We’re almost here, friends. With the time remaining until I’m in the theater watching Superman measured in hours, excitement is at a fever pitch. Just this morning (July 9th), my son told me just how excited he is to watch the movie, then he asked me if Batman is gonna be in it. Like I said, FEVER PITCH.

I don’t even know what I’ll be reading or watching AFTER I see the movie, but until then, let’s hit the last book on James Gunn’s list of inspirations for Superman.

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

Wed., July 9

Graphic Novel: Kingdom Come (Collects issues 1-4, plus a new epilogue)

Notes: I may have read this single graphic novel more than any other in my life. Kingdom Come, by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, is perhaps the zenith of DC’s Elseworlds imprint. A story that was out of continuity, but at the same time, still felt so accurate and so perfectly attuned to the characters within that for years afterwards, DC would have their various titles make small hints or pushes in the direction of this book, suggesting that this Elseworlds might – just might – wind up being the “real” future of the DC Universe. Eventually they dropped this (wisely, I think) and established it as Earth-22, one of the many worlds in DC’s multiverse, but that in no way diminishes the power or impact of this most incredible story.

The story begins in the future with the death of Wesley Dodds, the Sandman. On his deathbed, he plagues his pastor – a quiet little man named Norman McCay – with visions of the apocalypse, which he swears is imminent. The world they live in, you see, has become overrun with superhumans. The children (some literal, some metaphorical) of the heroes of our era have lost their way, turning their battles on one another with no regard for the lives of the innocent. And Superman, of course, isn’t there to stop it. No one has seen him in ten years. Shortly after Wesley’s death, a cataclysm happens: a superhuman battle in Kansas causes Captain Atom to explode, irradiating the entire state and killing a million people. Furthermore, the destruction of America’s farmland sends the entire globe into an economic spiral. Chaos is reigning and Norman finds his faith in God weakening…and then an angel appears. It is the being we once knew as the Spectre, the Spirit of God’s Vengeance, and he has come to take Norman on an important journey. Armageddon is close at hand, and he will need Norman’s guidance to pass judgment.

Over the course of these three issues, we learn that Superman retreated from humanity after the Joker murdered the entire staff of the Daily Planet (obviously including you-know-who). But that wasn’t what sends him away. Instead of being made to pay for his crimes, Joker was murdered by one of the new superhumans, Magog, and it was the way people accepted Magog acting as judge, jury, and executions that broke the Man of Steel. With Kansas gone, Wonder Woman brings him out of hiding and together they begin to reassemble the Justice League. Their old allies offer the new breed of superhumans a choice: join them and accept their ways or get thrown in a superhuman gulag. Not everyone is happy about this, of course, least of all Batman and his team – members of the old guard who are afraid of what Superman is doing. As the tension builds, old friends become enemies, old enemies become uneasy allies, and ultimately, the line between god and man must be defined before it’s too late.

This book is magnificent. Waid, as I’ve said many times, has a love and an understanding of these characters that is unparalleled among contemporary comic book creators, and he brings every bit of it to the page here. He manages to craft a story that makes us believe that, yes, Superman WOULD give up in these circumstances. That he and Batman WOULD wind up at odds with one another without any sort of stupid misunderstanding or plot contrivance. He explores the relationship between Wonder Woman and Superman in a way that feels more real and natural than most others. There is a love that develops between the two, but unlike most of the stories that try to shoehorn them into a relationship (such as the Superman/Wonder Woman book of the New 52 era) this isn’t a story about two hot, powerful people who are mushed together by virtue of them being hot and powerful. This is a different kind of love, a more mature kind of love. It’s the kind of thing that happens when people who have loved and trusted one another for their entire lives grow older and cling to one another to alleviate the loneliness of their loss. I don’t want that to sound like I’m diminishing it, mind you – this is a kind of love that is very real and very comforting to a lot of people. And as such it’s the most believable Superman/Wonder Woman pairing I’ve ever read. 

Alex Ross was coming off his star-making work on Marvels, in which he and Kurt Busiek explored the early days of Marvel Comics from the perspective of an outsider. This book is kind of the inverse of that – a story of the end of the DC mythology. Once again, it’s from an outsider’s perspective, but in this case that outsider is forced within. Whereas Phil Sheldon (protagonist of Marvels) spends his entire life at arm’s length from the heroes he photographs, Norman McCay is thrust into the lives of the Justice League at their most personal, their most vulnerable, seeing corners of their souls that even they themselves aren’t privy to. 

And even if it weren’t for the fact that this is one of the greatest stories ever written in comic book form, it would be worth it just for the artwork alone. Ross, creates fully painted artwork for every page of the story, and those pages are absolutely loaded. His Superman is strong and powerful, but has a humanity to his face that makes it easy to relate to him. Wonder Woman, similarly, is beautiful, but in a sort of unattainable, almost unearthly way that befits a goddess. Norman McCay, who was based on Ross’s own father, comes across as a very ordinary man who has been forced to shoulder the weight of the entire world, and your heart breaks for him.

And then there’s the FUN behind it. Ross fills nearly every page of this book with Easter Eggs and cameos – obscure characters who appear in only a panel or two, celebrities and comic book creators popping in just for a moment…even Phil Sheldon himself makes a cameo appearance if you look hard enough. And it’s not just the faces that give us surprises, but the books on a shelf, the artifacts in the Planet Krypton restaurant…there is SO MUCH going on in this book that some editions of the graphic novel even come with a section of annotations almost as long as the story itself to help you find them all.

Gunn’s Superman will be young, of course – not the elder statesman of Kingdom Come, and I’ll be very interested in seeing how this particular story influenced him. Besides the obvious, of course. 

Thur. July 10

Eddie is excited.

I need you to understand just HOW excited my son is. When he woke up this morning, the first thing he said was “Tomorrow we are going to see Superman.” He asked me to pull up our tickets on the AMC Theaters app so he could see what theater and what seats we were in. He asked if it was going to be in IMAX. He asked if we were going to get a regular popcorn bucket or a Superman bucket. He asked what Superman shirts he, his mom, and I are going to wear.

He’s almost as excited to see this movie as I am to take him to it. 

The next 24 hours are going to CRAWL.

Junior Novel: Welcome to Metropolis by David Lewton

Notes: On the last day before we finally see the movie, I thought it would be appropriate to read the “Junior Prequel Novel” to the film, Welcome to Metropolis. Gunn has quite famously reminded us all that the movie will NOT be yet another origin story (thank goodness), and that by the time it begins Superman has been active for about three years. This novel steps back and shows us Clark Kent’s arrival in Metropolis, his attempt to get hired at the Daily Planet, and his first encounters with the other metahumans in town.

And it is, sadly, painfully skippable.

It’s not that it’s unnecessary (although it is – if it weren’t, then the information in this book would have been included in the movie), it’s that it’s not even pieced together well. In many iterations we see Superman have a huge, public debut – saving the space shuttle, catching the helicopter falling from the roof of the Planet building, and so forth. In this book, he bursts on the scene stopping a heist at a toy factory, something which barely anybody sees, although it does get Clark Kent hired at the Planet in a truly unfathomable amount of time. 

Speaking of time, the timeframe of this book is confusing. The way it’s written, it feels as though everything happens in a matter of days. In fact, if not for a brief scene in Smallville, I would assume it was a narrative of Clark’s first week in Metropolis. When he visits his parents, though, they talk about subscribing to the Planet and how they read all his articles, as though he’s been there for at least several weeks. 

