ray that can “erase all thoughts of evil” from the minds of the world’s criminals, which they swiftly deploy through a series of satellites. Instantaneously, every villain on Earth is reformed. Bank robbers return their loot, escaped prisoners turn themselves in, the Soviet Union dumps all its missiles into the sea! Even Brainiac, coming from space to attack Superman again, has a change of heart when he gets in range of the satellites. And GEEZ, is this a story that would take on a different aspect if it were written today. If you were reading comics in the mid-aughts, you probably remember Identity Crisis, the DC event which revealed that certain members of the Justice League had agreed to use Zatanna’s magic to essentially brainwash certain criminals over time, removing memories and – in the case of Dr. Light – turning him from a serious threat into a buffoon. The revelation of their actions caused a schism in the League that nearly destroyed it before it was rebuilt in the wake of Infinite Crisis. One could argue that what happens in this story is far worse. Sure, there’s no more crime, but it’s at the cost of effectively brainwashing the entire planet. These are our HEROES, folks.
Not to say it’s all bad. Once the rays hit Lex Luthor and reform him, he whips up a serum that, after the Supermen distribute it into the world’s drinking water supply, instantaneously eradicates all disease from the Earth, even allowing him to grow his hair back. Yes, they even eradicate male pattern baldness.
The final chapter of this three-part “novel” shows us the end of the Supermen’s career. With Krypton restored and crime wiped out, Supergirl releases the Phantom Zone criminals (who are immediately reformed by the rays) and together they decide to go back to live on New Krypton, but not before the Legion of Super-Heroes pops in to say goodbye to her, and also give her a spaceship. Remember that, people, good friends are the greatest treasure. The Supermen then decide to turn their attention to the greatest danger of all: women. Superman, it seems, had always struggled between two girls, Lois Lane and Lana Lang, and unable to make a decision, kept them at arm’s length. Now that there’s no crime to endanger Superman’s wife, there’s no longer any reason to stay single. For the first time it turns out that Red and Blue aren’t EXACTLY alike – Red prefers Lois, while Blue is conveniently Team Lana, so each of them goes to reveal his identity and propose to the girl he loves. They each agree immediately to marry Superman (they most certainly would NOT have married Clark, let’s be honest), but are stunned when they discover that there are two of him.
Have they not been watching the news? I…I feel like the two Supermen who eradicated crime and spread Lex Luthor’s serum to cure all disease would have made the news.
Wait, LOIS AND LANA would have made the news, they BOTH WORKED for news organizations.
Anyway, their double wedding is disrupted when Best Man Jimmy Olsen and Maid of Honor Lucy Lane decide to tie the knot as well, making Lois and Lana considerably more understanding than any bride who was ever featured on TLC. Red decides he wants to retire to Krypton, taking Lois, Krypto, and Comet the Super-Horse with him, while Blue stays on Earth to devote his life to science while his robots take over the job of patrolling the Earth for natural disasters and accidents, which surprises me inasmuch as Dorfman didn’t have him invent an anti-Earthquake ray or something. The end.
This story…It’s been several years since I read it, and I have to admit, it hits a little differently than it used to. I still enjoy it. It’s got that sweet, naive charm of the Silver Age, and I’ve got a heavy chain of nostalgia that makes me appreciate it. At the same time, though, there’s a lot of stuff in here that very much would not fly today. In fact, I’m kind of surprised that nobody has latched on to this for one of the far-too-frequent “evil Superman” stories, returning to this “imaginary world” (which is now just considered part of the multiverse) to look into the consequences of actually manipulating the brains of the entire planet the way these Supermen do. There are several other things in the story that are a little iffy, but nothing as awe-inspiringly wild as that.
It was a different world 60 years ago, wasn’t it?
Thur. Sept. 26
Comics: Adventures of Superman #473
Notes: When I started this year, I compiled a sizable document listing the assorted theme weeks I had planned or was considering, along with another list of specific stories that I wanted to include for one reason or another. With the end of the year coming faster than it seems, I’ve decided to pepper these weeks that aren’t adhering to any particular theme with more of these random stories that made the list because I remember reading them and I wanted to visit them again. Such is the case with Adventures of Superman #473.
This issue came immediately after Lois and Clark’s engagement in Superman #50 which – if you recall when I wrote about the whole “Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite” storyline months ago – is the story that actually locked me in as a regular Superman reader. That makes this one of the earliest Superman stories that drew me into this incarnation of the character, as well as the one that showed me a bit of what was then the status quo of the Green Lantern Corps, which at the time didn’t really exist. It was kind of foundational for my entry into the DCU.
Plus, that Dan Jurgens cover just slaps.
The story starts with Lois and Clark telling Jimmy the news of their engagement over lunch – a lunch disrupted when an enormous Green Lantern symbol appears in the sky over Metropolis. When the symbol morphs into an S-Shield, Lois rushes to write up the story that one of the Lanterns is trying to contact Superman, leaving Clark (who still hasn’t told her his identity at this point) the opportunity to sneak off. He flies to New York to find Guy Gardner, but Gardner didn’t send the signal. Gardner uses his ring to track the signal to a location in Wyoming where Hal Jordan is being held by a giant alien whose ship crashed on Earth centuries ago. Hal is helpless, his ring’s charge having been spent just as he signaled Superman, plus the alien is siphoning energy from his power battery. They find him beneath an air force base where Hal escapes and recharges his ring, then with the addition of Superman’s will, they take back the emerald energy he stole. The alien is despondent, believing himself trapped on Earth, but Superman and the Lanterns take pity on him and restore his ship to space with enough energy to finally, after centuries, return home.
This is a nice self-contained issue, with the only major link to the ongoing storylines being Lois and Clark’s engagement and a few references to the still-fresh wound of the death of Jerry White. But the book turned out to be pretty fundamental to me. As I said, I was still relatively new to DC at the time it came out, and this served as something of a gateway for me to both the Justice League America series that Guy was a member of, as well as the then-new Green Lantern series featuring the down-and-out, gray-templed, globetrotting Hal Jordan that existed at the time. I knew who the Justice League and Green Lantern were, of course, but at this point my perspectives on the characters were built primarily around pre-Crisis comics that my uncle had given me and the way they were depicted on shows like Super Friends. With this book my eyes were opened to a larger world. I became a fan of these properties, especially Green Lantern, and I’ve been a faithful reader of that comic ever since (with the exception of one writer whose run turned me off so much that I dropped the book until it ended – but the less said about that bleak period the better).
This book is also a great glimpse at the way the characters were written at the time. Gardner, for example, had the same stupid, brash attitude that Nathan Fillion made so much fun in the movie, although he’s perhaps even a little more dimwitted. There’s one point, for instance, where Superman shows his exasperation that the alien has allied himself with two old sparring partners of his named Dreadnaught and Psi-Phon, and Gardner takes that as a cue to go after them with a power ring-generated chainsaw. There’s some interesting contradictions here as well – he’s jingoistic enough to casually wish for a new war so he could show what he can do, but too dense to realize that the airplanes attacking them are American. Fortunately, this particular facet of the character has dulled over time.
Superman, meanwhile, is all him. When the alien believes himself to be stranded, Superman hits him with a classic observation: “How come extraterrestrials are always coming here and causing all kinds of trouble instead of asking for assistance? All you have to do is ASK!” The giant alien is suitably ashamed of his behavior before Superman helps him out anyway, because of course, he’s Superman.
A fun book from early in Jurgens’ run, and I enjoyed revisiting it again after all this time.
Fri., Sept. 26
Comics: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #139, 141, All-Star Squadron #36 (Team Member)
Notes: Here’s a fun, weird one that should have been worked into the week of Superman’s Strangest Team-Ups. Jack Kirby, who at this point was doing pretty much whatever he wanted with this title, had made Project: Cadmus a regular co-feature of Jimmy Olsen’s adventures. This is the issue where the Project unveiled the Guardian, the clone of the Golden Age hero who became a regular member of Superman’s supporting cast in this same basic form during the Triangle Era. Guardian changed a bit before the 90s, though. In this one he’s much more focused on being a clone, even commenting how it’s always an “experience” to meet an “original” human like Clark Kent. (That’s what we call dramatic irony, by the way, kiddos.) By the Triangle Era, Guardian had shed the conceit of making his status as a clone such a big part of his identity and was just the original Jim Harper in a new body.
The rest of the story involves “Goody Rickels,” WGBS employee with an uncanny resemblance to Don Rickles. Morgan Edge can’t stand him and tries to manipulate things to get rid of him, and honestly, it’s hard to blame him. It’s a really weird little story and, despite the promise on the cover of “Two Rickles,” the real Don doesn’t appear until part two of the story, which comes in issue #141. (Issue #140 was a giant-sized issue of reprints.) The second part begins with the bold cover proclamation: “Kirby says: Don’t ask! Just buy it!” Jimmy, Guardian, and Goody have been given a meal with a toxin that will activate and cause them to explode within 24 hours if they don’t get the antidote. As Guardian searches for it, Jimmy and Goody wind up at WBGS where the real Don Rickles is in a meeting with Morgan Edge. There’s a big dust-up and Goody is on the verge of exploding when Guardian shows up with the antidote. This also happens to be the issue where Clark Kent, in space with the New Gods, gets his first-ever glimpse of Apokolips, which is an interesting historical note for a comic book with Don Rickles on the cover.
Sat., Sept. 27
Comics: Superman Unlimited #5, Superman Vol. 6 #30, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #11, New History of the DC Universe #3, Aquaman: Yo-Ho-Hold on To Your Hook #11 (Guest Appearance)
Notes: Once again, today I’m picking up the new Superman-related comics for the week, including two new issues of the ongoing, Justice League Unlimited, and a return to the reshaping of DC’s history.
We’re starting it off with Superman Unlimited #5. The Daily Planet gets word that the Kult of Kobra is operating in El Caldero, the “Kryptonite Kingdom.” What’s more, the Calderan mining operation is about to uncover a Kryptonian Sunstone, the same kind of technology that built Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Donning a suit of Kryptonite-proof armor and catching a ride in one of the most gloriously anachronistic pieces of Superman tech, he heads to Caldero to try to get the Sunstone before Kobra. The story seems to be picking up a little here. Previous issues have been largely one-off stories that connect to the larger story of the Kryptonite Kingdom, but this one gives us a nice little cliffhanger. It looks like the story is opening up, and I’m excited to see where it’s going to go.
The story of Darkseid’s Legion continues in Superman #30. Superman’s supposed ally, Superboy-Prime, has turned (insert surprised Pikachu face here), joining Darkseid’s Legion and capturing him, along with the long-suffering Booster Gold. The issue wraps up this (surprisingly short) storyline, but also acts as a lead-in to the upcoming DC KO event, and although I don’t want to get into too much more detail about what happens, Joshua Williamson pulls off a hell of a trick. There’s a brilliant reversal of expectations in this book, leading up to a climax (before the epilogue) that felt positively stirring. There’s a reason Superman is the greatest hero there is, and it’s got nothing to do with his powers. It’s about what he represents, what he stands for, what he means to other people. And boy-howdy, does this issue understand that. I love Superman, I love the Legion, I love Booster Gold…and I love what this issue does with all three of them.
We also, incidentally, get to use Prime’s meta awareness to give us what is objectively one of the most funny panels in a Superman comic all year. You’ll know it when you see it.
Justice League Unlimited #11 is another prelude to DC KO, this one starting off with the Justice League Watchtower being invaded by an army of Parademons. At the same time, beneath the country of Markovia, a League squad including Power Girl and Captain Atom find themselves in battle against some of Darkseid’s Legion. The battle goes poorly on both fronts and we get Leaguers down before a last page that ties very nicely into this week’s issue of Superman. I love when comics pull off tricks like this one, two stories that happen simultaneously and tie together in the end. It’s a nice way to make the shared universe conceit work, and theoretically, you don’t HAVE to read both of them to understand either one. It sure makes it more satisfying when you do, though.
And Waid returns with a plethora of artists to bring us New History of the DC Universe #3. Picking up on the aftermath of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, Barry begins to recount the era of the DC Universe that made for my foundational years – the late 80s and early 90s – all the way up to Barry Allen’s resurrection in Final Crisis. As Barry is, in fact the narrator of this series, you could simply call this issue “stuff that happened while I was dead.” Once again, I’m impressed at how Mark Waid has gone about smoothing over certain elements of the combined/rebooted/revamped DC Universe. For instance, when Supergirl came back in 2004, she was introduced as though she were a brand-new character, her death in the original Crisis being removed from continuity. Waid has it both ways here – Supergirl DID die in the crisis, and the story we read in Jeph Loeb’s Superman/Batman run has been retconned slightly – rather than introducing her to Earth to use her as a weapon, now Darkseid actually resurrected Supergirl for the same reason. Waid also, once again, brings in elements of the Milestone Universe, specifically the 90s incarnations of the characters, marking them as denizens of the DCU proper in such a way that certainly makes it seem as though there are plans afoot to bring them back again.
This series really is a nerd’s dream. And as a nerd, I approve.
Sun., Sept. 28
Comics: Superman #125, DC Vs. Vampires: World War V #11 (Appearances by Supergirl, Steel, Lois Lane)
Notes: Let me tell you something about my family. My son is a football nut. Like, he’s crazed. If there is an NFL game on, he is insistent upon watching it, to the point that he begged me to take him to church yesterday on Saturday afternoon so that he could stay home this morning, Sunday, and watch the Steelers/Vikings game in Dublin at 8:30 am. He also gets up and gets VERY excited and VERY hyper, and the point is, by the time the early game ended and the noon game began, I was already exhausted by this little creature which I am emotionally, biologically, and legally responsible for. I didn’t really have it in me to get into any deep Superman lore today, so I scrolled through the DC app looking for the silliest, most ridiculous one-off comic I could find. The winner turned out to be Superman #125 from 1958.
The first story, “Lois Lane’s Super-Dream,” begins with Lois falling into a coma when she falls from a ten-foot ledge trying to sneak into the Metropolis Science Fair a week early, which has got to be the stupidest way she’s ever almost gotten herself killed, even in the Silver Age. She gets a blood transfusion to save her life, but her subconscious mind thinks she got it from Superman, and she has a dream where his blood gave her powers as well. In the dream she puts on a red wig and starts calling herself “Power Girl,” and she’s actually fairly effective until – again, in the dream – Clark Kent is nearly killed in an explosion. Power Lois gives Clark a transfusion of her blood, and now HE’S got powers too. Go figure. So she makes him a Power Man costume and the most comically ridiculous mustache anyone not named Oliver Queen has ever worn and makes him join her as a superhero. But Power Clark, in Lois’s subconscious, keeps screwing things up due to a combination of cowardice and ineptitude. The whole story kind of makes Lois look bad, showing not only what she really thinks of Clark, but the particularly cruel way she treats him as her sidekick.
“Clark Kent’s College Days” is next, the beginning of an “Untold Tales of Superman” series. I’ve read this story many times, as it too was included in either the Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told or Superman From the 30’s to the 70’s books (I honestly don’t remember which) I read so many times as a kid. Clark gets an invitation to his college class reunion and begins to reminisce about his early days at Metropolis University, where he’s putting on his weakling act and letting the upper classmen haze him. The seniors aren’t the real problem, though – in year two, Clark’s teacher Professor Maxwell catches Clark using his vision powers to weld a seam in a robot and immediately deduces that one of his students must be Superboy. In this next class, he begins hooking his students up to a lie detector and asking if they’re Superboy, which makes you wonder what the hell he’s supposed to be teaching. Clark barely escapes being interviewed before class ends, and Maxwell begins a series of schemes that could make Lucy Ricardo proud, attempting to prove that Clark is Superboy, even to the point of exposing him to Kryptonite. But Clark winds up outsmarting him every time, and finally escapes the Professor’s attention by strapping in and letting him ask if he’s Superboy. Clark says “No,” and passes the test. Is it because of his powers? His Kryptonian physiology being incompatible with the machine? Nah, it’s because he decided, right at that moment, that it was time to consider himself an adult and start referring to himself as “Superman.”
The cover story that got me to read this issue comes last, “Superman’s New Power.” Superman finds a pocket of fires in the core of the Earth that are causing tremors above in Metropolis. As he stabilizes the fires, he uncovers a tiny space ship that seems to have been embedded in Earth’s crust for eons. The ship blows up, and he later realizes his powers have changed. His normal powers (except, conveniently, invulnerability) have vanished, even as he gains the new ability to shoot a tiny replica of himself from his fingertips. The mini Superman has all his normal powers, so Superman’s career as a crimefighter shifts to being more of a puppeteer, sending Lil’ Superman into danger instead. While he proves just as effective as the real thing, Superman finds himself feeling emasculated at sitting on the sidelines while his teeny proxy goes into danger. The story ends when Tiny sacrifices himself to save Superman from a chunk of Kryptonite some crooks hurl at him. The Kryptonite makes Tiny vanish and Superman’s powers return to normal, ending with a panel where he contemplates whether Tiny had a consciousness and will of his own and made the sacrifice deliberately.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the 50s were a wild time.
Mon., Sept. 29
Comics: Superman Vol. 2 #2, Justice League of America #30 (Team Member)
Notes: Returning to my list of random Superman stories that I’ve read at some point, here’s yet another that I remember reading first in the old Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told trade paperback. The second issue of the John Byrne reboot in Superman #2 is a good story, and it’s got one of the best Lex Luthor moments of all time…at least, “best” in the sense that it’s one of the greatest expressions of who Lex is as a character, not in that it makes him look good.
At this point, Superman had been active for a few years (mostly glossed over in the Man of Steel miniseries), and Luthor is looking for any clues that could potentially help him destroy the Man of Steel. He finds them, along with analyst Amanda McCoy, in the form of a red-haired woman who seems to keep showing up when Superman is active. As they search for the strange woman, Luthor turns to his frequent flunky Sidney Happersan, who is examining the Metallo cyborg they captured in Superman #1. Determining that the Kryptonite heart in Metallo’s chest is potentially fatal to Superman, Lex ruthlessly rips it from him even though Happersan warns him that it will kill the cyborg. (Don’t worry, he got better.)
In Smallville, a pair of Luthor’s goons are looking for things that link Clark Kent to Superman, as Clark seems to be the one who gets all the big scoops. They drug Jonathan and Martha Kent then ransack their house, stealing Martha’s scrapbook of newspaper clippings regarding Superman. As they leave the house, they’re spotted by the passing Lana Lang, whom they drug and (realizing that she can identify them) kidnap. Imagine Lex’s glee, of course, when she turns out to be the very red-haired woman his people are searching for.
