A little over a month ago, I talked to you guys about Compact Comics, DC Comics’ incredibly well-received new publishing initiative, in which some of their most popular and well-known graphic novels have been reprinted in smaller volumes, about the same size as a modern paperback novel, for the deliciously new reader-friendly price point of $9.99. The first ten books DC released in this format all sold out and went back for additional printings, and a second wave of titles has been announced for later this year. As with the first wave, the new titles are a mix of perennial bestsellers, books with current media tie-ins, and a few offbeat titles that aren’t their usual superhero fare, but may well snare readers who want something different.
I applaud this initiative. I’m up for anything that gets more people reading comic books, and based on the success of this series so far, it seems like it’s doing the trick. But that doesn’t mean that ONLY the smash hits deserve the Compact Comics treatment. DC’s got a history going back 90 years, and in those nine decades they’ve turned out a lot of books that may not be immediately recognizable, but at the same time, are fully deserving of finding a new audience. So DC – I know you’re listening to me, I can hear you breathing – this week in Geek Punditry I’m going to give you some suggestions for a few titles that I think are worthy of inclusion and should be given the utmost consideration when the time comes to select round three of Compact Comics.
The Kents
Look, everybody knows I’m going to have at least ONE Superman-related suggestion, so why don’t we just get it out of the way early, shall we? The Kents was a 12-issue miniseries from 1997 and 1998, written by John Ostrander with art by Tim Truman (issues #1-8) and Tom Mandrake (issues #9-12). In this series, Jonathan Kent uncovers a series of diaries, letters, and artifacts from the mid 1800s and, sharing them with his son, the two of them piece together an epic story about the history of the family that would give Earth her greatest hero.
“Ah, who cares about the Kent family, Blake?” some of you may say. Well…people who are into the likes of Unforgiven, perhaps. Or True Grit. Or John Ford’s Stagecoach. Because The Kents isn’t a superhero story at all – it’s an epic western. In three acts, the story tells the saga of the Kent family before, during, and after the Civil War. There’s a bitter, harrowing tale of brother against brother played out against the backdrop of the American west, and in this story we not only see the seeds of righteousness and nobility that would one day so profoundly inform who Clark Kent is, but also the struggles, heartache, and betrayals that the family had to endure to build that foundation. I’ve loved this series since it first came out, and although it’s been reprinted once or twice over the years, it doesn’t look like there’s been a new edition of this book since 2012. That’s entirely too long, and it’s time it got back in the spotlight.
Camelot 3000
Speaking of 12-issue miniseries that have been out of print for over a decade, let’s talk about Camelot 3000. This science fiction/fantasy series by Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland came out from 1982 to 1984, and it tells the story of a future where King Arthur has returned to Great Britain, as the prophecy foretold. In this distant future of the year 3000, the world has been divided up into four gargantuan autocratic countries, all bickering and fighting amongst one another, and completely oblivious to a greater threat from beyond the Earth. Arthur, resurrected, has to find the reincarnations of his knights and prepare them for battle.
This is a fantastic book, showcasing Bolland’s pencils even before he sharpened them to the point where he became the artist behind Watchmen, and the story very neatly mirrors the original Arthurian legend. Barr supposedly got the inspiration for the story while taking a college course on Arthur, and the work he put into shaping this world is really remarkable. He doesn’t just re-tell the original story, but weaves in certain themes, showing just how timeless they are. The Lancelot/Guinevere story is still hanging over everyone’s heads, and the new take on Tristan and Isolde is way ahead of its time. It’s also an important book, historically speaking – DC’s first maxi-series created for the direct market only, their first time experimenting with a new format, and the first time future superstar Bolland would do full stories for an American publisher.
But most importantly, it’s just a good comic that modern audiences haven’t all had an opportunity to experience yet, and it’s an experience they frankly deserve.
Batman: Robin Ascendant
This doesn’t actually exist. I mean, the stories exist, but this particular collection of them, to my knowledge, has not been made…but damn it, it should be. Batman, as you may have heard, has gone through a Robin or two in his time, and for a lot of us, the definitive Robin is Tim Drake. I love Dick Grayson as much as anybody, but he’s far more interesting as Nightwing than he ever was as Robin. Tim Drake, on the other hand, is probably the best Robin there’s been. Batman himself has acknowledged that Tim will be a better detective than he is some day, and he’s also the only one of the main Robins that has never particularly harbored a desire to become Batman. He stepped into the role after the death of Jason Todd (who, of course, got better), during a period where Batman was being consumed with self-doubt and anger, and it seemed like the Dark Knight was going to go far, far darker than ever before. Tim deduced the original Robin’s identity, and from there, it was easy enough to determine that Batman was Bruce Wayne, so he arrived on Bruce’s doorstep not because he wanted to be a superhero, but because he knew that Batman is better with a Robin.
The story in which this is told was called “A Lonely Place of Dying,” by Marv Wolfman, George Perez, and Jim Aparo, and while it has been collected many times, it’s only five issues long. (Batman #440-442 and New Titans #60-61) One of the few legitimate complaints I’ve heard anyone have about any of the Compact Comics is that certain ones – specifically the ones that reprint original graphic novels like Joker or Wonder Woman: Earth One – are too short compared to the ones that squeeze in a hefty 12 issues worth of content. So in order to combat this volume having the same problem, I propose a bundle of sorts, combining this story with two shorter, subsequent ones. Bruce didn’t make Tim a Robin immediately, dedicating himself to training the boy so as not to repeat the mistakes of Jason Todd, and there were a few good Tim stories before he put on the costume again. In “Rite of Passage,” from Detective Comics #618-620 (by Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle), Tim’s parents are kidnapped by a villain called the Obeah Man, leading to a tragedy that would shape Tim dramatically. I would include that, then cap off the book with “Identity Crisis” from Batman #455-457 (Grant and Breyfogle again). Here, Tim is grappling with the events of “Rite of Passage,” struggling with the legacy of the two previous Robins looming over him, and is grounded while Batman sets out to take on the Scarecrow. But Tim figures out that Batman is walking into a trap, and realizes that he’s the hero’s only hope.
When you put these three stories together, you’ve got a nice chronology of Tim Drake, leading up to him officially taking the mantle on the final page. And you’d get 11 issues of content, which is perfectly in keeping with the size of the better-received Compact Comics.
Tales of the Green Lantern Corps
One of the first Green Lantern stories I ever read – thanks to some comics given to me by my Uncle Todd – was the three-issue Tales of the Green Lantern Corps miniseries from 1981 by Mike W. Barr, Len Wein, and Joe Staton. In this truly epic story, all 3600 members of the Corps are called together to face the most dire of threats – their ancient enemy Krona has returned. Krona, a twisted member of the same race that eventually became the Guardians of the Universe, has forged an alliance with Nekron, a god of Death, and is planning to rend a hole between the worlds of the living and the dead, beginning with the destruction of the Corps’ central power battery on Oa. The Corps only has one charge remaining – a mere 24 hours to save the universe.
This is an incredible storyline – wide-reaching and eventful, that showcases not only Hal Jordan, but so many other Lanterns. Classics like Katma Tui and Tomar-Re show up, little-known GLs like Charlie Vicker make an appearance, and we get the debut of Arisia, who would go on to be a major player in the series. Furthermore, elements from this story would be used decades later in Geoff Johns’s Blackest Night, another awesome story that should get the Compact Comics treatment.
The only problem is all of this universe-spanning action takes place in only three issues, and, like I said, that just ain’t enough to satisfy Compact Comics reader. Fortunately, DC has already provided us with a solution. Tales of the Green Lantern Corps was not only the title of this miniseries, but also the banner under which solo tales of Green Lanterns from beyond the Earth appeared as back-up stories in the main comic for years. There were also three annual specials using this title with the same concept: short stories of various GLs. Some of those were amazing, such as the introduction of the bizarre and delightful Rot Lop Fan from Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual #3 (story by Alan Moore and Bill Willingham). Once you’ve included the three issue miniseries, it would be quite simple to cherry pick the best of the other Tales and build up enough of a collection to make a suitable Compact Comics volume.
Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga
The Legion of Super-Heroes is one of DC’s greatest properties, and yet somehow it gets less respect and love than so many. It deserves more, and showcasing one of its crowning achievements in The Great Darkness Saga would be a way to show them off to a new audience. In this one, the heroes of the 30th Century find themselves coming into conflict with bizarre, shadowed figures who turn out to be corrupt clones of heroes from the past. The race to discover the truth about these threats leads to a collision with the characters of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World, finally bringing the Legion into conflict with the embodiment of evil in the DC Universe: Darkseid himself. The story was a smash hit when it was first published in the early 80s, and was credited with making Legion one of the best-selling comics in America for a while. It showcases virtually every character who was or had ever been a member of the Legion, as well as drawing in many of their allies like the Legion of Substitute Heroes and the Wanderers. If you’re looking for a showcase of everything the 30th Century had to offer, this is the book to read.
The main storyline is, again, somewhat short, running in Legion of Super-Heroes #290-294. However, there was a long buildup before the main story began, and previous collections have included material going back to issue #286 and their first annual, with an epilogue of sorts appearing in the third annual. And if you really want to link it to the greater DCU, years later there was another side-story that connected to it in issue #32 of Booster Gold, a series in which the time-travelling hero often found himself stumbling into classic DC storylines. There’s certainly enough to collect a full-size volume here.
Ambush Bug
My final suggestion is probably my most off-the-wall, but I will defend it vigorously. For the last few years DC Comics has been trying to turn Harley Quinn into their answer to Deadpool, with the sort of fourth-wall breaking shenanigans he’s known for. With all due respect to the creators who have been involved in those stories, that’s a mistake. Harley became a hit character on her own merit, and changing who she is to fit some other character’s template is foolish, especially since they’ve already got a much better candidate: Ambush Bug.
Ambush Bug, created by Paul Kupperberg and Keith Giffen, is (supposedly) Irwin Schwab, a schlub who found an alien super suit that gave him the ability to teleport. Schwab is also ludicrously insane and a wholly unreliable narrator, making everything we know about him (including his real name, his origin, and his rivalry with the alien sock Argh!yle) suspect at best. Who or whatever Ambush Bug really is, he first showed up as an antagonist in DC Comics Presents #52, running afoul of Superman and the Doom Patrol. He came back a few issues later, causing problems for Superman and the Legion of Substitute Heroes, then decided to try becoming a hero after an encounter with Supergirl in her own comic. (He initially mistook Supergirl for her cousin. He’s that crazy.) Co-creator Keith Giffen and his writing partner Robert Loren Fleming soon started to run with the character, having him show up in three issues of Action Comics (where he quickly realized that Superman looked exactly like Clark Kent – he’s that crazy) before he got popular enough to get miniseries and specials all his own.
Ambush Bug was breaking the fourth wall before Harley, before Deadpool, even before John Byrne’s She-Hulk raised such a thing to an art form. He is fully aware of the fact that he’s a comic book character, and he was proficient in meta humor long before it became popular. His stories are bizarre, surrealistic, and utterly bonkers, and they’re a lot of fun because of that. Unfortunately, since the passing of Giffen, there really hasn’t been anybody else who has a great hold on the character and he doesn’t appear much these days. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before somebody tries to bring him back, and when that happens, I hope they find creators who have just the right blend of humor and irreverence to do him justice.
In the meantime, though, we can grease the wheels for his return with the Compact Comics treatment. Ambush Bug Vol. 1 should include his early appearances in DC Comics Presents, Action Comics, and Supergirl, as well as his first four-issue miniseries from 1985, and the Ambush Bug Stocking Stuffer Christmas special. Once that first volume is a sales juggernaut (as all my suggestions clearly would be) they could follow it up with Vol. 2, collecting the Son of Ambush Bug five-issue miniseries from 1986, the Ambush Bug Nothing Special from 1992, and the six-issue revival miniseries Ambush Bug: Year None from 2008.
There you go, DC. I know the books for Compact Comics series two have already been chosen, so consider these six suggestions the first half of a wave three. I’m sure you can figure out the rest of that wave yourselves. You guys are pretty good at this too.
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He hopes you all appreciate the fact that he got to the end of this without talking about Captain Carrot. That wasn’t easy, people.
We’re here approaching the middle of May already, and for me that means the end of a school year. This week is the last week for my 12th graders, while my 11th graders are gearing up for their last two weeks. All of this boils down to less time for me, so I don’t think I’m going to work too hard to maintain any sort of theme this week. Let’s just take it as it comes and see what turns up.
Wed., May 7
Comics:Action Comics #558, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #138, Justice League of America #23
Ironically, this is what I feel like when I get an ice cream headache.
Notes: Here’s another one of those semi-random issues that turns up in my classic comic read-throughs, and it really illustrates something about the middle years of Superman. After the Silver Age silliness started to die down, there was a long period where it didn’t quite seem that the writers knew what to do with him. He only had a few great villains, like Luthor and Brainiac, and it’s not like he could face off against them twice every month, or they’d be overused. Attempts at creating new villains tended to turn out losers with little meat behind them, such as Terra-Man, or else random alien or mystical opponents who were only good for one story each. Other than that, they had him facing off against natural disasters or some sort of personal mishap that made Superman himself (temporarily) dangerous or otherwise imperiled without having an actual antagonist.
As for his personal relationships – the perpetual Second Act of ongoing comic books is on no greater display than it was here. They didn’t want Clark to get married, they kept Lois as a hanger-on, they didn’t add any characters, they didn’t remove any, and that’s how things were for decades. They finally made a slight shift in the late 70s and early 80s: moving Clark to WGBS added a few characters to the cast, and bringing back an adult Lana Lang who was finally infatuated with Clark Kent rather than Superboy changed up the classic Superman/Lois/Clark love triangle. Ultimately, though, these changes were largely cosmetic, and the actual plots didn’t change all that much. When somebody calls Superman boring I disagree with them vehemently, but I have to assume that the majority of their exposure to the character probably comes from this era.
All of this is to say, “The All-Searing Eyes” from Action Comics #558 is another example of a Superman story that’s low on threat and doesn’t really have any reaching impact. Superman is brought into contact with a scientist attempting to solve the world’s energy problems, and he thinks he’s found the way to do it: Superman’s heat vision. He believes if he can discern how Superman’s heat vision works, he may potentially be able to harness that energy for the benefit of the people of the world. Superman, being Superman, agrees to have his heat vision tested, but he’s forced to end the experiment prematurely to avert a disaster, and as a result, he finds himself unable to turn the heat vision off.
Is there story potential here? Sure. A Superman unable to turn off his heat vision would be horribly dangerous, something that was actually addressed in a 90s storyline in which his powers went out of control for a while. But true to the time period, there wasn’t much room for real drama here. Superman realizes he’s in a pickle, he causes a small amount of trouble but no lasting damage, and at the end of 12 pages the scientist manages to get his heat vision back to normal. Ultimately this – like a lot of the comics of the era – feels pretty inconsequential. It has no lasting impact for any of our characters, and nothing that happens is ever referenced again. This isn’t to say that every single Superman story (or every story for any ongoing character, for that matter) HAS to have long-reaching consequences, but if they don’t, they should at least reveal something about the characters or, at bare minimum, be original and fun. This story, and many of them of the era, just don’t tick any of those boxes. In a modern age where it seems like comic books are rebooted every twenty minutes and it never matters anymore, you can look at books like this one – books that happened in the years before the first major reboot – and you can understand why DC felt like it was necessary.
Thur., May 8
Comics: Superman #126, Blue Devil #3 (Guest Appearance), Action Comics #375, Infinity, Inc. #5 (Power Girl)
And this is what it takes to get RID of an ice cream headache.
Notes: As I’ve said before, on weeks when I’m not pursuing a particular theme, there’s little rhyme or reason to the choices I make as to which Superman content I’ll explore. For example, Superman #126? It’s on the docket for today solely because I was scrolling through the DC Universe Infinity app, the cover caught my eye, and I don’t think I’ve ever read this story before.
I should clarify: I’ve never read the story presented in this PARTICULAR issue before…but I have most CERTAINLY read stories about Superman with amnesia. They were strikingly common in the Silver Age, and even as late as the early 90s there was the “Blackout” five-parter, in which Superman’s memory was accidentally wiped by an experiment Emil Hamilton was working on and he wound up on a tropical island almost marrying a native princess. (Hmm. Should I read that one next? It’s been a while.)
But for now, I’m focusing on “Superman’s Hunt For Clark Kent.” While experimenting for a possible antidote to Kryptonite radiation at the Fortress of Solitude, an accident causes Superman to lose his memory…but fortunately not his powers, which he needs to fly down to Metropolis to start piecing together his missing life. He gets clothes from a British chap who is literally giving them away to the first person he sees who’ll fit them and who seems to have no idea who Superman is, then decides to adopt a “secret identity.” He disguises himself as a Brit, bleaches his hair blond, takes the name “Clarence Kelvin,” and applies for a job at the Daily Planet.
You know, there’s an adage in writing that goes something like, “In real life, we expect coincidence. In fiction, we do not stand for it.” I imagine that adage was coined in response to stories like this one. Superman’s behavior is completely absurd and preposterous, and seems to happen only to keep him from telling literally anybody on the planet the predicament he’s in, at which point every scientist in the world (except for Lex Luthor) would be falling over themselves to try to cure his amnesia. But instead he…fights a whale.
Eventually, he learns who he really is by flying into space far enough to overtake the rays of light coming from Earth and using his telescopic vision to watch himself, in the past, changing his clothes, making him realize he’s Clark Kent – and that may be the LEAST scientifically implausible thing about this story. At the end, everything goes back to normal, with Clark settling in at the Planet again…but something about this is bothering me. He discovers that he’s really Clark Kent. He resumes his life as Clark Kent. But at NO POINT does the story actually say that his MEMORY returns. Does that mean that Superman technically had amnesia for the rest of the Silver Age?
Where’s that grim and gritty follow-up?
As usual for this era, there are three stories in the issue. The second one isn’t particularly memorable, but the third one made me do a double-take. In “The Two Faces of Superman,” Lois deliberately makes herself unattractive to ward off a blind date and Clark, catching wind of this, decides to teach her a lesson. He decided to do that a LOT in the Silver Age, in and of itself there would be nothing noteworthy about this. But as Superman, he whisks her off on a date, at the end of which he “confesses” that he always wears a rubber mask as Superman and wants to finally show her his true face. And when he does…well…see for yourself.
“What, me Kryptonian?”
Yep. Superman decides to turn himself into the spitting image of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman.
And this, it should be noted, was long BEFORE Mad was published by DC Comics.
Anyway, to her credit, Lois is smart enough to figure out Superman’s ruse (after a few pages of angst and soul-searching) and calls his bluff by accepting a marriage proposal he never thought she would go for. In the end, both of them put their cards on the table and admit the truth, and Lois even concedes that it was wrong of her to blow off her blind date in such a way, then goes right back to dreaming about wanting to marry Superman – but NOT by tricking him. I guess that’s the sort of thing that passed for noble aspirations in 1959.
Fri., May 9
Comic: Absolute Superman #7
This is what it felt like when I got an ant farm in 4th grade.
Notes: Only one new Superman-related comic hit the stands this week, although I did get the Dan Mora variant cover for the Action Comics #1 facsimile, because I’m a sucker. The one new book, Absolute Superman #7, is our introduction to the Brainiac of this dark universe. In fact, Superman doesn’t technically appear at all. Instead we spend the entire issue exploring this new incarnation of the villain and his obsession with the Superman that has somehow appeared on Earth. This version of Brainiac has a bit in common with Geoff Johns’ re-imagining of the character several years ago, but there’s a madness to him that I’ve never seen in a Brainiac before. It suits the grimmer universe that the Absolute titles occupy quite well, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes next.
Most interestingly, though, is the cover. I have to talk about my love for this cover, by Rafa Sandoval. It’s not just that it’s a good piece of art, although, it is, but look at it. Word balloons. How often do comic book covers have word balloons these days? It’s a lost art, and when it IS used, it’s usually used for comedic purposes. To see it done this way is both unexpected and exciting. Good on ya, DC.
Sat., May 10
TV Episode: Superman and Lois, Season 2, Episode 8, “Into Oblivion”; Episode 9, “30 Days and 30 Nights.”
After I make it to work on a day like this I usually text my wife and say “Careful, the fog is crazy this morning.”
Notes: The assorted subplots that have defined this season continue in episode 8. Jonathan, expelled from school, is given permission to complete his coursework online and is forced to get a job. Jordan discovers that the reason his brother has refused to tell anyone about his sources for X-Kryptonite is because he’s trying to protect Candice, the girl he’s been seeing, who’s trying to support her family. John Henry is recovering from amnesia (more amnesia?) and has forgotten that he’s not married to Lois in this universe, and his recovery is triggering Natalie, who remembers how the Superman of her original universe murdered her mother. Lana’s husband Kyle – despite their estrangement – tries to help her prepare for her upcoming debate in the race for Mayor of Smallville, while Sarah tries to convince Jordan to become friends with the girl she hooked up with in summer camp.
Sometimes the synopsis of these episodes make me long for the quiet subtlety of a Silver Age issue of Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane.
In episode 9, cult leader Ally Allston (the one who sucked Lucy Lane into her web) breaks DOD custody and manages to hop into a portal to another dimension. Superman goes after her and winds up trapped in that other dimension for…well, the name of the episode IS “30 Days and 30 Nights.” In that time, disasters go unchecked and lives are lost as the world cries out, “Where is Superman?” As John Henry sets out in his Steel armor to fill in the gaps, Jordan tries to use his super-senses to find his absent father. Ah yes – and the Smallville mayoral election happens, and lest we forget, Lana is on the ballot.
As much as I want to enjoy this series, in episode 8 there’s just too much going on, and it’s not connecting with me as a result. I feel like I need a scorecard to keep track of all the storylines, and for somebody who navigated the entire Triangle Era of Superman comics with no issues, that’s saying something. That said, there are a few things that I liked here. Jonathan taking the fall for Candice, for example, feels like a very Kent thing to do. He’s protecting someone and taking the heat on his own, and while he’s doing it in a stupid way, he’s also a teenage boy and thus a certain level of stupidity is to be expected when girls are concerned. I also like the way that Clark tries to mend fences with Natalie, someone he has never wronged, but at the same time, someone who may be the only person on Earth with a legitimate reason to be traumatized by Superman. There are a few good scenes with the two of them, and I like the development of her character.
