Superman Stuff

Superman Stuff #30: Blake’s Superman Shelves-Assorted Action Figures

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Today we’re going to take another trip to the Superman Shelves, the semi-regular feature in which I take you on a tour of some of the many, many pieces of Superman toys and collectibles in my collection. In previous installments, we’ve looked at my Superman LEGOs and various toys featuring Supergirl. This time out, we’re going to look at some of the assorted action figures that line my shelves.

We’re going to start today with some of the in-package figures in my collection. For the most part, these do not go on display, mostly because I don’t have a good way to display them at the moment. I’m not a fanatic about keeping toys in the box, but certain ones (particularly if it’s not a reclosable box) stay in their plastic bubble as a display piece.

The top two figures in this collage are both of the Christopher Reeve Superman. On the left is a retro-style Spin Master figure, and next to him is a DC Comics Multiverse representation. (I’ve also got the Michael Keaton-style Batman from this line.) Below that we’ve got one of the McFarlane “Page Punchers” – figures packaged with a comic book. This one is from the first issue of the 2016 “Rebirth” era of the comic. In the middle is a Spin Master black suit Superman based on the 2015 Lois and Clark miniseries, and at the end is one of the new line of MEGO Heroes replica figures. I definitely don’t have the original.

This next trio are old-school figures: a McFarlane Super Powers Superman in the style of the Fleischer Cartoons, a bendy figure in the same style (that one is out of his box), and a retro “First Appearance” Superman from the sadly defunct DC Legion of Collectors series. I miss that line – getting a box of DC collectibles every other month with no idea what was coming was a great thing.

Here are some of the smallest figures that I have. The top row are all figures from the Mattel “Imaginext” line of toys for younger kids. Don’t worry, I did not steal any of these from my son. I am consistently impressed, though, at the wildly diverse characters in that line – it’s not 200 different versions of Batman. Well…not JUST 200 different versions of Batman. Here we have Superboy-Prime, a Kingdom Come Superman, and Bizarro. The two figures beneath them are steel Mattel figurines from the Dollar Tree – a classic Superman, and the same figure in a black costume, part of a larger set of Justice League figures.

This next set of figures are all based on last year’s David Corenswet Superman movie. Your basic figure comes first (still in package), followed by a Krypto “Mini Chomper.” Next to them is a Thrilljoy figure, given to me as a birthday present by my brother. Thrilljoy is a relatively new player on the market and seems to be making moves to set itself up as the next Funko – in fact, I believe the company was founded by former Funko executives. On the bottom row is a 12-inch David Corenswet figure (my son has an identical one, which he insisted on bringing with us to see the movie), and in the corner is the three-inch four-figure set from the film, which included not only Superman, but Ultraman, the Engineer, and Mr. Terrific. 

These two tall guys are a Noble Collection Bendable figure (which has come out of his package since I took this picture) and a 12-inch “New 52”-style Superman that I got in a gift basket from my dear friend Owen years ago when I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. There were other Superman things in that basket too, some of which will turn up in later pictures, and a towel that my son now uses. Owen is a great guy.

I call these guys “the Cosplayers.” McFarlane Toys did a line of “action figures” that were really more like slightly articulated statues for Warner Bros’ 100th anniversary a couple of years ago. I got the Bugs Bunny-as-Superman from that line, as well as Sloth from the Goonies recreating that epic moment from the end of the movie. Also in this set is the Neca Ben Cooper Superman costume figure. I love this line of toys, even though this is the only one I own – action figures of kids wearing the classic Ben Cooper Halloween costumes of my youth. There are lots of other ones. My brother gave me this one, too.

Two more from McFarlane: this replica of the old Supermobile, with an out-of-package Super Powers Superman to pilot it.

Then there’s this little oddity from their Qubi line – cubes that “transform” into figures. It’s weird and neat. I got my wife the Harley Quinn from that line, and I’ve got my eye on the Supergirl…

Let’s finish up this tour with two of my favorite pieces: the most unique toy in my collection and the oldest toy in my collection. Back in 2008 Disney launched its own line of vinyl figures called “Vinylmation.” There were hundreds of different designs that were wildly popular for a few years, then kind of faded away. But one of the most popular things in the line  were blank figures intended to be customized into whatever design you wanted. My sister, who is far more artistic than I am, made this Superman Mickey Mouse for me for Christmas one year. It’s still got a place of honor on the shelf.

Finally, this guy here is a MEGO Pocket Heroes Superman. I had one of these figures as a child, and it was one of my favorite toys. I played with it all the time. The thing is, I never knew what action figure line it came from. I have no memory of receiving the toy, it was just kind of always THERE. This preceded the original Super Powers figures, and once those came out, that was sort of the standard for DC figures for many years. I never forgot the old toy, though, and I spent years wondering what it was and where it came from. Then out of the blue, just about a year ago, someone in a Facebook group shared an old advertisement for the MEGO Pocket Heroes (the ad, and some further information about the series, can be found here at the MEGO Museum Galleries website). I immediately recognized the figure as the one I’d played with as a kid, and as it originally came out when I was just two years old, that kind of explained why I didn’t remember its origin. Once I finally had a name for the figure, finding one on eBay wasn’t terribly difficult. I even got a case just for this guy. He’s not particularly expensive, especially in this condition, but he’s a piece of my past that I was absolutely thrilled to have returned to me.

Okay, I think that’s enough for today. Still plenty of other stuff on the Superman Shelves to share with you (I haven’t even touched on the Funko Pops yet), so there’ll be more coming soon. 

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!

Superman Stuff #29: Incomplete Classics II

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Once again, today we’re going to look at a few of the older Superman comics I rescued on a trip to an antique mall a few weeks ago. Let’s start with a trip back to 1977, then bounce forward a couple of years. 

Superman #314
Title: Before This Night is Over, Superman Will Kill!
Writer: Martin Pasko
Pencils: Curt Swan
Inker: Dan Adkins
Cover: Neal Adams & Curt Swan

As I mentioned last week, picking up comics from bargain bins is a gamble, because you often will get an incomplete story without knowing it until you sit down to read. Such is the case here – the story starts right off with a child begging Superman not to kill his “dog,” only for next page to reveal that the boy is suffering from an alien germ called “Journalist’s Disease” which has apparently been plaguing Metropolis at least since Lois Lane caught it back in issue #311. (A four-issue arc? Rare at this time.) The “dog” is, in fact, an alien creature called Jevik that Superman believes is responsible for the disease. Jevik was sent by another alien – a pirate named Amalak – whose attack is intended as some sort of revenge against Superman as the last son of Krypton.

There were a LOT of aliens who hated Krypton back in the day. I wonder if James Gunn’s movie was on to something.

Anyway, Superman has a way to cure the disease, but needs equipment from the Justice League satellite. Arriving there, he finds Amalak, who claims to have killed Flash, Green Lantern, and Supergirl, and engages our hero in a final battle. 

The story as a whole is interesting for two reasons. First, there’s the alien Jevik. Aliens in comics past often fell into one of two categories: either they were basically human, save for skin color or an odd extra growth and maybe some sort of racial superpower, or they were so bizarre that one can’t even fathom how such a thing could have evolved. Jevik falls into the latter category. Superman’s description of his life cycle is so strange that it makes almost no sense. Fortunately, making sense is by no means a requirement to enjoy a story of this nature.

The other thing that is noteworthy is how infuriating the last page of this issue is. I’m gonna spoil it for you here, because I want to talk about how mad it made me and I can’t do that without telling you what happens, so if you’re trying to remain pristine on a 49-year-old comic book, skip this. After Superman has engaged the cure to Journalist’s Disease and its many victims are on the mend, Clark Kent visits the recovering Lois Lane in the hospital. Shattered at the fact that he almost lost her, Clark asks Lois to marry him. She says she will – IF he will confess to her, right then and there, that he is Superman. And he says he can’t do that and walks away, leaving them both heartbroken.

It was the 70s, I get it. At this time period, the status quo was God and nothing could change. But Mr. Pasko – you expect me to buy that Clark Kent was willing to marry Lois Lane, but was not willing to tell her his identity? 

And look, I know that 15 years later Clark would propose to Lois before she knew he was Superman, but the idea there was that he wanted her to love CLARK, and he would tell her the truth after they were engaged. There was never any doubt that he WOULD tell her. You can say that it may still have been problematic, but this? This is just absurd.

Loved it. Five-star issue.

Superman #366
Title: Revenge, Superman-Style (Story 1), Perry White’s Superboy Scoop (Story 2)
Writer: Cary Bates (1), Bob Rozakis (2)
Pencils: Curt Swan (1), Kurt Schaffenberger (2)
Inker: Frank Chiaramonte (Both)
Cover: Ross Andru & Dick Giordano

An amazing thing about comics of this era is just how much time they spent recapping the story so far. This issue gives us no fewer than four pages to set up the story and recap what happened in the previous issue: Clark Kent is taking another week off work at WGBS-TV because Superman is needed on a mission in space that he fears he may not return from. Supergirl, meanwhile, is worried about him because last issue she was manipulated into attacking him as a plot by what they assume is the Superman Revenge Squad, and he’s off to fight them on his own. He disguises himself as an alien and allows himself to be “discovered” by the Revenge Squad, claiming that Superman recently thwarted him as well. 

