Once again, it’s time to look into the reviews of some of the Superman-related comics that have dropped in the last few weeks, including some pretty massive events. Let’s get right to it.
DC KO #4 Title: Trial By Absolute Writers: Scott Snyder & Joshua Williamson Art: Javi Fernandez & Xermancio Main Cover: Javi Fernandez
The Final Four have made their way through all comers, but before they can turn their attention to one another, four new combatants have entered the fray. Tainted by the energy of Darkseid, the combatants will be forced to fight the Absolute Universe versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman – as well as Booster Gold who has been possessed by Darkseid himself.
This event has promised us one throwdown after another, and there’s no way to argue that it hasn’t lived up to that promise. This issue is perhaps the most high-octane, brutal battle yet. The fight between the four remaining heroes and villains with their Absolute counterparts is scripted and drawn with incredible energy and brutality, but at the same time, Scott Snyder has not skimped at all when it comes to character and story. In fact, there are multiple twists in this issue that catch you off-guard and send the story spinning into new, unexpected directions. At the same time, the twists all fit the characters – a great twist is one that is a surprise without violating what you already know about the world you’re reading, and Snyder pulls that off.
For people who are into Superman (know anybody like that?) seeing “our” Superman face off against the Absolute Kal-El is one of the high points of the issue. Neither character is disrespected or nerfed in respect to the other, but there’s also no room for any doubt as to which of the two is the original. I am slightly disappointed at just how the Absolute characters were used, however. Similar to the surprise guest stars from the Boss Battle one-shot, the Absolute heroes are in and out rather quickly. It’s not even clear as to when, exactly, this story takes place in the Absolute timeline – Superman seems to know Batman here, whereas in their respective comics, they haven’t met yet. Although there’s definite promise here for future brushes between the two worlds, it feels like this encounter will mostly be a footnote for the Absolute characters, even as it sets up the conclusion for the Final Four.
I know I’m being deliberately vague here, by the way – I suppose it’s clear that Superman is one of the Final Four (as it should be) but I’m trying to avoid spelling out who else is in that group in case anyone is trying to remain spoiler-free. Considering just how this one ends, though, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep that up for the finale. So if you’re reading along with these reviews, I would highly recommend being up-to-date with DC KO when I drop my thoughts on issue five. Whenever that might be.
Superman Unlimited #10 Title: Die Laughing Part Two Writer: Dan Slott Art: Mike Norton Main Cover: Dave Johnson
Intergang has set its sights on Metropolis’s new mayor, Perry White, and they’ve contracted the Prankster to take care of the problem. But Oswald Loomis’s nephew is trying to step into his uncle’s role and take over the family business, and the NEW Prankster isn’t quite as funny as his predecessor.
This is a solid issue. There’s something up with this new Prankster – in these two issues he’s appeared we never find out his real name, and there’s no explanation for his bizarre powers, something Uncle Oswald has never had. I feel like this is just part of a coming, larger story, even as these two issues work perfectly well as a couplet. I also like how a big part of the middle of this story isn’t about the power of Superman, but rather the investigative skills of Clark Kent. Not to say that Superman is entirely absent, but we see more Clark than we often do these days, and I appreciate that.
We also get a quick interlude with Jon, who’s been setting up the new Daily Planet office in Smallville, only to get an ominous warning from an unexpected source. Even more so than the Prankster stuff, this is explicitly setup, especially since DC has revealed their “Reign of the Superboys” initiative that’s going through all of the Super-titles after DC KO ends. If you didn’t know, Jonathan is going to take the reigns of this title for an indeterminate amount of time, and it looks like the groundwork is being laid here.
I’m still really digging Mike Norton’s Superman. I love the way his character works, with the kind of strong lines and clean character work that made so many of the Triangle Era artists stand out, and I hope we see more and more Superman from him in the future.
Superman #35 Title: Life Secrets (A DC KO Tie-In) Writer: Joshua Williamson Art: Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira, Julio Ferreira Main Cover: Dan Mora
The final instalment of this title’s DC KO storyline runs with the conclusion of issue #4 and leads straight into #5. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of the storylines that’s been going through this book turns out to be crucial to the conclusion of the crossover. But that’s not the one that works best.
We’re following two intertwined threads here. First, the Doomsday/Time Trapper is reeling from the events of issue #4 and trying to gird himself for what must come next. After all, at least part of him is the creature that was created eons ago for the express purpose of destroying Darkseid, and it may be time for that charge to finally come due. Meanwhile, Lois and Superboy-Prime continue their faceoff with Darkseid’s Legion, and it is this latter part that is particularly revelatory.
From the moment he was introduced in this title, we’ve been building a redemption arc for Prime, and it gets center stage in this issue, where he is faced with choices that he’s made before and is given an opportunity to make better choices this time. I’m not in the business of giving out spoilers, but it should be pointed out that when “Reign of the Superboys” takes over the Superman titles next month, DC has revealed that Prime is going to be the start of this title for the time being.
There’s also a great face-off between Lois and Darkseid’s Saturn Girl. Just like prime, this series has hinted that the dark Legion may not be completely beyond hope, and that hope spot is further explored this month. I’m really anxious for the final issue of the crossover to drop…which I guess will be today as you read this. Holy cats, why are you reading this blog instead of DC KO #5? Have you lost your senses?
Action Comics #1095 Title: Pressure Writer: Mark Waid Art: Patricio Delpeche Main Cover: Ryan Sook
The adventures of Superboy in Action Comics continue, although Clark actually takes a back seat this issue. Last month, on a camping trip, Pete Ross happened to spy Clark Kent going into action as Superboy. This issue is Pete’s story, as he struggles with this knowledge and wrestles with whether to confront Clark with what he has learned – and ask why his best friend would ever keep such a secret.
I adored this issue. Mark Waid, human comic book encyclopedia that he is, is doing a phenomenal job of mining the classic tales of Superboy to bring the drama to this series. In the Silver Age this was the status quo – Pete knew that Clark was Superboy (even learned it the same way as he did in Waid’s story, if I’m not mistaken) and chose to keep that knowledge to himself. But as was so often the case with those Silver Age tales, there wasn’t an awful lot of thought given to the implications of this sort of thing. How would Pete feel about learning his best friend was keeping such a gargantuan secret? Doesn’t Clark know that he can trust him? Does anybody else know? And why would Pete choose to keep what he’s learned to himself instead of talking to Clark about it?
The answer to that last question is because it was the Silver Age, and if anybody in a Silver Age DC story had the ability to have a rational adult conversation about anything 95 percent of the stories would have ended on the second page. But Waid actually finds a way to justify Pete’s actions, draping his decision in a metaphor for a real-world issue and presenting it in such a way that makes perfect sense and somehow makes all of the characters – Pete, Clark, even Lana Lang – come across as behaving in a mature, emotionally intelligent way. How often could you say that back in the 50s?
Supergirl #10 Title: My Bloody Valentine Writer: Sophie Campbell Art: Joe Quinones Main Cover: Sophie Campbell
It’s Valentine’s Day, and Kara has a date with the mysterious, long-haired, tattooed boy of her dreams. Her friends Lena and Luna, however, are following along, sensing something is amiss.
After last issue’s slight misstep, this one is more of what I’ve come to enjoy about this series. The “date” is mostly a setup for this issue’s fight scene, but Campbell isn’t having a fight just for the sake of a fight. In the midst of battle we get some good character moments and the ongoing storyline of Kara and her friends (particularly Lena Luthor, in this case) continues nicely. Lena made a mistake in the last issue for which she’s trying to mend fences, and while this issue doesn’t patch everything up in a neat little bow, it also doesn’t cause some insurmountable gap between the friends like books that lean on melodrama are wont to do. Kara and Lena both some some real emotional maturity here, which is particularly funny when juxtaposed against the “date” scene, which works mostly as a parody of gooey Silver Age romance comics tropes.
I have to point out, though, that the recent run of holiday issues is starting to strain credulity a little bit. Literally half the issues of this series have been holiday stories at this point (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and now Valentine’s Day) and while comic book time is naturally elastic, it does have its limits. As this issue begins, Lena and Luna are going to visit Kara on Valentine’s Day to try to make up for their screwup at the New Year’s Eve party – so it’s been six weeks since they spoke to one another? Nobody has made any effort to patch things up before now? I’m willing to forgive, because this really is a great book, but I’m crossing my fingers that next issue’s story (part of the “Reign of the Superboys” initiative) won’t be a visit to show us how they celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Kandor.
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #48 Title: Day For Night Part One Writer: Mark Waid Art: Marcus To Main Cover: Dan Mora
Once again, Mark Waid has been let loose in his favorite playground, the DC Universe. In this issue we leave behind our pals Superman and Batman and instead visit their arch Earth-3 counterparts, Ultraman and Owlman, as they begin plans to expand their Crime Syndicate to unprecedented levels, with world conquest as their goal.
Waid is building out Earth-3 quite a bit here, introducing versions of DC heroes that I’m pretty sure have never showed up in a Crime Syndicate story before (although I could potentially be wrong about that – I’m certainly not the walking encyclopedia of comic book knowledge that Waid is). There’s a particularly amusing sequence that really puts the relationship between Owlman and Talon (his Robin analogue) into focus. All of it works up to a nice last-page surprise that seems poised to set up the rest of this arc. As per usual, I’m very excited to see where this is going to go next.
Adventures of Superman: Book of El #6 Title: The Warworld Engines Writer: Phillip Kennedy Johnson Art: Scott Godlewski Main Cover: Scott Godlewski
This issue we at last return to Otho-Ra and Osul-Ra, Superman’s adopted children, who disappeared back in the first issue after Superman was abducted to the future. We also come across another clan wearing Superman-like sigils, while our hero is battered and beaten down.
I’m trying, guys, I REALLY am trying to get interested in this book, but it’s just not working. Having left behind the Green Lantern stuff (although future covers seem to indicate we’re not done with it yet), we’ve gotten back to Superman vs. Warworld, which was an era of Action Comics that, if I’m being honest, bored me stiff. Despite his power, “cosmic” Superman stories rarely work for me. The character is all about heart and how he deals with people, and throwing him into deep space against all-powerful entities and sci-fi clans that think he’s just a legend…it’s too far from the things that make me keep reading Superman comic books. It just isn’t connecting with me, no matter how much I wish it was.
New History of the DC Universe: The Dakota Incident #1 Writers: Joseph P. Illidge, Stephanie Williams, Morgan Hampton, & Nikolas Draper-Ivey Art: Valentine De Landro, Carlo Pagulayan, Stephen Segovia, Jason Paz, Fico Ossio, & Edwin Galmon Main Cover: Diego Olortegui
Strictly speaking, I don’t feel obligated to review this book the way I do many of the other Superman appearances. He shows up in this book, but his appearance is brief and it’s not his story. That said, I liked this book quite a lot and I wanted to talk about it and it’s my own blog – dammit – so I’m gonna write about this if I want to.
Spinning out of last year’s fantastic New History of the DC Universe miniseries is this one-shot focusing on the heroes of the Milestone universe. As the previous NHOTDCU explained, the Milestone heroes (versions that are fairly close to their original incarnations from the 90s) have always existed in the current incarnation of the DC Universe, but they all vanished from the public eye after something referred to as the “Dakota Incident.” This issue delves into their history, showing the reader just how they fit into the DCU, and the events of the incident that led to their departure.
I’m impressed at how relatively easily they worked the characters into the DC Universe while still keeping their original stories mostly intact. There is one element that’s added to link the origins of many of the Milestone heroes to the DC Universe proper, but that addition doesn’t really change anything about who they are or how their adventures unfolded back then. The issue also places a heavy emphasis on Static, holding him up as perhaps the most significant of these characters. That makes sense – he’s certainly the most well-known and popular Milestone character among the general public (by virtue of his old cartoon show if nothing else), but it also fits with the character of Virgil Hawkins very well.
For fans of these characters, especially the original versions, this issue serves very well to integrate them into the DC Universe, explain their absence, and – most importantly – set the stage for their return. It’s already been teased in various places, not the least of which is the last page of this issue, and I am very much looking forward to seeing the heroes of Dakota rise 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!
Sometimes people ask me, “Blake, have you read every Superman story there is?” And I smile and laugh because I can totally understand why they might think such a thing. I’ve got a whole shelf of Superman toys and knicknacks, I own approximately 97 Superman shirts, socks, and other assorted articles of clothing, I spent an entire year of my life reading or watching a different Superman story every single day, and although I do not personally HAVE a tattoo, if I ever were to get one, you can probably guess what image I would choose. So you may be surprised when I tell you that the answer to the question “have you read every Superman story?” is a definitive NO.
The thing to remember, friends, is that despite my age, Superman is considerably older than me. Earth’s greatest hero is coming up on his 90th birthday in two years, and I am not quite there yet. There are mountains of Superman stories that were published before I was born. And to be certain, I’ve read a lot of them. His first appearance in Action Comics #1 has been reprinted frequently, as have many of the most popular and memorable stories, stories that introduced important characters and concepts, and so forth. But the truth is, there are a lot of Superman stories – especially from the Golden and Silver Ages – that have never been reprinted. In this day of digital comics, one would think that it would be simple enough for DC to put them all on their DC Universe Infinite app, to which I subscribe and use almost daily. But if you go into the archives and start poking around, you see massive swaths of comics that simply aren’t there.
There are reasons for that, of course. It’s NOT as simple as just pushing a button and putting them online. Many of those comics, especially the older ones, have never existed in a digital form. They were drawn, colored, and printed on paper before the advent of computers, and to digitize them today would require someone to take the old prints, scan them in, and remaster them into a readable format, and that is assuming copies of the books are available (which is often not the case with Golden Age comics, especially the more obscure ones). If there are available copies it’s not an impossible task – a great many classic comics have been preserved this way – but it IS a time-consuming and sometimes expensive task, which is why those older comics that ARE available digitally are the ones that are the most popular and most significant.
All that said, I wish that DC would put more effort into preserving their older comics. On a whim, I went through the app and looked at the assorted Superman titles to see which ones have missing issues, and the results are, frankly, alarming. Of the 904 issues of Action Comics Vol. 1, DCUI lists 463 of them available digitally. (Actually, that number isn’t exactly accurate, as the 463 includes annuals and specials that DC places in the run of the main title, but the number is close enough to make my point.) As of when I checked the app on Feb. 23, the following issues of Action Comics are unavailable digitally: 106-251, 253-266, 268-283, 285-307, 360-363, 377-456, 458-520, 522-551, 560-582, 603-617, 627-642, 653-658, 660, 663-668, and, bizarrely, 729.
It’s interesting to note which books ARE available as well. There’s an enormous hole at the end of the Golden Age and beginning of the Silver Age, stretching almost completely from 106 through 360. In that run there are only three issues that pop up: issue #252 (the first appearance of Supergirl), issue #267 (an early Legion of Super-Heroes story with the first appearance of several key members), and issue #284 (I have no idea what makes this issue special enough to warrant inclusion).
Left: Worthy of digitizing. Right: Somehow, NOT worthy of digitizing.
Also missing are most, but not all, of the Action Comics Weekly run, from issues #601-642. For those who don’t know, at this time DC experimented with changing Action from a monthly title starring Superman to a weekly anthology book with several ongoing stories, of which Superman was only one of them. What’s bizarre to me is that they have issues #618-626, which I have to assume contains some serialized story they deem significant enough to include.
Speaking of anthologies, it should also be noted that the early Golden Age issues of Action are incomplete. The series was originally an anthology before Superman (or his spin-off characters, like Supergirl) eventually took over the entire book, for but many of those anthology issues, ONLY the Superman story is online. Granted, that’s probably the part of the book of greatest interest, but that still leaves huge gaps in DC history. The same is true for the other Golden Age anthologies that are remembered mostly for their main character, such as the Batman stories in Detective Comics or the Wonder Woman stories in Sensation Comics.
Reading this period is going to be like rolling the dice.
I kept looking. Volume 1 of Superman is missing issues 25-27, 29, 31-33, 44-75, 77-121, 132-232, 239, 243-247, 249-256, 258-265, 267-304, 309-337, 339-364, 366-409, and 416-422. That series didn’t end there, but the title was changed to Adventures of Superman, which is missing issues 580-581, 599-607, 610-638, 640-641, and 643-649. During that time, the book ran concurrently with Superman Vol. 2, which is missing a relative few issues (178-185, 188-203), and Superman: The Man of Steel, which seems to only be lacking 121-129. The baffling thing is that these three titles, along with the post-Weekly era of Action Comics, were part of what fans fondly recall as the Triangle Era, that period in the 90s and early 2000s when the four Superman titles fed into each other week to week, essentially making one glorious serial. Anybody attempting to read this era in its entirety on the app will find bizarre and baffling gaps in the story.
These are the main Superman titles, of course, but the spin-off books have fared little better. Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane ran for 137 issues between 1958 and 1974. Of those, only issues #1-21 and, randomly, #93 are available digitally. Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen ran for 163 issues before the title was changed to Superman Family and it became an anthology with stories featuring assorted characters in the…well, the title makes it clear. Of the original Jimmy Olsen run, we have only the first eight issues, then issues 133-148, the seminal Jack Kirby run on the title. The series continued as Superman Family from issues #164 until it was cancelled with #222, but the only one available on the app is #182, again, for reasons I can’t fathom.
Finally, let’s talk about the Superman team-up book of the late 70s and early 80s, DC Comics Presents. This series has fared much better than many of the others we’ve covered here. Of the 97 issues in the run, only three are missing: issue #47, which guest starred He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and is therefore no longer available to DC due to licensing issues, and issues 70 and 71, which guest-star the Metal Men and Bizarro, respectively, and don’t seem to have any particular reason they should be discluded.
“By the Power of Lawyers! YOOOU CANNOT REEEEEAD MEEEEEEEE!”
This is not a comprehensive examination, of course. I haven’t checked in on most of the annuals, specials, or miniseries, although it should be noted that only the first issue of the Superman: The Secret Years miniseries from 1985 is included, which is totally perplexing to me. Why bother to digitize ONLY part one of a four-part story?
I should also note that this is not a problem unique to the Superman comics. If you go through the back catalogues of most DC books prior to the modern era, you’ll see similar gaps in the libraries of Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, etc. I also stopped looking after the New 52 reboot of 2011, at which point digital comics had become relatively common, and I feel mostly certain that everything one could reasonably expect to be available is so. But what I’ve laid out here should be enough to make it clear how big this problem is.
Again, digitizing the thousands of comics that have not been scanned would be a daunting task. It would be time-consuming and expensive. Some of the books – such as the aforementioned He-Man crossover – would run into rights issues that prevent them from being reprinted or added to the app. Others may cause some sort of confusion in terms of royalty payments to the creators involved. And a few – a scant few, but a few – books have been deliberately left out because one of the creators involved would later go on to infamy for reasons entirely unrelated to their comic book career. (If you don’t know what I mean, look up who originally wrote the 1990 Green Lantern title and Justice League Europe and you’ll quickly discover why those books are mostly off the DC website and out of print.)
And of course, DC Comics is a business, and it’s not likely that they will undertake all of these endeavors unless they see a profit in it. What would the profit be, then, in having employees spend thousands of hours scanning in and remastering the thousands of comics that are currently AWOL? Would they be able to sell enough collected editions to justify it? Would it draw in a mountain of new subscribers to the app? The honest truth is, even if it WERE as simple as hitting a switch that allowed DC to say “Every Superman comic ever is now on the DC Universe Infinite app!” it probably wouldn’t generate enough new users to fully justify the cost.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.
DC Comics is a business, sure, but comic books are an art form, and art should be preserved. And increasingly, in this modern age, digital preservation for older comics, books, movies, music recordings, and other works of art is proving to be the best way to make sure that it is available to future generations. Public domain helps with this. Once a work is available to the public, there are a lot of people who have a vested interest in seeing that it is preserved. The first Action Comics issues – and by extension, the first appearances of Superman – will enter the public domain in 2034. Every year after that, a new batch will be added to that list. If DC doesn’t do it themselves, eventually somebody else will make these classic books available. There’s a comfort to that, but it also begs the question of whether that’s what DC really wants. Is it actually in their best interest to keep these things buried until everybody ELSE can get their hands on them and put them out there for the world?
I’m not speaking objectively, obviously. I want very much for all these missing works to be available there for me to read here and now, although I’m willing to wait for DC to do it right…provided they’re actually doing it. In the earlier years of the app, DC had a relatively regular schedule of adding older comics to the library, but that has largely dried up. Every Wednesday DC adds the most recent NEW comics to the app, but the older back catalogue hasn’t had a substantial update in a very long time. It’s a shame.
And it’s time DC did something about it.
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!
I don’t want every “Superman Stuff” post to be comic book recaps, hence last week’s post where I talked about the upcoming Spider-Man/Superman and Bizarro: Year None announcements. That said, one of the reasons I wanted to keep this going was so that I could keep talking about the NEW Superman comics as they come out. With that in mind, this week I’m going to give my feelings on some of the Superman-related comics that have been published so far in 2026.
Superman Unlimited#9 Title: Die Laughing Part One Writer: Dan Slott Artist: Mike Norton Main Cover: Dave Johnson
A series of strange deaths strikes Metropolis, and although they could be accidental, there’s something that makes it feel like they’re linked to an old foe of Superman’s. (I realize I’m playing coy with who the villain is, and they name drop him on the cover, so I guess that’s a little pointless.) Meanwhile, Metropolis’s new Mayor Perry White finds himself a target, and at Steelworks, Jon Kent gets an important warning from a very unexpected source.
There is a LOT of stuff going on in this issue. The main plot regarding Perry White is the through-line, but the story of Jon at Steelworks feels like there’s more going on than is readily apparent, and the ongoing story of the massive Kryptonite meteor that’s fallen to Earth is woven in through what happens in the other plots. What’s more, we also get to see a classic foe and a new collaborator show up here in ways that feel like there’s a lot of story to tell. The way this book is packed is honestly reminiscent of the way stories were structured during the much-missed Triangle Era, and as I read this I felt those pangs of regret that I’m going to have to wait a month for this storyline to continue rather than just one week.
Slott does some of the little character bits he’s so good at here. For instance, we see Clark Kent at a press conference by Mayor Perry White where he acts just like he’s asking questions to any random elected official, and Perry humorously reminds him that he doesn’t exactly have to introduce himself. It’s funny, but it also brings up the idea that it’s kind of unethical to send a reporter to cover a press conference when the guy at the podium happens to be godfather of the reporter’s son. Then again, Clark has been reporting on himself for almost 90 years now, so…
Mike Norton steps up for the artwork this issue, and it makes me wish we saw him drawing Superman more often. His lines are clean and bold, very reminiscent of the style we saw from the likes of Dan Jurgens or Jerry Orway back in the day. Having him on this book feels very, very right. I hope we get to see more of his work on Superman in the future.
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #47 Title: The Merger Part Three: Truth and Consequences Writer: Mark Waid Pencils: Adrian Gutierrez Inks: Vicente Cifuentes Main Cover: Dan Mora
Fusion – the merged form of Superman and Batman – is in battle with Merger, the Lex Luthor/Joker mashup. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Merger has used Hawkman’s Absorbascon to learn the identities of our heroes and transmit that information all over the planet. Fortunately, Fusion has a whole Justice League to back them up.
I’ve loved this book since day one, because Mark Waid is clearly having a lot of fun playing around with all these classic pieces of the DC Universe. World’s Finest is set several years in the past, so when the secret is revealed we get to see some things that wouldn’t happen if this story were set today: a more villainous Poison Ivy going after Alfred, or a Lois Lane who is heartbroken to realize that Superman has been hiding under her nose all this time. Waid writes these moments very well, with compelling character work, especially in the Lois Lane scene.
That said, he’s walking a tightrope here, playing with what they sometimes call “Schmuck Bait.” It’s when a story (particularly in an ongoing franchise) teases a development that you know will not or cannot stick. In this case, we know with 100 percent certainty before the issue even begins that the secrets of Superman and Batman’s respective identities will go back in the box, so that lowers the stakes dramatically. The trick is to use this to milk good character beats that will retain their significance even once the actual plot is reversed. He manages to do that here, and even ends the issue with a new little wrinkle that could be brought back later, either in the pages of this book, or in other DC titles set in the current continuity. Either way, there’s potential there.
Supergirl Vol. 8 #9 Title: Resolutions Writer: Sophie Campbell Art: Joe Quinones Main Cover: Sophie Campbell
Continuing the holiday kick this book has been on (the last three issues have been Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas stories, respectively), it’s New Year’s Eve in Midvale, and Supergirl’s squad has been invited to a booze-free party to ring the year in. Lesla, unfamiliar with the effects of alcohol in the first place, is a bit disappointed to learn that it wouldn’t have any effect on her Kryptonian physiology. Lena has an idea for how to fix that little problem. Chaos ensues.
I have to admit, I didn’t see this issue coming. The first half comes across as Campbell trying to do an 80s style “very special episode” about the consequences of drinking, which would actually fit very well in what we’ve gotten from this series so far. The second half, however, takes a rather wild left turn when those consequences actually begin to stack. Stuff happens in this issue that drives a severe wedge in the family of friends Supergirl has built up around her, and I frankly didn’t see it coming. What’s more, Kara herself comes across as kind of cold in this issue – outwardly, at least. The reader gets to see her agonizing over the choices she makes and the way that she’s forced to push away her friends, but to those friends themselves she puts on a face of stoicism that’s really unexpected. Particularly in the case of Lesla, who is arguably a victim here, Kara doesn’t show the usual compassion that we get from her. I’ve been a big supporter of this book, but this is the first issue that feels like a misstep.
I’ve got no such complaints about the artwork, however. Campbell’s work on this title is great, but whenever she steps aside, they can bring in Joe Quinones to pinch-hit. I love his take on Kara and the rest of the cast, and I especially would like to see more of his version of Kandor.
Action Comics#1094 Title: Our Superboy at War Writer: Mark Waid Art: Patricio Delpeche Main Cover: Ryan Sook
This is an interesting one. The main story here is Superboy – in conjunction with his arrangement with General Sam Lane – being summoned to help with a military operation. Although that’s the A-plot, it’s also the least interesting part of the issue to me. That’s not to say that it’s not handled well – Mark Waid taps into the psyche of Clark Kent and has him go through this storyline in a way that feels very accurate for the character. The issue is that it’s very by-the-book. The beats are predictable, as are Clark’s reactions. I suppose that’s the thing about understanding a character really well – sometimes it can make certain stories feel very rote.
The b-plots in this issue are much more interesting to me. In the early part of the book, Clark has a study date (of sorts) with Lana Lang, and we’re teased with a strange animosity her father has for Clark. In the latter part, he goes on a camping trip with Pete Ross and laments the fact that there’s nobody he can share his secrets with. Both of these segments, to me, were far more satisfying than the A-plot. In each case, Waid is using established elements of the two characters to build them out a bit. For instance, Lana’s father being an archaeologist is a long-standing and well-known piece of the lore, but Waid seems to be using it here in a way that feels somewhat menacing, as though that status has a dark secret that’s going to cause trouble down the line. Pete, on the other hand, is famous for being the character who (in the Silver Age) knows that Clark is Superboy, but doesn’t tell anybody – not even Superboy himself. It definitely seems like we’re trending in that direction, but I trust Waid to do more with the concept than previous writers did. In the meantime, it’s really sad to see Clark upset about his big secret and the fact that there’s nobody else that could possibly understand what it’s like to have his kind of power.
Dang, if only he had some friends. If only he had a Legion of them or something.
Adventures of Superman: House of El#5 Title: I Am the Lantern in the Dark Writer: Phillip Kennedy Johnson Art: Scott Godlewski Main Cover: Scott Godlewski
A Sun-Eater has been unleashed on Lanternholm, the world that serves as the haven for the Lightborn. Superman and Ronan Kent join the fight alongside Ronan’s sister, Rowan. The Lanternholm stuff has actually been the most interesting part of this series yet to me, and I’m glad to see it take center stage in this issue. The DC Universe, let’s face it, has a LOT of potential futures. Some of them are easily compatible with one another, others require a bit more shoehorning to fit in, and this future in particular is at best going to be relegated to an alternate timeline in which Superman never comes home because – come on, let’s be honest here – we know that Superman is going to come home. It’s another example of that Schmuck Bait I mentioned earlier.
But that’s something that could theoretically be used to the story’s advantage. It is impossible for this future to be the “real” future of the DC Universe, so why not take some wilder, braver swings with it? I’d like to know more about what happened to the Lanterns in this future. I’d like to know more about what happens afterwards, with Rowan’s new status at the end of this issue. I’d read a miniseries about that, I’d read a miniseries about her. I’d be excited for it.
Absolute Superman #15 Title: The Never-Ending Begins Part One: In Blue Writer: Jason Aaron Art: Juan Ferreyra Main Cover: Rafa Sandoval
A new storyline kicks off this issue, although it kicks off in a very low-key way. After the huge win at the end of last issue, Kal-El is trying to settle in, taking over the Kents’ farm and running it the way they would have wanted while, at the same time, operating as Superman around the world. Of course, as the beginning of a new story, new threats are coming in as well, and we see the seeds for a few things planted here.
It’s nice to have something of a breather this issue, as we see Kal-El spending time with a lot of people, exploring his relationships with both Lois Lane AND Lana Lang, and interestingly enough, even Ra’s Al Ghul. There’s shoe leather to be expended here, building on who each of these people is to our new Superman. What I really like, though, is the direction this series is trending. Clark has traded in his Kryptonian suit for a uniform made for him by Martha, a uniform that speaks to a brighter future for the character. The Absolute Universe is one where Darkseid’s ethos reigns supreme and hope is the underdog…but despite that, Superman still acts as a symbol of that hope, and this issue continues to demonstrate that.