I’m not wild about the continued development with Lucy and the cult leader who sucked her in, and the end of the episode has Lucy taking a turn that not only marks her as a bit of a villain, but a way bigger idiot than even Jonathan. It does lead into Episode 9, though, which improves over 8 considerably. It starts with John Henry suiting up in his armor and trying to fill in the gaps left by Clark’s absence. There’s also a great bit where Kyle – a firefighter – is trapped in a burning building and Jordan has to use his powers to save him. Lois is outraged, but Jordan stands his ground and insists that he did the right thing. And damn it, Lois, you know he’s right. Finally – FINALLY – we get some of the stuff I’ve been wanting to see in this series. Jordan uses his powers to save somebody’s life. Lois argues that he should have let John Henry handle it, but Jordan points out that John wouldn’t have made it in time and Kyle would have died. Jordan is 100 percent right – he used his super powers to save somebody’s life, and that is ESPECIALLY important while his father is missing. On the other hand, Lois isn’t approaching this as someone who is desperate for a new superhero in the world. She looks at it from the perspective of a wife whose husband is missing and whose son just did something incredibly dangerous, sparking her fears of losing him too. Lois is totally in the wrong, and yet, her reaction is entirely understandable and in-character. And that, my friends, is what makes for a compelling conflict.
This episode also finally gives us a little forward momentum on the X-Kryptonite storyline, as Jonathan breaks down and tells his mother where to find the distributor, sending Lois, Sam Lane, and Jordan on a stakeout that goes bad. (There’s a cute bit here where Lois’s knowledge of the kind of knots used to keep them in check makes her father question just how many times his daughter has been tied up over the years.) Despite Lois’s protests, Jordan comes in to save his mother and grandfather, and maybe for the first time in this whole series, we see a glimpse of the Superboy he just may be destined to be. I love what they do with him in this episode, it’s the best we’ve seen from Jordan yet.
Although Sarah dumping him at the end of the episode because he keeps disappearing and won’t tell her what’s going on is more of a Peter Parker consequence than a Clark Kent one. Ah well. He’s got the powers, best he learn what it takes to be a superhero now.
It ends on a hell of a cliffhanger, and it’s probably the best episode of the season so far. And Superman isn’t even actually IN it. Go figure.
Sun. May 11
Comics: World of Smallville #1-4
Notes: It’s Mother’s Day here in the US, and in the Year of Superman I thought I should devote my reading today to that mom of moms, Martha Kent. Let’s face it, Martha and Jonathan are probably the greatest parents in all fiction. They took a child with the power of the gods and raised him to a man who uses that power only to help people. That is A-plus parenting no matter how you slice it.
Nobody else even comes close. No disrespect to May Parker, but look at the little bundle of neuroses SHE raised. And sure, Susan Richards’s son is plenty powerful, but they actually put a mental block on him to prevent him from accessing his abilities. I mean, I get it – when Eddie was little we put a lock on our oven because it was too dangerous to allow him to open it at will. Same thing. But still, Martha had no such protections, and she STILL knocked it out of the park.
Problem is…there aren’t really a ton of great comic book stories ABOUT Martha. Sure, she appears a lot, especially since the Man of Steel reboot, but she’s almost always in a supportive capacity. There have been a few stories about Jonathan, but Martha almost always appears to impart a little wisdom like a midwestern Yoda, to fuss over her son like any other mom even if he IS Superman, or to bake.
So even though it’s really more about Jonathan and Martha as a couple, today I decided to read the World of Smallville miniseries from 1988. This was actually the middle part of a trilogy of miniseries written by John Byrne expanding upon Superman’s corner of the DC Universe after his reboot, preceded by World of Krypton and concluding with World of Metropolis. In this one, Clark comes home to Smallville to visit with his parents, but a slip of the tongue by Jonathan sends him probing into family secrets he never heard before.
You know how they tell you if you find an old videotape in your parents’ closet you shouldn’t watch it? Well, this is nothing at all like that, you sicko.
Although Jonathan Kent and Martha Clark were sweethearts from a young age, their lives were shattered he was missing and presumed dead in World War II (I assume that, were they to reference this story today, they’d update it, perhaps to the first Gulf War). By the time Jonathan was found alive, Martha had married Daniel Fordman, a member of Smallville’s wealthiest family, although she never stopped loving him. Jonathan comes home to find yet another shock – Dan is dying of cancer, and he wants Jonathan to take Martha from him. Jonathan is shocked at the idea and, despite his sister’s encouragement, is planning to reject Daniel’s proposal. It turns out to be a moot point, though, as when he arrives at the Fordman house to do so, he’s there just in time to see Daniel fighting with his sister – a fight that drives him to his death. Jonathan and Martha, we learn, were engaged six months later.
It’s not exactly Romeo and Juliet, but that’s a good thing, since those two both ended up dead.
After the first two issues, which tell that story and a re-telling of how the Kents learned they couldn’t conceive a child and then, miracle of miracles, found one in a rocket ship, issue three brings in Lana Lang to talk about a little of the trauma SHE was subjected to by John Byrne. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely his fault. At least part of the blame has to go to Steve Englehart, author of DC’s 1988 crossover event, Millennium. In that story we learned that the Manhunters – the failed android race that preceded the Green Lantern Corps as peacekeepers in the universe – had stationed agents all over Earth to spy on its burgeoning superhero population. The editorial edict was that each comic had to have someone revealed to be a Manhunter spying on their respective hero. Byrne went one better – in the Superman titles it turned out the Manhunter was Doctor Whitney, Smallville’s pediatrician, who was sent to watch the child from Krypton. Whitney implanted a device into the spinal column of every child he delivered for the next two decades, turning every kid in Smallville into a sleeper agent that was to be activated to report on the actions of Clark Kent.
They got better after Millennium, fortunately. In fact, Lana was the only one who even remembered the ordeal. But these last two issues deal with what happened to her as a result. It’s a dark story, and the miniseries as a whole serves mostly to fill in blanks from Man of Steel and to connect the dots to the Millennium revelations. It’s good, and it’s worth including if you do a read of the Byrne era Superman. It’s a shame, though, that there just aren’t a lot of other great Martha stories out there.
Mon., May 12
Comics: “Blackout,” from Adventures of Superman #484, Action Comics #671, Superman: The Man of Steel #6, Superman Vol. 2 #62, Adventures of Superman #485
Notes: Ever since I got that dose of Super-amnesia from the reading I did a few days ago, that concept has stayed with me, and I decided to go ahead and read the old “Blackout” storyline again. This was 1991, about a year before the Death of Superman, but after Lois and Clark got engaged and she learned about his double life, and this was deep into my formative years as a Superman reader. I was about two years into being a regular and any time I went to a comic shop or convention I scoured the back issue bins for everything post-1987 Superman that I could find. What’s more, when the new Man of Steel series launched, DC ran ads offering a discounted subscription rate for all four of the Superman titles for a year, and I asked my parents to buy me the subscription for my birthday, ensuring (in this era before I had a pull folder at a local comic shop) that I would never be in danger of missing an issue. It was a present they renewed for the next several years. It was a sweet time for me.
Something something ice cream headache.
“Blackout” begins in Adventures #484, when the mysterious Mr. Z reads in a newspaper about Superman’s friendship with Professor Emil Hamilton. Mr. Z was a villain Superman had faced a few times before (first in Superman #51, then during his jaunt into World War II during the “Time and Time Again” storyline I wrote about waaaaaaay back in Week Three) – seemingly immortal, with the ability to mesmerize others. When Superman visits Hamilton to test a remote apparatus he’s developing to help monitor the Antarctic Fortress of Solitude, he learns that Mr. Z hypnotized Emil, turning the viewing device into a trap. Z learns that the magic gem Superman confiscated from him during their previous encounter is being held in the Fortress, and commands Superman to bring him to it. Hamilton, freed from Z’s commands, tries to override the device remotely, but the enormous power drain not only plunges Metropolis into a blackout, but winds up wiping out both Superman AND Mr. Z’s memories.
In Part Two (Action Comics #671), Metropolis struggles to deal with the blackout. Gangbuster is doing his best to pick up the slack, and the chaos in the streets prompts Rose Forrest’s alternate personality, the Thorn, to come out of retirement. Then, in the midst of the blackout, a figure appears to try to bring the city some sense of normalcy: Lex Luthor II, “son” of the “late” industrialist. Meanwhile, after a brief stopover at an Antarctic research base, the mind-wiped Superman and Mr. Z wind up on an uncharted island full of prehistoric beasties.
Fair warning, guys, telling your wife, “It wasn’t my fault I had amnesia” does NOT work. Don’t ask me how I know.
Man of Steel #6 gives us part three. Superman and Z discover that they’re not alone on the island with the dinosaurs – there’s a tribe of natives there as well. Most of them, it seems, are fairly neanderthal in appearance. The notable exception, naturally, is their princess, an exotic bombshell that immediately falls for Superman. The princess, Lola-La (BECAUSE OF COURSE THERE’S A DOUBLE-L) arranges for her marriage to Superman, but despite his amnesia, he resists her advances, a voice in the back of his head telling him that it’s not right. Back in Metropolis, Hamilton and Lois (source of the voice in his head we mentioned before) meet up with Guardian, who takes them out in the Whiz Wagon to look for the missing Superman.
Part Four: Superman #62! In addition to having a Lois Lane vs. Lola-La cover that no doubt inspired a LOT of fanfiction, there’s a story here as well. Lois, Hamilton, and Guardian find Superman JUST in time to stop the wedding. After a tussle with Lola-La, Lois sparks upon a method that juuuuuust might bring back Superman’s memory. Oh yeah – and in Metropolis, Agent Liberty shows up to help fight the rioting from the blackout.
Some anthropologists theorize the modern internet was invented just so people would write their own versions of how this scene played out.
The story wraps up in Adventures #485, which picks up where the previous part left off – with Lois trying to kiss Superman’s memories back. It doesn’t quite work, but Superman is convinced to return to Metropolis with her. They leave, Mr. Z staying behind, having found some peace in his tropical paradise. Guardian whips them back to Metropolis, arranging for Project: Cadmus’s resident telepath Dubbilex to help try to restore Superman’s memory.
I’ve always enjoyed this storyline. There’s a degree of tonal whiplash going on here, but I think it’s justified. The scenes in Metropolis, with the blackout and the riots, are played seriously, but the stuff on the island is a straight-up comedy. There’s misunderstanding, coquettish flirtation, and lots of silly jokes (including a Gilligan’s Island gag) that make it a joy to read. There’s little that happens in this storyline of future relevance, though, except for the abandonment of the Mr. Z storyline. I don’t remember off the top of my head if he ever came back after this issue, it may well be that he’s still living a happy life out there on his tropical island, his memory of the atrocities he committed in the past completely wiped away. And it’s always pleasant to see Lois taking such a proactive role, leading the quest first to find Superman, then restore his memory. The final sequence, where Dubbilex leads Superman through his own mind, also has the added fun of making his mental “fortress” look like the classic Arctic Fortress of Solitude, which in this continuity had never existed, complete with the giant golden door and key.
The Metropolis stuff, on the other hand, had pretty major significance for the next several years of the Superman titles. First, it’s the on-panel debut of Lex Luthor the Second. We (the readers) didn’t know it yet, but this would turn out to be the original Luthor, having faked his death and cloned a new body to pass off as his own son, and it was a substantial part of the Superman comics for quite some time. We also got the return of Rose and Thorn, a Bronze age vigilante who had the unique condition of being what at the time was called a multiple personality. Rose had no idea that a vigilante called Thorn took over her body to fight crime, spurred by the hatred of the mafia ties in her own family. Thorn became a semi-regular character in the Superman comics for a while, similar to Gangbuster and Guardian. Finally, this story gave us one of the earliest appearances of Agent Liberty, one of those government-sponsored superheroes that you hear about all the time. He, too, became a pretty big part of the supporting cast for a while, even joining the Justice League briefly after Superman’s death.
Mostly, though, I just like this story. There’s enough meat to make it feel substantial and juuuuust enough silliness to keep the whole thing feeling like a lot of fun. And sometimes, that’s all you want.
Tues., May 13
Comic: World’s Finest Comics #90
Notes: It’s been a day, guys. If you’ve had day where it’s just “a day,” you know what I mean, and with the end of the school year rapidly approaching, I feel like these “days” are going to be coming fast and furious over the next couple of weeks. And frankly, on “a day” I usually don’t want to do any more than find a hole to crawl into and hope that tomorrow is NOT – with apologies to Scarlett O’Hara – “another day.”
“If you think this is irritating, Bruce, wait’ll I tell you about the Alfred E. Neuman mask I had to use on Lois the other day…”
Still, I made a promise to myself that I was going to find some Superman every day this year, and that includes “days,” so I carved out enough time to read an oldie, World’s Finest Comics #90. Modern readers may forget this, but there actually was a Batwoman and Bat-Girl in the Silver Age, Kathy Kane and her niece Bette, respectively. Although the modern Batwoman kind of shares the original’s name (she goes by “Kate” these days), that’s pretty much where the resemblance ends – old school Batwoman was a socialite who embarked upon a crimefighting career specifically in the hopes of snaring Batman into marriage. It doesn’t say specifically, but I would guess she was a big fan of Lois Lane’s column. Anyway, for most of the stories in the era, that was Batwoman’s primary motivation. In this particular story, Batman had recently discovered her secret identity and forced her into retirement, reasoning that if he could figure out who she really was, so could the bad guys. But things get more complicated when a criminal escapes from prison boasting that he’s got a capsule that will give him Superman’s powers for 24 hours. Superman, hearing about this on the news, immediately recognizes this as a capsule invented by his father, Jor-El, back on Krypton, and reasons that the box must have crashed on Earth, so he zips over to Gotham City to lend a hand.
This set-up raises any number of questions.
First of all, if Jor-El could give anyone super powers for 24 hours, why didn’t he use those pills to empower some people to maybe stop the planet from exploding? Or at the LEAST, to help with the evacuation?
Second, is there ANY piece of the destroyed planet Krypton that did NOT eventually make its way to the Earth? Was our planet just bombarded with their leftovers for decades? How is it more people weren’t killed by falling Kryptonite meteors?
Third, how did the crook know that the capsule would give him super powers? Did Jor-El label the box? In English?
FOURTH, if you have a capsule like that in your possession, why would you HIDE it?
And FINALLY, even if you have a good reason to hide it, why would you TELL EVERYBODY ABOUT IT?
Anyway, Batwoman disobeys Batman’s retirement order because he…needs her help… and beats the crook to the capsule, taking it and giving herself Superman’s powers for 24 hours. What would you do with Superman’s powers for a day, friends? Fight crime? Try to solve world hunger? Read every book in the library? Grab a sack of coal and just start turning out diamonds?
Well, that’s because you’re not insane. But Batwoman apparently was, because when she gets powers the ONLY thing she wants to do with them is figure out Batman’s secret identity. Her first attempt – looking through his and Robin’s masks with X-Ray vision – fails, because as soon as Batman found out she had powers, he and Robin lined their masks with lead. Say what you will, but as the saying goes, you’re not paranoid if they really ARE out to get you.
As Batman and Superman try to hatch a plan to discourage Batwoman, she has plans of her own. She trails Batman and Robin back to the Batcave and, upon seeing whose house it’s under, is satisfied that she’s solved the riddle of their dual identities. Then she turns her attention to figuring out Superman’s identity because…reasons. Her plan is simple: just stick to him like glue until she sees him change his clothes. He tries to shake her by flying through a lightning storm, through Niagara Falls…nothing. That is, until he walks into an old decrepit house, which scares off a Batwoman with Kryptonian powers because – I swear to Christ I am not making this part up – THERE MIGHT BE MICE INSIDE.
But she keeps on following him, even to the Daily Planet, where Superman is pleasantly surprised to find Clark Kent waiting for him. It’s actually Batman in disguise, of course, helping a brother out. But as Batwoman’s powers fade away, she reveals she’s found Batman’s true identity: JOHN MARTIN!
Actually, the Batcave she saw him drive into was a fake that Superman carved. Helping a brother out.
But in the end, Batman decides that Batwoman’s acts of stalking, childishness, and mice-fearing “showed such cleverness and courage that I can’t ask you to drop your career completely.”
My friends. Today is May 13th. As of this writing, I have read 377 separate comic books featuring Superman or a member of the Superman family. And that’s just in 2025. And that’s just the SUPERMAN comics I’ve read. And I can say with full sincerity and conviction that this issue contains the stupidest portrayal of an adult female human being I have yet to come across.
On the other hand, I guess it’s nice to know that Lois Lane isn’t the only woman the writers of the era mistreated ever so badly.
I’m hoping that tomorrow will help break my recent chain of “a day”s. The first full trailer for the new Superman movie is supposed to drop (will already have dropped by the time you read this), and I’m sure I’ll have stuff to say about it. And in honor of both that new trailer and what appears to be the beginning of the movie merchandising blitz – starting with an ad for Milkbone dog biscuits – I’ve decided that next week will be the week of Superman: The Super-Sponsor! I’ll be looking at commercials and comic books where Superman is there to sell ya something. This should be fun.
Another week, another round of the Year of Superman! It’s going to be another random week, a week where I’m not going to be adhering to any particular theme or category, and just reading or watching whatever catches my fancy. And there’s some fancy, fancy stuff coming down the pipe this week, from the big 25th issue of Joshua Williamson’s run on Superman to the completed three-part Last Days of Lex Luthor miniseries, and…well, I don’t even know what else will come up, because I’m writing this at the beginning of the week and I’ve got no idea where the solar winds of Rao will take me. Join me and let’s find out!
Wed., April 23
I feel like Perry is kinda burying the lede here…
Comic:Superman Vol. 6 #25
Notes: Since Williamson kicked off his run on the main Superman comic about two years ago, he’s been building up a pretty epic storyline involving Lex Luthor. It began after Lex was taken into custody, turning over his company to Superman and making it “SuperCorp.” As one of the few people on Earth whose memory of Superman’s double identity remained (it was because of him that it was wiped out anyway), he decided that if he couldn’t destroy Superman, he would force him to work WITH him, and it was a strategy that worked pretty well for some time. Along the way, though, Lex lost his memory, leaving him a man who wasn’t quite as brilliant as before, but who had a genuine benevolence to him, seeming to want to atone for the crimes of his former self. It was a change for the better for everyone – except for Mercy Graves.
In this climactic issue, Mercy has let loose one of Lex’s failed experiments, X-El, a Luthor/Kryptonian hybrid clone, that she’s hoping to have supplant the “new” Luthor, and it’s Superman, Superwoman, and Lex vs. X-El. I loved this issue – it feels like a real culmination of the story so far, with everything that’s been happening building up to an incredible fight that lasts for most of the extra-sized issue. What’s more, the usual penciler Jamal Campbell (who has been doing a bang-up job on this series) is joined by a murderer’s row of talent, including Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira, and Dan Mora. Campbell and Alejandro Sanchez are credited as colorists as well, and although you don’t often discuss the colorists when you’re talking about comic books, this is one issue where it really stand out to me. Every page has at least one panel that could be turned into a poster I’d expect to see in any comic shop.
Although the issue is, like I said, kind of a culmination of the storyline in that it has brought everything together, it would be a mistake to imply that it’s the END of the story. In fact, this issue ends in a cliffhanger that’s really got me itching for issue #26. But man, I can’t say enough good things about this run and this creative team.
Thur., April 24
I just wish that Bryan Hitch would have the guts to put a little symbolism into his artwork.
Comics: Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #1-3
Notes: About a month ago, when the long-delayed second issue of this miniseries finally came out, I decided to wait to read it until I had the third and final issue in my hands. I don’t know if the story would have been less impactful had I not chosen to wait, but I DO know that it would have driven me crazy to have to wait for the final installment, because ultimately, this is one of the finest Superman stories I have ever read.
And if you haven’t noticed, I’ve read a LOT of them.
In the first issue (which, again, came out nearly two years ago, and that’s the last time I’ll reference the delay), Superman is attacked once again by his greatest enemy…but this time, Luthor’s goal is not the death of the man of steel. No, for once, he needs his HELP. Lex Luthor, it seems, is dying. Some strange, exotic radiation is attacking his cells, and he knows that Superman is the one being in the universe who will stop at nothing to find a cure, because Superman…well…Superman is the man who saves everybody.
I don’t want to say too much more about the story, because there are some incredible twists and surprises throughout this miniseries. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a LOT to say. The reason Luthor turns to Superman, again, is because he knows that Superman will absolutely refuse to quit as long as there is a life in jeopardy, and the fact that the life in question belongs to his greatest enemy makes no difference whatsoever. Luthor sees this as foolishness, as a weakness on Superman’s part, but throughout this story, Mark Waid demonstrates why this is actually his greatest strength. Superman is confronted by friends who cannot fathom why he would risk so much to help Luthor. The quest to save his enemy becomes public knowledge, making some of the public turn against him. His quest takes him to Kandor, Atlantis, Themiscyra, and even the 31st Century, before the final reveal of what’s really going on turns everything on its ear and seals the fate of the two characters.
It’s an odd choice, to make this a Black Label book. Black Label is ostensibly a “mature reader’s” imprint, but there’s nothing in this book that warrants that marker. It’s out of continuity, to be certain, and I wonder if this would have been listed as Elseworlds, had that label been resurrected when the first issue appeared. But no matter what imprint this story falls under, it’s a masterpiece. It’s Mark Waid’s dissertation on who Superman is and why he has to be who he is. We learn the same things about Lex Luthor, in fact, and the relationship between these two characters has never been laid out so bare, so stark, so clean as in this story.
This story is brilliant. This is one of the best Superman stories I’ve ever read.
Fri., April 25
Comics: Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #6
Notes: The second part of “We are Yesterday” in Justice League Unlimited doesn’t have a ton of Super-action, but it’s a great issue nonetheless. In this issue, we see Grodd hatching his plan to infiltrate the past and collect purer versions of his former compatriots in the Legion of Doom to act as a countermeasure to the now-larger League. We also get a glimpse of the moment when Superman recruited Air Wave – who has become a surprisingly important character in this series – to join the League. Air Wave is an interesting character – a D-lister for years, and Waid has already found a way to make him compelling and sympathetic through a comparatively small number of pages in the first six issues of this title. I really hope that we get to see more of his story after this crossover with World’s Finest reaches its conclusion.