Everyone in this book also talks as though they assume everybody else is an idiot. Mr. Terrific gives Superman a lecture on what a robot is, for example. Is there anybody who doesn’t know what a robot is? And is it necessary to get into the etymology of the word? Although this isn’t quite as egregious as the scene where a waitress instructs Clark Kent on how to tip for a cup of coffee. Even the narration gets in on it, introducing one of the other characters as “Green Lantern, whose real name was Guy Gardner.” It’s a clunky, poorly-phrased piece of exposition that could have been worked in more organically.

Look, I get that this is a book for children, and I don’t expect it to be on the level of an Andy Weir hyper-detailed sci-fi thriller. But I’m a teacher and a dad and – I’ll be honest here – a nerd. I’ve read an awful lot of young adult fiction, and if there’s one thing I firmly believe it’s that kids are smarter than most adults give them credit for. They know when they’re being condescended to, and this whole book feels like that…someone talking down to a kid who may not instinctively grasp why they’re getting irritated, but they feel that way nonetheless.

I hate to end the countdown to the film on such a sour note, but that’s how this book left me feeling. I think I’ll need something else today to help perk me up. 

Movie: Superman (1978)

Notes: “Hold on a second,” you may be saying. “Didn’t you watch that already? In fact, wasn’t that the first movie you watched in 2025, all the way back in January?” Why yes, yes I did. But as Eddie’s enthusiasm for the new movie grows by leaps and bounds, today he said to me that sentence that every father hopes to hear at some point in his life:

“Daddy, can we watch the 1978 Superman movie today?”

YOU’RE DARN RIGHT WE CAN.

I need you to understand, it’s not like I’ve hidden this movie from Eddie. I’ve watched it several times since he was born, and always with him in the room. He’s never truly been engrossed in it, though, his mind (as the minds of kids often are) focused on other things. But this time, for the first time, he’s ASKED for it. And he’s actually paying ATTENTION. And as such, his beautiful neurospicy brain is full of questions.

“Is that Superbaby?”

“Sure.”

“Can Superbaby fly?”

“Well, he’s still on Krypton, so no, not yet.”

“Can SuperBOY fly?”

“Yes, Superboy can fly.”

“Only big kids can fly.”

“I love the connections your mind makes.”

That said, he’s still seven and still an active little sort, and as such he’s not as interested in some of my favorite parts of the movie. Specifically, the Smallville scenes – the slow burn as Clark grows up and discovers himself doesn’t really hold much interest to Eddie. In fact, he stops and asks me “Do we see Superman yet?” just before we get to the scene where Clark runs alongside the train. I point it out and something clicks inside of him. “That’s SuperBOY,” he says, gleefully. 

I’m not going to argue.

He gets distracted again, although he’s fascinated by the construction of the Fortress of Solitude, but he doesn’t really jump up until the end of the sequence where Jor-El mentors his son. The music starts and we see, from a distance, Christopher Reeve in costume for the first time.

“He’s Superman!” Eddie shouts.

He lifts off the ground and moves towards the camera.

“HE’S FLYING!” Eddie shouts. 

47 years later and Chris Reeve is still making people believe. 

His attention wavers back and forth, seemingly in direct proportion to whether Christopher Reeve is wearing the costume at the moment. He is delighted when he saves Lois Lane and the falling helicopter, but he has no patience for the two of them conducting the most innuendo-laden interview this side of Monty Python. He LOVES the scene where Lex Luthor holds up a Navy convoy on a bridge because, well, he loves bridges. 

He’s all in for the final scene, though, once Luthor’s bomb causes an earthquake. “Why is the gas station blowing up? It damaged San Francisco! SUPERMAN HAS TO SAVE THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE!!!”

(I told you he loves bridges.)

“What’s happening?” he asks, excitedly.

“The earthquake is making the Hoover Dam break!”

“What’s a (whisperwhisper)?”

“What?”

“What’s a (whisperwhisper)?”

“WHAT?”

“What’s a water station?”

Oh. “Eddie, it’s okay to say THAT kind of ‘dam’.” 

In the end, I think he enjoyed it, even if his favorite part was when – and I quote – “the Golden Gate bridge got demolished!” 

I can’t wait for tomorrow. 

Comics: Trinity: Daughter of Wonder Woman #1 (Jon Kent appearance), LEGO DC Superheroes Save the Day (Superman appearance)

Notes: Before he goes to bed, we read a book with Eddie every night. Today he picks one he checked out from the library earlier this week, LEGO DC Superheroes Save the Day. It’s a short graphic novel that mostly focuses on LEGO Batman and Robin, but Superman shows up at the end to help save the day. I hold him and help him with the tougher words, and he’s perfectly content to be reading a Superman story in preparation. I love being his dad. 

Fri., July 11

Movie: Superman (2025)

Notes: Eddie woke up at 6:43 in the morning. I know this, because he immediately rushed to me and made sure I was awake because he wasn’t about to miss our movie at 11:30 am.

I may have created a monster.

But it’s impossible to get mad at the boy – he’s pumped. We get him dressed in his special Superman shirt with his own cape. I put on my t-shirt with the new logo, then top it with my RSVLTS “Pup Pup and Away” button-down. Erin has ordered her own Lois Lane t-shirt specifically for this occasion. He spends the entire morning asking when the movie starts, what auditorium we’re going to be in, how long the commercials before the movie will be – by the time we actually arrive at the movie theater, he’s ready to combust. 

We get our snacks and I am unable to resist the siren call of the Daily Planet “popcorn bucket.” (Movies and theme parks have taken ridiculous liberties with what they deem a “bucket.” Basically, any kind of tchotchke in which there’s room for a cavity that could theoretically contain some small quantity of popcorn qualifies.) I look at the newspaper box, thinking about where I’ll put it in the Superman corner of my classroom once school starts next month. 

We sit down in the theater. Eddie is anxious, barely able to keep still, to the point where I’m starting to get nervous. But when the trailers end and the opening narration begins, he finally sits still.

And over the next two hours and nine minutes, we watch the Superman movie I’ve been waiting for ever since Eddie was born.

I’ve written a full review that I posted last Saturday. You can read it here, and I won’t reiterate what I’ve already discussed, but in case you’re not interested in the details about how I felt watching the movie that literally inspired this entire Year of Superman project in the first place, I’ll give you the short version right now:

Back in December, I was having a crappy day when the first trailer for this movie hit. And I mean HIT. I was knocked right out my socks and my whole attitude changed. Since then, I’ve been living Superman every day, examining his best stories, his previous movies, his appearances in animation and toys and anything else I could find. And the point of it all has been to crystalize, in my mind, just who Superman is so that I would know, when I watched the movie, if James Gunn pulled off what I want Superman to be.

My friends. It’s been worth every second. 

Sat., July 12

Comics: Superman Treasury 2025: Hero For All #1, Supergirl Vol. 8 #3, Action Comics #1088

Notes: Still a-tingle from the movie (and from having written the gargantuan review I linked to above) I’m finally ready to settle down with this week’s new Superman comics. In the 70s and 80s, Marvel and DC both put out several giant-sized “Treasury Edition” comics – pages nearly twice the size of a standard comic book, usually with longer stories. The very first crossovers (Superman and Spider-Man, Superman and Muhammed Ali, Batman and the Hulk) were printed in this format. Eventually, it went away. But with the current popularity of facsimile comic books, reprinting older comics in their original form, original ads, letter columns, everything, DC did a few facsimile treasury editions. Those were popular, and that’s led to more and more treasuries, finally leading up to the Superman Treasury 2025, which I believe is the first of the current crop to feature all-new material.

In Hero For All, by Dan Jurgens and Bruno Redondo, Maxima has grown outraged upon learning that Superman (whom she once had sought as a mate) has had a child with a human woman. She takes the Cyborg Superman as her consort and together they attack Metropolis, capturing Superman in a strange virtual version of his life that took a very different path, while his allies in the Justice League and beyond do their best to fight off the invasion.