I love seeing the home of the Revenge Squad here. This isn’t a group of five or six bank robbers from Metropolis, friends, it’s a legion of evil aliens that Superman has thwarted time and again. They’ve got their own whole alien base. They even make a giant statue of Superman that they daily force to melt by shouting how much they HATE it. George Orwell would approve.

The aliens show off their various techniques to train while one of them secretly scans the newcomers brainwaves to make sure it’s not a trick…and he passes. What? How can this BE? The narrator even asks the same question. Unfortunately, the answer to that seems to come in issue #367, which I don’t have.

There’s a back-up story, though! A tale of “Superman: The In-Between Years,” which was a serial from that era that told stories of Superboy after the death of Jonathan and Martha Kent but before he began his career as Superman in Metropolis. In “Perry White’s Superboy Scoop,” the boy of steel has gone AWOL. Cities all over the country are claiming that he’s moved into town as various disasters are averted and crimes are thwarted anonymously. As people wonder where he’s gone now that he’s left Smallville, Daily Planet reporter Perry White is determined to prove that the kid has taken up residence in Metropolis. Clark Kent, of course, IS in Metropolis, attending college and carrying out good deeds in secret – deeds like saving Perry White from a mob boss. 

Both Clark and Perry catch wind of the fact that some mobsters Perry recently reported on are meeting a rival gang from Gotham City in a baseball stadium, and both seek it out. Superman stops the gangland shooting and Perry White realizes that, despite the hail of bullets the two gangs unleashed upon one another, they were all knocked UNCONSCIOUS rather than killed. He demands Superboy show himself, and…well…he does. Pretty soon the Planet is formally announcing that Metropolis is the new home of Superboy.

Huh?

Okay, I can SORT OF buy that Superboy wanted to play his location close to the vest after leaving Smallville. Maybe he hadn’t totally settled on Metropolis as his new home yet. But first of all, these are the stupidest gangsters in history, so intent on shooting each other that none of them noticed the teenager in blue tights or the reporter with a camera taking pictures of them while they were standing on the baseball diamond of an otherwise empty stadium. And worse than that is Superboy just basically shrugging and giving Perry the scoop. There’s no change of heart, nothing that makes him sure that Metropolis will be his home, he just throws his hands up in the air and announces he’s in Metropolis now. Perry had no proof, just another freak occurrence such as those that had been happening since Superboy went into hiding. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Another timeless masterpiece.

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!

Superman Stuff #28: Incomplete Classics

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As I’ve mentioned many times, whenever my family takes a trip I like to do a little nerd shopping. Not only do I hit up comic shops whenever possible, but if I can find used bookstores, antique malls, or anything else of the sort, my wife knows that I’m going to want to immerse myself in some back-issue diving. There’s some relationship advice, folks, marry somebody who is willing to be patient with you when you’re elbow-deep in old copies of Donald Duck. 

The interesting thing about doing this is that you never quite know what it is you’re going to find. I like the bargains, the dollar bins, the unsorted pot of gold at the end of the comic book rainbow. Sometimes you get complete sets. Sometimes long runs. But more often, I find, you get utterly random issues that don’t necessarily have anything else to do with anything else in the box. I always like to grab the weird comics when that happens, things that I’ve never heard of before, stuff that I’ve heard of but maybe have never read…and, of course, when I come across a Superman comic that I haven’t enjoyed, I rescue it from the bin.

Of course, this approach to collecting comes with a major complication – not knowing what I’m looking for and not even always knowing what I’m getting, Because I like to approach it this way, I often get incomplete stories. While it’s true that comics of the past were rarely serialized to the extent that they are today, even in the 70s and 80s it wasn’t unusual for a storyline to run for two or three issues, and at the time it was virtually unheard of for them to be labeled as such on the cover. 

When that happens, when I read a comic that’s only a chunk of a story, I don’t necessarily feel like it’s fair to give it a full review. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun to talk about it, though. For example, a few weeks ago on a trip to the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, we hit an enormous antique mall where I scored several cheap Superman books, virtually all of which turned out to be only a part of a story.

Bet you wanna know what’s going on here. Sucker.

Action Comics #507, for example. The lead story in this issue is “The Miraculous Return of Jonathan Kent” by Cary Bates and Curt Swan. Younger folks might not remember this, but until the John Byrne Superman reboot in 1986, most versions of Clark Kent’s adoptive parents had passed away by the time he began his career as Superman. So I’m sure you can imagine Clark’s shock in this 1980 comic when Jonathan shows up to visit him in Metropolis as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Clark is dumbfounded, of course, but is even more shocked when he discovers that Lana Lang, too, thinks it’s perfectly natural for the late Jonathan Kent to be there. Whooshing off to Smallville, Clark can’t find his father’s grave or any other evidence that he died – in fact, there is a preponderance of evidence that Jonathan has been alive and well in Smallville all this time. Superman even finds letters (people used to do that before email) written to Jonathan FROM Clark, in his own handwriting. How is such a thing possible?

What a great question! I assume the answer can be found in Action Comics #508. I didn’t get that issue, though, so I can’t be entirely certain.

Bet you wanna know how this started. Sucker.

Adventure Comics #455 from 1977 has the opposite problem – it’s the end of a story that began in the previous issue. In “I Can’t Go Home Again” by Bob Rozakis with art by Juan Ortiz and Vince Colletta, Superboy begins the issue in outer space looking down on a Smallville that seems to have been somehow inundated with Kryptonite. Although (in this Pre-Crisis era) Kryptonite is harmless to humans, Superboy is trapped outside of town, and a recap of last issue tells us that although he’d captured the Kryptonite Kid, thinking him responsible, the real culprit is Lex Luthor. Superboy switches back to Clark and tries to confront Lex, even though the Kryptonite has left him as weak as a kitten. It goes as well as you might expect, and let’s all be grateful that Pete Ross knew Clark’s secret, even if he didn’t want Clark to know that.

The story isn’t bad, but it makes me want to go back and read the first part which – needless to say – I don’t have. It probably also goes without saying that neither of the books I’m hoping to read are available on the DC Universe Infinite app. I’ve written before about how irritating it is that the “infinite” app has such huge swaths of comics missing from its catalogue. By what measure can we call it “infinite” if there are hundreds of comics featuring Superman that aren’t included in the database? (To say nothing of the missing comics featuring Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and all the rest?) I get that digitizing old comics takes time and money, but it’s been an embarrassingly long time since there were any more older comics added to the app.

I doubt that they’ll leap onto these two comics that I’ve mentioned here just because I happened to mention it – after all, I’ve been playing this particular song for a couple of years now and DC hasn’t made any real strides to start adding older comics again. But it’s something I find frustrating every time I open the app and look for a comic that turns out to be missing.

Not that this will stop me from picking up the random oldies whenever I come across them, of course. That, if nothing else, is part of the fun. 

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!

Superman Stuff #27: June 2026 Review Roundup!

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It’s time once again for a roundup of recent comic reviews! This time, we’re kicking it off with Supergirl’s return to Elseworlds, just in time for her new movie!

Supergirl: Survive #1

Writers: Ethan S. Parker & Griffin Sheridan
Art & Main Cover: Rod Reis

The newest Elseworlds miniseries puts Kara Zor-El in the forefront. Ever since Jeph Loeb brought her back after her death in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, one of my favorite bits of lore that was added to Supergirl is the idea that Kara is actually OLDER than Kal-El, but was in suspended animation for her trip to Earth, which took much longer for her than her cousin. The result is that when she arrived on Earth she was still a teenager, and now was in the position of seeking big brotherly guidance from the world’s greatest superhero, whose diapers she changed just a few relative months ago. Supergirl: Survive starts from that basic premise. The Elseworlds twist this time is that instead of Kal-El escaping Krypton’s destruction ALONE, older cousin Kara was placed into the rocket ship WITH him.

Then there’s another twist. But we’ll come back to that.

The destruction of Krypton is only in the last few pages of this issue, with most of the book taken up with Kara’s life on Krypton and a schism between her father, Zor-El, and his brother Jor-El. The friction between the brothers is explored, but they manage to come together in the end. We get a few pages focusing on some sort of political unrest on Krypton, although the actual source of it is somewhat unclear (and there’s a bit that feels like a heavy-handed attempt at a metaphor, which I hope isn’t where things are going, but you never know). There’s also a lot of stuff about Kara in school, her friendships, the boy she has a crush on…and to be honest, all of it is a little perplexing. If this was part of the main DC Universe, we’d get some backstory to emphasize the tragedy that’s coming, the dramatic irony of the reader knowing every character Kara is interacting with is doomed. But this is an Elseworlds, and there’s a definite possibility that these scenes are not just flavor to make the cataclysm more bitter. I may be wrong, although I won’t be certain until the series reaches its end, but a lot of this feels like groundwork for future plot points. 

The other thing that makes this interesting is – without getting into too much detail – this is NOT a story about Kara and Kal-El growing up on Earth together, as many people would be tempted to tell with this starting point. No, remember, the title is “Survive,” and the struggle for survival seems like it’s going to take place in space. Although Earth was the intended destination, by the end of this first issue that’s already blown up in our faces, and that’s the thing that I find most interesting here. The writers are using a familiar starting point, but they take a wild left turn immediately afterwards, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it leads. 