We also get the first appearance of the Absolute version of one of Superman’s oldest foes, and he’s taken in a very different direction. The Toyman has gone through several incarnations over the years. This one is different from any of them, but it suits the universe we’re living in and still fits the concept of the character fairly well. We also get a cameo by next issue’s big guest star, Hawkman, and recent comments by Scott Snyder that we’ll see a gathering of heroes in this universe sooner or later feel like they’re inching closer to fruition.
DC KO #3 Title: No Mercy Writers: Scott Snyder & Joshua Williamson Art: Javi Fernandez & Xermancio Main Cover: Javi Fernandez
Following December’s “All Fight Month” event, the combatants in the KO tournament have been narrowed down to an “Elite Eight.” The remaining fighters are each given an opportunity to choose a partner to fight alongside in the next battle. However, the one fighter who generated the MOST Omega Energy gets a special prize – their partner may come from ANY level of reality…and that winner is the Joker.
Much as the “All Fight” issues were at their best when used as an examination of character, even the selection of the heroes’ partners serves that same purpose. Some of them are obvious, some of them are understandable, and some of them are baffling. All of them demonstrate something about the character who makes the choice, and it’s writing like that which has elevated DC KO from being just a mindless slugfest into one of the most compelling events the DC Universe has had in ages.
There’s a running commentary from the Heart of Apokalips throughout the story that focuses heavily on Superman as well – what’s going on in his head, how he’s dealing with the battle, how he handles the fact that he’s got to fight, kill, perhaps even use his friends. What’s more, from the beginning the idea has been that it was okay for the heroes to die or to kill in pursuit of winning the tournament, because whoever wins and gets the Omega Energy at the end will have the ability to reset the universe and fix everything. This issue Snyder really starts to explore what that would actually MEAN. Would anyone – even Superman – have the wherewithal to only turn the clock back to before the tournament, or would that temptation to make the world unto what he thinks would be paradise be too tantalizing?
Also, there are a couple of moments in this issue that are gonna make for great action figures.
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!
Last weekend was Fan Expo New Orleans. If you recall, during the full Year of Superman last year, I wrote about the Superman-related stuff I found at Fan Expo 2025. And right now, let’s all be grateful that was last year and not this year, because this year’s Fan Expo – I’m sorry to report – was kind of a bust. The big cons have been shedding comic and science fiction participation for years, that’s nothing new. The shows are becoming more and more focused on anime and photo ops. And look – it’s not like I think that everything has to cater to me personally. I know, I’m an old man and people need to chase the money young people are bringing to the table. But there are full-on anime cons out there. The convention culture was built around comic book and sci-fi geeks, such as myself, and it feels very much like we’re the ones getting left out in the cold. All of this is to say, after a Saturday afternoon of prowling the vendor floor, I probably spent less money at this year’s Expo than I ever have before.
Seeing as how this is “Superman Stuff,” I’m only going to run through the few related finds I got. I knew even before I got there that I was going to hit up one of the booths that sells custom LEGO-style minifigures, because I’ve got a display of Superman-related figures in my classroom and I wanted to add to it. There was a movie version of Superman and Krypto that I added to my display, but sadly, those were the only two Superman characters they had that I didn’t have already. (I did, however, pick up the movie Fantastic Four, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the core Heeler family from Bluey, so I came away satisfied.)
The comics were an even bigger bust. I like to hit the bargain bins – the dollar comics, the weird stuff. But I found only two such bins in the whole show. and I’m pretty sure there were only four or five comic book vendors TOTAL. I walked away with a handful of old Archie comics and some 80s Marvel goodness, but the only Superman comic that fell into my hands was a battered reading copy of Action Comics #342 from 1966, which I’m digging into today.
In “The Super-Human Bomb,” Brainiac is prowling space, trying to think of some way to defeat Superman, when he finds himself under attack by another alien named Grax, whose 20th level intelligence is obviously way above Brainiac’s mere 12th level. Grax has a beef with Superman as well, and has come up with a scheme to destroy him, but he needs a force field and somehow Mr. 20th Level can’t figure out how to make one, so he steals Brainiac’s. Grax tricks Superman with a missile that attaches a bomb to the man of steel, a bomb he claims is powerful enough to annihilate Earth, and it’s rigged to go off if Superman tries to remove it. Oh yeah, and just in case he gets any smart ideas about flying into space, Grax put Brainiac’s force field around Earth, trapping him here, with a 24-hour timer on the bomb.
I have to admit, inability to invent a force field notwithstanding, so far Grax is making a solid case for being eight levels smarter than Brainiac. He never got this far.
Superman spends the next 24 hours trying desperately to stop the bomb, but everything fails. He even offers to let Grax kill him if he will spare Earth, but Grax refuses. Minutes before the explosion, Brainiac messages Superman and tells him how to defeat Grax: build an enormous magnet (shaped like a horseshoe, because theming) and use it to draw Grax’s ship against the force field, trapping him in the blast radius of the bomb. Superman gets into Grax’s ship and hits the switch for the bomb, just as – in the most dramatic moment in comic book history – I realize that this $1 reading copy I purchased is missing pages out of the middle, so I can’t see how the story ends.
Incredible!
The back-up story, fortunately, is complete: Supergirl stars in “The Day Supergirl Became an Amazon.” College student Linda Danvers is on a trip to the South Pacific to gather specimens for the school aquarium, when their ship is struck by a heavy storm. Supergirl secretly guides the ship to an island, where the students casually decide to begin collecting their specimens rather than wondering about, y’know, getting rescued. But the island turns out to be occupied by an Amazon tribe that would later be sued by Themiscyra for trademark infringement.
The Amazons put Linda and her classmates in slave girl costumes because fun, and that night Linda puts her Supergirl costume on a bird so people will see it flying around and assume Supergirl is on a mission, and that may be one of the most confusing sentences I’ve ever written. The Amazons feed the girls a “nectar of strength” which doesn’t appear to impact Linda’s classmates, but she pretends that the nectar has given her super powers and starts wiping the floor with the Amazons in trial after trial. Eventually, Linda does such a good job of building a pyramid with the stones from the Amazon’s homes that the queen gets fed up with her and lets the girls go. The story is an absolute masterpiece, assuming that you don’t stop to wonder why Supergirl dropped their ship on the island instead of taking them to a safe place in the first place, why she felt it necessary to put her costume on a bird, or what Linda’s major was and what kind of college sends three random students to the South Pacific in a hovercraft.
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!
Continuing on from last week, I’m still making my way through all of the different Superman adaptations I haven’t touched upon so far. Of course, Thanksgiving is this week as well, and as always, life is bound to throw a few curve balls into my plans, because life enjoys doing that to me. But I’ve got a bare minimum of seven movies and TV shows I’m going to try to hit this week. Can I do it in seven days? Your guess is as good as mine.
TV Episode:Superboy Season 1, Episode 1, “The Jewel of the Techacal.”
Notes: The same year as the Ruby-Spears Superman animated series I wrote about last week, the Salkinds (producers of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies) gave us a new live-action TV series starring John Haymes Newton as a college-age Superboy. Newton was replaced after one season with Gerard Christopher, whom I remember liking in the role a lot more, but I haven’t watched any of these episodes in years. I should, in all fairness, watch at least Christopher’s first episode as well for the sake of comparison, but I’ve only got the first season of the show on DVD and it does not appear to be on HBO Max because – and I cannot stress this enough – Warner Bros. does not know what the hell it’s doing. I’ve still got the whole month of December, though, so if I manage to locate any of the Christopher episodes, I’ll try to squeeze one in for the sake of completion. For now, though, we’re going to look at the first episode of the series, “The Jewel of the Techacal.”
Newton was joined by Stacy Haiduk as Lana Lang, and in a nice nod to comic book continuity, the episode begins with her archaeologist father, who is apparently nervous to see his daughter again after some time as he comes to town with a set of Mayan artifacts. Lana and Clark are both students at Shuster College (cute), along with T.J. White (son of Perry, of course), and a young Lex Luthor who gives neither “mad scientist” nor “insidious businessman” vibes, but rather came out of central casting in the search for a villain in an 80s movie about a ski resort whose wacky staff has to show up some snobbish guests. Anyway, as the episode opens, Professor Lang’s plane is having some trouble, its landing gear refusing to go down, so Superboy zips into the sky to make a quick repair. Lana is overjoyed that her father doesn’t – y’know – die, but is despondent only minutes later when he quickly blows her off to tend to his artifacts. The tension gets worse when Professor Lang suddenly and inexplicably collapses, a malady his assistant attributes to a curse that came with the artifacts they found. While he’s out, Lex and his goon plot to steal the artifacts, but Superboy arrives to stop it, only to find himself susceptible to the curse as well. He collapses while Lex makes off with an ancient chest containing…well, the curse, I guess. Superboy recovers and catches Lex, turning him over to the cops with most of the artifacts – all except for the cursed chest, which he brings back to…well, presumably to Techacal. We only SEE him flying into the clouds, because shooting in South America would have been entirely too expensive. Returning the chest breaks the curse, though, and Professor Lang recovers, giving him and Lana another chance.
The next time I want to crack jokes about the teen soap opera aspects of Superman and Lois, I’m going to stop myself and remember this show, because holy CRAP was this stuff overwrought. Is it understandable that Lana is upset to have her father lying in a hospital bed dying, apparently, of nothing? Absolutely. Should she be behaving like a character in a telenovela? Absolutely not. On the other hand, that’s better than the utter lack of emotion that we get from Scott Wells as Lex Luthor. (Lex only appeared in four episodes of season one and he, too, was recast for the second season.) As for Newton himself…he’s okay, but he’s a little stiff. The show doesn’t do much to justify why this is Superboy instead of Superman either, save for the fact that he’s in college and not yet in Metropolis. All things considered, it’s kind of a miracle that the show lasted as long as it did.
The really shocking thing, though, is that through 1988 there hasn’t been a single Superman-related TV series that has a proper status quo-establishing pilot. I guess that sort of requirement is more recent than I had realized.
Comics: DC K.O. #2, Superman Vol. 6 #32, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #13
Notes: I popped by the comic shop today as well, grabbing this week’s books, and I’m going to take a little time this afternoon to catch up on DC’s current crossover event, DC K.O., the second issue of which is sitting in my hot little hands right now. In order to claim the Omega Energy before Darkseid – and with it, the power to reshape the entire universe – 32 heroes and villains have made it through the first stage of the gauntlet. In issue two, 16 items have been scattered across the battlefield. The rules are simple: if you’re holding one of the items when time runs out you advance to the next round. If you aren’t, you die. Lex Luthor (showing far more cunning than his counterpart in the Superboy TV show) makes right for a collection of Lantern power rings, while Superman tries not only to outrace Luthor, but stop the other villains at the same time.
Screenshot
This issue is where I feel like we’re really going to see exactly what DC K.O. is. The conceit is that the eventual winner of this tournament will be able to reset the universe as they see fit, so the consequences here are kind of minimal – heroes and villains alike can be broken, maimed, even die, and you know that when that reset button is hit it’s all going to go away. Normally I would consider the existence of that sort of reset to be a negative, but K.O. has two major things going for it. First, the writers are using the lack of consequences as an opportunity to really cut loose, pushing the battles to extremes that they normally would never approach. Even Superman has an opportunity to be more brutal without violating his ethos, and this issue shows us just how scary that would be. The other thing is that although there IS a reset button included, that button will be used at the whim of whoever eventually wins the tournament, and I have a suspicion that it’s not going to be a simple square one reset. Whoever wins is probably going to have the opportunity to change some things when they rebuild the universe (for example, should a member of the Bat-family come out on top, it seems like this would be a prime opportunity to bring back a certain faithful butler whose presence has been sorely missed for quite some time), and I’m very curious to see what shape that will take.
Superman #32 fills in a blank and continues the side-story at the same time. Half the issue is used to explain where Lex and the rest of the villains came from in DC K.O. #1 when they suddenly joined the tournament. The other half picks up the story of Lois and Superboy-Prime versus Darkseid’s Legion at the Fortress of Solitude. The Lex stuff is nice to explain something that I’m sure a lot of of were curious about, but I’m more satisfied with the Lois/ Prime storyline. Prime’s characterization has shifted since the days of Infinite Crisis, sliding from a bitter ex-fanboy to a kid who leans on the fourth wall in a way that almost feels Deadpool-like. Considering his origins, it makes sense, and it never goes so far as to have him addressing the reader; instead, it’s more like he’s got awareness of the medium he’s in and he’s using it. I didn’t have it on my bingo card for the Year of Superman, but the redemption of Superboy-Prime is shaping up to be a great story.
And in Justice League Unlimited #13, we get part two of “The Terrific Ten.” Mr. Terrific leads his team of time-tossed Justice Leaguers (including the Electric Blue Superman and a young Power Girl) into Hell itself to confront the demon Neron, who has chosen a devil of a time to juice up some of Earth’s villains again. Meanwhile, the very Omega Energy that the heroes in the main book are trying to claim is simultaneously rendering Earth uninhabitable, and the remaining Justice Leaguers are trying to help the Titans coordinate the evacuation of the entire planet. At the same time, they’re trying to round up the amped-up villains that Neron has set loose. I have to say this for K.O. – I’ve read most of the tie-ins so far, and none of them feel the same as the others. What’s happening in Superman and Justice League are totally different than Titans and Flash. And while some of them feel more immediately relevant to the main storyline, none of them feel wasted or irrelevant to the titles that they’re reaching into. You can’t say that about every crossover, and the DC creators deserve a lot of credit for making it work so well thus far.
Thur., Nov. 27
Comic: New Adventures of Superboy #38, JSA #54 (Guest Appearance)
Notes: Happy Thanksgiving! Well, it’s Thanksgiving as I write this. By the time you read this, it’ll be December 3, and I’m sure you’ll all be watching the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and if you aren’t, what even are you doing with your holidays? But at the time I write this I just took the dessert I made out of the oven, my wife is in the kitchen making her cornbread casserole, and Eddie and I are on the couch watching the Macy’s parade. Since they don’t have a Superman balloon for some insane reason, I need to work in something else to maintain my streak. Fortunately, the DC Universe app has me covered with New Adventures of Superboy #38, one of the terribly rare Thanksgiving comics out there.
The story begins with Superboy paying a visit to the Soames Reformatory, where he pitches in with Thanksgiving dinner by cooking the turkeys with his X-Ray vision. There’s one resident of the reform school who isn’t impressed, though: young Lex Luthor. Lex pitches a fit and Superboy leaves, upset that for all his genius, he fears that Lex will never mend his ways. (Prescient kid, that Superboy.) But there’s no time to bemoan Lex’s fate – he’s gotta bounce to the future for the monthly meeting with the Legion of Super-Heroes. At the same time (somehow), 13 years in the future, an adult Superman is making a visit BACK in time. Superboy collides with his grown-up self in the timestream, and the two of them are hurled back to their respective time periods, but with their minds switched. Superman – in Superboy’s body – winds up back in the 60s, while Superboy in Superman’s body goes to 1982.
Superman wakes up in Superboy’s body, believing that something has made him younger, and decides to go hide out in the empty Kent house in Smallville until he can figure out what’s going on, shocked to find his parents there, alive. Stunned, he puts on teen Clark’s clothes and sits down for a Thanksgiving dinner with his family and teenage friends. The next day, Lex manages to sneak out of the reformatory. Superman/boy, meanwhile, suddenly finds himself in a Groundhog’s Day Loop of reliving Thanksgiving, the result of some sort of device Luthor planted on him the day before. He tries to break the loop by, instead of travelling to the future to see the Legion switching it up and going to the past. Somehow, this works, because Albert Einstein said if he went far enough back he would loop around to where he started from. Superman catches Lex, but his rage at what his former friend will one day become nearly pushes him to destroy him in anger.
The story continues in Superman #380, where we see the other half of the story…presumably. That issue isn’t on the DC Infinity app. I cannot stress this enough, they have GOT to get their act together with this app. The story’s also kind of light on Thanksgiving cheer, so I’m going to call that an appetizer, with the main course being an unabashedly holiday story from JSA #54.
It’s Thanksgiving at the Justice Society brownstone in Manhattan, and they’ve invited the Justice League to join them. We get a series of vignettes to begin the story – Batman and Mr. Terrific talking shop, Wonder Woman and Wildcat having the required awkward political disagreement, Impulse and Jakeem Thunder bonding over a mutual hatred of school, and so forth. We get an amusing bit where Stargirl is upset about being placed at the kids’ table while Captain Marvel (whose secret identity she knows, but not everybody else does) gets to sit with the adults. Everything is going great…until Kulak the Sorcerer and the Warlock of Ys appear. Kulak is out for revenge against the JSA, the Warlock hates the JLA, but NEITHER of them really counted on just how many heroes’ dinner they just ruined. Their resistance…doesn’t last long. In the end, the two teams order a tower of pizzas and celebrate the holiday the way Batman always predicted they would.
Is it heavy on Superman content? No. But he gets a few nice moments, such as catching Wildcat flying out the window after Wonder Woman “disagrees” with him and another where he and Alan Scott crack their knuckles before wiping the floor with the bad guys. But it’s a funny, heartfelt story by Geoff Johns and Don Kramer, which is only slightly overshadowed by the absolute masterpiece that the Christmas story in the next issue would be. There’s no Super-family characters in that one so I probably won’t be reading it, but if you’re looking for Christmas comics to read over the next month, make sure you add it to your list.
Fri., Nov. 28
Movie Serial: Superman (1948), Episodes 1-15
Notes: I’ve been holding off on this one until I had a day with a big chunk of time where I could watch it, as the 15 episodes of the original Superman movie serial make up a whopping four hours and change combined, but there was no way I could consider this project complete without including the work of Kirk Alyn, the first actor to portray Superman in live action.
(Before anybody comes in the comments trying to correct me, I know that Alyn wasn’t the first actor to wear a Superman costume. Ray Middleton dressed as Superman during the 1939 World’s Fair. But to the best of my knowledge, there was no footage of Middleton and, if there is, it doesn’t seem to exist anywhere. We’ve got a few still photos. Alyn’s is the earliest actual performance we can WATCH.)
Anyway, I’m not going to try to do a total recap of the movie serial the way I do for a lot of the things I watch. It’s too long, frankly, and like a lot of movie serials there’s a lot of repetition that would make it kind of tedious to read about. But here’s what’s important: the serial tells the story of the destruction of Krypton and baby Kal-El coming to Earth, being raised by the Kents, and then making up his mind to become a hero in the city of Metropolis all in the first 20-minute episode. After that, we see Superman at odds with assorted criminals and natural disasters before finally coming into conflict with the main villain of the serial: the Spider Lady, who is using her “Reducing Ray” to hold the world hostage.
The storyline is very much in keeping with a lot of the adventure serials of the era: goofy sci-fi weapons of dubious practicality, a femme fatale villain with a sort of bland identity, and tons and tons of goons that came straight out of the Goon Casting Academy. It’s the fact that the hero of this one is Superman rather than “Commando Cody” or something that makes it interesting. And the Superman we get here is very well done. Kirk Alyn is a great Superman for the era: he’s strong, but also somewhat joyful. He’s having FUN with his powers, and that’s something that you can’t always say. He also is quite clearly taking his cues from Bud Collyer’s portrayal of the character on the radio and in the Fleischer shorts, duplicating the way Collyer would start off his catch phrase as Clark Kent (“This looks like a job…”) and then drop his voice an octave (“…for SUPERMAN!”) to signal that he’s going into action. Even the credits for the serial indicate that it is “adapted from the Superman Radio Program,” so there’s no pretending it’s a coincidence.
Noel Neill, as I mentioned last week, is our Lois Lane, a role she would reprise when Phyllis Coates left The Adventures of Superman a few years later…and I LOVE Neill’s Lois. She’s slick, clever, and occasionally even devious. She’s miffed at Clark for scooping her on the story that got him his job at the Daily Planet (a story beat that John Byrne would duplicate for his Man of Steel series four decades later) and isn’t above pulling some sneaky tricks to get him out of the way so she can beat him to the story. She’s feisty and ferocious, and I’m there for it.
Special effects being what they were in 1948, the serial makes frequent use of animation. The destruction of Krypton, the rocketship to Earth, any time Superman flies, and various super-feats that would be too difficult to portray in live action are all done through animation. It’s not – I must concede – particularly CONVINCING animation. It looks like the scenes in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? where the toons and live-action characters coexist. But for the time, it was innovative, and the animation is good, fluid, and impressive.
Kirk Alyn’s name is overlooked far too often when we’re talking about the actors who have portrayed the Man of Steel. This serial and his performance are both great fun, and worthy of inclusion…it wouldn’t have been a Year of Superman without him.
Sat., Nov. 29
TV Episode:Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman Season 1, Episodes 1-2, “Pilot,” Superman and Lois Season 3, Episode 6, “Of Sound Mind.”
Notes: In 1993 it was time for TV to take another swing at the Man of Steel. But as it WAS the 90s, this time out the focus was more 90s as well. For a superhero show, the emphasis was on the relationship and burgeoning romance between Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher) and Clark Kent (Dean Cain). In fact, they even gave Lois top billing in the title, as if to emphasize the fact that this wasn’t like the OLD adventures of Superman at all. The series doesn’t even begin with Clark, it begins with Lois returning to the Daily Planet office stripping off a disguise she used to go undercover to land a big story. As they’re celebrating her scoop, a young man steps off the bus outside, carrying a suitcase with the initials “C.K.” The young Clark Kent meets with Perry White (the great Lane Smith, perhaps my favorite Perry White of all time), who rejects him due to his lack of experience. He retreats to the rundown apartment he’s renting and, as a lightbulb above his head begins flickering, he casually floats to the ceiling and fixes it. Because, y’know, super powers. Lois, meanwhile, retreats to the apartment she shares with her sister Lucy, who berates her for the way she constantly drives away all the men in her life for being too weak, then sobs while watching a sappy movie. Because yeah, it’s a superhero TV show, but it’s also a romantic comedy.
The next day, Clark tracks down an aging actress in an abandoned theater, poaching a human interest story he heard Lois reject in Perry’s office, and brings it to the Planet, where his initiative impresses Perry enough to give him the job. Just seconds later, the TV in the office shows a disaster at a space launch. Lois is determined to follow leads that point to a conspiracy in the space program, and over her objections, Perry assigns her to partner with the newcomer Clark. She’s not thrilled about it, and she’s less thrilled when her scheduled date for a gala thrown by Lex Luthor drops out, forcing her to ask Clark to accompany her if she wants any chance at landing the first one-on-one interview Luthor has ever given.
Before the Gala he flies home to Smallville (under his own power, naturally) to have dinner with his parents (Eddie Jones and Jonathan and K Callan as Martha), where he bemoans the fact that he has to hide his powers instead of openly helping people. Jonathan, always the wise one, tells him he’ll find a way. At the Gala, Clark has his socks knocked off when he sees Lois dressed to the nines, but she’s preoccupied dancing with businessman Lex Luthor (John Shea). Luthor turns out to be charming, showing off his tower and saying how he loves the fact that everyone in Metropolis has to look up to see him. He uses the ball as an opportunity to announce his newest initiative: the creation of a space station bearing his name. He’s outraged, though, when the Congress of Nations rejects his proposal to continue their own plans.
Over the next few days Lois – despite herself – finds that she’s warming up to Clark, who has a charm she can’t deny, and is full of surprises, like the ability to read Chinese (which he demonstrates after bringing her Chinese food – unbeknownst to her – from China). He also comforts her when they find a source who has been feeding her information about the space sabotage dead, an apparent suicide, although Lois and Clark aren’t buying it. After a few close calls of nearly being caught helping people, Clark asks his mom to help him make an “outfit” to use.
Lois continues to pursue the story, finally getting herself and Jimmy captured. Clark manages to find her trapped in an empty warehouse, but has to allow himself to get caught in order to protect his secret. As Lois berates him for bumbling in without a plan, he casually frees himself from the shackles, but allows Lois to continue with her raving as it transmogrifies into a bit of a self-therapy session, then he frees them both. He gets Lois – and the unconscious Jimmy – out of the warehouse just before it’s blown up. The evidence she has saves the space launch, and Clark goes back to Smallville to help finish his disguise. After a montage, he settles on something…iconic: blue tights, with red boots, trunks, and a cape. Something is missing, thought and Martha digs into a chest to pull out the blanket Clark was wrapped in as a baby, complete with a familiar crest.
Jonathan, meanwhile, is watching the space launch on TV, not knowing that Lois has 1) stowed away on the rocket and 2) discovered a bomb. She tries to disarm the bomb, but instead causes a mechanical error that ends the countdown. Sensing something is wrong, Clark takes to the air and arrives just in time to reach the bomb and EAT the explosive, saving the rocket, its crew, and Lois. The crew – planning to be long-term colonists on the space station – fear the mission will end as their window is about to close, but Superman gets beneath the rocket and flies it into orbit himself, docking it with the station and saving the mission. In the final scene, the newly-dubbed Superman arrives at Lex Luthor’s tower to confront him over the bomb: he knows that Luthor was behind the sabotage to promote his own station. And although he can’t prove any of it, he’s going to have his eyes on Luthor from now on. As he takes off, he tells Luthor “If you ever need to find me, all you have to do is look up.”
If you remember the personal timeline of my experience with Superman, you may remember that I first became a big fan of the character in the early 90s, and this show was one of the elements that paralleled that. By the time it came out in 1993, I was already big into the comics, but the show helped fuel that fandom for a few years, helping to bolster Superman’s status as an icon (recently reignited thanks to his “death”) and carrying it forward. And it was, sincerely, the perfect show for the era. It’s VERY 90s, and the different take on Superman works for the time period. Teri Hatcher’s Lois is confident (good) bordering on arrogant (bad), but it soon becomes clear that it’s a mask for her rather deep loneliness (awwwww). Clark, meanwhile, isn’t the pushover that we had in the Christopher Reeve era. His background from “Smallville” leads to people (Lois, for instance) underestimating him, but he proves to be shrewd and clever, in addition to just being competent at reporting. This show also has to get credit for one of my favorite Superman lines, one that people (myself included) often misattribute to Superman For All Seasons: when a kid tells Superman she likes his costume, he replies, “Thanks, my mother made it for me.”
The supporting cast is aces as well. I mentioned already how much I love Lane Smith as Perry White, with a sort of drawl that makes his character sound like he’s handing out homespun wisdom. Jones and Callan as the Kents make for a perfect sounding board for Clark, demonstrating yet again how wise it was of John Byrne to let them live to Clark’s adulthood rather than forcing him to spend his life UTTERLY alone. And John Shea’s Lex Luthor probably wouldn’t have worked if they were going for the “mad scientist” interpretation of the character, but as the ruthless businessman, he’s perfectly suited for the role. Tracy Skoggins’ predatory Cat Grant is very much a reflection of the earliest versions of the character, and although he would be replaced in favor of a younger actor later in the series, I rather liked Michael Landes’ Jimmy Olsen.
One thing I’ve noticed is just how well the various live-action incarnations of Superman act as a sort of capsule of the time. While the broad strokes remain the same, the details in each incarnation of the character give you a good idea of where culture was at that point. 90s television was the era of the relationship drama, and this show reflects the Superman version of that perfectly.
Sun., Nov. 30
Novel: The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson
Notes: I’ve been reading this novel off and on for about two weeks, and I finished it up today. If there’s one thing I wish I had squeezed more of into this Year of Superman, it’s prose fiction…but the truth is there isn’t all THAT much to choose from, and some of the best — specifically as the novels of Elliot S! Maggin — were books I read just last year, not long before I decided to do this project, and I didn’t quite have the impetus for a re-read just yet. But this book by frequent Star Wars writer Kevin J. Anderson went a long way towards scratching that itch.
As the title implies, this book tells us the story of the final days (final years, actually, but that’s not as catchy a title) of the planet Krypton before its ultimate destruction. Jor-El is the protagonist of the book, a scientist whose work has been suppressed by Krypton’s staunchly unbending ruling council, even as he finds sign after sign that the planet is in imminent danger. One of the few people who takes him seriously is Councilor Dru-Zod, who has an eye on conquest and forges a bond with Jor-El in the hopes of using him towards his own ends. Over the course of the book, Jor-El falls in love with an artist, Lara Lor-Van, and colludes with his scientist brother Zor-El (mayor of Argo City) to help save the planet from itself.
Spoiler warning: It doesn’t quite work out.
That’s the tricky thing with prequels: so much of what’s going to happen is a foregone conclusion. Anybody with even a passing knowledge of Superman’s history knows that Jor-El’s efforts to save the planet will fail and that he and Lara will perish after sending their infant son Kal-El into space. People who have a slightly deeper – but still not encyclopedic – knowledge of the lore will also know that before the end of the story Zod will be in the Phantom Zone, allowing him to survive the planet’s destruction. And the real ones, of course, will know that Zor-El will save Argo City from Krypton’s destruction only to suffer its own doom some years later. So since all of these things are locked into canon before you even crack open the book, where’s the tension? Where’s the drama?
Miraculously, it’s there.
Anderson does a fine job of weaving a story that’s still compelling despite the fact that we know more or less how it’s all going to go. The relationship between Zod and Jor-El has shades of Shakespearean tragedy, of a friendship gone wrong, although the degree to which Zod ever actually considered Jor-El a friend is debatable. He also does a fine job of fleshing out Lara and Zor-El, characters who have never been quite as well-developed in the comics as Jor-El or Zod, imbuing them with distinct personalities that fit cleanly into the story and both serve as support for Jor-El in different ways.