Days later, Clark Kent comes home to find a series of bloody footprints leading to his apartment and Lana hiding there, having been tortured for information that she refused to give. Sensing Luthor’s involvement, Superman barges into LexCorp, only to find that Luthor’s got a new piece of jewelry – a ring with a glowing green stone that keeps Superman at bay. Stymied, and with no actual proof of Luthor’s involvement, he takes Lana back to Smallville. In Metropolis, Amanda runs all the data they’ve found through the computer, seeking the link between Superman and Clark Kent, and she arrives at one inexorable conclusion: Clark Kent IS Superman.
And Luthor is furious at the absurdity of it. “I know that no man with the power of Superman would ever PRETEND to be a mere HUMAN!” he shouts, firing Amanda McCoy on the spot because “I have no place in my organization for people who cannot see the OBVIOUS.”
Ah, what a fantastic story, Mr. Byrne. This is the ultimate platonic ideal of who and what Lex Luthor is, especially at that time. He’s ruthless and cruel – his treatment of Lana, of Amanda, even of Metallo all demonstrate that. He’s intelligent, but not the super-scientist he was in the Silver Age or would become again. But he’s also so unbelievably arrogant that when the answer to all of his questions is served up to him on a silver platter, he rejects it because he cannot fathom anyone with Superman’s power being so good that he would “pretend” to be Clark Kent. Byrne actually used this as part of the punchline in his “Superbman Vs. the Fantastical Four” story from Marvel’s What The–?! #2, with the fake Dr. Doom telling Rex Ruthless that Superbman COULDN’T be a normal human because that would make him “nicer than us.”
This story is also important in that it sets up a number of different elements that would be of tremendous importance later, especially the Kryptonite Ring. That little domino would set off multiple chains. Luthor would learn to his grave error that he was wrong about the radiation being harmless to humans, and that wearing the ring constantly gives him cancer. This ultimately leads to him faking his own death, cloning a younger body, and returning to Metropolis pretending to be his own son. Amanda McCoy came back later desperate to prove she was right, stealing the ring but being killed in an alley for it, leading to theDark Knight Over Metropolis story where Superman gave the ring to Batman, a concept which has been a consistent part of the characterization of the two heroes ever since.
It’s also a pretty good showing for Lana, proving – even under torture – that she’s a good friend and worthy of Clark’s trust, never betraying his secret. In Man of Steel, Byrne had turned Lana into something of a broken bird, heartbroken at the realization that Clark Kent was too big and too important to the world to be in her life the way that she wanted. It took a long time to rebuild her character, and this issue I think was the beginning of that.
Even these short stories can be great sometimes.
Tues., Sept. 30
Graphic Novel: Superman: True Brit
Notes: I decided to cap off this week with something relatively lighthearted – perhaps even a bit silly, and this 2004 Elseworlds graphic novel certainly fits the bill. True Brit brought John Byrne back to do artwork for the Man of Steel again, but this time in a story written by Kim Johnson “with some help” by Monty Python legend John Cleese, who of course is most famous for that one “Bicycle Repairman” sketch that we covered back in Parody Week. (There’s a brief shout-out to that bit in the book, as well.) Like many Elseworlds, it starts with a “what if” type of scenario – Jor-El sends his infant son to Earth. Instead of Kansas, though, this time his spacecraft lands in what Jor-El calls “their most advanced, most powerful nation – the British Empire!” Kal-El is found by a British farm couple, Jonathan and Martha Clark, who raise him as their son Colin. He struggles to control his powers, even after being told of his true alien heritage, and when the time comes to go off to University Mrs. Clark admonishes him to keep the powers hidden away in shame.
Studying journalism, he becomes smitten with his classmate Louisa Layne-Ferret, but she doesn’t show any interest in him until he accidentally impales a classmate with a cricket bat just before graduation. He winds up using his powers to get stories for a sleazy rag called the Daily Smear, where he finds out the famous rock band the Rutles (another in-joke) are in mortal danger, forcing him for the first time to act publicly in a Union Jack-adored Superman costume.
The Smear runs with it, making the Superman stories more outrageous and scandalous, to the point where the Clarks even move without telling Colin where they’re going. But his fortunes change when the Queen sets him some “impossible” tasks – making the trains run on time, reducing the wait time for hip operations (the solution, by the way, is to convince the surgeons to play less golf), and raising the quality of the programming of the BBC. But all his work may come to a screeching halt when he runs afoul of his greatest enemy: the Bat-Man.
The story is rife with gags and jokes that almost could have qualified this graphic novel for Parody Week in and of itself. For instance, when his adoptive parents think Colin can fly, they advise him to flap his arms like a bird, which causes a bit of amusing chaos and resultant property damage. When he finally does fly – with a horse – the poor animal has to be carted away to a veterinary hospital and treated for shock. An attempt to milk the cows with his super-speed and strength leaves them…let’s say “unhinged.” Perhaps my favorite joke comes when his mother tries to steer him into being a postman rather than a journalist, and he fires back with “I don’t CARE about respect! I’d rather be a REPORTER!”
Ah, maybe it’s just the ex-reporter in me that finds that hilarious, I dunno. But that seems to be the main thesis of this book. Rather than telling a story about Superman in another culture, True Brit comes across as Howard and Cleese giving a scathing indictment of the British media. Most of the book comes down to a heavy and brutal satire of the state of the British press, with the more lurid types of publications rising in prominence and the few legitimate reporters being buried. It’s a funny book, although I imagine a lot of the Britishisms are lost on an American audience.
Byrne’s artwork is interesting here. While not as cartoonish as he used in his What The–?! story, nor is it as clean and straightforward as his usual style as seen in his Superman run. He somewhat splits the difference here, drawing a world that still feels like part of the DC Multiverse but, at the same time, having enough fun with it to allow some silly sight gags, outrageous facial expressions, and goofy poses.
This week was a nice change of pace, friends, but October begins tomorrow. And October begins my favorite part of the year — those last three months that I love so much. And this year being the Year of Superman, it’s gonna be even better. For the next few weeks, as we approach Halloween, we’re going to be looking at darker versions of Superman, Superman gone wrong, a focus on his greatest villain, and more! See you then!
If you’re anything like me, you probably read my columns approximately 97 times after I post them, intent on finding typos and turns of phrase that you think could be improved upon. In fact, if you’ve ever gone back and read a column again only to notice that a word has been changed or a misplaced modifier has been re-placed, that’s probably because I caught the error after one of my meticulous re-evaluations and made the change, which for some reason my wife finds tremendously amusing. But in the course of that obsessive re-reading, you may remember that last week I discussed the news that Mad Cave Studios is going to be publishing a comic book based on the classic 80s film The Last Starfighter. I was, of course, terribly excited about this news and I couldn’t wait to order a copy from my local comic shop. But as I pondered this, something quite disturbing occurred to me. I want to order a copy…but I’m not entirely certain HOW.
Me asking the universe how the hell to order comics anymore.
The comic book market is in quite a quandary at the moment, and like most other problems in the universe, I think it’s at least partially Marvel’s fault. I’m going to give you a heavily condensed version of what’s happened to the comic market over the past 30 years or so, so buckle up. Once upon a time, there were several companies that distributed comic books to the stores of North America. Publishers had deals with multiple distributors, and comic shops and newsstands were free to pick and choose which distributors they wished to do business with. But in 1994, as part of a series of bad business decisions that eventually led to the company’s bankruptcy, Marvel Comics decided to purchase one of those distributors and begin using their own distribution company exclusively. The ONLY way to get Marvel Comics was going to be by ordering through their distributor, Heroes World.
This understandably caused a lot of the other publishers to be concerned. Marvel was – and remains – the biggest publisher of comic books in North America, and everybody knew that all the stores would HAVE to use Heroes World to get Marvel Comics, which meant that many of these stores would start dropping the OTHER distributors, making it harder for publishers to get their comics on shelves. The other publishers, then – DC, Dark Horse, Archie, and more – realized that the last thing they wanted was to put their biggest competitor in charge of their distribution system, and they all rushed to sign exclusive deals with another distribution company, Diamond. Pretty soon, most of the other distributors frittered and died, leaving only Diamond and Heroes World, and even though Marvel was the biggest kid on the playground, they came to realize that even they were NOT bigger than every other kid on the playground put together. Furthermore, Heroes World itself didn’t have enough infrastructure to handle 100 percent of Marvel’s orders, and the company fell into chaos. By 1997 Marvel gave up on self-distribution, shut down Heroes World, and signed their own distribution deal with Diamond.
And then, for about three decades, Diamond had a virtual monopoly on comic book distribution in North America.
Imagine this logo has a goatee and a little mustache to twirl.
This was a situation that pleased nobody (except, presumably, Diamond’s shareholders), but that’s the way things were until a few years ago. The many, many problems Diamond had – such as frequent late, lost, and damaged shipments among other things – finally made some of the same publishers that made them a juggernaut jump ship and look for alternative means of distribution. Without the revenue of the big boys like DC, Marvel, and others, Diamond itself began to atrophy, and now it’s going out of business. Other distributors are beginning to rise again, and for the most part I think that’s a good thing. I sincerely believe that competition helps people – and companies – get better, and the fact that Diamond turned to crap while it had no competition to speak of is evidence of this.
However, there is one thing from the Diamond Era going to cause real problems if it’s gone for good. Once a month, Diamond published Previews, a massive catalog that listed all of the comics, graphic novels, toys, clothes, statues, collectibles, and other paraphernalia that the distributor handled. Comic shops sold the catalog, or sometimes gave it for free to their regular customers, and those customers could then easily look through the listings of virtually every publisher to tell their shop what they wanted to order. When the other publishers started jumping ship, the bigger ones (Marvel, DC, IDW, Image) started publishing their OWN catalogs for readers to use.
There was a time when this MEANT something, damnit.
The problem, hopefully, is becoming clear now. The Big Boys have their own catalogs. But Mad Cave – to get back to my Last Starfighter conundrum – does not. So how will we know when the new comic is available to order? How will we know when it’s scheduled to be released? If and when Diamond goes away entirely, how will we know which of the 38 different variant covers we want reserved for us?
“Well Blake, have you ever heard of a little thing called the INTERNET?” you may be asking, if you’re the kind of person who feels like being a jerk about it. Well yeah, duh, I know about the internet. It’s this box on my computer that I use to edit my columns 194 times after I publish them. And I suppose it’s useful for other things too. If I know a book is going to be solicited soon I can keep an eye out, do searches, even set up a Google alert. But that’s for ONE comic. Are people going to be willing to do that EVERY time they hear about a new comic book they want to read? And what’s worse, what about the stuff that ISN’T made into news but that they would be interested in, if only they knew about it?
What I’m getting at is that this lack of unity could be a crippling blow to a lot of smaller publishers.
Of course, the smaller publishers in question ARE finding distribution. There’s a new distributor called Philbo, for example, that recently started putting out a catalog featuring a sizable number of smaller publishers, including the likes of Red 5, Abstract Studio, Antarctic Press, and Monarch Comics. (Unfortunately for The Last Starfighter, Mad Cave is not among their number, at least not yet.) And even though that physical catalog isn’t necessarily showing up in every shop, it’s available on their website. More good news.
You guys just don’t know how badly I wish I’d been present at the marketing meeting when they chose “Philviews” as the name of their catalog.
The bad news is that if we want a system where readers can find EVERYTHING that’s available, it doesn’t exist anymore. That puts much more of the burden on the potential customer to actively try to stay aware, which also increases the burden on the publishers to find ways to MAKE the customer aware. We’ve built a system where readers will have to fight to stay abreast of virtually every publisher and every distributor and seek them out once a month if they’re to have any chance of finding what they’re looking for. Promotion has always been a challenge for small publishers, and this is only going to make it more difficult.
So what’s the solution? As much as the Diamond monolith hurt comics, I think having a one-stop location for solicitations was beneficial to most publishers, and I think we need that back. There’s a proposal that I wish somebody would take up. Not me, mind you, because I don’t have the time or the technical know-how to build a resource of the type I’m about to suggest, but if anybody else sees this idea and decides to run with it, all I ask is that you tell me when it’s ready.
I think we need a resource that collects the solicitations of all the distributors that service the comic shops of North America. One website, maybe even one app, that breaks these things down so that we can browse and search everything easily. It could, perhaps, be organized by publisher, with links to each distributor that particular publisher works with. Readers and retailers could set alerts for new solicitations featuring their favorite publishers, creators, or IPs. And, of course, customers could read through all the solicits and, at a click, build a list of the books and assorted merch they wish to order that month, which could then be provided to their local comic shop. I know that there have been efforts in the past to build an app that customers could use to send their orders to their shop, but to the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been one that’s as comprehensive or successful as what I’m proposing – certainly not one that has the widespread coverage that the former Previews catalog had.
I think readers and retailers alike would probably welcome such a system, although as I said, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to go about creating such a thing. But if you do, give it a shot.
And if you DO know of an app that’s already doing something similar to what I’m suggesting, for Heaven’s sake, let me know about that, too. This is a problem in desperate need of a solution.
Of course, this only applies to people who read PHYSICAL comics. Digital comics are a whole different animal with a whole different set of problems. But there are – fortunately – people seeking a solution to that one.
We’ll talk about that next week.
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 lives for the day when he can set an app to alert him to new Captain Carrot merchandise.
It feels like I just started yesterday, but here we are in the fourth week of my journey through the era of Electric Superman. The Man of Energy has been split into two – a red and a blue version of himself. But time is almost up, because we’re on the cusp of the crossover event that ended this era, the Millennium Giants. Let’s get into it!
Comics:Superman Vol. 2 #133, Adventures of Superman #556, Action Comics #743, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #6 (Guest Appearance), Taste of Justice #11 (Supergirl and Krypto)
Notes:Superman #133 starts with Red and Blue bickering over which of them is going to go in to work and write their column, with Red winning the argument and banging out a piece that’s both more pointed and more jovial than his usual style, to the point that Perry asks him to rewrite it. An explosion summons Superman Red to Cadmus, where he finds Guardian beaten to hell and the three deities that Superman fought on Halloween proclaiming “The Time of the Millennium Giants is at hand!” In a backup story, Jimmy and Misa are still on the run from the Black Crucible. When they get pinned down, Misa uses a device to signal for help. Blue Clark, meanwhile, is back at the Planet office where he’s rewritten Red’s column, only to turn in one that’s too bland and analytical. He bolts away and saves Jimmy from the Crucible, whose leader says the Medallion Jimmy is carrying will signal the end of the world. Suddenly, the Medallion AND the members of the Black Crucible just…disappear.
Ominous, no?
Adventures #556 picks up right there with Red facing off against the Millennium Guard. They summon the Medallion to them (explaining where it went in Superman #133) and then take off in three different directions. Blue, meanwhile, is helping Jimmy and Misa fix up their vehicle when the three of them are attacked by a huge monster straight out of a Kirby sci-fi comic. The conclusion of that fight is ALSO the sort of supremely goofy thing that would have happened in a book of this era, but it’s actually pretty charming as well in its silliness. And even though at the end of the book Jimmy is still running for his life from Intergang, his standing up to the monster convinces Misa that maybe he’s not so lame after all – it’s a rare win for Jimmy in this era.
Action Comics #743 has Blue returning to Metropolis, where he encounters detective Slam Bradley, who’s chasing a nasty sort that calls himself the Inkling. Blue stops Inkling, who the reader learns is another product of Hunter Thompson’s experiments at S.T.A.R. Labs (the same ones that gave us the Ripper not long ago). He knows Thompson is bad news, but has no proof, which has gotta be frustrating for a guy as cool and logical as Superman Blue. Also, in space, the Millennium Guard has taken positions in orbit ready to “purge the Earth,” which always sounds like a good time.
In Red’s story, the Guard has bolted away, leaving Superman drained of energy. Jimmy and Misa find him and give him a lift back to Metropolis, where they stumble into the Intergang squad that’s been chasing Jimmy for months. Misa finds a dandy solution, using a device that makes Jimmy completely invisible to them and, in fact, making them forget he ever existed. That’s a quick little solution to that subplot just before things get wild next week.
These three issues all use the same format, with two different stories for the respective Red and Blue, and I have to say, I’m impressed with how well it works. The stories weave in and out of each other, connecting at various points and showing the consequences of one story in the other. It works so well, honestly, that I’m surprised it really only happened for three issues, plus the two issues we read at the tail end of last week, Action #742 and Man of Steel #77, which each devoted an entire issue to one of the Supermen but otherwise worked the same way.
I suppose time has shaped my perspective, but I could have sworn the Red/Blue era lasted longer. As it turned out, only about two or three months pass between the split and the story that’s going to end with the two of them re-forming and Superman’s powers going back to normal. Maybe it was the fact that back then I had to wait a week for each new issue to come out, whereas today I’m simply clicking “next issue” in the DC Universe app and bouncing ahead seven days to get the next installment.
At any rate, I really liked the way these issues were told, and while I don’t want Superman to get split in half again, I’d like to see someone else use this trick. I’m not sure how, exactly – maybe Firestorm, whose whole gimmick is that he’s two people who fuse into one superhero would be a good candidate. Or perhaps a run about a couple of Green Lantern sector partners that used this formula. Or hell, do it with Jonathan and Conner Kent, the two Super-Brothers. That might actually give Jonathan something interesting to do for a change. But somehow, it’s a trick I would like to see done again.
Thurs., Sept. 18
Comics: Superman: The Man of Steel #78, Aquaman Vol. 5 #43, Challengers of the Unknown Vol. 3 #15, Superman Vol. 2 #135, Teen Titans Vol. 2 #19, Supergirl Vol. 4 #20, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #11
Notes: There are different degrees of crossover events. There are the bigs ones, the huge ones that have a main miniseries and spin-offs and chapters appearing in various different comics – from the original Crisis on Infinite Earths down to lesser examples like Genesis. There are the small-scale ones that only involve titles in the same group, like the Superman or Batman titles. Then there’s stuff in the middle like Millennium Giants. This one is clearly a Superman story and it plays out in the four main Superman titles, but it also brings in Steel and Supergirl, as well as a few books with no relation to Superman at all. They also did a neat thing with the covers of the first nine (out of 11) issues: they assemble into a sort of large puzzle featuring the giants and the respective heroes facing them, along with our two Supermen zipping around and appearing on every cover.
The fun starts off in Man of Steel #78. The three members of the Millennium Guard have taken their spots in three places on the globe, including the site of a volcanic eruption where the native religion sees them as a harbinger of the end of the world. Red and Blue, after a brief squabble, agree to split up and each take on one of the Guard. But as it turns out, the Guard are only there to facilitate the release of the Millennium Giants – three enormous deities who burst from the ground.
