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
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.
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
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
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
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
(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
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.
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
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.
Anyway, the story is utterly ridiculous, but it’s harmless fun, and that’s what April Fool’s Day SHOULD be.
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!
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. You can join in the Kryptonian Konversation every day in the Year of Superman Facebook Group!
Blake M. Petit 