Most impressive to me, though, is how Anderson plunders decades of Superman continuity for the details that populate this story. Stories from the comics like the ancient Kryptonian despot Jax-Ur, the abduction of Kandor by Brainiac, or the question of just why Argo City was beneath a dome in the first place all factor into the storyline. But Anderson avoids the trap that so many prequels fall into of feeling like the writers are just connecting the dots, trying to piece together the information we already have, and instead incorporates these different elements organically and sometimes in such a subtle way that you don’t quite realize the significance of certain things until they come to the forefront.
The story paints Krypton’s destruction as imminent, and finds fault with multiple characters – even, to a degree, Jor-El himself. It builds to the tragedy, this notion that the death of Krypton’s civilization may have been avoidable, but was propelled by hubris. The book is a little vague on just how inevitable the end of the planet was – there are several elements that make it seem like Krypton was doomed no matter what anybody did – but there are definitely actions by certain people that accelerate its death, and if not for the pigheadedness of those in charge, the people of Krypton may have found a way to save themselves, even if the planet as a whole was doomed.
Anderson isn’t beholden to any particular continuity. As I said, many of the elements are drawn from different eras of the comic books, but it’s not married to any of them. (It would fit fairly well with the Silver Age, for example, but doesn’t fit at all with the Man of Steel era.) Other things, like Jor-El’s physical description of white hair and shimmering white robes, seem to come more from the movies. Ultimately, though, it serves as a sort of platonic example of the final days of a grand civilization and a backdrop of the tragedy that ultimately would give birth to Earth’s greatest hero.
Mon. Dec. 1.
Comics: Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #47 (Jonathan and Martha Kent Guest appearance), Action Comics #1092
Notes: I have a child. Children have things like choir rehearsal and basketball practice. Dad has no time to do stuff. This is the circle of life. Anyway, without the time to watch anything today, I’m squeezing in some comics.
I don’t often write about the quick read “DC Go” comics, but every so often I get one that’s so delightful I need to draw attention to it. Batman: Wayne Family Adventures is a bit of a reimagining of the Batman characters as a sort of family dramedy. The focus is on Bruce and his multitude of adopted children, and although they are superheroes, the comic strip is really about them functioning as a family, with most actual adventures happening off-panel. Episode #47 is a spotlight on Alfred, having what appears to be a fairly regular dinner with his friends, Jonathan and Martha Kent. The story is sweet and simple, a portrait of the adopted parents of Earth’s two greatest heroes spending time together and relating to one another in a way that nobody else in the world possibly could. We’ve seen elements of this in the main continuity from time to time, but this short story really is a treat.
On to Action Comics #1092, which is sort of a breather issue. The Captain Comet storyline wrapped up last issue, so this month we see young Clark Kent bemoaning the fact that Lana Lang is interested in Superboy instead of “him,” Pete Ross wonder why he best friend is so distant lately, and Sam Lane roll into town to try to do something about this super powered teenager that’s been running around lately. There’s a lot of good character stuff here for Superboy – Mark Waid is dipping his toes into the struggles of Clark trying not to draw attention to himself, and seems to be leaning in towards the old Silver Age status quo of Pete Ross figuring out that Clark is Superboy but keeping that information private. The scene with Sam Lane is especially good, demonstrating the relationship that Superboy has forged with the people of Smallville in a relatively short time. On the other hand, Waid has a teenage Clark make reference to the Star Wars prequels, a comment that makes me feel egregiously old and for which I may never forgive him.
Tues., Dec. 2
Comic: Adventure Comics #423
Notes: I had intended, this week, to try to wrap up at least the most important “Superman Through the Ages” that I hadn’t gotten to yet – things like the pilot episode of Smallville and Supergirl, or to finally talk about Henry Cavill’s Superman movies. But it’s that time of year, guys. Holidays, family events, work, and a kid who is into both choir and basketball are eating up my time. I’ve got the last few weeks of this project planned a little – holiday tales for the week before Christmas and some all-star stuff, including “endings” for that week before the new year. In the two weeks between now and then, I’m not going to make myself beholden to any theme and I’m going to read whatever I want on the day, but I’m also going to do my best to scratch off as many of the remaining movies and TV shows from my list as possible.
Today, though, that isn’t going to happen, because of the aforementioned work and basketball and whatnot. So instead, let’s look at Adventure Comics #423, a story from the time that Supergirl was the headliner of the series, but which has her in conflict with Superman, who – as you see from the cover – she’s calling a traitor. In “Treachery,” written by E. Nelson Bridwell and Steve Skeates with art by Mike Sekowsky and Bob Oskner, Linda Danvers is shopping one day when she tries on a pair of sunglasses that she cannot remove from her face. The glasses are the creation of aliens who have been observing her from space and who plan to control her via messages embedded in the glasses. The aliens force Linda to go to Metropolis to visit her cousin Clark (you may have heard of him), and secretly switch his glasses for a pair sent by the aliens. They force Superman and Supergirl to visit their spacecraft, hidden beneath the waters of the bay, and collect glasses to use on the rest of Earth’s superheroes. As they enter, the heroes immediately begin mopping the floor up with the aliens before their leader Gur realizes his crony ordered them to enter the craft, but gave no commands preventing them from fighting back. He orders them to cease all action and executes the flunky responsible. Superman is ordered to trick the rest of the Justice League into putting on the glasses, but without specific orders of her own, Supergirl again rebels against the aliens and, again, is stopped by Gur. Gur’s brother, however, however, opposed to Gur’s plans for conquest, gives Supergirl an order to use her heat vision, which melts the glasses off her face and sets her free. She makes short work of the aliens and rushes to the Justice League satellite, where Superman is trying to con his teammates into wearing the glasses. (There’s a particularly funny panel where he’s grabbing the Atom like a doll and trying to force the glasses onto his face.) Supergirl tells Green Lantern to blast the glasses off Superman’s face and set him free. Meanwhile, the alien ship is sinking and Gur and his brother fight, with the two of them eventually going down with the ship as the rest of their crew escapes. Superman and Supergirl build a craft to send the rest of the aliens home, hoping that Gur was one-of-a-kind.
I’ve never read this story before, and I was surprised by just how much I liked it. The hero-versus-hero trope is kind of tired, as is the “mind controlled hero,” but it actually works here because there’s a reasonable explanation. “Here, try on these sunglasses.” It’s a simple enough way to kick things off, and it’s completely believable that even a Supergirl would be off guard and fall into that trap. From that point, it’s easy enough to accept her swapping Clark’s glasses and pulling him in as well. The only weak point was Superman utterly failing to convince the rest of the JLA to put the glasses on – he’s just not that good at deception. Speaking of which, it’s a good thing that nobody else seemed to see Superman flying around wearing the alien spectacles, because the ol’ Clark Kent disguise would have gone out the window REALLY quickly if they had.
We’re going into the last month of the year, friends, and my goal at this point is just to knock off as many things remaining on my list as possible. So expect the next two weeks to be kind of eclectic – movies, TV shows, comics, and whatever else I haven’t gotten around to yet. Thanks for sticking around this long – I hope you’ll find the last month of this little project to be as much fun as the first 11.
It’s the last full week before Halloween, and I’m going whole hog on the spooky content, friends. This week we’re going to find ourselves encountering some of the creepiest crawlies there are. Vampires, werewolves, mummies, and Dr. Frankenstein’s bouncing baby boy are all coming your way week, along with a few Halloween specials. We’re gonna wrap up October in classic Abbott and Costello fashion with Superman Meets the Monsters!
Comics:Superman: The Man of Steel #14, Superman Vol. 2 #70, Young Justice #3, Wonder Woman Vol. 6 #25 (Cameo)
Notes: We’re going to kick off this week with a two-part story from 1992 in which Tim Drake – at time the newly-minted Robin – pays a visit after news that an odd “blood plague” has jumped from Gotham City to Metropolis. Tim suspects that the victims, drained of blood and left to die, were the targets of a vampire, and he’s determined to hunt them down. Tim, being the smartest member of the Batman family, is absolutely right: we see the vampire appear in the home of the ill Lucy Lane whose boyfriend (at the time) Jimmy Olsen is at her bedside when he appears. The vampire pulls Lucy from her window to feast, his appearance constantly changing and cycling through various famous movie vampires, before Jimmy drives him off with the flashbulb of his camera. The next day he shows Lois the photo he took of Lucy hovering in the air, proof of the attack because vampires can’t be photographed. Dozens of people start disappearing, including Jimmy’s friend Babe (I didn’t name her, folks), a rocker girl who hired him for a photo shoot.
Since Superman is out of town dealing with a series of disasters and calamities, it’s up to the rest of our cast to do something about the situation. The next night, Jimmy, Lois, and Ella Lane (Lucy and Lois’s mom) treat her room with garlic and prepare to look out for her. Jimmy, meanwhile, goes full-out Monster Hunter with a kind of ridiculous getup that I can’t believe never made it into an action figure. Jimmy and Robin encounter each other on a rooftop (their first meeting) as they both track their suspect, the mysterious “Dr. Ruthven.” (Ruthven, by the way, I believe is an old Bulgarian name which means “Obviously I’m a vampire in disguise, I mean, come ON.”) But when Ruthven turns out to be more they can handle, Jimmy activates his signal watch, summoning Superman to his side. He manages to grab Ruthven as the sun is rising, and they watch him disintegrate. Their victory is short-lived, though, as they hear Ruthven laughing, mocking them, saying that sunlight can’t kill a “modern” vampire.
The story continues in Superman #70, with Superman and Robin patrolling the city and Robin trying to convince Superman that vampires are undead, and the usual no-killing rules therefore do not apply. Superman, meanwhile, isn’t convinced that driving a wooden stake through someone is the way to go. Jimmy, hospitalized from his own injuries fighting Ruthven, implores Superman to save Lucy. As he seeks her out, Jimmy and Robin begin making plans. That night, Superman is distracted by a subplot just long enough for Ruthven to return to Lucy’s apartment and take her away, but Jimmy and Robin trace him to an old cemetery where he’s gathered dozens of people he’s infected, including Lucy. Lucy is about to bite Superman (and, as her vampire powers are magical, it would probably work), and Jimmy tackles Robin to prevent him from staking her.
As all this is going on, the situation is being observed by the demon Blaze, an old foe of Superman’s who is concerned that there are certain dead people whose souls were marked for her, but are still in the land of the living, trapped in their undead forms. Blaze floods the cemetery with light that burns the vampire virus out of the victims. Ruthven falls onto a statue of a soldier with a bayonet, essentially staking himself. All seems to be well until the final panel, when we see a face in Babe’s eye that reveals she is not as free of the vampire influence as we would have hoped.
The Babe situation would become a running subplot for quite some time, not resolving itself until some time after Superman’s death and resurrection, so it clearly wasn’t the end of this particular storyline. But that’s how it was during the Triangle Era – this little two-parter set up lots of pieces that would pay off later. The Babe story was one of them, the Blaze storyline would flare up just a month later, and there were even seeds for the two-part “Crisis at Hand” story we read here a couple of weeks ago. It’s fun to see Jimmy hanging out with Robin as well, although there’s never any real explanation as to why Batman would have sent him to Metropolis to deal with a friggin’ vampire without any backup. This was during the period where Tim was enjoying a few miniseries before graduating to his own solo title, and the red-hot popularity of the character explains his appearance in a meta sense, but not in a story sense.
As we’ve seen before, though, it bothers me that the heroes didn’t actually win this one. Without Blaze’s intervention, Superman may well have been bitten and turned into a vampire. Ultimately, it’s hard to call this one a victory for the good guys, no matter how much fun the story actually was.
For a bonus bit of Halloween fun, let’s look at Young Justice #3 by the late Peter David with art by Todd Nauck. Tim’s back again, this time with his pals Superboy and Impulse, having fun at a Halloween party with their brand-new superhero team. Unfortunately, a cult nearby has – in an attempt to summon a demon – accidentally plucked a teenage Mr. Mxyzlptlk from back in time. He encounters the kids and, hearing about his future shenanigans from Superboy, resolves never to use his powers frivolously. Unfortunately, it’s one of those “would you kill Hitler as a baby?” scenarios – it may sound like a good idea, but the ripples through time turn out to be disastrous. Young Justice is then tasked with teaching Mxy HOW to be a prankster in order to save the world.
David’s run on Young Justice was simply a delight. It was a series that had plenty of humor and laughs, but at the same time, never once skimped on characterization. Early in this issue, for example, there’s a scene where Superboy defends Robin from a jerk at the party, not because he doesn’t think Robin can handle himself, but because as someone who hangs out WITH Robin, he’s afraid that if Robin comes off as a wimp it’ll make him look bad. There was a lot of character growth done in this series, and by the end of it Tim and Conner were fast friends, but that bond didn’t exist yet here. There’s also a subplot with Red Tornado, who was acting as a sort of senior advisor to the team, reconnecting with his daughter as she goes trick-or-treating. These little character moments were a trademark of David’s writing, and whether he was writing a cosmic epic or a goofy story about a Halloween party, either way it elevated his work and helped make it more than the sum of its parts. It’s only been a couple of months, but I miss his stuff already.
Notes: Today I’m going to tackle a couple of comics that only a Mummy could love, starting with Superboy #123, “The Curse of the Superboy Mummy.” The story begins in ancient Egypt, when an oracle sees a vision of the future with Superboy demonstrating his amazing powers. The oracle tells the royal magician how to create a potion that will turn his son Seth into a super-boy, even crafting a costume to match that in the vision. Neferti, daughter of the pharaoh, takes an interest in Seth, but he spurns her as he had no interest in her before he gained his powers. She turns to a rival magician for a charm to make Seth love her. He gives her a jade scarab, but the magician tricks her and the scarab strikes Seth down, causing both he and Neferti to drown in the sea. The two are mummified and buried together. In sorrow, Seth’s father carves a warning inscription into his son’s tomb about a calamity the oracle predicted, but he is driven out before it can be finished.
5,000 years later, Lana Lang and Clark Kent are digging up a pyramid in modern Egypt (this isn’t quite as random as it sounds – Lana’s father was an archaeology professor) and happen to unearth the mummies of Neferti and Seth who – wouldn’t you know – happen to EXACTLY resemble Lana and Superboy, whose costume Seth is still wearing. Lana doesn’t know what the inscription on the tomb says, but Clark knows ALL ancient languages, because when you’ve got super-speed you need to find some way to pass the time. It reads “Mighty Superboy! Behold Seth, the super-youth of our day, and Neferti, who slew him by mishap. Heed the warning of the magic shield which predicts that you, too, will be killed by the maid, Lana, of your time, unless you first destroy her…” The mummies crumble into dust, and Clark dismisses the prophecy. Upon returning to Smallville, Superboy gets a sudden chest pain when he picks up Lana the next day. It happens again every time he gets near Lana, which is frequent, as she seems even more trouble-prone than Silver Age Lois Lane. Together they crack the mystery – Lana foudn and has been wearing Neferti’s scarab, which is affecting Superboy much like Kryptonite. The inscription, which was never finished, was supposed to say “unless you first destroy her SCARAB.”
This is why it’s always important not to bury the lede, guys.
It’s a fun story, though, and although it has a lot of the sillier tropes of the era, it presents them in a fun, more unique way than a lot of the comics of the time. Superboy doesn’t actually FIGHT a mummy, I guess, but he’s almost killed by one, and that feels like it fits in with Halloween to me.
Clark would encounter a mummy again in the John Byrne era, in Superman #5, “The Mummy Strikes!” Clark comes in to work where Perry White shows him a video that Lois sent covering an archeological dig in South America. The video cut out, and Perry orders Clark on the next flight down there to find out what happened – of course, the fastest flight happens to be Air Superman. When he arrives he finds he camp safe, allows Lois to think Superman dropped him off (it’s not TECHNICALLY a lie) and discovers what’s going on. The archaeologists have uncovered a metal cylinder that seems to have been made by advanced technology, but is at least 6000 years old. What’s more, the pyramid they are excavating was built over a technological structure that predates human civilization. As they search the caverns, a gigantic creature wrapped like a mummy bursts through the walls and attacks them. Clark manages to “get separated” from the group so he can use his powers against the mummy, but it knocks him out. Lois finds him and the creature, whose trappings have fallen away to reveal an enormous robot. The story continues in issue #6, where Clark wakes up to find Lois holding up his Superman uniform. She tells him that he has been unconscious for “two solar days” and refers to Clark as a “handsome stranger.” Clark realizes that Lois, and the rest of the camp, have had their bodies taken over by alien forces. He learns that these creatures belong to a race that existed on Earth before humans, but who abandoned the planet when struck by a plague. About 500 of them chose to stay and placed their minds in the body of their robot, which would awaken when the race that replaced them reached a sufficient level of development, then take their planet back. Superman battles the robot, which still has the minds of most of the lost civilization, and forces it to release Lois and the rest of the team, who conveniently have no memory of their captivity. He tricks the robot into trying to download its consciousness into his Kryptonian body, which short-circuits the transfer sequence, causing the robot to explode. Superman gives Lois the story this time, “Clark” having been returned to Metropolis already.
I enjoyed this little John Byrne two-parter with its appropriate seasonal goodness. The first half, with the mummy, has some classic monster movie tropes, although the science fiction underpinnings show through the seams from the very beginning. The second half does away with those trappings (literally and figuratively), but the notion of a pre-human civilization trying to wipe out humanity is another classic trope that you could find in the sci-fi invasion films of the 50s, giving the entire thing a nice, old-school feel that’s wildly apropos for the season. There’s also a funny little runner about Clark having neglected to shave and trying not to let Lois notice that he and Superman are sporting the same five o’clock shadow. I know I usually defend Lois in the old days for not figuring out that Superman and Clark were the same person, but I have to admit, stories like this one make that tough sometimes.
I’ll close off today with the curious little book that is DC Comics Presents #53. Presents, as you may recall, was the Superman team-up book, with Superman partnering up with a different guest star in each issue. In this one, his guest star is House of Mystery, an odd choice in that it’s not exactly a CHARACTER. House of Mystery and its sister title, House of Secrets, were a pair of horror anthology comics hosted by the brothers, Cain and Abel, similar in concept to classic comics like Tales From the Crypt, but not quite as intense. In this issue, Mystery’s host Cain pops in to present to us the Superman story “The Haunting Dooms of Halloween.” The story starts with a kid – little Ricky (who probably not coincidentally looks like Ricky from Superman III,which had been released earlier that year) trick-or-treating in a Superman costume when suddenly, without warning, he turns into Superman himself. He rushes to Metropolis and bursts into Lois Lane’s Halloween party, where he abducts Lois. At the same time, Jimmy transforms into Thor – the costume HE was wearing – and tries to save her by…making it rain. Clark, wearing a Green Lantern costume, pretends that whatever magic is affecting Jimmy has struck him as well and uses his “power ring” to fly after the fake Superman.
Back at the House of Mystery, Cain is settling in to tell another story to a group of children when he gets a visitor – Mr. Mxyzptlk (Mxy seems to just LOVE Halloween), who brings in the fake Superman and Lois. He restores Ricky to normal, then starts zapping the other kids to become the monsters and ghosts they’re dressed as. The real Superman (in his own costume now) tracks them down and enters the House, and a voice warns him that he must find Lois by midnight or she’ll be lost forever. He stumbles through the house, facing not only his own fears, but assorted monsters that he’s reluctant to hurt when he realizes that they’re transformed children. As the clock strikes midnight, Superman stands in stark horror at his failure…until Mxy reveals himself, and he starts to laugh. Cain is confused until Superman explains – the whole thing is obviously a joke. Mxy may be a pest, but he wouldn’t actually HURT anyone. This is a WILD swing, by the way, as there are plenty of Mxyzptlk stories where he DOES hurt people, but in this case it seems to be right – Lois is freed from her own prank (being stuck in a room full of comic book artists chained to their drawing boards and begging her to set them free), and Mxy begins to plot his next Halloween stunt. He’s foiled not by Superman, but by little Ricky, who feeds Cain a clue to trick Mxy into banishing himself for another 90 days.
This is a really silly story, far more lighthearted than your typical House of Mystery fare, and Cain plays a more active role than he usually does. It’s very much in keeping with the Superman stories of the era, though, and a joy to read as part of my Halloween windup. I didn’t anticipate having two Mxyzptlk stories in two days, however. I suppose Halloween WOULD be his favorite time of the year, though. Hey, DC, if you’re listening, I’ve got an idea for NEXT year’s anthology theme…
Fri., Oct. 24
Comics: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #44, 52
Notes: If there’s one thing you can say about Jimmy Olsen, it’s that his life is NEVER boring. Whether he’s getting elastic powers or turning into a giant turtle, some sort of nonsense is ALWAYS happening to him. Today I’m going to take a peek into a couple of his hairiest adventures, beginning with Jimmy Olsen #44, “The Wolf-Man of Metropolis.” Superman, who has apparently learned nothing from all the times Jimmy has turned himself into a turtle, drops off a box of ancient bottles and jars that he recently uncovered, including one that purports to contain a potion that can turn someone into a “wolf-man.” When Lois asks Jimmy if it’s real, he decides to prove it’s just a superstition by drinking the contents of the bottle. (Side note: whether werewolves are real or not, is it really the best idea to drink from a bottle that’s been underground for centuries? This is why Jimmy is still a junior reporter after 85 years.) That night, the potion kicks in and turns him into a werewolf just before he’s supposed to take Lucy on a date to a masquerade party. He avoids admitting he’s a werewolf by getting her a Red Riding Hood costume, and they even win the costume contest. Over the next few nights, though, he keeps changing into a wolf and having to find increasingly unlikely explanations for why he’s still wearing the makeup. Lois immediately catches on to what happened and tells her sister, but Jimmy keeps evading the question instead of just fessing up and asking her to break the curse for him, as the bottle says it will end if he gets a kiss from a pretty girl. Jimmy gets desperate, even attempting to pay random women in the park to kiss him (had this story happened today it would be all over social media and Jimmy would be cancelled FOREVER) before Superman brings Jimmy into a dark room and gets his cousin, Supergirl, to give him a smooch and put him out of his misery.
This story makes Jimmy look so remarkably stupid that you can’t help but love it. From drinking the potion to refusing to admit it even after Lois has told Lucy about the boneheaded thing he did this time, Jimmy doesn’t make a single correct decision throughout the entirety of the tale. He doesn’t even know, at the end, that Supergirl is the one who saves him, because this is during that period when her existence was still being kept a secret, which is why Superman asks her to kiss him in the dark. I would love to have listened in when Superman called her to help with this one: “Hey, Linda, it’s Clark. My idiot friend drank a potion that – yes, AGAIN – a potion that turned him into a werewolf. Will you kiss him for me?”
Incidentally, in the backup story in this issue, Mr. Mxyzptlk disguises himself as a leprechaun. It may not be a Halloween story, but if this keeps up I may have to re-name this “Mr. Mxyzptlk” week.
Jimmy’s monstrous problems weren’t over, though. Just eight issues later, MYXYZPTLK COMES BACK! I am UTTERLY DELIGHTED. Mxy, dodging taking his own girlfriend out for a birthday date, comes to Metropolis and falls head over heels in love with Lucy Lane. Trying to find a way to sabotage Jimmy, he sees the b0ttle of wolf-man potion in Jimmy’s trophy collection and makes him drink it, but further uses his magic to turn the potion into water. It doesn’t affect Jimmy, but he doesn’t know that. Instead, Mxy places his own curse on Jimmy, one that is immune to the kiss of a beautiful girl. When the sun comes down, Jimmy becomes a wolf-man again. Once more, Superman summons Supergirl to make out with Jimmy in the dark, but it doesn’t work and he’s still stuck as a wolf. The next night, he’s working late at the Planet office when the sun goes down and he once again wolfs out. Lois takes pity on him and gives him a kiss, but once again, nothing happens. On Night Three, Lucy insists on Jimmy taking her to the zoo at night, because that’s apparently something girls did in the 1950s. Jimmy changes again, and this time Lucy kisses him (with her eyes closed, trying to pretend he’s somebody else), but again, no avail. It keeps going – Lori Lemaris, Lana Lang, nobody’s kiss saves him! Until a veiled girl on the street rushes up to him and gives him a smooch that turns him normal again. She whips off her veil to reveal the less-than-gorgeous face of Miss Gzptlsnz, Mxy’s spurned girlfriend, who enchanted her own lipstick to break Mxy’s magic. She tricks Mxy into going home and follows him, then he goes back to Lucy to tell her he’s normal again, but this time she spurns him because he’s kissed too many girls this week.
I have no notes. This story is perfect and, although I haven’t actually looked it up, I assume it won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Sat., Oct. 25
Comics: Superman #143, Action Comics #531, Green Lantern Vol. 8 #27 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Green Lantern Corps Vol. 4 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Green Lantern Vol. 8 #28 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Action Comics #1091, Superman Unlimited #6, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #44
Notes: Today we’re going to spend a little time with Superman and his encounters with my favorite creature of them all – the Frankenstein monster. The creature has been in the public domain since the dawn of comics, and he’s showed up everywhere. In modern times, the DC version has even become a secret agent and adopted the name “Eric Frankenstein.” But we’re going to look at earlier versions this time out, starting with Superman #143: “Bizarro Meets Frankenstein!”
On Bizarro World, the Bizarro kids love Earth movies – terrifying monsters like Charlie Chaplin and comedies starring the likes of the Wolfman and Mummy. But Bizarro #1 is outraged when he sees a commercial advertising a new Frankenstein movie as starring “the world’s scariest monster.” Determined to prove that he, Bizarro, is scarier than Frankenstein, he zips to Earth, scaring the crap out of a Yeti just to prove that he can before he makes his way to Metropolis. First, he finds the actor wearing the monster makeup and chucks him out of the window, then makes his way to the movie set. To his shock, though, instead of being terrified of him, everyone laughs and the actresses even line up to give him kisses. Unbeknownst to him, the director saw Superman on set earlier and told the girls that he must have put on Bizarro makeup to stir up publicity to his Frankenstein movie. I assume this story must take place on an alternate Earth where that kind of logic makes sense.
Bizarro’s attempts to generate terror continue to fail. A few actors on a western set shoot at him to make him dance (having accidentally chewed a loco weed that’s growing on the movie lot) and a couple of kids don’t fear him, but treat him like Santa Claus (Bizarro doesn’t know that the kids’ parents are part of a circus freakshow, so ain’t nothin’ gonna creep them out). Finally, he gets back to the Frankenstein set, where he starts tearing stuff up, but once again, there’s no fear on anyone’s faces. Superman finally drives Bizarro off by playing a recording to make Bizarro think someone is screaming in terror and a static electricity machine to make the actors’ hair stand on end. Back on Bizarro World, Bizarro decides to celebrate Halloween (Dec. 24, of course) with his kids with a marionette of the scariest monster on Earth – Superman.
My goodness, what a delightfully absurd story. Perhaps the funniest thing is that Bizarro himself isn’t the one acting backwards this time. His goal of proving that he’s the scariest monster of them all is actually pretty straightforward, and in truth, is more logical than most of his stories often are. But even for the Silver Age, the set of contrived coincidences that keep people from fearing him over and over again just stack up to a point of utter absurdity. I love this story for what it is, though: ridiculous, cheesy fun.
Action Comics #531gives us “The Devil and the Daily Planet!” Morgan Edge is making preparations to sell the Daily Planet to a sleazy tabloid publisher named Mort Waxman, a decision that has Clark and his colleagues quite upset. As he’s being shown around the building, Waxman is attacked Scooby-Doo style by a ghost who tells him to get out. The staff begins searching the building, and Lois and Clark run afoul of a Frankenstein-type monster dead set on getting Waxman, whom he calls his “creator,” and Jimmy and Perry wind up fighting a horde of demons that attack a mysterious woman in the printing room. The whole thing turns out to be the work of the ghost of the Planet’s original printer’s assistant, who loves the newspaper and refuses to see it destroyed by Waxman. In the end, Edge is convinced that the paper is too important to turn over to a profiteering scum merchant like Waxman, marking one of the few instances in comic book history of Morgan Edge demonstrating something like integrity.
Marv Wolfman and Joe Staton are responsible for this one, and it’s pretty good. This is from 1982, that era when the Superman comics as a whole were kind of stale, but this was a different sort of story. Superman wasn’t quite the hero in this one, facing a supernatural threat where he was confused as anybody else, but the story holds up the ideals of the character very well. I also really like Staton’s Frankenstein Monster – it’s a nice design that is more evocative of the original Mary Shelley novel than the more popular movie rendition, and it really works well for the character here.
In addition to the creepy content, I’m also going to read some of the recent Superman comics today – it’s been a couple of weeks, and I’ve got several of them built up. Action Comics #1091 continues Mark Waid’s Superboy story with Sam Lane trying to capture young Clark. He escapes easily, but the realization that the military is after him leaves Clark rattled, especially since he was sent there by Captain Comet. When he confronts him, Comet tells Clark he knew that Lane would try to catch him and he wanted to see how Superboy would handle a problem he couldn’t simply punch. Clark soon realizes there’s more going on than Adam Blake is telling him. I said an issue or two ago that I hoped Mark Waid wasn’t taking the route of turning Captain Comet, one of DC’s longest running heroes (maybe never an A-list hero, but still a hero) into a villain. The reveal in this issue is really well-planned, and the final pages between Superboy and Captain Comet are magnificent. It’s perfectly in character for both of them, and it’s wonderful to see a story where a Clark this young starts learning the lessons that will make him the greatest hero of them all.