The story picks up in Aquaman #43. One of the giants is marching through the ocean on a beeline for the Atlantean city of Poseidonis. Aquaman and Tempest try to confront it when he takes out Superman Red, but the creature keeps walking, sending tidal waves towards nearby coastlines. As Tempest protects the shore, Aquaman tries to communicate with the giant telepathically, but he fails and it goes into battle against the heroes and the HEAVILY armed Poseidonis. Man, this really makes me want to go back and read Peter David’s Aquaman all the way through. Maybe next year. Anyway, Superman and Aquaman try their best to hold back the creature but it crushes an underwater city on its march across the ocean.
This is really how a crossover SHOULD work. It’s not a coincidence or shoehorned in – it makes PERFECT sense for Aquaman to get involved when a freaking giant is threatening his kingdom, and it brings him in to make him a player in the rest of the crossover too. Perfectly done.
The next installment brings us to Challengers of the Unknown #15. Classically, the Challengers were a group of daredevils and specialists who each survived a near-death experience and, believing themselves to be “living on borrowed time,” became adventurers. They weren’t QUITE superheroes, but they often ran across them. This series was one of DC’s periodic attempts to update the concept with new characters and a dash of X-Files style paranormal investigation. The Prime Minister of the UK summons the Challs to investigate the giant that erupted from Stonehenge and is marching across the countryside. This issue is more skippable than the Aquaman chapter, seeming to take place BEFORE that one (the English Giant is the one Aquaman and Superman Red fight in the ocean), and Superman doesn’t actually appear. It does end with the Challs uncovering some info that they want to bring to Superman’s attention, though.
In Superman #135, the two Supermen have reconvened in Mexico, where another Giant has climbed out of a volcano. Blue wants to evacuate, but the impetuous Red charges in headfirst, attacking. They manage to barely pull off a save, and Lois (who is there covering the Giants, of course) confronts her two husbands, both of whom now seem to be pretty happy with the ability to be in two places at one and have no intention of trying to fuse together again. The split up yet again, with Blue staying on the giant in Mexico and Red zipping to the Pacific. Back in Metropolis the Teen Titans (whose book, you may recall, was written by Dan Jurgens at the time) decide to head to Egypt to take on the third giant, while the Challengers are on their way to Mexico. Neither of the Supermen are effective in their attacks on the giants, though, with Red failing to save an entire pacific fleet of 200 American ships.
Teen Titans #19 starts with Tempest saving Red after his failure in the Pacific before following the people whose comic it actually is as they attempt to hold off the Giant that’s threatening Egypt. The bulk of the issue is Superman Red and the Titans facing off against the Giant, failing time and again and finally accepting that they need to focus on saving the people in its path rather than fight it directly. That may not sound like the most exciting take for this issue, but Jurgens does a good job of painting it as the sensible route, showcasing his Titans to readers who may not have been exposed to them before and showing some hidden depths to a few of them as well. The issue ends with the Giant marching off to sea and the team planning to head to Markovia, where the third Giant is wreaking havoc.
Supergirl #20 brings back Peter David again, kicking things off with a woman in a mental institution claiming to be Cassandra (the Greek one) and screaming with terror about the encroaching giants. And like Cassandra, her fears are dismissed. Supergirl, meanwhile, has just left her family in the midst of a personal crisis to help deal with the crisis of the Giants. She tries to use her powers as an “Earth Born Angel” (read everything Peter David ever wrote, really) to hold it off, but falls into the ocean where both she and “Cassandra” are saved by Superman Red. It’s kind of a quick chapter, really, but it showcases Supergirl well and it’s always a delight to read David’s stuff again.
Fri. Sept. 19
Comics: Adventures of Superman #557, Steel #50, Action Comics #744, Superman: The Man of Steel #79, Superman Vol. 2 #135, Superman Forever #1
Notes: In Adventures #557, Steel calls in Superboy and the Justice League to join the fight as Blue faces the Mexican Giant Cabraca while Geo-Force and Terra hold the line against Cerne in Markovia. Blue, Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter face Cabraca while the others join the Titans, Supergirl, and Red in Markovia, where Cerne and Ronal are now converging. The giants lift an entire chunk of Markovia into the sky, the heroes only barely managing to evacuate it before it’s gone. And the icing on the cake comes when Cerne crosses the Atlantic to re-emerge in Metropolis harbor.
Steel #50 continues as John Henry – who has recently joined the Justice League and is eager to prove himself – works with J’onn J’onzz to construct a weapon to stop the Giants by disrupting their connection to Earth’s magnetic Ley Lines. The device seems to work, but John shuts it down, fearing that it will cause even greater destruction than the Giants if the field breaks down. He winds up fighting his own teammates over it, destroying the device and finding himself on the opposite side of the rest of the JLA.
In Action #744, while Cerne approaches Metropolis, the Challengers of the Unknown come to Lois Lane in the hopes that she can get their findings to Superman. Their theory is that the Giants – who appear in myths from cultures all over the world – have arisen because of an anomaly in the Earth’s energy field. They believe that the two Supermen, working together, could drain the Giants of their energy and stop the rampage. Red draws all the power from Metropolis to turn himself into a giant, ripping Cabraca into space. The effort is fruitless, however – Cabraca crumbles, falls back to Earth as a meteor shower, and re-forms in Australia. His suit shredded, Red begins to dissipate.
Blue zips into space to save Red in Man of Steel #79, but Red refuses his help, fearing that weaving the circuitry of their respective suits will cause them to re-merge. Blue saves him anyway, and although they don’t merge, the two Supermen are now tethered together. Steel has modified his device and gives it to the Supermen to try to trigger it in Cabraca’s heart – which they do but find themselves transported to the “Heart of the World,” where a strange being calling himself the Keeper of the Flame says that their alien energies awakened the giants. He can help them, but only at the cost of their lives. The Supermen trigger a chain reaction that topples the Giants, but their victory is short-lived. It turns out that stopping the Giants has also stopped the flow of the energy that binds Earth together, and it’s on the verge of a massive eruption that would duplicate the fate of a little world called Krypton.
It all comes to a head in Superman #135! An old Aboriginal man tells the Supermen that salvation can be found with the Medallion of the Damned, which is deep inside Cerne’s body. The three of them dive into the Giant’s form, where they find the Medallion on the body of an insectoid creature. Here they learn that the only way to restore Earth’s magnetic lines is for each of them to expel their energy, one at the center of the Earth and one from orbit. And although they have spent this entire time fighting and bickering one another, the two Supermen do it – because at the core, they’re still both Superman. The skies turn red, the ground turns blue, and Earth is saved…but when it’s over, J’onn J’onzz casts out a telepathic web to search for the men of energy…and finds nothing.
Are they gone? Are they dead?
Of course not. They’re in Superman Forever, a giant-sized one-shot with a fancy lenticular cover by Alex Ross to tie the whole thing up. The Kents are driving through their fields at night, worried about their missing son, when they see a meteor streak across the sky. It’s not the first time this has happened, and they rush to the site to see Clark lying in a crater: unconscious, naked, and burning with fever. They bring him back to their farmhouse where he sleeps for over 24 hours before waking up and realizing he can hear them speaking outside. Somehow, the expenditure of his energy powers made him fuse back into a single being with his original powers again. How? Clark himself theorizes that it was some kind of “reward.”
Who am I to argue?
Martha being Martha, she just happens to have one of his original costumes handy for him to put on,and he takes off to let the world know that Superman is back!
Of course, it’s only page 14, and there’s a lot left to go. Turns out Superman is being watched by Kismet, a cosmic entity he’s encountered a few times before, who sees (YET ANOTHER) threat on the horizon. Superman returns to Metropolis where he joins in with Supergirl, Superboy, and Steel saving an airplane from a crash… a plane that just happens to have Lois on it. The woman has the WORST luck when it comes to air travel, I tell you.
Also in this special, Jimmy Olsen returns to the Planet with his tail between his legs to beg for his job back, only for Perry to give it to him without hesitation. While they’re celebrating, though, Lex Luthor barges into the office, furious that the Planet published a photo of his daughter. While he’s railing against Perry, he gets call that Lena has been kidnapped.
The creative team on this book (like the Wedding Special and the Red/Blue special, it’s a mashup of the creators of the regular books with a few guests) took an interesting approach. There are really three different, almost totally unconnected sections of the book. The first act, where the Kents find Clark and he returns to Metropolis, is part one. Act two is the kidnapping storyline, with Superman doing everything he can to find the missing daughter of his worst enemy, because that’s the kind of man he is. This has virtually nothing to do with what happened before, except for the fact that every person who encounters him makes a comment about the fact that he’s gone back to his original powers and costume, then goes on with their day because they all live in Metropolis and they see more inexplicable stuff than that before their Pop-Tarts come out of the toaster in the morning. Then, after that story is resolved, we get four separate epilogues, each of them showing Superman in different eras that seem to roughly correspond to the Golden, Silver, and Bronze ages, and a third that is set 1000 years in the future. It’s a setup for the Dominus story that would consume the books for the next several months – which is totally fair, except for the fact that, again, it seems to have nothing to do with anything that’s come before it. In fact, I almost feel like I don’t need to read these books again , but it’s been a long time and I enjoy a good timey wimey story.
Besides, if I don’t read them, I’ll just be cliffhangering myself. And I promised me that I would treat me more nicely.
Sat., Sept. 20
Comics: Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #2, Action Comics #1090, Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #4
Notes: I’m not going to get to Dominus just yet, though. After a couple weeks, I’ve once again liberated my new comics from my local shop and I’m going to spend today (and maybe tomorrow too) reading the new Superman-related books. And although only one of the back-up stories is Superman-related, I’ll start with the painfully-titled Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1.
I objectively got the best cover.
The main story and most of the back-ups are really quite good. Zeb Wells, who writes the Deadpool/Batman tale, finds a new spin on combining the universes that’s really quite suitable for Deadpool. Most of the others simply take the old-fashioned tactic of assuming the characters inhabit the same world. The Captain America/Wonder Woman story by Chip Zdarsky goes so far as to showing a whole history between the two characters that goes all the way back to World War II. There are also two pages by Frank Miller, the less is said about which, the better.
But mostly, I’m here to talk about the Krypto/Jeff the Land Shark story by Jeff’s usual creative team of Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru. This mostly-wordless story is set in the Arctic, as Krypto and Jeff romp and play games with one another outside the Fortress of Solitude. That’s it. That’s the whole story. And it’s really adorable. It fits perfectly in with the usual Jeff stories, and were it not for the fact that his co-star is an inhabitant of the DC Universe, it could easily be an issue of his own comic.
Now I have to say, were you only buying this book for a Superman story, dropping $6.99 for a story co-starring Krypto is probably too much. But if you’re a fan of comics and crossovers in general, this really is a great package.
The second issue of Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum is next. Continuing from issue one, Superman and Batman are still experimenting with the new types of Kryptonite when one of them turns the man of steel into a giant. Batman thinks he can concoct a fix, but before it’s ready, Lex Luthor ups the ante by exposing the Kaiju-sized Superman to a dose of RED Kryptonite, sending him on a rampage that the Justice League has to come in and try to stop. Like the first issue, I’m tremendously impressed at how W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo are applying their signature style to the DC Universe. There’s still very much the same flavor of weirdness we get from Ice Cream Man, but the horror elements are replaced with a take on silver age-style superheroism that feels more like a loving parody than an attack. It’s a glorious little story with a climax and cliffhanger that literally made me laugh out loud. That doesn’t happen often, even with comics that are intended as straight-up comedies. This is rapidly climbing my list of best comics of the year.
In Action #1090 Mark Waid and Skylar Partridge continue the story that – no matter what the eventual trade paperback is gonna be called – is essentially “Superboy: Year One.” Clark finally gets a date with Lana, only for two disasters to happen. First, she tells him how she REALLY feels, and second, Captain Comet summons him to a battle scene. Raze, the villain Superboy caught a few issues ago, has come back with some friends and he’s attacking the lab of noted AI specialist and metallurgist Will Magnus, and Superboy is needed to save the day. Turns out that Comet had a little surprise of his own, though.
Waid is taking classic tropes of the Pre-Crisis Superboy and putting a modern spin on them, particularly in the context of Clark and Lana’s relationship. Although the writing is modern, the themes and tone could fit in just as well in the 1950s, and that’s really perfect. On the other hand, the more sinister Captain Comet is an interesting choice, although I imagine we’ll get some sort of revelation on his part before this story ends to keep from casting him as an outright villain.
Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #4 starts with a content warning. It says “This is a sad one. Read it with someone to hug nearby.”
THIS is a sad one.
AS IF THE LAST THREE ISSUES DIDN’T ALL REDUCE ME TO A GIBBERING MESS.
Anyway, in this one the still-wandering Krypto befriends another stray dog, and together the two of them befriend a group of children, and together the kids and the dogs activate an alien intelligence that threatens all life on Earth. And Krypto is a very good boy. And so is his friend. And eventually, after I soak through a couple of Kleenex, we get to a last page that promises – FINALLY – a glimmer of hope in this terrible, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, magnificent, beautiful series.
Sun., Sept. 21
Comics: Supergirl Vol. 8 #5, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #43, Justice League Red #2 (Team Member Power Girl)
Notes: Supergirl #5 is a largely one-off issue that focuses on the Super Pets. Supergirl and Lesla leave their respective superpowered animal pals with Lena, who loses them almost immediately, leading to two separate adventures. Krypto and Kandy the Super-Rabbit wind up in battle with Princess Shark, who has come to Midvale to get her revenge on Supergirl, while Streaky and the miniature Super-Ape Tinytano stumble across a litter of kittens who have inadvertently gained super powers. The story is light, airy, ridiculous, and charming.
Sophie Campbell takes this issue off from the art chores, but she still writes the issue. Pencils instead are handed over to Paulina Ganucheau for the Krypto half of the issue and Rosi Kampe on the Streaky half. Both of their respective styles are fine, but they’re very different from one another. Ganucheau’s art is a little looser and cartoony, more in line with Campbell’s usual style. Kampe’s art is tighter and looks like a more traditional superhero comic. Again, neither of them are bad, but the switch halfway through the book is somewhat jarring.
In World’s Finest #43, the Bizarro World storyline comes to a close. As we learned, the alien who infected the Bizarros with a pandemic that “fixed” their brains did so in the hopes that they would realize their planet was about to be destroyed by the physical laws that say a square planet can’t exist. This issue, our heroes struggle against the twin problems of the planet’s collapse and the pandemic, and in each case, a solution is found by a most unexpected mind. I really love the way Mark Waid plays these characters here, showing an intelligence in one of our heroes that he isn’t usually credited with having, and pulling a rabbit out of his hat with a new Bizarro that is hilarious and brilliant. This arc was an awful lot of fun, and that’s all we really want out of World’s Finest, isn’t it?
The new Super-titles wrap up with Power Girl in Justice League Red #2. Power Girl, Green Lantern, and Cyborg are comparing notes, all of them realizing that the missions Red Tornado has been sending them on are less than savory, and they demand answers from their teammate. Red Tornado reveals that his actions are linked to another Leaguer in jeopardy, but none of that quite explains just how underhanded he’s been acting. The heroes don’t know what to make of it but, at the same time, they’re not going to abandon one of their own. I’m still not quite sure what to make of this title. I’ve enjoyed the first two issues, but I can’t tell where they’re going with Red Tornado here. If the miniseries ends with him becoming a villain I’m going to be pretty disappointed, but as I said after issue one, I think it’s going to turn out to be more nuanced than that when all is said and done. All that said, the cliffhanger at the end of this issue is just dandy.
Mon, Sept. 22
Comics: Adventures of Superman #558, Action Comics #745, Superman: The Man of Steel #80, Superman Vol. 2 #136, Adventures of Superman #559, Action Comics #746, Superman: The Man of Steel #81, Superman Vol. 2 #137
Notes: Welp, Superman is one person again and his powers are back to normal. You’d think his troubles are over, right? No, you silly person. Now it’s weirder than ever, because it seems as though there are FOUR Supermen (again), except this time, each of them is in a different era. In Adventures of Superman #558, we’re in a world that seems highly reminiscent of the Silver Age, with Superman and his family having a friendly game of baseball that spans the globe using a mine launched by an enemy submarine as the ball. We’ve got Steel on the top of Mt. Everest, Superboy (wearing an old-school costume) in France, and most surprising, a Kara Zor-El Supergirl in outer space. And the game stops when Krypto fetches the ”ball!” (I feel like we should remember that, at this point, the “Superman is the only Kryptonian survivor” edict was still in place – neither Kara nor Krypto existed in this continuity.) Jimmy Olsen, meanwhile, has stumbled into yet another of one of those transformations that seemed to happen to him so frequently in this era, this time drinking an alien isotope that turns him into a green-skinned spaceman. When word gets out that Alien Jimmy has been blessed – or cursed – with a Midas Touch, turning anything he touches into gold, he’s kidnapped by the world’s most ingenious criminal scientist, Lex Luthor.
I can only imagine co-writers Karl Kesel and Jerry Ordway putting this one together, an issue that’s a wild and charming mashup of the modern Superman (with elements like Steel and Dabney Donovan) with a story that could very easily have been a lost plot from an issue published in 1955. Jimmy’s wild transformations were a staple of the time, and we see the old (and often frustrating) trope of Lois being desperate to marry a Superman who keeps resisting her advances. By the end of the issue, nothing has really been resolved – it comes across as an entertaining oddity, but as of yet there’s no clue as to what’s actually happening.
Action Comics #745 takes a similar approach to what the writers call the “Polyester Age” in a story that roughly approximates the Superman comics of the late 70s. Superman comes in to save an unruly mob that has gathered on the collapsing Queensland Bridge, each of whom is carrying a bogus deed indicating they own it. Superman plans to investigate, but first he has to head to his job at WGBS to report the news with his co-anchor, Lana Lang. The story spins out into a fairly standard Prankster story, in which he takes over a cruise ship, kidnaps Lana Lang, places her in a trap that Superman can’t spring without exposing her to a deadly toxin, and in a script-flipping cliffhanger, asking Superman to officiate his and Lana’s MARRIAGE.
We journey back to the Golden Age with Man of Steel #80, and in the most literal way possible. The story begins reenacting a scene from Action Comics #1, with Superman barging into the governor’s mansion to demand a stay of execution for a woman he’s proven to be innocent of the crime for which she’s about to be electrocuted, then immediately bounding in to stop a man from beating his wife. It’s here, for the first time, that we really get a glimpse of what’s actually happening – a little girl with white hair appears briefly as Superman stops the wife-beater proclaiming “It’s all wrong! Everything’s wrong!” When Superman looks out the window to see that the police has arrived, the child vanishes. Superman doesn’t have time to solve the mystery, though – he’s expected by his editor, George Taylor, at the Daily Star. Lois and Clark are sent to cover an American Nazi rally that is eventually broken up by Superman, making Lois swoon.