Adventures of Superman: Book of El #9

Title: The Battle For Tamaran
Writer: Phillip Kennedy Johnson
Art & Main Cover: Scott Godlewski

As we seem to be moving into the final act of this story, we’re digging still more into the future family of Kal-El, which – okay, it’s the title of the series. But man, there’s a lot going on here, and I wish more than ever that DC saw fit to preface their books with a recap page like Marvel does, because there are so many characters and so many things going on that it’s getting really difficult to keep track month-to-month.

All that said, there was probably more to like about this issue than I’ve seen in this series for quite some time. Although I often find his stories to be hit-or-miss, I cannot deny just how well Phillip Kennedy Johnson understands Superman’s character, the inherent goodness and optimism that makes the character what he is. And best of all, he portrays those traits as infectious. We don’t see too much of that from Superman himself this issue, but rather from Osul-Ra, who has taken his Papa’s lessons to heart and expresses them very well, even as he goes into battle. 

I’m still more interested in Rowan Kent, the “Lantern in the Dark,” than I am in most of the other players in this story, and I again reiterate that I’d read a miniseries just about her. But the final page gives me a little more hope, bringing in a character that’s definitely more familiar and gives the whole story a more solid standing. 

Supergirl #14

Title: Hero of Kandor Part Four (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer, Art & Main Cover: Sophie Campbell

When the cover for this issue was released it initially caused a bit of a stir. “Matrix Returns!” the artwork proclaims. And the cover is an homage to a classic Tom Grummet pin-up from the 90s. The return of the Matrix Supergirl, the one from the Death of Superman era and the amazing Peter David run! She was coming back!

Then Sophie Campbell said that the marketing department was being overzealous and the Matrix Supergirl is NOT returning…in THIS issue. But there are plans for her. So I’m excited and I’m not going to hold the marketing against Campbell any more than I’m going to blame her for the editorial-mandated “Reign of the Superboys” stamp that doesn’t really amount to much. 

Here’s what happens: Lena reunites with Kara and Lesla-Lar, on the run from Black Flame, who has stolen the ring that allowed Supergirl to use her powers while in Kandor. Lena has a solution, though, a special suit she’s made that she calls an S-Matrix (get it?) that will boost Kara’s powers and make her a match for the villain. Conner Kent spends the issue unconscious. 

But honestly, that’s gotta be because he was never intended to be in this story in the first place, and what we get with the girls works really well. Campbell’s earlier storylines, which have all been about Kara taking adversaries and enemies and turning them into friends, is really paying off here, with a lot of nice character work and an exciting last few pages that promise a heck of a finale. And if in the mixture Kara gets a new, temporary costume perfect for merchandising and Funko Pops just as her movie is in theaters? All the better for it. Tenuous link to the “Reign” notwithstanding, this has been a great storyline and I look forward to the end. 

Superman Unlimited #14

Title: Hero Time (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer: Dan Slott
Art: Lucas Meyer & David Messina
Main Cover: Taurin Clarke

In case you couldn’t tell from the cover, things are really coming to a head with this issue. As the time-tossed Jon Kent and his older self (as Tomorrow Man) face a slew of their father’s old foes (Thaddeus Killgrave, Volcana, Dabney Donovan, etc.), Lois continues to investigate the mystery of her younger son and his missing older counterpart. Although it’s been apparent for some time that something was up with the younger Jon, the revelation this issue works out very well, tying this story in not only with the earlier stories of this run (with the mountain of Kryptonite in El Caldero) but also with a story in another recent Superman title that – at the time – I thought ended rather abruptly. I’m really happy to see that it was a setup for this story, and it promises a slam-bang ending.

The Lois scenes are actually my favorite stuff in this issue. Her gut is telling her that something is off, so she turns for counsel to the only people she can, Jonathan and Martha Kent, who prove that they’re just as great at being in-laws as they were parents to her missing husband. We also get to see not only Steel in action, but Lana as Superwoman, which we don’t get nearly enough of. She’s still got the powers, why doesn’t she use ‘em more often? 

Action Comics #1099

Title: Powerless (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer: Mark Waid
Art: Skylar Patridge & Patricio Delpeche
Main Cover: Ryan Sook

A third Reign of the Superboys series hits its penultimate issue as the time-tossed Justice League tries to find a way to restore young Clark Kent’s powers. Epoch’s red-sun blast has stripped him to the level of a normal human, but for some reason, the yellow sun is not restoring his powers as it should. As they try to solve the mystery, the paradox of their presence in the past begins to catch up to them. Meanwhile, Lana makes an unsettling discovery.

Waid is really playing with the time-travel stuff here, and it appears as though in this story we’re playing by Back to the Future rules. A difficult part of time-travel is establishing exactly how the mechanics of it work. As such a purely hypothetical concept, I don’t really mind what the rules of time-travel are as long as they remain internally consistent. This becomes more difficult in a huge shared universe like DC Comics, where there are dozens of time-travel stories with mechanics that flatly contradict the way it’s being depicted in this story. That isn’t really Mark Waid’s fault, but it IS a consideration that creeps into my mind when I’m reading it.

That said, if you’re reading this book just because you want a time travel story, you’re getting it for the wrong reasons. It’s the character stuff that really works here, as we watch Clark go through various levels of grappling with his powerless state. We see him first frustrated at feeling so useless, then watch the pendulum swing in the other direction as he rediscovers the joy of just being a normal kid, then all the way back again when he realizes he’s denying the responsibility that he’s already accepted. It’s a fun sort of roller coaster to put the character on. He’s Superman, we know he’s going to grow up and accept who he is, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t struggle with it, especially at such a young age. It’s more realistic, more relatable.

The subplot with Lana gets more interesting here, and in more than one way. We see basic character stuff, which is nice and sweet. We also get a bit of a mystery that has me intrigued.

Next issue, #1100, has been touted as the return of Superman after being lost in time after the end of DC KO. I hope that doesn’t mean the end of Mark Waid’s adventures with Superboy, because it’s been a fun ride. 

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #52

Title: Warlords Part Two
Writer: Mark Waid
Art: Adrian Gutierrez
Main Cover: Dan Mora

Last issue our heroes – Superman, Batman, and Robin – travelled to the lost world of Skartaris in search of a missing Air Force pilot. Upon arriving, they discover that due to timey-wimey stuff, the man they’re searching for has become an evil wizard, and in order to defeat him they’ll have to partner with ANOTHER missing pilot, Travis Morgan, the Warlord. With no defense against Tyrant Rex’s magic, Superman is quickly captured, sending Batman on a rescue mission, while Robin tries to piece together the villain’s ultimate goal.

As I’ve said before, Warlord is one of the corners of the DCU that I’ve never been able to really get into, but Waid is using it well here. Superman’s whole problem with magic is actually used appropriately here, rather than treating it as if it were Kryptonite like some people seem to assume, and it suits the story Waid is telling. The issue mostly focuses on Batman and Robin, as Superman is kind of off the table, but Robin serves nicely as an audience surrogate as we get a quick history of Skartaris, or at least as much of it as is relevant to this story. And it all wraps up with our two title heroes getting new looks that are RIPE for action figures.

Am I getting too cynical?  I find myself assuming that every time a comic book gets a new look – even one that’s obviously temporary and only intended for the duration of the current storyline – there’s a marketing wonk somewhere pointing at the cover and saying, “That’s it, we’re gonna TOY that one right there.” I mean, I don’t think that assumption is WRONG, I’m just wondering if I’m cynical in that I constantly feel the need to point it out. Anyway, obviously I’ll get the Funko Pop of both this Superman and the Supergirl in the white-blue-and-yellow costume from above. 

Summer of Supergirl Special #1

The Summer of Supergirl is upon us, and DC is treating us to this one-shot all-star special. I’ll take each story in this one individually.

Title: Man’s Best Friend
Writer: Sophie Campbell
Artist, Main Cover: Belen Ortega

The first story in the book, by regular Supergirl writer Sophie Campbell, picks up shortly after the chaos caused by Supergirl and her movie co-star Lobo (I’m sure that’s a total coincidence) over in Lobo #4. I haven’t actually read that book, but it’s pretty incidental – what you need to know is that there was some destruction and Lobo is sent to rehab, leaving his dog Dawg in the custody of Krypto. Supergirl and Lobo’s daughter Crush take the mighty mutt down to Midvale to hang out while Lobo serves his time. When he comes back looking for his dog, the chaos…well, it resumes.

It’s a simple story. It’s an oddly sweet story, considering the co-stars are Lobo and Crush. But it accomplishes two things very neatly. First of all, it showcases the difference between Superman and Supergirl. Although Superman is pretty much a paragon of hope, and that’s as it should be, Supergirl is less about hope and more about compassion. She feels for people so deeply, but in a different way than her cousin. In the main title, Campbell has spent over a year now telling stories of how Kara has an uncanny ability to turn enemies into friends, and this story showcases that wonderfully.

The other thing this story does is feed the readers into the main title. Although it began in Lobo’s book, the story that snakes through here promises to continue in the pages of Supergirl, and folks who picked this up just for Lobo will get a good taste of what to expect if they decide to follow the storyline into the main series, and that’s all to the good.