Dan Slott and Rafael Albuquerque (with Mike Norton this time) continue their story in Superman Unlimited #6. A visit to the Kryptonite-rich country of El Cadero to retrieve a Kryptonian sunstone runs into some problems as Clark’s lead suit is ripped open, exposing him to the incredible amount of Kryptonite radiation permeating the country. At that moment, of course, the Kobra operatives choose to take action. This is the sixth issue, the half-year mark of the title, which is traditionally where the first trade paperback collection will end. That makes it a decent time to take stock of where the series as a whole is going. Slott has set up a really interesting status quo, with a potentially hostile nation having control of the largest Kryptonite stockpile on the planet, Superman discovering a new power, and of course, the return of the Supermobile. The last page also is extremely promising, setting up future storylines for a couple of characters who have been underutilized lately. I’m hoping the second half of this title’s first year is as good as its first, because it’s been a strong addition to the Superman family of titles.
Waid is back for Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #44. Superman and Batman decide to send Robin (Dick Grayson – remember, this series is set in the past) to investigate a company that may have ties to LexCorp. Concerned about his safety, though, they ask Supergirl – who hasn’t held the highest opinion of Robin since their disastrous and hilarious date back in issue #12 of this series, to keep an eye on him from a distance. When the facility they’re in turns out to be experimenting with a synthetic Kryptonite, the fight gets a lot harder, and funnier. I absolutely love the antagonistic attraction Waid laces into the interactions of these two characters. It’s a funny dynamic to play up that’s pretty unique in pairings between the Superman and Batman families. I hope, at some point, we get to see Waid write a contemporary story with the two of them to see how the grown-up Nightwing and Supergirl get along these days.
Sun., Oct. 26
Comics: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #142-143, Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #5, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #3, Supergirl Vol. 8 #6, Justice League Red #3, New History of the DC Universe #4
Notes: More monsterly fun begins today with Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #142, part of Jack Kirby’s run, in which Jimmy and Supes meet “The Man From Transilvane!” A vampire called Dragorin casts his spell on Laura Conway, secretary of Jimmy and Clark’s boss, Morgan Edge. When she passes out in the office, they quickly discover her vampiric affliction, and Dragorin appears to interrogate her about her previous employer, Dabney Donovan. Jimmy and Clark go to investigate Donovan’s old lab, where they face off with a werewolf, causing Clark to duck out and Superman to take his place. Together, they figure out that Dragorin is seeking information about a cemetery called Bloodmoor. They track Dragolin to Bloodmoor, where they find his secret – the miniature planet Transilvane, buried beneath his mausoleum! The story continues in issue #143, where we learn that Donovan created the entire planet, complete with its monster-like inhabitants, as one of his experiments. They find Dragorin in what looks like a coffin, but Superman realizes they’re more like decompression chambers, helping them make the transition from Transilvane to Earth. The monsters put Superman in a torture device, hoping to force him to reveal Donovan’s whereabouts. Unfortunately for them, Superman doesn’t know, and also, he’s Superman, so the torture device isn’t all that effective. Donovan’s machines are about to unleash a “Genocide Spray,” cleansing Transilvane’s surface of all life to prepare it for new experiments. Superman manages to stop the spray and send the Transilvanians back home. Together, he and Jimmy figure out that the beings from Transilvane were “copiers” – creatures of a fluid atomic base that transformed into monstrous forms because Donovan flooded their planet with images from horror movies. Superman decides to give them a more peaceful world, and they switch the movie in Donovan’s machine to Oklahoma.
There’s a reason they called Jack Kirby the King of Comics, and I suppose that reason is that no other man on Earth could have gotten away with starting a story by showing a vampire attacking a secretary and ending it by having Superman convert the entire population of a miniature planet into devotees of musical theatre. Kirby had no hesitation to take wild swings, and the more I read of his Jimmy Olsen run, the more convinced I am that this series showcased that better than anything else. Still, for all the fun I’ve had so far this week, I’ve seen relatively few legitimate monsters. There was a robot wrapped up like a mummy, an actor in Frankenstein makeup, kids turned into monsters by Mxy-magic, Jimmy turned into a wolfman without losing his inherent Jimmytude…and now this alien that’s kinda like a vampire. I feel the need for REAL monsters. Fortunately, I’ve got a few more comics lined up that may understand the assignment a little better.
Halfway through the Saints/Buccaneers football game, I decided that if I was going to cry this afternoon it should be for a GOOD reason, so I picked up Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #5. The final issue of Ryan North and Mike Norton’s miniseries is just as flawless as the first four issues as Krypto, still wandering, stumbles upon a family in trouble. Remembering some of the hardships he’s endured since coming to Earth, he comes to their rescue, and then something miraculous happens.
This is, simply put, a beautiful comic book. North has a pipeline right to the heart of the reader, tapping into emotion that greatly outstrips any other comic on the market right now. His Krypto never says a word, but nevertheless proves over and over again what kind of hero he truly is. Norton, meanwhile, is putting forth his A-game in every panel, filling Krypto’s canine face with courage and emotion.
This is the best miniseries of 2025. I’m putting it out there right now. It’s perfect.
Of course, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum may be a close second. The third issue of W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo’s Black Label series starts with a Superman who has been reduced to a teenager after exposure to a new kind of Cobalt Kryptonite, so the Justice League places him in the custody of one of the few people who can relate to what he’s going through: Billy Batson. As Batman tries to seek a cure to the Cobalt K’s effects, he stumbles upon a surprising revelation about the Rainbow Kryptonite in his possession. Billy and Clark, meanwhile, decide to visit a local amusement park that turns out to be a trap set by their respective foes, Dr. Sivana and the Toyman. Hilarity ensues.
Well, not “hilarity,” actually, but “existential drama ensues” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Prince layers his story with the same kind of deep questions and introspective moments that have made Ice Cream Man such a hit, but at the same time, respecting the characters and crafting a tone that feels kind of like the Silver Age taken a bit more seriously. It’s All Star Superman played for drama. And all of that is a good thing.
Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl #6 give us a brand-new Halloween tale. Kara is being plagued by bad dreams about her own past: her time as a Red Lantern, the time she was manipulated by Darkseid, and her own death in Crisis on Infinite Earths. As her friends try to figure out what’s wrong with her, Supergirl faces a demonic being called Nightflame who claims to be a facet of Kara’s own personality. It’s a quick, self-contained story, but there’s a lot to like about it. Campbell reflects a lot of elements of Supergirl’s past that seem to be intended to help differentiate which of her stories and versions are still in continuity these days (in addition to the previous stories I mentioned, her father’s tenure as a Cyborg Superman and the epic events of Woman of Tomorrow are both referenced). I have to wonder if DC disseminated Mark Waid’s notes for The New History of the DC Universe to its writers as they were coming in, because Campbell works hard to reflect the reality that miniseries has given us. But it doesn’t just show us the tough times in Supergirl’s past – it’s a story about a girl who has confronted her own demons and is working past them. For the most part, this series has been pretty lighthearted, but Supergirl is a character who has endured an awful lot of trauma (arguably much more than her cousin) and Campbell isn’t shying away from showing that.
Nightflame, by the way, is yet another Character from Supergirl’s past, and the cover is even an homage to her prior appearance from Adventure Comics #421. You’ve gotta appreciate the attention to detail.
The mystery deepens in Justice League Red #3. As Cyborg and Green Lantern try to save Red Canary from the Church of Blood, Power Girl confronts Red Tornado over the “gift” he offered her at the end of last issue. Red Tornado is starting to come apart – he’s afraid he’s losing his humanity and, at the same time, using his algorithm to try to predict future catastrophic events that his newly-assembled strike force is intended to prevent. But there’s one future – one REALLY bad future – that he’s got his eye on, and this issue he tells us what he’s going to need the team to do. I like the premise here, of Red Tornado putting together a red ops – um, black ops – team that does jobs he can’t divulge to the rest of the Justice League. I just hope writer Saladin Ahmed can pull it off without permanent damage to the character. I suppose it’ll all come down to how the rest of this miniseries shakes out.
Mark Waid finishes up his romp through the multiverse with New History of the DC Universe #4, with Barry Allen bringing us from the events of Blackest Night right up to the most recent events in the DCU. I’m a little surprised that he didn’t try to touch upon the Legion of Super-Heroes more, but I suppose that’s being saved for the regular comics. I did like how the notes at the end touch upon virtually all of the many potential futures of the DC Universe. There are a lot of great characters out there, and it would be kind of a shame to decanonize any of them. The book works well in terms of trying to explain the reason behind the assorted contradictions of DC history, if not explaining the contradictions themselves. By the end of it all, I feel like we have a solid foundation and understanding of just what stories matter, with a real pathway to the future. I’m going to have to go back at some point and read these four issues (and the extensive notes in the end) in one fell swoop.
Notes: There was more blood-sucking goodness to be had in Superman #344 from 1980, “The Monsters Among Us” by Paul Levitz and Curt Swan. Lois and Clark are sent to cover a seance at an old castle that is intended to summon the spirit of mystic Roland Randall on the 50th anniversary of his death. The medium, a blind woman named Cassandra Craft, tells Clark that she senses an “inner strength” to him, something he quickly denies. When the seance begins, Cassandra cries out and faints, waking up to say that Randall’s spirit is terrified of something. Clark spots two figures in the storm raging outside and ducks away so Superman can investigate. The two shapes burst into the room, appearing as Dracula and the Frankenstein monster, and they’re after Cassandra. After a quick battle with Superman the monsters escape, vowing to return. The next day, after a bizarre vignette where the Frankenstein monster steals some cakes from a bakery truck and briefly tousles with Superman, they return to the castle seeking Cassandra. He manages to fight them off, setting the creature on fire and creating a miniature sun with a hydrogen balloon to cripple Dracula. With the monsters out for the count, the Phantom Stranger appears out of nowhere and spirits them away.
No, really, that’s how it ends. No explanation, no rationalization, not even a “to be continued.” Dracula, at least, says something like “Not again!” but that doesn’t actually tell us ANYTHING. On the one hand, I’m glad that Superman actually had the monsters beaten already by the time the deus ex machina showed up, but on the other hand, what the hell, Paul Levitz? A good story with a very frustrating finale.
In Action Comics #577 by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming, Superman faces off with “Caitiff, the first vampire!” The Metropolis Center for Disease Control reports a number of “suspicious deaths.” Seeing a news report promising footage of what’s going on, a creature named Caitiff decides to stop it from airing again on the evening news, which means he’s going to target the WGBS anchor, Clark Kent. Clark, meanwhile, is reluctant to show the footage, which he believes to be the work of a vampire. (Isn’t it refreshing, by the way, that in most of these stories Clark doesn’t waste any time with the whole “vampires aren’t real” nonsense? The man is an alien, his best friend is an Amazon goddess, he frequently does battle with a pint-sized wizard from the fifth dimension – vampire skepticism would be absolutely absurd in the DC Universe.) Caitiff attacks Clark on the air but, as a vampire, his image doesn’t transmit over the broadcast, so he’s visible to the people in the studio. He vanishes into mist and Clark – as Superman – takes after him, further exacerbating the indigestion his frequent disappearances cause his director, Josh Coyne. Superman inhales the mist that makes up the vampire, but Caitiff attacks him psychically, stirring up feelings of immense loneliness and causing Superman to black out long enough for him to escape. He tracks the vampire to a subterranean lair full of desiccated skeletons. At first Superman is horrified, believing them to be Caitiff’s victims, but Caitiff reveals that these are the remains of his own family, his own people, who were exterminated by humans over the years, Catiff is the last of them. He slips away and Superman is left to pity the creature who, like Superman, is the last of his kind.
This is a dark tale, and really genuinely sad. It evokes the feeling of some of the great monster movies like The Wolfman or the original Frankenstein, where the creature comes across less as a demon and more like a victim of circumstance. Caitiff seems to have no true malice within him, only a well-justified fear of humans and their actions towards his kind. The panel where he talks about how human scientists dissected his own child is particularly chilling. This works very well as a sad meditation on humanity, which is something you often get out of good monster stories.
Superman faced a Lord of Darkness yet again in 2002, in Superman #180 by Jeph Loeb, Geoff Johns, and Ian Churchill. Lois, Clark, and Jimmy visit the home of the mysterious Count Rominoff “somewhere in eastern Europe.” Rominoff, an admirer of Lois’s work, has invited them to his castle where he promises a rare interview in light of the recent annexation of a nearby country by General Zod. That night, Lois is roused from her slumber and she roams the grounds, where Superman appears just in time to save her from a werewolf attack, then the appearance of a vampire. She passes out and wakes up in the morning with no memory of the late night excursion, which has Clark understandably worried. That night, as Rominoff’s thrall Elizabeth goes after Jimmy, Rominoff is revealed to be Dracula himself and clashes with Superman over Lois. Dracula reveals that he invited Lois specifically because he wanted to lure Superman to his castle. He uses his magic to hypnotize Superman and bites him, only to find himself suddenly in agonizing pain.
Remember what a vampire’s main weakness is? That’s right, the sun.
Remember Superman’s power source? That’s right. THE SUN.
Biting Superman turns out to be like biting into a solar battery. Dracula howls in pain and disintegrates, and Superman snaps out of it none the worse for the experience. Jimmy, meanwhile, has just managed to escape Elizabeth, but as the Planet staff goes home, we see that Elizabeth has found a new home of her own amongst the Creature Commandos.
The interesting thing about this is that, despite feeling like a mostly one-off story, it’s highly intertwined with plots that were running through the books at the time. The Zod thing is the most obvious part, but we also see that Lois is still bitter at Clark for choosing to save Wonder Woman’s life over that of Lois’s father during the recent Our Worlds at War crossover, and that friction between them persists throughout the issue. On the other hand, even though Superman doesn’t actually “beat” Dracula through his own agency, I absolutely LOVE the way Loeb wraps up the conflict. Connecting Superman’s solar cells to Dracula’s fatal weakness is the sort of little bit of cleverness that makes a story far more enjoyable to me. I’m sure that, in the 23 years since this story was written, Superman MUST have faced another vampire, but I’m not sure if this has come up again. I know it didn’t during the DC Vs. Vampires series, but that’s an Elseworlds. I want to believe this is a canon vampire immunity for the main line.
One last Super-family/Dracula clash came interestingly, in Batgirl #14 from 2010. This issue was part of Bryan Q. Miller’s excellent, underrated Batgirl run, which starred Stephanie Brown and was derailed by the New 52 reboot the following year. But one of the running subplots he had was a friendship between Stephanie and Supergirl. I really enjoyed that, and it’s a shame that they haven’t touched upon it again since Stephanie came back from comic book oblivion a few years ago. In “Terror in the 3rd Dimension,” Kara drops by Gotham City to have a girls’ night with Stephanie. Kara, who was still written as being new to Earth at the time, is in love with Stephanie’s relatively “normal” life, living with her mom and attending college, and she’s hoping to share in some of those experiences. They wind up deciding to take in a 3-D revival of a vampire movie. As they’re watching the film, an experiment at the campus super collider (of COURSE they have a super collider on a college campus in Gotham City) causes several Bela Lugosi-style Draculas to leap from the screen and terrorize the crowd. Batgirl and Supergirl find that the lab’s experiments in “hard light” force fields lasted one second, creating 24 Draculas – one for each frame of the film that played during that second. One of the science students who was behind the experiments gives them a set of control rods that will destabilize them if they, y’know, stake the Draculas through the heart.
It’s the sort of premise that’s so ridiculous that only works if the story KNOWS it’s ridiculous and refuses to take itself seriously. Fortunately, that’s a perfect description of Miller’s run on this book. Sure, it’s a Batman-family book, and sometimes it got dark, but Stephanie herself was kind of the antidote to that. It came out of the time when Bruce Wayne was believed to be dead and Dick Grayson took over as Batman, and the books as a whole were consumed with darkness. This title specifically, and her friendship with Supergirl in particular, made this feel like a light in that darkness. You’ve probably seen Mike Maihack’s delightful Supergirl/Batgirl comics online (how DC has yet to commission this man to do a graphic novel is beyond me). Although that’s the Barbara Gordon Batgirl instead of Stephanie, it’s got a similar tone to this book, and the relationship between our two heroines is lovely. Somebody pass this issue over to Sophie Campbell – I want this dynamic back.
DC’s latest crossover event has also begun, and it’s time to play a little catch-up on DC KO. The time-tossed heroes from the Omega Act special have come with dire news. Darkseid has placed a “Heart of Apokalips” at the center of Earth, something that will overrun the planet with Omega Energy and give Darkseid the power to reshape reality as he wishes. The only hope is for one of the Justice League to take it first – and the only way to get through it is through personal combat with one another, for reasons that writer Scott Snyder explains much better than I can here. Is it a comic book-y type of excuse to have a bunch of heroes fight each other? Heck no! Because the bad guys find out about it and sneak their way into the tournament, so it’s a comic book-y type of excuse to have a bunch of heroes AND villains fight each other!
That’s snarky, I know, because it’s all a little convoluted, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. Snyder does a really good job of selling the stakes and having the heroes prepare to do battle with each other without it seeming out of character. There are even some nice surprises in this one, including one character who doesn’t make it into the first round of the contest, something that’s going to surprise everyone. So far so good.
The spin-offs are hitting as well. In Titans #28, the Titans are tasked with evacuating Earth, assisted by Jonathan Kent. Superman #31, meanwhile, is not only tying into the crossover, but seriously paying off the assorted storylines that have been going on in this title since DC All-In started. Before leaving for the KO tournament, Superman consults the simulation of Jor-El at the Fortress of Solitude for any knowledge Krypton may have had about Darkseid and the Omega Energy. Failing that, he helps coordinate LexCorp’s resources – along with Brainiac’s miniaturization tech – to help facilitate the evacuation of Earth. After he leaves, Lois isn’t satisfied and makes her way to the Fortress to interview Jor-El herself. Her conversation with the Kryptonian archives brings unexpected fruit, and a surprise visitor to the Fortress turns everything on its head. It’s always nice, during these crossover events, when it feels as though the story has been planned out. Ever since the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, events have been plagued by “red skies” crossovers – issues with the event labelling but nothing to do with the story except the color of the sky to indicate something big is happening elsewhere. This feels like the opposite of that – a comic that has told its own story very well, but at the same time, contributes to the overall crossover AND uses it to extend its own storylines. It’s great stuff.
Tues., Oct. 28
Comics: DC’s Zatannic Panic (Cameo), DCU Halloween Special #1 (2008), Taste of Justice #15 (Starring Jimmy Olsen)
Notes: Let’s close off this week with some seasonal stuff, starting with the annual DC Halloween special. This year, the marketing people who come up with the titles for these things continue to earn their paycheck with Zatannic Panic, which – shockingly – has no stories starring anyone from the Superman family. Superman DOES make a brief appearance in the delightful Ambush Bug story that serves as a nice meta-commentary on the Halloween special as a whole, but that ain’t enough for me. So I dipped back into the DC Infinity archives and pulled out the 2008 DCU Halloween Special, a title that would last for three years, then fade away before the annual specials returned in the Rebirth era with a different wild title each year. (My favorite, by the way, is still the 2021 special, Are You Afraid of Darkseid?)
The 2008 special – hosted Cryptkeeper-style by the late Ralph and Sue Dibney – starts off with a Superman story. In “Deadline: Halloween” by Mike Johnson and Tony Shasteen, Clark is working late after the Daily Planet Halloween party, where Perry warns Clark to take it easy before he ends up like “Old Man McCampbell,” an old reporter who died before finishing his last story. Clark hears some odd noises, and when he investigates, he finds himself facing what appear to be ghosts of some of his greatest enemies. After getting knocked around a little, a ghostly Lex Luthor pulls him into a framed newspaper, which changes to a picture of Clark with the headline “Reporter Missing.” With him tapped in the paper, the ghost of McCampbell appears and commandeers Clark’s computer to finally finish his last story. Clark awakens at his computer, believing he finished his story in his sleep, then goes home where he greets a trio of trick-or-treaters dressed like Batman who mock Clark’s fake-looking Superman costume.
The nature of these specials sometimes works against the stories being told. I feel like there’s a good story here, something that would have worked well in a longer tale, but in seven pages there’s not enough buildup, not enough development of the McCampbell ghost to really feel like we’ve got a satisfying payoff. Looks like I will, yet again, have to seek some Super Halloween content elsewhere.
Animated Short: Krypto Saves the Day: Halloween Havoc
Notes: The second of the new DC Studios Krypto shorts just happens to be Halloween-themed, and even though it dropped a few weeks ago, I held off on watching it until this week so I could include it as a seasonally-appropriate addition to the blog. Halloween Havoc, written and directed by David Gemmill, in this one Clark Kent (dressed as Frankenstein) realizes he’s running low on Halloween candy and leaves Krypto in charge while he goes out to get more. This turns out to be a drastic mistake as Krypto is almost immediately distracted by a black cat and goes, once again, on a citywide chase trying to get his quarry, causing havoc (hey, I bet THAT’S where the title comes from!) and potentially ruining Halloween for children everywhere in the process.
Like the first short, “School Bus Scuffle,” this one is really cute and clever. The gags land and there are even a couple of Easter Eggs for DC Comics fans who are paying attention. The final punchline is perfect, and even helped to answer a concern I found myself thinking about as the short went on. And special mention has to go to musical composer Paul Fraser, who I imagine was given the instructions “Make it sound like The Munsters, but not enough to get sued.”
After two chase scene shorts, though, I’m very curious about the other two that haven’t dropped yet. Will they go in a different direction next time, or is Krypto going to be DC Studios’ answer to Tom and Jerry, every episode being a chaotic and futile effort to get his quarry before realizing the error of his ways and proving himself to be a good boy at the very end?
Hope you’ve enjoyed “Superman Meets the Monsters” week, friends. There are still three days left in October as I write this, but the next blog isn’t scheduled to be posted until Nov. 5, so I’m not going to do any more Halloween focus – although you may still get bits and pieces. Hope you all have a fun, safe, and (dare I say it?) SUPER Halloween!
It feels like I just started yesterday, but here we are in the fourth week of my journey through the era of Electric Superman. The Man of Energy has been split into two – a red and a blue version of himself. But time is almost up, because we’re on the cusp of the crossover event that ended this era, the Millennium Giants. Let’s get into it!
Comics:Superman Vol. 2 #133, Adventures of Superman #556, Action Comics #743, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #6 (Guest Appearance), Taste of Justice #11 (Supergirl and Krypto)
Notes:Superman #133 starts with Red and Blue bickering over which of them is going to go in to work and write their column, with Red winning the argument and banging out a piece that’s both more pointed and more jovial than his usual style, to the point that Perry asks him to rewrite it. An explosion summons Superman Red to Cadmus, where he finds Guardian beaten to hell and the three deities that Superman fought on Halloween proclaiming “The Time of the Millennium Giants is at hand!” In a backup story, Jimmy and Misa are still on the run from the Black Crucible. When they get pinned down, Misa uses a device to signal for help. Blue Clark, meanwhile, is back at the Planet office where he’s rewritten Red’s column, only to turn in one that’s too bland and analytical. He bolts away and saves Jimmy from the Crucible, whose leader says the Medallion Jimmy is carrying will signal the end of the world. Suddenly, the Medallion AND the members of the Black Crucible just…disappear.
Ominous, no?
Adventures #556 picks up right there with Red facing off against the Millennium Guard. They summon the Medallion to them (explaining where it went in Superman #133) and then take off in three different directions. Blue, meanwhile, is helping Jimmy and Misa fix up their vehicle when the three of them are attacked by a huge monster straight out of a Kirby sci-fi comic. The conclusion of that fight is ALSO the sort of supremely goofy thing that would have happened in a book of this era, but it’s actually pretty charming as well in its silliness. And even though at the end of the book Jimmy is still running for his life from Intergang, his standing up to the monster convinces Misa that maybe he’s not so lame after all – it’s a rare win for Jimmy in this era.
Action Comics #743 has Blue returning to Metropolis, where he encounters detective Slam Bradley, who’s chasing a nasty sort that calls himself the Inkling. Blue stops Inkling, who the reader learns is another product of Hunter Thompson’s experiments at S.T.A.R. Labs (the same ones that gave us the Ripper not long ago). He knows Thompson is bad news, but has no proof, which has gotta be frustrating for a guy as cool and logical as Superman Blue. Also, in space, the Millennium Guard has taken positions in orbit ready to “purge the Earth,” which always sounds like a good time.
In Red’s story, the Guard has bolted away, leaving Superman drained of energy. Jimmy and Misa find him and give him a lift back to Metropolis, where they stumble into the Intergang squad that’s been chasing Jimmy for months. Misa finds a dandy solution, using a device that makes Jimmy completely invisible to them and, in fact, making them forget he ever existed. That’s a quick little solution to that subplot just before things get wild next week.
These three issues all use the same format, with two different stories for the respective Red and Blue, and I have to say, I’m impressed with how well it works. The stories weave in and out of each other, connecting at various points and showing the consequences of one story in the other. It works so well, honestly, that I’m surprised it really only happened for three issues, plus the two issues we read at the tail end of last week, Action #742 and Man of Steel #77, which each devoted an entire issue to one of the Supermen but otherwise worked the same way.
I suppose time has shaped my perspective, but I could have sworn the Red/Blue era lasted longer. As it turned out, only about two or three months pass between the split and the story that’s going to end with the two of them re-forming and Superman’s powers going back to normal. Maybe it was the fact that back then I had to wait a week for each new issue to come out, whereas today I’m simply clicking “next issue” in the DC Universe app and bouncing ahead seven days to get the next installment.
At any rate, I really liked the way these issues were told, and while I don’t want Superman to get split in half again, I’d like to see someone else use this trick. I’m not sure how, exactly – maybe Firestorm, whose whole gimmick is that he’s two people who fuse into one superhero would be a good candidate. Or perhaps a run about a couple of Green Lantern sector partners that used this formula. Or hell, do it with Jonathan and Conner Kent, the two Super-Brothers. That might actually give Jonathan something interesting to do for a change. But somehow, it’s a trick I would like to see done again.
Thurs., Sept. 18
Comics: Superman: The Man of Steel #78, Aquaman Vol. 5 #43, Challengers of the Unknown Vol. 3 #15, Superman Vol. 2 #135, Teen Titans Vol. 2 #19, Supergirl Vol. 4 #20, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #11
Notes: There are different degrees of crossover events. There are the bigs ones, the huge ones that have a main miniseries and spin-offs and chapters appearing in various different comics – from the original Crisis on Infinite Earths down to lesser examples like Genesis. There are the small-scale ones that only involve titles in the same group, like the Superman or Batman titles. Then there’s stuff in the middle like Millennium Giants. This one is clearly a Superman story and it plays out in the four main Superman titles, but it also brings in Steel and Supergirl, as well as a few books with no relation to Superman at all. They also did a neat thing with the covers of the first nine (out of 11) issues: they assemble into a sort of large puzzle featuring the giants and the respective heroes facing them, along with our two Supermen zipping around and appearing on every cover.
The fun starts off in Man of Steel #78. The three members of the Millennium Guard have taken their spots in three places on the globe, including the site of a volcanic eruption where the native religion sees them as a harbinger of the end of the world. Red and Blue, after a brief squabble, agree to split up and each take on one of the Guard. But as it turns out, the Guard are only there to facilitate the release of the Millennium Giants – three enormous deities who burst from the ground.
The story picks up in Aquaman #43. One of the giants is marching through the ocean on a beeline for the Atlantean city of Poseidonis. Aquaman and Tempest try to confront it when he takes out Superman Red, but the creature keeps walking, sending tidal waves towards nearby coastlines. As Tempest protects the shore, Aquaman tries to communicate with the giant telepathically, but he fails and it goes into battle against the heroes and the HEAVILY armed Poseidonis. Man, this really makes me want to go back and read Peter David’s Aquaman all the way through. Maybe next year. Anyway, Superman and Aquaman try their best to hold back the creature but it crushes an underwater city on its march across the ocean.
This is really how a crossover SHOULD work. It’s not a coincidence or shoehorned in – it makes PERFECT sense for Aquaman to get involved when a freaking giant is threatening his kingdom, and it brings him in to make him a player in the rest of the crossover too. Perfectly done.
The next installment brings us to Challengers of the Unknown #15. Classically, the Challengers were a group of daredevils and specialists who each survived a near-death experience and, believing themselves to be “living on borrowed time,” became adventurers. They weren’t QUITE superheroes, but they often ran across them. This series was one of DC’s periodic attempts to update the concept with new characters and a dash of X-Files style paranormal investigation. The Prime Minister of the UK summons the Challs to investigate the giant that erupted from Stonehenge and is marching across the countryside. This issue is more skippable than the Aquaman chapter, seeming to take place BEFORE that one (the English Giant is the one Aquaman and Superman Red fight in the ocean), and Superman doesn’t actually appear. It does end with the Challs uncovering some info that they want to bring to Superman’s attention, though.
In Superman #135, the two Supermen have reconvened in Mexico, where another Giant has climbed out of a volcano. Blue wants to evacuate, but the impetuous Red charges in headfirst, attacking. They manage to barely pull off a save, and Lois (who is there covering the Giants, of course) confronts her two husbands, both of whom now seem to be pretty happy with the ability to be in two places at one and have no intention of trying to fuse together again. The split up yet again, with Blue staying on the giant in Mexico and Red zipping to the Pacific. Back in Metropolis the Teen Titans (whose book, you may recall, was written by Dan Jurgens at the time) decide to head to Egypt to take on the third giant, while the Challengers are on their way to Mexico. Neither of the Supermen are effective in their attacks on the giants, though, with Red failing to save an entire pacific fleet of 200 American ships.