Louise Simonson’s writing on this issue evokes the tone of the Golden Age, especially with a cold, aloof Lois that doesn’t give Clark the time of day, while he is utterly smitten with her. On the other hand, she manages to avoid some of the more problematic tropes of the original stories – she recreates the wife-beater scene almost perfectly, but omits the infamous “You’re not dealing with a woman now!” line. Jon Bogdanove, for his part, is perhaps more in his element than ever before. He adjusts his art style just SLIGHTLY, and it becomes a perfect update of a Golden Age Superman. He even gives us a panel emulating the legendary cover to Action #1. Reading this issue makes me ache for a full Elseworlds-style series set in this time period with Bogs handling the pencils.
Superman #136 takes us to the year 2999 (with yet another Action #1 homage cover, by Dan Jurgens this time). Years after the death of the last great champion, Superman XVIII, a new Superman appears saving a spaceship from disaster…or at least, he tries, but the rookie Superman winds up ripping off one of the ship’s stabilizers. Another craft manages to save the ship in a stasis field, including Lena Luthor, who gives us the infodump that Superman’s father died bringing Lena’s father to justice. We explore this future world, meeting “Klar Ken’s” coworkers, his younger sister Kara, and get information about the Superman legacy that has lasted a millennium. This one, too, ends with a cliffhanger, as Superman 2999 faces against a futuristic menace called Muto, and we get another glimpse of the girl with the white hair.
Back to the Silver Age for Adventures of Superman #559, which kicks off with Superman busting Brainiac and his shrinking ray. The next morning, though, things get really bizarre as some mysterious force gives everyone in Metropolis super powers. And I do mean everyone – Perry, Lois, Jimmy, Maggie Sawyer, the Newsboy Legion – it’s an epidemic. Everyone, it seems, except for MCU Officer Dan Turpin. It comes in handy when Metallo attacks and his Kryptonite heart affects EVERYONE except for Dan and his bazooka. The reveal about where the powers came from is fantastic, perfectly in keeping with a Silver Age story, and it’s really nice to see Turpin get hailed as the hero for once…until the girl with the white hair shows up again on the last page repeating her warning: “Can’t you feel it? It is ALL WRONG!” And then poof – she’s gone.
Things aren’t going great in Action Comics #746. Superman manages to save Lana from the Prankster, but she’s so angry that Clark bailed out on the situation (so he could be Superman) that she gets him fired from his job at WGBS. He’s doing the cardboard box walk of shame when the White Haired Girl AGAIN shows up and vanishes. They gotta start going somewhere with this soon, right?
And they do! Man of Steel #81 begins immediately with the White Haired Girl stuck on a railroad track as a train speeds towards her. Fortunately, ol’ “More Powerful Than a Locomotive” gets her away even as she keeps pleading “Everything is wrong.” She vanishes as soon as she appears, though, and we get to the main plot – Superman and Lois each stow away on a ship to Nazi Germany. The issue really does showcase the vast changes Superman underwent after the Golden Age. While for most of his history, Superman has been reluctant to involve himself in political situations (in fact, in the 1978 movie Jor-El specifically forbid that), here he actually thinks “Someone has got to settle these world affairs once and for all – and who else can do it but me?”
This issue gets pretty bleak, as Superman and Lois each independently delve into the Nazi concentration camps. Simonson doesn’t hold back from showing the horrors of the era, and in the end we’re just left more unsettled as we end on a cliffhanger, with Lois in dire straights that make being caught by the Prankster seem like a tropical vacation.
I’ll end today with Superman #137, in which the man of tomorrow (that being 2999) faces Muto – a fight that’s going poorly before he’s rescued by some of the other heroes of the era: 2999’s Green Lantern, the future Aquaman, and from Gotham City, “The Bat.” Superman and the other heroes face Muto at his orbital Fortress of Solitude, and Dan Jurgens plays off of Despero’s chess set from Justice League of America #1 for the second time this year (the first being when we read Superman’s adventures with the JLA in the era just before Doomsday).
Tues., Sept. 23
Comics: Adventures of Superman #560, Action Comics #747, Superman: The Man of Steel #82, Superman Vol. 2 #138, Adventures of Superman #561, Action Comics #748, Superman: The Man of Steel #83, Superman Vol. 2 #139
Notes: Today I’m getting into the finale of the Dominus storyline (at least this one), starting with Adventures #560. Silver Age Superman is stunned to find out that Lois Lane – the girl he loves but keeps at arm’s length – has a date with his pal Batman. The story seems to be going in the same direction as the previous two issues – a kind of standard Silver Age type story involving Lois’s feelings, Batman, and a sliver of Red Kryptonite. Halfway through, though, there’s a turn, as Batman reveals – even to Superman – that the two of them were BOTH adopted by the Kents after their respective origin tragedies and grew up as brothers. From there we get a quick chain reaction as all of Superman’s dreams seem to be coming true: Emil Hamilton shows up with a cure for Red Kryptonite, Jor-El and Lara appear alive, promising to take him back to Krypton’s Hypersector with them, Lois professes her love and vows to go with him…but Batman transforms into the White Haired girl, who reveals herself to be Kismet. The universe fades as Superman and Lois embrace one another.
Action #747 goes in a very different direction. The story, free of dialogue, unfolds as we watch Clark return to the Daily Planet, Lois kidnapped by the Prankster, and Superman come to the rescue. Throughout, although there are no speech bubbles or conversations among the characters, an unseen narrator gives us a monologue about godhood, divinity, chaos, and order. The narrator is manipulating Lois, trying to bring her into a position where she kills Superman, but in the end she can’t do it. The dialogue finally comes back in the last few pages, when the White Haired girl again reveals herself as Kismet and the narrator redoubles on his plan to control the universe, revealing himself as an entity called Dominus. This issue is really jarring, being SO different from the previous two (and, in fact, from the rest of this storyline altogether). I’m not sure if it entirely works, to be honest, especially since the girl’s reveal at the end was done in the previous week’s issue, and now I’m sure we’ll see it again two more times.
Man of Steel #82 picks up with Golden Age Superman determined to halt a train laden with prisoners bound for the concentration camps, unaware that one of the prisoners is the captive Lois. Saving her from the train he kisses her and – just for a second – glimpses the real, modern world. Kismet (still as the White Haired Girl) hopes that putting the two of them together again will help them to break whatever Dominus has been doing, but Superman’s attention is focused on liberating the Nazi’s prisoners (because, you know, he’s Superman). Kismet tells Lois and Superman that their bond is the one thing Dominus can’t break, and when she brings them together again, the three of them find themselves back in Metropolis in the modern day. But the Nazi Commandant has come with them, revealing himself to be Dominus. Superman again recognizes the girl as Kismet, who helped lead him back to life back in Adventures of Superman #500, but Dominus attacks the girl and Superman is swallowed by nothingness.
The future ain’t what it used to be in Superman #138. Superman returns to Metropolis with his allies – and several new ones – announcing the formation of a Justice Alliance (with a logo that looks like an odd mashup of the Justice League and Legion of Super-Heroes emblems). But the ceremony is disrupted by the White Haired Girl, and we begin flashing between the four timelines we’ve been following. Kismet reveals that Dominus has trapped Superman in a sort of “reality prison” and split his consciousness into four separate simulated realities. As he breaks free from Dominus’s will, he returns to the real, modern Metropolis with Kismet. We discover that, in the last moments of Superman Forever, Dominus placed him in this “reality prison,” and Superman has been tearing through Metropolis ever since, acting out the scenarios we’ve been reading across the four titles. (It really makes you wonder what people were watching him do when he was carrying around his sad little box after being fired from WGBS.) Kismet brings Superman to a secluded place where she tells us that she thought Dominus was trying to control him, but it turns out that she’s his REAL target, and Dominus was using the false scenarios to draw her out of Superman so he can usurp her power. Dominus appears and attacks, hurling Superman away as Kismet flees.
In Adventures #561 Waverider appears and implores Superman to help find Kismet, as if he needed to ask. The White Haired Girl reappears as Clark is having lunch with Jimmy and Lois, and he takes off after her. It turns out NOT to be Kismet, though, but rather the girl whose appearance Kismet adopted. And as Superman takes her home, Waverider reveals himself to be Dominus in disguise, using Superman to find the REAL Kismet.
Incidentally, this issue also sets up the NEXT big story arc for the Superman titles, in which the Daily Planet is put up for sale. That’s an interesting arc in its own right, but I’m not going to get into the whole thing because…well geez, I gotta draw the line SOMEWHERE.
Action Comics #747 brings Dominus – disguised as Superman – to Smallville to talk about Kismet with Jonathan Kent, who also met her back in Adventures #500. He fails to draw her out, though and leaves. Dominus makes his next play against Superman, but his constant manipulation of reality leads the two of them into a conflict that spirals into some really cool page design by Stuart Immonen before finally – hopefully – bringing the REAL Waverider into the conflict. In Man of Steel #83, Waverider and the Linear Men try to break Superman from all the reality warping that Dominus has been putting Superman through, but by now he doesn’t trust his old allies, believing them all to be Dominus. Finally, in Superman #138, as Superman holds Dominus off Waverider – the real one – takes Kismet back in time and hides her inside a young girl from Smallville, Kansas. Dominus leaves, swearing his revenge, and the story finally ends…
For now, at least. Both Dominus and Kismet would return in later story arcs, but this is as good a place as any to draw the line and end the saga of Electric Superman, plus the Dominus epilogue. So let’s do a post-mortum of the era, shall we? When this saga was originally being published, back in 1996 and 1997, I remember having some rather uncharitable feelings about it. I knew even then that it was a temporary change, and I felt like it was disingenuous of DC to try to paint this as a new status quo for Superman. With age, I’m definitely wiser in that respect. I realize now that DC was never really trying to pretend this would be Superman “Forever,” and any comments to the contrary were nothing more than kayfabe. I think that accepting that sort of thing has made me more accepting of other, later long-form stories, like when Dr. Octopus took over Peter Parker’s body for a year or two, or when Captain America was revealed to be a Hydra Agent. I’ve gotten better about judging stories like these on their own merits, rather than having a knee-jerk reaction to any sort of change, and I think I enjoy comics better because of it.
As for the Electric Saga as a whole…I’m actually struck by how much I enjoyed reading these comics again. This time around I’ve really gained an appreciation for how intricately the stories of the Triangle Era were woven together. Even when I read the whole Death and Return of Superman earlier this year, it wasn’t as clear because EVERY storyline was put on hold at the time to serve the larger one. This time around, between the time Clark’s power changed and the time he split into two, the power thing was almost incidental. We were still getting Superman stories with the ongoing plots and subplots, with things being set up far in advance that would pay off much further down the line. It’s really impressive to me just how well these things were plotted, and frankly, I miss the days when a comic book like this could put out a new installment each and every week. These days, likely, will not come again.
Next, I think I’ll take a week to be random before I get back to themes. I’ve only got 14 weeks left, and I definitely have several categories that I intend to dig into before it’s all over…but for now, I’m going to give myself a teeny break and just spend a week with whatever Superman Stuff suits my fancy.
This week the world of pop culture was totally rocked by the news that one of the greatest underrated movies of the 80s is FINALLY getting a sequel. Director Nick Castle’s 1984 science fiction epic The Last Starfighter is being revisited, after over four decades, in a new comic book series by Mad Cave Studios and the planet absolutely REJOICED.
Well it rocked MY world, anyway.
I don’t give a damn what you’ve been told, THIS is what Epic actually looks like.
I loved The Last Starfighter growing up. If you’ve never seen it, here’s the short version: teenager Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) is addicted to a video game – a cabinet video game, not one of them newfangled home consoles – and keeps playing it until he shatters the record. That night, he’s visited by an alien called Centauri (Robert Preston) who tells him that the game is actually a secret test, and Alex has been recruited to join the real StarLeague in its battle against “Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.” In fact, for a lot of people my age, just SAYING the phrase “Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada” activates something inside of us similar to saying “mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.”
There were lots of movies in this era trying to ride the coattails of Star Wars, and this is one of my favorites. It’s been adapted before – there was a novelization, a Marvel comic book adaptation, and even a stage musical – but despite being pretty well loved by its fan base, there was never a sequel and the story has never continued until now. Original screen writer Jonathan Betuel is working with writers Deric A. Hughes and Benjamin Raab as well as artist Willi Roberts on this new series, which Beutel hints is the beginning of a plan to tell larger stories to expand the universe of the film. And I, for one, couldn’t be happier about it. Honestly, it couldn’t happen to a better franchise.
That said, just because this is the perfect franchise to relaunch as a comic book, that doesn’t mean there aren’t others. Mad Cave has taken the forefront on this in recent years, with reboots of Speed Racer, Dick Tracy, and Defenders of the Earth, as well as individual Defenders characters such as Flash Gordon and the Phantom. And Dynamite Publishing has stepped up to the plate with more “sophisticated” reboots of old cartoons like Thundercats, Silverhawks, Space Ghost, and Captain Planet. It’s not really surprising that writers and artists who grew up on these franchises want to resurrect them in comic book form and put their own spin on them. That said, even with the avalanche of classic stuff we’ve gotten in the last few years, there are still a few that haven’t been touched.
Yet.
So today, in a “Three Wishes” special, I’m going to propose three franchises that – to the best of my knowledge – have never had a sequel or reboot of any kind since their original run ended. And this was harder than it sounds – I thought about nearly a dozen different movies and TV shows that I discarded when I checked and found out that there HAD been a comic book or TV reboot that had escaped my notice. But I’m pretty sure that, for the three I’m about to talk about, any continuation of the original story exists only in the imagination of fans everywhere. Here are three 80s IPs that I would love to see get a reboot or sequel as a comic book.
Bionic Six
Although Bionic Six had only one season in 1987, this was in the day when a season of a syndicated show ran for 65 episodes, and the reruns could be broadcast for ages. I remember distinctly that our local station showed it fairly early in the morning, and I would watch this cartoon every day when I was getting ready for school, which is probably why I have such fond memories of it. In the “near future,” test pilot Jack Bennett is given super powers through a series experimental of bionic implants and acts as a superhero and secret agent, Bionic-1. But when an avalanche on a family vacation buries his entire family (his wife, son, daughter, and two foster sons) with an object giving off bizarre radiation, the professor who gave him his bionics decides that the only way to save his family is to bionicize the whole batch of ‘em. Professor Sharp becomes the handler/science guy for the team as they fight the supervillain Scarab (who also happens to be Sharp’s brother) and his minions.
I watched this show faithfully every morning, loved the heroes, loved hating the villains, and I even became a fan of some of the side-characters like the Bandroids (a robot rock band) and pair of villains called Perceptor and Kaleidoscope who did a heel-face turn and joined the good guys. There was a line of action figures in the same scale as the G.I. Joe toys I loved, and even better, the figures had transparent plastic and die-cast metal pieces for the bionics, objectively making them some of the coolest figures of the era. And although it didn’t become as well-known as the likes of Silverhawks or Captain Planet, I think the concept has just as much potential for continuation.
Were I to relaunch the book, here’s what I would do: I would pick up the story several years later. Professor Sharp has passed away, Scarab has long since been defeated, and the Bionic Six are in retirement. Eric (aka Sport-1) has settled into a low-level job, bitter that his dreams of becoming a professional athlete were quashed because he realized he could never compete without the secret of his bionics becoming public. His sister Meg (Rock-1) has found happiness as a music teacher. Their adopted brother Bunji (Karate-1) has retreated to a monastery somewhere, embracing a life of peace and solitude. And J.D. (IQ) has spun his remarkable intelligence into an enormous business empire. Things are mostly okay.
Until Scarab returns, kidnapping Eric’s daughter, Meg’s son, and J.D.’s twin girls. The siblings reunite, fetching Bunji from his retreat, and head out to rescue the kids. When they arrive, though, they find that Scarab has begun experimenting on them. To save them, J.D. finds himself forced to repeat Professor Sharp’s experiments and bionicize the kids, who never knew that their family was the legendary Bionic Six. After a few near-tragedies caused by their inexperience, Eric and Bunji agree to train them in the use of their powers, with J.D. providing financial backing and support. Although he and Meg decline to return to active duty, they agree to help out if the situation demands it, but now Eric, Bunji, and the four kids are the new Bionic Six. Bunji tries to teach them a more peaceful, spiritual approach, while Eric is desperate to prove himself, causing some nice little interpersonal conflict amidst the family in their new adventures.
Call me, Mad Cave.
Galaxy High School
The next sci-fi cartoon of the 80s I would give another shot is Galaxy High School. Like Bionic Six, this show only lasted one season. Unlike Bionic Six, though, it was a Saturday morning cartoon, and in its one season it only turned out 13 episodes. I was pretty stunned when I discovered that – I have memories of watching this cartoon that I could have SWORN lasted for YEARS. Reruns are a powerful thing, I guess. Anyway, the show was created by future blockbuster director Chris Columbus (who you may know as the guy who masterfully helmed the methodical torture of Joe Pesci and Daniel stern in Home Alone, among many other films).
In the show, two teenagers from Earth are accepted to the intergalactic “Galaxy High School.” Doyle Cleverlobe is a popular all-star jock, while Aimee Brighttower is an all-star in academics, but shy and unpopular. When they arrive at a school full of aliens, however, the script is flipped: the aliens all adore the brilliant Aimee, while Doyle finds himself immediately rubbing many of them the wrong way and turning into an outcast. The core of the show was the friendship (and teased romance) between the two of them and the adventures they had with their wild cast of alien friends.
If I were to continue this series, I’d pick up right where it left off in Galaxy High School: Sophomore Year. Doyle isn’t quite the outcast he was before, mostly because the others tolerate his presence since he’s friends with Aimee. He’s still eager to prove himself, but he’s a bit less of a dork about it. Aimee, meanwhile, will have a bit of a crisis when a new student rolls into school – a computer intelligence from another planet that’s even smarter than her.
In addition to continuing the teen romcom with the two of them, I would want to explore the hell out of this universe. The aliens in the show were really wild and creative (Gilda Gossip’s species had several mouths that never stopped talking, Booey Bubblehead had a literal bubble for a head, and the school bully Beef is a giant chicken), but we didn’t see much of their individual cultures in the show’s mere 13 episodes. I would do stories with field trips to other planets, or comics that take place during school breaks and holidays where Aimee and Doyle go with their friends back to their homeworlds for a visit, really getting a chance to explore. Galaxy High School only hinted at a larger, hilarious sci-fi universe that was kind of a kid-friendly version of Douglas Adams. I want to see more of that.
