At the end of 2025, I made the decision to keep up my blogging about Superman. Unlike 2025, though, I’m not going to require myself to read or watch something literally every single day. That was a fun challenge, but the truth is, I know it’s not sustainable. I’ve got other writing to do, after all. But I’m going to aim to have some “Superman Stuff” for you roughly once a week. This might be a review of a comic book, a TV episode, or a movie. It might be a discussion of recent news or announcements. It might be talking about a new piece of merch or discussion of merch that I just WISH existed. I’m leaving the doors for this very open for me, because I want that freedom to take this in any direction that strikes me.
I call it…
To start this new, open-ended journey, I’m going to read a couple of the many books that were left over in my massive “Year of Superman” reading list, the first two issues of the 2016 DC Rebirth reboot, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year somehow. Following the divisive New 52 era, this version of Superman (by Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason) felt very much like a return to form – it was the post-Crisis Superman again, married to Lois Lane, raising their son Jonathan together. And oddly enough, it began with Superman – the classic Superman – mourning the death of his “brother,” the New 52 Superman, which had happened just months before.
The Kents are still living on a farm here, under the assumed identities that they were using to avoid the revamped universe’s Clark and Lois. The relative seclusion is also helpful for Jonathan, still learning his powers. At the beginning of this issue he gets a horrific reminder of just what he can do – when a bird snatches his cat, Goldie, Jonathan’s heat vision fires instinctively, annihilating both the bird AND the cat. To make matters worse, a neighbor girl witnesses his trauma. Jonathan snaps at his parents later, upset about having to hide who he really is and what he can do, and is sent to his room. As he sits in his room, his father gets a visit by Wonder Woman and Batman, both concerned about this “new” Superman and his family – particularly the ten-year-old boy with Kryptonian power.
In issue #2, Superman takes Jonathan out with him to watch as he helps a ship trapped in ice, only to find an enormous tentacled creature beneath the waves. As Superman battles the creature, he instructs Jon into how to use his heat vision to neutralize the monster and send it below the waves. To his surprise, Jon realizes it’s…kind of fun. That fun is shattered later when Jon is hanging out with Kathy – the neighbor girl who saw him use his heat vision – and takes a tumble from a tree. He’s unconscious, hurt far more than he should be, and Clark decides a trip to the Fortress of Solitude is in order, not knowing that a visitor is waiting there.
This was such a great era for Superman. The classic version is back, the family is back, and best of all, we get stories like this. Clark is teaching his son to use his powers, helping him slowly discover them and having sincere discussions about what it means to be a hero. The episode with the monster in the ice, for example, is entirely orchestrated by Clark. He knew that Jon used his heat vision on the cat (he could smell the traces of ozone left behind by a heat vision blast) and decided to pull the ol’ “get back on the bicycle before you’re scared of it” routine to put him in a position where he has to use his powers to HELP people.
Jonathan killing the cat, as awful as it is for him, is a great story beat. Superman’s “no killing” code is a fundamental part of the character, but it’s also a lesson that he had to learn. Jonathan gets to learn that lesson early, through an accident that is no less traumatic. It’s kind of emblematic of what being a parent is – you want your child to be better than you and learn from your mistakes, knowing full well that they’re going to wind up making mistakes of their own. Goldie’s death was a total accident, and Clark knew that Jonathan would take it to heart, so rather than punishing him or lecturing him, he turned it into a unique teachable moment. It was peak parenting.
This was the first time we were going to see Superman as a dad for an extended period, and Tomasi’s approach is great. In the first issue, shown mostly through Jonathan’s perspective, Clark is a little intimidating, the way kids can see their fathers. In issue two, that barrier is broken and we realize that the kind, caring nature of Superman extends to his nature as a parent. The scenes with Clark and Jon in this issue are note-perfect, and would be a hallmark of Tomasi’s run.
To be blunt, this is yet another reason I’ll never quite forgive DC for aging Jonathan up a few years later. There are hundreds of stories about teenage superheroes out there, and for the most part, they haven’t known what the hell to do with Jonathan since then. But stories of the greatest hero in the world fathering, tutoring, mentoring, TEACHING a super-powered child? Those are in very short supply, and they had only scratched the surface of the potential here before it was swept away.
At some point, I may try to find a reading order of all the Superman comics between Rebirth and Action Comics #1000, because that whole too-short two-year era calls to me as something well worth revisiting again and again. It was a great time for Superman. I just wish DC had realized it.
Blake M. Petitis a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive!Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!
Yesterday, January 1st, was the first day since 2024 that I didn’t read, watch, or listen to anything related to Superman.
And I missed doing it.
Unless you’ve been living under a Kryptonite rock, you know that at the end of 2024, enthused for the then-upcoming James Gunn movie, I declared that 2025 would be my Year of Superman, and for the next 365 days I adhered to that. Every day for a solid year I read comics, watched movies and TV shows, listened to podcasts, and otherwise spent time with stories featuring my favorite superhero and his extended family. 52 blog posts later (all of which are archived right here, by the way) it’s time for me to look back and think about what it all means to me.
Nailed it.
To begin with, I don’t do this very often, but I’ve got to congratulate myself for actually accomplishing the goal. In that original column when I announced the project, I said that I would give myself grace, fully expecting that at some point in the year I would slip up and miss a day. And let me tell you, there were days in 2025 in which I didn’t want to read or watch anything. Bad days came and I didn’t want to do much more than retreat to my own Fortress of Solitude. But I didn’t. I made it without missing a single day. Let’s talk about what that means by the numbers. Over the course of 2025, the media I consumed included:
1 TV special (the Superman 50th Anniversary special)
And finally – are you ready for this? 1206 individual comic book issues that featured at least one story in which a member of the Superman family appeared.
That’s – and keep in mind that I’m referring to myself here – batshit insane. I don’t know if David Corenswet spent as much time in 2025 thinking about Superman as I did. So after all that…what does it mean? What have I learned about him?
The truth is, I find that the things I already believed were mostly affirmed. Superman has been around for nearly 90 years now, and in that time there have been many stories told about him and many different interpretations of the character. And that’s all fine. But let me tell you about MY Superman, what I get from the character, why he matters so damned much to ME.
In Man of Steel, Henry Cavill popularized to the mainstream something that had been part of the comics for a few years at that point, that the S-shield Superman wears, the emblem of the House of El (at least going back to the 1978 Christopher Reeve movie) was a Kryptonian symbol for hope. But what exactly does that mean? Is it just because Superman is so powerful? Is it because when you see that symbol, you know that the danger you’re in is only temporary, that somebody will be there to save you? Is that “S” just for “Superman,” or does it also mean “Savior?”
Yeah. That guy. Any of him.
Superman’s story has a lot of allusions to Christianity, with Marlon Brando’s Jor-El even referring to Kal-El as “my only son,” but Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were Jewish and the story perhaps fits the concept of Moses even better. If you’ll forgive a brief moment of spirituality, Jesus was sent as the Savior of the human race in a direct way, and we get that whenever Superman saves someone falling from a burning building, leaps in front of a speeding bullet, or stops a locomotive to save the kid stuck on the tracks. Moses, on the other hand, was a less direct kind of savior, a leader, someone who GUIDES his people to a better world. And it is in this capacity that the parallels to Superman are stronger. Sure, Superman will save you from a flood, but more importantly, he’s there to show you that there’s a better way.
Let’s say it one more time: It’s not subtle.
It’s almost a cliche to say it at this point, but Superman’s greatest power is not his strength, his speed, his ability to fly or see through walls. His greatest power is his compassion, his unflinching belief in the goodness of people, and his ability to help others see things that way as well. Superman is the man who will never give up on you: no matter who you are or what you’ve done, he will always have faith in your ability to be better.
If you’re going to wear that shield, Kenan, you need to remember this.
In the climax of the new movie, David Corenswet tells Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor that his greatest strength is his humanity, and that he hopes for the good of the world that some day Luthor will realize the same thing about himself. From anybody else, that line would sound trite, pat, and cloying. From Superman, you believe it. The tragedy of Lex Luthor is not that he’s a criminal or a killer or anything else. That makes him a villain. What makes him a tragic figure, what Superman laments every time he faces him, is that he has a mind that could make the world a better place, but chooses to use it selfishly. And every time he faces Luthor, Superman hopes that this will be the time that Luthor sees the light. It’s even happened in the comics a few times, where Lex has turned good. It’s always been temporary, of course, except for in self-contained continuities like All-Star Superman, but we’ve seen time and again that even Lex Luthor has within him a seed of redemption. We’ve seen time and again that Superman is right. And if he’s right – if even LEX LUTHOR has the potential to be a better person tomorrow than he is today – then what does that mean for the rest of us?
Superman believes the best of you. And he inspires you to believe the best in others. In the final episode of Superman and Lois we see him in flight with his extended family of heroes, and we learn that he and Lois manage to change their world for the better. In Final Night, we are reminded that half the superheroes in the world look to him as inspiration (the other half, naturally, look to Batman). The whole point of The Iron Giant is that the Giant himself – an alien weapon – looks to the example of Superman and sees that he can make himself better.