Graphic Novel:Batman: Hush (Collects Batman #608-619, Superman appears in #611, 612, and 619)
“Say it, Bruce! SAY THAT GLASSES ARE A PERFECTLY ADEQUATE DISGUISE!”
Notes: With “Hush 2” currently running in the ongoing Batman comic book, I wanted to go back and re-read the original, as it’s been a while. I’m not going to dig into it too deeply, as this ain’t the “Year of Batman,” and Superman’s appearances are brief. But brief or not, they ARE impactful, and I wanted to point out a few things.
First comes in Chapter 4 (issue #611 of the ongoing), in which Bruce Wayne visits Metropolis and, specifically, the offices of the Daily Planet. At this time, Bruce actually OWNED the Planet. I’m not sure if he still does or not. Hey, DC, give us a ruling. But regardless, in this issue he’s been finding himself growing more and more drawn to Catwoman, with whom he’s always had a “will they/won’t they” relationship. At the Planet office, he watches Lois and Clark together and marvels at how Clark has found someone with whom he’s willing to trust his greatest secret. A few chapters later (kinda spoilers, in case you’ve never read “Hush” before), Bruce reveals his own identity to Selina for the first time. It’s one of those rare status quo changes – like Lois and Clark getting married – that has stuck, and I find it very interesting that writer Jeph Loeb decided to use the Lois and Clark relationship as a way of sort of justifying that relationship upgrade for Selina and Bruce.
Superman has a bigger presence in Chapter 5 (issue #612), in which he’s being controlled by Poison Ivy and comes to blows with Batman in the sewers of Metropolis. (Side note: it’s VERY odd to see the way Catwoman fights both Ivy and Harley Quinn in this storyline, considering the way that the three of them would become the “Gotham City Sirens” just a few years later.) It’s a pretty good fight, all things considered. Bruce has his Kryptonite ring, and he’s counting on both that and the fact that he knows Superman is actively fighting against Ivy’s mind control to keep him alive. I think the most interesting thing about this fight, though, comes from a two-page spread in the middle, where Bruce’s inner narration makes a comment that the internet has elevated to meme status: “Deep down, Clark’s essentially a good person…and deep down, I’m not.” People love to use this quote, but I think a lot of them miss the point. The way I read it, this is something that Bruce sincerely believes…but he’s wrong. Not about Clark, of course, but about himself. And Clark would be the first one to tell him that.
Also, in this issue, Poison Ivy gets captured by Krypto, and that’s just adorable.
Superman then dips out of the rest of the story until the denouement in Chapter 12 (issue #619). The mysterious Hush has been defeated and Bruce turns once again to Superman…not just because he needs a friend, but also because he needs someone with X-Ray vision to make sure that Hush didn’t do anything inside of his head…and literally, not the way the Joker does it. The three appearances of Superman in this story really speak strongly towards the bond between these two heroes and the trust that they share. At the same time as this storyline was winding down, Loeb was launching the ongoing Superman/Batman series, and I don’t believe for a second that this was a coincidence. He writes both heroes well. He writes them TOGETHER excellently.
Sat., April 26
Comic: Power Girl Vol. 4 #20
“Meet Kara who’s never had a home From Argo City to the Phantom Zone But PAIGE HAS MADE FRIENDS LEFT AND RIGHT TO GO WITH HER KRYTPONIAN MIGHT! Whaaaat a crazy pair…”
Notes: This volume of Power Girl ends with this issue and, much as I hate to say it, I’m not really upset to see it go. It had a promising start, but the series seemed to be all about trying to figure out who Power Girl is and…frankly…I’m tired of that. A lack of identity has been Power Girl’s defining characteristic for the past 40 years, and that’s at least 39 years too long for that to be interesting in any individual character. At first, it seemed as though this series was going to lock her in to a true identity, but as evidenced by the cover of this last issue, it never really felt like it gelled. The book built up her world, built up her supporting cast, but didn’t really build up HER. I get it. It’s difficult. The elevator pitch of the character is “older Supergirl from Earth-2,” and since we’ve already got the “Prime” Supergirl, that doesn’t seem to leave room for her. But if all you do with the character is point out that she seems superfluous without redefining her in a satisfying way…well, what have you actually done? I hope somebody else gets their hands on Power Girl soon. I don’t care if it’s as a supporting player in the Superman titles or if she rejoins the Justice Society or what, but I want somebody, ANYBODY to take Kara Zor-L and finally, after all these years, say “This is who she is and this is what makes her unique, and can we please stop having the same conversation?”
Is that so much to ask?
Sun., April 27
Comics: Batman Vol. 3 #36-37
Part one: Bromance. Part two: Romance.
Notes: When I read Hush a few days ago, I noticed a scene in the chapter where Superman is controlled by Poison Ivy where Catwoman tries to break him out of it by threatening Lois Lane’s life. She didn’t mean it, of course, she did it because Batman told her that Superman was close to the people who worked at the Daily Planet and that endangering one of them would help him break from Ivy’s control. Nor did she know specifically that Lois was Clark’s wife – Bruce also told her that Jimmy Olsen and Perry White would have been suitable for this purpose. But the scene put me in mind of a more recent meeting between these four, and I wanted to read it today.
Tom King’s run on Batman is controversial for reasons I’m not going to get into here, but the two-part “Super Friends” story from Batman Vol. 3 #36 and 37 is one of the best stories about Superman and Batman I have ever read. Batman and Catwoman have recently become engaged, and in the first issue Bruce and Clark each have conversations with their respective significant others about the fact that they haven’t spoken to one another about the engagement yet. Clark is convinced that the fact that Bruce hasn’t called him is evidence that they’re not really that close, Bruce says he shouldn’t have to call Clark because his best friend is actually Jim Gordon (who doesn’t know his real name) or Alfred (who Selina points out is on his payroll, and therefore doesn’t count). The bulk of the issue is taken up with cutting back and forth between these two conversations, and the quick realization that Lois and Selina know Clark and Bruce far better than either of the world’s two greatest heroes know themselves. At the end of the first issue, the two couples come together in one of the most charming meet-cutes I’ve ever seen. You’ve probably seen the page on the internet even if you’ve never read the issue.
Yeah, that’s the stuff.
In part two, the foursome go on a double date to an amusement park which is celebrating “Superhero Night” – you have to have on a superhero costume to get in. Under the ladies’ suggestions, Bruce and Clark wear each other’s costumes and enter the park to enjoy an extremely rare night for themselves.
Tom King’s depiction of this relationship is spot-on. They’re best friends, even though neither one of them really wants to admit it. Their differences are what make them work together, not something that drives them apart. And the scenes of Lois and Selina bonding with one another are absolutely joyous. We fans talk quite a bit about how difficult it must be for superheroes to hide the secret of their dual lives, but we don’t talk enough about the toll it might take on those who love them. Giving Lois a new friend in Selina really feels natural. I was, I admit, disappointed when the Batman/Catwoman wedding didn’t go through, because I thought that DC would finally have the guts to push Batman’s status quo in a new direction permanently. I still think that it would have been better if they’d remained together. But mostly, I miss the chance to have more issues like this one, with Clark and Lois and Selina and (however begrudgingly) Bruce just being friends.
Don’t we all need that?
Mon., April 28
TV Episode: Superman and Lois, Season 2, Episode 7, “Anti-Hero”
Or the “Lana’s Trauma Conga Express.”
Notes: Superman has been taken into custody by the DOD, who are holding him under a red sun lamp to negate his powers. As Lois and Sam try to figure out a way to navigate his release, Jordan is still angry at his brother for lying about the source of his newfound powers, and Lana and Sarah are dealing with the fallout of Lana’s impending separation from her husband.
Did you notice how each plot point I recapped there got progressively less superhero-y and more soap opera-ish? To be fair, there has been overlap in the kind of storytelling done by superheroes and soap operas for a very long time. Even as far back as the Golden Age you had the occasional unrequited love runner that punctuated early superheroes. Then, once Stan Lee brought in the Marvel Age of comics, the greater emphasis of serialized storytelling made it virtually inevitable that elements like Spider-Man’s disastrous love life would become an ongoing story point. But at times, Superman and Lois feels far more like a teen drama than a superhero show. It’s not fair to criticize the show on that point – for what it’s doing, it seems to do it just fine. But it isn’t exactly what I’m looking for here.
Some of the soap opera stuff is done well. For instance, there’s a nice scene where Lois and Lana are bonding over their respective family struggles – Lana with the fact that her husband cheated on her, Lois with the fact that her son got caught with a backpack full of drugs. The odd thing is that they’re treating X-Kryptonite as if it was any other drug. Jonathan’s bag had 20 vials, each of which could turn a teenager into a walking weapon of mass destruction, but the conversation they have could have been ripped straight out of a 70s After School Special about a mom who caught her son with a joint.
That’s not to say that there’s no superhero stuff going on, of course. The story of Clark in custody, held under the red lamps with his half-brother Morgan Edge, is exactly what I’m hoping to see. The DOD even weaponizes Superman’s compassion, threatening to harm Edge if he doesn’t give them information that they want, which he does despite the fact that his brother is also his enemy. I even like the way the two of them put their differences aside and work together. The CW has a tradition of villains slowly reforming and joining the heroes that goes back to when they were the WB network and it happened every season on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so if that turns out to be the long game with Morgan Edge’s character, I’m used to it. Once they meet up with the hologram of Lara and the Alternate-Superman (can we PLEASE just call him Bizarro?), there’s some good action stuff here.
But none of that addresses the real problem I’ve been having with this show in season two. I love Hoechlin’s Superman, but the problem here is that they’ve isolated him. The show is stronger when he’s paired with Lois or where he’s working with his sons and their struggles with Jordan’s powers and Jonathan’s typical lack thereof. If you’re not doing that kind of thing, if you have him segregated from the rest of the main cast, you may as well be watching two entirely different shows.
Clark, fortunately, returns to Lois at the end of the episode. But before that we get one more little scene I liked. Edge is still in custody, still the bad guy, but at the end of it Clark addresses him as “Brother.” This actually goes directly against something said earlier in the episode, when she tells Jonathan that his father would never forgive him for his involvement with X-K. But as the end of this episode shows you, Superman’s forgiveness is infinite. You mean to tell me, Lois, that you don’t think he would forgive his SON? Come on, you know him better than that.
Then again, the episode ends with Clark tearing into Jonathan and not allowing him the opportunity to talk, so what do I know?
When the dry cleaner at the Hall of Justice mixes up the bags.
Notes: I’ve got a new writing project I’m working on today, so I needed something quick to slip in to the Year of Superman. The classic Elseworlds one-shot Superman: Speeding Bullets seemed like just the thing. Written by J.M. DeMatteis with art by Eduardo Barreto, this is about as close to the old Marvel What If? format as Elseworlds got, basically asking the question, “What if Kal-El was found by Thomas and Martha Wayne instead of Jonathan and Martha Kent?” Thomas and Martha – childless in this universe – find the rocket ship and adopt the child much like the Kents did, naming him Bruce and raising him as their own. Kal-El’s life in Gotham is pretty similar to the mainstream Bruce Wayne until the night of his parents’ murder, when – seeing the people he loved most in the world gunned down in front of him – his head vision activated and he roasted Joe Chill to death. In shock, Bruce developed a mental block about that night, forgetting his powers until – as a young adult – robbers break into Wayne Manor. His heat vision – and memories – come back, and he becomes a much more brutal version of Batman and the one in our universe.
When I say this was close to a What If?, I don’t just mean in premise, but also in execution. The classic What If? stories tended to end in one of two ways: either the universe attempts to “course correct,” resulting in a world as close to the original as possible, or things go so dark and bleak that it may as well be the apocalypse, at least for the characters involved, if not literally. Some of the ways we see that here are Bruce deciding to buy the Gotham Gazette and hiring Perry White and Lois Lane, falling in love with the latter, and Lex Luthor suffering an accident in a chemical plant, transforming him into this world’s version of the Joker. Since this is a world that can’t have both a Superman and a Batman, we watch Bruce Wayne transform from one to another. Lois’s influence cools his rage, getting him to pull back on his bloodlust, and eventually abandoning the Batman identity to become his world’s Superman. It’s an interesting book, and it works well as an Elseworlds. I have to admit, though, I’m surprised that this version of Bat/Superman hasn’t turned up the way other Elseworlds versions like Red Son or the Vampire Batman have once the Multiverse was opened up again.
Here at Geek Punditry Global Headquarters and Communications Hub and Lawn Care Emporium, we have five separate but equally important departments: the Department of Movie Stuff, the the Department of TV Stuff, the Department of Book Stuff, the Department of Comic Stuff, and the Jimmy John’s down on the third floor. And we try our best to balance those departments out, spending a little bit of time on each and not overwhelming our legion of adoring readers with any one topic above any other. But even though last week’s topic was about comic books, and I feel we’ve gotten a little comic book heavy lately, we’re going back to DC Comics again this week. There are two important reasons for this:
The topic we’re going to discuss is of great significance and, if studied properly, has the potential to turn into a great boon not only for DC Comics, but for the entire comic book landscape.
I couldn’t think of anything else to write about.
Last year, our friends at DC kicked off a publishing initiative called “Compact Comics.” This new line of paperback editions, all bearing a distinctive trade dress, collects some of DC’s most popular and important storylines in volumes smaller than the usual trade paperback design. At 8.5 by 5.5 inches, these full-color editions are almost exactly the size of a current fiction paperback that you might buy at any bookstore. They sell for $9.99, and have become a hit in both comic shops and in other retail outlets. And frankly, it couldn’t have come at a better time.
“You see, we call them COMPACT because they’re SMALL.” –Guy who paid $250,000 for his marketing degree.
Comics are in a bit of a crisis, although to be honest, there’s nothing new about that. I’ve been reading comic books for 40 years and I can’t remember a time when people didn’t fear that the industry was in the midst of some crisis or another. But we’re in a time where the distribution model is in absolute turmoil, with so many publishers abandoning Diamond Distribution (which had a monopoly on the comic book distribution market for decades) that the company had to declare bankruptcy earlier this year. As Diamond scrambled for a new owner to right the ship, all of the comic book publishers were flailing about, trying to make sure that they could still get their product into the hands of readers.
What does this have to do with Compact Comics? Nothing – at least not directly. DC abandoned Diamond some time ago, and they’re one of the few publishers big enough to weather this particular storm without any real chaos. But the issue here is how to get readers to pick up the comics, and what DC has done is found a format that is inherently appealing to those readers, something that will draw people in and get them not only to read one volume, but to go back to the shop and pick up another one. And that’s exactly what everybody in comic books should be trying to do.
I didn’t have a banana for scale so, as per FDA guidelines, I used Dean Koontz instead.
First of all, the size is important, and don’t let anybody tell you differently. Traditional graphic novels in the larger trade paperback format have been fine for a long time, but they’re not as portable as the Compact Comics. They’re good as archival editions, whereas Compact Comics are the sort of thing that will appeal to a casual reader – someone who is browsing the stacks at an airport bookstore or shuffling through the available volumes at Barnes & Noble looking for their next great read. It’s not a coincidence that the Compact Comics size is very similar to that of Japanese Manga, which is enormously popular. (The day I realized that Manga now had a section three times as large as the traditional graphic novel shelves at Barnes & Noble, I died a little inside.) Some may see this as an attempt by DC to court the Manga reader, and I think there’s at least a little truth to that. But I think it’s even more true that they simply recognized that the portability is one of the things that contributes to the success of Manga, so they decided to run with it.
This isn’t new, of course. Manga has been growing in popularity for decades, so why has it taken American comics so long to catch up to this smaller format? Honestly, I think it’s the printing technology. Most Manga is in black-and-white, and therefore easier and cheaper to print. Most American comics, on the other hand, are in color, making them not only more expensive, but more difficult to reduce in size to the smaller format without muddying the colors or losing detail in the artwork. But printing technology has improved, and anyone glancing through a Compact Comic will be able to tell you that the artwork looks just as good now as it did in the original printing – in the cases of some of the older stories that have been remastered, even better.
“He’s big! He’s blue! He’s right in front of you!”
The next thing, and this cannot be understated, is the price. TEN BUCKS for a complete graphic novel? These days, that’s the deal of the century. A full-size graphic novel of comparable length will usually go in the $25 to $30 range. In fact, most individual comic books these days sell for $3.99 or $4.99. That means that for the same price as two issues of Action Comics, I can get all twelve issues of Watchmen and have a complete story. It’s an incredible bargain, especially for somebody dipping their toes into comic books for the first time. Imagine a potential reader who, for example, is excited about James Gunn’s upcoming Superman movie and is interested in reading some of the comic books that inspired it. They may look at the trade paperback or hardcover editions of some of those books retailing for anywhere from $25 to $50 (depending on how fancy the edition is) and rightly blanch. Even four bucks for a 22-page comic book story is an awful lot. But over 250 pages of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman for $9.99? That, my friends, is the sweet spot. With everything in the universe getting more and more expensive, seeing such a low price point is absolutely going to get a reader’s attention.
And I think it’s also important to note which stories DC selected to include in the first wave of Compact Comics. Aside from the aforementioned All-Star Superman and Watchmen, both bona fide classics, DC also included two of the more successful Batman stories from the past couple of decades, The Court of Owls and Hush. They populated the line with stories featuring their most popular (and – let’s be honest – cinematic) characters, including Wonder Woman: Earth One, Harley Quinn and the Gotham City Sirens, Catwoman: Trail of the Catwoman, and Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo’s chilling Joker graphic novel. Then they tossed in a recent hit, the Green Lantern science fiction murder mystery Far Sector. And as the coup de grace (which is Latin for “a cooper full of grass”) they gave us the first volume of Scott Snyder’s horror series American Vampire. Why is that so significant? Well, Snyder had a co-writer for the backup stories in the first six issues of this excellent series, a little fella by the name of Stephen King.
And in case you didn’t know, King’s name on the cover of a book is the closest thing in the publishing world to a license to print money. For once, DC knew what they were doing.
Admittedly, his name is usually a bit larger.
The line was so popular that a second wave of Compact Comics will be hitting shops this over the course of this year, this time including Kingdom Come, Static Season One, DCeased, Batwoman: Elegy, Superman: Birthright, The Authority: Book One, Superman/Batman: Book One, DC: The New Frontier, Wonder Woman: Blood and Guts, Harley Quinn: Wild at Heart, Batman: The Long Halloween, Y: The Last Man Book One, V For Vendetta, and We3. As with the first wave, we have a good mix of perennial classics, more recent favorites, properties that are linked to upcoming DC Studios releases, and a few really strong comics from outside the DC Universe itself that have proven popular to folks who don’t read superheroes.
And of course, as the initiative has proven successful, it’s being imitated. A few months after it was clear that Compact Comics was a hit, Marvel Comics announced its own new “Premier Collection,” a similar-sized set of graphic novels (9 by 6 inches, just a half-inch larger per side) with a $14.99 price point (a bit higher than the Compact Comics, but still more palpable than a traditional graphic novel to a new reader). This line kicked off in February with a new edition of Daredevil: Born Again, which – what a co-inky-dink! – just happens to have the same title as the recent hit show on Disney+. Isn’t it nice how stuff like that just works out sometimes?
“Kevin? C.B. What’s the slate for 2025 again?”
But DC (and anyone who copies them) has to play it smart. So far they have, but it’s imperative that they make sure that the books they’re putting out fulfill the needs of the reader. For standalone books like We3 or The New Frontier, the task is done. Put out the book and keep it in print. Maybe throw out a new cover or a new afterword for an anniversary edition, but there’s not much else to think about. But go back and look at that list of titles again. Did you notice how many of them include the words “Book One?” And even several of them that don’t have “Book One” in the name have follow-ups (Batman: The Long Halloween was followed by Batman: Dark Victory, and Jeph Loeb is currently finishing his trilogy with The Last Halloween) or were originally released as part of an ongoing series that readers would like to continue reading (Wonder Woman: Blood and Guts was part of Brian Azzarello’s 2011 run on the character).
If the intent on DC’s part is that the readers will be drawn into the Compact Comics and then drift over to the standard-sized graphic novels for the rest of the series, that would be a huge mistake. Readers may like convenience, but we also like consistency. And if you don’t believe me, ask any book reader how they feel about a series of fantasy novels that doesn’t put the publisher’s logo, author’s name, or volume number in the same PLACE on the spine of every volume. Have a bucket handy when you do so, though, because just the thought of that may cause some bibliophiles to throw up.
No, if a reader STARTS reading Y: The Last Man in Compact Comics format, they’re going to want to CONTINUE reading Y: The Last Man in Compact Comics format. Yes, DC, that means selling all TEN volumes in this new size when it’s time to do a new printing. I concede, it wouldn’t have made sense to put out all ten volumes at once when the format was still new and untested. But once the format has demonstrated it has legs, you’ve got to stick with it. Will each individual volume make less money than the larger editions? Yes, it will. But I honestly think that what you gain in the number of sales will more than make up for any shortfall in the single unit profits.
“No, seriously, this thing is enormous. Where’s the real Volume 2?”
So what comes next for Compact Comics? Assuming the new wave (which will begin in May with Kingdom Come) is as successful as the first, I think we could see these books on the market for a very long time. In fact, outside of hardcore comic book collectors, I could see the compact size becoming the format of choice for the casual reader. I don’t have any trouble at all foreseeing a future where this becomes the standard way that people read collected editions and original graphic novels. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. In truth, I think ANYTHING that makes comics easier to get in the hands of people who don’t have them there already is a good thing.
And so, so nice to look at.
I’ve got a few of the Compact Comics myself, and I couldn’t be happier with the format. They look good, they read great, and they look oh-so pretty on a shelf. If I had the money and space, I’d put up an entire bookcase with each of the ten that have been printed so far, leaving room for the next wave, Marvel’s Premier Editions, and anybody else who wants to play along. I sincerely believe that this is a great thing for comic books, and I hope that every publisher out there is paying attention to how well this line is doing. Because if you’re thinking about the future of comics, this just may be where we find 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. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Yeah, he’s the kind of nerd who can write 2,000 words about a printing format, but YOU’RE the kind of nerd who READ 2,000 words about a printing format, so let’s not pretend we’re so different, all right?