This is a good book and a great use of the format. Jurgens has always done wonderful stories about the pre-aged Jon Kent, and this is another one that fits in well with his Lois and Clark stories, with the kid being a key element to the story. The world that Superman is trapped in is particularly bizarre – a world where Jonathan Kent (Pa, not son) died when Clark was young, but his friendship with Lex Luthor continued until adulthood, and in which Lex winds up marrying Lois Lane. Eventually, this last bit is what stretches credulity too much for Superman to accept the fantasy, but it’s really odd to think that Maxima’s people would think that’s a world that would keep Superman placated.

I’m not crazy about spinning Maxima back into a villain. She went through her reformation arc, was a member of Jurgens’ iteration of the Justice League, and fought with him against Doomsday. To see her revert back to the callous creature she was when she first appeared and then to align with the Cyborg, of all people, is kind of bothersome to me. Recidivism may be sadly realistic, but it’s not something I particularly care for in superhero stories – I prefer a world with a bit of hope behind it. 

Bruno Redondo, whose run with Tom Taylor on Nightwing is going to go down as one of the all-time great comic book collaborations, kills it with this story. I love his Superman, his Metropolis, his Justice League. I wouldn’t mind at all seeing him do an extended run on Superman.

I enjoyed this treasury for the most part, and I always like seeing Jon as a kid, where he worked the best. It will be interesting to see where DC goes with the format after this.

Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl #3 continues the story of Lesla-Lar, who is outraged that even though the people of Midvale have bought into her lies about Kara (even calling her “Phoneygirl”), they STILL prefer Kara to her. There’s some meta commentary in there, I think, that works well with this character, whose compassion is her greatest power. We see that a few times in the issue, such as with her interactions with Lena Luthor – still a friend despite who her dad is – and even with Lesla herself. The last scene in the comic is a great example of Supergirl’s capacity for forgiveness, something that I think runs through the best stories with her.

Mark Waid’s Superboy tales continue in Action Comics #1088. With his career as Superboy slowly taking off, Clark Kent is meanwhile forced to face the greatest challenge of all: high school. The Smallville school district has recently built a new, larger school that consolidated three high schools in the area, and so the hierarchy of high school life is totally upended, with Clark struggling to find his place in it. It’s a nice trick by Waid, allowing him to play with the tropes of making Clark the “new kid” without having to fabricate some excuse for him to have recently moved to town, something that wouldn’t really make sense in any incarnation of the character. The final page is a nice little surprise, and something that’s got me very curious as to where, exactly, Waid intends to take this story. But I’m certainly excited to see where it goes.

TV Episode: The Adventures of Superman Season 3, Episode 3, “The Lucky Cat.”

Notes: MeTV has started airing old episodes of The Adventures of Superman on Saturday nights after Star Trek. I have nothing to say about this, except that it makes me very happy.

Sun. July 13

Comic: Absolute Superman #9

Notes: This was the last of this week’s new Superman books, and it’s becoming kind of an oddity. In this issue we have Kal-El, wounded from the Kryptonite bullets last issue, taken in by the Omega Men in an effort to save his life. The battle to do so, though, turns not into merely a life-or-death situation for Kal-El, but a symbol of the legacy of Krypton itself. After the opening scenes, we see Kal-El bonding with Jimmy Olsen, aka Agent Alpha of the Omega Men, who fills us in on what it’s like living day-to-day in what TV Tropes would call a Crapsack World like the Absolute Universe.

I’m trying to wrap my brain around how, exactly, the Absolute Universe works. It’s still less than a year old, and the six titles have not directly crossed over yet, which is probably a good thing. With an endeavor of this nature, it’s best that each title stand on its own before they lean too heavily into the interconnectedness of it all. But as a friend of mine recently pointed out to me, it doesn’t really feel like ANY of the Absolute titles take place on the same Earth. The giant alien dome from Absolute Green Lantern feels like it should have at least been MENTIONED somewhere else. Same with the enormous monsters Wonder Woman is fighting in her book. And while the Gotham of Absolute Batman is very dark, it’s not necessarily the same flavor of dark as we’re getting here or in Absolute Flash. And Absolute Martian Manhunter feels more like a psychedelic trip that’s spinning from Deniz Camp’s mind than anything else – if they had just called it something else and made it a Black Label book, I don’t think anyone would have noticed the difference. 

The Absolute comics seems to be doing well, and that’s a good thing. I’m just a bit concerned that I can’t get a feeling for where this universe is going. 

Mon. July 14

Short Films: Eleventh Hour (1942), Destruction, Inc. (1942), The Mummy Strikes (1943), Jungle Drums (1943), The Underground World (1943), The Secret Agent (1943)

Notes: With the main event behind me, I decide to spend this Monday getting in some more of the classic Flesicher shorts. I kick off the mini-marathon with Eleventh Hour, another of the World War II-era shorts. Oddly, this one does something that we haven’t seen since the very first of the shorts: a recap of Superman’s origin. It’s oddly out of place, and I can’t imagine it was really necessary even in 1942, not after the shorts had become so popular. I honestly wonder if they popped it back in because the film ran short. 

This is another one with Lois and Superman running afoul of the Japanese army. As Superman works to take down some of their operations, they capture Lois and post warnings that if he continues his attacks, they’ll execute her. Superman doesn’t see the notices until he wrecks a  battleship that’s still under construction, and he winds up having to swoop in and save Lois from a firing squad. 

It was World War II. The depictions of the Japanese soldiers are, to put it mildly, somewhat insensitive. But in the context of the time, it’s still got the amazing animation that you look for from Fleischer, and an interesting bit where Superman is temporarily caught under an avalanche of steel beams, something that his later power levels would make nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

Wartime worries remain in Destruction, Inc. This time out, the night watchman at a Metropolis munitions plant is found murdered. Lois goes undercover in the plant to investigate, where she quickly runs afoul of spies trying to undermine the American war effort. She’s captured and placed inside a dummy torpedo that’s about to be fired in a demonstration. Superman has to race through the water to catch the torpedo before it can collide with a derelict ship with Lois inside! With Lois safe, it’s time for Superman to turn his attention to the saboteurs.

There’s a nice change of pace here, dropping the Japanese angle while still telling a distinct wartime story. We also see how clever Lois can be, seeing right through a disguise Clark is wearing to hide in the plant himself (although still being unable to see past the glasses.) I think my favorite bit in this one is a short comedy routine where Clark encounters “Lewis,” a character that looks like he rolled out of a Looney Tunes short who gets momentarily offended when he think Clark calls him “Lois.” It’s an utterly ridiculous moment that adds nothing to the short except for a few seconds of levity, but honestly, what’s wrong with that?

Hallelujah, war is over! Or at least on pause, for 1943’s The Mummy Strikes. Clark is called to the Metropolis museum to investigate the death of a recently-murdered archaeologist. Lois, not buying Clark’s excuse of going to see “the doctor,” follows him to the museum where the curator tells Clark the story of the oath taken by the guards of a child prince in Ancient Egypt. When the child died of illness, his guards killed themselves so that they may guard him in the valley of the dead. The late Dr. Jordan, it seems, had violated an ancient warning against opening the pharaoh’s tomb. When Clark and the curator accidentally do the same, his mummified guards come to life and attack!

I love this short. It’s so great to see Superman have to fight a real supernatural menace after so many shorts focusing on the war, and the mummies themselves (a more classical case, not the sort that we think of as being terminally wrapped in bandages and decaying) are legitimately creepy as they swarm in on Lois and the curator. My only real disappointment is that the final battle is so short. The buildup is great, with Clark learning about the history of the pharaoh, but when the battle finally happens it’s over almost before it’s begun.