The Giant gets it better than anybody on BlueSky.
We cannot bend steel in our bare hands. We cannot leap tall buildings in a single bound. We cannot change the course of mighty rivers, or freeze those rivers with our breath. We cannot fly through space unaided, travel through time, or crush a lump of coal into a diamond. Those things are beyond us.
But we can believe in the best of each other. And maybe, if we do enough of that, those others will actually begin to earn that trust. And maybe, if we do enough of that, we can learn to believe in the best of ourselves.
We should believe the best of ourselves.
Because Superman would.
Remind yourself, in those times where you’re dangling off the edge of that cliff and you think you’ll never make it, that Superman would believe in you.
And who are you to tell Superman that he’s wrong?
And don’t you forget it.
So now what?
Some people, after spending an entire year dwelling on a single character, would get tired of it. I…I’m not. I want more Superman. And there’s so much more to come. There’s the Supergirl movie coming out later this year, of course. And a new season of My Adventures of Superman is also scheduled to drop some time in 2026. Next year we’ll get Man of Tomorrow. DC Comics has announced some really interesting things for the ongoing Superman comics after the current DC KO event wraps up that I’m certainly going to want to talk about. They’ve also teased the return of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and come on, if Superman’s not involved with that in some way, what are we even doing? And let’s not forget that in March, after decades apart, Superman is finally going to meet Marvel’s friendly neighborhood webslinger again in a new Superman/Spider-Man crossover.
We’re back, baby!
Then there’s all the stuff on my list that I just didn’t get around to this year: John Ostrander’s amazing miniseries The Kents, Grant Morrison’s DC One Million event (which – let’s be honest – is a Superman story at its core), or the “world without Superman” Elseworlds series Justice League: The Nail. There are still several animated films I didn’t get to watch. I had hoped to do an entire week on fanfilms, but ran out of time. And I had stories picked out for weeks focusing on Jimmy Olsen, Lex Luthor, Kong Kenan, and other characters that didn’t get scratched off the list.
The truth is, I don’t want to stop reading, watching, or writing about Superman. I just don’t want to HAVE to do it EVERY DAY.
So consider this my official announcement. Starting in 2026 and going on…well, as long as I wanna do it, I’ll be bringing you SUPERMAN STUFF right here on the blog. Sometimes it’ll be new comics, new movies, new TV shows. Sometimes it’ll be classic stuff that I haven’t talked about before. I’ll still endeavor to have at least one blog post a week, but they won’t be as long as they were in 2025 (you’re welcome) and they may not necessarily always be on a Wednesday.
The world of Superman is vast, and despite the mountain of stuff that I mentioned in the list above, there’s plenty more to dig into. The regular Geek Punditry blog here on Fridays won’t change. But I’m going to continue to devote real estate here to talking about the characters and stories that I love.
Because there’s something to be learned here. And it’s a lesson we can all use.
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. To all the people who sent him messages urging him to make 2026 “The Year of Captain Underpants,” he considered it. A little.
I’m writing this on Christmas morning, sitting amongst piles of wrapping paper and the mountain of Hot Wheels that Santa Claus brought Eddie, The Muppet Christmas Carol on TV because it’s not time for football yet. But it’s also the first day of the final chapter. After 51 weeks in which I have watched, read, or listened to at least one piece of Superman-related media every single day, no matter what life had in store for me, I’ve only got seven days left to reach the finish line.
I’m going to think of this week as “the best of the rest.” I’m going to try to read and watch some of my favorite or some of the most significant stories remaining on the gargantuan list I started the year with. And make no mistake, that list is still pretty big. I haven’t gotten close to scratching off all of it. So perhaps, just perhaps, when I reach New Year’s Day, my journey with Superman won’t be ending, but merely evolving.
Comics:Superman Smashes the Klan #1-3, DC Go! Holiday Special #32
Notes:A few weeks ago I listened to the radio serial “Superman Versus the Clan of the Fiery Cross.” In 2019, writer Gene Luen Yang and artist Gurihiru loosely adapted that storyline into a three-issue miniseries, Superman Smashes the Klan, that kept the skeleton of the original story, but added some new elements that really made for one of those evergreen graphic novels that will be read for a very long time.
Set in the days after World War II, the story kicks off with a Golden Age-style Superman polishing off a leftover Nazi calling himself Atom Man. The fight is tougher than it should be, as Atom Man is powered by a glowing green crystal that Superman has encountered before, that makes him weak and sick. We soon discover that this is a very young Superman who does not yet know the truth of his alien origins. Something is nagging at him, and he sees an odd vision of himself in the mirror looking like a creature from outer space. Meanwhile the Lee family – Dr. Lee, his wife, and their children Tommy and Roberta – is moving from the Chinatown section of Metropolis to the city proper because Dr. Lee is starting a new job as Chief Bacteriologist of the Metropolis Health Department. Their new neighbor, Jimmy Olsen, stops by to introduce himself and invite them to the Unity House Community Center baseball practice.
The story follows the plot of the radio show fairly well, but it adds in elements that weren’t present on the air. Superman learns in the course of this story that he’s an alien himself, giving an added dimension to the story of the Lees and their struggle to find acceptance in Metropolis. We’ve also got an original character, Tommy’s sister Roberta, who wasn’t in the original story but takes on a large part of the narrative. As the daughter of a Bacteriologist, Roberta is a bit of a germophobe, which only serves to enhance her existing awkward nature, making it much more difficult for her to acclimate to her new home. I like this angle a lot. Having Tommy fit in as a typical all-American boy worked well for the radio show. You didn’t even know that he WAS Chinese for the first few episodes, making the angle of the Klan come across as a surprise to the listener. But in a comic book, there’s no way to make that kind of thing a surprise. While Tommy is still that kid who everyone loves and blends in with the Unity House baseball team easily, Roberta gives us a character to depict the alienation that someone – especially a kid – can feel in this sort of situation. The idea in the original was just to point out how foolish the likes of the Klan were, and that’s all to the good, but Gene Luen Yang (himself a creator of Asian descent) brings a whole new dimension to the story by emphasizing the struggle of an immigrant family through Roberta’s perspective. Not to make it sound like she’s some damsel in distress, mind you. Roberta is Superman’s deuteragonist in this story. She overcomes her anxiety to help her brother, realizing very quickly that Chuck Riggs is involved with the Klan and using her knowledge to race to Tommy’s rescue. She also inspires Chuck’s change of heart much earlier than happens in the radio serial.
Tommy, on the other hand, perhaps tries a little TOO hard to fit in, leaning on his ethnicity in ways he didn’t in the original radio story. Once he becomes part of the Unity House baseball team he keeps dropping jokes about being Chinese (“Confucius says” references, for example), using what makes him different to enhance his popularity. Although he’s a good-natured kid, his insistence on drawing attention to being Chinese bothers his sister almost as much as the people who insult them.
Superman himself has yet another perspective on the immigrant experience. He knows he was adopted, and we see flashbacks of Jonathan showing him a strange device that was in the ship that brought him to Smallville, but it spoke a language they were never able to translate. He’s even gone so far as to mentally suppress some of his more fanciful powers, making for a nice explanation for why he goes from “leaping tall buildings” to outright flight.
Another addition to the story is the Atom Man subplot. After Superman captures Atom Man in the beginning, we see periodically that he’s not in police custody, but being studied by the Metropolis Health Department, a study that Dr. Lee clearly has misgivings about. Lois Lane – who had almost no presence in the original radio story – takes the lead on this one, cracking open the story about the “Health Department” which turns out to be a private enterprise conducting dubious research. Naturally, this turns out to dovetail with the story of the Klan in a rather unexpected way. This is one point I’m a little unsure about. Making the Klan a more high-tech organization, with “loftier” ideals than the simple bigotry of the original works for this version of the story, to be certain, but I’m not sure if it undermines the original point at all. Perhaps smarter people than I can answer that one.
The is a fantastic story – a bold, proud tale that does far more than simply adapt the original radio drama. Indeed, it ties the story of Tommy and Roberta Lee in with the core concept of Superman, making who they are as integral to the series as who he is. I can’t recommend this one highly enough.
Fri., Dec. 26
TV Episodes:Superman and Lois Season 4, Episodes 6-10
Notes: With my wife working and my son having a mountain of toys to play with and college football to watch, I decided that the day after Christmas was the time to finally finish the last season of Superman and Lois. I’m not going to to a play-by-play on these last five episodes, so let’s assume that you’ve watched these episodes that I’m watching for the first time, and I’m going to discuss my feelings about them as I watch.