It’s a new week and, for the first time in a month, I’m NOT going to be spending it with the Death of Superman storyline. As much as I love that story, I’m happy to move on to something else…but I’m also not really interested in doing anything “structured” this week. I kind of want to bounce around, hit all quarters, and read lots of different things. To that end, I asked folks on Social Media to suggest their favorite single-issue Superman stories. I already have my own list of these, but I wanted to do a little crowd sourcing and maybe find some stories that I wouldn’t have thought of, or maybe have never even read before. There are some interesting choices in here, so I’m going to spend a few days sifting through them. This week, it’s SUPERMAN BY REQUEST!
Wed., March 26
Comics:Justice League of America #194, Superman Annual #11
Next time, stick to Go Fish.
Notes: I’m starting off with this suggestion, an issue of the original Justice League run I’ve never read before. This one intrigued me, because although many of those old Justice League comics are great, there are few that I’ve seen that I would specifically mark off as a great SUPERMAN story. Let’s see what it is about this one that makes it stand out.
It starts at a carnival in Metropolis, where Lois Lane is racking up prizes on the midway and forcing Clark to carry them. Clark encounters a fortune teller who reveals his double identity, then casts some sort of spell rapidly turning him into an old man. Over the course of the issue we check in on other members of the League – Flash, Elongated Man, Green Lantern, Black Canary, and Zatanna – each of whom has an encounter with a different figure ripped from a deck of tarot cards before they all converge on the Justice League Satellite and track down the source of their woes: their old foe Amos Fortune.
This is kind of perplexing. It’s a perfectly good issue, and I enjoyed reading it. Gerry Conway had a decent run on Justice League and this story, with lovely art and an eye-popping cover by George Perez, comes from the high point of the era. But I specifically asked for great single-issue Superman stories, and he only really appears in the first few pages and the last few pages. Sure, he’s the one that takes down Fortune at the end, but this isn’t so much a “great single-issue Superman story” as it is a “good single-issue Justice League story featuring Superman.” But y’know, when I decided to crowdsource, I knew that I would be seeing different people’s takes on what makes for a good Superman story. I imagine the person who recommended this one did so because of Superman’s good standing at the end.
Worst birthday since that time I didn’t get the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier.
Having gone with one of the Internet’s suggestions, I’m going to move on to one of the issues that was on my own list, a comic that is frequently cited among the greatest Superman stories ever told (and was, in fact, included in the trade paperback anthology of that name): Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ “For the Man Who Has Everything” from Superman Annual #11. It’s Superman’s birthday, and Wonder Woman, Batman, and Robin (Jason Todd) are meeting him at the Fortress of Solitude for a little party. When they arrive, though, they find Superman tangled in the snares of the Black Mercy, an alien parasite that traps its host in a hallucination of their own deepest desires. As they try to free him, they are attacked by Mongul, who sent the creature in the first place, and their only chance to survive is to free the Man of Steel.
There are a lot of layers here to peel apart, starting with Superman’s hallucination. The Black Mercy shows him a world where Krypton was never destroyed, where he grew up there, married, and had children…however, in the decades since, a movement has arisen protesting the use of the Phantom Zone as a punishment for criminals. And since the Phantom Zone was discovered by Jor-El, the House of El is the target of their ire. It’s an intriguing sort of political debate, and it’s kind of sad to see that in his “deepest desire,” Superman still has to watch Krypton self-destruct, even if it’s metaphorical this time. This is, however, very much a product of its time. In the early 80s, it’s easy enough to imagine that Superman’s greatest dream would be a world where Krypton never was destroyed. In the post-Byrne era, he didn’t have that nostalgic love for Krypton (which makes more sense, since he has no memories of it), and even through all the changes that the character has undergone over the years, that aspect has never really come back, at least not to the degree it was in the Silver Age. Were this story to be told today, I think it’s more likely Clark’s dream would be a perfect Earth, free of crime and disaster, where a Superman was no longer needed.
I also love the interaction of Mongul with the others. Moore gets some great little witticisms, like asking Batman to make the “yellow creature” stop shuffling, or the point where he recognizes that human society makes distinctions based on age and gender and, therefore, asks them to tell him which one of them is the polite one for him to kill first. If this story had never happened, I think Mongul would have been just one of many would-be alien conquerors that litter the DC Universe. This is what made him stand out, made him memorable.
Once Superman is released, the fight is great too. The rage that Gibbons places in his eyes is both righteous and frightening. He really cuts loose, telling Mongul to “burn” as he blasts him with his heat vision – which was rare at the time. Heat vision was almost never used as an offensive weapon then, certainly not directly against the bad guy. It’s something that became more common later, and I think this is most likely where that came from.
This is a brilliant comic book, and deservedly considered one of the greatest Superman stories ever. It’s even the source for the ONLY adaptation of Alan Moore’s work that the man himself signs off on – an episode of Justice League Unlimited. I should watch that soon.
Thur., March 27
Comics: Superman Vol. 6 #26, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #5, Power Girl Vol. 3 #19, Shazam! Vol. 4 #20
Those two fronts, oddly enough, are a Nor’easter and the facade at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom at Disney World.
Notes: It’s another recent recap day for me. There were three Superman-adjacent books that his the stands this week, and I’m ready to pick into them, beginning with Superman #26, which I loved. Lex Luthor’s memory is slowly returning (since the events of the Lex Luthor Special, specifically). While this is good, in that he may be regaining the knowledge of how to deal with the stasis field holding Doomsday and the Radiant, it also opens us up to the danger of the old Luthor returning. Meanwhile, Lois “Superwoman” Lane goes on her first Justice League mission and winds up finding out something shocking about Supercorp. Everything builds up to a last scene and especially a last PAGE reveal that knocks your socks off. It’s the kind of issue that makes you want to go back and re-read the issues beforehand to admire how well the writer, Josh Williamson, has set everything up. I won’t be doing that today, exactly, but it feels like it may be in the cards before the 25th issue finale next month.
Mark Waid and Dan Mora come back for Justice League Unlimited #5, continuing the saga of the mysterious terrorist group called Inferno. The super terrorists attack globally at once, not only targeting power plants, but somehow kidnapping the attendees of the annual G20 summit, including dozens of world leaders and several members of the Justice League. And among the missing, only Supergirl has a clue where they’ve been taken. This issue kicks off the crossover event between this title and Waid’s Batman/Superman: World’s Finest, and it’s a story I’ve been looking forward to. It’s got time travel, it’s got oodles and oodles of heroes, and it’s linking two of the three best DC Universe books being published right now (the third being Superman itself).
Finally, Power Girl #19 shows us the missing heroes coming home just in time for Power Girl to get a pretty major surprise on the news. This issue, frankly, feels rushed, and I suspect that’s at least in part because next month appears to be the end of the series. There’s a sense here that Leah Williams was told the book was ending at issue #20 when she had a lot more planned, and she’s trying to race towards a satisfying conclusion. If that’s the case, I can’t really hold her accountable for that – it’s happened to a lot of good books over the years, and sometimes the first casualty of that kind of thing is coherence. That seems to be the case here.
Fri., March 28
I just have answer keys from old tests in MY file cabinet.
Comics: Action Comics #399
Notes: Action Comics #399 is an old favorite of mine. It’s one of those books that has a cover that can’t help but grab you – Superman in a morgue next to a guy in a suspiciously short skirt, with drawers containing two dead and pickled Supermen, telling him that the third empty drawer is waiting for him. This is a cover that DEMANDS answers. Why are there two other Supermen? Why is ours called “Superman III?” Why are they in jars? Where’s Richard Pryor?
Sometimes, you get a cover like this and wind up disappointed in the story inside. That happened frequently in the silver age – there was a period where the editor (usually the great Julius Schwartz) would have the cover artist whip up the wildest image he could think of, frequently involving some sort of monkey or gorilla, and then task the poor writer with coming up with some kind of story to justify that image. I don’t know that this is the case here, but where it was the script or the cover that came first, this is one where Leo Dorfman’s story lives up to the artwork.
It begins with Superman rushing off to stop a power generator explosion, something so volatile that is has the potential to ignite Earth’s atmosphere. Before he can deal with it, though, he is suddenly kidnapped, whisked away by a mysterious force and finding himself in a strange room with men who appear to be George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and George Custer. Superman quickly realizes his fellow captives are not imposters, but that they – and he – have been transported through time. He escapes and confronts his abductors, who turn out to be historians that have taken each of them from a point in time immediately before their deaths for study. Superman is then given an even greater shock: he is, in fact, the third Superman. After Superman died battling a “space vampire,” he was cloned, with the duplicate having no memory of his death. The clone, then, met a similar fate, making our Superman, in fact, Superman III – but the cloning will no longer be stable if another copy is needed, thus Superman III will be the last, and he is destined to die stopping the power generator from destroying the world.
At first, Superman is reluctant to take the trip back, but concedes when he realizes that staying in the future would result in the destruction of the timeline and the deaths of billions…but he somehow survives the explosion. It is then that he discovers the truth – he was taken not only through time, but to an alternate universe, where his fate and those of his fellow captors was different than in our own world. He lives on, but somewhere in the multiverse, Superman III is lying in state.
Man, I still can’t get away from the death of Superman, can I?
Anyway, I read this story in Superman From the 30s to the 70s, a book that I used to check out from the library religiously as a child. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to find a copy at a used bookstore, and it’s a treasure to me now. It’s full of great stories like this one and, in fact, is probably responsible for the bulk of my exposure to Superman before I became a full-time reader in those nascent days just before the Triangle Era began. I haven’t read this story in years, but I find it just as entertaining now as I did back then – a great sci-fi concept with the expected twist (Superman wasn’t REALLY going to die, even as a child I knew that), but the twist is done in such a way that it still carries weight. A Superman died, just not our Superman.
Hmm. I wonder if that universe still exists out there somewhere in the oft-rebooted and rebuilt DC Multiverse? That would be a fun project – a story that looks in on some of these one-shot alternate worlds from the Silver and Bronze Ages. Who at DC do I pitch that idea to?
Sat., March 29
Comic: Hitman #34
They say you should never meet your heroes, but when your hero is Superman, I think it’s okay.
Notes: This is such an odd book, on the outside, to include in this project. Hitman is by far the most successful alumni of DC’s Bloodlines crossover, and he had an ongoing series that lasted quite a while and still has a large fan base. The thing is, Hitman was created – and his series was written – by Garth Ennis, creator of The Boys, who you may know has a pretty vocal and heated distaste for superheroes. He doesn’t like ‘em. He created The Boys specifically to tear them down. But the one exception to that rule seems to be Superman. And it’s obvious when you read this comic, because it’s as tender and effusive a love letter to the Man of Steel as any comic book I’ve ever read.
In this issue, Tommy Monaghan – the titular Hitman – is on a rooftop in Gotham City when suddenly, inexplicably, he comes across Superman, brooding into the night sky. Monaghan turns into a stumbling fanboy for a moment until he realizes that something is bothering Superman. He convinces the hero to open up and he tells a story about a mission in space, a tragic failure, and how it’s eating away at him.
And then the most improbable thing in comic book history happens: Tommy Monaghan helps Superman.
The vast majority of this issue is simply a conversation between the two men on the rooftop. Superman tells the story of a doomed space flight and he confesses how he struggles sometimes with living up to what people expect him to be. Then Monaghan turns it all around, explaining what the idea of Superman means to people and framing him as a metaphor for America itself. “You’re everything that’s great about this country an’ you don’t even know it,” he says, and then goes on to explain a pretty singular philosophy that is just as true today as it was when this issue came out in 1998. In the end, he’s shared what he thinks Superman – and America itself – is really about, and Earth’s greatest hero returns to the sky, his failure no longer weighing on him quite as heavily as it did a few moments before.
Then, because it’s still an issue of Hitman, Tommy murders somebody, but you don’t really mind so much.
People talk often about Superman For All Seasons and All Star Superman (specifically the issue where Superman talks the girl off the ledge) as some of the stories that most perfectly exemplify who and what Superman is, and they’re right. Those are amazing stories, brilliant stories, stories I fully intend to revisit before the movie hits screens this July. But if someone wants to know what there is to love about Superman, I can’t think of any single issue of any comic book more suited to the task than this one.
And the fact that the guy who understands Superman so incredibly well has such a deep hatred of every other superhero still makes me chuckle.
Sun., March 30
“I’m sorry…I can’t do that, Clark…” (It’s a 2001 joke. Get some culture, people.)
Comic: Superman #300
Notes: Ah, another beloved classic. Once again it’s an “imaginary story,” as one can probably tell by the cover, and one that is particularly indicative of its time. In this alternate world, the destruction of Krypton happened much later, and baby Kal-El’s rocket came to Earth in the “present” of 1976. And rather than landing in a Kansas cornfield, it made a splashdown in the ocean as both American and Soviet vessels raced to snag it. The rocket – and the baby inside – was claimed by the Americans, and thus did the Cold War enter a new stage on this planet.
The story takes us through two more “acts.” In 1990, the teenage Kal-El (called “Skyboy” by the US military) is revealed to the world and tensions between nations almost precipitate World War III, sparking the young man to flee and go into hiding. Then in 2001, an imposter makes a move, claiming to be the star-child, and the boy – now a man – has to come out of hiding to save the world.
Whether you call them Elseworlds or Imaginary Stories or something else entirely, it’s always interesting to me how often these DC stories tweak things, then twist them around to make them fit the original universe. For instance, the “Skyboy” costume the military gives Kal-El is, of course, identical to the traditional “Superman” uniform, right down to the S-shield, even though in these days the symbol wasn’t a Kryptonian glyph that came to Earth with him like it’s usually portrayed these days. Nope, just a crazy coincidence. Second, when Kal-El goes into hiding, he decides to borrow the names of two of his father-figures, one Thomas Clark and Kent Garrett, making him…oh, come on, you can guess, right? And as this Clark Kent grows up…well whaddaya know…he becomes a reporter. It’s almost like the philosophy of these stories is that there are just some constants in the multiverse, and no matter what details are changed, the end result will be kind of the same. When you consider the thesis of more recent stories like Doomsday Clock (I’ll probably read that again at some point this year) it actually makes sense. Superman is, not only metaphorically, but literally, the center of the DC Universe. Everything revolves around him in one way or another, and it seems kind of fitting that the universe itself will take pains to make that path consistent.
Mon., March 31
Comics: DC Comics Presents #83, Superman #127
Seriously, you’re never gonna guess who they’re all grimacing at.
Notes: Let’s kick off Monday with another recommended comic, DC Comics Presents #83. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but DC Comics Presents was, essentially, the Superman team-up book of the era. Every issue had Superman pair off with a different guest star, and in this one, he’s joining up with Batman and the Outsiders. That team has an interesting pedigree as well – Batman has quit the Justice League over its refusal to get involved in an international incident, and winds up leading a new team of offbeat characters: Black Lightning, Geo-Force, Katana, Metamorpho, and Halo. As a result of his actions, tensions between Batman and Superman were rather high at this period, with the two best friends finding themselves at odds. This issue kicks off with the return of the ORIGINAL Outsider – Alfred Pennyworth. The Outsider was an evil and powerful alter-ego of his that apparently can be unleashed to wreak havoc on the world due to a simple bump on the head. Ah, it was a simpler time.
When the Outsider turns himself into a tornado (seriously, he was freakishly powerful) and attacks a farming community, Superman joins in the hunt. He winds up joining the OutsiderS to battle the OutsideR in the Batcave, while Batman himself chases down the issue’s real villain, his foe Ira “I.Q.” Quimby.
I’d have to check the timeline, but this issue appears to take place after Superman and Batman have buried the hatchet. There’s no trace of that earlier animosity over Batman quitting the League, and I recall that they specifically addressed it and came to terms in the book that starred both of them, World’s Finest Comics. So what you have here is a simple team-up. In fact, considering that it’s written by Batman and the Outsiders creator Mike W. Barr, it really feels more like an issue of that comic that guest-stars Superman than the other way around. It’s a good issue, and I find it interesting that someone out there declared it their favorite.
Jack Black played Superman in the 2005 version.
Let’s dive further back in time to Superman #127 from 1959. This issue kicks off with “When There Was NO Clark Kent!” In this one, Superman recalls a time when an accident led Lois to believe that Clark Kent had been killed in an explosion. Superman decides that his life will be less complicated if he just does away with being Clark and remains Superman full-time… then he asks Jimmy Olsen if he can be his roommate.
What the hell was going on in 1959?
Anyway, Superman’s new address gets leaked to the public by means of Jimmy Olsen being stupid enough to put Superman’s name on the buzzer in the apartment building, and he’s soon inundated with the demands of his adoring public 24/7, to say nothing of the demands of his Kryptonite-bearing enemies. By the end of the story, he finds a convoluted way to bring Clark back to life. This is a really funny story from a modern perspective, from years of reading a Superman who understands and even CRAVES the normality of Clark Kent’s life and who will do anything to preserve it. It’s so bizarre that back then he would have considered Clark so disposable.
“The Make-Believe Superman” is story #2 in this issue. In this one, a suburban dad – embarrassed at his pedestrian life – decides to tell his son’s class at school that he’s really Superman, because there is absolutely no flaw in this plan. Except, of course, when he gets caught up in a scheme by some robbers who have taken Clark Kent hostage and threaten to kill him unless “Superman” goes along with their scheme.
Hilarity ensues.
It’s really the third story in this issue that’s most significant, the first appearance of Titano the Super-Ape. A gentle ape named Toto is sent into outer space, where a burst of strange radiation turns him into a giant and gives him the power to shoot Kryptonite rays from his eyes. In true King Kong fashion, he falls in love with Lois Lane, who somehow has the presence of mind to re-named him “Titano” even as she’s afraid she’s going to get killed. That Lois, she gives new meaning to the term “clear-headed.” Titano would become a recurring foil for Superman, although most of the time he’s portrayed in much the way that his obvious cinematic inspiration is – a force of nature, an animal acting out his own nature, and not specifically evil. As far as the story itself goes, it’s cute.
Tues., April 1
Comic: Superman #145, DC Comics Presents #70
Remember that time Superman fought a Robert Frost poem?
Notes: It seemed appropriate to read this particular issue today, although the pertinent reason doesn’t turn up until three stories deep. The first story, “The Secret Identity of Superman,” deals once again with Lois’s turmoil over the fact that Superman won’t marry her. (Really, they did Lois SO dirty in these stories.) This time, she thinks it’s because he’s afraid she couldn’t keep his secret identity a secret if she ever knew about it, so Jimmy Olsen decides to “help” by telling her Superman’s secret: he’s really science fiction writer Rock Stirling! Actually, Jimmy is just testing Lois to see if she CAN keep the secret, thinking that knowing the answer one way or another will be a favor to both of them. People who were alive in the 1950s – did you really pull this kind of crap on your friends back then?
Anyway, Lois turns out to be so hilariously bad at keeping the secret that four pages later, she’s inadvertently announced that Stirling is Superman on national television, prompting the real Superman to race to his rescue when some crooks come after the writer with Kryptonite. Stirling actually saves Superman by throwing his lead typewriter over the meteor, allowing Superman to melt it and get his strength back long enough to stop the crooks. In the end, Jimmy tells Lois to cheer up – “Superman thinks a lot of you! Maybe he’ll marry you some day even if you CAN’T keep a secret.”
There’s a reason the comic wasn’t called Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane’s Pal Jimmy Olsen.
Story #2 features Superman in “The Interplanetary Circus.” An alien circus comes to Earth to put on a show, and Lois and Clark head out to the big top. Lois – and virtually everyone else – thinks that the “alien” bit is just a gimmick and the fabulous creatures they see are all robots (which raises the question of just how good they thought robots could be at the time, because this is WAY beyond Pirates of the Caribbean), but Clark’s super-senses indicate that it’s all real. In fact, when Superman has to prevent a disaster at the circus, the ringmaster offers him a job. When he declines, he tries to take Superman by force, which of course works out about as well as you expect.
The Silver Age was such an odd time for Superman. After spending the Golden Age beating dangerous criminals, going into war zones, and stopping domestic violence, we got about a 20-year period where his major concerns seemed to be things like convincing aliens to leave Earth and preventing Lois Lane from marrying him. Different sensibilities, I suppose. These stories do have charm, but there’s a limit.
It’s the final story in this issue that made me decide to read it today. In “The Night of March 31st,” Clark Kent writers in his diary that “Nothing exciting happened today – will patrol Metropolis, as usual, tomorrow. Supergirl isn’t ready yet to have her existence revealed to the world.” Then, after writing all this stuff in a paper diary in plain English where anybody could read it, Clark goes to sleep. In the morning, he’s awakened by an urgent call from Perry White asking him to get Superman to meet him at the Daily Planet, only to find that Perry has somehow been transformed to a Bizarro. From there things only get wilder – he rushes to an oceanic observatory only to find his old girlfriend Lori Lemaris, the mermaid, with legs and drowning. Then Supergirl — at the time still acting as Superman’s “secret weapon” — shows up to put out a fire in broad daylight, revealing her existence to the world. Krypto and Streaky burst in at the Planet offices to play with Jimmy and Lois, Mr. Mxyzptlk shows up to take Lois out to lunch…every panel is full of strange occurrences and even stranger sight gags. We see Superman with no cape, wearing slacks over his costume, wearing Clark’s glasses, with a backwards S-shield, and dozens of other little visual oddities. Nothing about the story seems to make any sense whatsoever, even up to the point where Lex Luthor, Bizarro, and Brainiac team up to save him from a Kryptonite-wielding Lana Lang.
Why is all of this crazy stuff happening, you ask? It’s simple – we began with Clark writing his March 31st entry, then going to sleep, so then what day is it when he wakes up?
I personally hate April Fool’s Day, at least the way it exists today. It should be a day for gentle, harmless jokes and pranks, but far too many people use it as an excuse to pull mean-spirited gags and then brush it off with “Can’t you take a joke?” Social media has made it even worse – it’s hard enough these days to sort the truth from the nonsense online, and April Fool’s Day annually bombards us with an avalanche of garbage that gullible people panic over because they think it’s real. It’s gotten so bad that when Marvel Studios announced Spider-Man: Brand New Day as the title for the next movie, I went to Google and started looking for other sources to corroborate that it wasn’t just a joke.
All that said, though, this is actually a fun story. It’s completely ridiculous, and there’s a lot of fun to be had in going through it a panel at a time and picking out all of the ridiculous things that the writers and artists work in – things like the Leaning Tower of Pisa being in Metropolis, Lois’s hair changing from panel to panel, and Clark changing to Superman in front of a pair of onlookers that give off a kind of vibe that…well, see for yourself, I guess.
I honestly can’t decide which joke to go with here, friends, write one yourself.