  Sadly, the war is back on in Jungle Drums. Once again, it starts with the recap of his origin before the story starts. In this one, Lois is aboard an army plane that’s shot down in the jungle by a hidden Nazi base. Entrusted with important papers, she’s captured by natives in the shadows and brought to the Nazis, who threaten her with torture to get the papers. When she refuses, they turn her back over to the natives. When Clark happens to fly by in the next plane, they see the wreck of Lois’s aircraft. Clark’s “Lois sense” alerts him to the fact that she’s gotten herself into even more trouble, and Clark jumps out of the plane so that Superman can save the day.

Credit to Lois here: even in the face of what seems to be certain death, she sticks to her guns and refuses to betray her country. She shouts insults at the bad guy leader as she’s about to be burned at the stake. She even manages to free herself and radio for help even before Superman intervenes. If all you’re looking at is the treatment of Lois Lane, this is a FANTASTIC cartoon. But as is to be expected for a cartoon from 1943, the depiction of the jungle natives makes the treatment of the Japanese seem reasoned and sensitive by comparison. As always, I hate to judge a work from the past by modern standards, but sometimes it just makes you prickle to watch. 

The Underground World is loosely based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ story “At the Earth’s Core,” which is fun for me. There’s something about these “hidden civilization at the center of the Earth” stories that I usually enjoy, so tossing Superman into one is like a visual Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for me. Lois joins an archaeologist (lots of those in Metropolis) on an excursion deep into the Earth, where they find a civilization of winged hawk men (not to be confused with Hawkman). Clark, meanwhile, goes down of his own accord, no doubt expecting that Lois is going to get up to her neck in trouble again. He manages to save them just before the hawks dunk them like an Oreo in a pool of molten lava. I seem to be using a lot of snack food metaphors in this writeup. That’s what I get for watching these cartoons right before lunch. In the end, the worst part is that the editor praises Lois’s story, then burns it, saying no one will ever believe it. Considering some of the other stuff they publish in the Daily Planet, that seems kind of capricious. 

And finally, sadly, comes the last of the Fleischer Superman shorts, Secret Agent. In a nice change of pace, a group of Nazi agents with a leader who, based on his appearance, was probably named “Schmadolf Schmitler,” captures Clark Kent instead of Lois! In fact, Lois doesn’t even APPEAR in this cartoon, just an American agent who looks and sounds exactly like her, except for having blond hair. The funny thing is, as with most of these cartoons, Clark doesn’t go into action as Superman until the last few minutes, with the rest of it being setup. However, with Lois absent and Clark tied up, if only watched the middle section of this, there’s not even anything that would identify it as being a Superman cartoon. I suppose it would have strained credulity a bit to have Lois undercover for six months, but it does lead to an odd feeling that Superman was an afterthought.

And thus, we end our adventure in the world of Fleischer Studios. These cartoons were outrageously expensive for the time, but aside from those episodes that include unfortunate racial depictions, they’re still pretty glorious today. The animation is on point, the voice acting is delightful…this is the Superman for that generation, and for quite a few after it, and deservedly so. 

Comics: JSA Vol. 2 #7 (Superman, Power Girl Appearances), Four Star Spectacular #6 (Superboy and Krypto)

Tues. July 15

TV Episode: Superman and Lois Season 3, Episode 1, “Closer”

Notes: We pick up about a month after the previous season ended, with Lana settling in as mayor of Smallville, Kyle and John Henry each settling into homes of their own, Sam Lane shutting down the X-Kryptonite mines, and Clark and Lois sharing the new Fortress of Solitude with their boys, including the new actor playing Jonathan. Clark has gotten a job at the Smallville Gazette alongside his wife, and Lois sets out to investigate Intergang leader Bruno Mannheim in Metropolis, starting by pretending to need a doctor’s appointment to try to talk to the sister of this universe’s John Henry, one of Mannheim’s likely victims.

Coming off of seeing Superman just a few days ago, I find myself comparing Bitsie Tulloch’s Lois to Rachel Brosnahan, and it’s not really a fair comparison. Tulloch is good at the part, and she’s the perfect Lois for this show, but she’s playing the part of a reporter as opposed to actually behaving like one. Lying about who she is to talk to a potential source is the kind of thing that TV writers think reporters do, but is sort of frowned on in real life. It feels less like real behavior on her part and more of an excuse to get her into a doctor’s office so they can drop this episode’s big bombshell: that Lois may be pregnant.

Both John Henry and Lana figure out that Lois may be pregnant within minutes of talking to Clark and Lois (respectively), which makes you wonder exactly how they’ve held the biggest secret on the planet under their belts for the last twenty years. But the character moments here are good. Each of them gets a scene to process the news, each of them coming to embrace it on their own, which in TV terms feels like a damn guarantee that either she’s not pregnant after all or that Lois is going to lose the baby. (At the end of the episode, it turns out to be the former.) 

We also see some nice scenes of the Kent parents tutoring their kids – Lois teaching Jonathan to drive while Clark gives Jordan some flying lessons, which get out of hand when Jordan nearly reveals himself in Malaysia. This does lead to an odd question, of course: is Jordan not going for his driver’s license? Okay, he’s the Boy Who Can Fly, but most people don’t know that. Did nobody think it was odd that one of a pair of twins with the same birthday is going for his license but not the other?  Especially since the second half of the episode is centered around their shared 16th birthday barbecue?

The oddest relationship development we see here comes when Sam Lane, recognizing that his counterpart on John Henry’s Earth was Natalie’s grandfather, starts trying to bond with the girl. They’re not wrong about their relationship, of course, but to date most of the exploration of that particular quirk of this series has come from Nat lamenting the fact that our Lois isn’t her mother and that her real mother is gone. Seeing Sam step into that grandfather role is kind of surprising, but oddly charming. It’s a bit undermined a few scenes later when Sam tries to convince Natalie to enroll in the DOD Academy. Natalie is put off by it, of course, feeling like Sam’s attempt at closeness was just a ruse, but I like the way they play his character. While it’s true that he wants Natalie to go to the Academy, you also get the impression that his interest and concern for her is genuine, that he sincerely means it when he tells her how much he respects her intelligence and wants to see her using it for the better good. I can easily picture him behaving exactly the same way were she “really” his granddaughter, which is pretty close to him doing his best to be a good grandpa in these scenes.  

I remember hearing when Jordan Elsass (as Jonathan) left the show and was replaced by Michael Bishop, but I don’t remember the circumstances behind the replacement. I wasn’t paying attention to the show at that point, as I was desperately behind on viewing it. I’m not sure if I’m sold on the new guy, though. Elsass had a kind of classic jock look to him, and occasionally exhibited the same behavior when the episode called for it. Bishop’s Jonathan has less of an edge, coming off as more laid-back and less athletic. I have a difficult time picturing him in football pads, which wouldn’t be a problem if not for the fact that he’s ostensibly the same Jonathan that’s been jocking all over the series for two seasons now, or that the comedy in his driving test scene comes from him sharing the car with his former football coach (who, of course, has never had a scene with this actor before).

The relationship between Sarah and Jordan gets its own pair of scenes and, I’ve gotta be honest, I’m getting less and less on Sarah’s side as this series continues. She breaks up with Jordan (that’s fair, but let’s not pretend that their relationship issues didn’t start when SHE cheated on HIM), then at his birthday party she asks why he’s been ignoring her, because she doesn’t want it to be “awkward.” Jordan has the surprisingly insightful reply of “it IS awkward; I want to be with you but you don’t want to be with me.” To which she replies, “I just need some space.”