Teen Titans #19 starts with Tempest saving Red after his failure in the Pacific before following the people whose comic it actually is as they attempt to hold off the Giant that’s threatening Egypt. The bulk of the issue is Superman Red and the Titans facing off against the Giant, failing time and again and finally accepting that they need to focus on saving the people in its path rather than fight it directly. That may not sound like the most exciting take for this issue, but Jurgens does a good job of painting it as the sensible route, showcasing his Titans to readers who may not have been exposed to them before and showing some hidden depths to a few of them as well. The issue ends with the Giant marching off to sea and the team planning to head to Markovia, where the third Giant is wreaking havoc.
Supergirl #20 brings back Peter David again, kicking things off with a woman in a mental institution claiming to be Cassandra (the Greek one) and screaming with terror about the encroaching giants. And like Cassandra, her fears are dismissed. Supergirl, meanwhile, has just left her family in the midst of a personal crisis to help deal with the crisis of the Giants. She tries to use her powers as an “Earth Born Angel” (read everything Peter David ever wrote, really) to hold it off, but falls into the ocean where both she and “Cassandra” are saved by Superman Red. It’s kind of a quick chapter, really, but it showcases Supergirl well and it’s always a delight to read David’s stuff again.
Fri. Sept. 19
Comics: Adventures of Superman #557, Steel #50, Action Comics #744, Superman: The Man of Steel #79, Superman Vol. 2 #135, Superman Forever #1
Notes: In Adventures #557, Steel calls in Superboy and the Justice League to join the fight as Blue faces the Mexican Giant Cabraca while Geo-Force and Terra hold the line against Cerne in Markovia. Blue, Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter face Cabraca while the others join the Titans, Supergirl, and Red in Markovia, where Cerne and Ronal are now converging. The giants lift an entire chunk of Markovia into the sky, the heroes only barely managing to evacuate it before it’s gone. And the icing on the cake comes when Cerne crosses the Atlantic to re-emerge in Metropolis harbor.
Steel #50 continues as John Henry – who has recently joined the Justice League and is eager to prove himself – works with J’onn J’onzz to construct a weapon to stop the Giants by disrupting their connection to Earth’s magnetic Ley Lines. The device seems to work, but John shuts it down, fearing that it will cause even greater destruction than the Giants if the field breaks down. He winds up fighting his own teammates over it, destroying the device and finding himself on the opposite side of the rest of the JLA.
In Action #744, while Cerne approaches Metropolis, the Challengers of the Unknown come to Lois Lane in the hopes that she can get their findings to Superman. Their theory is that the Giants – who appear in myths from cultures all over the world – have arisen because of an anomaly in the Earth’s energy field. They believe that the two Supermen, working together, could drain the Giants of their energy and stop the rampage. Red draws all the power from Metropolis to turn himself into a giant, ripping Cabraca into space. The effort is fruitless, however – Cabraca crumbles, falls back to Earth as a meteor shower, and re-forms in Australia. His suit shredded, Red begins to dissipate.
Blue zips into space to save Red in Man of Steel #79, but Red refuses his help, fearing that weaving the circuitry of their respective suits will cause them to re-merge. Blue saves him anyway, and although they don’t merge, the two Supermen are now tethered together. Steel has modified his device and gives it to the Supermen to try to trigger it in Cabraca’s heart – which they do but find themselves transported to the “Heart of the World,” where a strange being calling himself the Keeper of the Flame says that their alien energies awakened the giants. He can help them, but only at the cost of their lives. The Supermen trigger a chain reaction that topples the Giants, but their victory is short-lived. It turns out that stopping the Giants has also stopped the flow of the energy that binds Earth together, and it’s on the verge of a massive eruption that would duplicate the fate of a little world called Krypton.
It all comes to a head in Superman #135! An old Aboriginal man tells the Supermen that salvation can be found with the Medallion of the Damned, which is deep inside Cerne’s body. The three of them dive into the Giant’s form, where they find the Medallion on the body of an insectoid creature. Here they learn that the only way to restore Earth’s magnetic lines is for each of them to expel their energy, one at the center of the Earth and one from orbit. And although they have spent this entire time fighting and bickering one another, the two Supermen do it – because at the core, they’re still both Superman. The skies turn red, the ground turns blue, and Earth is saved…but when it’s over, J’onn J’onzz casts out a telepathic web to search for the men of energy…and finds nothing.
Are they gone? Are they dead?
Of course not. They’re in Superman Forever, a giant-sized one-shot with a fancy lenticular cover by Alex Ross to tie the whole thing up. The Kents are driving through their fields at night, worried about their missing son, when they see a meteor streak across the sky. It’s not the first time this has happened, and they rush to the site to see Clark lying in a crater: unconscious, naked, and burning with fever. They bring him back to their farmhouse where he sleeps for over 24 hours before waking up and realizing he can hear them speaking outside. Somehow, the expenditure of his energy powers made him fuse back into a single being with his original powers again. How? Clark himself theorizes that it was some kind of “reward.”
Who am I to argue?
Martha being Martha, she just happens to have one of his original costumes handy for him to put on,and he takes off to let the world know that Superman is back!
Of course, it’s only page 14, and there’s a lot left to go. Turns out Superman is being watched by Kismet, a cosmic entity he’s encountered a few times before, who sees (YET ANOTHER) threat on the horizon. Superman returns to Metropolis where he joins in with Supergirl, Superboy, and Steel saving an airplane from a crash… a plane that just happens to have Lois on it. The woman has the WORST luck when it comes to air travel, I tell you.
Also in this special, Jimmy Olsen returns to the Planet with his tail between his legs to beg for his job back, only for Perry to give it to him without hesitation. While they’re celebrating, though, Lex Luthor barges into the office, furious that the Planet published a photo of his daughter. While he’s railing against Perry, he gets call that Lena has been kidnapped.
The creative team on this book (like the Wedding Special and the Red/Blue special, it’s a mashup of the creators of the regular books with a few guests) took an interesting approach. There are really three different, almost totally unconnected sections of the book. The first act, where the Kents find Clark and he returns to Metropolis, is part one. Act two is the kidnapping storyline, with Superman doing everything he can to find the missing daughter of his worst enemy, because that’s the kind of man he is. This has virtually nothing to do with what happened before, except for the fact that every person who encounters him makes a comment about the fact that he’s gone back to his original powers and costume, then goes on with their day because they all live in Metropolis and they see more inexplicable stuff than that before their Pop-Tarts come out of the toaster in the morning. Then, after that story is resolved, we get four separate epilogues, each of them showing Superman in different eras that seem to roughly correspond to the Golden, Silver, and Bronze ages, and a third that is set 1000 years in the future. It’s a setup for the Dominus story that would consume the books for the next several months – which is totally fair, except for the fact that, again, it seems to have nothing to do with anything that’s come before it. In fact, I almost feel like I don’t need to read these books again , but it’s been a long time and I enjoy a good timey wimey story.
Besides, if I don’t read them, I’ll just be cliffhangering myself. And I promised me that I would treat me more nicely.
Sat., Sept. 20
Comics: Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #2, Action Comics #1090, Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #4
Notes: I’m not going to get to Dominus just yet, though. After a couple weeks, I’ve once again liberated my new comics from my local shop and I’m going to spend today (and maybe tomorrow too) reading the new Superman-related books. And although only one of the back-up stories is Superman-related, I’ll start with the painfully-titled Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1.
I objectively got the best cover.
The main story and most of the back-ups are really quite good. Zeb Wells, who writes the Deadpool/Batman tale, finds a new spin on combining the universes that’s really quite suitable for Deadpool. Most of the others simply take the old-fashioned tactic of assuming the characters inhabit the same world. The Captain America/Wonder Woman story by Chip Zdarsky goes so far as to showing a whole history between the two characters that goes all the way back to World War II. There are also two pages by Frank Miller, the less is said about which, the better.
But mostly, I’m here to talk about the Krypto/Jeff the Land Shark story by Jeff’s usual creative team of Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru. This mostly-wordless story is set in the Arctic, as Krypto and Jeff romp and play games with one another outside the Fortress of Solitude. That’s it. That’s the whole story. And it’s really adorable. It fits perfectly in with the usual Jeff stories, and were it not for the fact that his co-star is an inhabitant of the DC Universe, it could easily be an issue of his own comic.
Now I have to say, were you only buying this book for a Superman story, dropping $6.99 for a story co-starring Krypto is probably too much. But if you’re a fan of comics and crossovers in general, this really is a great package.
The second issue of Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum is next. Continuing from issue one, Superman and Batman are still experimenting with the new types of Kryptonite when one of them turns the man of steel into a giant. Batman thinks he can concoct a fix, but before it’s ready, Lex Luthor ups the ante by exposing the Kaiju-sized Superman to a dose of RED Kryptonite, sending him on a rampage that the Justice League has to come in and try to stop. Like the first issue, I’m tremendously impressed at how W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo are applying their signature style to the DC Universe. There’s still very much the same flavor of weirdness we get from Ice Cream Man, but the horror elements are replaced with a take on silver age-style superheroism that feels more like a loving parody than an attack. It’s a glorious little story with a climax and cliffhanger that literally made me laugh out loud. That doesn’t happen often, even with comics that are intended as straight-up comedies. This is rapidly climbing my list of best comics of the year.
In Action #1090 Mark Waid and Skylar Partridge continue the story that – no matter what the eventual trade paperback is gonna be called – is essentially “Superboy: Year One.” Clark finally gets a date with Lana, only for two disasters to happen. First, she tells him how she REALLY feels, and second, Captain Comet summons him to a battle scene. Raze, the villain Superboy caught a few issues ago, has come back with some friends and he’s attacking the lab of noted AI specialist and metallurgist Will Magnus, and Superboy is needed to save the day. Turns out that Comet had a little surprise of his own, though.
Waid is taking classic tropes of the Pre-Crisis Superboy and putting a modern spin on them, particularly in the context of Clark and Lana’s relationship. Although the writing is modern, the themes and tone could fit in just as well in the 1950s, and that’s really perfect. On the other hand, the more sinister Captain Comet is an interesting choice, although I imagine we’ll get some sort of revelation on his part before this story ends to keep from casting him as an outright villain.
Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #4 starts with a content warning. It says “This is a sad one. Read it with someone to hug nearby.”
THIS is a sad one.
AS IF THE LAST THREE ISSUES DIDN’T ALL REDUCE ME TO A GIBBERING MESS.
Anyway, in this one the still-wandering Krypto befriends another stray dog, and together the two of them befriend a group of children, and together the kids and the dogs activate an alien intelligence that threatens all life on Earth. And Krypto is a very good boy. And so is his friend. And eventually, after I soak through a couple of Kleenex, we get to a last page that promises – FINALLY – a glimmer of hope in this terrible, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, magnificent, beautiful series.
Sun., Sept. 21
Comics: Supergirl Vol. 8 #5, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #43, Justice League Red #2 (Team Member Power Girl)
Notes: Supergirl #5 is a largely one-off issue that focuses on the Super Pets. Supergirl and Lesla leave their respective superpowered animal pals with Lena, who loses them almost immediately, leading to two separate adventures. Krypto and Kandy the Super-Rabbit wind up in battle with Princess Shark, who has come to Midvale to get her revenge on Supergirl, while Streaky and the miniature Super-Ape Tinytano stumble across a litter of kittens who have inadvertently gained super powers. The story is light, airy, ridiculous, and charming.
Sophie Campbell takes this issue off from the art chores, but she still writes the issue. Pencils instead are handed over to Paulina Ganucheau for the Krypto half of the issue and Rosi Kampe on the Streaky half. Both of their respective styles are fine, but they’re very different from one another. Ganucheau’s art is a little looser and cartoony, more in line with Campbell’s usual style. Kampe’s art is tighter and looks like a more traditional superhero comic. Again, neither of them are bad, but the switch halfway through the book is somewhat jarring.
In World’s Finest #43, the Bizarro World storyline comes to a close. As we learned, the alien who infected the Bizarros with a pandemic that “fixed” their brains did so in the hopes that they would realize their planet was about to be destroyed by the physical laws that say a square planet can’t exist. This issue, our heroes struggle against the twin problems of the planet’s collapse and the pandemic, and in each case, a solution is found by a most unexpected mind. I really love the way Mark Waid plays these characters here, showing an intelligence in one of our heroes that he isn’t usually credited with having, and pulling a rabbit out of his hat with a new Bizarro that is hilarious and brilliant. This arc was an awful lot of fun, and that’s all we really want out of World’s Finest, isn’t it?
The new Super-titles wrap up with Power Girl in Justice League Red #2. Power Girl, Green Lantern, and Cyborg are comparing notes, all of them realizing that the missions Red Tornado has been sending them on are less than savory, and they demand answers from their teammate. Red Tornado reveals that his actions are linked to another Leaguer in jeopardy, but none of that quite explains just how underhanded he’s been acting. The heroes don’t know what to make of it but, at the same time, they’re not going to abandon one of their own. I’m still not quite sure what to make of this title. I’ve enjoyed the first two issues, but I can’t tell where they’re going with Red Tornado here. If the miniseries ends with him becoming a villain I’m going to be pretty disappointed, but as I said after issue one, I think it’s going to turn out to be more nuanced than that when all is said and done. All that said, the cliffhanger at the end of this issue is just dandy.
Mon, Sept. 22
Comics: Adventures of Superman #558, Action Comics #745, Superman: The Man of Steel #80, Superman Vol. 2 #136, Adventures of Superman #559, Action Comics #746, Superman: The Man of Steel #81, Superman Vol. 2 #137
Notes: Welp, Superman is one person again and his powers are back to normal. You’d think his troubles are over, right? No, you silly person. Now it’s weirder than ever, because it seems as though there are FOUR Supermen (again), except this time, each of them is in a different era. In Adventures of Superman #558, we’re in a world that seems highly reminiscent of the Silver Age, with Superman and his family having a friendly game of baseball that spans the globe using a mine launched by an enemy submarine as the ball. We’ve got Steel on the top of Mt. Everest, Superboy (wearing an old-school costume) in France, and most surprising, a Kara Zor-El Supergirl in outer space. And the game stops when Krypto fetches the ”ball!” (I feel like we should remember that, at this point, the “Superman is the only Kryptonian survivor” edict was still in place – neither Kara nor Krypto existed in this continuity.) Jimmy Olsen, meanwhile, has stumbled into yet another of one of those transformations that seemed to happen to him so frequently in this era, this time drinking an alien isotope that turns him into a green-skinned spaceman. When word gets out that Alien Jimmy has been blessed – or cursed – with a Midas Touch, turning anything he touches into gold, he’s kidnapped by the world’s most ingenious criminal scientist, Lex Luthor.
I can only imagine co-writers Karl Kesel and Jerry Ordway putting this one together, an issue that’s a wild and charming mashup of the modern Superman (with elements like Steel and Dabney Donovan) with a story that could very easily have been a lost plot from an issue published in 1955. Jimmy’s wild transformations were a staple of the time, and we see the old (and often frustrating) trope of Lois being desperate to marry a Superman who keeps resisting her advances. By the end of the issue, nothing has really been resolved – it comes across as an entertaining oddity, but as of yet there’s no clue as to what’s actually happening.
Action Comics #745 takes a similar approach to what the writers call the “Polyester Age” in a story that roughly approximates the Superman comics of the late 70s. Superman comes in to save an unruly mob that has gathered on the collapsing Queensland Bridge, each of whom is carrying a bogus deed indicating they own it. Superman plans to investigate, but first he has to head to his job at WGBS to report the news with his co-anchor, Lana Lang. The story spins out into a fairly standard Prankster story, in which he takes over a cruise ship, kidnaps Lana Lang, places her in a trap that Superman can’t spring without exposing her to a deadly toxin, and in a script-flipping cliffhanger, asking Superman to officiate his and Lana’s MARRIAGE.
We journey back to the Golden Age with Man of Steel #80, and in the most literal way possible. The story begins reenacting a scene from Action Comics #1, with Superman barging into the governor’s mansion to demand a stay of execution for a woman he’s proven to be innocent of the crime for which she’s about to be electrocuted, then immediately bounding in to stop a man from beating his wife. It’s here, for the first time, that we really get a glimpse of what’s actually happening – a little girl with white hair appears briefly as Superman stops the wife-beater proclaiming “It’s all wrong! Everything’s wrong!” When Superman looks out the window to see that the police has arrived, the child vanishes. Superman doesn’t have time to solve the mystery, though – he’s expected by his editor, George Taylor, at the Daily Star. Lois and Clark are sent to cover an American Nazi rally that is eventually broken up by Superman, making Lois swoon.
Louise Simonson’s writing on this issue evokes the tone of the Golden Age, especially with a cold, aloof Lois that doesn’t give Clark the time of day, while he is utterly smitten with her. On the other hand, she manages to avoid some of the more problematic tropes of the original stories – she recreates the wife-beater scene almost perfectly, but omits the infamous “You’re not dealing with a woman now!” line. Jon Bogdanove, for his part, is perhaps more in his element than ever before. He adjusts his art style just SLIGHTLY, and it becomes a perfect update of a Golden Age Superman. He even gives us a panel emulating the legendary cover to Action #1. Reading this issue makes me ache for a full Elseworlds-style series set in this time period with Bogs handling the pencils.
Superman #136 takes us to the year 2999 (with yet another Action #1 homage cover, by Dan Jurgens this time). Years after the death of the last great champion, Superman XVIII, a new Superman appears saving a spaceship from disaster…or at least, he tries, but the rookie Superman winds up ripping off one of the ship’s stabilizers. Another craft manages to save the ship in a stasis field, including Lena Luthor, who gives us the infodump that Superman’s father died bringing Lena’s father to justice. We explore this future world, meeting “Klar Ken’s” coworkers, his younger sister Kara, and get information about the Superman legacy that has lasted a millennium. This one, too, ends with a cliffhanger, as Superman 2999 faces against a futuristic menace called Muto, and we get another glimpse of the girl with the white hair.
Back to the Silver Age for Adventures of Superman #559, which kicks off with Superman busting Brainiac and his shrinking ray. The next morning, though, things get really bizarre as some mysterious force gives everyone in Metropolis super powers. And I do mean everyone – Perry, Lois, Jimmy, Maggie Sawyer, the Newsboy Legion – it’s an epidemic. Everyone, it seems, except for MCU Officer Dan Turpin. It comes in handy when Metallo attacks and his Kryptonite heart affects EVERYONE except for Dan and his bazooka. The reveal about where the powers came from is fantastic, perfectly in keeping with a Silver Age story, and it’s really nice to see Turpin get hailed as the hero for once…until the girl with the white hair shows up again on the last page repeating her warning: “Can’t you feel it? It is ALL WRONG!” And then poof – she’s gone.
Things aren’t going great in Action Comics #746. Superman manages to save Lana from the Prankster, but she’s so angry that Clark bailed out on the situation (so he could be Superman) that she gets him fired from his job at WGBS. He’s doing the cardboard box walk of shame when the White Haired Girl AGAIN shows up and vanishes. They gotta start going somewhere with this soon, right?
And they do! Man of Steel #81 begins immediately with the White Haired Girl stuck on a railroad track as a train speeds towards her. Fortunately, ol’ “More Powerful Than a Locomotive” gets her away even as she keeps pleading “Everything is wrong.” She vanishes as soon as she appears, though, and we get to the main plot – Superman and Lois each stow away on a ship to Nazi Germany. The issue really does showcase the vast changes Superman underwent after the Golden Age. While for most of his history, Superman has been reluctant to involve himself in political situations (in fact, in the 1978 movie Jor-El specifically forbid that), here he actually thinks “Someone has got to settle these world affairs once and for all – and who else can do it but me?”
This issue gets pretty bleak, as Superman and Lois each independently delve into the Nazi concentration camps. Simonson doesn’t hold back from showing the horrors of the era, and in the end we’re just left more unsettled as we end on a cliffhanger, with Lois in dire straights that make being caught by the Prankster seem like a tropical vacation.
I’ll end today with Superman #137, in which the man of tomorrow (that being 2999) faces Muto – a fight that’s going poorly before he’s rescued by some of the other heroes of the era: 2999’s Green Lantern, the future Aquaman, and from Gotham City, “The Bat.” Superman and the other heroes face Muto at his orbital Fortress of Solitude, and Dan Jurgens plays off of Despero’s chess set from Justice League of America #1 for the second time this year (the first being when we read Superman’s adventures with the JLA in the era just before Doomsday).
Tues., Sept. 23
Comics: Adventures of Superman #560, Action Comics #747, Superman: The Man of Steel #82, Superman Vol. 2 #138, Adventures of Superman #561, Action Comics #748, Superman: The Man of Steel #83, Superman Vol. 2 #139
Notes: Today I’m getting into the finale of the Dominus storyline (at least this one), starting with Adventures #560. Silver Age Superman is stunned to find out that Lois Lane – the girl he loves but keeps at arm’s length – has a date with his pal Batman. The story seems to be going in the same direction as the previous two issues – a kind of standard Silver Age type story involving Lois’s feelings, Batman, and a sliver of Red Kryptonite. Halfway through, though, there’s a turn, as Batman reveals – even to Superman – that the two of them were BOTH adopted by the Kents after their respective origin tragedies and grew up as brothers. From there we get a quick chain reaction as all of Superman’s dreams seem to be coming true: Emil Hamilton shows up with a cure for Red Kryptonite, Jor-El and Lara appear alive, promising to take him back to Krypton’s Hypersector with them, Lois professes her love and vows to go with him…but Batman transforms into the White Haired girl, who reveals herself to be Kismet. The universe fades as Superman and Lois embrace one another.
Action #747 goes in a very different direction. The story, free of dialogue, unfolds as we watch Clark return to the Daily Planet, Lois kidnapped by the Prankster, and Superman come to the rescue. Throughout, although there are no speech bubbles or conversations among the characters, an unseen narrator gives us a monologue about godhood, divinity, chaos, and order. The narrator is manipulating Lois, trying to bring her into a position where she kills Superman, but in the end she can’t do it. The dialogue finally comes back in the last few pages, when the White Haired girl again reveals herself as Kismet and the narrator redoubles on his plan to control the universe, revealing himself as an entity called Dominus. This issue is really jarring, being SO different from the previous two (and, in fact, from the rest of this storyline altogether). I’m not sure if it entirely works, to be honest, especially since the girl’s reveal at the end was done in the previous week’s issue, and now I’m sure we’ll see it again two more times.
Man of Steel #82 picks up with Golden Age Superman determined to halt a train laden with prisoners bound for the concentration camps, unaware that one of the prisoners is the captive Lois. Saving her from the train he kisses her and – just for a second – glimpses the real, modern world. Kismet (still as the White Haired Girl) hopes that putting the two of them together again will help them to break whatever Dominus has been doing, but Superman’s attention is focused on liberating the Nazi’s prisoners (because, you know, he’s Superman). Kismet tells Lois and Superman that their bond is the one thing Dominus can’t break, and when she brings them together again, the three of them find themselves back in Metropolis in the modern day. But the Nazi Commandant has come with them, revealing himself to be Dominus. Superman again recognizes the girl as Kismet, who helped lead him back to life back in Adventures of Superman #500, but Dominus attacks the girl and Superman is swallowed by nothingness.
The future ain’t what it used to be in Superman #138. Superman returns to Metropolis with his allies – and several new ones – announcing the formation of a Justice Alliance (with a logo that looks like an odd mashup of the Justice League and Legion of Super-Heroes emblems). But the ceremony is disrupted by the White Haired Girl, and we begin flashing between the four timelines we’ve been following. Kismet reveals that Dominus has trapped Superman in a sort of “reality prison” and split his consciousness into four separate simulated realities. As he breaks free from Dominus’s will, he returns to the real, modern Metropolis with Kismet. We discover that, in the last moments of Superman Forever, Dominus placed him in this “reality prison,” and Superman has been tearing through Metropolis ever since, acting out the scenarios we’ve been reading across the four titles. (It really makes you wonder what people were watching him do when he was carrying around his sad little box after being fired from WGBS.) Kismet brings Superman to a secluded place where she tells us that she thought Dominus was trying to control him, but it turns out that she’s his REAL target, and Dominus was using the false scenarios to draw her out of Superman so he can usurp her power. Dominus appears and attacks, hurling Superman away as Kismet flees.
In Adventures #561 Waverider appears and implores Superman to help find Kismet, as if he needed to ask. The White Haired Girl reappears as Clark is having lunch with Jimmy and Lois, and he takes off after her. It turns out NOT to be Kismet, though, but rather the girl whose appearance Kismet adopted. And as Superman takes her home, Waverider reveals himself to be Dominus in disguise, using Superman to find the REAL Kismet.
Incidentally, this issue also sets up the NEXT big story arc for the Superman titles, in which the Daily Planet is put up for sale. That’s an interesting arc in its own right, but I’m not going to get into the whole thing because…well geez, I gotta draw the line SOMEWHERE.
Action Comics #747 brings Dominus – disguised as Superman – to Smallville to talk about Kismet with Jonathan Kent, who also met her back in Adventures #500. He fails to draw her out, though and leaves. Dominus makes his next play against Superman, but his constant manipulation of reality leads the two of them into a conflict that spirals into some really cool page design by Stuart Immonen before finally – hopefully – bringing the REAL Waverider into the conflict. In Man of Steel #83, Waverider and the Linear Men try to break Superman from all the reality warping that Dominus has been putting Superman through, but by now he doesn’t trust his old allies, believing them all to be Dominus. Finally, in Superman #138, as Superman holds Dominus off Waverider – the real one – takes Kismet back in time and hides her inside a young girl from Smallville, Kansas. Dominus leaves, swearing his revenge, and the story finally ends…
For now, at least. Both Dominus and Kismet would return in later story arcs, but this is as good a place as any to draw the line and end the saga of Electric Superman, plus the Dominus epilogue. So let’s do a post-mortum of the era, shall we? When this saga was originally being published, back in 1996 and 1997, I remember having some rather uncharitable feelings about it. I knew even then that it was a temporary change, and I felt like it was disingenuous of DC to try to paint this as a new status quo for Superman. With age, I’m definitely wiser in that respect. I realize now that DC was never really trying to pretend this would be Superman “Forever,” and any comments to the contrary were nothing more than kayfabe. I think that accepting that sort of thing has made me more accepting of other, later long-form stories, like when Dr. Octopus took over Peter Parker’s body for a year or two, or when Captain America was revealed to be a Hydra Agent. I’ve gotten better about judging stories like these on their own merits, rather than having a knee-jerk reaction to any sort of change, and I think I enjoy comics better because of it.
As for the Electric Saga as a whole…I’m actually struck by how much I enjoyed reading these comics again. This time around I’ve really gained an appreciation for how intricately the stories of the Triangle Era were woven together. Even when I read the whole Death and Return of Superman earlier this year, it wasn’t as clear because EVERY storyline was put on hold at the time to serve the larger one. This time around, between the time Clark’s power changed and the time he split into two, the power thing was almost incidental. We were still getting Superman stories with the ongoing plots and subplots, with things being set up far in advance that would pay off much further down the line. It’s really impressive to me just how well these things were plotted, and frankly, I miss the days when a comic book like this could put out a new installment each and every week. These days, likely, will not come again.
Next, I think I’ll take a week to be random before I get back to themes. I’ve only got 14 weeks left, and I definitely have several categories that I intend to dig into before it’s all over…but for now, I’m going to give myself a teeny break and just spend a week with whatever Superman Stuff suits my fancy.
I spent last week dipping my toes into the DC Vs. Marvel crossover, as well as the first wave of Amalgam Comics titles. But I’m not done yet: I’ve still got over half the huge Amalgam Age Omnibus to get through, including two sequel miniseries and the second wave of Amalgam Comics. Not only that, but after a few weeks where the beginning of the school year has kept me busy, I finally get a chance to sit down and catch up on more recent Superman comics. Oh yeah – and Peacemaker season two drops this week, and while I don’t expect to see Superman to show up, James Gunn has promised that the story of this season follow on from the film, so there’s a pretty good chance I’ll have some thoughts to share about that. Let’s begin, shall we?
I had the same look on my face as Access when I read Civil War II.
Notes: I’m going to say something that may be controversial here. I actually like the follow-up miniseries, like DC/Marvel: All-Access, better than the DC Vs. Marvel event itself. DC Vs. Marvel was a fun experiment, but the plot was really just a flimsy excuse to show off fights between the characters and frame the Amalgam specials. All-Access, on the other hand, has an actual STORY to it, and I appreciate that. Written by Ron Marz with art by Butch Guice, whom you may remember passed away earlier this year, All-Access starts out with Axel Asher, the man who straddles the line between the Marvel and DC Universes as Access. A psychic flash warns him that Venom has somehow hopped universes, and if anyone from either universe stays in the other one for too long it could cause the worlds to fuse into the Amalgam Universe again, so the cosmic hall monitor has to get to work. He comes across Venom in Metropolis, where he’s throwing down with Superman, and so Access decides to get some backup by calling in someone who knows what Venom’s deal is: Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man.
This is all in the first issue of the miniseries, by the way, which almost works very well as a standalone Superman/Spider-Man team-up. There’s no gratuitous hero-on-hero fighting here, just two good men teaming up to take down one bad one, and Marz plays them both perfectly. Re-reading this issue is where I started to realize that this is kind of what I had hoped DC Vs. Marvel would have been all along.