Title: Lost Girls
Writer: Gail Simone
Pencils: Emma Kubert
Inks: Sandra Hope

In story #2, Supergirl is going toe-to-toe with a robot menace called Amazonia, one who has a little green friend that might keep Kara on the ropes. Fortunately there’s help nearby in the form of Mary Marvel. Gail Simone is telling a new version of the first meeting between these two girls, and here she leans hard into just how similar they are. Some of the similarities are obvious – they’re both incredibly powerful, both often overshadowed by their more famous relatives. Something that I don’t think anyone has ever really drawn on before, though, is the fact that both of them are orphans. And not in the way that Clark is an orphan either, having grown up on Earth with loving adoptive parents and no real memory of his origin. Nah, Kara and Mary are both girls who lost their families and were kicked around the foster system for a while. Now what with the way each of them have had their origins twisted and changed over the decades, this hasn’t always been true for both of them at the same time, but it is now, and Simone really draws the emotion out of it. The supervillain fight is really just the set-up, what this story is about is two lonely young women who find something they need in one another. It’s really a beautiful story, and I hope that future writers for both of these characters continue to build on the relationship the way it’s depicted here.

Emma Kubert – third generation of the Kubert comic book dynasty – handles the pencils here. I actually haven’t seen a lot of her work here, but I love it. She has a loose style that comes across not QUITE like a cartoon or anime, but not as tight as someone going for “realism” either. It’s the sort of artwork that works for characters like these two, giving us the fanciful but being full of emotion. It reminds me a lot of Campbell’s work on the main Supergirl series or Todd Nauck’s classic run on Young Justice, which is to say I think it’s great.

Title: Who Is Supergirl?
Writer: Mark Waid
Art: Cian Tormey

While the first story in this book is valuable for the ongoing series and the second story is the heart of it all, Mark Waid’s tale at the end is what’s going to make this book important for nerds like me. Supergirl’s history as a character has been…let’s say “tumultuous.” In the early days she was Superman’s “secret weapon,” operating from Midvale Orphanage. As she grew up, in the 70s and 80s, she bounced all over the country from one job to another. She died in that whole Crisis on Infinite Earths thing. And when she returned in the pages of Jeph Loeb’s Superman/Batman, she was treated as though she was a brand new character. How the hell do you reconcile all of that?

You call the man who literally wrote The New History of the DC Universe, that’s how.

Story-wise, what we have here is a case of Conner Kent, Jon Kent, and Natasha Irons cleaning up the Justice League’s files and, in the process, recapping Kara’s history. Functionally, we have a story that explains so much of the tumult. Was Superman REALLY so callous as to drop off Kara at an orphanage? (Waid explains it.) Why did she spend so long going from one job to another, one city to another, one COSTUME to another? (Waid explains it.) And Waid also slips in a tidy retcon, reframing the Jeph Loeb story to be that of Kara’s resurrection after the Crisis, rather than her introduction. If you’ve spent the last couple of decades wondering what the hell was going on with Supergirl, exactly, this is the story you absolutely need to read. 

Superman #39

Title: Prime Time Part Four: Superboy-Prime Versus Infinite Crisis (A Reign of the Superboys Tie-In)
Writer: Joshua Williamson
Art and Main Cover: Dan Mora

Oboy, the main event is finally here! At the end of last issue Superboy-Prime discovered who’s been monkeying with him for the past three issues – Superman’s old foe Manchester Black. Black, as it turns out, wasn’t tooootally dead after Lex Luthor used his powers to wipe the memory of Superman’s secret identity from the world (back in Action Comics #1050) and as a disembodied intellect, he thinks Prime may be just the man to give him corporeal form again, if only he gets back to his reality-punching ways from Infinite Crisis. As readers of this title know, of course, Prime is in the middle of a redemption arc, and doing his best NOT to pull the sort of shenanigans Black needs from him. So to wrench what he needs from the boy, Black is sending Prime on a mental tour of his past and a meta-Odyssey through comic books.

It seems like most comic books that play with metafiction do it in one of two ways. Either they restrict themselves to snarky fourth-wall breaking comments (like Deadpool or She-Hulk) or, eventually, they build to a story where the landscape of comic books themselves become a sort of battlefield, whether that’s literal or metaphorical. (This is the literal kind – for the metaphorical version, go back and read Grant Morrison’s Animal Man again.) Since Black can read Prime’s mind, he knows about his medium awareness and weaponizes that against him.

Here’s the tricky part: you can’t just bounce around to a page that looks like Superman: The Animated Series and then take a left turn into Anime and then make some sort of commentary on reboots. I mean, you CAN, but ultimately that would be kind of shallow and unsatisfying. What you need to do – what Joshua Williamson does perfectly – is frame that journey in a true character piece. This is less a struggle of Superboy-Prime vs. Manchester Black and more a story about Prime doing being forced to face up to himself. That’s a damn sight more compelling. And honestly, if you’re not pulling for Superboy-Prime to come out of this a new kind of hero by now, I don’t know if there’s anything that could convince you at this point.

Absolute Superman #20

Title: Reign of the Superman Part Three: Up, Up, And…
Writer: Jason Aaron
Art: Rafa Sandoval & Vicente Cifuentes
Main Cover: Rafa Sandoval

With King Shazam on the loose, an uneasy alliance forms between Superman, Hawkman, and Steel as they attempt to bring him down. But friction between the heroes makes them almost as dangerous to each other as they are to the villain, and if they can’t get it together, the world may belong to Teth-Adam.

This issue is almost pure brawl – the three heroes fighting King Shazam and, occasionally, each other, on an absolutely massive scale. Sandoval and Cifuentes do a great job of depicting the battle, giving it a scope and a power beyond your average comic book fight. People love to throw around the word “gods” when they talk about superhero comics, using the term to indicate how powerful the characters are supposed to be. This issue doesn’t need it – the art does the job.

The four combatants each get an interesting development here as well. We learn a little about them, we see even more how Superman is being poised to take a place as this universe’s premiere hero. Even the ending, a huge cliffhanger, is the kind of thing that makes him look like a giant among men. (And would make for a hell of an action figure – I’m sorry, I can’t help it.)

Bizarro: Year None #2

Title: Meet the Superfans
Writers: Eric Carrasco & Kevin Smith
Art & Main Cover: Nick Pitarra

Last issue, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White were whisked away by Bizarro to his strange duplicate Earth, there being forced to run his own Daily Planet, which Jimmy (naturally) being in charge, while Perry is tasked with getting coffee. But as they try to piece together the facts about this world that Superman’s imperfect duplicate has created, the two of them start asking questions that may lead to some very uncomfortable answers. 

With Kevin Smith co-writing this story, it would be easy to expect a sort of goofy comedy, as we’ve seen from most of his movies. But people often forget that a good writer is rarely a one-note writer. There’s humor in this book, yes, but towards the end we take a startling turn, and this tale of Bizarro stops feeling quite so fun as we take a turn towards horror. When I reviewed the first issue of this book, I mentioned that it feels like a sort of Bizarro counterpart to Grant Morrison’s All Star Superman. In this issue that becomes even more pronounced – whereas that book is ultimately about the indelible power of hope, this issue is one that explores the potential for terror in a creature with the power of Superman, particularly one whose mind doesn’t work the way that Superman is supposed to.

Nick Pitarra’s Bizarro is really a striking figure. He’s massive, but more wide than we usually see from these characters. His shoulders are broad, but he’s a bit squat, once again contrasting him with the Superman Frank Quitely drew in All Star. I have to believe that all of these choices are deliberate, because they just come together far too neatly for it to be otherwise.

This book was pretty startling, which is a nice trick. It’s going in directions I didn’t expect, but that work nonetheless.

Superman: Father of Tomorrow #2

Title: Parasites
Writer: Kenny Porter
Art & Main Cover: Danny Earls

It’s been twenty years since Jor-El of Krypton was revealed to the world, and in that time, he’s made the Earth of this particular Elseworlds a very different place. Not only has he spent that time as Superman, Earth’s protector, but he’s also been shepherding the planet’s scientific advancements, sharing Kryptonian technology that has transformed the planet. And although he’s surrounded by familiar figures, the shape of this world is turning out to be something quite different than the world we know.

I like how Kenny Porter plays with the supporting cast in this issue. Rather than being “Superman’s Girlfriend,” in this world we see a Lois Lane who has grown to love Jor-El as a father figure, somebody markedly different from her own father, which of course is not a relationship that sits well with Sam Lane. Similarly, we see a Lex Luthor who has worked alongside Superman for years rather than standing as his enemy. Unfortunately, as the Superman of another Earth once observed, there’s just something about Luthor that makes him a poisonous snake, and that doesn’t seem to be any different here. Luthor’s storyline feeds us into the nicely-satisfying last-page cliffhanger, and sets things up for this miniseries to go in a different direction that I find intriguing.

I’m also fascinated with the title of this book and how it’s turned out to be a play on words. Putting “Father” in the title of a story that focuses on Jor-El calls to mind, of course, the fact that his son is Kal-El. But we never see Kal-El in this book, and at one point Jor-El even refers to somebody else as the “closest thing [he has] to a son.” Instead, this is a story about how Jor-El is guiding the future of Earth – he is literally the father “of tomorrow.” It’s a neat little play on words, and I’m a sucker for a good play on words.

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!