Anyway, the story is utterly ridiculous, but it’s harmless fun, and that’s what April Fool’s Day SHOULD be.
The only kind of AI I’ll allow on this blog.
DC Comics Presents #70 has no seasonal contribution to make but it does have a personal connection for me. The Metal Men are some of my favorite B-list (or, even C-list, if we’re being honest here) DC characters, and this is the first story featuring them I ever read. I always just loved the concept – a team of robots, each of which is comprised of a single metal (Gold, Tin, Mercury, Lead, Steel, and Platinum), with personalities and powers associated with that metal. I suppose it was that I was also a huge Isaac Asimov fan, and as such anything with robots was really entertaining to me.
In this story, the robot heroes are abducted by a mysterious enemy and put through a series of trials, some of them being “eliminated” and removed along the way. Mercury and Tin, for example, can’t make the cut in severe cold, and Lead is bounced when he starts to melt in great heat. As their trials go on, an image flashes on Clark Kent’s computer at the Daily Planet, alerting him to their plight, and it’s Superman to the rescue…but the heat melting Lead is being powered by red solar energy, reducing Superman’s powers and making it a real fight.
I haven’t read this issue in quite a while, but I’ve always enjoyed this sort of “And Then There Were None” tale, where characters get picked off one by one. The only real strike against it comes when the villain finally stands revealed – a sort of standard mad scientist who is doing these trials out of fear of some ill-defined apocalypse that would eliminate the human race, hoping to find a way to preserve life. Superman himself points out how stupid his plan is, and that’s gotta smart.
And thus ends the first “Superman By Request” week. I may do more later in the year, especially if I need another break from longer storylines or themes as I did this week. But you know, I think I’m ready for a new theme next week…so in honor of the goodest boy in the universe and the REAL star of James Gunn’s first Superman trailer, I hereby declare April 2-April 8 to be KRYPTO WEEK. See you next Wednesday!
Another week, and finally some good news. For those of you who follow along in the blog and know about the car troubles that have been weighing me down the last couple of weeks, the car has been fixed and it’s on the road again. So I’m recharged and ready to get back into it. Let’s get started, shall we?
Wed., March 19
Animated Feature: Superman/Doomsday (2007)
Notes: Back in 2007, the big news was that Warner Bros. animation was starting a series of direct-to-DVD movies based on DC comics, starting with this one, the animated adaptation of the Death and Return saga. It was the first of an initiative that lasted (as far as I can tell) right up until last year, when the two-part Watchmen adaptation was released. I haven’t heard about any new films since then, though, save for a Japanese-produced sequel to Batman: Ninja. I hope that this series isn’t a casualty of the new James Gunn universe.
Anyway, when this movie first released, it was a big deal. We were psyched for it, excited to see a more adult animated version of the DC Universe. Don’t misunderstand, the Diniverse (home of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, Static Shock and more) was and remains a favorite…but within the constraints of a TV-PG rating. We wanted something a little more. The fact that it was a big deal that this movie was rated PG-13 is actually kind of quaint, considering we now live in a world where Wolverine drops F-bombs like Kanye West being dropped by his managers.
In 2007, we thought this was groundbreaking.
All that said, although I remember enjoying this movie at the time, it doesn’t hold up that well. Condensing the Death and Return trilogy into a scant 77 minutes was probably the first mistake. The battle with Doomsday is actually pretty well done, but it feels too brief considering the gravity of the situation. Then, the movie jettisons most of the “Funeral” and “Reign” storylines entirely, going from Superman’s death to a new Superman popping up to take in a bizarre version of Toman that even the great John DiMaggio can’t make entertaining. The result is that it feels like Superman is “dead” for about 20 minutes. Of course, it’s not the real Superman at this point, something that soon becomes evident as Lois realizes that he has none of Superman’s memories. Nope, this is a clone – but it ain’t Superboy. It’s a clone created by Lex Luthor (a clone he gets off on abusing under red solar lamps in one particularly squicky scene), crafted to give him the chance to ruin Superman’s reputation from beyond the grave. It starts to work when he begins getting more violent with the criminals he thwarts, going to extremes that even the Eradicator wouldn’t. But no problem, the REAL Superman wakes up in the Fortress of Solitude because…he can. Really, it’s just that on Earth, he can come back from death. That’s the only explanation we get.
The relationship between Superman and Lois is weird here too. The two of them are dating – he even takes her off at the beginning of the film for a romp at the Fortress of Solitude that, while not explicit, would certainly have strained the limits of a kid-friendly rating. But at the same time, she’s dating SUPERMAN, and still doesn’t know that he’s Clark Kent (although she has her suspicions). I guess it’s a more of a modernized take on the old Silver Age status quo, but that was a bad look then and it’s a bad look now. To be fair, they do work it into the plot, as she goes to seek out Martha Kent after Superman dies, trying to share her grief with the only person on Earth who MIGHT understand what she’s going through, but it could have been served just as well having a more traditional Lois/Clark relationship.
The casting has its ups and downs. Adam Baldwin is a decent Superman, and James Marsden is a great Lex Luthor, but Anne Heche is sorely miscast as Lois Lane. She doesn’t have the steel in her voice (excuse the pun) that Lois should have, and the way she goes after Superman to badger his secret identity out of him is an awful way to write the character. Plus, it makes HIM look bad for not trusting her with the secret. They even try to work around the fact that Clark goes missing after Superman dies because he was on assignment in Afghanistan, which is far too neat a solution.
I get it. It was their first attempt not only at adapting this storyline, but at making an animated DC superhero movie. There was a pretty steep learning curve that needed to be addressed. But man, am I glad that they came back a few years ago and took another swing at this storyline, because the two-parter was much, much better. I watched Part One, The Death of Superman, back in Week Nine of this project. I’ll try to tackle Reign of the Supermen before week 12 ends.
Comics:Black Lightning Vol. 4 #4 (Guest Appearances by Superman, John Henry & Natasha Irons), Jenny Sparks #7 (Guest Appearance)
Thur., March 20
I hear Spielberg used these covers as inspiration for that scene in Jaws.
Comics: Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey #1-3
Notes: About a year after his return from the grave, Dan Jurgens gave us this three-issue miniseries featuring what fans were clamoring for: a rematch between Superman and Doomsday. Apparently, since he came back, Clark has been suffering from recurring nightmares about the battle with Doomsday, worried about the fact that the Cyborg threw his body into space and parts unknown. The fears are justified – a space cruiser picks up the rock the Cyborg strapped him to and Doomsday wakes up, resuming his quest of slaughter amongst the crew. The ship brings him to Apokalips, where he begins a rampage that causes even Darkseid’s minions terror, and then it gets worse – the Cyborg himself returns, having transferred his consciousness onto a device he slipped onto Doomsday, where he just bided his time until he had the opportunity to construct a new body.
On Earth, Superman hunts down Waverider and the Linear Men, hoping they will tell him Doomsday’s secrets, but all he gets is a cryptic clue that points him to Apokalips. Oberon of the Justice League hooks him up with a Mother Box, and he sets out, just in time to see the Cyborg and Doomsday causing untold destruction, even beating down the mighty Darkseid.
This is the series that gives us the origin of Doomsday, and it turns out to be as horrific as one would expect. Millennia ago, an alien scientist strove to create a “perfect” being. And what better way to do that then by going to a planet so violent and inhospitable that virtually nothing could survive on the surface, jettison an infant to be brutally slaughtered, and then cloning him over and over again to find new ways to survive? The ultimate result of this experiment, after decades of violence and torture, was Doomsday, a creature who has the ability to evolve and recover from any injury. In short, he can never be killed the same way twice. Unfortunately for the scientists, he also evolved to consider literally any form of life a threat. He kills them all, then hitches a ride into space to begin a reign of terror. Oh yes, and the planet where all this happened? It was in the ancient past of a little world called Krypton. Eventually he was defeated by the Radiant, an energy being from another world, and was “buried” on an asteroid that, after untold centuries, crash landed on Earth.
Ah, you know the rest.
Issue three of this series is almost pure fight scene. By the end of it, Darkseid has trapped the Cyborg’s consciousness in a little ball, and Superman and Waverider throw Doomsday through time to be swallowed up by the end of the universe itself. He got better.
Jurgens takes advantage of the “prestige format” of this miniseries, free from the constraints of the comics code. While still relatively mild compared to a “mature readers” comic book, he really amps up the violence this time around. We see Doomsday’s victims ripped in half, their heads pulled off, and all manner of gore that was pretty intense compared to the typical Superman comic of the Triangle Era. Keeping the bulk of the story on Apokalips also nicely sidesteps the consequences of fitting this story into the regular Triangle books. Had the rematch happened on Earth, there would have had to have been a whole new subplot about the destruction, the devastation, the PTSD everyone suffered from Doomsday’s return. This way, only a handful of people on Earth even know that it happened, and it’s taken care of with everybody none the wiser. It’s well-constructed.
It’s also a nice showcase of the way that Jurgens – like many creators – shows off his pet creations. There are a few characters that Jurgens created or co-created that he keeps coming back to time and time again. Booster Gold is probably the most famous of these, but he also loved to keep coming back to Waverider and the Linear Men. I’m a big fan of them as well – to this day, I think Waverider has one of the coolest designs of any character that came out of the 90s (not a single pouch or pocket, even), and I also like a good time travel story. He fits in nicely, and on those rare occasions he shows up nowadays, I always like seeing him.
Of course, this wasn’t the end for Doomsday. Even throwing him into the heat death at the end of the universe wouldn’t be enough to take such a lucrative character off the table forever. But it would be a little while before he showed up in continuity again. In fact, the next time we saw him, it wouldn’t be set in the regular timeline at all.
Literature.
Novel: The Death and Life of Superman by Roger Stern (finished)
Notes: I wrote about the bulk of this novel in last week’s blog recap, so I don’t have too much more to say, other than to note how Roger Stern tweaked the ending. He left out Green Lantern’s involvement in the finale, which seems like an odd choice, considering how meticulously he stuck to the story in the earlier scenes with the Justice League. There’s also a bit of a change at the end: in the comic book, Superman’s powers were restored when the Cyborg tried to hit him with Kryptonite, but the Eradicator dove in front of the beam. The mingling of the Kryptonite and the Eradicator’s energy was what it took to bring Superman back to full power. In the novel, though, the Eradicator chooses to pour his energy into Superman and recharge him. I have to say, I like the comic book version better. Either way the Eradicator gets his heroic sacrifice, but somehow it’s more satisfying if he dies trying to SAVE Superman, rather than dying just to give him back his powers. Even more than the Green Lantern omission, I’m not sure what spurred this change in the story. All that said, none of this ruins the book. It’s a fun read, especially for completists like myself, and I suggest you poke around and find yourself a copy if you’re so inclined.
Fri., March 21
Comic:Doomsday Annual #1
You know, technically, there’s no such thing as “first annual.” Something can’t be a yearly event until it happens twice. This one didn’t happen twice. Please enjoy “Doomsday Not-Really-An-Annual #1.”
Notes: By 1995, DC had stopped doing annual crossover storylines like Bloodlines and, instead, began doing annual THEMES instead. This year, the annual theme was “Year One,” with every annual telling an early story of the character in question. Not a bad way to do it, really, I wish that modern annuals had any sort of rhyme or reason to them. Over at Marvel their Annual editors don’t even know there are numbers higher than “one.” But most interesting was how they would occasionally drop an “annual” for a character who didn’t even have a regular series, such as this. On the anniversary of Superman’s death, people have made a pilgrimage to the site where the monster first broke free from his confinement. As it turns out, the gathering was arranged by our old friend Mitch Anderson, he whose home was destroyed by Doomsday during the original rampage. The crowd and a group of soldiers guarding the area nearly come to blows until Superman arrives, settling things down, and begins to regale the people with stories of Doomsday’s past. The anthology issue includes the creature’s first battle against Darkseid, an ancient encounter with the Green Lantern Corps, and an epilogue of sorts to Hunter/Prey. It’s not bad – the Darkseid story especially is good, no doubt bolstered by the writing and artwork of Dan Jurgens – but compared to most of the other appearances of Doomsday, it’s a little forgettable.
Sat. March 22
Comics: Absolute Superman #5, Action Comics #1084, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #37, DC X Sonic the Hedgehog #1
Notes: It’s that time again, friends. Once again, I’m going to spend a Saturday afternoon checking in on the recent Superman comics – most of them, anyway. This week we got the long-delayed release of the second issue of Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor, a Black Label comic by Mark Waid and Bryan Hitch. The first issue, as I recall, was magnificent…but it came out nearly two years ago. I’ve got no idea what the cause was for the gargantuan wait, but I’ve frankly sort of forgotten what happened in issue one. I could go back and read it, but the third and final issue is supposedly going to come out next month. I think, instead, I’ll just hold off on reading #2 and hit all three of them when the final issue is released. So here are the other Superman and Superman-adjacent comics from the past few weeks:
The weird thing is that this image was originally drawn for a Pepto-Bismol commercial.
Absolute Superman #5: The newest DC Universe continues to reveal its secrets, with this issue telling the story of the last days of Krypton. I’ve said many times that I don’t really need origin stories anymore – we’ve seen them a billion times and there’s not really a need for them anymore, especially in terms of the most popular characters. I never again need to see the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, I never need to see Peter Parker get bitten by a spider, and I never need to see Krypton explode. The exception to this rule is the rare story that does it differently. In the Absolute Universe, Kal-El wasn’t sent to Earth as a baby. Here, as a child, he is one of a group of Kryptonians that Jor-El has gathered in an effort to escape Krypton’s destruction – not even a fraction of her population, but more than the sole survivor their son usually is. I’ve really been enjoying what they’ve done with the Absolute line. I wouldn’t want this to be the “main” DC Universe, but as an alternate reality, it works, and it’s working quite well.
Action Comics #1084: John Ridley’s “Force Majeure” arc ends this issue, and it does – to be fair – address my biggest issue with the arc. I’ve said before, I hate recidivism stories. No matter how realistic they may be, once I’ve watched a former villain go through a redemption arc I don’t like seeing them backslide, and Major Disaster is no exception. As this story ends, we at least get a slightly more palatable reason for his reversion to a crook. It helps, but it’s still just not the kind of story I want to read, especially in a Superman book. There’s enough darkness in the world, Action Comics is a place where I want to see the light shine through.
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #37: Although this title is ostensibly a Batman/Superman book, there are times where Mark Waid really uses it as his playground to touch upon the entire DC Universe. Batman and Superman are almost side characters in this issue, with the bulk of the story landing on the shoulders of Aquaman, Swamp Thing, and Lori Lemaris. Lori kissed Superman at the end of last issue, her old feelings for him resurfacing, and in this issue her husband is understandably having issues dealing with it. They work through their issues while the heroes fight to, y’know, save the world, as they do. Nobody knows the DC Universe like Mark Waid does, and it’s great to know that they’ve tapped him to write the upcoming New History of the DC Universe miniseries.
DC X Sonic the Hedgehog #1: Man, do I love a ridiculous crossover event, and this most certainly qualifies. In this issue, Darkseid has invaded the world of Sonic the Hedgehog aboard his “Ragna Rock,” a mobile battlestation that can cross dimensions. The Justice League follows him, and join forces with Sonic and friends to take him down. This is surprisingly refreshing for one of these crossover events. For starters, whenever there’s a crossover between two universes that can’t mix as easily as, say, DC and Marvel, it’s usually the characters from the less-grounded world coming to the more-grounded one – the DC/Looney Tunes crossover from years back being a prime example. Here we get the reverse, which is a nice change of pace. Second, there’s never even an iota of the usual “heroes get into a misunderstanding and fight before they team up against the bad guy” nonsense that we see time and time again. The League and Team Sonic immediately recognize each other as heroes and quickly not only partner up, but pair off, with the members of each team gravitating towards their most logical counterpart on the other. Superman winds up with Knuckles, the “strongest” of the Sonic heroes, and while their personalities are very different, there’s a mutual respect from the outset. I suspect at least part of this is because the comic is written by longtime Sonic writer Ian Flynn, who probably knows those characters better than anybody alive, and finds it fairly easy to integrate them with the world-famous Justice League. It’s a silly book, to be certain, but you know what? I like silly.
Sun., March 23
These covers, on the other hand, inspired a scene from Paddington 2.
Comics: Superman: The Doomsday Wars #1-3
Notes: The second Superman/Doomsday rematch, once again a Dan Jurgens joint, came in 1998. In another three-issue miniseries, we see Superman wrestling with his failures – specifically the death of Cat Grant’s son Adam at the hands of the Toyman. He keeps flashing back to a failure of his as a teenager, in which his family’s entire herd of cows froze to death while he was helpless to save them, and the dual failures are eating at him. Things are compounded when he learns that Lana Lang – who at this point was married to Pete Ross – has given birth, but the baby came prematurely and is near death. As Superman races to bring the child to medical attention, Doomsday returns and begins tearing through the Justice League…and this time, he’s not the mindless brute Superman faced before.
I have to say, as a sequel to the original Doomsday fight, I actually prefer this one to Hunter/Prey. The stakes are much more personal here, with Lana and Pete’s child hanging in the balance, and with Doomsday himself (spoiler) being propelled by Brainiac’s intelligence, making him far more dangerous. The story also takes place during the Grant Morrison era of the Justice League, so Doomsday is fighting a far more experienced and more powerful team than he did the first time. We don’t see the entire fight, but the stuff we see is really good, and in some instances (such as what he does to Plastic Man) downright chilling.
The one thing I’m not really down with is the characterization of Pete Ross. In the classic Superboy stories from the Silver Age, Pete was Clark’s best friend and the only one outside of the Kents who knew his secret identity, although Clark didn’t know that Pete knew it. After the Man of Steel reboot, the Superboy years never happened and the role of secret-keeper was switched to Lana, which was fine, but there are moments where Pete just doesn’t feel right. He’s outraged at Lana when she asks to speak to Clark privately (so she can ask him to have Superman save her son), and while a little insecurity about her speaking to the man Lana was in love with for so many years may be understandable, the blind rage he shows when he finds out that Superman is trying to save his child doesn’t make any sense at all. To be fair, Pete comes around by the end of the miniseries, but it’s a journey he never should have really been on in the first place.
Mon., March 24
Imagine this guy showing up on the bridge of the Cerritos.
Feature Film: Reign of the Supermen (2019)
Notes: The sequel to The Death of Superman picks up six months after the end of the first film, which in and of itself is an improvement over Superman/Doomsday, which made it seem as though the big guy was dead for about the length of an episode of Bluey. Almost simultaneously, four different people show up wearing the s-shield, and…oh, what the hell am I doing? You know how this story goes by now.
Instead of wasting time on a recap, let’s just talk about how this animated film works as an adaptation. The changes, for the most part, seem to be in service of making the story fit the animated DCU they were working with at the time. For example, in the absence of both Cadmus and WGBS, Superboy is a creation of LexCorp, although he still maintains his essentially good heart. In fact, his debut is interrupted by the Eradicator, showing up to eliminate “known criminal” Lex Luthor and winding up fighting the Kid, Steel, AND the Cyborg. It works pretty well – if there was anybody watching this who somehow didn’t know the story, it’s a good misdirect as far as hiding the Cyborg’s true nature. They also tie Superboy’s origin into the reconned version from his Teen Titans era – making him a mix of Superman and Lex’s DNA – which works better in this universe. An odd tweak has Henshaw, the Cyborg, initially working for Darkseid (deliciously voiced by the late, great Tony Todd) as part of his status as this DCU’s Big Bad. Instead of an attack on Coast City, Henshaw builds an army by offering them the same technology that “resurrected” him – really Apokalips tech. The end of the story isn’t quite as dramatic – we don’t get anything like the devastation of Coast City – but they manage to make the battle deeply personal, with the Cyborg’s rage being a bit more focused and less megalomaniacal.
There’s really good stuff with Lois in here, such as a nice early scene where she and Wonder Woman commiserate over Superman’s absence. Later, she deduces John Henry’s secret identity, then teams up with him to uncover who the Cyborg is – funny for a character who, in her own words, is “the worst with secret identities.” But it makes Lois look smarter, more capable, and gives her an agency that she lacked even in the original story. She’s also present for the finale this time, taking an active role in the battle with the Cyborg, and I love seeing it.
There are also nice Easter Eggs in this movie as well, such as newspaper cover photos that are based on the covers to the Reign of the Supermen comics. It’s the sort of thing that only the hardcore fans might notice but…well, if you haven’t noticed by now, I’m a hardcore fan.
I don’t want to spend too much more time talking about the casting of this one, as there isn’t much more to say this time around than I said when I watched the first one a few weeks ago, but I do need to point out Rainn Wilson’s Lex Luthor again. While still slick and serpentine, Wilson plays him a bit funnier this time around. There’s a dismissive conversation with Superboy about how a clone is no different than a biological child that left me laughing, for instance, and he carries that same sensibility throughout the film.
This is a far superior adaptation of the story than the animated DC’s first attempt. It’s not totally faithful, but it works well for the world in which it is set, and that’s what I’m asking for here.
Tues., March 25
I bought a bunch of these balloons once. My niece said I ruined her sixth birthday.
Comic Books: Superman: Day of Doom #1-4
Notes: To all things there must come an ending…even the saga of Superman’s death and return. I’m going to wrap up this surprisingly long dive into that storyline with the four-issue miniseries Superman: Day of Doom from 2002, published to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the story, written by Dan Jurgens with art by Jurgens and Bill Sienkiewicz. It’s the anniversary of Superman’s death in the DCU too (which anniversary isn’t really made explicit) and Daily Planet newbie Ty Duffyis tasked with writing a piece about people’s feelings about that monumental event. Despite not seeing the newsworthiness in a story that’s been told time and again, Duffy starts to dig, beginning with an interview with Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. (Remember what I said about Booster being one of Jurgens’s pet characters? This isn’t a complaint, I love seeing Booster Gold.) From there he begins an Odyssey that takes him to all walks of life in Metropolis, finding the stories that haven’t been told before.
The strength of this series, honestly, comes in those scenes where we hear new perspectives. Duffy talks to Perry White and Jimmy Olsen, but we saw them on the day. We know how they felt. It’s far more impactful when he talks to a random bystander who was left in a wheelchair thanks to Doomsday’s rampage, a priest who ministered to the suffering after the Coast City disaster, or uncovers the undisguised glee the Prankster felt when he heard that Superman was dead.