Superman doesn’t show up again until the last page of issue #3, but in the meantime, Jubilee convinces Access to take her back to the DC Universe because when she and Robin were supposed to be fighting each other, they kind of fell in love. (To this day, it’s probably the best relationship Tim Drake has ever had.) Their reunion is interrupted by an encounter with Two-Face, then again when the Scorpion appears, once again mysteriously having been pulled from the other universe. Access recruits Batman to help him solve the mystery of the “crossovers,” and Batman suggests that they track down the man who, in the combined universe, was supposed to be its defender: Dr. Stephen Strange. Batman approaches Strange, suspecting that he’s causing the crossovers somehow, and Jubilee calls in the X-Men to hold him off. Issue three ends with Access once again calling in the cavalry, bringing in the rest of the Justice League.
Issue four is X-Men vs. JLA, at least at first. Things change when Access discovers that Dr. Strangefate has been hiding in Strange’s subconscious ever since the merger and used him to cause the crossovers in an attempt to restore the Amalgam Universe. He fuses Wonder Woman and Storm once again into their Amalgam counterpart, Amazon, but when he realizes he doesn’t have the right parts to put together anyone else, he starts creating NEW Amalgams: Superman and Bishop! Iceman and Aquaman! Jean Grey and the Martian Manhunter! Things get wild!
The story ends with a nice little promise, the Amalgam Universe restored as a sort of pocket universe where Strangefate is locked away, and the Marvel and DC Universes get to remain separate. But this miniseries was so much fun, seeing the characters actually interact in ways that didn’t go straight to the fisticuffs. The Robin/Jubilee stuff in particular was fantastic, and I loved seeing Superman and Spider-Man working together again.
It’ll never happen, but I’d love to see a longer Access series, say a 12-issue event in which he’s trying to solve some sort of mystery that encompasses both worlds. And I’d love if, during this year, he appears not only in his own series, but in the ongoing comics of both companies, bringing surprise guest stars with him. But seeing as how the original plan was for DC Vs. Marvel to end with She-Hulk and Martian Manhunter swapping universes for a year until that plan was nixed by the lawyers, it’s doubtful that anything like that could happen. It’s not like the world has gotten LESS litigious since 1996, after all.
Thur., Aug 21
Comic Books: Super-Soldier: Man of War #1
The amalgamated Snyder Brothers fans get SO angry that they gave Super-Soldier his trunks back.
Notes: A year after DC Vs. Marvel, a second wave of 12 Amalgam one-shots were released, six of them continuing adventures of the characters from the first, six of them with all-new Amalgamations. What’s interesting is that even the books that carried over didn’t continue the STORIES from the original. Some of them were unrelated stories, some made brief reference to the previous, and some went REALLY wild, like Dark Claw Adventures giving us an adventure of the Amalgamated Batman/Wolverine combo in a Batman: The Animated Series style. For our first visit with the Super family, Super-Soldier: Man of War dipped back in time to give us an adventure of the character from World War II. Mark Waid and Dave Gibbons reunite for this story, which kicks off with Super-Soldier at a meeting of the All-Star Winners Squadron. But he’s only there long enough for us to notice some new Amalagams (such as the Human Torch/Green Lantern mashup Human Lantern) before it’s off to join Jimmy Olsen for a special undercover Daily Planet assignment overseas.
On the ship to Europe, Clark and Jimmy make the acquaintance of Sgt. Rock and the Howling Commandos, and Clark is later chagrined to find that Winston Churchill has fallen for the do-gooder act of his arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor, husband of Lois Lane. In a way, Luthor’s involvement actually makes this a prequel to the previous story, as the issue ends with him unveiling the plans for the Ultra-Metallo that Super-Soldier fought the first time we read one of his adventures. Kinda makes you wonder why it took Luthor 50 years to get it together.
As before, Waid and Gibbons do a great job lacing together the Superman and Captain America characters, this time bringing in the World War II-era heroes of Easy Company and the Howlers as well. Peggy Carter, for instance, shows up here as a member of the French Resistance (although I couldn’t figure out which member of Easy Company she was supposed to be mashed up with). The appearance of Major Zemo and his War Wheel pushes this over the top – silly and gleeful. These Amalgam books, when done well, are just an enormous amount of fun. Is it too much to hope that the new DC/Marvel crossover books that are about to come out will open the door for the return of this mixed-up universe?
Fri., Aug 22
No, you give YOUR dog an invisible bone!
Last night was the premiere of Peacemaker season 2. I thought that meant I would be able to watch it when I got home from work, but apparently, it dropped at 8 p.m. EST, by which time my sports fanatic son was engrossed in a preseason game between two teams that nobody in our house has any personal connection to. But that was okay, I figured that I would just watch it the next day. I guess that was pretty stupid of me, though, to assume that I could wait a whole 20 hours and not have anything spoiled for me. Before the game was even over, though, posts were appearing on social media that spoiled something that really pissed me off. You see, season one was made BEFORE James Gunn was given the job of revamping the DCU, and was intended as part of the previous iteration of the DC Extended Universe. With the new DCU that began in Creature Commandos and continued into Superman, though, there were questions as to which parts of the season were still canon. Gunn has been exploring that in the official podcast for the show, but there was a moment in the finale that they were going to have to work a little bit to reconcile.
Naturally, looking at Facebook last night, I was spammed with different pages that I don’t even follow sharing a screenshot that ruined a pretty amusing moment. How dare I assume that people wouldn’t make it into a headline? It had been an entire 180 minutes since the show dropped! What are they, made of stone?
Here’s the rule: If you’re posting spoilers about a show on the day it airs, you’re an asshole. That goes for individuals as well as all of those pages that I have since blocked.
By the time you read this it will have been nearly a week since that episode, and I STILL wouldn’t talk about it without giving you a warning. So in the next paragraph I’m going to spoil a few things about the end of Peacemaker season one and the beginning of season two. If you haven’t watched them and want to remain pure, skip ahead to Saturday.
TV Show: Peacemaker Season 2, Episode 1: “The Ties that Grind.”
Season one of Peacemaker ended with the titular hero and his team, the 11th Street Kids, saving the world from an invasion of alien butterflies. It’s more impressive than it sounds. But in the battle, Emelia Harcourt was nearly killed. Towards the end of the episode, Peacemaker is carrying her to safety when, lo and behold, the Justice League appeared – too late to do any good. The League, in this case, included silhouettes of Superman and Wonder Woman, as well as Jason Momoa as Aquaman and Ezra Miller as the Flash. It was a funny scene, but as that Justice League doesn’t exist, that scene clearly was no longer canon.
Gunn promised to explain it away and he did at the very beginning of the episode, in the “Previously on…” montage, where the League was replaced by the Justice GANG from the movie. The silhouettes of Superman, Mr. Terrific, and Supergirl all appeared, as well as a quick and the cameos have been replaced by Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl and Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner. It was a funny bit. But I bet it would have been funnier if not for the asshats on the internet posting it the night before I got to watch it.
Fillion and Merced appear later in the episode as well, alongside Sean Gunn as Maxwell Lord allowing Peacemaker to audition for the Justice Gang. Watching the episode, it’s clear why DC put out the digital version of Superman last week – there are a lot of things in this show that build directly on that movie, although it’s still Peacemaker’s story of course. Rick Flagg shows up, worried about another dimensional rift like the “Luthor Incident” that happened this summer. Besides the connections to Superman, the show also starts trickling in new characters, like a surprising cameo by White Rabbit and references to the likes of the Ultra-Humanite and Captain Triumph. Rick Flagg is even working with Sasha Bordeaux, a supporting character from Greg Rucka’s Batman comics. Gunn seems to be using this season of Peacemaker to lay in chunks of the history of the DCU that Superman only hinted at, and I’m really quite excited by that.
Look, it’s not a HUGE Superman link, and it’s DEFINITELY not a show I’m gonna watch with my seven-year-old like the movie, but this show is starting to look like it’s going to be part of the fundamental fabric of the new DCU, and that would make it worth watching even if it WEREN’T really good.
Comics:Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #5
Notes: The beginning of a new school year traditionally keeps me busy, and today was the first time I’ve made it in to pick up my new comics in a few weeks. As such, I’ve got a hefty nine Superman or Superman-related comics sitting in my stack, waiting to read and discuss, including the much-anticipated Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #1. This Black Label series is by W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo, the creative team behind Image Comics’ incredible existential horror series Ice Cream Man. That’s the only thing of theirs that I’ve read before, however, and while I’m a big fan, I’ve been curious ever since this was announced as to just how their sensibilities would translate over to the Man of Steel.
As it turns out, they translate wonderfully.
In this story, Superman discovers four new strains of Kryptonite beyond the usual colors we’re aware of, and recruits Batman to help him experiment with them and find out what they do. The first, a Purple K, distorts Superman’s perception of time – something that is especially concerning as Lex Luthor chooses just that minute to unleash Solomon Grundy in Metropolis.
It would be fair for someone to question whether a creative team best known for a cosmic mind-tripping horror comic would be an appropriate choice for a Superman story, but Prince and Morazzo acquit themselves right away. The Kryptonite Spectrum isn’t a horror story by any stretch, but when Superman’s concept of linear time is skewed, we get a story that drifts into the kind of psychological twists that make Ice Cream Man so compelling while skipping the actual terror. Prince uses this conceit to play with the reader’s concept of time as well, and the script even twists Superman’s interactions with his friends, with a few scenes with Lois Lane dipping into the very real anxieties that Ice Cream Man so frequently mines for pure horror. Here, though, rather than terror, Prince uses them for character drama, displaying things about the relationships between the characters that feel very true, very human. This may not have the “Elseworlds” label, but the story clearly isn’t set in the mainstream DC Universe, with Superman and Lois’s relationship framed in a way that doesn’t fit that world, but feels quite appropriate for the story that Prince and Morazzo are telling. This is a great first issue of a very different kind of Superman story, and I enjoyed it heartily.
Remember this the next time one of you wants to give me grief for putting up my Halloween decorations in September.
Dan Slott and Rafael Albuquerque are back with Superman Unlimited #4. With the Daily Planet expanding to a global operation, Jimmy Olsen has been tasked with helping set up their Gotham City office. While he’s in town, he and his ape city sidekick Tee-Nah run across Man-Bat and wind up summoning Superman for help. What they don’t know, though, is that this is a new Man-Bat, one who can transmit its curse via a bite…and a chance encounter with all the Kryptonite on Earth these days has left Superman just vulnerable enough to get nipped. Soon it’s Robin and the Birds of Prey vs. Superman-Bat!
This book is really turning out to be just what I wanted. There’s an ongoing storyline – that of the Kryptonite meteor that fell to Earth and the consequences of that – however, each issue feels like it’s telling a complete and self-contained story. The A-plot, the “Superman-Bat” thing, is done in one and it’s over. The background story of the Kryptonite and the expanded operations of the Planet continue. Although it’s a single monthly comic, in a lot of ways it feels like the structure of the glorious “Triangle Era” of the Superman comics, and I love it for that. Slott also works in some nice tidbits regarding Superman’s interaction with the Batman family, which – coming right on the heels of having read The Kryptonite Spectrum #1 – makes it feel as if DC is using the month of August to make sure everyone remembers that Superman and Batman are best buds. Which, of course, I approve of wholeheartedly.
This is what happens when you don’t use fluoride.
Supergirl #4 continues Sophie Campbell’s new(ish) take on the Woman of Tomorrow. Having defeated her doppelganger Lesla-Lar last issue, this issue Supergirl takes her back to Kandor where she does something her cousin would most certainly approve of wholeheartedly: she goes to bat for her. Supergirl argues that Lesla has the drive to become a real hero, if only given the proper guidance, and volunteers to take that task upon herself. That’s the very beginning of the issue – afterwards we see Lesla make earnest attempts to prove her worth, leading up to a strange but entertaining encounter at a Goth club where she makes a mistake in judgment that winds up having the Supergirl squad face the forces of Decay.
I just adore Campbell’s take on Supergirl. This issue in particular feels so true to the character – she comes off as someone who has demons in her past but, having largely conquered them, is sworn to help other people do the same. And following Lesla in this issue just magnifies that fact, demonstrating the effect that just being in proximity of someone like Supergirl can have on a soul that’s not truly evil, but merely lost. It’s such a good look for her and for the entire Superman family, and Campbell is nailing it in a delightful way. I also appreciate how Campbell is mining Supergirl’s past – the “new” villain, Decay, is a new version of an obscure character from Supergirl’s ‘80s series who, to the best of my knowledge, hasn’t reappeared since then. She knows this character’s history and she’s using it to her best advantage, which makes for a really rewarding read.
Sun., Aug. 24
Comics: Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #3, Action Comics #1089, Justice League Red #1
Notes: After a busy Sunday of groceries, shoe shopping, making my weekly LitReel and, of course, a required stop at Spirit Halloween, it’s nearly 7 pm before I have a chance to sit down and read anything. Fortunately, I’ve still got six more new Superman-related books to dig into. Let’s see how many I get to this evening.
Beware the fetch.
Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #3 is first. Wandering alone after abandoning Lex Luthor, Krypto is stumbling through the woods when he comes across a little girl who’s as lost as he is. Roaming through the freezing woods, Krypto takes it upon himself to take care of the child, and in the process, proves just what a good boy he really is.
The first two issues of this miniseries blew me away. This one… DAMN it, Ryan North. Three issues in a row – THREE ISSUES IN A ROW – and you’ve got me in tears reading about KRYPTO THE SUPERDOG.
Honestly, if you’re not reading this comic book I don’t know what even is wrong with you.
When a teenager loses one of his contact lenses.
Action Comics #1089 may not have me sobbing over the adventures of a dog, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. Last issue, young Clark Kent was surprised when his history teacher showed up on his doorstep and revealed that he knew Clark was Superboy. This issue, Mr. Blake has a reveal of his own and, frankly, I’m kind of irritated with myself for not picking up on who he was in the first place. Mark Waid is being Mark Waid here, tapping on his seemingly infinite awareness of the DC Universe to bring back a character who hasn’t been seen in a while and recontextualizing him in the world of Superboy’s Smallville. I can’t get much more specific without spoiling anything here, and in case you haven’t read the issue yet, I don’t want to do that But Waid is doing really interesting stuff in this issue.
My one complaint is actually the cover by Ryan Sook. It’s a great piece of art – evocative and certainly sure to get a reader’s attention…only it doesn’t seem to actually fit anything in the story. I hate when comic book covers are dull, generic pin-ups, but it may be even worse when the cover is of a scene that doesn’t even appear in the book.
Wait, some of these costumes need more red.
The last book I squeeze in before I’m alerted by my child that he’s hungry and he has expectations of something called “dinner” is the first issue of the latest DC All-In era Justice League spinoff, Justice League Red. Ever since the Justice League re-formed, Red Tornado has been serving as the computer intelligence running the operations for the team. This issue, Power Girl and Green Lantern Simon Baz get a red alert on their League ID cards that summon them to a satellite Red Tornado built without the knowledge of the rest of the League. His computer mind has been running millions of simulations and has determined that the new League is somehow going to lead to a catastrophe on Earth, and he needs a few trusted members to handle secret tasks the rest of the League cannot learn about in order to stop it.
Writer Saladin Ahmed is taking an interesting path in this book. The story leads us to believe that Red Tornado is unstable, and that all of these predictions and algorithms he’s run are unreliable. Even as Power Girl and Simon carry out their first mission, they’re skeptical as to whether they’re doing the right thing and whether they can trust their robot teammate. But to play that hand so early, to make it seem from the very beginning that Red Tornado may be going off the rails…it feels kind of like a feint to me. I’m willing to bet that we’re going to find out along the way that things are even worse than believing Red Tornado is wrong: we’re going to find out that somehow, he’s RIGHT. Interesting set-up, and I look forward to seeing where this goes.
Mon. Aug. 25
Comics: Absolute Superman #10, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #42, Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 #3
Confirmed: I still can’t see John Cena.
Notes: Time to wrap up my catch-up weekend (plus one day) with the final three Superman-related comics from my visit to the comic shop. I’m kicking it off with Absolute Superman #10. The battle continues between the Omega Men and Ra’s Al Ghul’s Peacemakers, with Peacemaker Smith on the front line in the hunt for Kal-El. With a Kryptonite bullet in Smith’s gun, Kal-El is faced with a decision, and a reflection onto a hard choice his father once made brings about a surprising result.
The conceit of the Absolute comics is that this is an entire universe tainted by Darkseid, where hope is the eternal underdog and the sort of values that characterize the traditional DC heroes are absent. This issue, Kal-El is faced with the kind of choice that Superman inevitably comes down to at some point in his career, and it’s a testament to Jason Aaron’s writing that, right up until the choice is made, I’m not entirely certain which way I think he’s going to go.
I like the way the Absolute world plays with characters as well. Concepts like the Omega Men, Peacemaker, and especially Ra’s Al Ghul are not traditional elements of the Superman corner of the DC Universe, but they work in the story we’re getting here. Overall, it’s a good chapter in this saga.
This am bad serious book.
In World’s Finest #42, Superman and the Dynamic Duo have been summoned to Bizarro World to help with a plague. The Bizarros (including Bizarro Superman #1 and Batzarro) who are infected find their minds realigned to a more Earth-like way of thinking. Such a danger can’t be allowed to spread, so they’ve turned to our heroes to save them…but together, they find that the danger may be greater than even the plague seemed to be.
Mark Waid is doing some really interesting things with the Bizarros here. He plays with the notion of how science and physics don’t really allow for something like a square planet and what the consequences of such a world would be. At the same time, he tackles the Bizarro philosophy of things being “backwards” as well, in a way that makes me feel slightly abashed for my criticism of the Bizarro story in the recent Kal-El-Fornia Love summer special. There’s also a great moment for Batman here – Robin (understandably) questions why it would be such a bad thing if the Bizarros all had their minds reversed to what we think of as “normal.” Batman’s response is a little unexpected, at least until he gives his reasoning, displaying a depth of compassion that Batman isn’t often given credit for. It’s a good look on Bruce.
So they’re sitting around watching Japanese movies, so what?
I finally get to the end of the new Superman titles (less than 48 hours before this week’s comics go on sale) with Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 #3. At the center of the Earth, Superman and Lex Luthor are forced into an uneasy alliance as they come across a herd of giant gorillas. (A herd? A pride? What are a group of gorillas called? I should probably look that up.) On the surface, meanwhile, Supergirl and Wonder Woman get to work liberating a Monarch base being held captive by Task Force X, and Harley Quinn gets involved in a rather…unique therapy session.
Obviously, I love crossovers, and seeing the League facing off against the Kaiju of the Legendary Monsterverse is a lot of fun. I particularly like bringing in the Suicide Squad as an alternative antagonist in this story. But it’s the sort of thing that’s a little hard to hold in your head from month to month. Waiting for the trade isn’t a practice I care for, but this is probably a situation where the story will read better in collected form than issue-to-issue. Once it’s over, I’ll have to re-read the whole thing in a lump.
Notes: We’re going to end our journey through the Amalgam Universe and the DC/Marvel Omnibus today with Spider-Boy Team-Up #1, and the subsequent Unlimited Access miniseries. The final one-shot, written by Roger Stern and Karl Kesel (cleverly Amalgamated into R.K. Sternsel) with art by Jose Ladronn, features the return of the Arach-kid with a special guest appearance by his pals in the Legion of Galactic Guardians 2099, and that in and of itself should tell you that at this point they were going WILD with the Amalgamations. At Cadmus, as preparations are made for the Kid’s upcoming nuptials to Mary Jane Watson, aka the Insect Queen, the Kid is plucked from the timestream and brought to the far-flung future, where the Legion is about to elect a new leader. Will it be Vance Cosmic? Martinex 5? Cannonfire? Multiple Mai–you know what, there’s too many, I’m not going to list them all. But it’s pretty interesting to note that there are so many Legionnaires that there aren’t enough Guardians to Amalgamate them all (or at least, there weren’t at the time) so they wind up mashing together with virtually any Marvel character that fits: Dream Girl and Destiny made up Dream Date, Matter-Eater Lad and the Trapster made Paste-Eater Pete, and my personal favorite, Bouncing Boy and Speedball mashed into Bouncing Ball. Unfortunately, Spider-Boy’s time displacement is causing stress on the time stream, and he winds up falling into different time periods, meeting different incarnations of the Legion.
The book turns out to be a real celebration and gentle parody of the Legion, poking some lighthearted fun at the various reboots the team has undergone over the years, a topic with which I have some passing familiarity. Even Ladronn’s artwork works really well, emulating the different styles of Keith Giffen’s Five Years Later era just as neatly as he does the Chris Sprouse-inspired Reboot Legion. The ending is a really nice touch, tying together the “2099” part of the melding with the only Legionnaire that it could possibly have been. Even divorced from the rest of the Amalgam comics, Spider-Boy was a glorious, joyful, wild experiment. Man, I hope the upcoming facsimile edition is just a precursor of things to come.
Something about Thor-El is kinda…compelling…
The last gasp – both for the Amalgams and for the Access concept of Marvel/DC Crossovers, came in the 1998 miniseries Unlimited Access by Karl Kesel and Pat Olliffe. The story starts with Access, the “Cosmic Hall Monitor,” popping back to his home in Marvel’s New York after sorting out a recent encounter between Spider-Man and Batman. Kesel implies here that this particular crossover had Access looking on from the background trying to keep things straight. As a concept, it actually would work to explain EVERY Marvel/DC crossover – Access, or someone like him, keeping an eye on temporary fusions between the worlds, which the respective heroes forget after the fact. If they decided to run with it that way.
Access has to untangle the appearance of Mantis – one of Darkseid’s lesser goons – in battle with Spider-Man, a fight that gets escalated when Juggernaut and Wonder Woman wind up in the mix. Things get even crazier when he takes Diana home only to find himself tangled in a fight between a still-savage Hulk and Green Lantern Hal Jordan…who is DEAD.
Superman doesn’t actually show up in the first few issues of this miniseries, so I’ll cut to the chase: as it turns out, Access doesn’t just bounce back and forth between universes, but discovers he can bounce back and forth in TIME as well, allowing him to meet the different versions of the Marvel and DC heroes from any point in the timestream (including the “Days of Future Past” X-Men from the distant year 2012). He’s also got the ability to create Amalgams, merging characters from the two worlds into one, which comes in handy when it turns out he’s being tracked by Darkseid, who wants his ability to traverse the worlds. By issue three, Amazing Grace has hypnotized the original Avengers and Justice League into battling each other, and Access decides to reach out for the only hero who stands a chance of fixing this mess: big blue himself, Superman. And I mean Superman during his electric blue era. It takes literally seconds for Superman to jolt everyone back to their senses, then he and Captain America mobilize the two teams to fight off Darkseid’s invasion of the Marvel Earth. But the crazy just keeps coming with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the original X-Men, and a group of teen heroes who – just months later – would wind up getting their own title as Young Justice.
By issue four, Darkseid and Magneto are teaming up to take over the world (this is early Magneto, when he was still into that kind of thing) and the heroes decide to combine their powers – literally – into a single strikeforce of Amalgams. Black Canary and Jean Grey: Jean Black! Giant-Man and Green Lantern: Green Goliath! Captain America and Captain Marvel Jr.: Captain America Jr.! I know, I didn’t write it. And of course, Superman and Thor are fused together as Thor-El.
The fun part here is seeing these new Amalgams throw out casual references to help the reader to understand what they’re like in their own minds: Captain America Jr. possessing the “wisdom of Lincoln,” for example, or Thor-El referencing the Valhalla Zone. The series, and the history of Access, end with him accepting the truth about himself, beating Darkseid, and swearing to prevent a future he doesn’t want to experience.
Reading this story again now, there’s so much potential left in this concept, and thanks to the nature of Access’s powers, there’s no reason that Marvel and DC couldn’t pick up on it again at any time. With new crossovers (finally) on the horizon between the two of them, the chance is right there. I don’t know if they’ll take it – I certainly hope so.
But for now, at least, our journey with Superman and the heroes of other worlds has come to an end. And I think it’s time to rededicate myself to stories focused around Clark Kent himself. That in mind, next week, I’m going to embark upon my re-read of the longest Superman saga I’ll have yet tackled for the Year of Superman blog. See you then!
We’re getting down to it, friends. As I write this, on July 2nd, the new Superman movie is a mere nine days away, and in case you haven’t noticed over the last six months, I’m kind of excited about it. So how, in this Year of Superman blog, do I commemorate this upcoming momentous occasion? Here’s what I’ve done: I’ve made myself a list of the stories that James Gunn has confirmed were used as inspiration for the new film. I’ve added a few other stories that I personally think are especially significant to demonstrating what kind of man Clark Kent is. And I’ve got a couple of surprises. But from now until July 11th, there’s gonna be no filler. For the next nine days I’ll be reading and watching some of the most important building blocks in making the Man of Steel.
Graphic Novel:Superman For All Seasons (Collects issues #1-4)
Notes: In 1998, hot off the heels of their character-defining maxi-series Batman: The Long Halloween, writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale were given four prestige format issues to tell their quintessential Superman story. For All Seasons isn’t exactly an origin story, it’s not exactly the story of Superman coming to Metropolis, it’s not exactly anything but what it is: a glimpse of the Man of Steel. Rather than crafting an intricate mystery as they did with The Long Halloween or a high-octane thrill ride like Loeb would later do on the Superman/Batman ongoing, For All Seasons is like looking through a viewfinder at scenes of Superman, each of them capturing in a perfect crystalline moment just who Earth’s greatest hero actually is.
The first issue, “Spring,” focuses on young Clark Kent in Smallville. He’s different from his friends and he knows it, and we see a sort of struggle to maintain the balance between the idyllic small-town life he lives (Loeb even cribs a moment from the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, just in case we didn’t get the message that Smallville is the perfect little town) and the amazing, world-changing things he can do. He overhears his parents discussing his powers, he confides them to Lana, and in the end, the small-town boy decides to go to Metropolis. One of the last pages in this first issue, in fact, has become an iconic Superman moment, just as much as Krypton exploding or Superman catching Lois Lane falling from a building. It’s one of the sweetest, most Superman things I’ve ever seen on a comic book page:
Issue two, “Summer,” is narrated by Lois Lane early in Superman’s career, and she asks the question that I think makes the character so compelling: “He can do anything he wants to, and he decides to do what? Be a hero? Why?” Whenever someone tells me that they think Superman is boring or unrealistic, my response boils down to this same question. What kind of person would actually choose to use this kind of power for good? It’s crazy. It’s absurd. It doesn’t make sense.
That is, until you meet Clark Kent. And when you see who he is, that’s when you get it.
Superman saves Lois from a terrorist (in a glorious moment where Lois, rather than begging Superman to save her, instead asks him to make the obnoxious guy with a gun to her head SHUT UP because he’s getting on her nerves), but in so doing leaves Lex Luthor feeling somewhat impotent, something that Lex just can’t stomach.
My favorite part of issue two, though, is a return to Smallville. Clark catches up with Pete Ross, is dismayed to learn that Lana Lang has left town, and spends time with his parents merely because he’s lonely. This is another reason I love Lois Lane’s character – the responsibility of being Superman seems so gargantuan…he needs – even deserves – to have someone who can help him shoulder it. We’re not there yet in this issue, but Lois’s infatuation with Superman is already clear.
Issue three is “Fall.” It begins with Lex Luthor being arrested for some unspecified crime (although if you want to try to put it in context, this issue slots neatly after issue #4 of John Byrne’s Man of Steel series). Luthor quickly uses his influence to free himself, but his ire has grown even more. The people of Metropolis – beginning with the staff of the Daily Planet – suddenly fall ill and collapse, the victims of some mysterious viral agent. Although Superman is certain Luthor is responsible, he turns to him and asks him to use his resources to help. Fortunately, Lex already has a solution – he’s taken Jenny Vaughn, a woman Superman saved in issue two, and used her biochemical expertise to create an antidote. All Superman has to do is take her into the skies to seed the clouds above the city. She does so, and the people of Metropolis begin to wake up. But Jenny suddenly collapses and dies in Superman’s arms – overexposure to the very disease she had cured. Clark, broken, returns to his parents in Smallville, uncertain if he’ll ever come back.
“Winter” ends the series beautifully. Still in Smallville, in hiding, Clark reconnects with Lana Lang. Lana and his parents can see the pain he’s carrying with him, but rather than feed it, they remind him of who he is, what kind of a man they’ve known all his life. And when a flood threatens Smallville, Clark finds himself ready to put his uniform back on again.
There are so many amazing things about this series. It shows very clearly that the soul of Superman is not the city of Metropolis, but Smallville, Kansas. It’s where he begins, it’s where he returns in every issue. It is his home, it is the place that grounds him. When Superman needs help, he returns to the farm where he grew up and the people who know him better than anyone. Luthor, meanwhile, is never technically “defeated.” His scheme is built on his ego, his compulsion to hurt Superman, and he does it far more effectively than he ever could with Kryptonite or a red sun projector – he strikes not at his Kryptonian power but at his all-too-human heart. But in the end, Superman triumphs simply by returning to Metropolis, by deciding to move on. The best way for Superman to defeat Lex Luthor is by continuing to be Superman.
There are a lot of great Superman stories. I’ve read many of them this year, and I’ve got several more of the best lined up for the next nine days. But if you’re looking for the simplest, truest, purest expression of who Superman is at his core, I think Superman For All Seasons may just be the greatest of them all.
Notes: Next up on my tour of Superman’s greatest hits is this magnificent series from 2005 to 2008. DC announced their “All-Star” line as a chance for some of comics’ greatest creators to tell stories unhindered by continuity, their ideal versions of the character. To this day I don’t know what happened, really, but only two comics ever materialized from this effort, this one and All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder by Frank Miller and Jim Lee, and that series was never even finished.