Superman Stuff #26: Supergirl (2026)-The Review

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As the second feature film in the new DC Universe, the new Supergirl movie, starring Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El and directed by Craig Gillespie, serves a double purpose. It’s out there to demonstrate that not everything in this universe will be the same, and it’s out to further the world as well. It succeeds at both.

Based largely on the comic book series Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, the movie features Kara in space on a birthday bender when she gets mixed up with an alien girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley) whose family was murdered by a Brigand named Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts). Kara reluctantly joins Ruthye and finds herself battling not only the aliens who have hurt her beloved Krypto, but to save Ruthye from succumbing to her thirst for revenge.

I’ve heard people compare this movie to Guardians of the Galaxy, but although there are a few similarities, I don’t think the comparison is apt. They both take place almost entirely in outer space, there are space pirates of a sort, and there are a few fight scenes choreographed to popular music, agreed. And in both cases, we’re dealing with a broken loner who finds themself transforming into a reticent hero. But as opposed to being about a found family coming together to fight yet another cosmic menace, this is a more singular, personal tale. It’s also widely set apart from the first film in this new franchise, last year’s Superman. Whereas David Corenswet’s Superman is proud and heroic from the jump, Kara is very different. Unlike her cousin, she was a young teenager when her home (Argo City, the last remnant of planet Krypton) died. She remembers the planet of her birth, she remembers her father and mother, and she’s clinging to the pain that she carries with her as she tries to find a new place in the universe. I’m not an expert on trauma, but if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that Kara is suffering from PTSD, and it’s turned this Supergirl into someone who doesn’t really click with Superman. She sees his optimism as naivete, and she makes choices that fit with this incarnation of the character, but that he would most definitely never make.

While Superman seeded several different characters for the DCU, Supergirl only introduces one new major player, Jason Momoa as Lobo. He’s got that nasty charm that you expect from the Main Main, coming across as grimy and angry. He’s not a hero, not even an anti-hero, but he does have something of a code, and Momoa gets that code across.

Eve Ridley’s Ruthye is, in a lot of ways, the heart of the film. It’s her tragedy that starts the plot, and it’s the way Kara keeps trying to pull her back that causes the arc for the titular character. Ruthye has an arc of her own, of course, but the way it reflects on Kara’s arc is what makes her work. When we’re first introduced to Kara she’s bar-hopping on planets with red suns, since she can’t feel the effects of alcohol on a world with a yellow sun like Earth. But even at this point, where all she seems to want to do is to drink the pain of her loss away, the first thing we see Kara do that’s not immediately related to her own trauma is step up to defend Ruthye. It becomes clear to everyone – even Ruthye herself – that Kara’s real goal with the girl is to try to save her from succumbing to her own pain and survivor’s guilt because, having gone through it herself, Kara wouldn’t wish it on another innocent.

The film changes the ending of the book in a rather surprising way, but again, I think it’s a choice that fits this version of the character. The most important thing, though, is the fact that it gives us a very different film, not only from Superman, but from most other superhero movies of the last few decades. For quite some time now – since the first Avengers movie, if not earlier – superheroes have always been about escalation. Each movie has to be BIGGER than the last, each villain has to be MORE powerful, each threat has to be MORE deadly. That’s not the case here. Krem is strong, yes, but the things he does are relatively minor in comparison to Lex Luthor’s machinations in the previous film (or, presumably, Brainiac’s in the next one).

That’s not the story we get here. Despite the fact that the movie takes place in outer space, going from planet to planet, encountering one alien race after another, it feels much smaller than the last Superman, than anything Marvel has done in over a decade, and that’s a positive. With those movies it’s always time to save the planet, save the universe, save the MULTIVERSE. In this one, the stakes are the life of a small dog and the soul of a grieving child. There’s a little more, and it’s layered in nicely in a way that basically serves to make Krem an even nastier bastard than he already was, but those are the two things that the audience is invested in.

What a lovely change of pace. 

Man of Tomorrow can’t come soon enough. 

I don’t want to spend a ton of time talking about the first weekend box office for the movie. It didn’t do as well as hoped, but the majority of the people who’ve actually seen it (as opposed to the trolls who tried to bury it before it was even filmed) seem to have had a very positive reaction. The good news is that the movie industry is shifting, and while opening weekend ticket sales still dominate the conversation, the truth is that it isn’t always the be-all and end-all that it was just a few years ago. Milly Alcock’s Supergirl is already filming new scenes for next summer’s Man of Tomorrow, which is getting highly positive buzz, and which I hope leads people who skipped this movie to go back and find it when it’s streaming on HBO Max/Paramount+/Whatever the Hell It’s Going To Be By This Time Next Year.

As for the potential for a sequel, that’s a bigger question mark. Masters of the Universe had a similarly weak opening weekend (at a substantially higher budget), but also had a fairly positive audience reaction, and Amazon/MGM is reportedly considering a sequel. The big difference is that Supergirl is part of the larger DCU, and as James Gunn has already demonstrated, he’s not going to go ahead with any project until he’s satisfied with the script, so virtually nothing is guaranteed. I think there’s certainly potential for future movies starring Kara Zor-El, but I’m not going to make any predictions. If nothing else, I can be satisfied that this isn’t the last we’ll see of her.

And if you’ve been put off by the talk about the box office, remind yourself that most film critics these days are like any other part of the media – there to push a narrative. Don’t let them sway you. Check this movie out and make up your own mind. 

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!

Superman Stuff #25: Supergirl Stuff

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With Supergirl’s big day just around the corner, this week I decided to return to my Superman Shelves. Last month, I showed off some of the Lego-related Superman Stuff in my collection, some of which I keep at home, some of which I use to adorn my classroom when school is in session. This week we’re going to continue the tour with some of the stuff on my shelves that features the Girl of Steel in her various forms.

As is probably not a huge surprise, a large percentage of my collection comes from our friends at the Funko company. This first tier of figures are all relatively basic Supergirl Funko Pops. To the left you’ll see the first Supergirl Pop in my collection, a basic figure of the character from the early days of the series before Funko started getting more…let’s call it “experimental.” Next to her at the top right is the newest Kara on my shelves, one of the Funko Pops from the new movie that hits theaters this Friday, along with a mini puppy Krypto figure. There are two Supergirl Pops in this line, the other one wearing her trenchcoat, which (if we’re being totally honest here) I’ll probably get at some point. And on the bottom is Supergirl #3, this one in a Santa Claus hat and holding a present, released as part of a holiday-themed line of DC Superheroine Holiday figures that came out a few years ago. (I’ve got several of the other girls from that line as well, all of which come out to decorate the day after Thanksgiving, but Kara is the only Superman-related figure in that line.)

Tier 2 are more Supergirl figures…of a sort, at least. Let’s call this “The Supergirls of Many Worlds.” On the left we have Supergirl from the popular DC Bombshells Line – it started as a series of variant covers with pinups of the DC characters in the style of World War II fighter jet nose art. The variants were popular and spun off an actual comic book series, which in turn spun off some Funko Pops. Next to her is her Sister from another Level of the Multiverse, Power Girl. If you’re not toooo deep into the DC Multiverse (then what are you doing here?) Power Girl is Kara Zor-L, Supergirl’s variant from the world of Earth-2, where the original Golden Age DC heroes lived. Through assorted multiversal fun, Peeg (as her friends call her) now lives on the main DC Earth and is considered part of the Superman family, although she and Supergirl are technically the same person.

Comics are wild, right?

At the end of the row is the Supergirl from the 2023 movie The Flash. I have to say, I think that movie was unfairly maligned. There was fun to be had in it, it was a BLAST seeing Michael Keaton as Batman again, and Sasha Calle turned in a good performance as Supergirl. But between Ezra Miller’s shenanigans turning off the potential audience and the fact that James Gunn was already poised to reboot the DCU at that point, it never really had much of a chance, did it?

Next we have two fun little oddities. After Funko made Pop figures of the six main characters from Friends, they had to start looking for variants to keep turning out money, including this figure of Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe Buffay when she dressed up as Supergirl for Halloween. (There’s also a Joey in a Superman costume we’ll get to one of these days.) Then, last year Kinder Joy did a DC Funko line of figures, which included this miniature Supergirl phone stand. It’s kind of hard to tell it’s a phone stand without a phone in it, I concede, but how was I supposed to take a picture of it if I put my phone there?

Before we leave Funko, just a quick observation: I was startled to find that, to the best of my knowledge, the only Pop that was ever made of the Melissa Benoist version of Supergirl from her TV show was a 2018 NYCC exclusive, which is currently being sold for several hundred American dollars on websites such as eBay. I was less startled, but not less disheartened, to discover that there’s never been a version of Helen Slater’s Supergirl. I consider both of these lapses to be terrible moral failures that Funko should rectify immediately.

We’ll wrap up this tour with a few odds and ends. In this last row we’ve got the Supergirl from a series of DC Superheros figures Burger King released two years ago. Next to her, from earlier this year’s DC Rides line from Wendy’s, is Supergirl with her flyer. Why did Supergirl need a jet? Because that was the premise of the line, that’s why. I make it a point to try to get my hands on these fast food-related Superman toys whenever any of them are released, and I’ve got several on my wish list, including the Bizarro and Bizarrogirl figures from the DC Rides line, the Mexico-only Burger King figures from last year’s Superman movie, and the new Supergirl figures that were just released at KFC this month to coincide with her movie. That’s what eBay is for, I guess.