Condorman
The last 80s character I would love to see again comes from the little-known 1981 Disney movie Condorman. Woody Wilkins (Phantom of the Opera star Michael Crawford) is a comic book writer and artist who insists on testing out his fictional hero’s stunts in real life, such as building a Condorman hang glider and trying to fly from the Eiffel Tower. Woody gets caught up in a document exchange with a woman who turns out to be a Soviet spy who falls in love with him and decides to defect to the United States. The movie is kind of half superhero/half James Bond spoof with a lot of awesome gadgets and vehicles that sincerely appealed to the kid I was when I watched it over and over again. To this day, I think about the scene where Woody and Natalia are in what looks like an old truck that, with the flip of a switch, turns into the cool-as-hell Condormobile. It was pretty atypical of Disney, even for the time, but it was fun.
If I was bringing back Condorman, what would I do? Glad you asked, my friend. I’d keep the 80s time frame, because once you hit the 90s spy movies just weren’t what they used to be. I’d reintroduce the characters a year or two after the film, where Woody and Natalia have become a real spy team (mostly due to her doing her best to keep him from getting killed) and send them on another quest, this time to find an American asset who has been captured behind the Iron Curtain. After several adventures, we’d finally rescue the American, only to hit us with the big reveal: the American in question turns out to be Cliff Secord, a pilot in his 60s who once saved the United States wearing the jetpack and helmet of the Rocketeer.
Yeah, that’s right. I would use Condorman as a stealth entryway into a Disney Cinematic Universe. I would also bring in things like Tron, with those characters battling Russian programs. Woody and Natalia would find the remains of the Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean. Tech would be built by Professor Ned Brainard (The Absent-Minded Professor) and Dr. Wayne Szalinski (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids). They would face off against the Sanderson Sisters from Hocus Pocus at Halloween, meet The Santa Clause’s Scott Calvin at Christmas! And I’m not sure when or how, but at some point SOMEBODY would have to Escape to Witch Mountain.
Look, crazier things have happened.
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 may have gotten a little carried away on the Disney Universe thing, but he has no regrets.
The Year of Superman continues our journey through the Electric Superman era! This week we peek at the Pulp Heroes annuals, explore Superman’s activities during the Genesis crossover, and see that electric blue spark into crimson. Join me, why don’t you?
Comics:Superman Annual Vol. 2 #9, Superman: The Man of Steel Annual #6, Adventures of Superman Annual #9, Action Comics Annual #9, Batman: Gotham By Gaslight-A League For Justice #2.
Just like old times.
Notes: By 1997, DC had fallen off of the annual crossover events such as Armageddon 2001 and Bloodlines, instead shifting to a policy of doing annual THEMES, where the creative teams would tell one-off stories that fit into categories such as Elseworlds or Legends of the Dead Earth (which was also essentially Elseworlds, but post-apocalyptic, although one of the characters from these language later showed up as a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes). The 1997 theme was Pulp Heroes, in which each annual was tasked with placing the hero into a genre from classic pulp magazines – westerns, potboiler detective stories, old-fashioned sci-fi. The Supergirl annual for that year even did a romance comic, with a love story between Supergirl and Brainiac 5 (the Legion was still stuck in the 20th century at the time). It was a fun summer, with different types of stories that sported some gloriously painted covers that really evoked the time period they were paying tribute to.
These stories were all self-contained and could really be inserted almost anywhere into the timeline before the Blue/Red split, so I’m going to punch through them all here since we’ve got a sort of hard stop before the Genesis crossover. And I’ll start off with Superman Annual #9 by Dan Jurgens and Sean Chen. Labelled “My Greatest Adventure” on the cover, this issue drew its inspiration from the same sort of globe-trotting adventure yarns that inspired the likes of Indiana Jones. In the country of Bhutran, a mysterious cult called the Black Crucible is setting its sights on Jimmy Olsen, because it’s been at least twelve minutes since his life was endangered. In this story, set before he was canned from WGBS over the “Superman’s Secret Identity” fiasco, Jimmy is undercover trying to get the scoop on a smuggling operation when Bibbo accidentally outs him to the same crooks he’s trying to catch. He finds himself being targeted by an assassin who – upon failing in his task – kills himself. What’s even stranger is that the assassin, save for an enormous dragon tattoo on his chest, is a perfect doppelganger for Jimmy.
Jimmy and Bibbo assemble Lois, Clark, and lawyer Ed Drysdale at Professor Hamilton’s lab to try to get to the bottom of things, and the group uncovers a link to Bhutran. One plane ride later, they’re off to investigate. From here the story comes off as kind of a Doc Savage pastiche (with a bit of a lampshade to that fact in the end), with the hero operating alongside a team of specialists who each contribute something unique and invaluable to the mission (even Drysdale). We even get to see de-powered Clark using his own fists when he gets into a situation where Superman’s powers lose their advantage. It’s easily the best Jimmy story of the era, although that’s a low bar to jump considering the way he was being played in the main comics of the time.
Man of Steel Annual #6 bears the banner “Suspense Detective” for a story by Louise Simonson and Tommy Lee Edwards. In “Pierced,” SCU head Maggie Sawyer steps into the narrator’s box, agonizing over recent losses to her unit in their battles against the more unorthodox villains that seem to plague Metropolis. This time out it’s a telekinetic assassin with a face loaded with piercings, and Maggie gets understandably outraged when the FBI steps in and wrests control of the investigation away from the SCU. Lois, similarly, is frustrated with the lack of cooperation from law enforcement in getting her story out, with Maggie told not to talk to any reporters, ESPECIALLY Lois Lane. (Honestly, if you’re trying to keep something low-key in Metropolis, that’s a sensible demand to make.)
This isn’t a bad story at all. It feels like a chapter from the Metropolis SCU miniseries that guest-stars Superman in a prominent role, and that’s not a bad thing. I’ve often enjoyed the sort of “lower decks” storytelling we got from that comic and the brilliant Gotham Central. That said, I don’t think it’s as successful as the Superman Annual at capturing the feel of a pulp novel. The story is too contemporary, not really having the flavor of the kind of two-fisted cop stories that it seems to want to invoke. But if I didn’t know that was the goal, I wouldn’t give it that note, either. It’s a complete story, just a tad out of place.
Adventures of Superman Annual #9 brings us an absolutely gorgeous cover by Laurel Blechman with Electric Superman swinging into an old west saloon present a few Weird Western Tales. First is “Terror of the Sierra Madre” by John Rozum and artist Alcatena. Perry White sends Clark to New Mexico to look into a “major archaeological discovery” which promises to link the disappearances of three different tribes from the region. Joining the dig, Clark descends into an underground structure with iconography from the three different tribes all in the same place, suggesting that it was used for some sort of meeting between them all. As they investigate, strange spirits begin to inhabit the bodies of the archeological team – and then they come for Superman! This is one time where the Electric Superman particularly works, I think, causing an even sharper contrast with the western theme than it would if Superman had his conventional powers in this story. The bizarre juxtaposition of the energy man in a tale of the old west is a nice, zesty combination that I really enjoy.
Mike W. Barr and Dale Eaglesham then pitch in for “The Return of Saganowahna,” a story of a town where native American residents are being compelled into selling land that has been in their families for generations by the ravages of a creature called Saganowahna, “Chief of All Chiefs.” (No, it has nothing to do with Perry White) If you think it sounds like the plot of an episode of Scooby-Doo, you’re not far off. Eaglesham, for absolutely no reason, draws Superman in a white cowboy hat and duster, which looks absolutely fantastic over his electric blue costume. I want a Funko Pop of this guy.
The third story in this one is “The Journey of the Horseman” by Paul Grist and Enrique Villagran. In this one, an alien comes to Earth just as a new experimental energy source is about to be tested. The alien sets out to destroy, which I’m sure you can imagine, causes him to run afoul of Superman. Of the three stories in the book, this is the one that strains the theme the most. There’s really nothing “western” here, except for possibly casting the alien in a sort of “Man With No Name” sort of role, where he’s under suspicion even though his motives may ultimately turn out to be benevolent.
We’ll wrap up our Pulp Heroes journey with Action Comics Annual #9, a horror-inspired “Tale of the Unexpected” by David Michelinie and Vince Giarrano. Clark Kent is investigating a recent rash of museum thefts where ancient artifacts have been stolen – crimes that Clark believes are connected. The crooks are assembling pieces of a mystical stone, one which leaves Superman in the unenviable position of fighting an army of the dead. Of the four annuals, this is the one that feels most pertinent to the ongoing storyline of the regular comics. Ever since his shift to his energy powers, Clark says, he’s wondered if this has changed his vulnerability to magic. In this issue he’s forced to face it, along with dealing with the fear of forces that he can’t defeat, and he learns a little bit about the relationship between magic and energy that could definitely come in handy in later stories. That is, if any of the remaining stories from this era feature magic and if the writers of those stories actually remember that.
Thurs., Sept 11
Comic Books: Genesis #1, Steel #43, Superman: The Man of Steel #72, Genesis #2, Supergirl Vol. 4 #14, Superman Vol. 2 #128, Genesis #3, Adventures of Superman #551, Genesis #4, Batman: Justice Buster #27 (Superman Cameo), Jon Kent: This Internship Is My Kryptonite #8
This crossover just wasn’t the same after Peter Gabriel left.
Notes: Superman’s power struggles started during DC’s 1996 summer crossover event Final Night. Now we’ve progressed through a solid year’s worth of comics and we’re colliding with their 1997 crossover series, Genesis, which spun out of the pages of John Byrne’s Jack Kirby’s Fourth World series. The concept here was that the “Godwave,” a cosmic phenomenon, was about to pass through the universe. It had gone through twice before, the first time creating gods on multiple planets, and the second time creating humans. This time, reality itself seems to be threatened by its approach. As I did for Final Night, here I’m going to read the main Genesis series and any of the crossover issues featuring Superman or a member of the Superman-family, starting off with Genesis #1.
In Genesis #1, written by Byrne with art by Ron Wagner and Joe Rubinstein, heroes and villains start to feel their powers going haywire. The Flash’s speed is drained, as is Green Lantern’s ring, and Captain Marvel simply falls out of the sky. Others find their powers enhanced: Ultra Boy (the Legion is still in the 20th century) can suddenly use multiple powers at once, and Superman’s electrical powers feel an unexpected surge of energy. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it – heroes may be affected whether they’re metahuman, alien, mutant, or just have a powerful weapon like Green Lantern’s ring, while others like Aquaman suffer no changes at all. Batman theorizes that people from other dimensions, such as (the Matrix version of) Supergirl are not affected, but that never explains Aquaman. And as they debate and discuss what’s happening, an alien armada shows up in the skies above Earth. I never got the hang of Thursdays either.
The first Superman-family crossover comes in Steel #43 by Christopher Priest and Denys Cowan. This is a weird one, with the first half of the book mostly devoted to the ongoing stories and subplots of the series before touching upon Genesis – John Henry flies into Metropolis to check on Superman when he hears about the power fluctuations, only to suddenly start suffering from wild bursts of anger. He talks to Superman, who asks him to keep an eye on Metropolis while he meets up with the League (something that happened in Genesis #1), but when he flies off his new electromagnetic powers act like an EMP burst, frying the circuitry in John Henry’s armor and causing him to plummet from the sky! Cliffhangered!
Next up is Man of Steel #72. Lois and Clark are hanging out at the Planet when Clark’s powers spontaneously create an image of a meteor striking the Earth, freaking out Perry White’s assistant Alice, who decides she’s been working too hard. As Allie goes home, she’s attacked by Baud and her crew called Mainframe. Superman dives in to save her, but his powers again cause him to freeze and start projecting images, and Mainframe captures him, bringing him to their hideout. Override, the leader, is trying to use Superman to power a dimensional window, but Superman manages to get free, busting up a barroom brawl at the Ace O’Clubs between Bibbo, Scorn, and some monsters. This issue really has little to do with the crossover, just Lois theorizing at the end about some of the wild power fluctuations that have been happening lately. I hate that.
Genesis #2 picks up where the first issue ended, with the heroes at the Justice League Watchtower seeing the alien armada arrive in Earth orbit. Meanwhile, on the fused world of New Genesis and Apokalips (it’s a Fourth World thing), Darkseid seems to have vanished, which one would usually consider good news, except in this case it’s making the New Gods believe he’s behind the power fluctuations. One of the oldest of them, Arzaz, chooses this moment to reveal his true form as one of the “Old Ones,” the first Gods, who warns that if they do not stop the Godwave the Fourth World will be destroyed and replaced by a Fifth World. The changes don’t seem to be limited to powers, though – it’s also creating crises of faith. For instance, in Gotham City Robin, Huntress, and Catwoman seem to find themselves beset by a plague of fear and doubt that they normally don’t have. The Earth is suddenly besieged by Darkseid’s armies of Parademons, while the fleet in the sky turns out to be lead by the Darkstars leading an assault on Earth. Highfather finally shows up and says there’s one chance – some of our heroes will have to ride into the Godwave with a set of special Mother Boxes to focus the waning power of the Source. And all it’ll take is a few volunteers to run a suicide mission. He has no shortage of volunteers, of course.
The story moves from there to Supergirl #14. The crux of this series is that Supergirl saved the life of a woman named Linda Danvers that caused the two of them to merge into one person. This issue she goes to both of her sets of “parents” – the Kents, who raised her as Matrix, and Linda’s parents the Danvers – to tell them about it. It goes considerably better with Kents, who are far more used to weird stuff. Again, though, while Peter David’s whole run was great, the relationship to the crossover is tangential at best.
Superman #128 is – wonder of wonders – a crossover chapter that actually has to do with the main storyline. Picking up seconds after Genesis #2 ended, Green Lantern has had our heroes draw straws to decide who’s going to go on Highfather’s suicide mission. Before they can act, though, Highfather receives a psychic burst alerting him to danger at the Source Wall, the barrier between the universe as the cosmic energy of the Source itself, in which everyone who has tried to penetrate the wall has instead become bonded with it. They send Superman to investigate while the others continue their plans to deal with the Godwave. Superman is briefly dazzled by the sheer brilliance of the Source Wall, but his astonishment is broken when the giants bound to the wall begin trying to grab him and pull him in. He is trapped in a sort of living bubble, surrounded by memories of a human who turns out to be Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman! Cliffhangered AGAIN!
In Genesis #3 the inevitable happens – Darkseid returns. He gives an infodump on the Godwave before noping out and having his army attack the heroes until the New God Takion breaks it up, before reverting to his human form and dying for some reason. Can you tell I’m getting tired of this crossover?
Adventures of Superman #551 apparently forgot that it was supposed to be part of Genesis, at least on the cover, since it’s missing the trade dress, despite being far more linked to the story than the Man of Steel or Supergirl issues. Picking up where Superman #128 left off, Superman is in the clutches of the Cyborg, who has been inside the wall for some time. They fight and Superman hurls the Cyborg back into the wall before returning to Highfather and the others, meaning this two-issue excursion apparently took place between two panels at the beginning of Genesis #3. Oh yeah – and although Superman doesn’t know it, the issue ends with a hint that Henshaw, who has the power to hop from one electronic device to another, is actually now riding around inside Superman’s new techno-suit.
In Genesis #4 Earth is in utter chaos, with people giving in to despair and rage all around. But it’s okay! Because the heroes save the universe by…holding hands and believing? I don’t even know at this point. I’m going to be blunt here – this is one of the most poorly-structured crossovers I’ve ever read in my life, and I’ve read a LOT of them. Things happen for no reason and the individual installments feel pointless. Too many of them have barely any connection to the main event, and even the main event itself is a complete mess. Why the hell did the Darkstars invade Earth? Why is Darkseid and his entire army just allowed to appear and disappear at will? The two-parter with Superman fighting the Cyborg isn’t even referenced in the main story, we just kind of have to ASSUME it happened somewhere between panels of issue three. And none of the characters have personality – even the strike force that is assembled to use Highfather’s special Mother Boxes never gets any real development. We only learn in a flashback which 13 characters were chosen, and the choices are pretty irrelevant – you could swap any of ‘em out with anybody else and there would be no impact on the story because they don’t DO anything except show up, shoot at things, and then come back with a dead Takion.
John Byrne has been responsible for some of the best, most memorable comic books of all time. His runs on X-Men, Fantastic Four, and indeed, Superman are legendary. This book? This is the platonic ideal of phoning it in.
Ugh. Now I’m grouchy. Here’s hoping tomorrow is better.
Fri., Sept. 12
Comic Books: Action Comics #738, Superman: The Man of Steel #73, Superman Vol. 2 #129, Adventures of Superman #552, Action Comics #739, Taste of Justice #9
That’s more like it.
Notes: We start today with Action Comics #738, the one Superman title that dodged the bullet of having to tie in to Genesis. Superman returns to Metropolis following the crossover and almost immediately runs into a thief with the power to phase through solid objects. He escapes through an electronic store, where the Cyborg (hiding in Superman’s suit) jumps into the store’s computer system and begins plotting his revenge. This is a pretty-low key issue, mostly there to set things up and progress subplots like Clark and Lois dealing with the new circulation manager at the Planet who has the hots for Clark, and Jimmy – who has been on the run from Intergang for several issues now – finding himself in ever-hotter water.
Man of Steel #73 picks up Jimmy’s predicament as Intergang finally catches up to him, just to run afoul of a group of high-powered hippie bikers that call themselves the Outsiders and who aren’t happy about Intergang’s encroachment on his territory. Meanwhile, Morgan Edge manages to convince Desaad (Edge works for Darkseid, by the way) to lend him some Parademons to help him wrest control of Intergang from Boss Moxie. Now Jimmy’s caught between three fighting factions. Superman finds himself in the unenviable position of defending Lex and his pregnant wife from them, and in Australia, Lois is on assignment to interview a native tribe whose Chief tells her “we are honored, for we have been chosen to witness the coming of the giants…and the end of all that is.”
Nicely ominous, and I’m surprised that they started referencing the Millennium Giants – the story that would be the endgame of the Electric Era – so early.
Superman #129 brings the focus back to Scorn and Ashbury, who has decided to start keeping a diary, beginning with the tale of bringing Scorn along with her to help decorate for her high school homecoming dance. Clark Kent also happens to be there (funny how that happens) working on a column when a fire breaks out. Fortunately, as Ashbury recounts, Superman ALSO shows up to help put it out. The issue mostly tracks Ash and her art teacher, Mr. Sormon, who it turns out isn’t a Superman fan. It also turns out there’s a reason for that. I have to admit, I got irritated with Sormon proselytizing in the classroom, which is the absolute last thing any decent teacher should do, until we got to the reveal that clarified it all.