But Morrison and Quitely finished their story, and in the years since it has become acclaimed as one of the greatest Superman stories of all time. In a nutshell: while saving a scientific expedition in distress on the surface of the sun, Superman’s cells become overcharged with energy. Although he suddenly finds himself more powerful than ever, it is only a temporary boost – his cells are dying, and all the science in the world can’t save him. Knowing that his days are numbered, Superman sets out on an Odyssey to save the world as much as he possibly can before time runs out. A time-traveler tells him of 12 impossible tasks he will accomplish before his death, and he sets out to do them – while all the while being watched by a Lex Luthor who is sitting on Death Row.
What Morrison and Quitely do with this book is nothing short of miraculous. Morrison mines Superman’s entire history to pull out characters and pieces to play with: a rivalry with Samson and Hercules for the hand of Lois Lane, the mysterious “Unknown Superman” of the future, and even characters from one of Morrison’s own epics, the DC One Million crossover. Over the course of twelve issues, Superman spends time with several people of great significance to him, with spotlight stories on Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Jonathan Kent, Bizarro, and Lex Luthor himself.
But the amazing thing is that none of these characters are exactly what this series is about. There are a great many good stories about what Superman means to other people. For All Seasons, for instance, had chapters narrated by Jonathan Kent, Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and Lana Lang. We’ve seen how everyone feels about him, from Perry White to Batman to some random kid he pulled out of a school bus that was going over a bridge. But All-Star Superman is really about what SUPERMAN thinks it means to be Superman. And what that means is a relentless, unstoppable thirst to be better. Even when faced with his own certain death, Superman’s every breath is dedicated to making the world a better place, to bringing happiness to his friends, to saving as many people as he possibly can. There’s a famous single-page vignette – you likely have seen it online even if you haven’t read the comic book – of Superman talking someone out of jumping from a ledge. It’s a single page, removing it from the graphic novel would not impact the story in any way, but it is the perfect, crystalline embodiment of who Superman is.
At the end of the story (and here’s a spoiler, in case you haven’t read it), Luthor finds a way to temporarily give himself Superman’s powers. And Superman finds a way to weaponize that, manipulating Luthor’s enhanced senses to force him to perceive the fabric of the universe the way Superman does. Suddenly forced to change his perspective, Luthor has an absolute breakdown as he sees the connectedness of all things in a way that he’s never considered, making the most egotistical man on the planet realize the depths and futility of his own selfishness.
Despite such a dark premise, this story (like Superman himself) never falls to despair. It is quietly uplifting, awe-inspiring, and full of hope. It shows us how Superman sees himself, and how he wishes for the rest of us to see him as well. And if the movie is half as capable of depicting that feeling as the graphic novel, it will be magnificent.
Fri., July 4
Comic: Action Comics #775
Notes: It’s the Fourth of July and, of course, for those of us in the United States it’s our Independence Day. I’ll be spending most of the day at a family barbecue – it’s always been my favorite day of the summer, after all. But that doesn’t mean I can skip my Year of Superman obligations, and I can’t think of a better story to read today than Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke’s classic “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?”
In this legendary tale, Superman is stunned by a new team of heroes who prove to be anything but. Calling themselves “The Elite,” this new squad bursts onto the scene and dispatches those they see as villains quickly, violently, and terminally. Superman is horrified when public opinion starts to tilt in favor of the Elite and their leader, the telekinetic menace called Manchester Black. Children want to be the Elite, saying that Superman is played out, others wish that the Elite would take steps like killing the Joker…and all the while, Clark finds the changing tide shocking and disturbing.
After Black calls him out, Superman agrees to face the Elite in battle. They take the fight to the surface of Jupiter’s moon, Io, where the Elite proceeds to pound Superman seemingly into oblivion. With nothing left but his cape, they think victory is in their grasp – until they hear Superman’s voice coldly “thanking” them for showing him the way. In seconds, Superman seems to kill all of Black’s associates one by one, and when an enraged and hysterical Black tries to force a final confrontation, Superman uses his heat vision to cut out the part of his brain that gives Black his powers without the man even feeling it. Weeping in despair, Black says that Superman has proven them right, that he’s no better than they are.
Except that he is. Because he’s Superman. The Elite are alive – beaten, incapacitated, but none permanently injured. Even Black’s powers will return after he heals from the concussion Superman gave him. But Superman had to show WHY he never takes the steps the Elite have taken – that it would be too easy, too ugly, too terrifying to give in to the temptation to kill, and once that step is taken, there is no going back.
Black has spent the issue telling Superman that he’s naive, that his perspective on the world is just a dream, a worthless ideal that holds the world back from progress. On the last page, Superman gives his perfect rebuttal to that stance:
“Dreams save us,” he tells Black. “Dreams transform us. And on my soul, I swear…until my dream of a world where dignity, honor, and justice becomes the reality we all share, I’ll never stop fighting. Ever.”
How good is this comic? How many other single-issue comic book stories have been adapted into a feature-length film? And even fewer have done it well. This is the one-book response to everybody who claims that Superman should be dark, should use his powers to shape the world as he sees fit, should take care of his adversaries permanently. This is not the world that Superman sees, and thank God that it’s not. In the few pages where Superman cuts loose and makes it clear that he COULD kill the Elite with minimal effort, he becomes absolutely terrifying. So at the end, when he reverts back to type and you realize it’s all been a ruse, the relief is tangible.
Kelly reportedly wrote this story as a response to the popularity of Wildstorm Comics’ The Authority, in which thinly-veiled expies of the Justice League decide to use their power in just this way, taking on threats to the world in a violent and permanent manner. (There is an irony to the fact that the Authority is now part of the DC Universe and that one of its members, the Engineer, is going to be among the antagonists of the new movie I’ll be sitting down to watch with my family exactly one week from today.) Those stories are fine for the likes of the Authority because – although obviously created to imitate the Justice League – they are NOT the Justice League. Apollo is their version of Superman, but he’s NOT Superman. These are stories that work as a deconstruction of our heroes, but don’t work as stories of the heroes themselves. In less than 40 pages, Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke show us that the ideals that Superman stands for not only aren’t out of date, they’re more important than ever before.
What’s so funny about truth, justice, and the American way?
Nothing at all.
Sat., July 5
Movie: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Notes: Some of you are scratching your heads right now. Some of you have no idea why I would choose To Kill a Mockingbird as an entry in the Year of Superman, especially in THIS week, which is about the stories that most make Superman who he is. But there’s actually a very simple explanation, friends: To Kill a Mockingbird is Clark Kent’s favorite movie. In fact, it was even the key phrase that Superman used when he returned from the dead to convince Lois Lane that he was the genuine article and not yet another imposter.
In and of itself, though, that wouldn’t be enough for me to include the movie. If Clark’s favorite movie was something like Caddyshack, Godzilla, or Dude, Where’s My Car?, it wouldn’t make the cut. But I believe very staunchly that the things a person loves can tell us an awful lot about a person, and in this case, that’s particularly profound. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is a big fan of what he calls “really old” movies like Aliens and Empire Strikes Back. In his case, they chose those movies for two reasons: to make a joke about what people of different generations consider “old” and to demonstrate that this Peter Parker is a geek like us. And it works for that character. But in the case of Superman, when Dan Jurgens declared To Kill a Mockingbird to be Clark’s favorite movie (or whoever – I assume that it was Dan Jurgens because he wrote the comics where I first saw it referenced), he could have picked anything. He chose a movie with a compelling and powerful message about justice, and when the film ends, it’s easy to see Atticus Finch as a cinematic mentor for Clark Kent.
In case you’ve never watched it (or, even better, read the book), To Kill a Mockingbird is the tale of a family in Alabama during the height of the Great Depression. Gregory Peck plays Atticus Finch, an attorney appointed by the court to defend a black man named Tom Robinson who has been accused of beating and raping a white woman. Although Tom maintains his innocence, in this time and this place, the mere fact of the color of the accused and the accuser is enough to make most people in town declare his guilt without even the benefit of a trial. But despite the town turning against him, Atticus stands firm in his conviction to do the right thing and defend the innocent – no matter the personal cost that he will have to pay.
Come on, people, do I have to spell it out for you? That’s who Superman is every day. Defender of the defenseless, protector of the innocent, willing to give even his own life for somebody else, and refusing to back down in the face of what he knows is right, no matter what anybody else says.
The Tom Robinson plot is the main story, but there are also several subplots and side moments that you can easily view as contributing to the development of Clark Kent’s moral core. One of the biggest is Boo Radley, son of Atticus’s neighbor. Atticus’s children Jem and Scout (the latter of whom narrates the story) are afraid of the mysterious Boo, who never leaves the house, leading to a lesson about making assumptions about people. Another scene features Scout learning to understand how to treat the less fortunate during an awkward dinner. A few minutes later, Atticus is forced – despite having no desire to do so – to put down a rabid dog to protect his family, shocking his son Jem when he realizes his dad is a crack shot.
The lessons permeate the story itself, too. One night, Atticus gets wind that a mob is planning to storm the jail and lynch Tom, so he sits outside the jail to wait for them. Jem, Scout, and their friend Dill sneak out of the house and arrive just as the mob is about to turn on Atticus, and although he tells them to go back home, the children refuse. Instead, as Scout asks the men in the mob – neighbors she’s known her entire life – how they’re doing, the men are shamed into retreating. It’s a beautiful moment of heroism for the little girl, and you see how Atticus has shaped his children in a time where society was working against him.
The funny thing to me is that Superman was created in 1938. To Kill a Mockingbird came out in 1962, a full 24 years later, and the novel it was based on was released only two years earlier than that. It’s more than likely that Harper Lee (born in 1926) had read Superman comics when she was young before writing the book. In comic book time, it doesn’t matter. Even in 1992, when Jurgens first mentioned that it was Clark’s favorite movie, it would have been 30 years old and easily could have been a movie that Clark watched when it was released during his childhood. Today (and I’m just realizing that more time has passed since that comic was published than had elapsed between that comic and the movie’s release – somehow this stings more than Tom Holland calling Alien “really old”) it would be a movie he saw on cable. A few years from now he’ll mention having caught it as a kid on Netflix. But it doesn’t really matter how old the movie is or what era little Clark first would have watched it in – the meaning is timeless and has never lost its relevance. It is the perfect choice for a film that shaped a Superman.
In 2003, the American Film Institute conducted a survey of its members where they voted for the 100 greatest heroes and villains in cinematic history. Christopher Reeve’s Superman made the heroes list at #26. Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch? He was number ONE.
And I doubt that Clark Kent would have any issue with that.
Comics: Secret Six Vol. 5 #4 (Super-Son), Justice League: The Atom Project #6 (Cameo)
Sun., July 6
Graphic Novel: Superman: Up in the Sky (Collects issues #1-6)
Notes: Tom King and Andy Kubert’s Up in the Sky was not – to my knowledge – specifically listed amongst James Gunn’s inspirations for the new movie. However, King is working with Gunn – he’s one of the executive producers for the Lanterns series that’s in the works and, of course, his Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is the inspiration for HER upcoming movie – so it’s reasonable to assume that Gunn has read this book. And if he hasn’t, he should, because it’s one of those stories that cuts right to the heart of who Superman is.
Batman summons Superman to Gotham where he’s told of the murder of a pair of foster parents by what seems to be an alien presence, and the abduction of one of their children. The girl is named Alice, he learns, and she loves Superman. Everyone is put on alert – even the entire Green Lantern Corps is looking for Alice, but as Hal Jordan tells Superman, “it’s a big universe.” Although he is reluctant to leave Earth, worried that something will require him in his absence, Superman cannot allow this child to remain lost, waiting for him to save her, and know he’s done nothing. He takes off into space, determined to find her.
This story was originally serialized in 12 parts, in the Superman Giant series that was released through Walmart several years ago. It was repackaged as a six-issue series through comic shops, and now the graphic novel format we enjoy today. In these 12 parts, we watch Superman go to the end of the universe to find Alice. Each chapter, although part of the quest, is relatively self-contained. Superman goes into a boxing match with an alien stronger than him, but who can give him a clue to Alice’s location. A time anomaly tosses him to meet Sgt. Rock in World War II. Another anomaly splits Superman and Clark Kent into two people on a frozen alien planet. So forth. One chapter is even a story from Alice’s perspective, as she narrates the story of the one Superman/Flash race that Superman legitimately won. Remember waaaay back in Superman Vs. the Flash week, when I mentioned there was one other race I skipped? This is the one. And the reason Superman wins that race is…well, it’s not because he’s faster than the Flash. It’s because someone needed him.
That’s what this story, this entire, amazing, incredible epic, boils down to. Everything Superman does – everything he EVER does – is because somebody needs him. Lost in time? He’s got to get back to save Alice. Stuck in a stupid, alien bureaucracy for hours trying to get a call back home to hear Lois’s voice? A brief pit stop, because Alice needs him. Making a deal with Darkseid to violate one of his own sacred vows? He has no choice – Alice is still out there. Even in the chapter where Superman and Clark are two different people, it seems at first that we’re going to get the standard dichotomy of the human Clark and the cold, stoic Superman, which we’ve seen so many times. But as the story goes on, we realize that – although Clark is, of course, the soul of Superman – even without Clark there he’s STILL Superman and, illogical as it may be, he cannot fly away when somebody needs him. And Alice needs him.
The final chapter of this story is one of the most emotional, beautiful pieces of Superman storytelling you’ll ever read. We see him backtrack, revisiting some of the dangers he faced along the way, and we get added context to certain things. Most importantly, we see how Alice sees Superman, and we see why her faith in him – her belief that he would save her – never wavered, no matter how foolish or hopeless his quest might have seemed. I can’t imagine anyone who loves Superman being capable of reading this book without feeling a stirring in their chest. Despite its galactic scale, this is one of the most deeply personal Superman stories I’ve ever read, a story about a man who is incapable of giving up when someone else needs help. It’s about a man for whom saving just one child matters just as much as saving the entire universe.
It’s about Superman in his truest, purest form. It’s about Superman.
Mon. July 7
Graphic Novel: Luthor (originally published as Lex Luthor: Man of Steel #1-5).
Notes: This isn’t the first time Brian Azzarello’s name has come up in the Year of Superman, but you may recall I didn’t particularly care for his collaboration with Jim Lee on For Tomorrow. However, his and Lee Bermejo’s Lex Luthor: Man of Steel miniseries from 2005 was a different matter entirely. In this story, we see a Lex Luthor who is motivated not purely by arrogance or a thirst for power, but also by fear. Luthor is afraid that Superman – an alien – will undermine humanity, and decides to fight back by creating his own superhero, a woman he dubs “Hope.” In his game of chess against Superman, though, is Hope a pawn, or a queen?
They say that, in real life, nobody thinks of themself as a villain. After all, a villain is a bad guy, and if you think something is genuinely bad, you don’t do it. So the villains in the real world have justifications, moral and ethical gymnastics that they use to convince themselves that what they’re doing isn’t bad – “I deserve what I’m taking,” “the world isn’t fair, so I don’t need to play fair,” “I have to get him before he can get me,” and maybe most sadly, “God told me to do it.” That’s why it never quite made sense that, in the early days of the X-Men, Magneto called his group the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. In Luthor’s case, he has convinced himself that Superman is a genuine threat against humankind, therefore anything he does – including murder – is justified in that his end goal is to save the world. Azzarello isn’t the first person to posit this characterization of Luthor, but he certainly is among the best to put it on the page.
The story is told exclusively through Luthor’s point of view. Although Superman is a constant presence in the tale, his appearances are brief and sparse, and he never speaks on-panel. (His one spoken line, a slap to the face of Luthor’s moralizing, comes at the very end, and is delivered from off-panel.) Instead, we have Lee Bermejo painting a Superman the way that Luthor sees him – cold, distant, with an anger in his eyes that an objective look at the Man of Steel would never show. In the end, we have a Luthor whose distrust and hatred of Superman is so great that he’s willing to cut out his own heart (metaphorically speaking) in the hopes of gaining the upper hand. It’s a harsh portrayal of the character and, although he is still brilliant and terrifying, you can’t help but feel pity for him.
Supposedly, this version of Lex Luthor was drawn on for Nicholas Hoult’s portrayal of the character in the movie, and I honestly can’t think of a better story to use to shape a Luthor that’s both chilling and entertaining. In the end, he’s the most dangerous kind of villain of all: the one convinced he’s right.
The story has been presented a few times: both under its original title of Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, and in a collected edition called simply Luthor, making it a sort of companion piece to Azzarello and Bermejo’s highly-acclaimed Joker original graphic novel that gives a similar portrayal to the Clown Prince of Crime. Both books are worth reading. But let’s be honest – you only need to read this one before Friday.
Special Presentation: Superman World Premiere
Notes: I’m breaking a lot of new ground here in the Year of Superman. Tonight I’m watching something I’ve never watched before: the livestream of a movie premiere. DC is streaming the world premiere of Superman on all the socials, so I’ve got it fired up on YouTube. I have also turned off the comments on YouTube, because good lord, people on the internet are morons.
The stream starts with clips from the various fan events that they’ve been holding over the last few weeks. I’ve already seen most of the footage on social media, but Eddie hasn’t, and he (being a child who loves logos) got particularly excited when he saw a group of fans standing in the shape of the Superman S-shield. Even now, after months of hyping it up, I’m get a little nervous about taking Eddie to see what is technically going to be his first “grown-up” movie in theaters (defined as “not a cartoon”). But his anticipation has been growing. He talks about going to the movie several times a day. And as the livestream begins, he plops down in front of the TV and watches in glee as we see clips of the fans in cosplay, the drone shows, the decorations, and the crowds that have come to celebrate the Man of Steel. He actually doesn’t turn away and go back to playing games on his tablet until we return to the two guys who are hosting the show as they try to vamp until someone shows up on the carpet. I can’t really blame him.
I can’t pretend the premiere event was particularly revelatory. Most of it was brief interviews with the cast who all said pretty much the same thing: “The movie is great, the cast is great, James Gunn is great, you’re all going to love it.” Gunn himself, I think, had the quote of the evening when he urged people to see the movie on the “biggest screen possible” so that they can catch all of the “Crazy-Clark-Kaiju-robot-flying-dog action you can get.” I mean, I was planning to do that anyway, but if I hadn’t been that would convince anyone.
I don’t begrudge them for sounding like hype men, of course – this is simply what you say and do during a red carpet event. Despite that, though, despite the repetitive nature of the conversation and the clips that we’ve already seen from the trailers 1000 times, I still had fun watching this. I guess I’m just that psyched – every little scrap of content pertaining to this movie is enough to energize me at this point. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Tues., July 8
Graphic Novel: Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? (Collects Superman #423 and Action Comics #583).
Notes: Let’s talk again about the John Byrne Man of Steel reboot. You’ve heard of it, right? Well, with the knowledge that the Superman books were about to be restarted and given a clean slate, it was decided to end the current run with one last “Imaginary Story,” the Silver Age term for comics that were out of continuity. Written by Alan Moore with art by perhaps the most iconic Superman artist of the age, Curt Swan, this two-part story is the culmination of everything Superman was in the Silver and Bronze ages of comics. It begins in the future of 1997, where a retired Lois Elliott (née Lane) is being interviewed by a reporter for the Daily Planet about her experiences in the last days of Superman’s life. Lois recounts how, a decade prior, Superman’s enemies suddenly returned, much more violent and brutal than before. Bizarro goes on a killing spree before taking his own life with Blue Kryptonite, then the Toyman and Prankster torture and murdere Pete Ross, getting from him the secret of Superman’s dual identity. They are captured by Superman, but not before revealing that he is really Clark Kent to the entire world. Scared for the rest of his friends, Superman gathers those closest to him and takes them to the Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic, unaware that Brainiac has taken the body of Lex Luthor as his own, and is marching towards the Fortress with deadly purpose.
I have a complicated relationship with the work of Alan Moore. Without question, he’s responsible for some of the greatest comic books in the history of the medium: Watchmen, Swamp Thing, this one…all masterpieces. But in recent years I feel like he’s sort of started to buy into his own hype and taken on a sort of self-absorbed attitude, showing public disdain for comics in general. And when the creator of Lost Girls has the audacity to complain about other people touching his characters, it kind of drains my respect.
But separating the art from the artist here: this book is a phenomenal capstone for the nearly 50 years of Superman continuity that existed at that point. Moore uses an intriguing blend of Silver and Bronze age elements. From the latter, Clark Kent is a TV reporter whose identity is exposed on-the air thanks to the Prankster and Toyman. Supergirl is dead in this timeline, following Crisis on Infinite Earths, so for her cameo she visits with the time-travelling Legion of Super-Heroes. Even Kristin Wells, the mostly forgotten Superwoman of the 80s, makes a brief appearance in this story. But a lot of the bits and pieces come from the Silver Age – Lana and Jimmy both evoke some of the sillier stories in which they got super powers, this time weaponizing them on Superman’s behalf. The Legion we see is drawn to resemble the earliest days of the characters – young, with their original uniforms – but they also quite clearly know that they’re in a time period in which their teammate Supergirl is already dead and in which Superman’s days are numbered.
There’s a lot of tying off the old loose ends that Superman accumulated over the years, especially in terms of the Superman/Lois/Lana love triangle. For years, it appeared in the comics as though Superman was unable to decide which of the women he loved the most. In this issue, Moore deftly reveals that he’s known the obvious choice along, but has a suitably self-torturing reason for never acting upon it. It’s the kind of motivation that fits in perfectly with a Silver Age mindset, but it works well in the context of this “final” story, helping to bring closure to elements that had been around for decades.
That said, there’s plenty of Alan Moore’s signature deconstruction going on in this story. The reveal of the true villain of the piece is exactly the sort of thing he’s known for – taking an element that may have seemed silly or childish when originally conceived, but finding a way to make it terrifying. Other moments are simply heartbreaking – Superman trying to avoid letting the time-travelling Supergirl know that she’s dead in this time period, for example. Then there are the three friends of Superman who try to step up and fight alongside him, each of them showing a core of courage and love that makes you want to weep. As Lana Lang tells Jimmy Olsen at one point, “We’re only second-stringers, Jimmy, but we’ll show ’em. Nobody loved him better than us.” You even feel pity for Lex Luthor in this one, as his body is manipulated by Brainiac. The implications of that, the idea of having someone else invade your physical form, using your muscles, controlling your vocal chords as you are forced to watch and do nothing…not even Lex Luthor deserves that.
Having Curt Swan illustrate this story was a perfect choice for two reasons. First, it was just a fitting tribute for one of the greatest and most influential Superman artists of all time. Second, his pencils evoke a simpler, brighter time period, which makes for a harsh juxtaposition with the extremely dark story.
But dark as it is, the story ends – as befits Superman – with a symbol of hope. Not an S-Shield this time, but rather, a wink. The story has aged somewhat. A lot of the things that Moore draws upon have been evolved or removed to the point that someone who is only familiar with the post-Crisis incarnations of Superman would feel very confused, if not terminally shut out of understanding what’s happening. But if you have a love for the Superman who existed before John Byrne’s era, this story feels like the perfect ending, the ultimate culmination of that Superman. It’s a grand farewell to this version of the character. There will never truly be a “last” Superman story – the character will live on no matter what. As an attempt to end the legend, this is a good one.
But I still think there’s one better.
I’ll get to that today, as you read this…but I guess you’ll get my thoughts on it next week.
Back home from our trip, it’s time to play catch up. I hit the local comic shop on Wednesday to grab a few weeks’ worth of comics, and I’m going to start week 26 by going over the Superman-related titles in the mix. Let’s see what we’ve got!
Notes: The Mark Waid era of Action begins! I’ve been excited for this one ever since they announced he was taking over this title with a feature on Superboy. Ever since 1986, DC has gone back and forth several times over whether Clark Kent ever had a career as Superboy in-continuity. It looks like this series is going to finally settle the question once and for all…or at least until some new editor comes in and decides to change it again. But until then, I’m psyched to enjoy the ride.
Let’s hear it for the Kid of Steel!
Action Comics #1087 has Clark Kent – as an adult – reminiscing about an “Expo of Tomorrow” he attended with his parents when he was 15 years old, and how an encounter with a villain on that day would shape the rest of his life. Have we seen the story of Superman’s public debut before? Yes, dozens of times. Does that make me any less thrilled with the comic I just read? Not in the slightest.
Like I said, we’ve seen the story of SuperMAN’s debut over and over again. This is different. This is SuperBOY – a Superboy whose powers are new to him, who has never been in a fight before, and who’s wearing red converse sneakers instead of boots. He’s determined to do good, but at this embryonic stage he’s still trying to learn how. Fortunately, he’s got Jonathan and Martha Kent in his corner. Jonathan has taught him about the lost heroes of the Golden Age, drilled him relentlessly on their feats and adventures, so he could get a feeling for the heroic ideal. And when the time comes to prove himself…well, it doesn’t go as smoothly as it might go today, but it’s an authentic, entertaining, and uplifting story. Waid – who is also currently restructuring the timeline of the DC Universe in another miniseries I’ll get to shortly – is the perfect person to reintroduce the adventures of Superman when he was a boy.
So embarrassing when someone shows up wearing your outfit.
Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl #2 picks up where the first issue left off – there’s a second Supergirl in Midvale who seems to have captured the hearts of the town. And I have to admit I was pretty tickled when I realized that the fake Supergirl was actually a new incarnation of Lesla-Lar, the Kryptonian doppelganger that we read about back in Supergirl Week. This time around, Lesla is a Kandorian with something of an obsession with Supergirl who convinces herself that she could do the job better than the genuine article. She finds a way out of Kandor, mesmerizes the Danvers, and transforms herself into a near-duplicate of Kara Zor-El (which is much better than her being just a random lookalike as in the Silver Age). Lesla also manages to tamper with Kara’s costume, causing her to turn to a friend for help: Lena Luthor.
I’m already loving this version of Supergirl. There’s a sweetness to the book, a sense of humor that more recent versions of Supergirl haven’t had. Campbell is also already doing the legwork of building up Kara’s supporting cast, and Lena makes for a fantastic addition. The two of them acknowledge that things have gone kind of sideways between Superman and Lex, but they don’t let it affect them – and in a genre where stupid misunderstandings are used to cause conflict more often than a comic gets variant covers, that’s a wonderful change of pace. Campbell’s Supergirl is already one of my most-anticipated books from DC each month.
Oh geez, he’s got that “I’m so disappointed” look on his face. I HATE that.
In Superman #27, Lois is still reeling from the loss of her Superwoman powers, while Superman is struggling with a sudden burst of Red Kryptonite energy. Meanwhile, Mercy and Lex have a heart-to-heart. This is kind of an odd issue – part two of “Superman Red” seems to be an epilogue of sorts. This issue, combined with the previous one, feels like it was intended to tie off some of the plotlines that have been running through this series since the first issue, clearing the table for next issue’s new storyline to dive headlong into the greater mystery of DC All In. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make the issue feel a little weak on its own.
This is why you don’t go into bars in some of the seedier parts of Daxam.
Superman Unlimited #2 continues Dan Slott’s inaugural storyline. The enormous Kryptonite meteor that landed in the country of El Caldero has upended everything, making the tiny nation one of the most economically prosperous countries on Earth overnight. But black market Kryptonite is getting into the hands of villains everywhere, which I’m sure you can imagine causes some problems for the Man of Steel. Meanwhile, Lois is launching the new global Daily Planet initiative, and only one man seems to remember the fact that Kryptonite is NOT only harmful to Kryptonians – unfortunately that one man is Jack Ryder.
Slott is having a lot of fun with the pieces here. He finds a new angle on Superman’s little-used solar flare power, and in so doing manages to escalate the stakes of the Kryptonite storyline just a little (which is about all you want in chapter two of a storyline). I’m also glad that he hasn’t ignored the fact that Kryptonite is, in fact, radioactive. I don’t know that it’s necessarily public knowledge that it once gave Lex Luthor cancer, but that’s certainly the sort of thing that would become scuttlebutt and whispered rumors and make its way to a conspiracy theorist podcast, which seems to be how they’re casting Jack Ryder now. It’s a good fit, and it gives a good reason for the Creeper to show up at a crucial moment in the story that turns out to make things even more complicated.
The strange thing is that, although the consequences of this storyline are obviously global, Slott manages to give us a perspective that keeps things smaller. It’s mostly about Superman and how he deals with the problem, and while all the seeds are here to make this a story that can (and, logically, should) impact the entire DC Earth, he’s building to that instead of going to planet-wide societal upheaval right from the jump. There’s a build here that I appreciate, and it makes it even more exciting to anticipate the next issue.
Thur., June 26
Comics: Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #8, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #40, New History of the DC Universe #1, DC X Sonic the Hedgehog #4
No, Superman IS on this cover. Look between Aquaman and Wonder Woman. No, lower. There ya go.
Notes: Continuing today with the recent releases, I’m kicking it off with Justice League Unlimited #8, the end of Mark Waid’s “We Are Yesterday” crossover. With Grodd having absorbed the Omega Energy of the late Darkseid and scattered the Justice League throughout time, Air Wave has done his best to compensate – bringing heroes from across the time stream to the present to aid them in their battle.
I don’t want to talk too much about what happens here – I hate spoilers, after all – but if you’re the kind of person who likes crazy superhero battles, this will be eminently satisfying to you. It’s an exciting book with gorgeous artwork and a genuinely surprising ending. I’ve got no idea where Waid is going with this, although its significance to the overall story arc that seems to be “DC All In” is abundantly clear. If you’re following what’s going on in the DC Universe, you really can’t afford not to be reading this book.