There’s a running thread throughout the series as well, about someone causing disasters along a path that perfectly mirrors Doomsday’s trail of destruction. As the trail reaches Metropolis at the end of the third issue, the two storylines finally collide, with Duffy laying in to Superman with the truth about why he resents the hero’s return from the dead so much, just pages before he too is taken by the mystery villain.
The story is surprisingly open-ended. Superman is forced to confront the tragedies that so many other people suffered during the battle with Doomsday and beyond, but the villain gets away and his true nature goes unrevealed. Even Duffy, who is the crux of this story’s emotional journey, doesn’t seem to really get the catharsis one would expect at the end. There’s a bitterness here that’s surprising. Don’t misunderstand – it’s pretty realistic. Even at the time of the original Doomsday storyline, the writers made it a point to refer to how many people Doomsday had killed, but they’d never really dug into those stories before. Even the most prominent Doomsday victims in the comics of the time – Mitch Anderson and his family – survived the rampage with the loss of their home, but no loss of life. And the Justice League showed up and built them a new house at Christmas, so where was the tragedy?
I have to wonder if writing this was a kind of catharsis for Jurgens himself. It feels almost like the writer is performing an act of penance, trying to atone for all the hundreds of fictional people that he killed (to say nothing of the seven million of Coast City) in the service of the story of the life and death of one man. It’s certainly the way that Duffy views the event, and it’s so odd that the comic book gives you the impression that – at least on some level – Dan Jurgens feels the same way.
The story of Superman’s death was tragic. The story of his return was triumphant. Day of Doom is a somewhat dark attempt to reconcile the two. It’s probably not something to be read in the immediate aftermath of the Death of Superman – after the upbeat ending of that story, it’s something that’ll bring you right down.
But it is most certainly a story that should be read.
Other Comics: Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #11,
And thus, finally, we reach the end of the epic saga of the Death and Life of Superman, and I am reminded why I decided not to do TOO many of these extended storylines over the course of this year. I do have one more planned, but it’s going to be a few months before I’m ready to tackle it. Starting tomorrow I’m planning to get a little more random again…but I’m also looking for some help. I’m asking you, dear readers, to suggest some of the best single-issue Superman stories ever written for me to dig into. After spending nearly a month with one story, I want shorts. So hit me in the comments with your suggestions. They can come from any era, any continuity, any Superman you want. They don’t even have to be from a Superman comic book – if you can find a really great story from an issue of Blue Devil or something, I’m down for it. Preference will be given to stories available on the DC Universe Infinite app, but that doesn’t mean I’ll automatically reject stories that aren’t. Next week, it’s gonna be SUPERMAN BY REQUEST!
Today I’m going to start the first of the Theme Weeks I’m planning to do for this little project. It won’t be every week, nor will the content of those weeks be 100 percent dedicated to that theme. There’s still a lot of Superman and Lois to catch up on, after all. But on these theme weeks, I’m going to focus on a specific character, creator, or concept related to Superman. For this first week, I’m going to put the spotlight on the second-most important character in the entire Superman mythos, one of the best comic book characters ever created. Welcome, friends, to Lois Lane Week! Lois has been around since day one, appearing in Action Comics #1 along with Superman himself, and over the years has grown and evolved into one of the most complex and engaging characters in comics…when she’s written correctly. In the Golden Age, Lois was a tough-as-nails, courageous, crusading reporter. The modern incarnation has a lot of the same qualities. When written properly, Lois Lane is brilliant, fearless, and a force of nature. The only Lois I’m not crazy about, honestly, is the Silver Age Lois, a character who seemed more interested in marrying Superman or proving his secret identity (because somehow that would convince him to marry her). I’m going to try to look at all ages of Lois this week.
Wed., Jan. 22
Comics:Showcase #9
Notes: DC’s Showcase comic book, in the 50s, was essentially a try-out series. Every issue or two they would change the headliner, basically using the series to test the possibilities of a new character or new title, many of which eventually spun off into their own series. Most famously, this is the series that gave us the Barry Allen Flash and the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, but today we’re focusing on Showcase #9, the prototype for the series that would be called Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane.
If you swapped Lois with Chili and Superman with Bandit, this is any given episode of Bluey.
This Showcase issue is pretty indistinguishable from the early years of Lois’s solo title, with three stories each dedicated to Lois’s love life with Superman, while he treated her in a way that would have pretty much everybody on Reddit telling her to dump him, and frankly, I can’t blame them. The first story is “The Girl From Superman’s Past.” Lana Lang – Superboy’s old flame from Smallville – moves to Metropolis, and she and Lois immediately wind up sparring for the affection of the now-adult Superman, up to and including placing themselves in danger to see which one he was going choose to rescue. At the end of the story, of course, Superman has refrained from making a decision, probably because both of these women are behaving like lunatics.
“The New Lois Lane” is even more bonkers. When Superman learns that a group of crooks are on the verge of unveiling his secret identity, he creates a new alter-ego, “Allen Todd,” and counts on Lois’s trademark snooping to reveal Mr. Todd as being the real Superman. Unfortunately for him, Lois recently used a Weight and Fortune Telling Machine (no, really) that told her to change her strategy to help get the man she loves – so instead of trying to reveal his secret, she starts going behind his back to “help” him HIDE it. I tell you, some of these Silver Age Lois Lane stories are positively Shakespearean, in that they’re predicated on absurd coincidences and ridiculous misunderstandings that could easily be cleared up if either of the people involved were capable of having a simple adult conversation, for God’s sake.
Finally, there’s “Mrs. Superman,” in which Lois gets a head injury and has a coma dream about her fondest wish: marrying Superman. To get her out of it, Superman sits by her bedside and feeds her “false” information to try to snap her out of the fantasy – you know, horrible things like Superman’s real identity being Clark Kent, or that he’s cheating on her with a woman named Lulu, because every woman in Metropolis is legally required to have a name beginning with the letter “L.” I guess in this one Superman is at least trying to help Lois. Technically.
The idea, I suppose, was to make a comic book that fit in with the popular romance comics of the time, although these stories were even sillier and more convoluted than a lot of those. I guess it was popular, though, as this series lasted for 16 years and 137 issues before being merged with the Jimmy Olsen title as Superman Family. But sitting from where I am, where my Loises are all strong, independent, and smart as a whip, it’s bonkers to me that this incarnation of the character lasted as long as she did.
Articles: “A Fond Remembrance of Mort Weisinger By His Son” and “The Superman Mythos: Roots of the Superman Confluence,” both by Eddy Zeno, from The Krypton Companion
Thur., Jan. 23
Comics: DC Horror Presents… #3 (Cameo), Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #21, Action Comics #662, Superman Vol. 2 #53
Notes: Returning to the shockingly meager offerings on DC Universe Infinite for this series, I decided to check in on Lois Lane #21, featuring a pretty well-known cover with Lois and Lana somehow superpowered and slugging it out for Superman’s affections, but I don’t think I’ve ever read this one before. The first two stories in this issue, though, are a two-parter unrelated to the cover. In “Dolls of Doom” and “Trapped in Kandor,” Lois is tricked into posing for a Lois Lane doll by a gang of criminals planning to use her against Superman. This somehow winds up with her sent to the bottled city of Kandor where she falls in love with a Kandorian who is – shockingly – a dead ringer for Superman.
I’m sorry to not have a better synopsis for this story, but I refuse to take total blame for it, because the DC Universe app has the PAGES IN THE WRONG ORDER. The middle of chapter two appears in chapter one and vice-versa, and while it is theoretically possible to read the pages in the correct order by flipping back and forth in the app, by the time I realized what the problem was I was so angry about it that I stopped trying. Hey, DC Universe Infinite: FIX THIS CRAP.
After all, with the pages scrambled, some people may find this confusing.
The last story is the one I was really interested in anyway. “The Battle Between Super-Lois and Super-Lana” features Superman’s two favorite girls, now rival reporters, who stumble upon a magic lake that conveniently gives super powers to anyone who bathes in it. Realizing they now have all of Superman’s powers, they decide that this is the perfect time to make him choose between them by doing things like cooking giant food, finding and wearing priceless jewelry that has been lost to antiquity, and carving their own faces into mountainsides. The story ends, predictably, with the magic water wearing off and Superman once again getting out of having to make up his mind. The most important part of the legacy of this issue is that the “magic water” came back into play decades later in Alan Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” (which of course you can be certain I’ll read before this Year of Superman is over.)
It’s unfathomable to me how the book lasted this long with stories that make the title character look like an obsessed stalker and make Superman look like an indecisive jackass. I think I need an palate cleanser, so I decide to read the issues I skipped between “Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite” and “Time and Time Again” – the story of how Clark Kent finally revealed his secret identity to Lois Lane.
The face of “WHAT THE ACTUAL F@#??”
It happened in Action Comics #662, and before I get into the story, can we talk about the cover for a minute? This is a classic by Kerry Gammill and Brett Breeding, and it’s wild to me that this hasn’t made the echelon of often-homaged covers like Action Comics #1, Superman #1, or even Superman Vol. 2 #75 (the Death of Superman issue). The angle, from Clark’s point-of-view, is perfect, and the look of total amazement on Lois’s face just kills me every time I look at it. I love this cover.
As for the story itself, the issue begins with Lois and Clark having a comics code-approved romantic evening at home, with Clark about to tell Lois the big secret just as they’re interrupted by the Silver Banshee. Her magic told her that Superman was in that apartment, but all she finds there is this tall drink of water in a pair of glasses, so she dashes out. Clark goes after her, leaving Lois somewhat confused. The middle part of the issue is pretty standard for the time period – Superman fighting the Banshee (who, I should mention, has one of the coolest designs for any Superman villain ever) while in a subplot, a LexCorp employee digs into the mystery of the company CEO’s death and his potential heir. The Lois story doesn’t come back until the last couple of pages, where Clark gives the big reveal on a full-page splash panel at the very end of the issue, leading into Superman Vol. 2 #53.
The first few pages of this issue are devoted to the Lois and Clark story, as she tells him that she thinks – on some level – she knew his secret for a long time, but had always dismissed it, then she (understandably) asks for a little time to process this major revelation. The rest of the issue deals with Superman being asked to help escort a political prisoner being brought from the Middle East back to the ol’ U.S. of A. It’s a perfectly fine issue, but it definitely illustrates the way the Superman comics were written in the 90s. Each issue had an A-plot (which may or may not continue next week) and several ongoing B-plots that were often specific to the individual titles and writers. Anything dealing with the Clark Kent side of his life was usually relegated to the B-plots, even something as monumental as this. If this story were being told today, the revelation would have been its own one-shot issue with a half-dozen miniseries spin-offs dealing with the fallout. In these two issues, it’s less than ten pages total.
All that said, I like how they dealt with Lois here. Rather than make her look or feel foolish for not having known Clark’s secret, she confesses to having had a gut feeling. In the Silver Age, that “gut feeling” was half of her reason for existence. This is a much smarter, more mature Lois Lane, and it’s a much better interpretation of the character.
Fri., Jan. 24
TV Episode: Superman: The Animated Series, Season 2, Episode 7, “Target”
Notes: Except for Margot Kidder, I think Dana Delaney may just be my favorite Lois Lane. Her wit and sarcasm feels so completely perfect for the character – I love the way she knows she’s the smartest one in the room, but doesn’t lord it over anybody unless they’re asking for it. It’s like if Bugs Bunny were a reporter. One of the things I particularly liked about Superman: The Animated Series is that they wrote Lois the way she SHOULD have been written in an era before she and Clark were allowed to be together. This is a Lois who, like the Lois of the Golden Age, finds Superman more fascinating than Clark. However, she doesn’t spend all her time mooning over him or trying to crack the secret of his identity. She’s someone with a thirst for truth and, along with that, a hefty appreciation of justice.
And if we’re being totally honest, there’s just something about a gal with purple eyes.
In this episode, Lois is sent a death threat just seconds before receiving a prestigious journalism award. After a quick rescue by Superman (as per usual) she embarks upon a quest to find out who’s gunning for her, with more and deadlier attempts following her as she seeks out the truth. Although both Clark and Superman appear and factor heavily into the plot, we never actually see the transition from one to the other, aiding the conceit that this is an episode told from Lois’s perspective. It’s a great episode for showing how smart and, ultimately, dangerous she can be to the wrong people (the “corrupt” that she mentions in her acceptance speech), and I like the fact that she refuses sensible precautions like staying under house arrest when there are super criminals gunning for her. It’s the kind of reckless that is 100 percent indicative of Lois Lane. And it’s great that she cracks the mystery on her own, without Superman’s help or without even hearing the clue that tells him where to find her at the end. If I have any complaint, though, it’s that she doesn’t show herself quite as capable as I’d like. Every deathtrap is escaped, narrowly, by Superman’s interference. Sure, it’s part of the usual schtick for these two, but it would have been nice if just ONCE she managed to get herself out of trouble by herself.
Notes: Like the episodes of the cartoon, Superman Adventures #12 demonstrates ably who Lois Lane should be. Superman has been infected with a Kryptonian virus, and Lois and Professor Emil Hamilton are in the midst of a war zone trying to get an essential ingredient for an antidote. Once the cure for the man of steel is synthesized, it’s up to Lois to transport it back to Metropolis through battlefields, across oceans, and in the midst of an awful lot of criminal types who would be perfectly happy if the cure never makes it to its destination. The story, written by Scott McCloud, perfectly showcases the cartoon’s version of Lois. We see how strong and gutsy she is, every step of the way. The best thing is that she’s not doing it because she’s in LOVE with Superman, she’s doing it because the world NEEDS Superman. A+ Lois Laning in this issue, guys.
Sat. Jan. 25
Answering the question, “What if we write Lois Lane, but for the Pretty Little Liars demographic?”
Novel: Fallout (2015) by Gwenda Bond
Notes: This is part of a larger push to put the DC characters into young adult novels, a practice that I think is a good idea. Get ‘em while they’re young, get ‘em reading, get ‘em loving the characters. In this version, Lois is a teenager in the modern day – or at least in the modern day of 2015, when this was published, which cannot possibly be 10 years ago, so this is just more proof that math is a liar. Young Lois and her family have recently moved to Metropolis, the latest in a long line of homes as befits her army brat lifestyle, but the Lanes are hoping to put down roots this time. At a new school, Lois struggles making friends until she’s recruited for a special initiative of the Daily Planet to bring in high school students with an interest in journalism. As Lois tries to acclimate to her new passion, she finds that a group of bullies at the school may be more than they seem, and the principal may be part of a larger conspiracy.
This book, part of a trilogy by Gwenda Bond, gives me serious Nancy Drew vibes. This is not a criticism, mind you, I think that’s actually quite appropriate for a young Lois Lane. Although the story is structured to lead her towards her destiny as the world’s greatest reporter, for most of the plot she’s doing a detective’s job, trying to crack a mystery with the help of a few sometimes reluctant friends. In fact, the only one who’s totally on her side from the beginning is her online friend, who goes by the handle “SmallvilleGuy” and is shockingly hesitant to cough up details about himself.
I liked this book a lot more than I expected to, if I’m being honest. I’ve read a lot of novels based on comic book characters and too many of them are sort of bland, lifeless retellings of a story that would be better served as a comic book. But Gwenda Bond has a fine voice for Lois, and the way she builds up the sometimes antagonistic nature of her relationship with her father works well. Bond’s Sam Lane hits all of the right beats for that character – he’s tough, he’s strict, and he wants things to be done his way. At the same time, though, he’s not an ogre. He’s a father who wants what’s best for his children, and the conflict stems from the fact that what he thinks is best is not necessarily what Lois wants, not because he’s evil.
The interactions with “SmallvilleGuy” are fun, but maybe a little too much like the writer is winking at the camera. I don’t mind a little bit of that, but when you spin this whole mystery around a question that the audience already knows the answer to, it doesn’t necessarily hit right. It’s not like it makes Lois look stupid or anything (just because SmallvilleGuy’s in-game avatar is an alien is no reason Lois should suspect that he’s the real thing), but you do start to twirl your finger a little and say, “Okay, let’s get on with it.”
All that said, I did like this book. I did like this Lois. And while I don’t know if I’ll get around to them right away, I’m adding the other two books in this trilogy (Double Down and Triple Threat) to my massive to-be-read list. That’s not a promise that I’ll ever get to them, if I’m being 100 percent honest, but they’re definitely on the radar.
Notes: The current run of the main Superman comic has been really good. Written by Joshua Williamson with art by Dan Mora – who, in case I haven’t mentioned it recently, is far and away the best Superman artist of the modern era – our heroes find themselves in a very precarious position. Doomsday, the creature who killed Superman once, is the target of an alien invading force, forcing Superman to work with the instrument of his own destruction. He’s not alone, though – Lois is currently Superwoman. I have to say “currently” because you know that, sooner or later, the status quo will reassert itself, but giving her Kryptonian powers (however temporary) is making for an interesting twist to the dynamic. The entire Superman family has sort of become a team, defending Metropolis together, and Super-Lois has essentially been made co-leader along with her husband. This isn’t the first time that Lois has gotten powers, of course, but this is a way of portraying that relationship that I’m pretty sure we’ve never seen before. With this being my “Year of Superman,” with the movie coming out in July, and with DC giving the Man of Steel a much bigger push than they have in recent years, I couldn’t be happier that this monthly comic is really good right now.
Sun., Jan. 26
The After School Special of Lois Lore.
Comic Books: Lois Lane #1-2
Notes: The early 80s were a weird time for Lois Lane in the comics. After all those decades of chasing after him, she “broke up” with Superman, feeling as though the relationship wasn’t going anywhere (go figure). What’s more, Clark started dating Lana Lang, which was admittedly a nice change of pace, as she was now interested in Clark Kent rather than Superboy/man, and it changed things up for a while. But the problem was, then, what do you do with Lois?
The answer, it seems, is this miniseries: two double-sized issues of two chapters each which were clearly originally intended to be a four-issue miniseries, but they condensed it for some reason. Regardless, in this refreshingly Superman-free story, Lois is covering a police investigation that turns up the body of a child, a horrifying moment that sends her deep into the investigation of child abduction and trafficking. I would have been about nine years old when this miniseries was published, so I can tell you that the whole “stranger danger” scare was a big thing at the time, and this miniseries feels very much like an attempt to connect to the After School Special audience by telling a story with an important message. Not that the message isn’t important, of course – sadly, it’s possibly even more relevant today than it was almost 40 years ago. But the way they tell the story is a bit heavy-handed, as many of these “Very Special Episodes” tend to be.
On the other hand, it’s good to see a story where Lois is being Lois – doing reporter work, digging into a story and trying to uncover the truth. The sad thing is that Lois comes off as awfully antagonistic throughout the story: she clashes with her editor, she clashes with her sister Lucy…she clashes with everybody. And there’s a point where it feels less like frustration about her serious story not being taken seriously and a bit more like Lois has some sort of chip on her shoulder. (It may have helped if the story at any point recapped just why she and Lucy were at each other’s throats at this period.) As it is, though, we get none of that. We learn nothing about why Lois is behaving the way she is, save for general sensitivity over the subject matter. It’s a pretty dark topic , but it’s hard to conceive of a seasoned reporter like Lois Lane suddenly lashing out at everybody around her over something like this. Half the characters assume she’s upset over her breakup with Superman, and while that too would be completely out of character for her, at least it would be an explanation.
We DO get a shocking revelation about Lana Lang…a revelation that, to the best of my knowledge, was never referenced again, and certainly has been wiped out in the half dozen or so continuity reboots since then. And in the end, the story doesn’t really have a resolution. We just run out of threads to follow. That’s how stuff like this happens in reality, sadly. But this isn’t reality, it’s fiction, and as much as I enjoy seeing a spotlight on Lois Lane, this spotlight is given to a story that forever will seem incomplete.
Enjoy it now, kids. Once Jon is born, even this won’t be far enough to get some peace and quiet.
Notes: So after getting engaged, finding out her fiancé was really Superman, losing him to time-travel shenanigans, and dealing with a dozen other problems that cropped up in the course of the four Superman comics of the era, in this issue Lois FINALLY has a chance to stop and talk to Clark about what it would mean for the two of them to be married. I’ve always enjoyed this issue.
The first half is a series of events where Lois keeps getting left behind as Clark rushes off to deal with one emergency or another – a sunken submarine, a homeless man who’s gotten his hands on a super-villain’s discarded weapons stash…you know, typical stuff. But in the second half, Clark bundles Lois up and takes her off to the top of Mt. Fuji, one place where he doubts that an emergency will call him away, for a conversation. The scene itself only takes a couple of pages, but it’s powerful. Lois asks why Clark, with all his power, would choose to be Superman, and he gives the most Superman answer imaginable: “Because no one else can.” They talk about their relationship and what they mean to one another, and by the time they return to Metropolis, it feels like a hurdle has been passed. After this, the relationship in the comics was usually rock-solid (except for that brief period where they broke up, but which eventually led directly into their wedding, and for the New 52 reboot, but we can dismiss that for timey-wimey reasons). I hate when writers throw a breakup/makeup dynamic onto their characters just because they can’t think of a way to tell compelling stories about a couple without threatening their relationship (lookin’ at you, Spider-Man writers). I’m really glad that this issue ended that era for Lois and Clark in a satisfying way.
Also of note: this issue is kind of an epilogue to the Time and Time Again storyline from last week as well. One of the Linear Men, Liri Lee, feels responsible for the months that Superman was lost in time, so she tries to make it up to him by pausing time for Lois and Clark (without their knowledge) and allowing them to discuss their relationship uninterrupted. It’s a nice little conceit and although I don’t think it was strictly necessary, it served the purpose of showing that the original Linear Man did not act alone (something that would become significant later) and perhaps gave a little more plausibility to the notion that Superman could go that long without picking up on a disaster somewhere that needed his attention.
Geez, how many Robins does that guy NEED?
Next up is a dandy two-parter from Superman Vol. 2 #168 and Detective Comics #756. This story comes from the era in which Lex Luthor had been elected President of the United States, and things kick off when Lois learns from her father (Lex’s secretary of state) that he’s somehow regained possession of the Kryptonite ring we last mentioned back in the Dark Knight Over Metropolis storyline. Superman, being Superman, is reluctant to break into the White House to get the ring, so Lois decides to enlist the help of somebody somewhat less reluctant: Batman.