Adventures of Superman #552 has Big Blue face the Parasite again, for about two pages. Most of the issue is actually taken up with Lex Luthor and Intergang, as Lex makes his own play for control of Metropolis’s organized crime cartel. We also check in with Clark, missing Lois (she’s still in Australia) and trying to deal with things like getting tired in his human body, which has never happened before.
And in Action #739, Ashbury takes Scorn to her homecoming dance, moved to a swanky hotel after the school caught on fire. Sounds nice – until an explosion rocks the hotel. Superman swoops in to save the day, only to discover the whole thing is a scheme by his old foe Carl Draper, now going by the name Locksmith. (Previously he was “Deathtrap.” In the pre-Crisis era he was the Master Jailer. And when he went to Smallville High with Clark, he was “Moosie.” The guy does not have a knack for good names.) As Scorn works on saving the kids at the dance, Superman works out his escape, getting back to the hotel just in time to stop it from collapsing. Back in Australia, though, Lois is kidnapped by Rajiv Naga, the guy who tried to kill Clark on their honeymoon. Fortunately for her, her dad gave her a GPS tracker before she left, which is why Clark is pretty surprised on the last page when Sam Lane shows up and demands Clark join him on a little trip down under to save her.
I’m looking forward to the next few issues – Sam Lane and Clark Kent working together? Sounds wild.
Sat., Sept. 13
Comic Books: Superman: The Man of Steel #74, Superman Vol. 2 #130, Adventures of Superman #553, Action Comics #740.
Faces. Faces are cool.
Notes: DC used to occasionally do these interesting events on their covers – one month every cover featured the hero on the top half of the cover with the title incorporated into the artwork at the bottom, for instance. This month was “Faces of the DC Universe”: each cover was a close-up of the face of the main character, or one of the main characters. I really liked these sort of mini-events – they had no bearing on the story inside, not disrupting the story like a Genesis-type crossover did, but it really made the books stand out on the racks in a pleasing, fun way. You still occasionally get cover themes like this, but they’re almost always restricted to variant covers these days, which isn’t nearly as much fun and don’t even catch the eye randomly. Ah, here I am getting nostalgic instead of talking about the comics. I guess I’ll do that now. I do it for YOU.
In Superman: The Man of Steel #74, Rajiv reveals his plan to the captive Lois. Back when he had Clark captured on their Honeymoon, he doused him with truth serum, during which Clark admitted to being Superman. Rajiv dismissed it at the time, but now he’s starting to wonder – so if Superman shows up to save Lois, he’ll consider it confirmation. Clark and Sam, meanwhile, are on their way to Australia, Clark lamenting the fact that he CAN’T get away and save Lois as Superman without Sam noticing something is up. There’s more “Clark’s Secret ID” stuff during this run than I remembered. Anyway, after a few close calls, Clark and Sam make it to Rajiv’s base, where Clark pulls off some quick-change shenanigans and figures out how to go invisible to save Lois without blowing his identity. This is the kind of stuff that works best in this period of Superman lore – forcing Clark to find alternative ways to pull off a rescue, while at the same time having to find new ways to protect his identity, since he can’t use his powers as “Clark” anymore. There have been several stories where the power change was really negligible – a few slightly rewritten panels and the stories would have worked just as well with “Classic” Superman. This time around, it’s a story where the different powers have a clear and measurable influence on the plot.
In Superman #130, with art by the late, lamented Norm Breyfogle, it’s Halloween! Lois and Clark are on their way to a Halloween ball, but are briefly detoured to S.T.A.R.Labs, where Superman examines the recently-uneared Dragon’s Tooth artifact. This large rock formation has an unusual molecular structure, almost like DNA, as if it were alive. That can’t possibly mean anything, right? Anyway, at the party Lois and Clark stride in wearing Robin and Batman costumes and we go through a half-dozen subplots. Perry is feeling better and he ribs Clark on his recent weight gain (turns out that Mr. Perfect Kryptonian Metabolism is struggling with being a normal human half the time). Lex Luthor is still trying to play Metropolis Mayor Berkowitz, while Dirk Armstrong is on the anti-Berkowitz bandwagon. When Ashbury winds up getting into it with her dad, she and Scorn bounce from the party only to be picked up by a guy wearing Doctor Doom knock-off armor and riding a fancy motorcycle. It turns out to be Jimmy Olsen. The guy, I mean, not the motorcycle. Oh yeah – and apparently Superman’s energy caused something inside the Dragon’s Tooth to awaken, releasing a gigantic spirit that quite publicly kidnaps Clark from the party, leading to him switching to Superman and finding himself battling not one, but THREE of the giants as the issue cliffhangers.
Adventures of Superman #553 picks up with Superman facing the three figures, who reveal themselves to be part of something called the “Millennium Guard.” He barely manages to escape, but they’re hot on his trail as he stumbles upon Jimmy, Scorn, and Ashbury – who’ve also picked up the Hairie called Misa (who not too long ago was part of Morgan Edge’s Superman Revenge Squad). They load the stunned Superman into Jimmy’s super-motorcycle and jet out of there to Cadmus. They manage to trick the Millennium Guard into thinking that Superman has been killed, at which point they each turn into a new Dragon’s Tooth. Well, at least that’s the end of it, right?
Nah, of course not. Also, Misa teleports Jimmy, Scorn, and Ashbury away before Superman can bring Ash back to her father or Guardian can arrest Misa. And in a subplot, Lucy Lane is terrorized by a super-powered serial killer that signs his name on walls as “The Ripper.”
Action Comics #740, the police find some of Lucy’s things in the sewer, the first actual clue they’ve got in the Ripper case. Superman follows the trail into the sewer and winds up fighting an enormous beast. It gets away, but Superman finds Lucy trapped in a makeshift cage. The word “Ripper” is, again, inscribed on the wall, but this time there are more characters, leading Superman to theorize that the word isn’t actually English at all, but part of a different alien language, and that the creature – whatever it is – was trying to tell Lucy something. It’s an interesting idea, I suppose, but kind of a stretch. I mean…what are the odds of a symbol in some sort of alien language resembling a character from our English alphabet? Come on, Superman, think about it.
Sun., Sept. 14
Comic Book: Superman: The Man of Steel #75
Wait, this looks…familiar.
Notes: 1998 began with Man of Steel 75 and a book that must have had Jon Bogdanove utterly delighted to draw – a spoof of Superman #75 on the front, and between the pages, a one-off story of Mr. Mxyzptlk. Lois and Clark happen to stumble upon a funeral procession of such size that they have to stop and check it out, only to find Mxyzptlk hamming it up over the casket. Mxy has decided that he wants to explore the concept of mortality, which (as a 5th dimensional imp) he’s never had to really think about…so he decides to die. Superman and Lois, as you can imagine, are not particularly concerned about this proclamation. Mxy whips up a new version of Superman’s killer to face – Bada Bing Bada Boomsday – and gives up his powers so he can REALLY die in battle.
Then it starts to get weird.
This is a really great little story. It’s goofy, silly, has no consequences and not even any real stakes. But Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove paint Mxyzptlk in a way that comes across more as a naive imp than the malevolent trickster he can be sometimes. He’s genuinely just there to experience something new, and the havoc he causes comes across not as the result of spite, but of genuine ignorance as to how we mere three-dimensional organisms live our lives. The whole thing boils down to a hilarious revelation as Mxy sees his version of the afterlife. You could skip this book. You could simply pluck it from the omnibus editions of the Electric Superman era. You could pretend it’s not there. But you’d be missing out on something that’s actually a lot of fun.
Mon., Sept. 15
Comic Books: Superman Vol. 2 #131, Adventures of Superman #554, Action Comics #741, Superman: The Man of Steel #76, Superman Red/Superman Blue #1, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #9
One last burst of blue…
Notes: It’s the big day! Lex’s wife, Erica, is about to give birth – so naturally, Lex is at a photo op with Mayor Berkowitz. He gets into it with Perry White over their shared history, which fills us in on a lot of things about this continuity’s version of Lex that had slipped my mind. I knew he hadn’t grown up in Smallville with Clark like so many versions of the character, but I’d forgotten he and Perry had taken on a similar dynamic: children of Suicide Slum that grew up as friends but broke apart. It’s also worth noting that Perry and Alice’s son, Jerry, had turned out to actually be Lex’s son – the product of an affair decades before. Although Perry and Alice had reconciled, the bitterness over Jerry’s death still lingered over Perry at this point. Perry gives Lois a reader’s digest version of Lex’s life – growing up in the slums, his parents dying in an “accident,” and being taken in by a foster family that was only interested in him because they suspected he had money. Lex fell in love with another of their fosters, a girl named Lena, who their foster father accidentally killed in a fit of anger. From then on, Perry says, any remnant of warmth in Lex Luthor was extinguished forever.
The ending of this issue is pretty shocking, even for Lex Luthor, and is kind of disturbing to read in the current climate. But by the time it’s over, Lex has a new daughter, he’s thrown his wife aside, he’s gotten what to him no doubt seems like a satisfying revenge, and Metropolis is on the hunt for a new mayor.
Adventures of Superman #554 returns to the far more comic booky story of the Ripper, the monster patrolling beneath the streets of Metropolis, but not before a scene where Lex lords his new daughter – Lena Luthor – over Superman, gloating that his studies of Kryptonian DNA have suggested to him that it would be utterly impossible for him to ever have a child with a human.
Anyway, Metropolis’s new mayor calls in a Kraven wannabe called Burton “Hunter” Thompson to try to track down the Ripper in the sewers, much to the chagrin of SCU head Maggie Sawyer, who is forced to work with him. At the Planet, Dirk is upset because he hasn’t heard from Ashbury in over a week. When Clark tries to comfort him, saying that Scorn will keep her safe, Dirk snaps back that he can’t understand because he’s not a father, a remark which visibly disturbs Clark. Damn, the Superman writers were REALLY leaning into that angle, weren’t they? It almost makes me wonder if they were planning to do a super-baby storyline way back then, but then it got sidelined for some reason.
Superman joins the SCU and the Hunter in the sewers where they manage to find the Ripper. Hunter kills it while the creature is clearly trying to communicate, and Superman is left wondering what more there is to the Ripper that Hunter is trying to hide.
Action Comics #741 brings back the time-tossed Legionnaires one last time. In their efforts to return home in their own comic, they’ve kinda sorta accidentally created a malevolent AI that’s taking control of tanks and other heavy machinery and causing havoc. Fortunately in the real world AI is totally benevolent and can only do good things. In the comic, though, they wind up struggling against out of control aircraft – which Brainiac 5 discovers aren’t being controlled by his C.O.M.P.U.T.O. after all, but from a signal coming from LexCorp Tower, because of course it is. They find Lex in the middle of telling his new daughter a rather slanted version of Chaucer’s tale of Chanticleer the Rooster (great segment there by the way) and end the issue with a particularly nice dig against Luthor. Superman doesn’t get petty often, but when he does, he finds a way to hit you where it hurts.
This would be the last time we saw the Legion before they went home, by the way. Their search for C.O.M.P.U.T.O. continued from this issue into issue #100 of their own series, which featured them finally returning to the 30th century. It was nice while it lasted, though.
In Man of Steel #76, Bogdanove does a nice take on his own over for Superman: The Man of Steel #1 (a trick he repeated a couple of years ago for the first issue of the Steelworks miniseries), and we pick up on Jimmy’s group, now on a quest. The DNAliens Simyan and Mokkari, meanwhile, are cooking up a new creation in a kind of weird meta-story. The two storylines collide with the release of a monster in midtown Metropolis. Superman takes care of it fairly easily and Ashbury is finally returned to her father…but Simyan and Mokkari are picked up by Morgan Edge, who hears they have a habit of creating monsters. It’s a really weird issue – visually fun, but it feels like they’re trying to cap off the Ashbury thing quickly to move on to what’s next.
Pictured: Next.
What’s next, you ask? Why, that would be Superman Red/Superman Blue #1, the beginning of the final act of the electric era. So important that it even had a 3-D variant cover! On Christmas, the Cyborg returns yet again, teaming up with the Toyman (who, at this time, was in his child-murdering phase) with a plan to destroy Superman. They capture him in a sort of energy bottle, with the Cyborg planning to rip his energy-body apart and store it in a thousand containers. At the same time, Toyman has Lois captive, and takes her away. As Superman’s body is dispersed he panics and explodes, the Cyborg’s machine splitting him into two – neither of which is aware of the other. “Blue” rushes off to save Lois from the Toyman, while “Red” brutally battles the Cyborg and traps his electronic consciousness inside an orbital antenna. The two villains disposed of, both Supermen return to the Planet office, switch to Clark Kent, and proceed to make an entrance…I gotta tell ya, that’s the way to do a cliffhanger that isn’t a life-or-death situation. The story itself is a little surprising, with such a big change in the status quo happening really quickly with absolutely no buildup. Unlike the transformation to Electric Superman, which was seeded and hinted at for months, this just HAPPENS.
Even odder, this issue spends a lot of time on the ongoing subplots of the Superman saga. Scorn is captured by a hologram controlled by Lex Luthor, who wants to study him to learn more about Kandor. Jimmy returns to his ransacked apartment to find the medallion he got in the Pulp Heroes Superman Annual, which freaks Misa out. There’s really a shocking amount of stuff happening here that ISN’T directly related to the Red/Blue split, but that does help it to feel like a significant chapter of the ongoing saga, which is a good thing.
Tues., Sept. 16
Comic Books: Superman Vol. 2 #132, Adventures of Superman #555, Superman: Man of Tomorrow #10, Action Comics #742, Superman: The Man of Steel #77, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #10
See what they did on those bottom two covers? Idn’t that NEAT?
Notes: We’ll finish up this week with the first month’s worth of the adventures of Red and Blue. I know I’ve been on this storyline for three weeks now, but it doesn’t feel like it to me – I feel like I’ve whipped through this much faster than I expected, and I think I’ll be able to finish it off next week. Fortunately I’ve still got several other themes lined up to get me to the end of the year.
We’re starting things with Superman #132, picking up right where the cliffhanger at the end of the Red/Blue special left off. The two Clark Kents both return to the Daily Planet building at the same time, with Blue coming down from the roof and Red entering from the ground level. Blue goes off to a lunch meeting with Perry, while Red finds Lois and effusively shows his joy that she’s okay, even though he doesn’t know how she escaped the Toyman. Most of the issue is taken up with Three’s Company style shenanigans, with the two Clarks narrowly missing each other at the Planet office, at the JLA Watchtower, or Dooley’s restaurant, but the JLA quickly discovers that there are two Supermen. Their genetic scanners, furthermore, confirm that BOTH of the men are genuine, something Blue doesn’t accept, leading to the two Clarks confronting each other in the alley behind the restaurant on the last page.
It’s subtle, but this issue also lays the groundwork for the way these two are going to differentiate from one another, aside from the color. As we see Red bounding around Metropolis, he’s very energetic, free-wheeling, and emotional. He cracks jokes like Spider-Man and has no hesitation dropping a friendly put down on Green Lantern. Blue, on the other hand, is already coming across as colder and more stoic, with a short but clear moment of rudeness to a waiter who spills some coffee on his tie. There are a lot of stories about a character splitting into two that pull this same trick – each version gets PART of the character’s personality. In Superman’s case, Red is his emotional side, Blue the logical, and it’s going to be very clear soon that neither of them is as effective without the other.
Adventures of Superman #555 continues with the fight in the alley, both Clarks swearing to be the genuine article. As they argue, a lunatic with a pair of guns and dynamite strapped to his chest barges into Dooley’s. Red punches out Blue and rushes in to tackle the attacker, scared for Lois’s safety, without even changing to Superman. The bomb is still ticking, though, and Blue switches to his energy form to whisk the bomber out of the restaurant. He manages to contain the explosion and save the bomber, but winds up confronting Red again, each of them convinced that the other is the Cyborg pulling some new scheme. When they touch each other, though, something happens…
Meanwhile, Jimmy and Misa make their move to rescue the captive Scorn, a plan that gets slightly derailed when the Black Crucible – the cult Jimmy took the Medallion of the Damned from – shows up in an attempt to reclaim it. They get him free and the three of them, along with Ashbury, are on the road again.
Man of Tomorrow #10 picks up with Lois confronting her husbands at home. When they came into contact their minds temporarily fused together, making them realize how the Cyborg’s machine split them. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to merge into one again, prompting them to zip to the Fortress of Solitude to look for a solution. When they get there, though, they find that the Fortress has been invaded by Dana Dearden, aka Obsession, a highly-powered woman who is…well…obsessed with Superman. To make matters worse, Maxima shows up at the same time, hopefully convincing Superman that he’s gotta work harder in this continuity to hide the Fortress. The two women fight over him, trashing the Fortress and nearly destroying Kandor before Maxima tricks Dana into leaving via a telepathic trick, and the Supers capture Maxima and drop her off at Belle Reve. It’s a pretty good issue, but true to the Man of Tomorrow ethos, it doesn’t really have any major plot momentum in the Red/Blue saga, except for Maxima confirming that both Red and Blue are really Superman (which we already knew) and that Kryptonian tech isn’t going to fix the problem.
Action Comics #742 is next. Red and Blue split up, Blue being more concerned with finding a solution to their problems, but Professor Hamilton is nowhere to be found. In the meantime, an eco-terrorist calling himself Kirichitan releases all the animals from the Metropolis petting zoo, with Blue zipping in to fight him. Meanwhile, the home where Luthor has been keeping his wife under sedation since the birth of their daughter mysteriously burns to the ground. Meanwhile, Man of Steel #77 shows us what Red is up to at the same time, zipping home to be with Lois, but being called to investigate the fire that seems to have consumed Erica. Red and Scorn wind up, through timey-wimeyness, fighting some dinosaurs and robots in Suicide Slum, and Scorn decides that his presence is too dangerous for Ashbury, leaving her behind and breaking her heart.
There’s a fun little trick with these two issues, taking place simultaneously and showing some of the same events from different perspectives. It’s not quite a Rashomon situation, but writers Stuart Immonen and Louise Simonson have a little fun with the conceit, as do Immonen and Jon Bogdanove on the two covers that match each other as a single image.
Oh yeah – also, at Cadmus, something is happening to the Dragon’s Tooth artifacts. We’re on the cusp of the Millennium Giants, and the end of this era.