HE WAS GIVING YOU SPACE, SARAH, BUT YOU GOT MAD BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT HE WAS IGNORING YOU.

Between TV shows like this one and my job as a high school teacher, I spend an awful lot of my time thanking God that I’m never going to be a teenager again.

We don’t get any real Superman action – or even a hint as to what the story behind this season will be – until the last 15 minutes or so, When Clark is called away from the twins’ birthday to face off against a new metahuman in Metropolis who turns out to be a crook he’s caught before that seems to have been juiced up. Opening up a little mystery is a good thing, hopefully it’ll pay off as the season progresses. 

The movie is out, but the year isn’t nearly over yet. With five and a half months left you can expect more theme weeks, more discussion of the movies and TV shows I haven’t watched yet, a few outside-the-box choices, and an absolute mountain of comics coming your way. The Year of Superman continues in seven days!

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

It’s probably going to be another random week friends. The first full week of summer vacation is upon me, but that really just means it’s time for me to get work done that I haven’t been able to get around to while school was in session. So the Superman blog this week, rather than following any theme, is just going to be whatever I’m in the mood for on the day, beginning with the new Superman-related comics that hit the stands on May 28. 

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

Wed., May 28

Comics: Superman Vol. 6 #26, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #7, Green Lantern Vol. 8 #21 (Superboy guest appearance)

Notes: The Joshua Williamson era continues in the main Superman title with part one of “Superman Red.” Following the chaotic events of issue #25, things are in upheaval in Superman’s world. Lois’s Superwoman powers are gone, burned out, and while she says she’s accepting returning to a normal life, she’s hiding a private struggle. Superman, meanwhile, is in trouble – the emotional turmoil he’s been in lately has activated the Red Kryptonite that’s been lying dormant in his system for some time (seriously, I’d actually forgotten about it), and as is always the case with Red K, there’s no telling what can happen. We also get a series of “interludes” showing various other characters and how they connect to what’s going on, such as Supergirl returning to Midvale (I assume this takes place immediately before issue #1 of her new series, although it doesn’t specifically say so), a powerless General Zod in space fighting to save his ship from a Khund invasion, and Darkseid’s Legion of Super-Heroes (from the DC All In Special) having a little nasty fun.   

This first chapter of the storyline seems intended mainly to restack the characters and where we are. We get glimpses of just about everybody, a confirmation of the current status quo, but little forward momentum until the final few pages. As such, it’s not quite as gripping as the previous issue. It also doesn’t help that we cycle through three different artists in the book. Last issue did the same, but it felt more like an All Star lineup, whereas this issue feels more like “we’re running out of time, who’s available?” None of the artists are BAD, but their styles are too distinct from one another, making it a bit jarring to read. 

But Williamson’s run has been really good and earned a lot of good will from me. One misstep isn’t going to shatter my enjoyment of this series. 

“We Are Yesterday” continues in Justice League Unlimited #7. Grodd has used Air Wave’s powers to toss the members of the JLU throughout time, hurling some of them to the distant past, others to the far future. As they fight in small pods to stay alive, in the present day Grodd’s time-plucked Legion of Doom is poised to use the Watchtower in his bid to absorb the energies left behind in the wake of Darkseid’s destruction (once again, from the DC All In Special. Really, folks, if you haven’t read that one, I feel like you’re gonna be struggling to understand a LOT of DC Comics right now.) 

Despite this storyline being an explicit crossover with World’s Finest, the focus here isn’t on Batman and Superman. In fact, if anything, Grodd is the main character, making his play while we only glimpse the heroes in the various eras in which they’ve been thrown…that is, until a voice somehow begins to link these heroes across time. 

In the first issue of this book, Mark Waid set up the obscure character Air Wave as being a traitor to the League. In this crossover we found out why the young man had turned on our heroes, and this issue continues his story. I absolutely love the way that Waid has not only made a character who was barely even a footnote in DC history into a major player, but also the work he’s doing to rehabilitate him. It all builds up to a last page that should be exciting to anybody who’s a fan of DC in ANY time period. I eagerly await the conclusion of “We Are Yesterday.”

Thur., May 29

TV Episodes: Superman and Lois Season 2, Ep. 10, “Bizarros in a Bizarro World”, Ep. 11, “Truth and Consequences.”

Notes: Coming back to Superman and Lois today, it seems that episode 10 is here to show us what Clark was up to during the time he was missing, which we saw on our Earth in episode 9. After passing through the portal, he winds up on a bizarre (get it?) alternate world where everything is backwards and the planet itself is a cube. He goes to his counterpart’s fortress in the arctic, encountering a hologram of the other Kal-El’s mother. He teams up with Bizarro-Jon (who has powers on this world) to try to track down Ally Allston before she can merge with her counterpart in this universe, a task made more difficult by this world’s red sun sapping his powers. It gets worse when (in a series of flashbacks to the lives of the El family of Bizarro-World) we learn that Jon is actually working with Ally.  

The way they turn the world on its ear in this episode is really unexpected. Kal-El is not just a hero, but a celebrity. Tal, his brother, is a part of his life, even as Lois and the boys have drifted away from him. Oh, and in this world, it’s Jon who has powers instead of Jordan. There are a lot of jumps to different points in the timeline, but it’s not particularly difficult to follow. Bizarro-Jon sports a look that echoes Conner Kent’s vibe from the 90s, and his attitude is similar – a little bit punk, but still seeming good-hearted until we discover the turn. And it’s interesting to turn the characters on their ear. It ends with Bizarro-Jon being sent to our Earth to merge with his other self, tying the end of this episode to the previous one.

If nothing else, I’ve gotta love this episode for the simple fact that we actually saw a square Bizarro World in a live-action Superman show. Never thought I would see the day.

Episode 11 starts with Bizarro-Jon trying to force a fusion with our Jon, but Clark makes it back through the portal to stop him just in time.  Bizarro-Jon escapes and tries to figure out how to lure our Jon into a trap, leading up to him kidnapping Lana to use as bait. Sarah turns to Lois for help finding her mother, and Jordan chooses the absolute worst possible time to try to get back together with her. Superman tracks B.J.  (callin’ him “B.J.” now, by the way) down to the slaughterhouse where he’s keeping Lana,  but gets caught in his trap, defending Lana from an explosion full of what turns out to be Kryptonite debris.  B.J. goes after Jonathan, leaving only Jordan to defend his brother. 

The last act of this issue is a really great bit, split between three action scenes at once: Jordan vs. B.J. while Lois calls to Clark for help, Lana trying to pick the chunks of Kryptonite out of Superman’s flesh as he can hear his family in danger, and John Henry and Natasha – sans armor – facing off with a super-powered Bizarro Lana. (It’s a thing.) The episode cuts between these three scenes quickly, building out that tension. I think my favorite bit of it all is watching Jordan come into his own, defending his brother, fighting like a true son of Superman. 

Oh – and it ends with Clark making a preeeeeetty big decision. Season two of this series started off slow, but the back half is really coming together. 

Comics: Justice League of America #24, Superman #10, New Adventures of Superboy #35

Fri. May 30

Movie: Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987)

Notes: Well, I’ve watched all the other movies in this series – I suppose that I’ve got to complete the set, right? Let’s talk about The Quest For Peace.