This is a great story. I love seeing Lois being proactive and using her husband’s ties to the superhero community to right a wrong. I also love how Superman winds up in conflict with his wife and best friend in a way that doesn’t seem convoluted or out of character. Of course Superman would refuse to break into the White House, no matter who’s sitting in that chair or what the provocation, and of course Lois and Bruce wouldn’t give a damn about all that when it comes to getting that sort of a weapon out of Lex Luthor’s hands. It’s a dandy little character play from writers Jeph Loeb and Greg Rucka (respectively) and it’s only slightly undermined by the ending. I don’t mind at all that Clark and Bruce hatched a scheme of their own, but I’m admittedly a tad disappointed that they didn’t let Lois in on it. That said, it’s a fine story that shows, as the best stories do, just how proactive Lois Lane can be.
Just as grounded in reality as her ’86 miniseries.
I’ll wrap up today with Superman: Lois Lane, a one-shot from the New 52 era. I won’t get into the pros and cons of that time period at the moment – odds are at some point later this year I’ll get into it a little bit – but I will say one of my least favorite things about that period was the way DC erased pretty much every superhero marriage and returned to the old status quo of Lois not knowing Clark’s identity and, for most of the run, not having any sort of relationship with him either. In fact, Superman only makes a cameo in this issue, and Clark isn’t mentioned at all.
That said, if you just change the costume Superman wears in his cameo, this story could very easily be dropped into pretty much any continuity or any time period for Superman. It’s a self-contained story about Lois, starting with her sister Lucy showing up on her doorstep, injured, begging for help. Lucy’s roommate, Amanda, has been transformed into some sort of monster by a strange street drug, and she pleads with Lois to rescue her. Like a lot of the best Lois stories, this one showcases her detective skills, hunting down the origin of the drug that’s terrorizing Amanda and going to whatever lengths it takes to save her. It’s not a bad story, although it does showcase just how much Lucy Lane has become something of a punching bag over the years. That poor girl never seems to catch a break.
Tues., Jan. 28
AKA Superman versus the Three Stooges
Movie: Superman II
Notes: The first Superman film, with Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, remains one of my favorite movies ever made, and by far my favorite superhero film. But ever since the release of the “Donner Cut” in 2006 I’ve harbored a belief that, had the film been completed as intended, Superman II would have surpassed it.
Not to say that the Superman II we have isn’t good. Quite to the contrary, it’s a great movie. Superman facing off against a trio of Kryptonian villains, Lex Luthor bouncing from enemy to ally to, at the end, a desperate attempt at becoming a frenemy before Superman deposits him with the police. And most importantly this week, this is the movie where I feel like Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane gets her best moments. In this film, Lois discovers the truth, that Clark Kent is Superman. They share a tender love story in which he decides to give up his powers, which his mother Lara (or rather, her approximation in a Kryptonian data crystal) tells him is the only way he can ever be with a human woman. But when Zod and company attack Earth, seeking the son of Jor-El, he has to find a way to restore himself and save the world. It’s a great superhero movie mixed up with a beautifully tragic love story. But there are two things about it I’ve never cared for. One is the end, where Superman erases Lois’s memory with a…well…a super-kiss. It’s a dumb power, one that we’ve never seen show up anywhere else except for a short gag in Scott Kurtz’s PVP comic strip, but the power itself isn’t the problem. It feels awfully cruel of Clark to do that to Lois, not unlike the stupid kinds of things that we saw from Superman throughout the Silver Age. Even if you couch it in the belief that Lois will be happier without knowing the truth, I don’t care for that.
The other problem is something that was much better in the Donner cut: the way that Lois discovers Clark’s secret. In the film, as completed, Lois hurls herself from Niagara Falls, expecting Superman to save her and finally prove her suspicion that he and Clark are one and the same. Clark manages to pull her out without divulging his identity, but only minutes later, he pointlessly trips and falls into a fireplace, allowing her to see that he isn’t harmed. It’s awful. Clark is way too experienced – not to mention way too smart – to give away the world’s greatest secret that way.
The Donner cut is SO. MUCH. BETTER. If you’ve never seen it, you can watch the pertinent scene on YouTube, and I urge you to do so if you haven’t. (I believe that the YouTube version was actually cobbled together from screen tests and was not intended for use in the final film, but that doesn’t matter.) If you don’t feel like watching it, allow me to explain what makes it so great.
As in the finished movie, Lois has failed in an attempt at proving Clark is Superman, and is discussing her suspicions with him. Suddenly, she pulls a gun. He goes into his usual blubbering Clark routine, trying to talk her out of doing something rash, but to his horror, she pulls the trigger. He starts for a moment, but then, realizing there’s no way out of this one, he stands up, straight as a board, glaring at her. He takes off his glasses, activating that Clark-to-Superman transformation that Christopher Reeve could pull off like nobody else, and says, “You realize, of course, if you’d been wrong Clark Kent would have been killed.” Lois raises the gun and says, “Well, they’re blank.” Clark’s head falls to his chest, realizing just how deftly he’s been outsmarted.
A face that says, “God help me, I love this infuriating woman so, so much.”
No Lois Lane has ever Lois Laned as hard as Margot Kidder Lois Laned in this scene.
Comics: Superwoman Special #1, DC Comics Presents #69, Supergirl Vol. 2 #21, Justice League of America #15, New Adventures of Superboy #31
She was always a woman of steel. She just has the jammies now.
Notes: I decided to close out “Lois Week” with a re-reading of Superwoman Special #1, which came out just over a month ago and is part of the current ongoing storyline in the Superman comics. A few months back, Lois suddenly started showing up in a Superwoman costume, displaying the same powers as her super-hubby and fighting alongside him, with no indication as to how this happened. This special finally gives us the skinny as Lois tells the other two super-women in Metropolis, Lana Lang and Kara, how she got her powers. In last fall’s Absolute Power crossover, Amanda Waller set out to steal the powers from the world’s heroes (and villains, but mostly the heroes). Waller was, of course, defeated, but when the powers were restored not everything went as planned. Some powers were altered and some went to the wrong people, including Lois suddenly having Kryptonian powers. An examination from Mr. Terrific and the Atom concludes that Lois does, indeed, have Kryptonian powers, but there seems to be a limit – every time she uses them, she is in danger of burning them out. Being Lois, she isn’t content to sit on the sidelines when people are in danger, hence the new Superwoman. The other thing the reader learns in this issue that the heroes don’t is where, exactly, her powers came from. She has inadvertently stolen the powers from one of Superman’s greatest enemies, General Zod, and it seems unlikely that he’s going to be happy when he finds out where his powers have gone.
This special is kind of a fill-in-the-blanks moment, revealing the backstory in the currently ongoing storyline, but there are a few moments I really like. The coffee klatch with Lois, Supergirl, and Lana Lang (who has also been a Superwoman for a few years now, if you haven’t kept up) works really well to help establish the relationship between these three women, arguably the most important ones in Clark’s life, except of course for Martha. Second, I love the scene where Lois reveals to Clark that she’s gained powers. There’s no moment of shock or disbelief – Clark has seen enough weird stuff that it doesn’t even phase him. They just decide to have a nice, romantic flight together before it’s time to get to the bottom of it all.
The last thing I really like is the one thing that I think may possibly be a permanent, or at least long-term change. Lois isn’t going to keep Zod’s powers forever, I don’t think anybody even remotely familiar with comic books thinks that’s going to happen. But her OTHER new job that is showcased in this issue MAY last for a good while. Perry White, in recent issues, stepped down as editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet to run for mayor of Metropolis, leaving Lois in charge. Once he won the election, her temporary position became less temporary. It’s actually been really fun to see Lois as the boss, particularly those moments where her journalistic integrity clashes with her knowledge as Superman’s wife. (There was a story in one of the other titles recently where she took Clark off of any Superman-related stories as they were a conflict of interest, even if the two of them are the only ones who know it.) I really love having Lois in charge, and as great a character as Perry White is, this new dynamic is one that I think has a lot of storytelling mileage in it, and I hope they don’t revert to status quo on this one any time soon.
Welcome to the first week of my grand “Year of Superman” experiment. Over the next 12 months, I’m going to do my best to read, watch, or listen to at least one piece of Superman-related media every day. As I go along, I’ll keep a journal of each day’s entries as well as thoughts on some of the stories I’ve read or watched, then I’ll try to share them here with you on Wednesdays. Please keep in mind that my thoughts on these pieces of Superman history are likely to contain spoilers, so if there’s anything you’re trying to remain spoiler-free on, you may want to skip that specific entry.
As the year began, I wanted to focus a bit on the earliest days of Superman. I read the first Superman story as it appeared in the first two issues of Action Comics (and thank goodness for the DC Universe Infinity app for making that possible). I also read Gladiator, the 1930 novel that many people believe was a direct influence on Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster when they created Superman. And I re-watched the movie that started my love affair with Superman, the first Christopher Reeve movie from 1978, directed by Richard Donner. Here, then, are my thoughts on Week 1 of the Year of Superman.
Wed., Jan. 1
Comics:Action Comics #1, 2, 1079
Notes: (On Action #1, 2) The embryonic Superman is so different from who he eventually becomes. He’s snarkier than usual, and much more ruthless, doing things like throwing an abusive husband against a wall, carrying a man along electrical poles, and forcing a munitions manufacturer to join the army and put his own life at stake. But even here, with methods that would seem very out of place in today’s stories, the moral core is there — a steadfast belief that, as Mark Waid wrote sixty years later in Kingdom Come, “There is a right and a wrong in the universe, and that distinction is not difficult to make.” The real world, of course, is infinitely more complicated than that, and there are a great many times when it IS difficult to figure out the right thing to do for mere mortals like you and me, but Superman doesn’t — and shouldn’t — have that problem.
Thur., Jan. 2
Movie: Superman (1978)
Notes: The 1978 film with Christopher Reeve will always be the gold standard, won’t it? The tagline was “You’ll believe a man can fly,” but that’s hardly the most impressive thing about the movie. In his performance, Reeve created a Superman that was warm, compassionate, and kind, all of which are things that we need even more today than when this movie was first made. This movie still has one of my single favorite moments in film history: the part where Lois falls from a helicopter. Superman reveals himself to Metropolis for the first time, gliding into the air and catching her in one hand and the helicopter in the other. He places them both on the roof of the Daily Planet building and Lois, in her shock, asks him, “Who are you?”
His reply is simple, elegant, and perfect: “A friend.”
And although my steadfast belief is and will remain that Clark Kent is the real person, that Superman is just another name that he uses and that the reason he is the greatest hero in the world is because of the upbringing of Jonathan and Martha Kent…despite that, there is a moment in this movie that shows Jor-El knew who his son was destined to be as well. The line in the Fortress of Solitude, during the tutelage montage: “They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They lack only the light to show them the way.”
That’s who Superman is. They knew it in 1978. And if nothing else with this little experiment, I hope to remind people of that today.
Comics:Black Canary: Best of the Best #1 (Lois, Clark, and Krypto cameo), Superman/Fantastic Four, Absolute Superman #3, Incredible Hulk Vs. Superman
Notes: (On Absolute Superman #3) Young Kal-El refuses to use generative AI to write. Further evidence that he’s the greatest hero there is.
Notes: (On Detective #1091) A surprisingly Superman-relevant guest spot in this issue. Batman has been offered an experimental medical treatment with the potential to greatly increase his lifespan, so he does something he very rarely does: he turns to Superman for advice. Assorted comics over the years have established that Superman ages very slowly and is, compared to the humans around him, functionally immortal, but it’s not something they talk about much in the mainstream comics. Writer Tom Taylor brings that to the forefront with a lovely speech about how Clark carries that knowledge, with an emphasis on the fact that he trusts Bruce Wayne to find a way to use this gift for the greatest good. Frank Miller was wrong. The world is better when Superman and Batman are friends.
Movie:Music byJohn Williams (Documentary, includes segment on Superman ’78)
Sat. Jan. 4
Novel: Gladiator (1930) by Philip Wylie
Notes: In the late 19th century, a reclusive scientist develops a treatment that gives incredible power to his unborn son. As the child, Hugo Danner, grows to manhood, he develops remarkable strength and speed, finds himself impervious to injury, and must then go out into the world to discover what place – if any – he will have in it.
This is the first time I’ve read this book, although I’ve long heard it cited as being a likely inspiration for Superman. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – to my knowledge – never confirmed that this book was on their minds when they were conceiving the character, but the similarities are too striking to ignore. Hugo Danner’s powers are virtually the same as those of Superman in the early days, before he developed flight or super-senses or some of the more outlandish abilities he has today. What’s more, the sort of ethical struggles he faces are virtual mirrors of those that later writers would apply to the man of steel. Hugo is a one-of-a-kind human being, Clark Kent is a last-of-his-kind alien. Hugo has to learn lessons about the danger of his powers, if they go unchecked, which is a lesson that we frequently see in Superman origin stories. Hugo has to deal with the fact that, despite all of his power, there are some things in the world he simply cannot change, which of course is a typical theme in Superman’s stories.
What really sets things apart is how the two characters deal with the circumstances of their lives. In many ways, the way Wylie develops Hugo Danner is the opposite of what happens with Superman. As Clark learns to believe in and have faith in humanity, Hugo finds himself growing increasingly cynical and bitter as the story goes on. Clark transforms himself into a hero, but Hugo has thoughts of anger and rage that, at times, tread the line of outright villainy. We’ve seen so many stories with “evil” versions of Superman in recent years – things like The Boys or Irredeemable, which show the consequences of a character with Superman-like power but without the Superman ethos. The odd thing about Gladiator is that it feels very much like it could have served as an origin story for Homelander or Plutonian, rather than our own Superman.
I’m impressed by the writing style in some ways. Wylie is sharper and snappier, less consumed with fluff than other writers of his time, and the book is a very easy read. That said, “easy” doesn’t always mean “pleasant.” The book is a novel only in the technical definition of the term. There’s no singular antagonist, save perhaps for Hugo’s powers themselves, and there’s not a singular plot, either. Rather, we get the story of Hugo’s life, from his childhood, to his college years, to his exploits during World War I, and then beyond. We don’t get cohesion, except for a throughline of seeing how the world wears him down to the point of turning against humanity as a whole. The end of the book is particularly unsatisfying – it seems as though Wylie felt like he’d said everything he had to say and then found a quick (and, frankly, unbelievable) way to end things without actually having to resolve the ethical questions he’d addressed in the book.
It’s interesting, particularly from a historical standpoint, to see this prototypical Superman, but I’m very glad that the writers who helped turn Clark Kent into the hero he is didn’t draw quite as much from this early version as they might have.
Comic:DC Vs. Vampires: World War V #5 (Supergirl appearance)
Article: “Superman’s Editor Mort Weisinger” by Will Murray, essay in The Krypton Companion
Sun, Jan. 5
Graphic Novel: Superman: Dark Knight Over Metropolis. (Collects Action Comics Annual #1, Adventures of Superman #466, Action Comics #653, Superman Vol. 2 #44, Adventures of Superman #467, Action Comics #654.)
Notes: Having read the scene in Detective Comics #1091 a few days ago, today I decided to go back to one of the early encounters between Superman and Batman in the post-Crisis continuity. The 90s was the era when I got into Superman comics big-time, the era that I still feel represents some of the best storytelling the character has ever had, and it’s always fun to revisit it. Oddly, one of the few things I’m NOT crazy about is the somewhat antagonistic relationship between Superman and Batman at the time. In this story, a former employee of Lex Luthor who has found evidence that Clark Kent is Superman confronts him with the knowledge, as well as Luthor’s Kryptonite ring. She flees and is murdered, and the ring makes its way to Gotham City and Batman, who comes to Metropolis to unravel the mystery.
The story is solid – Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, and Roger Stern were the writers of the three Superman books at the time and they had already seamlessly forged the flow that would come to define what we now call the “Triangle Era” of Superman, with the story moving from one title and creative team to another seamlessly. It still jars me to see a Superman and Batman that don’t quite get along and constantly question one another’s methods. On the other hand, this book DOES start to forge a respect between the two of them. The two of them recognize that their respective methods work for their respective cities. Most importantly, at the end of the story Clark visits Bruce in Gotham, giving him the Kryptonite ring with the reasoning that he’s worried that someday someone may take control of him and turn him against humankind, and if that ever happens he wants the only sure way to stop him to be in the hands of someone he trusts. It would be some time before Superman and Batman regained the Super BFF status that they enjoyed in the Silver and Bronze ages, but I feel like it began here.
Also of note, the issues collected in this graphic novel include a bit of a relationship upgrade for Lois and Clark, who had flirted (literally and figuratively) with being a couple for some time. In these issues, Clark pushes to make it official. One of the many things I love about the 90s Superman is what they did with the relationship between these two. Lois Lane, when written properly, is a powerful and dynamic character in her own right, and it suits the couple much more to have this version, where she falls in love with Clark Kent BEFORE she knows he’s Superman. It’s far, far preferable to the stories of the 50s, where she’s out to trick the Man of Steel into marrying her or – failing that – revealing his secret identity. This is the genesis of MY Lois and Clark, and it’s the pairing that we still see in the comics today.
Mon., Jan. 6
Short Story: “Lucifer Over Lancaster” by Elizabeth Hand & Paul Witcover (from the 1993 anthology The Further Adventures of Superman)
Notes: It’s been ages since I read this book, full of short stories about Superman, many of them by writers you don’t usually associate with the character. This one, for example, is about a doctor who experiments with a strange alien creature that residents of his home in Lancaster begin to suspect of being the Devil himself. I have to admit, I’m not wild about this one. The story has a long diatribe about how Superman and Clark Kent are both disguises and Kal-El is the “real” personality, associating himself more with Krypton than Earth. I don’t get this take on the character at all. Granted, he’s the last son of Krypton, but in virtually every incarnation of the character, he’s sent to Earth as a baby. It just doesn’t make sense that he would identify that strongly with his alien heritage to the point of considering his other two identities secondary. The character is a little cold in this story, too, speaking to a clearly remorseful Dr. Rule with what feels like unnecessary aggression. I’ve set myself up for a long journey this year, and I suppose it’s inevitable that I’ll run across versions of Superman that don’t quite jive with me. I guess this is the first.
TV Episode: Superman and Lois Season 1, Episode 7, “Man of Steel”
Notes: I know it’s going to shock people, but I totally missed out on Superman and Lois when it was on the air. It wasn’t deliberate. I watched the first two episodes and I enjoyed it, but then other things started to steal my attention and I just got further and further behind, always intending to come back and give it a chance. I finally made it back a few months ago, when every other Superman fan I knew was talking about how amazing the series finale was. Well, I figured, if the show is over, what better time to start binging the entire thing? I made it through the first six episodes before the end of 2024, and now that the Year of Superman is upon me, I’m getting back in with the intention of getting through the rest of the show this year.
Anyway, in this episode we see Lois and Clark’s son Jordan struggling to control his newfound hearing powers, while Lois tries to unravel the mystery of this mysterious visitor called “Captain Luthor,” who seems to hail from another universe in which he and Lois were a couple and where Superman turned bad. I know a lot of people have gotten burned out on the multiverse concept in the last few years, but I’ve always been a fan of it when it’s done well. This one is pretty interesting – as Lois and Clark are certain that this stranger is an alternate version of Clark’s arch-nemesis, but as we see flashbacks to this stranger building a suit of daughter with his and Lois’s daughter “Nat,” it becomes increasingly clear (long before Lois finds his actual name) that this is REALLY an alternate of one of Clark’s greatest ALLIES, Steel.
The DC Universe Steel, John Henry Irons, has been one of my favorite Superman spinoff characters ever since his debut back in 1993 during the “Death of Superman” arc. Steel in the comics is a good man with a great mind who uses Superman as an inspiration to redeem a mistake. This John is different – just as smart, and with what seem to be good intentions, but his experience with an evil Superman has turned him into an antagonist. It’s a pretty surprising take on a character I love, but I’m not upset at all. John is opposed to Superman here, but there’s a long way to go in this series, and I feel like this character, somehow, is going to lead to a version of the John Henry Irons that I’m such a fan of.
Nobody tell me if I’m right or not. I’m looking forward to finding out for myself.
It’s particularly nice to see Clark’s sons, especially the powerless Jonathan, get to play the cavalry in this episode. The relationship between Clark and Jonathan Kent in the comics is the best addition to the Superman mythos since he and Lois finally got married back in the 90s. This show adds a second son and changes the dynamic between the two considerably, but I’m really enjoying seeing where they go with it.
Tue. Jan. 7
Comic: Superman #76
Notes: Having read Dark Knight Over Metropolis a few days ago, I got the idea to go back to the first story showing Superman and Batman discovering one another’s identities. Although they had been shown as partners in stories prior to 1952’s Superman #76, this is the story that showed HOW they discovered one another’s identities and…well, it’s baffling that this is the sort of storytelling they got away with in that time period. Having basically eradicated crime in Gotham City, Batman decides to take a vacation, booking a spot on a cruise ship. Meanwhile, Clark Kent is booked on that same ship because…well, because he had accrued time off. In one of those wacky coincidences, Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are assigned one another as roommates. In an even wackier coincidence, an emergency breaks out on the ship and they both decide to change into their superhero uniforms after turning off the lights. And then, wackiest coincidence, a light shines through the porthole, revealing their true identities to one another.
It’s the most ridiculous secret identity reveal of all time, and I read Marvel’s Civil War.
The rest of the story is pretty standard 50s fodder. The two of them team up to thwart a criminal on the ship, Lois Lane happens to be along for the ride, and Superman – I swear to you, they did this kind of stuff all the time in the 1950s – convinces Batman to flirt with her as a distraction so she wouldn’t try to solve the crime herself and put herself into danger. I don’t know what’s crazier, that Superman would come up with a plan so bafflingly stupid or that the world’s greatest detective went along with it.
But I do have a soft spot for this story. I first read it when I was a kid, when I feverishly checked out the book Superman: From the 30s to the 70s from my local library over and over again, and I remember this story fondly. Does it hold up? No. But I can forgive that, as a relic of the time.
Speaking of relics, the way they depicted Lois Lane back then is mad. This is just one of many stories from the era where Superman straight-up gaslights her either to “protect her from harm” or to prevent her from getting too close to him, even though they were publicly dating. (Lois and Superman, that is, not Lois and Clark.) In fact, the last story in this issue is another Lois Lane Lovetrap, where SHE comes up with the brilliant plan to get Clark Kent to marry her friend Lorraine because…that…will make Superman…marry Lois? I know it doesn’t make any sense. I read the story two minutes ago and I can’t make it make sense. All I can say is, thank God for Margot Kidder, because she really was the blueprint for how Lois has been depicted from the 80s on, and the world is so much better for it.