It’s not something I ever thought I would say, but comedy is in danger of becoming a dying art. In movies, at least, it’s become harder and harder to sell a comedy to the theater crowd, mainly because in a world where movie theater attendance has never really recovered from the Covid shutdowns, people are far more discriminating about what they choose when they go out to a movie theater. The prevailing notion is that if you’re only going to see a movie in a theater a few times a year, it’s best to spend those chits on the big-budget special effects spectaculars, the things that really demand that IMAX treatment on the big screen. I know I’m guilty of that – my wife and I only get out to see a movie without our son a few times a year at best, so we’ve got to make sure it “counts.” After all, a comedy that’s funny in the theater will be just as funny at home, right?
Of course, some comedies aren’t funny no matter WHERE you are.
No, that’s not right at all, actually.
I’ve written before about that ever-so-thin line between comedy and horror, and about how both art forms are built on a similar formula of tension, buildup, and release, with the primary difference being that horror releases tension through screams whereas comedy releases it through laughter. It’s the reason, in fact, that horror/comedy hybrids can be so effective. But there’s another similarity that people don’t realize. Most horror movies are scarier in movie theaters than at home, where you can feed on the energy of the people around you, hear them gasp and shout with each scare, where you can see the girl a row ahead of you grab onto her boyfriend when the monster leaps at the screen. It makes watching a horror movie a communal experience that’s more enjoyable than watching the same movie alone. (There are exceptions, of course. Certain small, claustrophobic films like Buried or home invasion movies like Hush probably work better in a darkened living room with the curtains drawn and as few people as possible with you. But those are the exceptions, not the rule.)
Similarly, there’s something about comedy that’s funnier when you’re with an audience. There’s an emotional charge in the air that is infectious, spreading from one person to another. Even ONE person can be enough to trigger this. I’ll watch episodes of RiffTrax or Mystery Science Theater 3000 a dozen times by myself and chuckle with the riffs. But if I watch that same episode with my wife, those quiet laughs to myself become full-belly guffaws. Laughter, like terror, is contagious. One person’s laughter eases the path for others – it’s almost like hearing someone else laughing gives you PERMISSION to laugh, a permission that you don’t actually NEED, but that your psyche is waiting for anyway.
Crow: I guess this is what he gets for making Green Lantern.
Unfortunately we didn’t make it to the theaters for this one, but the reboot of The Naked Gun is available digitally now, and my wife Erin and I watched it earlier this week. I’ve heard from many people whose opinions I respect that it was the funniest movie of the year, which sadly isn’t as bold a statement as it used to be. I grew up on the original Leslie Nielsen Naked Gun movies, as well as the Police Squad series that preceded it. I dearly loved that style of slapstick comedy, the kind we got from Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles or Spaceballs, and that the same Abrahams and Zucker Brothers combo that gave us Police Squad would refine in their disaster spoof Airplane! And I mourned – oh, HOW I mourned – the death of that kind of comedy when it was replaced by Friedberg/Seltzer stinkers like Date Movie, Meet the Spartans, and The Starving Games.
So much high art it should be in a museum.
Someone watching a trailer for these movies might not be able to tell what the difference is on the surface. They’re all goofy movies built on absurd, surrealistic comedy that’s almost like a cartoon brought to life. But the difference is that Brooks, Abrahams, and the Zuckers understand how parody works. Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, and The Naked Gun are spoofs of westerns, science fiction, and cop dramas (respectively). They mock the tropes of those films ruthlessly, while at the same time telling their own stories. Date Movie and similar films lack that kind of imagination or creativity. They replace actual gags with straight references to other films, and seem to think that simply acknowledging the existence of a (usually superior) movie somehow counts as a joke, but they have no identity or voice of their own.
Airplane!, incidentally, is the oddball in this group. Whereas the others weren’t parodies of SPECIFIC movies (although Spaceballs leaned harder on Star Wars than most other sci-fi), Airplane! was almost a beat-for-beat remake of a lesser-known and much-forgotten disaster movie called Zero Hour, even borrowing some of the dialogue from the earlier film. They simply took the existing plot and characters and amplified them to absurd levels and created a comedy classic.
But that kind of comedy had died out, as I said, replaced by the Reference Fests that slapstick has become in the last two decades. So when I heard they were rebooting The Naked Gun I was highly skeptical. When I heard that Liam Neeson had been cast as Frank Drebbin Jr., my optimism increased slightly – Neeson is a great actor and I believed he may have the comedy chops to pull it off. But it wasn’t until I saw the trailer, where they included a joke that addressed the elephant in the room – a certain cast member of the original trilogy who became infamous after the series ended – that I realized that this movie might just be self-aware enough to work.
And it really did.
And they get bonus points for mocking AI. Everybody gets bonus points for mocking AI.
Erin and I watched this movie and, from the first scene, I found myself laughing out loud at the antics on the screen. Liam Neeson has reinvented his career before – after a long period as a profound dramatic actor he took a left turn into action hero starting with the Taken franchise. Now it seems like he’s ready to reinvent himself again. He doesn’t play Frank Drebbin Jr. as completely stone-faced as his “father,” Leslie Nielsen, played the original. Instead, he’s got his own sort of blend of faux seriousness mixed with just enough winking at the camera to indicate that he recognizes just how ridiculous the movie is, and he’s cool with it.
The real revelation here, though, was casting Pamela Anderson as the femme fatale of the movie. It’s been quite a while since Anderson was really in the public eye, and when she WAS making movies more frequently she wasn’t usually being sought out for her comedic skills. But she nailed it in this movie, with the same kind of goofy sensibility that Neeson brought to the screen. Word has it that she and Liam Neeson have actually begun a romantic relationship in real life after working together on this movie. That wasn’t on my bingo card for 2025, but after seeing them together I absolutely believe it, because the chemistry is flawless.
Get a guy who looks at you like that even with that hair.
Most importantly, though, the writing is sharp and clever. The jokes are about the tropes of a police procedural, not about the EXISTENCE of it. The screenwriters rarely make reference to any specific movie or TV show, and when they DO it’s actually done well (such as an extended joke where Neeson’s character is distraught that his Tivo has accidentally lost season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – the joke here being that a hardboiled cop at his age KNOWS so much about Buffy, not that it EXISTS).
The Naked Gun (“the new version,” Neeson says in his first of many fourth wall-leaning moments) is the kind of comedy we don’t get anymore, and it’s the kind of comedy we need. Honestly, when is the last time you went to a movie theater to watch a comedy? I went back and looked at my Letterboxd diary to find the last time I saw a new movie in a theater that was an actual comedy and not just a superhero movie with comedic elements or a cartoon I was taking Eddie to watch. I made it back to 2017 when Erin and I saw The Big Sick, which is really more of a dramedy. Before that I’ve gotta go back to the action/comedy The Nice Guys in 2016. Both of those, by the way, are movies that deserve a lot more love than they get.
The Naked Gun didn’t set the box office on fire, but it was highly lauded by critics and by those audiences that actually DID show up. I’m hoping that’s enough to justify Paramount moving forward with a sequel. Neeson and Anderson are such a great on-screen duo that it would be a crime not to pair them up again. This wouldn’t be the first time a movie – especially a comedy – found its audience after the lights dimmed in the movie theater, so I’m giving this my recommendation. Buy or rent it digitally. Stream it when it eventually shows up on Paramount+. Buy the Blu-Ray or DVD when it hits stores. I want more movies like this, and so should you. I didn’t get to see this one with a tub of popcorn in my lap and a huge screen in front of me, so I’m hoping I’ll get that shot for part two.
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. You know what other movie didn’t get enough love? The Rocketeer. Just saying.
After last week’s extended wind-up, this week it’s time to do a deep dive into the era of Electric Blue Superman. I’ve honestly got no idea how far into the run I’ll get in the next seven days, but I intended to have a good time finding out.
Before I get into it, though, some fun news hit today. James Gunn hopped on social media earlier with a post of image by Jim Lee: Superman (in the David Corenswet costume) and Lex Luthor in his power armor. Along with the image came the caption, “Man of Tomorrow. July 9, 2027.” This is pretty exciting. We knew he was working on the next movie already, but this is far more information than I thought we would possibly get before next year. We’ve got what seems to be a title, and maybe even a hint of the plot, with Lex in his armor. Obviously, I’m pumped.
After all, isn’t the one thing Superman has always been missing a screwdriver?
But I gotta tell you this story. I got a message right before lunch and, being in class at the time, I obviously couldn’t stop to look at my phone. When the lunch bell rang, the students left the room and I checked to see that Mark had shared this image. I got excited, I replied, and then I stepped out into the hall. Not 90 seconds after I got Mark’s message, a student ran up to me – not even a student I teach, just one who knows me – who wanted to know if I had seen James Gunn’s announcement yet.
Comics:Adventures of Superman #546, Action Comics #733, Superman: The Man of Steel #68, Superman Vol. 2 #124
That image looks…familiar somehow.
Notes: In Adventures of Superman #546, Lois Lane has her first meeting with her new and improved husband. As glad as she is to see him okay, he’s just as angry when he sees that the Daily Planet’s inflammatory new columnist Dirk Armstrong has painted him as a menace…mostly because Clark thinks he was right. When word comes in that Dirk’s blind daughter, Ashbury, has been kidnapped, Superman races to search for her, only to get sidetracked when he’s attacked by his old foe Metallo, who wants to try his hand at facing the new Superman. Don’t worry about the kidnapping victim, though – Ashbury is rescued by Scorn, who she briefly mistakes for Superman. Liking the role of hero, Scorn puts on Superman’s old symbol as his own.
In Action #733, Superman just manages to escape from Metallo’s clutches by switching to his human form, but winds up injured in the process. Hoping to gain more control over his new powers he seeks out someone who has similar experience: the energy-hero called the Ray. After a few tips, Metallo rises again, and Superman figures out some new tricks to take him down. This is an interesting issue – Ray only appears on a few pages, despite getting a nice “guest-starring” credit and half the cover. But what he does here isn’t insignificant, helping Superman start to figure out his powers and even theorizing that the reason he has no powers in his human form is because he subconsciously is imitating humans as he sees them. I like the fact that Superman isn’t above going to a younger hero for help when he needs it, even one as relatively inexperienced as the Ray. It’s the sort of thing that works well as a character beat, showing how even-tempered and nuanced he is.
The battle with Metallo continues in Man of Steel #68, and courtesy of Jimmy Olsen, it gets a lot harder. At this period, Jimmy was working as a TV reporter for WGBS news instead of his traditional photographer gig, and desperate to stay on top of the ratings heap, he starts covering the Metallo fight and explaining Superman’s new powers based on information he got from Professor Hamilton. Metallo is monitoring the TV broadcast, though, and using Jimmy’s broadcast to change his tactics. Superman manages to beat him, but winds up spinning into space, having absorbed far too much energy.
After ending Man of Steel #68, Dan Jurgens makes the rather odd choice to begin Superman #124 after the crisis has been resolved, with Lois and Clark discussing how the Planet’s publisher, Franklin Stern, is angry over his frequent absences lately. Then Clark dives into a flashback in which he’s saved from dissipating into energy in outer space by the timely intervention of one of Jurgens’ favorite creations, Booster Gold. The rescue fries the armor Booster has been wearing for some time, though – actually, ever since his original super-suit was destroyed in battle with Doomsday. Superman brings Booster to Hamilton, who uses the leftover weave from Superman’s containment suit and combines it with the remaining future technology Booster brought back from the future with him, giving him a new suit that’s a bit more in line with his classic one. I love when you see stuff like this – Jurgens clearly wasn’t happy with how the writers that followed him on Justice League America changed Booster’s armor and used this opportunity to fix it a little bit.
This issue gives us a lot of advancement on several subplots as well. Jimmy kind of patches up his relationship with Lois and Clark, ashamed of how his broadcast had endangered Superman, just in time for Perry White to storm into the Planet office and announce that his cancer is in remission and demand his job back. In Kandor, the town’s rulers find evidence that the bottled city – which is actually out of phase in another dimension – is on the verge of destruction. And Scorn is drawn to Lois and Clark’s apartment, where he finds one of Clark’s old costumes.
Reading these issues this way, one after another, following the story for long periods of time, is really making me feel nostalgic for the Triangle Era in a way that not even the Death of Superman. I love having this quick progression of story, so unlike a typical monthly comic book story. Even right now, when the Superman comics are really good, this is a different feeling. It’s a feeling I like.
Ah, I wish we could get it back.
Thur., Sept. 4
Comics: Adventures of Superman #547, Action Comics #734, Superman: The Man of Steel #69, Superman Vol. 2 #125, Secret Six Vol. 5 (Super-Son)
The Atom only went along because Superman told him they’d go spelunking instead of skydiving.
Notes: Still adjusting to his new powers, in Adventures #547, Superman is alerted to the crisis in Kandor and decides to reach out to a hero with experience in size manipulation: the Atom. At this point, though, Ray Palmer had gone through an even more radical transformation than Superman, having been reduced in age to a teenager. He was currently the leader of a new, very different version of the Teen Titans in a book written and drawn by our old pal Dan Jurgens. Still, despite having a teenager’s body and attitude, he retained his memories, and as a former Justice Leaguer, jumps at the chance to work with one of the big guns. Hamilton journeys to the Fortress with the two heroes, and Superman and the Atom dive down into Kandor. Scorn, meanwhile, is wandering around Metropolis stalking Ashbury and carrying around the Superman costume he took from Clark’s apartment, seemingly trying to decide what he wants his path to be now that he’s free of Kandor.
Action #734 picks up with Ashbury reuniting with Scorn, although the blind girl is still under the misapprehension that he’s Superman. At that same time Rock – a villain Superman caught a few months back – breaks out. With Superman and the Atom in Kandor, though, Scorn takes care of Rock by himself, to the confusion of the SCU, who sees this horned, blue brute wearing Superman’s old costume. In Kandor, Superman and the Atom fight off some of the city’s peacekeepers who are still loyal to their original captor, Tolos, and a group of dissidents manage to attack the city’s environmental generator. The city is beginning to freeze, but that’s not even the real issue. They’ve got one hour to get the generator back online before everyone in Kandor suffocates to death.
In Man of Steel #69, Superman, the Atom, and a telekinetic local named Faern try to get to the generator to start it up again. But the generator is bombed, and in the explosion, Tolos is revealed to be alive and hiding in Faern’s body. He escapes and takes over Superman, which I’m sure you can imagine is inconvenient for everyone. Outside of Kandor, Scorn has crashed at Ashbury’s apartment, with the blind girl finally figuring out that he’s not actually Superman, but she befriends him anyway. When her dad shows up, though, he thinks Scorn is a menace and Scorn, not realizing Dirk is Ash’s father, leaps from the window with her in his arms. Perry White demands that Planet staff get to the bottom of the Scorn situation, and still more questions about Clark’s attendance issue are raised.
I bring up that last point mostly because I think it’s an interesting note for the character. One of the reasons for Clark choosing the job of a reporter is usually the notion that it will allow him to be absent frequently to act as Superman under the guise of “covering a story.” That might work if he’s gone for a few hours, but as we’ve seen in these books lately, his other job sometimes has to take him away for days, weeks, even months at a time. The excuses he (and later, Lois) come up with to explain his disappearances often strain credulity and are frequently lampshaded these days. All of this is just to say that things like this are why I like the interpretation of the characters that say Perry White knows – or at least strongly suspects – that Clark is Superman, because otherwise he’d never put up with this.
The Kandor story wraps up in Superman #125. Tolos, controlling Superman’s body, frees himself from Kandor and attacks Hamilton, who’s been holding vigil over the bottled city. But Hamilton manages to science Tolos out, sending them both – separately – back into the bottle. Superman manages to trick Tolos, trapping him in the “glass” of the bottle, which is actually an energy barrier containing the city in its pocket dimension. Reuniting with the Atom, the two heroes manage to fix the machines that maintain the city’s environment, and the story ends with Superman swearing to the people of Kandor to find a way and a place to release them from the bottle and set them free.
It sounds awfully familiar, actually.
The first extended team-up between Energy Superman and the Atom is an interesting glimpse at the characters and the time. Superman is still learning the ropes of his energy form, but he’s still essentially the same person at his core. The Atom, on the other hand, has his memories and powers intact, but the brashness and eagerness of a teenager. Almost every other page in these four issues includes a reference to him hoping to impress Superman enough that he’ll score an invitation into the newly-formed (at the time) Justice League. The story flows together the way the Triangle Era did, and although this version of Kandor has been excised from continuity, there’s some interesting stuff going on. I especially like Scorn – a character who looks like a monster but decides that, if he’s gonna be stuck on Earth, there are worse things to be than Superman. He’s not wrong.
Fri., Sept. 5
Comics: Adventures of Superman #548, Action Comics #735, Superman: The Man of Steel #70
“Why you electrocuting yourself? Why you electrocuting yourself?”
Notes: In an epilogue to last month’s adventure, Kandor is shifting its allegiance from Tolos to Superman. In fact, his shield (the current, electric blue one) is showing up as a graffiti tag on city walls. Superman tells the Atom he’d be willing to recommend the Atom to rejoin the League, but suggests he could be of more use leading the Teen Titans, which he decides to take as a challenge. Clark returns to the Planet and tries to excuse his absence by saying he was hunting down the story on the new Superman, to which Perry replies, “Which one?” But while working on the story, Lois drops a bomb on Clark that he hadn’t been made aware of before: that the electronic fabric in his new suit was supplied by Lex Luthor. He rushes to LexCorp Tower, suspecting Lex of being involved with his power change as he’s tried tampering with them in the past, but leaves when Erica fakes a problem with her pregnancy. And in a moment that’s chilling to any long-time DC fan, the Phantom Stranger pops in to tell Clark that there’s some great disturbance in the universe, something that may or may not be connected to Superman’s new powers. And the fact that he’s not sure should be pretty scary to anyone.
(Wait — has anyone told Booster Gold that HIS suit has LexCorp tech too?)
Action #735 brings us the return of Saviour, a delusional serial killer who wants to “punish” liars and fakes, and who doesn’t believe that Superman actually returned from the dead and is dedicated to killing the “imposter” using his name. Ashbury, meanwhile, has found a hiding place for Scorn in the abandoned pool at her school. When Scorn hears Saviour on the radio calling Superman out, he is determined to help. Superman’s new energy powers allow him to find a way to cancel out Saviour’s energy, taking him out, but he manages to slip away and vow revenge.