And finally, closing out the Supergirl stuff, is a Hallmark “Itty Bittys” Supergirl plush. This was a cute line they had a few years ago encompassing characters from lots of different IPs. My son has a Bizarro plush that came with a book, and I’ve got Kara and Superman on my own shelves. I’m not sure if they still make this line or not – most of the Hallmark stores in my area closed down, which makes it harder on me when they release Superman-related Christmas ornaments. Harder, but not impossible.

I don’t have nearly as much Supergirl stuff as I do her cousin, I admit, but that really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Superman is my bread and butter. But the rest of the family brings me joy too, and I cannot wait to take my son Eddie to see the new Supergirl movie this weekend. 

BONUS:

I cannot believe I forgot to include this in the tour originally, because this is actually one of the gems of my collection. Despite my decades of fandom and collection, I only own exactly one piece of original comic book art — this page from Supergirl #68, 2002. This page, from the legendary Peter David’s run, was drawn by Leonard Kirk and shows Supergirl encountering Mary Marvel. I bought the page from Kirk at a convention, and as you can see, it’s signed by him. (That’s not discoloring on the page, it’s just the shadow of my arm holding up the phone to take a photo.)

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!

Superman Stuff #24: My Adventures With Superman is back for Season Three

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The Adult Swim animated series My Adventures With Superman is back for its third season, so this week I wanted to take a look at the season premiere. I only touched on this series briefly during the Year of Superman, so before I get into it, I wanted to talk about some of my overall feelings. These will include spoilers for the first two seasons, so if you haven’t watched it, you may want to skip this week.

It took me some time to get into this show, I admit. The characters are very young – Clark and Jimmy are straight out of college getting jobs at the Daily Planet, where Lois Lane is already employed. I didn’t mind the characters being young, but there’s an energy to this show (more prominent in the earlier episodes) that I can only describe as “anime-esque.” That is intentional, no doubt. The character designs evoke anime and there are bits where they zip around and have quick anime-style non sequiturs. This isn’t to say that it wasn’t done well, it’s just…I’m not much of an anime fan. If you are, hey, that’s cool. But not everything is for everybody and, with rare exceptions, I’ve found that anime is not for me. The good news is that sort of stuff has been downplayed after the first half of the first season, making the whole thing more palatable to me. 

That said, it took me a few episodes to really get into the show, and I think the exact moment it happened was the episode (episode four, I think, but I don’t remember for certain) where Lois figured out that Clark was Superman. There are a lot of continuities now where Lois is in on Clark’s secret, but in most of them either he revealed the truth to her or (such as in Man of Steel) she knew him before he “became” Superman and thus there was never any secret between them in the first place. I really like Lois solving the mystery on her own, though. She’s supposed to be the most brilliant investigative reporter in the world, after all – let her investigate this in a brilliant way. Once we hit that point, I grew an appreciation for the show and their portrayal of the characters and I enjoyed it much more. And the voice cast is wonderful too, particularly Jack Quaid as a young, inexperienced Superman.

If there’s one thing I’m NOT wild about, it’s the costume. They tweaked it in season two and it looks like it’s been tweaked again in season three, with more piping and unnecessary details. I’m a purist, I guess, the simpler the costume the better, but if that’s the biggest complaint about this show, I can live with it. 

The premiere of Season Three, “Into the New World,” begins with Superman taking Supergirl to the newly-upgraded Fortress of Solitude, where she’s interring the captured Brainiac module from last season, and Clark gets warnings from the Fortresses’s new robots about the many, many crises he’s going to face soon. I’m sure none of those are going to come back and be significant in the rest of the season. Back in Kansas, it’s Halloween, and the group heads to the Kent Farm to help set up the corn maze and hand out candy. While Jimmy and Kara bounce around their awkwardness surrounding their mutual attraction, Lois freaks out as she realizes that Clark is thinking about their future WAY more than she is. She escapes the uncomfortable conversation when her father gives her a tip about a nearby abandoned biotech facility. The group investigates and finds a project dedicated to cloning Kryptonians, including an entire arboretum full of Kryptonian plant life, several genetic monsters, robot guards, and a strange young man who seems to have lived his entire life there. 

I’m really glad that they’ve upgraded Kara to the main cast this season, adding her to the opening credits and integrating her into the (former) trio. She brings a different energy to the group – as bold and fearless as Lois, but with an added naivete stemming from her ignorance of Earth, and just a TINY air of superior arrogance that’s amusing. It’s a new angle to the dynamic that I really like.

If you’ve paid any attention to the casting announcements or pre-season buzz, you already know who the boy they find in the lab is destined to be, but even if you haven’t, it’s probably not too hard to figure out where they’re going with him. That said, I like the way they’re bringing in elements of the Superman mythos in different ways. This is a new version of Superboy, one who has elements of the Conner Kent version from the comics, but who isn’t EXACTLY the same. The same can be said for most of the main characters, both heroes and villains (including the villain teased in the final scene) – they’re familiar enough that you have the flavor of who they are, but different enough that the show feels like its own thing. It’s less an adaptation of the classic stories and more a new mythology that’s built on the DNA of the older one.

It’s a little thing, but the show does the usual comic book trope of dropping in references to the larger stories that inspired them – references to lesser-known characters, name-dropping Supergirl’s creator, and sneaking in Superman’s old-fashioned catch phrase. And I may be reading too much into it, but you can’t convince me that the guy wearing a Star Trek uniform in the middle of a Halloween crowd isn’t a tongue-in-cheek reference to Jack Quaid’s role on the best Trek series of the modern era, Lower Decks. 

Like most shows these days, My Adventures With Superman is episodic. The first episode of a season is less of a story on its own and more of the first chapter in a season-long arc. As such it’s successful, setting a lot of elements into play, introducing two new major characters, and establishing what appear to be the emotional arcs for our main characters for the next nine episodes. I enjoyed it, I’m glad the show is back, and I’m quite excited to see how they’re planning to set up Jessica Cruz for the My Adventures With Green Lantern spinoff before the end of the season. 

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!

Superman Stuff #23: Peter David’s Supergirl

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With the Girl of Steel scheduled to make her return to the Screen of Silver in a couple of weeks, I wanted to go back to one of the items I most regret never getting around to during the original Year of Superman project: Peter David’s excellent Supergirl series. David launched this series in 1996, taking the “Matrix” version of Supergirl and pulling her out of Metropolis. He dropped her not only in the seemingly nondescript town of Leesburg, but also into a metaphysical conflict that was very different from most superhero comics at the time – or for that matter, even since then. 

The real question is where to READ the book in this day and age, if you weren’t lucky enough to have bought them month-to-month as they came out like I did. David’s run lasted 80 issues, along with a handful of annuals and spinoffs, and a few mini-crossovers with other books like Resurrection Man and Young Justice. A few years ago they started series of omnibus editions that went for four volumes, collecting roughly the first half of the series, which we can all agree isn’t enough. Last year, though, when the DC’s Finest line of paperbacks was launched, they included two hefty volumes that made it almost as deep into the run as the four omnibus editions combined. One could only hope that they’re selling well enough to justify collecting the rest of the run in that series.

That said, this week I had time to read the first five issues, as well as the prologue story that was published in Showcase ‘96 #8, so that’s what I’m going to focus on today. The prologue, written by David with art by Terry Dodson, is connected to the main series more thematically than in a story fashion. Supergirl – the shapeshifting protoplasmic Matrix that Superman first encountered in the pocket universe where he was forced to kill General Zod and his cronies – is called upon to help with a hurricane causing terrible destruction. In the midst of the storm, she desperately tries to save a pregnant woman who has gone into labor, and the chaos around her forces her to think about concepts of mortality – both the beginning and end of life – that she as an artificial life form has never really had to contend with before. 

In its own right, this would be a perfectly good short story, a sort of character piece in which a superhero wrestles with a very human existential crisis. However, knowing what David was going to do with this series in the years to come, it really does feel like a glimpse at the future. Is it necessary for understanding the main series? No. But it sure as hell gives you the flavor.

The series proper, with art by Gary Frank, begins not with Supergirl, but with Linda Danvers. Linda – at this point a total blank slate to the audience – is introduced to us in the shower, covered in minor injuries and washing off blood. When she gets out of the tub, there’s also an odd accumulation of pink sludge…and a glance in the mirror makes her realize that her injuries are mysteriously gone. She can’t remember what’s happened to her or how she was hurt, but she’s also got memories that don’t quite seem to be hers.

The first two issues introduce us to Linda and her world: her highly contentious relationship with her parents, a journalist and strange admirer named Cutter, and a demonic acquaintance of hers called Buzz among others. We also learn that Linda’s relationship with the people of Leesburg seems to be full of friction. A lot of them were under the impression that she was dead. OH YEAH – and when she was missing, Supergirl had tried to find her, and somehow the two of them became fused into a single being, one that has more limited versions of Supergirl’s powers and a memory that’s been Swiss Cheesed like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap. Issues three and four push the book into a crossover with DC’s Final Night (which I wrote about last year) in which Grodd invades her little town and tries to make people embrace their bestial side while faced with the possibility of the death of the sun, and in issue five, Supergirl has a face off with Superman’s old enemy Chemo. 