In episode 6, we see Lex trying to tighten his grip on Smallville by buying up property and bribing the citizens, but they hold firm and resist – mostly because Clark wants them to do so. It’s a wonderful series of scenes in which Clark realizes something that viewers figured out several episodes ago: after seeing Lois and the boys run to Superman’s side after he was killed by Doomsday, the entire town of Smallville now knows that he’s really Superman. And best of all, every single one of them is willing to keep the secret and cover his back. It’s a great story beat, and actually one I’ve thought about several times over the years. Considering everything that he did for the town of Smallville, especially in those continuities where he had a career as Superboy, it would be utterly absurd if there weren’t a lot of people who deduced the truth. The fact that they keep the secret speaks to an inherent goodness in them, a loyalty to the hero who has saved them time and again. Plus, when we see him trying desperately to put the cat back in the bag, convincing people that he’s NOT Superman, it’s hilarious.
Of course, there’s gotta be some drama, and the fact of his identity leaking out predictably causes some problems – kids who are resentful of Jonathan and Jordan, an antagonist from an earlier season that comes back and causes trouble. The scene where someone takes a shot at him in a diner, forcing him to reveal himself, is just glorious, and it leads to the secret being revealed to the world. When that happened in the comics I hated it, because I knew this was a genie that had to go back in the bottle and we’d seen it before. But here, when it happens on a TV series that only has three episodes left, it’s an opportunity to tell a story that hasn’t been told with Superman before, and the creators nailed it.
Beyond that, of course, another big arc in this season is the fact that Clark now has Sam Lane’s heart, and it’s reducing his powers, causing him to age. At the same time, Luthor is planning his final revenge with the combination of a new super-suit (stolen from John Henry and beefed up with Kryptonite) and the return of his Doomsday monster. It all collides in the final episode, “It Went By So Fast,” a title which I can only assume was a meta way for the writers to indicate the fact that they didn’t really want the show to end. I get it, too – this last half-season, lower on the soap opera dramatics and higher on the Superman stuff, was really fantastic, and it’s leaving me wanting more.
They’ve done the Doomsday battle before in live action – in Smallville, in Batman V. Superman, and even before in this series…This is probably the best one I’ve ever seen. With Clark on the ropes, seeing Jonathan and Jordan step up to fight hits me in that parenting place that seems to dominate how I interpret stories these days. John Henry and Lana joining the fight as well shows how big Superman has become, how this world is rising up to meet him. He may have lost a step thanks to his heart transplant, but he’s also inspired another generation of heroes, meaning he doesn’t have to do it alone.
And that’s just act ONE of the finale.
While Clark is chucking Doomsday into the sun, back on Earth Lex attacks the twins and Lois goes after him directly. As she shouts at him to stop attacking everyone around her when she’s the one he really wants, she yells the most Lois Lane line I’ve ever heard: “I am not afraid of you, but you’ve always been TERRIFIED of me,” then nails his warsuit with a mine. It’s not enough to stop him, but it slows him down enough for Clark to make it back to Earth and really start the final battle. It’s an epic, airborne spectacle that ends, inevitably, with Luthor taken down.
And now we’re only HALFWAY through the episode.
Next we get a time skip to about year later with Lana’s wedding to John Henry Irons (an event that would happen a few months later in the comics as well). Kyle and Chrissy are expecting a second child, and Kyle and Lana have reconciled into what appears to be a sincere friendship. Jordan and Sarah, similarly, seem to have finally buried the hatchet, and John Henry spends a tender moment with Natalie as Lois gets an important text about Lex’s future behind bars.
In the final act, we get a voiceover from Clark about how Sam’s heart allowed him to live another 32 years, and how he wanted to leave behind a legacy, making the world a better place. Clark, along with the twins, John Henry, Natasha, even Bruno Mannheim, begin to make real change. Using the influence of Superman and Lois Lane, they start a foundation that accomplishes good throughout the world. The twins each marry and have kids of their own, and we get a nice scene of Grandma and Grandpa Lois and Clark (in admittedly dubious aging makeup). But eventually, Lois’s cancer returns, and Clark is left alone. He lasts for several more years before Sam Lane’s heart that had beat in his chest for so long finally gives out, passing away quietly with his sons next to him.
Clark sits up, young again, seeing his own body behind him. He embraces his sons – young again – and sees his grandchildren. He finds Luthor, of all people, sitting at his kitchen table, and offers him forgiveness…says goodbye to his friends one at a time, and in the end he sees a vision of Lois, waiting, to take him into the light.
Here’s the thing: the story of Superman doesn’t end. It just – it doesn’t. Five years from now, ten years, a hundred years from now, there will and should be new stories of Superman being told.
But if Superman DID end…this is the right way to do it. An ending that is happy in the life he and Lois get to lead, despite the fact that this life – like all those of mortals – must end. And the fact that a Superman left behind a better world than he arrived on in that spacecraft from Krypton. In the comic books, they can’t really do a story in which Superman changes the entire world this way, because they still need something to tell stories about next month and next year. But here, with a television series coming to an end and, with it, closing off the stories of that universe, they have the freedom to show what Superman is REALLY capable of. This season has been a buildup, showing how Superman inspires those around him – not only his own children or friends, but the people of Smallville who were willing to stand up for him, and the people of a world that grows to do the same. The ending of this episode is a tearjerker, but it’s left with a beautiful message of hope that is entirely appropriate for Superman.
But it’s not only hope. Superman is about hope, yes. But the thesis of this series is true as well: “[Love is] the thing that makes life worth living.” It’s what makes the story of Lois and Clark so powerful, in all its many iterations. A man from another world, a woman who represents the best of ours, and how they come together…this is a story worth telling.
Comics:DC Go! Holiday Special #41
Sat. Dec. 27
Comics:DC Go! Holiday Special #43 (Cameo), Detective Comics #1103, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #5, Superman Unlimited #8, Action Comics #1093, Superman Vol. 6 #33, Absolute Superman #14, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #46, Supergirl Vol. 8 #8, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #14, Justice League Red #4 (Power Girl), Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 #5
Notes: For the final time (this year), I’m going to do a roundup of recent Superman-related comics, starting – oddly enough – with Detective Comics #1103. One of the first comics I read this year, back in the first week of January, was an issue of Tom Taylor’s Detective that showed Superman helping Bruce through an existential crisis. This actually serves as a nice bookend, with Bruce teaming up with Lois to help with an investigation. Superman appears briefly, but most of the issue is concerned with Lois showing off how dang capable she is, and how much respect Bruce has for her. It’s the middle of an ongoing storyline, so it’s probably not something most people would read on its own, but it’s worth mentioning because it’s a great Lois guest appearance.
The final issue of Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum wraps up W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo’s celebration of the Man of Steel in dynamite fashion. Lex Luthor has engineered a new Kryptonite Man, powered by the entire spectrum of the remnants of Superman’s home, and the battle between the two of them sends Superman on a spiral that leaves him questioning the very nature of the universe itself. Prince’s story leans heavily on metafiction, concentrating on Superman as a story and weaponizing that part of the character’s nature. The finale is entirely unexpected, but in its own way, as sincere a love letter to Superman as the likes of All Star Superman was – in fact, Prince and Morazzo lean heavily on Morrison and Quitely’s story here, and they do so in a way that’s both loving and triumphant. This is hands-down the miniseries of the year.
Superman Unlimited #8 gives us another of the one-off stories that this series has been doing so well. The influx of Kryptonite on Earth has changed a lot of things, including energy sources, and an experimental space flight is planning to make faster-than-light travel a commercial enterprise on Earth. With Lois Lane as a passenger on the maiden voyage, the Justice League assigns Guy Gardner to escort the flight in case something should happen. And wouldn’t you know it? Something happens. I have no doubt that Guy’s appearance in this issue is at least partially due to his guest-starring role in this summer’s big movie, but at the same time, it’s done exceptionally well. Guy is such a fun character – a rude, insufferable boor that is in every way diametrically the opposite of Superman…except for the fact that they’re both true heroes at heart. Seeing them together, both clashing and cooperating, pretty much always makes for a good time, and this issue is no exception.
Action Comics #1093 is another one-off story, this time Mark Waid telling a Superboy tale that shows an event that’s fundamental to Superman’s moral core. Dozens of farmers throughout Smallville are given notices of foreclosure on their farms at the same time. The new owner of the bank assures them that if there’s an “error” they’ll figure it out, but the time it would take to do so would ruin every farm in Smallville. When Superboy contemplates using his power to “find” the money to save the town, it becomes a battle of wills between Clark and his parents, who think that using his powers for personal gain – even to save the town – isn’t the way to go. I’m sure that everyone who’s ever read a Superman comic has fantasized about having the power to hunt down undiscovered gold or some other get rich quick scheme, and Waid does a good job with the Kents of painting a picture of why such a thing should be above a Superman. I still have to confess that I’d probably go dig up the gold if I had Superboy’s powers, but in my defense, nobody has ever called me Earth’s greatest hero.