In Man of Steel #70 Superman and Scorn part as friends, but not before Superman tells the alien he has to bring Ashbury – a 17-year-old girl – back to her father. Although Ash protests, Scorn trusts Superman’s judgment, and she finally acquiesces upon learning her absence is taking its toll on Dirk’s health. WGBS, meanwhile, airs Jimmy’s interview with Hamilton about Superman’s new powers, despite the fact that it gave Metallo an edge in the fight, and this time Saviour picks up on it. With his reality-warming, he starts to mimic Superman’s new powers to get his attention. Scorn and even Bibbo get in on it, with Bibbo snatching a crib sheet Saviour wrote to keep track of what he learned about Superman’s powers. Superman and Scorn beat Saviour, but Jimmy’s relationship with his friends is damaged even further.
Jimmy could rarely catch a break during the Triangle Era. A running theme seemed to be him making a foolish mistake and then having one consequence after another stacked up on him like an enormous Dagwood Sandwich of Suck. It honestly could get a little tiresome after a while. These days we don’t see him quite as often as I’d like, but when we do, it’s usually more in the vein of the weirdness magnet that Matt Fraction (and, to a lesser degree, James Gunn) used him as. I prefer that.
Sat. Sept. 6
Comic Books: Adventures of Superman: Book of El #1, Absolute Superman #11, Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 #4
Notes: I’m taking a break today from the electric saga to pick into this week’s new Superman titles, starting with Adventures of Superman: Book of El #1.
🎶”Who wrote the book of El?”🎶 “I told you, Phillip Kennedy Johnson. Stop singing.”
This new miniseries is written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson as sort of the conclusion to his run on the Super-titles that followed Brian Michael Bendis’s run and lasted into the Dawn of DC era before he stepped aside. I had mixed feelings about his run. Coming off of the (ahem) previous writer it was inevitable that it would be an improvement, and there were certainly things about Johnson’s run that I enjoyed, but I ultimately got turned off. In this period, Johnson wrote about a Superman that was depowered on Warworld, and for most of that run, it was the only regular comic featuring Clark Kent. (The Superman title was sidelined and replaced with Jon Kent as Superman: Son of Kal-El.) I got burned out on Warworld eventually. Towards the end of the run I realized what the problem was – it was simply too long. A solid year of Superman on another planet and separated from Lois, Metropolis, and all the other elements that make Superman so great just didn’t work for me. In the Triangle Era they could have gotten away with it because a twelve-issue storyline would still only last three months, but 12 was too much. I greatly preferred the final section of Johnson’s run, after Superman returned to Earth and Action Comics became kind of a Superman Family title.
All that said, let’s look at what Book of El gives us. The story starts on a lazy day in Smallville, with the Kent family all together: Lois and Clark, Jonathan and Martha, Jon, and the adopted twins from Johnson’s run, Otho-Ra and Osul-Ra, who have ostensibly been living with Lois and Clark this whole time but who even the good writers of the modern Superman titles consistently forget about. Their idyllic afternoon is shattered by an attack by Kryl-Ux, an enemy from Warworld, leading an invasion force and – seemingly – hurling Superman into the future. On the last few pages Clark encounters Ronan Kent, a descendent of his from Johnson’s Future State comics, and the knowledge that he disappeared from Earth hundreds of years ago.
I really do like the way Johnson writes the whole Kent family together. He gives each character a voice that fits them, and his Lois and Clark interactions (so infrequent during his Warworld storyline) are excellent. The revelation at the end takes all the air out of the tires, though. Clark is missing for centuries? Presumed dead? And the invasion of Earth is successful? The whole thing may as well end with a big banner that says “THIS STORY WILL BE RESET AND THIS FUTURE WILL NOT HAPPEN.” By the end of this miniseries, I have absolutely ZERO doubt, something will happen that will eliminate the future of Ronan Kent from being a potential future. That doesn’t mean the story can’t still be good, but it excises the whole thing from consequence in continuity, and that hurts.
Brainiac doing his best Cryptkeeper voice: “What the matter, Kal? Got GORE-gia on your mind? HEEHEHEEHEHEHEHEEEE!!!”
In Absolute Superman #11, Kal-El is in the clutches of Brainiac, who is forcing him to experience hundreds of torturous simulations of the final days of Krypton with the intention of brainwashing him into becoming a tool for Ra’s Al Ghul. Despite some early success, though, Kal-El begins to resist the reprogramming. Meanwhile, Lois and Jimmy are captives of Talia, and find a very unexpected rescuer coming to their aid. This series is progressing a little slowly, to be honest, but this issue is solid. There’s a lot of action and great stuff with Kal-El and Brainiac, and I particularly like the way Jason Aaron is playing with [REDACTED] when that particular character comes to the rescue. Good stuff here.
Finally, we have Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 #4. The League is trying to recruit Godzilla to help with the current situation, but something in the other realm where Godzilla resides is preventing the Kryptonians from fully processing the solar radiation that powers them. To even the score, Mr. Terrific whips up a device that will temporarily make Superman kaiju-size…but at the same time, reduce his intellect to a point where he’s operating on pure instinct. That’s right: it’s Godzilla vs. Kaiju-Superman!
And somebody decided to go with a cover of a few random League members facing a water monster that doesn’t even appear in this issue. I swear, boneheaded movies like this are the reason I should be put in charge of comic books.
Sun., Sept. 7
Comic Books: Superman Vol. 2 #126, Adventures of Superman #549, Action Comics #736, Superman: The Man of Steel #71, Superman Vol. 2 #127
Clark had trouble making friends in this era.
Notes: It’s back to the electric era today, starting with Superman #126, in which our new electrified hero faces his Dark Knight buddy. Lex Luthor is planning his legal defense for his…well, trillions of crimes. But his scheme is to argue that he was somehow influenced by the Kryptonite ring that gave him cancer. Despite the fact that it might help Luthor, Mr. Truth and Justice Superman has no choice but to go to Batman and retrieve the ring. He returns it after some tests or run – or so he thinks. Luthor had one of his “scientists” pull a fast one, replacing the ring with a duplicate. Superman and Batman don’t know that the ring in the Batcave is a fake…but Luthor doesn’t know that Kryptonite no longer affects Superman in his energy form.
There’s an awful lot going on in this issue. In addition to the main plot I just recapped, there’s a great sequence where Superman saves the city from a plane crash, having to figure out how to use his new powers to do something that would have been relatively simple for the “old” Superman. Scorn is also convinced to abandon the Superman costume he’s been wearing and forge a name for himself. There’s good stuff there, but the actual Superman/Batman meeting is kind of a letdown. I would have hoped Batman would have more to say about Clark’s transformation, as this is presumably the first time they’ve encountered each other since it happened, but Batman barely seems to notice. It feels like those early Byrne issues where the two were tense rivals at best. Granted, they weren’t yet Superbesties again at this period, but as teammates in Grant Morrison’s Justice League, I would have expected them to be a bit more cordial to one another.
Adventures of Superman #549 stars with Superman forced to do something he didn’t need to do when he had hearing and vision powers: go on patrol. Instead of stumbling on Intergang, though, he winds up in the middle of a rumble between the Newsboy Legion and the Dingbats of Danger Street. No, really, those are actual comic book characters. Jimmy, meanwhile, is struggling to find some credibility after his recent struggles. He decides to check in on Lois and Clark, but arrives just as Intergang firebombs their building as a warning to Lois to back off. Superman evacuates the building, but is then forced to go back in as a powerless Clark to protect his identity. After spending the night in the hospital suffering from smoke inhalation, he goes to Professor Hamilton to ask if he’s discovered a way to restore his powers to normal, but Hamilton gives him the shocking news that this change seems to be permanent. Also at the end, Superman brings in yet another obscure group of DC kid characters to settle the issue between the Newsboys and the Dingbats, and Jimmy decides he’s going to resurrect his career by making one of the stupidest decisions he’s ever made in his entire life, and keep in mind that this is a man who once married a gorilla.
Action Comics #736: The mysterious shadowy figure who recently assembled a Superman Revenge Squad starts assembling…well…a new Superman Revenge Squad. He busts Barrage out of prison, then recruits Rock and the Parasite to his cause, with a promise of more to come. Clark, meanwhile, is depressed over the revelation that the change to his powers will be permanent. He heads to Pennsylvania on assignment for the Planet, only to get trapped in a coal mine collapse with a bunch of miners. The old Superman could get them out in moments, of course, but if he were to fire up his new electrical powers, he runs the risk of igniting the coal dust in the air and killing them all. This is the kind of story that they do every so often to prove that Superman is more than his powers – he’s actually got a brain, too. Clark finds a way to save everybody without his powers, because that’s what Superman does, no matter what costume he’s wearing.
Man of Steel #71 picks up on the Jimmy Olsen Bonehead Show. After the incident at the apartment, Jimmy is convinced he’s figured out Superman’s secret identity, and the rest of the crew at WBGS news is trying to convince him to pursue and report it. But at the same time Bibbo, who punched Jimmy out a few issues ago for his LAST boneheaded move, gets back in the boxing ring and wins, then surrenders his title as penance for hitting Jimmy. Somehow this is enough to cause a moral quandary in a man who should have NO moral quandary about the question of WHETHER OR NOT TO RUIN THE LIFE OF HIS BEST FRIEND, JAMES BARTHOLOMEW OLSEN, WHAT IN THE NAME OF NERON ARE YOU THINKING?
Ahem.
Also, the mysterious recruiter picks up a new villain, an electrical woman named Baud, to join his new Revenge Squad, and his identity is revealed as…Morgan Edge. It’s not the most dramatic reveal, honestly, but it tracks. He sends them to fight Superman, because that’s what he does.
And in Superman #127, Superman narrowly escapes the Revenge Squad as they start to fight amongst themselves. Superman lets the Parasite take out the other three, then bounces in and reverses things on his magenta rival, defeating him by using his new powers to suck the excess energy from him and leaving him helpless. Then, Lois and Clark get a visit from Jimmy, who asks their advice on whether he should pursue the story of the century, even if it will get someone “really mad at him.” Clark, being Clark, tells him that the truth is the most important thing, and Jimmy leaves renewed in his determination to blow Superman’s secret identity, because they are really writing him as unforgivably stupid at this point in the series. Honestly, I’d forgotten about all this. Jimmy. James. Jimothy. What the hell, dude?
Mon., Sept. 8
Comics: Adventures of Superman#550, Action Comics #737, Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #9, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #7, Justice League of America #28
Or “The Adventures of Superman’s Stupidest Friend, Jimmy Olsen.”
Notes: Jimmy’s giant bonehead extravaganza comes to a head in the “double-sized anniversary issue” Adventures of Superman #550. As he prepares his news special in which he plans to reveal Superman’s identity, he tries to justify it in his head by saying that, without his hearing and vision powers to alert him to danger, Superman’s identity being public would make it SO MUCH EASIER for people to come to him for help, displaying the kind of mental gymnastics that wouldn’t be associated with Superman again until Zack Snyder fans started to desperately try to pretend that the James Gunn movie wasn’t successful. Jimmy invites Lois and Clark to the taping of his special, along with two other guests: former football pro Johnny Dakota and Newstime magazine publisher Collin Thornton, both of whom also happen to live in the same building as our happy couple. Lois storms out of taping as Jimmy reveals what’s up his slave, but Clark instead gives Jimmy a kind but firm dressing-down about how Superman wouldn’t do anything to hurt anybody. The speech doesn’t fall on deaf ears, but Jimmy realizes it’s too late to back down now, and so on live TV he announces that Superman’s secret identity is…NOBODY!
Okay, he did the right thing in the end, but Jimmy B. Olsen comes across – both in-universe and to the reader – as one of the dumbest characters in the entire DCU.
Predictably, he gets fired from WGBS and he decides to take a little time off, even keeping the truth about Superman’s secret to himself…that Superman is really, of course, Collin Thornton.
I dislike this take on Jimmy so, SO much. I’ve talked before about how I prefer it when characters are played to the top of their intelligence, and this is as far from that as it could possibly go. Not only does Jimmy completely miss every clue that Clark is, in fact Superman, a fact that even a child could infer from the speech Clark gives him in this issue, but his emotional intelligence would have that same child look at him in disgust. One of my favorite bits of the new movie is the scene in the end, where Perry White and Jimmy Olsen quip about how long Lois and Superman have been hooking up. The scene can be read one of two ways: either they know Lois is involved with their biggest headline, OR they know that Lois is involved with Clark and that Clark happens to be Superman. There’s been quite a lot of chatter online about this, and personally, I prefer the latter interpretation, much for the same reason that I believe that James Gordon knows that Batman is really Bruce Wayne – he’s just too smart NOT to have figured it out, but he knows it’s best to keep it to himself. THAT’s the Perry and Jimmy I want to read about.
Not this assclown.
But as it turns out, the dumbification of Jimmy Olsen wasn’t over yet. Action Comics #737picks up the thread, as (in an issue by guest writer Mark Waid) Olsen is attacked by Intergang, who isn’t buying his claim that Superman has no secret identity, and they’re ready to get the truth out of him. Jimmy just barely manages to escape – in only his boxers, which only serves to deepen his public humiliation when he’s picked up by the police. It just gets worse when the people who bail him out turn out not to be family or friends, but the same Intergang agents who were after him before. Meanwhile, at Lex Luthor’s trial, Lex’s lawyer argues that Lex, while dying of Kryptonite radiation, was saved by one of his research team, but lay comatose for months, only coming out of it shortly before the Final Night crisis. The real criminal was his clone, “Lex Luthor Jr.” (which is technically true, if you ignore the fact that Junior was just Lex’s brain in a younger body). The real kicker, though, is when the defense actually produces the clone – now aging, infirm, and raging in court. The judge, reluctantly, allows Lex to go free.
There are a couple of good bits in this one, even as Jimmy continues to act like a bonehead. First, after Lex’s trial, a snide and confident Lex Luthor informs his lawyer that everything he just said in court was bupkis, he was indeed the one responsible for the “clone’s” crimes, and he’s about to go launch a plan to destroy the Justice League which the attorney can’t tell anyone about due to attorney/client privilege. It’s just the kind of utterly arrogant thing that makes Lex such a delicious villain, and Waid sells it nicely. Another good bit is at the end, when a desperate Jimmy turns to Bibbo for help. The same Bibbo who punched Jimmy out for his jackass behavior not that long ago comes to his aid because, in his own words, “We’re both pals o’ Superman, and dat’s a pretty solid brotherhood.”
The world needs more Bibbo Bibbowski in it.
A quick note about the next book I’m going to be reading, Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #9. During the “Triangle Era” we had four monthly Superman comics, which equaled 48 issues of Superman a year. As you may have heard, though, years actually have about 52 weeks. Comic books come out on Wednesday, and roughly four times a year you get a month with five Wednesdays in it instead of four. DC decided to fill in these gap weeks with Man of Tomorrow, a bonus title that only appeared in these missing Wednesdays. It was a fun idea, but they rarely added anything substantial to the ongoing storyline (I suppose DC knew that even with a triangle on the cover some people would skip it) and eventually it was phased out in lieu of DC’s “fifth week” events, where they’d fill Wednesday #5 with a series of themed one-shots like Girlfrenzy or New Year’s Evil.
Anyhoo, Man of Tomorrow #9 is kind of the perfect expression of this series. It’s a one-off story in which Jonathan and Martha – talking about their son’s recent transformation – run down all of the other trials and tribulations he’s faced over the years. The book is really nothing but a condensed history lesson of all the main storylines that had happened to the character in the decade since John Byrne’s Man of Steel reboot, which is kind of an odd choice for a book they’re afraid would only be purchased by the most intrepid of readers, because they would be far more likely than the casuals to already know all of this stuff. The cover is pretty misleading too, with a banner that proclaims “The Secrets of Superman’s Costume!” Spoiler alert: there are absolutely no secrets in this book, just a parade of Superman’s history with a visual focus – courtesy of artists Paul Ryan and Brett Breeding – on the assorted different costumes and appearances Superman had over the years. We got glimpses of pretty much everything, from the armor he wore during Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite to the circus strongman getup from Time and Time Again to the battle suit Mother Box gave him in Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey. In fact, if I were a toy manufacturer looking to do a really comprehensive line of figures featuring every different getup Superman ever wore, this book would be a pretty valuable resource for this time period. As a story it’s cute, but kind of a throwaway.
Tues., Sept. 9
Short Film: Superman 75
And he doesn’t look a day over 87.
Notes: My original plan for today was to read the Superman annuals that featured ol’ Electric Blue, but September 9th turned out to be one of those days that just gets away from you. I had my hands full with various things, and by the time I’m writing this at nearly 7:30 pm, I haven’t had a chance to indulge in any Superman content. It’s time to play one of the little “emergency cards” I had planned out at the beginning of the year – a quickie I could sneak in on a day like this one, when time is of the essence and I might not have another chance to keep my streak alive. Today I chose Superman 75, a two-minute animated short directed by Zack Snyder and Bruce Timm to celebrate Superman’s 75th anniversary back in 2013.
Say what you will about Snyder (and at some point, before the year ends, I intend to do so), but this short really does show a respect for the character of Superman. In two minutes, Snyder and Timm craft a wonderful little visual retrospective of Superman’s 75-year history, which I still can’t believe was already 12 years ago. I hope DC has some plans in place for year 90, it’s going to be here before they know it.
Anyway, over the two minutes of the short – which is mostly set to the classic John Williams score — we start off with an extreme close-up of the S-shield from the cover of Action Comics #1, which then springs to life and then begins evolving through the various ages of the character. At turn, we see glimpses of the Fleisher Superman, some Golden Age comics, George Reeves, the proliferation of new heroes and villains that joined Superman in the Silver Age, a glimpse of the Super Friends, a dip into the 70s when Superman boxed Muhammad Ali, the death and return, the electric era, the Animated Series, Smallville, Kingdom Come, and the New 52 (WHEW!) before the short finally wraps with a glimpse of Henry Cavill in that first promo shot we ever saw of him, where Superman was standing in the rubble of what looked like a bank vault. For the last segment the music shifts to the Hans Zimmer score, paying what I still think was a suitable tribute to the character as he was at the time.
I’ve watched this cartoon probably a half-dozen times since it was first released, and I enjoy it every single time. It’s a nice visual history of my favorite hero, and it’s the sort of thing I’d like to see them revisit and update every so often. But when I watched it on my laptop this time, something interesting happened. My son, Eddie, heard the now-familiar strains of the John Williams music coming from the computer and asked what I was watching. So I had him sit on the couch next to me so we could watch it together. As we went through the short I briefly informed him which eras we were passing through, and he thrilled at the appearance of Krypto during the Silver Age segment. Of course he did – we all love Krypto. If James Gunn throws Beppo into the Man of Tomorrow movie, I’ll show this short to Eddie again and he’ll go wild over that.
Assuming I have a little more time tomorrow, I’ll get around to those annuals, and then continue on my journey through Superman’s electrical era. Until then, friends!
Blake M. Petit 