It’s like that time King Kong interrupted Johnny Carson.
Waid is also doing his thing in Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #40. With “We Are Yesterday” over, this book settles back into its usual groove of telling stories of the World’s Finest heroes in the past. In this particular issue, Perry White and James Gordon are guests on a podcast together when a kaiju attacks, so Batman jumps into a giant robot he’s had prepared for just such an occasion and joins Superman in taking it down. And once again, friends, I would like to point out that occasionally this whole Year of Superman blog allows me to type sentences like the preceding, and that makes it all worth it.
I’ve got to be a little forgiving for the setup of this issue. The podcast in question is – like Jack Ryder’s show in Superman Unlimited – of the shock host variety. Jim Gordon is ostensibly there to defend Gotham from the hosts’s recent attacks, while Perry is there to defend print journalism, but that doesn’t really explain why they’re on the SAME episode, except to provide a (paper-thin) excuse to have Lois, Clark, and Bruce all in the same building when the giant monster shows up. But it still makes more sense than 90 percent of Silver Age contrivances, and the rest of the issue is a load of fun, so I give it a pass.
This one is for all you Arion: Lord of Atlantis fans out there.
My Mark Waid triple feature continues with the first issue of New History of the DC Universe, a comic that is, frankly, a long time in coming. With reboots both hard and soft having plagued DC Comics for decades, I welcome an attempt at creating a definitive timeline, establishing which heroes and stories are canon to the current incarnation of the DCU. Now the pitfall of such a project is that canon only remains canon until the next person down the line decides to change it, but for now at least, I think we can accept this book as being THE history, and there’s no better person to write it than Mark Waid.
The series is framed as a history of the universe as compiled by Barry Allen, who has a better idea than most of just how time has been monkeyed with over the years. And while the connection to Superman actually doesn’t come in until literally the last panel of the last page, I felt like it deserved mention here in the blog, if for no other reason than how impressive it is that Waid and co-researcher Dave Wielgosz (who provides a remarkably detailed index at the end of the book) have crafted a timeline that works. There’s nothing here that doesn’t make sense, and Waid even takes the opportunity to canonize several characters whose existence in the current DCU may have been suspect, such as the original Red Tornado, the Alpha Centurion, and – strangely enough – Robin Hood. Yeah, that one. Pretty much the only thing he DIDN’T mention is Hugo Danner from Gladiator, who I mentioned a couple of weeks ago was the father of the Young All-Stars member Iron Munro (although Munro and the All-Stars DID merit inclusion).
Most shocking of all, however, is a panel that places into the timeline the arrival of a Terminian alien who crashes to Earth and is adopted by a human couple – on a plantation in the American south in the 1800s. This baby will grow up to be Milestone Comics’ Icon, a character I’m planning to cover in a later week where I discuss characters clearly intended to be the Superman of their respective universes. This is the first I’ve heard of any plans to put the Milestone characters back in the DC Universe proper, and I’m very interested to see if Static, Blood Syndicate and the others show up when we reach their respective point in the timeline in future issues.
At any rate, this book is essentially required reading for any fan of the DC Universe, and I can’t recommend it enough.
Now HERE’S a race I wanna see.
Last but not least, Ian Flynn wrote DC X Sonic the Hedgehog #4 (instead of Mark Waid), but he did a great job with it. Last issue focused on Team Sonic stuck on the DC Earth, while this issue gives us the reverse of that, with the Justice League trying to keep things from falling apart during Apokalips’ attack on Sonic’s world. There’s a particularly entertaining exchange between Superman and Dr. Robotnik that I really enjoyed. As I’ve said when I wrote about this book in the past, it’s nothing groundbreaking, but darned if it isn’t fun.
Fri., June 27
Movie: Superman Returns (2006)
Notes: After a cinematic absence of many years, Warner Bros poached a filmmaker who had success making films with Marvel Comics characters and handed him the reigns of the Man of Steel in the hopes of evoking the feel of the Richard Donner era, bridging Superman back to greatness. There’s a sentence that’s as accurate today as it was in 2006, when Brian Singer directed Superman Returns. Unlike James Gunn’s Superman or Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, Returns was a direct sequel to the Christopher Reeve films, or at least the first two of them. The conceit here was that, some time shortly after the events of the second film, astronomers located the former location of Krypton amongst the stars, and Superman went into space in hopes of finding his heritage. He found, instead, only rubble, and returned to Earth five years later to a world that had changed greatly in his absence.
This is one of those movies that was unfairly maligned in its day, although it’s also a movie that has grown dramatically in the estimation of the public since then. Brandon Routh did his best impression of Christopher Reeve, both as Superman and as Clark Kent, and created a character that both evoked and paid tribute to the hero so many of us had grown up with. And although Kevin Spacey has quite rightly been cancelled since the movie came out, it would be disingenuous not to admit that he did a magnificent job channeling Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor.
Why, then, did this movie not land? There are a few reasons. I think the premise from which it begins is flawed in and of itself. It’s hard to imagine Superman abandoning Earth for such a long time, even in the name of seeking out Krypton. As much as this planet and its people mean to him, there’s no logical way he’d head out that way without some sort of concrete reason to. Looking at rubble isn’t good enough, and there’s nothing in the movie to indicate he was given ANY hope of finding something more substantial. To be fair, though, it’s possible that a more reasonable explanation was part of the story at some point but got filtered out by Hollywood’s classic “too many cooks” problem.
There are bigger problems in credulity when it comes to maintaining Clark Kent’s secret identity. There have always been jokes about how the glasses function as a disguise, but it’s even harder to imagine nobody – not even Lois Lane – would EVER question the fact that Clark went away at the same time that Superman left Earth then returned to the Planet at the same time that Superman returned to the…well… planet, with a lowercase “p.”
But the big elephant in the room is Jason White, Lois’s little boy whom everyone believes is the child of her fiancé, Richard White, even though it’s blindingly obvious to the viewer that he’s actually the son of Superman. I don’t object to Superman being a father – I think that’s pretty clear from the stuff I’ve written about Jon Kent in the comics – but I have to draw the line at the TIMING. If Jason is Clark’s son, he obviously had to be conceived before he left Earth, and yet nobody – not even Richard – seems to question Lois when she says he’s Richard’s kid. That would mean she would have to have been involved with him at the same time as she was with Superman (presumably their dalliance in Superman II). So why does everybody in this movie act as if Richard is hands-down Jason’s father? Even if Richard knows Jason’s not his, there’s a moment where he questions if Lois was ever in love with Superman, subtly implying he wants to know IF she ever hooked up with him. So who does HE think Jason’s father is? It just doesn’t piece together.
Of course, that leads me to the biggest problem I have with this movie: Kate Bosworth’s Lois Lane. I feel like I’ve made it profoundly clear how much I admire the character of Lois Lane when she’s written well – her intelligence, her integrity, her courage. Bosworth’s Lois doesn’t display ANY of that. There’s a softness to her that doesn’t belong to Lois Lane no matter how you slice it, and I never believe the chemistry between her and Routh.
All that said, the good in this movie outweighs the bad. Routh’s Clark Kent/Superman, Frank Langella’s Perry White, Sam Huntington’s Jimmy Olsen – all of them work. John Ottman’s score is a nice build on the classic John Williams themes. And there are some sequences in this movie that are legitimately stunning even 19 years later: the scene where Superman saves the plane (obviously inspired by John Byrne’s Man of Steel) is a total thrill ride throughout. Little moments, like when he gets shot in the eye and we see a close-up of the bullet crunching, or the scene where he holds up that famous green car from Action Comics #1 – all of that works for me, and works very, very well.
Wait, where’s the dude running away in a panic in the lower lefthand corner?
Despite its flaws, this movie and Brandon Routh deserved better than they got. A good sequel COULD have been made, even though Warner Bros. decided instead to go another way. I’m just glad that Routh got a shot at redemption during the Arrowverse’s Crisis on Infinite Earths event, where he showed off how good a Superman he was.
Comics: Metamorpho: The Element Man #6 (Guest Appearance), Zatanna Vol. 3 #5 (Cameo)
Sat., June 28
Graphic Novels: Superman: Emperor Joker (Collects Superman Vol. 2 #160-161, Adventures of Superman #582-583, Superman: The Man of Steel #104-105, Action Comics #769-770, and Superman: Emperor Joker #1), Superman: The Last Son (Collects Action Comics #844-846, 851, Annual #11)
This is why I’d rather play Uno.
Notes: Although my Superman On-The-Go week is over, there were a few graphic novels I downloaded but didn’t get around to, so I thought I would dip into those today. First off was Emperor Joker, a two-month event from the four Superman titles in 2000. Superman wakes up in a world that has gone mad: he is imprisoned in Arkham, his powers diminished, and Bizarro is the leader of a JLA made up of amplified versions of villains. He can’t remember how the world got this way, nor does he remember what the world was like before, but it’s clear that something is wrong. Lois Lane is a corporate CEO, Superman is a fugitive on the run, and Mr. Mxyzptlyk is trying desperately to find him.
I think it’s important to note that, although the storyline is known as “Emperor Joker” TODAY, that wasn’t the case when it first came out. The first four issues were published under the title “Superman: Arkham,” and the one-shot that comes in the middle (the fifth chapter of the story) was solicited as Superman: Emperor ?. This was back when things like the evil mastermind who has transformed the entire world were actually kept SECRET, instead of being published in Entertainment Weekly the day before the comic actually comes out. The reveal didn’t come until chapter four, when Mxyzptlk tells Superman that the world has been taken over by a godlike Joker. Turns out Mxy thought it would be fun to give the Joker a teeny bit of his own power – about 1 percent. But he didn’t reckon with the madman’s cunning, and Joker wound up taking 99 percent of Mxy’s fifth-dimensional abilities and reshaped the entire world in his own insane image. The real Justice Leaguers are pathetic creatures, hunted as villains, and only Mxy and Superman know what’s wrong. Superman manages to recruit this world’s versions of Superboy, Supergirl, and Steel to his cause, and they set out on a quest to find the one man who can defeat the Joker: Batman.
There’s good and bad in this story. It’s a nice change of pace, first of all, to put that much power in the Joker’s hands and have Superman have to deal with it. There’s also some meta-commentary in here about the power of faith and how it restores the changed heroes, as well as an interesting note about how the Joker’s obsession with Batman prevents him from eliminating his enemy entirely and, therefore, leaves the window open for his own defeat.
But there are some moments of disconnect in here as well. This was in the waning days of the “Triangle Era,” and by this point all of the creators who had made that a golden age for Superman fans were gone. This isn’t to say that any of the creative teams of the time (Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness on Superman, J.M. DeMatteis and Mike S. Miller on Adventures, Mark Schulz and Doug Mahnke on Man of Steel, and Joe Kelly and Kano on Action) weren’t doing good work, but there was a disconnect and it showed. This was especially evident in the artwork: things like Lois’s hairstyle and Steel’s armor varied wildly from issue to issue. It would be easy to dismiss this as just part of the Joker’s madness manifesting itself visually, but if that’s the case, it should happen constantly and be noted in-story rather than just flip when a new penciller takes over the next chapter.
It’s a good story, a story I remember enjoying when it was first published and I still enjoy now, but there are things that could have been better.
“The Last Son” has a different meaning when it’s Superman than, say, the Duggars.
Next was Superman: The Last Son, a storyline from 2006. In this one, a spacecraft crashes in Metropolis and, inside, Superman finds a young boy who speaks Kryptonian. The child is initially sought out by the government (because duh), so Superman helps him escape into hiding and crafts a new identity for him – Christopher Kent, whom he tries to pass off as the child of a late cousin – and tries to convince Lois that they should adopt him. The point might become moot, however, when the child’s REAL parents arrive on Earth: General Zod and Ursa…and they want their son BACK.
Geoff Johns co-wrote this one with his former boss and mentor, a guy who’s somewhat familiar with Superman, director Richard Donner. This is probably most evident in the scenes where Superman consults the crystal with the memories of his late father, Jor-El. Artist Adam Kubert doesn’t go so far as to try to draw Jor-El to resemble Marlon Brando, but Johns and Donner absolutely write the character with Brando’s voice, with speech patterns and mannerisms that feel very on-mark for the version of Jor-El from the 1978 movie.
This is one of those stories that I find most interesting in retrospect. It was a great story (if unforgivably delayed at the time), but there are a few things established here that are kind of hilarious in perspective of how the characters would change a decade later. When Clark tells Lois he wants to adopt the Kryptonian boy, she objects. He’s too busy being Superman, she says, whereas she’s too busy being a reporter. Neither of them, in her opinion, are meant to be parents. There are also moments where both Ursa and Jor-El insist that Lois, as a human, could not conceive a child with a Kryptonian. All of them, of course, would turn out to be wrong, as the Convergence event in 2015 gave us Jon Kent. (In fairness, Superman had no powers when Jon was conceived, so Lois’s pregnancy seemed relatively normal. But still.)
This wasn’t the last story with Chris Kent – named, I should mention, in honor of the recently-departed Christopher Reeve. Like Jon, though, he’d turn up again later having aged and become a hero of his own. He’s back in the DCU these days, a kid again, but he now goes by his birth name of Lor-Zod and seems to be following his father in the family business (being evil), so it would seem that this story probably isn’t considered canon anymore. And that’s kind of too bad, because if you look at it from a certain angle you could see Lois’s experiences with Chris as changing her mind about motherhood, helping to shape her into the Supermom she would turn out to be. If nothing else, it’s cool to read a comic book that was shaped by Donner himself.
Comics: Justice League of America #27, DC Vs. Vampires: World War V #9 (Supergirl, Steel appearances)
Sun., June 29
Comics: The Superman Monster #1
“Braaains…” “That’s ZOMBIES, Klaus.” “Oh — um — FIRE BAAAAAAD…”
Notes: On a rainy Sunday afternoon, I scroll through the DC Universe app looking for today’s Superman reading and – for no particular reason – I decide to click open The Superman Monster. This is an Elseworlds one-shot from 1999, written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning with art by Anthony Williams. As you may have guessed from the cover art or the title, this is a mashup of Superman with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This is a fun little combo for me – my favorite superhero and my favorite monster. Two great tastes that taste great together.
In 19th century Ingolstadt, we meet Vicktor Luthor, a man of science. Vicktor is engaged to the lovely Eloise Edge, but he carries a dark hunger within him, an urge – since the untimely passing of his parents – to find a way to conquer death. That path is opened up to him when he finds a mysterious metal shell in the woods, a craft from another world. Inside are the skeletal remains of its only passenger, along with a holographic message from someone called Jor-El, father of the vessel’s deceased inhabitant, carrying with it the knowledge of an alien world. Luthor uses the alien remains and alien knowledge to bring to life a creature – a being of immense power, but who quickly spins out of Luthor’s control.
I’m a teacher (I may have mentioned that once or twice), and my honors seniors study Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein every year, so I have more than a passing knowledge with the book, which is really quite different from the Boris Karloff movie that most people think of when they think of the Frankenstein Monster. I’m surprised, then, to see just how good an adaptation of the novel this comic book actually is. Oh, obviously it’s not an exact 1-to-1 adaptation. There are no aliens or holograms in Shelley’s novel, for instance. But the comic actually brings in a lot of the little moments from the book that adaptations often leave out. The kindly family in the woods that the creature tries to find shelter with become the kindly older couple the Kants, mourning the loss of their son Klaus, who take the creature in. (It’s a happier relationship here than in the novel, but the ending is no less tragic.) Eloise becomes a substitute for the Bride of Frankenstein, who is built but never brought to life in the book. In truth, Shelley’s themes mesh together with the Superman legend surprisingly well.
Then there are the odd moments, things that feel like a DC editorial mandate. The hologram that Luthor finds, for instance, is Jor-El wearing the clothing of the John Byrne era. Sure, that was the style of Jor-El in the comics at the time, but this is an Elseworlds – we’ve changed the inhabitants of Metropolis to German villagers in the 19th century and Superman into a walking corpse, but redesigning Jor-El was verboten for some reason. While the artwork throughout it pretty strong, little things like that take me out of it just a little bit. You don’t see stuff like that these days – look at a modern story like Dark Knights of Steel and there’s no attempt to adhere to current designs, nor should there be.
This is the kind of thing that really sets DC’s Elseworlds apart from Marvel’s What If? series, at least back then. Whereas the What If? stories traditionally used the main Marvel Universe as a starting point and then spun out an alternate history, Elseworlds could (and usually did) posit a story that never could have happened in the comics and followed them to a conclusion. These days, the two franchises have kind of moved closer together, where either can be used for either type of story, but for 1999 this was a quintessential Elseworlds yarn. It’s not so far off the mark that you can’t recognize Superman for what he is, but at the same time, it’s a take from a different angle, a fun sort of combination with a different story, not unlike Superman’s Metropolis, Batman: Nosferatu, or Green Lantern: 1,001 Emerald Nights. It’s too bad, with all the other Elseworlds characters that have cropped up in the Multiverse, that we haven’t seen the Superman Monster again.
I own this book, so I’m sure I’ve read it before, but it’s been long enough that I forgot most of it. I’m glad I read it again, but if I’m being honest, I kind of wish that I’d held off until October and worked it into some Super Halloween reading. Ah well, I’m sure I’ll find other seasonally appropriate stories when the time comes.
Mon. June 30
TV Special: Superman’s 50th Anniversary: A Celebration of the Man of Steel
And he doesn’t look a day over 87.
Notes: With the movie (THE movie) coming out next week, I’ve got a list of very specific things I’m going to hit in the week preceding it…but I’m a bit aimless as to how to finish up THIS week. Not quite feeling like hitting the DC app this morning, I decided to scroll through my list of things to watch, and more or less randomly decided to go to YouTube, where I’ve found the 1988 CBS television special Superman’s 50th Anniversary: A Celebration of the Man of Steel. Sorry to all the Kate and Allie and Designing Women fans – the special makes it clear at the beginning that those shows won’t be airing tonight, but they’ll be back next week.
This special, celebrating Superman’s 50th, starts with a narrator telling us Superman’s origin overlaid on footage from the original Superman movie serial from 1948 – until the planet explodes and we shift to the 1978 Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve movie. Apparently, in the universe of this special, Krypton is in black and white, whereas Earth is in color. Then we meet Dana Carvey, “Chief Historian of the Junior Supermen of America,” who promises to explore Superman’s history and interview some of the people who know him best: “The Metropolotians.”
Oh man – this whole special is gonna be a bit, isn’t it?
In fact, it turns out to be far more schizophrenic than that. The special is a bit of a history, using clips from pretty much every incarnation of the character at this point (Kirk Alyn, George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, and the Fleischer cartoons). And some of the narration is actually on-point – in a discussion of Superman’s powers, for instance, Dana Carvey mentions how Superman couldn’t actually fly in the early days, but instead jumped from place to place before he developed into – and I quote – “the Nijinsky of the air.”
We get interviews with people involved with Superman, like Christopher Reeve, but then it bounces to comedians in-character. Fred Willard, for instance, plays the Deputy Mayor of Metropolis desperately trying to emphasize that there are things in the city beyond JUST Superman – museums, for example. The Amazing Kreskin talks about how his powers are different than Superman’s. Hal Holbrook shows up in a (rather unimpressive) Superman costume preparing for his one-man show about Superman’s life, an apparent follow-up to his one-man show about Mark Twain. The golden moment here is Noel Neill appearing as Lois’s mother, Ella Lane, describing how she’s tried to talk her daughter out of chasing that Superman because he’s just never going to settle down. Then just seconds later, the goodwill is thrown out in a groan-inducing interview with Jan Hooks as a woman who claimed to have a fling with Superman and whose “hybrid” child is half-Superman. “He’s got X-Ray vision, but only in one eye, so he gets terrible headaches.”
I guess that’s supposed to be funny?
The special was produced by Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live, which is no doubt why so many SNL cast members past and present appear…but it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to BE. Is this a celebration of Superman or a parody? A sketch show or a documentary? It tries to be both, but it CAN’T.
There are some nice moments, though – a brief interview with Kirk Alyn where he talks about how much he loved playing Superman and how proud he was to be the FIRST Superman on screen. Jack Larson, the Jimmy Olsen from the George Reeves series, similarly gives a brief but sweet interview. John Byrne also gets an interview where he discusses how Siegel and Shuster pulled the character together and sold him to DC Comics – again, it’s a good moment, but far too short.
There is, however, one moment that makes watching the entire special worthwhile for me: RALPH NADER. Remember back in “Super-Sponsor Week,” when I took to YouTube to find different Superman-related commercials, and I found a bit with Ralph Nader doing a sort of public service announcement warning people only to buy their Kryptonite from a legitimate dealer? I had no idea where that commercial came from or why it exists. So I hope you can imagine just how excited I was when it showed up as PART OF THIS SPECIAL. The mystery is solved. I can finally get a decent night’s sleep again.
I’m not sure how I feel about this special, honestly. They tried to do a real dip into Superman’s history at some moments, which kind of undermine the in-universe comedy bits. The comedy bits, on the other hand, make the real world segments feel entirely out of place. I wish they had picked one path to take and stuck with it rather than this halfhearted attempt to have their cake and eat it too.
TV Episode: Super Mega Cakes Season 1, Episode 1: “Superman.”
Looks good enough to eat, right?
Notes: True confession time. I like TV baking shows, and when I saw the ad for this new one — Super Mega Cakes — scroll across my screen at some point, I realized I would have to watch at least the first episode. Celebrity baker Duff Goldman and his team is tasked with competing against six teams of non-celebrity bakers, baking six mega cakes in battle at the same time. And because this is a Food Network show and therefore part of the Warner Bros/Discovery umbrella, at least for the next five minutes, some of the themes are connected to specific IP. One baker’s theme is Classic Cartoons (with the Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry specifically shown). Another gets an “ocean predators” theme, and I just BETCHA that episode will be airing during Shark Week. But for the first episode, the one that I’m talking about today, the pitch is Superman-themed cakes.
The Superman battle pits Duff against baker Elizabeth Rowe, who decides to base her design on a scene in the trailer for the new movie (did I mention there was a new movie coming out?) in which a Kaiju attacks the Daily Planet office. Part of the requirements for the cake is that there has to be an animated element, so Rowe decides to have Clark, mid-change to Superman, turn his heat vision on the monster (although Rowe and her team constantly refer to his power as “laser eyes,” and part of me is rooting for her to lose just because of that). She’ll also have Lois brandishing a fire extinguisher, which is a cute touch. The final requirement that was mentioned is that the flavor of the cake has to be inspired by the theme, so Rowe decides to do a peanut butter filling because “Superman loves peanut butter.”
You know what? Superman used to SELL peanut butter, so I’m gonna allow that.
Team Duff, on the other hand, plans a three-foot tall Superman figure bursting out of the Fortress of Solitude made out of ice. Superman will be accompanied by Krypto, because Krypto is also in the new movie. (DID YOU KNOW THERE’S GOING TO BE A MOVIE?) But when Duff’s partner Ralph sees just how big Elizabeth’s kaiju is shaping up to be, he upscales the figures of Clark and Krypto to life-size. Duff’s tasting element is rhubarb jam, because Clark loves Martha’s rhubarb pie. (My wife: “Y’all nerds know way too much about this man.”) For his animated element, Supercake is going to use his (correctly-named) heat vision to carve an S-shield in the ice.
I’m not going to go into a blow-by-blow of the whole episode. If you like these kinds of shows, you probably know how it goes – we watch the cake artists at work, we see them overcome unexpected obstacles, there’s a confessional segment where they tell about some sort of personal hardship that makes you want to root for them DESPITE the fact that they keep calling it “laser vision,” the music gets super-duper intense just before the timer runs out and then, BAM! There’s a ridiculously impressive cake. And I gotta tell ya, the cakes DO look amazing.
Damn. Now I want cake.
Comics: DC Vs. Vampires: World War Z #10 (Appearance by Supergirl, Lois Lane)
Tues., July 1
Comics: Adventure Comics #346-347
Notes: Once again, I find myself faced with the sad duty of eulogizing someone here in the Year of Superman blog, as yesterday afternoon we were told of the passing of Jim Shooter at the age of 73. Shooter was perhaps one of the most remarkable comic creators of all time – certainly possessing the most unique history. At the age of 13, he submitted a story to DC Comics featuring what he considered, at the time, one of DC’s weakest properties: the Legion of Super-Heroes. Not only did editor Mort Weisinger buy the story from Shooter, but at the age of 14 he was hired as the regular writer for the Legion’s tales in Adventure Comics. Shooter would go on to write other comics for DC, including – among many others – the very first ever race between Superman and the Flash from Superman #199. He wrote a variety of comics for DC, many of them part of the Superman family, for about a decade before he bounced over to Marvel Comics. There he eventually rose to the position of Editor-In-Chief, spearheading Marvel’s New Universe line and writing their first major crossover event, Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars. After leaving Marvel, Shooter founded Valiant Comics, as well as other enterprises that perhaps are not remembered as well.
Although sometimes a controversial figure (word has it that he wasn’t always the easiest editor to work with), Shooter is one of those figures whose stamp on the comic book landscape is undeniable. Both as a writer and an editor, he is responsible for some of the most significant and memorable stories and characters in comic book history.
So to commemorate him, I decided today to go back and read a story I didn’t get to back in Legion of Super-Heroes week: his first ever Legion story, a two-parter from Adventure Comics #346 and #347 – a story written by a 13-year-old boy. (Take THAT, 17-year-old Mary Shelley creating Frankenstein.)
Hint: The traitor is the one who isn’t mentioned in any OTHER Legion stories of the past 60 years.
In the shockingly-titled “One of Us is a Traitor” Superboy, serving as interim leader, introduces four new young heroes all vying for Legion membership. Princess Projectra has the power to cast illusions! Nemesis Kid has a strange “alchemical” power that allows him to defend himself and defeat any foe! Ferro Lad can transform into living iron! And Karate Kid’s skill at Martial Arts is ALMOST enough to allow him to defeat Superboy! All four are unanimously accepted as members of the Legion.
Before the Legion has even had a chance to welcome their newbies, though, a new threat rears its head: Garlak, warlord of the distant world of Khund, is threatening to invade Earth if the planet doesn’t surrender in one hour. And just in case Superboy gets any smart ideas, he warns them, he has a healthy supply of Kryptonite weapons. Superboy splits the Legion into three teams to protect Earth’s three defense towers, but in private, Garlak gloats that he’s already slipped a spy into the Legion ranks to guarantee his success. And in fact, when the first of the defense towers is attacked, Phantom Girl is left questioning Karate Kid’s loyalty to the team when he sends her away at a critical moment and the first of Earth’s three defense towers is destroyed.
In part two of the story, Superboy leads an air-squad to defend the second tower, but their Kryptonite weapons weaken him and the tower is lost. Checking on the Legionnaires who were supposed to defend it on the ground, they find their teammates unconscious, temporarily incapacitated by a gas attack, with one person missing – Karate Kid. Racing to Legion HQ, they find Karate Kid standing over the wreckage of the Legion’s arsenal, but when Superboy shouts out, “All right, Kid! The game’s up!” it is not Karate Kid who steps out to confess, but Nemesis Kid. He’s already signaled the Khund to attack, and plans to be richly rewarded as Earth perishes. But Superboy isn’t without his own tricks – he reveals a secret fourth defense tower that helps fend off the Khund as the Legion takes the fight to their spacecraft. Karate Kid proves his worth by singlehandedly capturing the Khund leader, but Nemesis Kid’s powers allow him to teleport away, and Superboy is left wondering if they’ll ever see him again.
He’s no Daniel LaRusso, but let’s see Jaden Smith’s Karate Kid do THAT.
First off, if you didn’t already know, there’s no way in hell you would EVER guess this story was written by a 13-year-old. Not only does it fit with the style of the other DC Comics of the 60s, it’s BETTER than most of them – a more intense story, sharper characterization, and while Karate Kid is obviously a red herring from the beginning, most red herrings at this time were obvious. The only knock I could give this story is the kind of lame way that Nemesis Kid reveals himself: “Oh, Superboy said ‘Kid.’ He must be talking to me and not the guy who’s literally standing over the destroyed arsenal, whose name also happens to have ‘Kid’ in it. Better give myself up.” But even THAT isn’t any lamer than most other stories of the time, and I can easily give it a pass.
What’s more, in his first story, Shooter has contributed SEVERAL lasting elements to the Legion of Super-Heroes: Projectra and Karate Kid would go on to have long, storied careers with the Legion (to date, Karate Kid and Mon-El, using the name Valor, are the only Legionnaires to ever get their own ongoing comic book series). Ferro Lad’s time as a Legionnaire was cut tragically short, but as the first Legionnaire to die (and stay dead) in battle, he left an indelible mark on the franchise. Kind of like Tasha Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Ferro Lad turned out to be more important in death than it was in life. And even the bad guys from this story, the Khunds, would go on to be long-time alien antagonists not only for the Legion, but even in the DC comics set in the present day, although it should be noted that the Khunds would change to a more alien-like appearance, whereas in this story Shooter and artist Sheldon Moldoff (working off Shooter’s thumbnail sketches, no less!) kind of made Garlak look like Attila the Hun in space.
Not a bad first day on the job for someone whose contemporaries made their money delivering newspapers.
Thank you, Mr. Shooter from the hearts of the fans of the Legion. And Superman. And major crossover events. And the Valiant Comics characters. Let’s face it, you had your hand in everything, and we’re all better for having your work in comics.
Blake M. Petit 