DC KO’s “All Fight Month” continues with Superman #33, with the unlikely battle between Lex Luthor and Etrigan the Demon. Throughout the month I’ve been impressed at just how well these battles have transcended being mere slugfests. Oh, there’s fightin’ a-plenty, but each of them has gone beyond that to telling a story that digs into the heart of the characters involved. We see who they are, why they do what they do, and what makes them worthy of the Omega Heart, even if it’s only in their own mind. Joshua Williamson taps into the blackness in Lex’s heart and simultaneously shines a light on him. By the end of the issue, you almost (aaaaalmost) want to root for him in his fight with the Demon, because damned if he doesn’t convince you that he’s earned the win. We also continue the storyline with Superboy-Prime and Lois, whose Superwoman powers have returned, in the Fortress of Solitude. Recent announcements about the state of the Superman titles after KO ends have made these pages a bit more relevant than we’d realized, and although I hate the fact that they keep spoiling things in the solicits, I’m very curious to see what’s coming next to this title.
Absolute Superman #14 ends the current storyline with an epic battle between Kal-El and Ra’s Al Ghul for the heart of Smallville. As the two of them go at it, we see Lois facing off against the Peacemakers and Sol’s internal battle with Brainiac, all of which come to an amazing crescendo in this issue. Without going into a blow-by-blow, the ending of this one is probably the most hopeful thing I’ve seen yet in the Absolute Universe as a whole, although as suits this world tainted by Darkseid’s energy, the victory is bittersweet and not without a price. In many ways, it clears the table for this series, and it will be very interesting to see where the story goes from here.
World’s Finest #46 continues the story of Lex Luthor and the Joker, fused into a single being and armed with the power of a device that gives them the sum total of all knowledge in the human race. Superman and Batman, naturally, have to step up and stop them, this time getting a little extra help from Green Lantern to juice them up in a way he’s done once before. The issue ends on a cliffhanger, and it’s a pretty good one, except for the fact that it suffers a bit from Prequelitis. Admittedly, even in the present day what happens at the end would likely be wiped out by the next issue, but when you’re dealing with a series set in the past, there’s really zero tension with the “shocking” ending. It’s still a great, fun story, though.
I’m going to end my tour of new comics with Supergirl #8. It’s Christmas in Midvale, but Supergirl isn’t feeling merry. The holidays, with their emphasis on family, always make her remember everything she lost in the destruction of Argo City. Still, the Danvers and Lesla-Lar do their best to cheer her up, even as they get a strange visitor from the past that Supergirl has neglected for far too long. Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl is probably my favorite new comic book title of the year, but this issue is a little atypical. While the series is usually very bright and uplifting, this issue is somewhat darker and more bittersweet, particularly for a Christmas story. That said, it works really well. Sophie takes Kara’s pain and shapes it into a valuable lesson for Lesla-Lar, whose journey to becoming a superhero is an important component of this title. The story is told well and propels the characters forward, while still giving us a little Christmas cheer in the process.
This is most likely the last I’ll talk about newly-released comics in the Year of Superman, and it’s bittersweet for me too. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to taking a break on January 1st, but at the same time, I’ve enjoyed pontificating about these new issues as they come out. It’s one of the main reasons I’m thinking about how to continue this blog into the new year.
Yeah, I’m teasing that again. Sue me.
Sun. Dec. 28
Comics:Superman: Space Age #1-3
Notes: Continuing the theme of “Endings,” today I’ve decided to revisit the three-issue Space Age miniseries by Mark Russell and Michael Allred from 2022. Published as a Black Label series, like many of them, it really feels more like an Elseworlds. It’s set in a universe where Superman rises to prominence in the 1960s, with a Clark Kent that’s spurred to go out and find ways to save the world following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Before he puts on his costume for the first time, though, he encounters a strange man called the Pariah, who warns him that the world will end in approximately twenty years. Pariah claims to have accidentally unleashed a great evil called the Anti-Monitor, an ancient being whose goal is to bring order to the Multiverse by destroying every positive-matter universe until only his own Antimatter universe remains. He tries to dismiss the Pariah as one of the “kranks” he’s assigned to cover as a Daily Planet cub reporter, but something about him sticks with Clark and he’s unable to shake it. On the other hand, he’s sometimes skeptical that the world will even last 20 years, as the arms race is intensifying and made worse by a false flag attack on Coast City orchestrated by Lex Luthor. The cataclysm turns out to bring heroes out of the woodwork: Batman captures Luthor, Abin Sur passes his ring on to Hal Jordan, Themiscyra sends Diana to the UN as an ambassador, and Superman makes his true debut disposing of American missiles before they can annihilate the Soviet Union. Book one ends with these four coming together at a new Hall of Justice.
In book two, we jump ahead to the 70s, where Superman is well-established, and the world is at peace following a nuclear disarmament treaty. But an interview with Lois leaves him questioning whether he’s doing all he can, and a similar disagreement drives a wedge in the Justice League. It’s a bad time for it too, as Green Lantern warns of the impending approach of a cosmic threat called Brainiac and, at the same time, a Superman from an alternate universe where all human life has been rendered extinct. It’s not all bad news, though – Clark is promoted to an editor’s desk at the Planet, Lois breaks Watergate, the two of them fall in love and she confesses that she knows he’s Superman just before he tells her. They even have time to get married and have a son before Brainiac arrives on Earth. But he’s not there to destroy the world, only to take its greatest resource before the Anti-Monitor can destroy it himself, hoping to use that resource in his battle against the Multiversal destroyer. That resource, as it turns out, is Kal-El of Krypton. The League drives Brainiac off the planet, but at the cost of Green Lantern’s life.
The final book in the trilogy takes us into the 80s where Clark finds Pariah again, who is impressed by his years of heroism, but still sees the end as inevitable. With less than two years before the Anti-Monitor arrives, the Brainiacs again ask Superman to join their fight, and this time, he considers it – but when a heart attack fells Johnathan Kent, he changes path, dedicating himself to saving the human race by eradicating disease by scanning their DNA. It turns out to be a ploy to record their genetic code. When the Anti-Monitor destroys the world, Superman makes for the Brainiacs’ portal, but instead of going into it he pushes through a crystal encoded with the DNA of every human he could collect, sending them to the empty world populated by the other Superman. He returns to his family just before the end, where on the other world the other Superman restores the human race on a new home.
In terms of “ending stories,” I kind of have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it’s excellently done. The writing and storytelling are top-notch and the characters, even in the Elseworlds setting, still feel mostly true to the heroes we know and love. And I’ll pretty much always be on-board for artwork by Mike Allred, whose unique style is one of my favorites of all time. On the other hand, there’s an impending sense of doom that spreads across the entire thing. There are other dark “final” Superman stories, like Kingdom Come or Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, but in both those cases we journey through the darkness with Superman and ultimately end in a place of hope. This one has a sense of nihilism that doesn’t quite befit the character. Even the ending, where the other Superman brings back humanity (starting, naturally, with Lois Lane), leaves us with the feeling that it’s only buying time. After all, the Anti-Monitor is still out there, the final battle has yet to be fought, let alone won.
The series raises some interesting questions as the different Leaguers look on things with different perspectives. Green Arrow views the world through the perspective of the “Trolley Problem,” whereas Batman’s point of view is that he just saves whoever he can, knowing he can’t save everyone. Superman, as fits the character, refuses to accept that, and is determined to find a way to save everyone even if doing so seems impossible. It’s a noble point of view that works in the regular DCU, but Russell shines a light on how unrealistic that perspective actually is. If I was looking for something realistic, though, I don’t think I’d be reading Superman in the first place. Superman is an ideal, and ideals don’t have to be realistic. They’re something to strive for, even if you know they can never really fall into your grasp, and that’s how Superman works best.
So is Space Age a good story? Yes. Absolutely. Without a doubt.
I don’t think it will ever be one of my favorites, though.
Mon., Dec. 29
Comics:DC Go! Holiday Special #47 (Supergirl), Doomsday Clock #1-12
Notes: This is a controversial book, DC’s sequel to Watchmen which brings those characters into conflict with the heroes of the DC Universe, but I’m including it here for an important reason. In the end, this is very much a story about Superman. The first issue shows us the state of the world – since Ozymandias’s scheme was revealed by Rorschach’s journal, he has become the most wanted fugitive on the planet and the world has crept closer and closer to the very nuclear annihilation he was hoping to avoid. A new Rorschach has arisen, this time working with Ozymandias, who has a tumor growing in his skull. The two of them hope to find the only person in their universe with the power to change anything – Dr. Manhattan. Meanwhile, in another universe, Clark Kent wakes up from a nightmare, a horrible vision of the car crash that killed Jonathan and Martha Kent when he was only a teenager. It’s the first nightmare he’s ever had.
Ozymandias and Rorschach ally themselves with a pair of criminals – Marionette and Mime – who are seeking their missing son. They trace Dr. Manhattan to the DC Universe, where people are in upheaval following the popularization of the “Supermen Theory,” which posits the idea that the reason so many of Earth’s metahumans are American is because they have been deliberately created by the government since Superman’s first appearance. Faith in superheroes is eroding, with the only one who still has the public trust being Superman himself.