In Superman IV, Lex Luthor is broken out of prison once again, this time by his bumbling nephew, Lenny (Jon Cryer), who he brings along in his latest effort to destroy Superman. In Metropolis, the Daily Planet has been bought out by an industrialist who puts his daughter, Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemingway), in charge of turning the paper into more of a sensationalist tabloid. At the same time, a random kid worried about the nuclear arms race writes a letter to Superman asking him to do something about it. Superman decides to gather up the world’s nuclear arsenals and hurl them into the sun, because most governments are pretty cooperative when a private citizen tries to convince them to disarm themselves. Lex and Lenny, meanwhile, steal a piece of Superman’s hair from a museum display and attach a device to one of the rockets that creates an atomic-powered “Nuclear Man” that they pit against the Man of Steel. 

There are few people, I think, who would argue that Superman IV is a good movie. (There are, oddly, some people who argue that it’s better than Superman III, but I contend that the junkyard fight alone is superior to any single frame of Superman IV.) It’s produced by Cannon Films, a studio that famously made wild movies on a low budget. Kind of like the Asylum today, only with more cocaine. The movie introduces a slew of new characters, none of whom work: Lex’s nephew Lenny (Jon Cryer, bizarrely, would actually grow up to play a pretty darn good Lex Luthor on the Supergirl TV show), Mariel Hemmingway as a totally superfluous fourth corner to the Superman/Lois/Clark love triangle, Mark Pillow as a villain who really should have been Bizarro, and so forth. 

That said, Christopher Reeve is still Christopher Reeve. He still has the cool charm that he brought to the character and every moment we see him in costume is a treat. The most earnest part of the film, though, comes at the very beginning, when Clark returns to Smallville. Martha, it seems, has passed away, and he’s going to sell the family farm, but is refusing to sell it to a developer, instead wanting to hold out for a farmer. There’s no real relevance to the overall plot, but I suppose it fits in thematically with the larger story about the dangers of progress for the sake of progress. Whatever it is, I’m glad it’s there – it’s a nice little touchstone that feels more like it belongs in the same universe as the earlier films than much of the rest of it. 

Unfortunately, Reeve is still working with a lousy script, full of unfunny jokes and out of character moments. The worst bit, to me, is when he reverses the erasure of Lois’s memories from the end of Superman II. It starts out as kind of a nice moment, taking her flying again and showing her the world. Then it falls apart when we realize he’s only done so to ask her advice, then promptly re-kisses her and wipes her memory again. I’ve never really liked that “amnesia kiss” power they cooked up for the movie, and I don’t particularly like the idea of Superman tampering with Lois’s mind, but I sort of accept it as the way to restore the status quo at the end of Superman II. The way it’s used here, though, messing with her memories over and over just to unburden himself, feels terribly unlike Superman. If all he wants is to talk to her, it seems like he could have done that – as Superman – without toying with her memory. But he does, and for the sake of pretty trite advice: “You always do the right thing.” It even makes me question if this is the FIRST time he’s done this to her, or if he would do so again. The whole process, knowing he’s just going to wipe her memory again, seems terribly cruel, and that one scene brings down a movie that already wasn’t flying very high. 

Reeve himself helped write the story for this one, although he also conceded that the final film fell apart. And it’s a real tragedy, too, as this would be the last time he played Superman. As a kid I held out hope that he’d come back – especially since the first Michael Keaton Batman movie hit theaters only two years later, fueling hope for a World’s Finest – but the accident that put him in a wheelchair ended those hopes for good. Still, there was a majesty to Christopher Reeve that made him forever the Superman of my generation. Last year, DC Studios released a documentary about him, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which I was lucky enough to catch during its brief theatrical engagement. If you’ve never seen it, it’s on Max now, and gets my highest possible recommendation. I’ll definitely be revisiting it before this Year of Superman is over. 

Comic: Superman Family #208

Sat., May 31st

Comics: Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #14, Justice League of America #25, World’s Finest Comics #306

Notes: Can we, just, for a second?

Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #14.

Lois Lane. Hard-nosed, crusading reporter for the Daily Planet. The top of her profession. The pinnacle of her career. And yet all three stories in this issue – ALL THREE – revolve around “Golly, why won’t Superman marry me?”

In the first story, Superman takes her for a visit to the Fortress of Solitude, where she deliberately exposes herself to radiation that will make sunlight fatal to her, necessitating that she stay in the Fortress until it wears off. Her plan is to prove that she’s safe in the Fortress, and therefore, Superman will marry her. Because THAT’S what the obstacle has been.

In the second story, Lois pretends to fall in love with some random G.I. in the hopes of making Superman jealous. That’s just cruel, Lois.

And in the third story, Supergirl (because it’s not enough to paint ONE woman in a bad light) is still in the era where she’s living at Midvale Orphanage and lamenting the fact that she has no parents. Then she gets a brainstorm: if Superman marries Lois, the two of THEM can adopt her! So SHE starts trying to gaslight her cousin into marrying Lois Lane. Bafflingly, this includes sending Lois a Batwoman costume and pretending it was a gift from Batman.

I know it was the time period. I know this is just what comic book stories of the Silver Age were like. But Jehoshaphat, you’d think at SOME point, SOMEBODY would have said, “Guys, can we think of maybe a SECOND motivation for Lois for a few of these stories?” 

Sun., June 1

Animated Short: Terror on the Midway (1942), Japoteurs (1942), Showdown (1942)

Notes: The Fleischer Superman shorts continued in 1942 with Terror on the Midway. For once eschewing the supervillains and natural disasters, in this short Lois and Clark are attending a local carnival when the sideshow’s bloodthirsty gorilla gets loose and begins causing havoc. He frees more animals, horrifies the audience, and begins chasing after a little girl that Lois rescues. (It’s a far more valiant Lois we see in these 1940s-era cartoons than we did in any of the comic books of the Silver Age.) Lois manages to save the girl, but now the gorilla has his sights on her.

This is one of my favorites of the Fleischer era. The animation on the animals is exquisite, with Superman tangling with realistic lions and panthers as Lois flees from a truly frightening gorilla. There’s even an odd moment where the elephants do a conga line – a typical circus stunt, but it still feels more in-line with a Looney Tunes short than Superman. Still, even then, the elephants maintain their basically realistic appearance.

The cartoon looks great, and it’s a nice departure for the Superman cartoons. I hesitate to call it the BEST of them, but it’s certainly one of the ones I enjoy the most.

1942 also gave us Japoteurs, however, probably the most problematic of the Fleischer shorts through modern eyes. In this one, the United States unveils the world’s largest bombing plane, a vital concern in the World War II-era in which this takes place. Lois and Clark board the enormous plane for its maiden voyage, but a group of Japanese saboteurs have a plan to hijack it. As the pretty stereotypical saboteurs take the plane, Clark is left on the ground, whereas Lois radios for help. Superman, naturally, takes to the skies and goes after the plane. (Incidentally, this cartoon CLEARLY shows him flying to catch up to the bomber – please explain to me all those previous cartoons where he took a TAXI to the scene of a disaster.) Superman saves Lois and thwarts the saboteurs, making the world safe for democracy.

I don’t like tearing down a movie, book, or anything else because it reflects the values of a different time. From the perspective of a 1942 audience, the cartoon is still lavishly, lovingly animated, one of the best-looking shorts ever made, and both Lois and Clark are portrayed well and in-character. I don’t even object to the portrayal of a Japanese enemy since, y’know, at the time they WERE. And while there are certainly cartoons of the era with WORSE portrayals of the Japanese, it’s unfortunate how the animators for this one leaned into the stereotypes instead of working as hard to make the characters as realistic as they did, say, the animals in Terror on the Midway. 

 Showdown, which was released later that year, is far better. A crook in a Superman costume begins committing a series of crimes, tarnishing the reputation of the Man of Steel, forcing him to step up and clear his name. The imposter makes the mistake of trying to rob the audience at the opera, in which Lois and Clark (lucky him!) are in attendance.