The supervillain stuff is fine – Peter David was an excellent writer and handled that as well as anybody. But what really made this run (and his work in general for that matter) stand out from the pack was the way he handled characters. Forget the Pre-Crisis Linda Danvers you may remember – this Linda is by no means the paragon of virtue that one would assume to be that Supergirl’s secret identity. 90s Linda is a girl with a past that these first five issues only begin to dig into. Her parents start off as stereotypes: her cop father is an overbearing authority figure and her fundamentalist mother is…well…a fundamentalist mother. But as the series progresses, all three of the Danvers grow into fuller, rounder characters, moving past who you would assume them to be at the beginning. Cutter is an intriguing character as well, and while Buzz…there’s a lot to say about Buzz.

Buzz is a sort of portal for this story into the supernatural, something that Superman-family stories tend to shy away from most of the time. But over the course of this series (particularly the first half) David deals with a lot of metaphysical questions, battles between good and evil on a scale that’s more existential than physical, and questions about mortality and the afterlife. To put it bluntly, it’s a much deeper book than you would expect. 

I’m definitely going to continue reading this series again now that I’ve started. I won’t necessarily write about every issue, but I’ll probably come back with new blogs whenever I hit the high points. In the meantime, if you’ve never read the series, the whole thing is currently available on DC Universe Infinite and, as I mentioned, the two DC’s Finest paperbacks are in stores now. And with the news that Sophie Campbell is planning to bring Matrix back in the current Supergirl comic book, there’s no better time to move in and enjoy one of the most intriguing and most underrated parts of Superman lore. 

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!

Superman Stuff #22: The 1982 Superman Spectacular

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During the Year of Superman, I devoted about an entire month to the epic 90s saga of Superman Red and Superman Blue. After that, I went back and read the original one-off “imaginary story” that partially inspired it. A few months ago, though, I learned of the existence the 1982 Superman Spectacular, a treasury-sized one-shot reprinting a story originally published in Europe by the Egmont Group (the same company responsible for some of the greatest Disney comics of the post-Gold Key era), which was also a different take on that classic story. Had I known about this book last year, I would have tried to hunt it down and include it then. But since I didn’t, it gets a showcase this week in Superman Stuff. 

Superman Spectacular #1
Title: The Startling Saga of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue!
Plot: Bob Rozakis
Script: Paul Kupperberg
Pencils: Adrian Gonzales
Inks: Vince Colletta
Cover: Adrian Gonzales

Our titanic tale begins when Lex Luthor – this is in his fun and feisty Bronze Age mad scientist era – sends a hologram to a Daily Planet staff meeting to boast that he’s going to pull a heist at S.T.A.R. Labs in an hour. When Superman heads out to thwart him, Luthor attacks with synthetic magic energy (I know, I thought the same thing) generated by a S.T.A.R. experiment. Superman takes precautions, expecting a trap, and defeats Luthor, who turns out to be yet another duplicate – a robot this time.

In space, the real Luthor is approached by Terra-Man, a now-obscure villain that they were REALLY trying to push into the A-list at the time. The Pre-Crisis Terra-Man was literally a child abducted from the old west and raised by aliens. He grew up, killed the aliens, tamed another alien that resembled a pegasus, and came back to Earth in the modern day to be a supervillain for some reason. Why they were trying so hard to make him one of the big guns is beyond me. But having found a chunk of the one substance deadly to Superman, Terra-Man and Luthor decide to partner up and destroy him together. Terra is smart enough not to trust Lex, though, and only speaks to him via an 80s sci-fi Zoom meeting, which turns out to cause a problem, as we shall soon see.

Terra-Man attacks Metropolis with a meteor shower, interrupting a date between Superman and Lois (RIGHT before she was about to say the big L-word to him too), and the Man of Steel jumps into action only to fall right into their Kryptonite trap…but instead of killing him, the Kryptonite wave splits him into two, a red and a blue Superman. Lex and Terra-Man hadn’t met in PERSON to discuss their plans, you see, and on his black-and-white monitor, Lex didn’t realize that Terra-Man had a chunk of RED Kryptonite, not the fatal green variety. If you’re not up on your DCU science, red Kryptonite doesn’t kill a Kryptonian but rather has a different, random effect on them every time they’re exposed to it. (You may have seen classic covers with Superman having an ant head or turning into a giant or something – these were usually red K tales.) Anyway, as the Supermen stop the meteors, although one of them is briefly perplexed when his super-breath temporarily stops working as they’re trying to blow the meteors away. The villains escape and Luthor proceeds to activate his next plan, opening up a magical portal to another dimension, because that’s the kind of thing mad scientists do. 

The twin Supermen stumble over one another at the Planet offices, then discover that some of their powers seem to cut in and out whenever they go into action. Despite that, they charge into battle against the two villains. As Blue battles Terra-Man in space and Red fights Luthor on Earth, Blue finally cracks the secret that the reader figured out 20 pages earlier – the two of them are sharing their powers, and only one of them can use any given power at a time. The realization is a bit too late for Red – on Earth, Lex’s sudden magical expertise has him on the ropes. Fortunately for him, the red Kryptonite wears off at just that second and he fades away, re-fusing with Blue in space. The fully restored Superman makes short work of Terra-Man, but returns to Earth to find that Lex’s magical prowess has intensified. In the ensuing battle, Lois Lane is hurled into a wall and nearly killed. Superman rushes to her side and tries to think of a scientific way to save her, a magical way to save her…but ultimately he discards both of those choices and brings her back with…

Okay, I’m just gonna quote the book here.

“Superman knows…of a force mightier than science and magic…mightier even than himself! And though the world would likely go on anyway, he calls upon this greatest of powers – the deity the people of Krypton called Rao! We know that force by other names on Earth – across the dimensions, in every universe, it is also known…it is love.”

Yeah, Superman saves Lois from the brink of death with the Power of Love. Which is also evidently what the Kryptonian sun-god Rao is. I wonder if Huey Lewis had any idea when he wrote that song.

What an odd little book. So strange, so utterly Bronze Age Superman. There are a lot of fun ideas and some nice moments when Red and Blue butt heads a little bit, although unlike the later version of the story it’s because they’re TOO MUCH alike rather than too different from one another. Maybe it comes from growing up in an era where a story like this would have lasted at least three or four issues, but the whole thing feels somewhat rushed to me. It’s like the storytellers had the basic idea, then once they figured they’d gotten all the mileage they could out of the split Superman concept, they wrapped it up as quickly as possible. But it’s fun to read, despite all of that. I’m honestly quite surprised we haven’t seen it reprinted for over 40 years, and I wonder if Egmont technically owns it. I can’t think of any other reason it’s sitting in obscurity when so many other books show up again and again. 

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!

Superman Stuff #21: Review Roundup for May 13 through 27

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Thaaaat’s right, once again, it’s time to take a look at some of the recent Superman-related comics that DC has turned out for us. Including another heapin’ helpin’ of Mark Waid, a dash of dandy Dan Mora, more-a of those Superboys reignin’, and Superman’s return to Elseworlds!

Action Comics #1098
Title: Future Shock Part Two (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer: Mark Waid
Artists: Skylar Patridge and Patricia Delpeche
Main Cover: Ryan Sook

The time-tossed team of Martian Manhunter, Booster Gold, and Mary Marvel are in Smallville with Clark Kent early in his career as Superboy, and it’s not looking good when they learn that the villain they chased into the past, Epoch, has stolen the rocket that brought baby Kal-El to Earth in the first place. There’s a fight and a face-off, which of course is to be expected in a superhero comic book, but none of that is where this issue really shines. The heart of the book comes in the middle section, as Jonathan and Martha recount the story of how they found the baby to the time-travelers. Waid, of course, recently cleaned up DC’s timeline with his New History of the DC Universe series, so if there’s anybody we can consider an expert on what’s currently canon and what isn’t, it’s probably him. Seeing the current version of Superman’s origin presented answers a few questions and clarifies things, and leads to a surprisingly sweet moment between J’onn and the Kents. 

As with last issue, though, I’m absolutely loving the Mary/Clark dynamic. I really like the characterization of Mary as the older sibling of the Marvel family, and she carries that over here to her interactions with Clark, leading to a delightful scene where she decides to play wingwoman for him in his relationship with Lana. It’s a highly entertaining moment, although I do very much wonder if we’ll ever see a scene after Superman returns in the present timeline where the two of them talk about this.

Strong artwork by Skylar Patridge and Patricia Delpeche give the issue a sort of finishing touch. With issue #1100 coming up, it seems as though the time-missing Superman storyline is about to come to an end, but I hope that doesn’t mean an end to Waid’s time in Smallville, because these stories have been a lot of fun. 

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #51
Title: Warlords Part One
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Adrian Gutierrez
Main Cover: Dan Mora

Over in World’s Finest, which is ALSO set in the past (early in the partnership of Superman, Batman, and the Dick Grayson Robin), it’s time for a trip to the Arctic. Our heroes are tracking the flight path of a missing Air Force pilot, one who vanished on the same trajectory as another missing pilot, one Travis Morgan. Of course, the world’s finest get zapped to the out-of-time world of Skartaris and find themselves fighting alongside Morgan, the Warlord, in battle against the mysterious Tyrant Rex. Robin, of course, is wild about the dinosaurs. Superman is less wild about the magic flying around this little corner of the DC Universe.