Over the course of these twelve issues Geoff Johns and Gary Frank delve into the nature of the DC Universe itself, starting with the notion (from DC Rebirth) that it was Dr. Manhattan who was responsible for the New 52 reboot in the first place. Turns out, it’s more complicated than that. Manhattan did toy with the fabric of the universe, but the reason it was possible for him to do so is because the “Prime” DC Universe – the one that’s called Earth-0 these days – isn’t actually part of the multiverse as we know it. Manhattan calls it the “Metaverse” (take that, Mark Zuckerberg) because it’s a core reality that the others are all reflective of. In the Metaverse, Superman made his first appearance in 1938 and inspired the heroes of the Justice Society. Then reality snapped, moving Superman’s appearance to 1956. The JSA still existed, but now Clark Kent had an early career as Superboy, inspired BY the JSA, and it was that Superboy that in turn inspired the Legion of Super-Heroes 1000 years in the future. Another snap popped Superman’s first appearance to 1986, and–
–are you seeing the pattern here?
The idea is this: Superman is the center of the Metaverse. As time goes forward, his existence is the constant, and as such, the universe is in a constant state of change. But every time the universe shifts, the previous iteration is preserved in a different world in the Multiverse. The original Golden Age Superman’s world is Earth-2. Another was preserved as Earth-1985. The version Manhattan created is Earth-52, and so forth. Eventually, Superman’s timeline will catch up with the Legion a millennium in the future, and when that happens, the ideals of Superman will become universal, and create a lasting peace.
Man, that’s a nice thought, isn’t it?
This book – much like the original Watchmen – suffered from a lot of delays before it could be finished, and many of the larger concepts have been ignored since then. I don’t think the concept of the Metaverse has been explored since this book, for instance, and by its very nature it makes sense that they wouldn’t bring it up all that often. On the other hand, this book also established that Martin Stein was part of a government conspiracy to create superheroes, and Firestorm was the result of that, something that I’m almost positive has not come up again. But that’s the beauty of this book – it provides a framework that can be used to explain away virtually any discrepancy or change in continuity. That thing you remember that the heroes didn’t? It happened in a previous iteration of the Metaverse, and it’s still canon out there in the Multiverse…somewhere.
If you’re the kind of person who considers Watchmen sacrosanct, I can understand why you wouldn’t like this book. It does, in a way, undermine the conclusion of that story by answering the intentionally vague question of what would become of Rorschach’s journals, and (perhaps even more blasphemous) it allows for that world to have a happy ending. But as good as Watchmen is, I have no objection to the notion of returning to that universe. The HBO miniseries did it in excellent fashion. I like this one too, if for no other reason than because it confirms something very important: Superman is the most important hero in the entire universe.
Shoot, guys. I could have told you that.
Tues. Dec. 30
Graphic Novel: It’s a Bird
Notes: As with Doomsday Clock yesterday, I want to spend these last few days of the year with stories about Superman and about what he means. That quest led me back to It’s a Bird, the unique 2004 Vertigo graphic novel by Steven T. Seagle and Teddy Kristiansen. It’s perhaps the most unusual Superman story of them all in that Superman isn’t actually in it.
The story, which is semi-autobiographical, starts with five-year-old Steve waiting in a hospital as his grandmother languishes. To placate him and his brother, their father brings them a Superman comic…after which, Steve swiftly rejects comics, as they remind him too much of the hospital, making it all the more ironic that he would grow up to write them. When an adult Steve is offered the job of writing Superman by his editor, he rejects it, unable to find the character relatable.
The story is mostly about Steve trying to find his way into the Superman, and along the way he takes some interesting detours. His father goes missing, and fears of the disease that took his grandmother come back. Meanwhile, everyone he talks to about getting offered Superman is ecstatic for him and dumbfounded that he doesn’t want the job. These two threads are intercut with pages of Steve’s own musings on Superman, on who the character is and what he means – or at least, what he’s supposed to mean – as he tries to find something about the character that he can make believable in the real world.
The interlacing storylines, of course, come together in the end, because such things always happen in fiction even if they almost never do in real life. His father’s disappearance turns out to be related to the death of Steve’s grandmother all those years ago, and in confronting his father and the disease that haunts his family, Steve starts to find a way in to Superman.
It’s a good story, a powerful one, but it’s one whose inherent premise is one I somewhat disagree with. Steve’s quest is to find a way to make Superman “real.” I don’t think that’s necessary. Superman isn’t part of our real world any more than Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny or the food replicators on Star Trek. That doesn’t mean that he isn’t important, though, or that there’s nothing to be learned from them. In a lot of ways, I think the very fact of Superman’s fanciful nature is perhaps the most important thing about him.
Just as the story is very atypical for a Superman comic (such as it is), so is Teddy Kristiansen’s artwork. Kristiansen’s style is an odd halfway point between sketches and realism, in some ways making me think of Art Spiegleman…which is appropriate enough, as this book echoes Maus in various ways. Both stories are autobiographical, and with a frame narrative about the author struggling to relate to their fathers. In Maus, of course, the ghost that hangs between Art and his father is the spectre of the holocaust, while in this graphic novel it’s the shadow of the Huntington’s Disease that follows Steve’s family.
The book, of course, is specifically described as “semi-autobiographical.” Not really knowing much about Seagle himself, I wouldn’t presume to declare which parts are true and which ones aren’t, but regardless of any plot elements I tend to believe that all of the emotion in this book is genuine. The concerns, the fears, the anxieties that “Steve” expresses are almost certainly part of Seagle’s own psyche. Writers tend to do that, after all.
This is the Superman book for people who don’t understand Superman. I don’t know if, in the end, it will actually help them figure the character out – at least, not the way that I understand him – but it will at the very least help them find a path through someone else asking the same questions, and that’s a journey very much worth reading.
Comics:Harley Quinn X Elvira #3 (Power Girl guest appearance), Justice League Red #5 (Team Member Power Girl), Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 #6 (Team Member)
Wed. Dec. 31
Comics: Superman #247, Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth #29
Notes: Well glory be, here it is. 365 days later, and the journey I started back on January 1 with Action Comics #1 is about to end…or at least, to evolve. I’ll talk more about that (say it with me) later, but for now, it’s time for the final Superman reads of the year. I thought hard about what to read today. In the early part of the year I’d planned to end it with a classic “last” Superman story, like Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? or Kingdom Come, but I decided to add those when I did the week of comics that influenced James Gunn’s Superman. So how else to end it? I ultimately decided to go with two comic books about what Superman is, because that’s where this entire journey has led me anyway.
First is Superman #247, the Elliot S! Maggin/Curt Swan classic “Must There Be a Superman?” Like many of the stories I’ve read this year, I encountered this one for the first time when it was published in DC’s classic Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told collection. Let’s talk about why it qualifies.
The story begins with Superman taking on a special task for the Guardians of the Universe – a pod full of deadly spores on a path to Earth, and as the spores are yellow the Green Lanterns are helpless to stop it. Superman creates an artificial planet to draw the spores away safely, but is injured in the process, rescued by Green Lantern Katma Tui and brought back to Oa to heal. As Superman is healing, the Guardians take advantage of his unconscious state to plant a notion in his mind that his influence on Earth may be impeding human progress. (If this had been the “Year of Green Lantern,” you would have found me discussing a LOT of stories that drive home an important point: the Guardians are pompous assholes.) When Superman wakes up, the Guardians give him a tour of Oa, continually dropping comments about him contributing to a “Cultural Lag” on Earth, and sending him home with the notion that if he steps back, Earth will be better off.
As he returns to Earth, he stumbles on a child migrant worker being abused by his employer. Rescuing him, the child – Manuel – brings Superman back to his community where the residents begin begging him to help solve all their problems, such as fixing their crumbling houses. Superman refuses, saying that they need to know how to care for themselves, but an earthquake strikes just seconds later, destroying their homes. Superman blunts the quake and rebuilds their houses, but tries to convince them that they need to know how to care for themselves because no one – even Superman – can do anything. He returns to Metropolis only to get word of a cruise ship endangered by a waterspout, which he rushes off to save, even as the Guardians watch from afar.
Looking back at this story now, I feel like this was Maggin’s way of responding to people who asked why Superman didn’t just sweep in and fix all the problems in the world. After all, with his power, why couldn’t he just solve hunger, homelessness, war, famine, disease, and so forth? From a narrative standpoint, of course, the answer is obvious: if Superman were to do all these things, what stories would be left to tell? It would literally be the end of Superman, as a going storytelling concern. But what about in-universe? How do you explain it to a kid like Manuel, who’s getting beaten up by a man who basically controls his entire life? The answer is something that people who know Superman could have told you from the beginning: even with the best of intentions, having someone (like Superman) doing everything for them would hold them back, leave them unable to act or take care of themselves. It kind of reminds me of all those stupid ads begging me to use Google AI to write an email or a Facebook post as if I haven’t been perfectly capable of doing that for my entire life.
Superman is there to take care of the things that we can’t. As far as the things we CAN take care of…we shouldn’t expect him to do it all for us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take inspiration from him.