I love the attention to detail in these cartoons. If this short had been made in the 60s, the imposter would have looked EXACTLY like Superman, either because of a rubber Scooby-Doo type mask or because of the sort of ridiculously contrived duplicates that appeared in the Silver Age comics every other month. But here, the imposter has his own distinct look and facial structure – there’s no way anyone would mistake him for Superman up-close. When he’s in action, we usually see him from a distance, from behind…and even then, his hairline is very different from Superman’s, coming to a widow’s peak in the front. 

The scene where Superman faces off against his imposter on the rooftop is fantastic – he marches on him slowly, imposingly, without saying a word. It’s as if the bad guy is being stalked by Michael Myers rather than Superman, and he continues babbling in fear the whole time. Then we get to the final scene, in which Superman forces him to take him to his boss, who has a convenient trap door beneath his mansion. As if that’s gonna stop him.

I almost wonder if Bud Collyer was unavailable to record for this short. He has almost no lines, even while chasing the villains. On the other hand, it’s not like Superman is always a chatterbox in the other Fleischer shorts either, so maybe it’s just a little more noticeable this time.

Whatever the case, I enjoy this cartoon a lot. 

Mon., June 2

Graphic Novel: Superman: Kryptonite Nevermore (Reprints Superman #233-238, #240-242)

Notes: It’s been kind of light for me this week, so today I decided to dip into a longer storyline from the early Bronze Age, the classic “Kryptonite Nevermore” arc by Dennis O’Neil and the legendary art team of Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, although for once a mention has to be made of the editor. I’ve talked about Julius Schwartz before, but this was the arc in which he took over Superman’s adventures, and with it, he brought some big changes. According to the introduction by Paul Levitz, Schwartz wanted to streamline the books, de-emphasizing the other Kryptonians like the Kandorians and the Phantom Zone criminals, moving away from sillier Silver Age accouterments such as the legion of Superman robots at the Fortress of Solitude, updating Clark Kent’s occupation from newspaper reporter to the more modern TV news anchor, and doing something about all those crazy colors of Kryptonite that had flourished under previous editorial administrations. Schwartz brought in O’Neil to do the task, along with a pretty legendary cover by Neal Adams, and while I never had a problem with any of the things that Schwartz blotted out and I’m quite happy that they eventually made their way back, the stories that reshaped Superman were pretty solid. I guess the boring Bronze Age I’ve mentioned before would come later.

Things kick right off in Superman #233 where, in the first few pages, an explosion somehow causes a chain reaction that transforms all the Kryptonite on Earth into harmless iron. Superman is thrilled, of course, that his one weakness has been eliminated, but what he doesn’t realize at first is that the same explosion has created a duplicate of himself, rising from the sand in the desert where the explosion took place. That same day, Galaxy Broadcasting’s president Morgan Edge (which recently bought The Daily Planet) reassigns Clark Kent from the print beat to covering news for WGBS-TV, a complication he doesn’t welcome. Clark became a reporter, in part, so that he would be able to swiftly escape without suspicion when Superman was needed. A newspaperman can do that – an on-air broadcast talent not so much. Things get more difficult in the second chapter, when a sudden weakness overcomes him while trying to save an island from an erupting volcano. Superman doesn’t know it yet, but his weakness corresponds to the sand creature beginning to use Superman’s powers itself. And that’s just the beginning. 

For the early 70s, this story goes on quite a long time, from issue #233 through #242, nine issues in total (skipping issue #239, which was an issue of reprints). And while most of the stories are essentially self-contained, the arc regarding the sand creature slowly builds over time. Superman encounters it again and again, each time getting a little weaker, and each time watching the sand creature slowly become more “fully” him…with the exception of his utter apathy towards the betterment of humankind. Eventually, Superman and the Sand Creature face off, with a warning that were they to touch, it might trigger a catastrophic chain reaction. Wonder Woman’s mentor of the period, I-Ching, offers to remove that problem and the ensuing battle nearly destroys the world…until I-Ching reveals it was merely a hallucination he created, a warning about what would happen were the two of them to come to blows. (Take THAT, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II.) Realizing the futility of battle, the Sand Creature agrees to leave Earth and does so, taking half of Superman’s power with him.

This was the last part of the “streamlining” that Schwartz and O’Neil had orchestrated. Superman, they decided, had grown too powerful, and they wanted a story reason to explain the decrease in his power level, rather than just writing him as being less effective out of the blue. I appreciate that, and I’m sure most of the readers of the time did as well. Of course, just like the way they eliminated the other Kryptonians and Kryptonite and all the rest of it, over time his power levels started to crank up again. When John Byrne rebooted Superman in ‘86, once again, they ticked his power levels down a notch or two. These days, as I’ve said before, he’s probably about as powerful as he’s ever been, and I honestly have no problem with that. I know the mantra of the unimaginative – those who whine that Superman is “too powerful” and that somehow makes him boring. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: his power isn’t what makes Superman a great hero, it’s the exploration of character behind someone who has that power and still remains a hero that I find intriguing. 

So ultimately, was this story strictly necessary? I have to contend that it was not.

But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. 

Tues., June 3

Comics: Superman Special (1992) #1, Adventure Comics #103

Notes: Having read Kryptonite Nevermore yesterday, I thought that today it might be fun to revisit the “remake” of that story in the Post-Crisis, Post-Man of Steel era. In 1992’s Superman Special, Walt Simonson essentially writes and draws a condensed version of that epic, shrunk from nine issues to a single double-sized event, and updated for the Superman comics of the time. So we see things like Jimmy Olsen palling around with the Newsboy Legion at Cadmus and Lex Luthor in his businessman era. However, this story was clearly set in the “recent past,” as by the time it came out in 1992 Luthor was believed to be dead, having been replaced by his “son,” and Lois and Clark are not yet engaged, nor does she know his secret identity. 

In fact, it seems like the story begins shortly after the end of the “Exile” storyline, which concluded in 1989. In that story, Superman left Earth after suffering a breakdown after executing three Kryptonian criminals in a parallel universe (we’ll be getting to that story sooner or later). Finally healing, he returned to Earth. As this special begins, we see him in his Fortress of Solitude, creating a monument to the criminals he put to death and vowing never to do such a thing again. From there, familiar beats start to show up: an odd energy experiment leaves Superman lying in the sand, an imprint of his body rising up and gaining sentience. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor (whose Lexcorp was behind the experiment this time) finds that his Kryptonite has been transformed to lead. Superman is thrilled at first, but then finds his powers beginning to fade one at a time. Simultaneously, the Sand Creature appears in Metropolis, gaining Superman’s powers. Luthor manipulates the Sand Creature into attacking Superman, seeing an opportunity to finally put his enemy to rest. The two of them eventually take the fight to the Fortress, where the Sand Creature continues to absorb Superman’s powers, eventually leaving him helpless and seemingly dead. 

But this time around, the Creature is absorbing Superman’s personality as well as his powers – his memories, his respect for life, and the sight of the memorial to the criminals reminds him of Superman’s vow never to take a life. The creature breaks down in tears and there’s a brilliant (and ambiguous) flash of light. On the next page, Superman returns to Lexcorp, where he tells Luthor his latest plan was a flop. 

The story is good, and I love Simonson’s art. He’s got a flair for sci-fi/fantasy, honed by his time on Thor, no doubt, that is a really good fit for this storyline. But to me the really interesting thing about this isn’t the comic itself, but rather the culture that briefly sprung up around it. I don’t know exactly how this book came about, but the story is that it was originally intended for an annual that kept getting delayed for some reason until it was eventually released as a standalone special. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. What I DO know is this: the book came out only months before the Death of Superman story (you may have heard of that one), and even had a “Doomsday is Coming!” logo in the UPC box on the direct edition copies. 