Thus ends Week One of the Year of Superman. I wanted to tell you that, although I have a list of stories I plan to revisit, it’s not nearly extensive enough to last a whole year. So I’m open for requests! Do you have a specific Superman comic book, story, or TV episode you’d like me to weigh in on? Go ahead and drop your requests in the comments!
It’s time for a new Geek Punditry feature: Blake’s Five Favorites! In Five Favorites, I’m just going to talk about something that’s been on my mind and discuss my…well…my five favorite examples of that thing. Now keep in mind that this list is inherently subjective and not at all comprehensive. You may disagree with my choices, and that’s fine. And there may be other examples out there that I’d like even better, but I haven’t seen them yet. And if we’re being totally honest, if you asked me again tomorrow, my list may be totally different. I’m funny that way. But for now, as of the time I’m writing this, I want to tell you about my five favorite scenes from superhero movies. This is NOT a list of my five favorite superhero movies (although there would definitely be overlap), but a list of the five individual scenes in the history of superhero cinema that make me feel the happiest, proudest, most excited, or most touched. And obviously, these are going to be FULL of spoilers, so if you haven’t seen these movies by now, you may want to skip. Let’s see if any of your favorites make the list.
#5: James Gordon Lives (The Dark Knight, 2008)
Very few superheroes can really do their job alone, and those that try usually wind up learning early on that attempting to do so is a mistake. And for all his talk about being a lone wolf, decades of storytelling have built up a sizable contingent of heroes surrounding Batman. He’s got sons (biological, adopted, AND surrogate), daughter-figures, father-figures, friends, allies, lovers, and even frenemies. And of all the characters that have taken up arms with the Batman during the years of his crusade, my favorite is police commissioner James Gordon. There’s something inspiring about the one good cop trying to clean up a filthy, corrupt department and forging an alliance with an agent outside of the law to do it. I don’t really care for any version of Batman that casts Gordon as an incompetent, which is perhaps the most unforgivable of the many sins in the Joel Schumaker movies.
Of all the actors who have played Gordon, Gary Oldman in the Dark Knight trilogy is hands-down my favorite. He really sells Gordon as a good man who recognizes that things are out of control and takes the necessary steps to set things right, and I absolutely LOVED how this film showed the pact between Gordon, Batman, and Harvey Dent that worked so well for all characters in The Long Halloween.
“I believe in Crystal Lig–I mean, Harvey Dent.”
So I was pretty darn startled when, partway through the film, Gordon is killed. I was shocked. I was stunned. And although the large part of me didn’t believe it could be true, I also recognized that director Chris Nolan had already taken some liberties with canon and I couldn’t be TOTALLY sure that he wouldn’t make that big of a turn. A while later, Batman and Dent hatch a plan to trick the Joker into attacking a convoy. The plan works, the Joker winds up on the ground with a gun to his head, and the cop holding that gun whips off his mask to reveal Gordon, alive, his faked death revealed to be all part of the plan.
Gordon: I’ve got you, you son of a bitch. Me, in the back of the theater, screaming: YEEEAAH, YOU DO!!!
It is a testament to the love of my girlfriend at the time that, after I jumped and CHEERED in that movie theater, she still agreed to marry me. Someday I hope our son gets as thrilled at this scene as I am every time I watch it.
#4: You Are Who You Choose to Be (The Iron Giant, 1999)
Let’s get this out of the way before we go any further: Hell YES, The Iron Giant is a superhero movie. A childlike creature of immense power comes to Earth from outer space and chooses to use his powers to help people. There is no adequate definition of the term “superhero” that can justifiably exclude Brad Bird’s gargantuan guardian. As if that weren’t enough, the Giant befriends a young boy, Hogarth, who teaches him about being human using what is arguably the greatest possible source material: Superman comic books. (The argument, by the way, is whether or not these are a better source than Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, but the movie is set in 1957 and Schulz’s greatest philosophical work was still ahead of him.)
Plus, this looks a lot better than painting a zigzag stripe around his midsection.
Lost on Earth and with no memories, the giant goes through the usual sort of mishaps that ETs usually get into, only with fewer Reese’s Pieces, while the military picks up on his trail and tries to chase him down. Late in the film, the Giant’s true nature is revealed: he was created by some distant alien civilization as a weapon. As he struggles against his own programming, a panicked government agent orders a nuclear attack on the robot, one that will destroy not only the Giant, but an entire town of innocent people. The Giant, however, overcomes his programming and remembers something Hogarth told him earlier in the film: “You are who you choose to be.”
The Giant makes his choice. He is not a weapon. He is not a gun.
He blasts into the sky to intercept the missile, choosing to sacrifice himself to save the town full of innocents, and in the last second before impact, he whispers the name that he has chosen.
“Superman…”
If you can watch this scene without tears, I don’t know if I want to talk to you.
You can’t tell me that Clark wouldn’t be proud to see this guy wearing his shield.
In this scene the Giant proves he understands sacrifice, he understands selflessness, he understands choosing to believe in the fundamental goodness of humanity. He understands what being a hero actually is.
He understands Superman.
A hell of a lot better than most other people, I would argue.
#3: Peter One, Peter Two, Peter Three (Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2021)
Tom Holland, as I’ve often said, is my favorite of the actors who have played Spider-Man on the big screen. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a fondness for the other two, Toby Maguire and Andrew Garfield. And it was immensely satisfying to me to see the three of them share the stage together in the final act of Spider-Man: No Way Home. In this film, the MCU version of Spider-Man has screwed up badly, breaking a spell Dr. Strange was trying to cast to wipe memory of his secret identity from the public, and drawing in people from alternate realities, destabilizing the very fabric of the multiverse back before people were doing that every other week. The whole thing builds to a battle against the nastiest rogue any live-action Spider-Man has ever faced, Willem DaFoe’s Green Goblin, who ups the ante in this film by (last time I’m warning you against spoilers) murdering Peter’s Aunt May.
While the MCU never showed us Holland getting bitten by a radioactive spider or the death of Ben Parker, they found a different way to demonstrate Peter’s character development by spreading it across three films. Homecoming was about him learning how to be a hero. Far From Home was about him learning to be his OWN kind of hero, separate from Tony Stark. This film is about learning the COST of being a hero. It’s May’s death, not Ben’s, that really hammers that home for us all.
But Holland doesn’t have to learn this lesson alone, because the multiversal rift hasn’t only brought in villains. Holland’s Peter finds himself allied with his previous incarnations, Maguire and Garfield, each of whom has some baggage to bring to the table, and each of whom is essential to the full development of Holland’s character.
“Wait, you’re the youngest, why are YOU Peter One? This is worse than when Barry Allen called Jay Garrick’s universe ‘Earth-2’.”
While Holland wrestles with his own failures, he sees Maguire, who is implied to have found a sort of stability and love with his version of Mary Jane Watson. In Maguire, Holland sees that there is hope for the future, even in the wake of seemingly unsurmountable tragedy. Garfield, meanwhile, has tortured himself over the death of Gwen Stacy ever since the end of Amazing Spider-Man 2 and become a darker, more broken Spider-Man because of it. But in perhaps the greatest moment of this movie, Garfield saves the MCU version of MJ from suffering the same fate. The look of simultaneous anguish and relief on Garfield’s face is tectonic: he has atoned for his failure. He hasn’t failed again. In him, Holland sees the hope for redemption.
We should all have a moment where we can find that kind of peace.
When the girl who just FELL OFF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY has to ask if YOU’RE okay, it’s an emotional moment.
Seeing what the other two have gone through and how they came out the other side is perhaps the most important part of Tom Holland’s journey in this movie, guiding him to the new life he has to lead at the end with no family and no friends who remember his existence. He’s striking out on his own – lonely, yes, but with the knowledge that hope and redemption are real and possible. And no matter what movie he shows up in next or who directs it, if Tom Holland swings again, that’s the Spider-Man I want to see…the one shaped by the lessons of his multiversal brothers.
#2: Avengers…Assemble (Avengers: Endgame, 2019)
You want to know what makes Avengers: Endgame so great? You know what it does that so many other attempts at a “cinematic universe” (and even much of the MCU in the years since then) have failed at? Payoff. What’s the point in a cinematic universe if not to introduce long-term story threads that eventually are brought together in a satisfying way? Endgame pulled together the threads of eleven years of storytelling and almost two dozen movies to put together a finale that served as a powerful conclusion for every part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, provided you pretended that there weren’t any TV shows that were related to it.
And the best part of that film, for me, was the final battle scene, probably the most thrilling such scene in the history of superhero movies. The Hulk has undone the “snap” from the end of the previous film, bringing back all of the people Thanos killed five years ago, and as he launches his attack on the broken Avengers, their friends start to filter in.
It starts with “On your left.”
We remember this signal from the Falcon – one of the lost – and the rest of the heroes begin to arrive. The Avengers who were dusted in Wakanda. The Guardians of the Galaxy, along with Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, brought back from the far reaches of space. The armies of Wakanda, the acolytes from Wong’s temple. The battlefield is populated with more heroes than we’ve ever seen in a superhero movie before, and Captain America kicks it off with the words that fans have been waiting a DECADE to hear:
Me, squeezing my wife’s arm: He’s gonna say it, HE’S GONNA SAY IT…
“Avengers…assemble.”
But even that wasn’t the greatest part of the scene, wasn’t? Oh, no, as fantastic as that was, there’s still one more bit of payoff to come, when Thor and Thanos grapple on the battlefield and suddenly the mad Titan is struck by Thor’s hammer Mjolnir, scavenged from the past along with the Infinity Stones. The hammer smashes into Thanos’s face, flying through the air, hurtling back to the hand that threw it…but if not Thor, whose hand is guiding it?
It returns to the hand of Captain America, and the movie theater EXPLODED. At least, the theater where I was sitting did. In all my life, I have NEVER heard such an outpouring of cheers and excitement from a movie audience as I did in that moment, and I seriously doubt I ever will again. This, my friends, this was payoff for the entirety of the franchise. As we all know, Mjolnir is enchanted, and can only be lifted by someone who is “worthy.”
“I KNEW IT!!!” Thor shouts.
We all did, Thor. We all did.
I mean, this scene was amazing, but you know the Iron Giant could lift the hammer too, right?
But my favorite scene, guys…my single favorite scene in superhero movie history, the scene I would ask to have playing on the screen if they were strapping me down on one of those tables from Soylent Green, comes from the first Richard Donner Superman movie. We’ve spent half the film watching baby Kal-El become Clark Kent, watching him grow up into Christopher Reeve, watching him shape the persona he’s going to wear as a mild-mannered reporter, but we have not yet seen HIM. We have not yet seen more than a glimpse of the title character. Until Lois Lane – of course – is involved in a helicopter accident. The whirlybird falls and Lois falls OUT of it, and it’s curtains for the Daily Planet’s star reporter.
Until she falls harmlessly into a pair of waiting arms.
This strange visitor, this proud figure in red and blue, lifts Lois in one hand and catches the helicopter in the other, and he reassures her that everything will be fine by simply saying, “I’ve got you.”
And Lois, flabbergasted, shouts, “You’ve got me? Who’s got YOU?”
How anybody can call Romeo and Juliet a love story while this scene exists in the universe is beyond me.
I think we take for granted, in superhero stories, the miraculous things that these characters are supposed to be capable of. We’ve seen so many movies, read so many comic books with people who can fly and shoot lasers from their eyes and walk through walls that we forget how astonishing these things would be in the real world. But Superman was the first movie to attempt such a thing on this scale, and in-universe, it’s something that has never existed before. Up until this point, the world of this film is ostensibly our own. The astonishment that Margot Kidder brings to that moment is absolutely perfect, as is Christopher Reeve’s reaction. He gently places her (and the helicopter) back on the roof, but before he can leave, Lois asks him who he is.
And he gives the only answer that matters:
“A friend.”
There are two things, I think, essential to the character of Superman. One is the protector, the defender, the man who will stop at nothing to save the lives of everyone around him. The Iron Giant showed us that side of Superman. The other side, though, is the man of infinite compassion and kindness, a belief in the better angels of human nature if only there is someone to guide them. Superman is the hero who never gives up on anyone, even his bitterest enemy, because somewhere inside of them he KNOWS there is a flicker of good waiting to be fanned into a flame. Batman tries to strike fear into the hearts of criminals. Superman is there to show us all that there is a better way.
And when he looks at you like this, can’t you actually BELIEVE it?
I’ve got high hopes for James Gunn and David Corenswet, but it’s hard to believe that anything they can do could ever capture that essence as simply and perfectly as the two words, “a friend.”
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. Next time: his five favorite McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches! (Spoiler alert: steak, egg, and cheese bagel.)
Hello, everybody, and welcome to This is How We Do It, the latest Geek Punditry feature-within-a-feature. In This is How We Do It, which I intend to be a recurring segment here, I’m just going to showcase a piece of storytelling that I think is being done exceptionally well and talk about why I think it’s so great. It is the antidote to Internet negativity. And the subject of the inaugural This is How We Do It is going to be the currently-ongoing DC Comics crossover event, Absolute Power. Fair warning, it’s not going to be possible to talk about why this is so great without spoiling some things, so this will be a spoilerful discussion. If you’re not up to date on reading this fantastic series, you may want to hold off on reading this at least until you get to issue #2 of the main title, because that’s the most recent issue as I write this.
Get ready, because this one ROCKS.
Comic crossovers are by no means a new thing, and I’ve talked before at length about them but I feel like I need to give a brief overview of what I mean here. In these “event” storylines, there is usually a main narrative that brings together the various characters of a publisher’s shared universe (in this case, DC Comics), while assorted spin-offs and special issues of the series that star the individual characters tell other angles of the story. The earliest such event I can find that followed this format is DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths from 1985-86. (It’s true that Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars came out first, guys, but there were no spin-offs of that book, which to me makes it more of an embryonic version of the crossover as it exists today.) DC has done dozens of them, as has Marvel. In fact, pretty much every publisher that has a shared universe (or even Multiverse) has dipped their toes in the format at one time or another – Image Comics, Valiant Comics, IDW, Dynamite, even Archie Comics has had crossover events.
So what makes Absolute Power so good? In a word: construction. Some events seem to come out of nowhere and have little ongoing impact – last year’s DC summer event Knight Terrors, for instance, has made relatively few ripples after it was over. Others will sometimes take existing heroes and force them to behave wildly out of character for the purposes of the narrative (lookin’ at YOU, Marvel’s Civil War). And sometimes, they’re just so overblown and complicated that it’s impossible to keep track of what’s actually going on. Absolute Power suffers from exactly zero percent of these problems.
Mark Millar knows what he did.
A good crossover really needs to start with a good antagonist, and this story has one of the best: Amanda Waller, who has decided that superheroes are the biggest threat to the planet. Waller is an established character, best known for her role as being in charge of the various incarnations of the Suicide Squad (a group of supervillains that she forces to do jobs for the government in exchange for reduced sentences – with the caveat that if they step out of line she’ll set off an explosive device she had implanted in their NECK). Waller has always tread the line of what makes an anti-hero, usually using underhanded methods to accomplish goals that are more or less positive…ish. However, that placed her perfectly for her role of the villain in this story, being a natural extrapolation of who she has always been as a character. In fact, Waller is the BEST kind of villain – the sort that, in her own mind, is 100 percent justified in her actions. Waller COMPLETELY believes that what she’s doing is the right, moral, ethical thing to do, and that makes her both more interesting and more dangerous than any bad guy who’s just in it for the Evulz.
What do you MEAN, she doesn’t look like a good guy?
The next thing that makes a crossover work, in my opinion, is setup. Before the original Crisis on Infinite Earths happened, there were months of stories from DC where a mysterious, shadowy figure was shown to be monitoring the heroes of Earth. (As it turned out, he wasn’t the bad guy, but you could certainly be forgiven for thinking he was.) Absolute Power has a more obvious setup, but a very effective one. Waller has taken the villains from two recent storylines – Queen Braniac from the House of Brainiac Superman story, and Failsafe, a robotic duplicate of Batman with all of his tactical genius and none of his morals and ethics. She has combined their respective tech with the work of the old Justice League villain Professor Ivo to create a set of androids who can steal superpowers, and sent them out to attack, depower, and capture both superheroes and villains alike. In the first issue of Absolute Power, dozens of heroes have their powers stolen and most of them are taken prisoner by Waller. By the time the second issue rolls around, those heroes who remain at large have begun assembling at Superman’s Fortress of Solitude to plan a counter-offensive.
Imagine how nasty a character Amanda has to be that THESE two are her MINIONS.
Another important element is that the characters be true to themselves, and here I’ve got to give it up to writer Mark Waid. Waid was a mainstay of DC Comics in the 90s and early 00s, with a legendary run on The Flash and turning out the best of DC’s Elseworlds line with Kingdom Come. After a long exile, he’s returned to DC and is crushing it with books like Batman/Superman: World’s Finest. In short, there are few people in comics who know the characters as well as Mark Waid, and he’s proving it again here. Aside from using Waller to her logical extreme, he’s showing perfectly who the various DC heroes are, such as a depowered but still dauntless Superman. When Batman and Mr. Terrific get into a squabble over who should be the leader of this little resistance group, it’s Nightwing who steps up, gives a rousing speech that would make Jean-Luc Picard stand and applaud, and takes command. The best part, though, is Batman’s reaction: watching Dick Grayson, the original Robin, take his place as the natural rallying point for a group of shattered, broken, and frightened heroes, Batman simply gives us a sly smile and says, “That’s my boy.”
For Batman, this is an almost shamefully embarrassing display of pride.
And I haven’t even talked about the artwork by Dan Mora, who is probably my favorite artist working at DC right now. It’s phenomenal, with real emotion and characterization displayed on the characters’ faces and mannerisms. A good artist can always make or break a book, and Mora – as he’s done with Waid on Batman/Superman – is doing an incredible job.
The next aspect that makes a crossover work is what happens in the spin-off books. In the original Crisis, the main story was supplemented by chapters in the various ongoing comics showing what was happening to those heroes during the Crisis itself, and that was the template for crossovers for a long time. Somewhere along the line, though, it became less likely for an individual series to be interrupted by a crossover and we’d get several – sometimes DOZENS – of spin-off one-shots and miniseries doing the job instead. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this shift in how crossovers were told corresponded with the point where the comic book WRITERS became the stars of the show, their prominence somewhat overtaking the artists. If the guy writing, for example, Uncanny X-Men at the time didn’t want his X-Men storyline interrupted because of World War Hulk, then the main title would remain unmolested and a World War Hulk: X-Men miniseries would take its place. The far extreme of this policy was what DC did last year with Knight Terrors, where EVERY ongoing DC comic was replaced for two months with a two-part miniseries showing that character’s interaction with the event, and many of them were never touched upon again.
For the most part, I’m in favor of a writer getting to tell the story the way they want, but speaking as a READER, I prefer when the crossovers touch the regular title. To me, that gives them greater weight, makes them feel more “important” than putting them into a spin-off miniseries. Absolute Power has returned to form on this. The ongoing titles are picking up the story threads started in the main series and running with them. After Nightwing gives the heroes various assignments in Absolute Power #2, we see them start to carry out their missions in the pages of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and other titles. In other books, like Green Lantern, we get side stories of some of the heroes who have been captured or are still on the run. And then there’s Green Arrow, which deals with the most shocking development of the story to date: longtime Justice League member Green Arrow has inexplicably turned tables and joined Amanda Waller, fighting his friends! Obviously, anything this incredible has to be covered in the main Absolute Power title, so what’s going on in his book right now? We see how his supporting cast – his son Connor, various former sidekicks and so on – are reacting to the fact that their patriarch seems to have broken bad.
Crossover chapters that are actually RELEVANT? Is that ALLOWED?
There are, I should concede, two spin-off miniseries for Absolute Power, but both are a bit more justified. Absolute Power: Origins is a deep dive into Amanda Waller’s backstory, showing how she went from a grieving mother who lost family members to violence (and how many heroes have had that same motivation?) to the magnificent bastard she is today. Absolute Power: Task Force VII, on the other hand, tells stories focusing on Waller’s seven power-stealing androids and their interactions with the heroes. Neither may be absolutely NECESSARY to the story, but I feel as though they both add something that otherwise we wouldn’t have, which is what a good spin-off should do.
The last thing that I think makes for a solid crossover is the impact of the story after it ends. I hate to keep picking on Knight Terrors, because I don’t really think it was a bad story, but the overall impact on the DC Universe since then has been negligible. The only significant thread I can think of was increasing Waller’s paranoia, but she already had that in spades and, what’s more, the Beast World event that FOLLOWED Knight Terrors did that same job, but better. Obviously, it’s impossible to tell right now just how Absolute Power will shape the DCU going forward, but there are hints in the solicitations for upcoming comics. After the series ends we’re going to be treated to a new initiative called “DC All-In,” which will start with a one-shot before branching out. This isn’t going to be a continuity reboot as DC has done in the past, but it will launch several new titles and some of the existing books will get new creative teams and new directions. The one that I’m most excited for will be the newly-announced Justice League Unlimited, done by the Absolute Power team of Waid and Mora. Although they’re playing details close to the vest until the end of Absolute Power, preliminary artwork and buzz indicate that this comic will be taking its cue from the cartoon series of the same name, in which the League expanded to include virtually every hero in the DC Universe, with different ones called up as needed. This is honestly the way I’ve thought they should have run the League for the past twenty years, since the cartoon was launched, and the fact that it’s finally happening makes me giddy. The fact that it’s Waid and Mora taking the reigns makes me ECSTATIC.
Holy crap, guys, Santa got my letter.
So even now, only halfway through the event, I feel as though Absolute Power has all the earmarks of one of the DC Universe’s classic storylines. All the pieces are in place and the right creative team is there. I haven’t enjoyed a book of this nature this much in years, and the fact that I’m equally excited for the stuff promised to come next makes it even better. So for the next creative team – from any publisher – who’s looking to do a multi-character, multi-title crossover epic event series, I can offer no better advice than to look to Mark Waid, Dan Mora, and Absolute Power.
Because THIS is how we do 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. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. Now if only the next event series were to bring back Captain Carrot to his deserved place of prominence in the DC Universe.
Blake M. Petit 