“Inspiration” is the theme of the final comic I’m going to read in this year of Superman, Jack Kirby’s Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth #29. Kamandi, for the uninitiated, was a series about a post-apocalyptic world in which the human race is all but extinct, and the world is populated by anthropomorphized animals. In this issue Kamandi, one of the few remaining humans, finds the “Tablet of Revelation,” an ancient carving that prophesies the “return of the Mighty One,” a great warrior of the past. When the apes see Kamandi’s friend Ben Boxer, they believe him to be the returned “Mighty One.” One of the apes, Zuma, tries to engage him in combat, but the elder says that the Mighty One can only be revealed by demonstrating his powers against overwhelming odds. A catapult hurls claimants through the sky to prove that they can fly higher than the tallest building, an enormous boulder called the “Daily Planet” awaits the man who can move it, and so forth. Ben’s mutant powers convince some of the apes he’s the Mighty One, but a battle breaks out when they pledge to take him to his suit. In the fight, they come across a very familiar blue costume with a cape and a brilliant scarlet S-shield. Zuma tries to claim the costume, but perishes in battle as Kamandi defends the suit, saying “I know who owns it! I know that somewhere he’s still alive!” The suit is left, waiting until the true Mighty One returns.
This comic was released in 1975, some 30 years before the idea of the S-symbol standing for “hope” was put in place, but it’s hard not to think of it as you read this story. Kamandi’s faith that Superman is still out there is the sort of thing you’d expect, it feels like an appropriate place for the legend. The future of the DC Universe has been rewritten dozens of times, of course, with many of the various possibilities showing an immortal Superman, a legacy of heroes that lasts a millennia, or both. This feels like part of that, like the hero himself has left something behind with the promise that more is to come.
And that “promise of more to come” feels an appropriate place for me to stop.
Almost.
Movie: Superman (2025)
Notes: The first movie I watched this year was the original Christopher Reeve Superman from 1978. I’m going to end the year by revisiting the movie that inspired me to start this journey in the first place, James Gunn’s Superman. I’m not going to write it up again – Heavens knows you can find that on my original review. But I’m going to watch and enjoy.
One year later, and I have succeeded. I have watched, read, or listened to at least one thing starring or about Superman or a member of his family for an entire year. I’m actually quite stunned that I made it.
And I’ve still got so much to say.
But not yet. Come back Friday, friends, for my final thoughts on this year-long Odyssey, and my explanation of where I’m going from here.
Happy New Year.
Blake M. Petitis 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.
As I write this it’s December 17, one scant week until Christmas Eve. And I don’t mind telling you guys, we need a little Christmas right this very minute. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna quote the entire song. I will, however, spend the next several days reading some of my favorite classic Superman stories set around the holidays. I’ll also tackle this year’s DC Christmas special, which I’ve been sitting on in anticipation of this week, and I’ll take a look at the third Krypto short, Package Pandemonium.
Comic:DC Comics Presents #67, DC Go! Holiday Special #7 (Bizarro), DC Go! Holiday Special #8 (Sunshine Superman)
Notes: I’m starting this week with one of my all-time favorites, a comic book I’ve loved since I was a kid and I go back and re-read pretty much every year at this time. DC Comics Presents was, of course, the Superman team-up book for much of the 80s, and in issue #67 Superman teamed up with the greatest hero of them all: Santa Claus.
In “‘Twas the Fright Before Christmas” (a title which I feel has probably been used and reused hundreds of times over the years), Superman happens to pass by a kid using a toy gun to try to hold up a sidewalk Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Superman determines that the toy gun actually has a device that’s controlling the boy’s mind, and he whisks him off to the Fortress of Solitude to investigate. Superman breaks the mind control and the boy, “Timmy Dickens” (because Len Wein and E. Nelson Bridwell were not subtle writers) tells him how he found some of his Christmas presents early. Superman deduces that it’s the work of his old foe the Toyman, and bundles up Tim to bring him home. Just moments after he takes to the Arctic air, Timmy’s other toy blasts him with a ray that sends him crashing to the ground, unconscious. As Tim pleads with him to wake up, a group of tiny men with pointy ears appear as if from nowhere and take them both to safety.
Back in Metropolis, we see the Toyman monologing about how he found a chunk of white dwarf matter that he used to create heavy gravity, cancelling Superman’s powers, and believes him to be dead…but JUST in case (the Toyman may be crazy, but he’s not an idiot) he starts preparing a few other weapons. Superman, meanwhile, wakes up surrounded by his rescuers. When he asks where he is, his eyes clear and he sees Santa Claus standing over him, welcoming him to his top-secret workshop. He gives Superman a tour of the workshop, triggering memories in Superman of a holo-projector he played with as a baby, a gift from Jor-El that was lost when Krypton exploded. With Superman still weak from the gravity beam, Santa offers to give him and Timmy a lift back to Metropolis in his sleigh. They stop at Toyman’s hideout and Superman bursts in to stop his old foe, but between the earlier blast and Toyman’s Kryptonite-armed toys, the pushover of a villain turns out to be far more dangerous than usual. Santa drops down the chimney and lets some of his own toys out, and the tiny warriors help the Man of Steel defeat the Toyman in an epic battle. After the Toyman is taken away, Santa gives Superman safe toys to replace all of Toyman’s tainted gifts. As he finishes his rounds he’s about to take Tim home, but Tim’s toy blasts him again, knocking him out. He wakes up back in the arctic snow, Tim standing over him, and he believes the events of the evening to be a dream. But after he brings Timmy home, he returns to Clark Kent’s apartment to find a special gift in his cape pouch – the holo-toy his father made for him.
Usually, I despise the whole “It’s all a dream…or WAS it?” trope, but this is one of the few stories where I give it a pass. Part of it, I suppose, is the nostalgia behind it. I was probably ten or eleven years old the first time I read this story, and it’s as dear a holiday yarn to me as the likes of Rudolph and Frosty. There’s so much charm to it, and I just love Curt Swan’s depiction of Santa Claus. As much as he is one of the iconic Superman artists of all time, sometimes I wish he had gotten to do a Santa miniseries or something, just because his style lends itself so well to the character.
The story also plays on nostalgia as well, with Superman remembering the toy from Jor-El and thinking fondly of Christmases past. And while Superman’s initial skepticism about Santa DOES seem a little silly, considering all of the other outlandish things in the DC Universe that he knows are real (lest we forget, he has previously visited an alternate dimension occupied entirely by funny animals), they at least justify it by him saying that he would have seen Santa’s workshop at the North Pole if it existed and Santa casually telling him that nobody sees the workshop unless he WANTS them to. That whole “magic vulnerability” again, y’know?
This story, along with several other classics, was reprinted in 1988 in the first of two Christmas With the Super-Heroes specials. It was my first exposure to not only this story, but other classics like the Teen Titans “Swingin’ Christmas Carol” and “Silent Night of the Batman.” Both this issue and the entire special are – for once – available on the DC Infinity app, and if you want a little holiday cheer, it’s worth the read.
Dec. 18
Comics: Superman Vol. 2 #64, Adventures of Superman #487, DC Go! Holiday Special #12 (Super-Pets), DC Go! Holiday Special #13 (Bizarro)
Notes: This was probably the first Superman Christmas story I remember reading as an ongoing fan of the comic, surprisingly enough. I’d only come on-board 14 issues prior, during the Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite, and there wasn’t a Christmas story the previous year. This one made up for it, though, with “Metropolis Mailbag” written by Dan Jurgens with art by the late Butch Guice. This story established something that we’ve come back to in the Superman titles a few times over the years: people send letters to him all the time and they pile up in the Metropolis post office, as he doesn’t actually have an address. Then, a few days before Christmas, he comes by and reads and responds to as many of them as he actually can.
The task of reading the mail is arduous for Superman, the hero who wants to help everybody and sees the mountains of letters as a visual representation of all the desperate people beyond his help. This year, at least, he has a little company, as Lois is joining him in reading the letters so she can write a story about Superman’s tradition for the Daily Planet. After sifting through fan letters and get-rich-quick schemes, he starts to sift out the people he can actually help, such as an Auschwitz survivor who has discovered that the sister whom she thought died in the war is still alive, but she has no means to get to Germany to see her. The triumph of their reunion is quickly dulled, however, when he finds another letter from a boy whose father is dying from a brain tumor. Superman visits the child in the hospital, arriving just minutes after Terry Baldwin Sr. passes away. Although Mrs. Baldwin is grateful that he came, Terry Jr. – who wrote the letter – is outraged. Superman sits with the boy and tries to explain himself, but he’s not having it.
“But you’re SUPERman!” Terry shouts.
“No. I’m SuperMAN. And there are many, many things I just cannot do.”
After a few weepy panels (both for the characters and the reader), the doctors come by to ask Mrs. Baldwin if her husband was an organ donor. Superman, sensing an opportunity to take some good from this tragedy, tells her about a letter he received earlier from another woman in desperate need of a heart transplant. In what can only be categorized as a Christmas miracle, Baldwin’s heart is a perfect match, and Superman swiftly delivers it.