The timing, plus the logo, fed a MASSIVE speculator rush around this book on the nascent internet (I was on Prodigy at the time, if you remember that one). Simonson – deliberately or not – ended the book on a kind of vague beat. In the original storyline, we actually see the Sand Creature, still with its sandy exterior visible, depart Earth for another world. In this book, though, by the end the Creature has COMPLETELY transformed into a Superman doppelganger and is absorbing his memories along with his powers. The last we see of him is the Creature cradling Superman’s unconscious body, then a flash of light. On the next page Superman – hale and hearty – shows up in Luthor’s office. The theory, as I’m sure you can imagine, was going to be that the Creature had REPLACED Superman, to the point where it actually believed it WAS the original, and that the Superman who died fighting Doomsday was going to turn out to be the Sand Creature. The real Superman, then, would be elsewhere – perhaps having no memories or powers, wandering the country or something, and we would have discovered we’d been following the adventures of the Sand Creature for the last few years. 

It honestly wasn’t a bad theory, and it was a theory I fully supported for a time. It certainly made more sense than the people who rushed on Superman #66 (the end of “Panic in the Sky”) because they thought that Doomsday came from the device launched at the end, even though they would have known what the device REALLY was had they simply bothered to read Superman #67. There was nothing to dispute the Sand Creature theory until the comics finally made it clear that they weren’t going in that direction. But for a hot minute, this book was a must-have for the kind of people who only buy comic books in the hopes of reselling them for big bucks later. As I have a bit of distaste for those people, I do not feel sorry for them, being stuck with a book that would eventually become dollar bin fodder. But I hope that at least a few of them maybe wound up READING the comic, because it’s actually quite good. 

As Week 22 comes to an end, I find myself feeling another theme. get ready, guys, because I’m going for a big one this time, my favorite Superman spinoff series, the heroes of the 30th (and 31st) century, and most importantly, the kids who taught Superman to be a hero. Next week, it’s the Superman Family and the Legion of Super-Heroes!

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

Once more, my friends, it is the first weekend in May, and that means that tomorrow is one of my favorite Geek Days of the year. Tomorrow is FREE COMIC BOOK DAY here in North America. It’s a grand event, one that I have sincerely come to treasure, and I thought that I would tell you guys a little bit about what makes it so great, in case you haven’t heard already.

Over two decades ago, the comic book publishers, distributors, and shops of America began this little tradition, staking claim to the first Saturday in May as a time to share the love for comic books with one and all. On FCBD, the publishers release special edition comics, free of charge, to the fans. (They aren’t free to the store, though, so make sure you buy some stuff from them while you’re there.) Sometimes these FCBD specials are reprints of classic stories, sometimes they’re previews of upcoming comics, sometimes they’re excerpts from longer graphic novels, and sometimes they’re the launching pad for a new series, storyline, or event. The possibilities are truly endless, and every year I spend the weeks before FCBD checking out their website to see what this year’s offerings are going to be and which ones I want to make sure I don’t miss.

But that’s not really what makes FCBD so great to me. Oh, it’s GOOD. I love free stuff. Who DOESN’T love free stuff? But if that’s all there was to it, I wouldn’t have elevated it to my list of great events of the calendar year along with Christmas, J.R.R. Tolkien’s birthday, or the day in mid-August when Reese’s starts selling the Halloween pumpkins again. No, it’s much more important than that. Only a few years into the promotion FCBD began to evolve into more than just a carrot to dangle in front of customers to get them to drop in at their local comic book shop on a Saturday. Many shops started to expand the concept. They had their own sales. They had contests. They invited writers and artists to set up tables, sign books, meet fans, and sell merchandise. In short, the best shops on the planet have all transformed FCBD into an annual miniature comic book convention, and THAT’S why I love it so much.

I wrote a few months ago about how, as much as I appreciate larger shows like Fan Expo, I’ve started to find that the smaller conventions are the ones that hold more appeal to me as a comic book fan. Everything I like about small shows can be found at FCBD in microcosm. Sales, cosplayers, pros, and most importantly, hundreds of people who are just there because they like comic books and want to partake in comic books.

And much like other holidays, FCBD to me has become a time to spend with people who are important to you. Not relatives, not even your everyday friend group, but I’ve made friendships with a lot of people over the years that began on Free Comic Book Day. Let me tell you about my pal Vernon Smith, for instance. I first met Vernon at FCBD where I was set up at BSI Comics to record an episode of my old podcast (alas, I long for the days when there was enough quiet in my life to allow for some podcasting). Vernon, a local artist, was there to promote his self-published graphic novel, The Adventures of Dexter Breakfast. I interviewed him for the show, as I tried to do with all the guests in my podcast days, and we hung out for a while. And as the years passed, this started to happen more and more. It wasn’t only at FCBD, but also at local conventions, local shows, and other similar events. I became a fan, not only of his work, but of the fact that he’s a cool dude. I promoted his projects, such as his Action Labs Comics miniseries Bigfoot Frankenstein, or the variant cover he did for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Saturday Morning Adventures Halloween Special, as much as I could. When my wife was pregnant, Vernon was one of the first people outside of Erin and I to know what my son’s name was going to be, because that summer he released a children’s book called The Littlest Streetcar, and I had him sign a copy to the yet-unborn Edward. It’s still on his shelf. I call it “Eddie’s first collectible.”

A couple of years ago, I bumped into him at Fan Expo New Orleans, and when I told him I was there to sit in on a Star Trek panel, we started talking about what big Trek fans we both are. He told me how much he wanted to draw a Star Trek comic one day, and I wished him luck. And so I was thrilled, later that year, when IDW Publishing put out their Star Trek 500 special (celebrating 500 IDW issues of various Star Trek comics) to find out that Vernon drew the Strange New Worlds story in that issue. I was even happier, a few days ago, when he announced that he’s drawing two full issues of the upcoming Star Trek: Lower Decks comic – issues #9 and #10 in July and August, so go put your orders in. 

Guys, I don’t know how many of you can relate to this, but it feels SO GOOD to see your friends succeed this way. And I wouldn’t have had that relationship were it not for Free Comic Book Day. 

And this is just one example. There are at least a half-dozen other local creators who I’ve befriended and whose work I’ve grown to support – not just buying it myself, but talking it up to anybody else who’ll listen – and who I’ve joyfully seen tackle their goals. I’m singling Vernon out because he’s the one who has a project that is CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FOR ORDER, AND YOU SHOULD GO TELL YOUR COMIC BOOK SHOP TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU RESERVE COPIES FOR YOU RIGHT NOW, but he’s not the only one.

It’s a wonderful thing.

It’s stuff like this, friends, that really make FCBD worthwhile to me. Sure, freebies are great. But the community of people who’ve grown up to surround this event is far, far more meaningful. If you’re in the New Orleans area, come on down to BSI Comics tomorrow starting at 10 am. I’ll be there, along with Eddie, and if his new IDW-fueled jetsetting lifestyle slows down a bit, I think Vernon is going to be there too. Along with other friends of mine whose work you should definitely check out. If you’re not in New Orleans, go to the Free Comic Book Day website and find a comic book store near you that’s participating. And when you go, don’t just grab the freebies and leave. Support the store. Buy some stuff. Supports the local writers and artists. Check out their work. And most importantly, find your community. Find your people.

That’s going to be more memorable than this year’s Spider-Man freebie in the long run.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Oh yes, you will also be able to purchase copies of his books in person on FCBD. Did he mention that?