I’ve never gotten super into Warlord. Its heyday was before my time as a comic book reader, and the various attempts to bring him back over the years have never quite landed. That said, I do enjoy watching Waid play with all the toys available in the DC Universe, and this is no exception. He used the time differential between the “normal” world and Skartaris to good effect here, changing things up for our heroes almost immediately upon entering the lost land, and Batman and Robin are thrust into rescue mode fairly early. 

Gutierrez draws some wildly fun dinosaurs, and he really sells the “acting” with the characters’ faces, particularly Robin, whom we are reminded time and again is pretty young in this series. He behaves like a younger version of the Dick Grayson we know – a little more impulsive, a little less confident, but still with the same solid heart.

This remains one of my favorite series that DC is putting out. 

Superman Unlimited #13
Title: Primal Fears (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in
Writer: Dan Slott
Artist: Lucas Meyer
Main Cover: Taurin Clarke

This issue starts with the greatest character in comics, Bibbo Bibbowski, taking care of the monkey he found last issue. Some goons from the lab the monkey escaped show up trying to get him back, and things get much rougher than they expected. The time-tossed younger version of Jon Kent, meanwhile, is having nightmares about the torture he endured at the hands of Ultraman, while the older Jon – now calling himself Tomorrow Man – finds that a masked hero in Metropolis doesn’t necessarily enjoy the same kind of trust from the public that he may be used to. The two Jons are called into action when the super-monkey starts tearing it up. 

I’m not going to keep playing coy here – the story works great as a reintroduction of Beppo the Super-Monkey into the DC Universe, although the origin that Slott chooses for him here has a lot of 90s flavor to it, bringing back the long-missing Dabney Donovan character. I also like the dynamic he’s playing with the two Jons and Lois, who is far too smart not to figure out what the deal is with Tomorrow Man, and Slott seems to be leaning into that. I really don’t know what the endgame of this particular storyline is going to be, and that’s a nice feeling in a day and age where everything gets spoiled yesterday. It’s a longshot, but I think that if things shook out with young Jon/Superboy and old Jon/Tomorrow Man coexisted in the DCU long-term, I’d be okay with it.

Of course, Jon is still wearing the “S” over in New Titans, so that’s probably not going to happen.

Supergirl #13
Title: Hero of Kandor Part Three (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer, Artist, & Main Cover: Sophie Campbell

Kara’s adventure in Kandor continues. With Black Flame causing chaos, Supergirl – now stuck with some cyborg parts, in case you missed last issue – tracks down Lesla-Lar to try to get her help. Lesla, meanwhile, has something very, very important to show our heroine, and it might just change things for Kara Zor-El for good.

It really feels like Campbell has been building up to this story since issue #1, and that’s a great thing. All of the stuff with Lesla and Lena and Kara showing her constant compassion and trust in people who were once her enemies is paying off in really interesting and unexpected ways. Ultimately, we still aren’t 100 percent sure what side Lesla is going to land on once all of this is over, and Campbell has set it up in such a way that either choice would be conceivably in-character. That’s quite a trick, and it’s pulled off impressively. 

If there’s anything to complain about, it’s that the whole “Reign of the Superboys” tie-in feels more tacked on than ever. Conner finally makes it into Kandor in this issue, but he’s only around for a couple of frankly unnecessary pages before the story moves back to Kara. It really feels as though Campbell had the story planned and in the works when editorial put out an edict that Conner Kent had to feature into these post-DC KO issues somehow, then she just kind of crowbarred him in where she could while causing minimal disruption to the narrative. If that’s the case, then it’s a failure on editorial’s part, not Campbell’s, and the pages without Conner at all work just fine at telling an interesting, gripping story that only really could be told with Kara Zor-El. 

Superman #38
Title: Prime Time Part Three (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer: Joshua Williamson
Artist and Main Cover: Dan Mora

I didn’t have a Superboy-Prime/Witchfire pairing on my 2026 wish list, but here we are. Witchfire, a magic user from Kurt Busiek’s fun and forgotten series Power Company, is looking for an innocent soul to use in a spell she needs. Unfortunately, she has TOTALLY misread the aura of that cute guy at the comic shop. All is not lost, though – Superboy-Prime IS in the midst of a redemption arc, after all, and this seems like just the way to do it.

Williamson is clearly having fun with this. He leans more into the meta nature of Prime in this issue, and the last act of the book dives into it headfirst, with the return of this arc’s true villain and Prime being thrust into what is possibly his own worst nightmare. But the amazing, encouraging thing here is that we never feel like his attempts at redemption are fake or forced or cheap. Williamson has successfully convinced us that Prime sincerely wants to reform and become a hero like he always wanted, and despite the horrific crimes he committed in the past (some of which we are specifically reminded of in this issue), the reader finds themselves rooting for him. It’s an odd feeling, to look at someone who once casually slaughtered Teen Titans like they were nothing and find yourself pulling for him. But the whole thing kind of plays into a personal philosophy of redemption that I subscribe to. I’ve got to believe – hell, for the good of the WORLD I’ve got to believe – that redemption is possible. And that if someone truly wants to become a better person today than they were yesterday, at the very least they deserve the opportunity to TRY.

Admittedly, applying that philosophy to a murderer is totally on the extreme end, but just ask yourself how many bad guys joined the heroes on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and tell me if what’s going on with Prime here is really all that different.

Dan Mora’s artwork, as usual, is wonderful. I’ve talked before about how some artists are good at “acting” with their characters, and this issue is a fantastic example of that – the sweet, nervous flirtation between C.K. and Rebecca is written not only on their faces, but in their body language as well. It’s such a small thing, but it adds so much to the story. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I almost don’t want the real Superman to come back to this title just yet, because I’m not ready for this story to end. 

Justice League Unlimited #19
Title: Amnesty Part One
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist and Main Cover Dan Mora

Speaking of redemption, why don’t we peek in on what the Justice League is doing, shall we? Lex Luthor went public with the League’s plan to offer amnesty to certain super villains as part of their larger plan to fortify the defenses against the darkness they know is coming (that’s what DC All In is all about, Charlie Brown), and as you might have expected, public perception is NOT what the League may have hoped for. Meanwhile, Guy Gardner’s team is en route to Oa to hide the Power Bank with backups of the Leaguers’ respective super-powers, and Superboy (Conner) and Steel (Natasha) get a nasty surprise when they’re hanging out with Air Wave.

I mentioned this last issue, but I love the way that Mark Waid is juggling so many storylines at once. The “main” story, the one with Lex Luthor working with the League’s big guns and (in this issue, at least) rounding up villains who are falsely claiming amnesty, is really fascinating. Luthor, as a character, is the sort who always has something up his sleeve and you can never actually trust him, but considering what he and the other participants in the KO tournament know about the future, this is a case where it’s possible that he really is being genuine, even his motives are ultimately selfish. The fun here is trying to figure out just exactly HOW much is self-interest and self-preservation.

The other storylines are looked at quickly, but progress as well. Guy Gardner and the Justice Gang (if you’re gonna use the characters from the movie I’m gonna use the name from the movie) naturally run into some problems in the course of their mission, and just when you thought poor Air Wave’s troubles were over, they get worse. I’m looking forward to seeing them take the forefront next issue.

Dan Mora – have I mentioned that Dan Mora is really, really freaking good at what he does? And he’s doing it TWICE A MONTH. Plus about a billion covers. Dude is a machine. 

Superman: Father of Tomorrow #1
Title: Planetfall
Writer: Kenny Porter
Artist and Main Cover: Danny Earl

I’ve been waiting for this ever since DC announced they were bringing back the Elseworlds imprint. While alternate versions of Superman have featured in some of the books like Dark Knights of Steel or the Gotham By Gaslight sequels, this is the first of the new Elseworlds to explicitly be a Superman comic.

Not Kal-El, mind you, but I’ll take what I can get.

In Father of Tomorrow, the catch is that rather than Kal-El, it was JOR-El who escaped Krypton’s destruction and came to Earth, Similarly to what happened to his son in the main universe, he crashes to Earth in Smallville, Kansas, and is taken in by the Kents, who pass him off as Jonathan’s younger brother, Jordan. Jordan lives with the Kents, hiding the truth of his alien ancestry for years, until something happens that spurs him to come out of hiding and use his power and advanced Kryptonian technology to make the Earth a better place.

This first issue is intriguing. Porter uses a lot of familiar Superman elements, characters, and even standard plot points from various versions of Superman’s origin to put together this story, but the fact that it’s about an adult Jor-El instead of baby Kal-El twists things in curious ways. Jor-El is well-meaning, to be certain, but by the end of the first issue we start to get an ominous feeling that perhaps his good intentions are going to lead him down a dark path.

I don’t want this to be yet another “evil Superman” story by the end of it, but let’s be honest here. It’s an Elseworlds, and an awful lot of the classic Elseworlds stories had tragic endings. It wouldn’t be out of character for that to happen here.

I like Danny Earls’ artwork. His designs for Jor-El’s costume and the Kryptonian technology are unique and exciting, and contrast the idyllic small-town feel of Smallville in just the right way.

So far so good, folks. Let’s see if you can keep it going. 

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!