One last letter comes from a charity for disadvantaged kids that can’t afford Christmas presents or a Santa Claus this year, asking Superman to make an appearance to distract them from the lack of toys. As always, Superman does it one better with the help of his friends. Emil Hamilton whips up a sleigh and plays Santa, delivering a load of toys donated by one Mr. Bruce Wayne. Superman flies the sleigh down to visit the kids, incognito, and slips away before any of them suspect that they’ve witnessed anything other than Christmas magic.
This issue has been a favorite of mine for decades now. It’s a sweet, simple extrapolation of who Superman is and what would likely happen in a world where he existed – a mountain of pleas for his attention, of course, and the way he tries to handle as many of them as possible.
The story also humanizes Superman in ways that few other stories do. It’s natural enough to see him in pain over all the people he simply cannot help – that’s just part and parcel for who a Superman should be. But the panel where he’s arriving at the hospital, unable to save Terry Sr., cuts right into the gut. Jurgens has him pause for a moment on the hospital roof before going inside, thinking about the boy whose world he’s about to shatter, thinking, “I hope he understands. I hope he won’t hate me.” You read this panel, Guice drawing Superman’s face in shadow, and you’re not hearing the voice of the world’s greatest hero. You’re hearing a very human man who loves people, who desires connection, and allows a very relatable moment of despair at the thought that he’ll be blamed for something beyond his control. It’s one of those single panels that encapsulates the character just beautifully.
The story worked so well that it was revisited a few times, most notably one year later when Superman was “dead” after his battle with Doomsday and the rest of Earth’s heroes picked up his mail and dealt with it in his honor. But this original did it best. It’s a perennial read for me, a work of art, and it is as Superman as Superman gets.
Fri., Dec. 19
Comics: New Adventures of Superboy #39, DC Go! Holiday Special #19, 20
Notes: It’s the last work day of the year for me, and honestly, I’m ready for it. I need some time to decompress, although I fear terribly that those circumstances I keep talking about are going to do their best to prevent such decompression in the home stretch of the Year of Superman. Still, I spent Thanksgiving with Superboy, so I’m bringing him back for one last go today in “A World Without Christmas” by Paul Kupperberg and Kurt Schaffenberger.
It’s Christmas Eve in Smallville, but Clark’s classmate Bash isn’t feeling it. Bash – whose parents had to go out of town unexpectedly, leaving him alone – rants against the commercialization of Christmas and storms out of the Kents’ Christmas party. Clark heads after him, approaching him as Superboy, figuring that Bash would be more receptive to him that way. It doesn’t work – Bash continues to rail against the world. Playing a little Dickens, Superboy whisks Bash to an alternate reality where there is no Christmas, and Smallville is a dilapidated dump. Bash encounters that world’s Clark Kent, who runs away from him in fear, summoning an angry mob that’s out for blood, wanting to drive out the “costumed stranger” and the “Bashford Punk” from town. The two are separated, and Superboy is found by that world’s Jonathan Kent, one of the few decent people left. He takes Superboy to an underground hideout where, to Superboy’s shock, he finds Bash teaching Jonathan’s friends to sing “Silent Night.” Superboy takes Bash back home, his Christmas spirit renewed, neither of them ever learning that the leader of Jonathan’s resistance is that world’s Bash Bashford.
It’s a different kind of Christmas story, that’s for sure – kind of bleak and melancholy. Although I suppose the ultimate message is that good can be found anywhere, which is appropriate enough for the Christmas season. I’ll allow it.
Sat., Dec. 20
Short Film: Krypto Saves the Day: Package Pandemonium
Notes: It’s the third of the four Krypto shorts, this time giving us a warm, fuzzy tale of absolute chaos that feels delightfully appropriate for the holiday season. It’s Christmastime in Metropolis, and while Clark is sending out his Christmas cards, Krypto’s X-Ray vision happens to spot a postal worker carrying a package with a mouthwatering t-bone steak. Hunger overwhelms Krypto’s urge to be a good boy, and calamity ensues.
Okay, three cartoons in and I think it’s safe to say that this is the pattern for the Krypto shorts: he gets the urge to chase something for some reason, he causes lots of wacky shenanigans in his pursuit, and in the end he realizes he’s made a mistake and does his best to fix all the stuff that he’s wrecked. Yeah, it’s formulaic, but is it really any more of a formula than the classic Coyote and Roadrunner or Tom and Jerry shorts? They’ve all got their patterns, the real question is whether the filmmakers can find a little variety and a little fun while staying within the bounds of the formula. And I think this one does. The chaos is funny and Krypto’s remorse at the end feels genuine. Plus I’m still chuckling over the fact that Metropolis has a store literally named “Oversized Ornaments Outlet.”
Sun., Dec. 21
Comic:DC Special Series #21
Notes: Today I’m grabbing another old favorite from DC Special Series #21, aka the Super-Star Holiday Special. This book from 1979 featured several stories starring Jonah Hex, Batman, Sgt. Rock, and the House of Mystery. The one I’m reading this for, though, is Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes in “Star Light, Star Bright…Farthest Star I See Tonight!”
Superboy is bouncing forward in time for one of his regular visits to the Legion just in time for Christmas. His friends show him some of the futuristic holiday celebrations, and Superboy is left feeling nostalgic for a simple, old-fashioned Christmas. Then, to make all the Legion’s futuristic technology worthwhile, he proposes a little adventure: using their tech to try to track down the Star of Bethlehem. With Wildfire, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Phantom Girl joining him, the Legion sets out to look for the star. When they arrive where it should be, though, they find a planet in dire straights. The planet is entering an ice age, causing its three intelligent species problems. An aquatic race is dying because the plankton they feed upon is freezing. A land-dwelling mammalian race is so desperate for warmth that they’re setting fire to their own crops. Finally, ice storms are battering the nests of an avian race, threatening the eggs that hold their young. The Legionnaires help each of the tribes but know their aid is only temporary, until Superboy comes up with a plan. Together, the Legion uses their powers to carve out an underground catacomb where the three races can shelter from the storm and coexist with one another, sharing resources and warmth until the United Planets can find a way to safely evacuate them to a more suitable world. Although Wildfire remains characteristically skeptical, Superboy is happy to credit his quest for the Christmas star for saving an entire world that Christmas Eve.
The first time I ever read this story, like the DC Comics Presents story from a few days ago, was when it was reprinted in Christmas With the Super-Heroes from 1988. Dang – maybe I should have just read that book this year. But regardless, I really like the message here. The story is a bit light on traditional Christmas elements: no Santa Claus, no Angels, no carols or candy canes. Despite that, though, writer Paul Levitz leans on the spiritual aspects of the holiday even 1,000 years in the future, set against the backdrop of a story that feels like it could have come out of an episode of Star Trek. It’s not something that many writers would do today…in fact, more recent Legion stories have mashed all of the Earth’s winter festivals into a bland, homogenized “Holiday” (which is actually what it’s called), whereas Levitz recognizes and celebrates different traditions: while the story is explicitly a Christmas tale, we see other alien cultures, as well as other Earth festivals like Chanukkah, which is celebrated by Colossal Boy (whose Judaism isn’t frequently referenced, but it’s not ignored either).
I particularly like how Superboy has this sort of childlike wonder to him. He’s never got a hint of doubt that their quest will bear fruit, and although he doesn’t exactly find what he expected, the fact that his curiosity helped save three intelligent civilizations is evidence that he was right all along.
Although only the final story in this special is Superman related, the others have a lot going for them as well. The Jonah Hex story cracks open Jonah’s childhood to show the horrible cycle he’s trying to escape, the Batman story has some early Frank Miller art, and the House of Mystery is a wild little romp where most (if not all) of DC’s horror hosts of the era get into a little contest to see who can tell the best Christmas story. The special is available on the DC Universe Infinity app, and it’s worth cycling into your yuletide reading.
Mon. Dec. 22
Comic:Superman Vol. 2 #165, DC Go! Holiday Special #26, 29
Notes: I don’t talk about cover art often enough in these write-ups, but let’s take just a moment to appreciate this lovely little scene by Ed McGuinness: Superman and Lois looking down at a box of ornaments as Superman ponders that most inscrutable of holiday questions: what do you get the JLA for Christmas?
The story within, unfortunately, is somewhat less effusive with the holiday cheer. Written by Jeph Loeb, this story takes place in the aftermath of the election of Lex Luthor as President, with Superman struggling to wrap his head around the fact that such a thing could have happened. The issue is a series of vignettes, each by a different artist, in which he visits a member of the League, has largely the same conversation over and over again, and then gives them a token Christmas present. Some of them, like Green Lantern’s gift, are a bit of a gag, while others like Wonder Woman’s belie a deeper meaning.
