It’s still spooky season, which is tough on a dedicated Superman feature like this one. Finding Superman comics with seasonally-appropriate content is a challenge, but one I’m ready for. Let’s go back to 1986 and the second issue of John Byrne’s Action Comics run, when the man of steel and the Phantom Stranger teamed up to take on a whole dang zombie mountain.
Action Comics #585
Title: And Graves Give Up Their Dead…
Writer, Artist & Cover: John Byrne
In this tale, narrated by the Phantom Stranger, Superman begins in combat with an evil sorceress – who turns out to be a perfectly ordinary, if spiteful, woman who happened to find a magic gemstone that’s set her up against Superman. But although her magic weakens Superman’s body, his mind is as sharp as ever, and he quickly outsmarts her. What he doesn’t realize, though, is that the gemstone that gave her power has fallen to Earth in a cemetery haunted by the diseased souls of criminals – murderers, rapists, people who use their phones in a movie theater, the lowest of the low. Superman goes home to rest, only to find the Phantom Stranger waiting (in Clark Kent’s apartment, no less) to bring him right back into the field.
Turns out, that gemstone has whipped up the spirits of the evil dead into a swirling vortex of nasty, given form from the dirt of the ground beneath them and blown up to Kaiju-size. While Superman does battle with the monster’s physical form, the Stranger descends into its diseased mass and finds himself face-to-face with the souls of the wretched who make up the monster. In a sort of mock trial, the Stranger forces the evil men within to confront the spirits of their victims, causing them to lash out and giving him a chance to move against them. He manages to paralyze the beast long enough for Superman to rip it from the Earth and push it out into space. Returning to the ground, the Stranger gives Superman the gemstone that caused all the chaos to destroy, but when Superman demands an explanation, the Stranger simply tells him that there are some things men were not meant to understand
This one one of the earlier Superman stories I read when I was young, and I love it now like I loved it then. It’s dark, it’s creepy, it’s…compact. Like, I legitimately can’t believe this whole story was told in 22 pages. These days the same plot would be stretched into a four-issue arc with a prologue issue.
But Byrne proves himself here to be an absolute master of brevity. When the story begins, Superman has been transformed into an old man by the sorceress, then he takes her out in one page so that the real plot can commence. There’s no way, in 2026, that they would start a story like this in medias res. It’s such an abrupt opening that you think that the previous issue ended on a cliffhanger and you’re missing half the story (it didn’t, and you aren’t).
The compact nature of the story aside, Byrne delves into some real darkness here as well. The sequence where the Stranger forces the ghosts to witness their victims is positively disturbing, as he not only shows their faces, passive, as if they have been reduced to afterthought, but also recites what happened to these people as a result of the ghosts’ crimes, and some of those get REALLY dark. It’s almost too much to believe this was a Code-approved comic book.
This is early Post-Crisis, and while Superman was already Superman, his personality was still forming. His frustration with magic was there, which is fine, but there’s a bit where he admonishes the Stranger for bringing him into this mess, telling him to go find a magic-user like Dr. Fate instead. I get that feeling – wanting to pass something off onto somebody else is a pretty human trait. But it’s not a reaction I really expect from Superman. You kind of want him to be above that.
But this is a really fun issue, with some great, grimy artwork. It’s enough to make me wish that Byrne had more horror comics in his back catalogue.
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. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!