I get the intent behind this issue. The President Luthor story was a big one, and it makes sense for Superman to struggle with it, even to the point of a mild existential crisis But in practice, this issue comes off as very repetitive, with each Leaguer’s respective stance being highly predictable. The rotating artists thing doesn’t work great either. Some of the scenes are sublime – having the late Mike Wieringo illustrate an outer space game of Satellite Baseball between Superman and Kyle Rayner is just lovely. Others are less so, but I suppose that Loeb was a big enough name at the time to want to work with his friends, and I can’t in good faith begrudge him that.
All said, despite the premise of this issue being that Superman is delivering Christmas presents to his teammates in the Justice League, this is probably the least Christmasy story I’ve read this week.
But again, that cover is a banger.
I had more fun with the DC Go! Holiday Special #29. This digital series has mostly taken short stories from the assorted DC holiday anthologies of the past and re-presented them one at a time in their “Infinite” format, so they aren’t new stories, but I honestly don’t remember where most of them were originally presented. In this case, we’ve got “A Lex-Tacular Christmas Carol” by Ethan Sacks with art by Soo Lee. It’s one of a thousand takes on the ol’ Dickens chestnut, but it’s an entertaining one. After sending an employee (named Bob, naturally) off to spend his Christmas Eve working instead of spending time with his family, Lex sets out to have a good night’s sleep, only to find himself visited by a variety of familiar spirits. Just when you think you’ve seen every iteration of A Christmas Carol that you could think of, you get hit with something like this. Whereas most of our Scrooge stand-ins go through the requisite character arc, Lex is utterly nonplussed about the ghosts. Even his own father as the stand-in for Jacob Marley doesn’t make Lex bat an eye, merely comparing his current appearance to what he looked like when Lex – y’know – murdered him. Sacks DOES give in to tradition just a hair at the end, but all in all, Lex makes for them the most delightfully unrepentant Ebenezer Scrooge you could possibly imagine.
Tues., Dec. 23
Comic:Batman and the Outsiders #19, DC’s I Saw Ma Hunkel Kissing Santa Claus #1, Titans Vol. 4 #30 (Guest Star Jon Kent)
Notes: I like it when Superman pops up as a guest star alongside other, younger heroes. It’s a good way to see just how he’s perceived by the hero community at large, and this Christmas story from Batman and the Outsiders #19 serves that purpose well. On Christmas Eve, Geo-Force (arguably the most powerful member of Batman’s mid-80s team) is with the young Halo when gets a phone call from a friend who has swallowed a bottle of pills. After getting the young woman, Denise, to medical attention, Geo-Force discovers that she was driven to this desperate situation after being sexually coerced by one of her college professors. Geo-Force sets out to kill the professor and Halo rushes off to Batman for help. Recognizing that he can’t possibly stop Geo-Force on his own, Batman makes a call to Metropolis. As Superman and Halo seek out Geo-Force, hoping to stop him before he does something he can’t take back, Batman uses his own skills to attack the lecherous professor in his own way.
Several things worth mentioning in this one. First, when Batman quit the Justice League and founded the Outsiders (a whole 19 issues ago) it caused a rift between himself and Superman that all of their assorted titles dealt with for months, particularly the title they co-starred in, World’s Finest Comics. The fact that Bruce immediately calls Clark for help when he realizes what Geo-Force is up to is a wonderful way to demonstrate that the rift has largely been healed at this point. It’s also cute to see Halo mooning over Superman when she meets him for the first time. The “young heroine gets a crush on Superman” trope wasn’t new even when this book was published in 1984, and often it gets tiresome. It works quite well with Halo, though – she’s a teenage girl who is struggling with assorted identity issues of her own while, at the same time, still dedicated to being a hero. She’s also the kind of person whose heroism shows brightly, cheerfully – she may be a member of Batman’s team, but she’s not the kind of hero who sulks in the shadows.
The Geo-Force fight is the really interesting part of this story, though. It’s often tempting to enact what TV Tropes calls “the Worf Effect” in stories like this one – having a character who should theoretically be much more powerful than his opponent suddenly become weak or ineffective. It’s an annoying trope, and when you hear “Superman Vs. Geo-Force” (who’s very much a rookie at this point) it doesn’t seem like it should be a contest. But Geo-Force not only holds his own, but writer Mike W. Barr sells you on its plausibility. Superman’s powers are, after all, due in part to the lower gravity of the Earth, and since part of Geo-Force’s powerset is the manipulation of gravity, it allows him to balance the playing field considerably, making for a more tense battle scene.
Despite the dark undercurrent of this story, the presentation at the end feels hopeful and bright, which is just what you want in a Christmas story, isn’t it?
Also on the docket today is this year’s DC Comics Christmas special, I Saw Ma Hunkel Kissing Santa Claus. (Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, whoever it is in the DC marketing department that’s coming up with the titles for these holiday anthologies deserves a raise.) There are eight stories this time out, and I particularly liked the opening story starring Ma Hunkel herself, as well as the tales with Billy Batson, Animal Man, and Dr. Light. But I’m here to talk about the Supergirl story, “Holiday Woes” by Ash Padilla with art by Anthony Marques. Kara is spending Christmas in Smallville with Lois and Clark – her first since declaring herself the protector of National City, and she’s nervous that if she takes time away from her tasks as a superhero, people in her town will go undefended. But Clark wants her to loosen her up, and sets her up on a blind date at the Smallville Winter Festival. As is to be expected from a blind date in a comic book, things don’t go exactly as planned.
I’ll knock out the thing I didn’t care for: the retcon of Pete Ross’s son. As recently as the Summer of Superman special early this year, we saw that Pete and Lana’s son Clark Ross is still in continuity and still a child. A teenage son named Jonathan Ross doesn’t fit in anywhere here. Now it’s easy enough to dismiss the story as just being out of continuity, as the stories in these holiday specials rarely turn out to have any ongoing relevance. But in this case, darn it, I WANT this story to turn up again. The truth about Kara’s date is really sweet, and the kind of thing that appeals to an old-school fan like myself. (And truth be told, I’d like to see Dr. Light team up with the Atom again the way they do in this issue. What can I say? Like Clark Kent in this story, I love love.)
Notes: I’m going to wrap up this festive week with some Golden Age Goodies, beginning with what I have to assume is the first ever Superman Christmas one-shot, Superman’s Christmas Adventure from 1940. Lois and Clark convince their editor to begin a campaign to collect and refurbish used toys to give to needy children for Christmas. News of this campaign makes it all the way to the North Pole, where Santa is pleased to see that Lois and Clark are acting as his helpers this year. But a pair of villains who hate Christmas – Dr. Grouch and Mr. Meany – have sent a ship to the Pole where they try to convince Santa to convert his workshop to a commercial enterprise. Failing, they attack the Planet’s toy drive, setting the workshop on fire, with it only being spared thanks to Clark’s super-breath. Foiled again, they decide to attack Santa’s workshop directly, only to be driven back by his army of toy soldiers. Lois has stowed away on their ship (because of course she has) so they strap her to a rocket and blast her into the sky, where Superman rescues her. The villains split up, with one of them kidnapping Lois (again) and the other stealing Santa’s reindeer – a crime that statistically is far greater than stealing forty cakes. Santa radios Superman for help, and although he saves the reindeer, Grouch and Meany manage to gas them to sleep, rendering them unable to pull Santa’s sleigh. Superman, of course, steps up to help the big guy make his rounds.
This 16-page comic, originally published as a department store giveaway, is absolutely wild. It ends when Santa gives the bad guys Christmas presents, despite the fact that they quite clearly belong on the naughty list, and this makes them instantly reform and give up evil. Really, that’s all it takes. And I didn’t even mention the two-page sequence where Superman takes a spoiled rich kid on a tour of the less fortunate children of Metropolis to make him appreciate what he’s got and teach him the spirit of giving. That has NOTHING to do with the main plot. This story is wild, unfocused, a plot seemingly assembled by shotgun. And I of course loved every panel. Here’s hoping that Tom King is working on the gritty reboot of Grouch and Meany for next Christmas.
Action Comics #93 brings us “Christmas Around the World.” It’s 1945, and in the aftermath of World War II, Lois and Clark find an abundance of refugee children separated from their families during the war. Superman, of course, loads them up in a glider and begins a world tour, delivering food and supplies to impoverished areas while, at the same time, reuniting the children with their families, and spreading Christmas spirit along the way. It’s an odd little story. There’s no villain. There’s not even really any conflict. The closest we have is one boy who lies about wanting to go with Superman to be reunited with his father, but who only didn’t want to make his friends (whose fathers died in the war) feel bad. It’s just a little picture postcard of a world healing itself after its darkest hour.
I’m going to wrap up this week of yuletide joy with Action Comics #105, a comic so stuffed with holiday cheer that I am currently wearing a t-shirt with the cover on it. Millionaire Jasper Rasper is a mean man who hates Christmas. He sneaks off to the North Pole and tempts Santa with some candy that is specially formulated to make fatty tissue multiply at an alarming rate. When Superman gets wind of the scheme, he rushes to the Pole to find that Santa is now too plump to make it down the chimneys on Christmas Eve. Superman begins whisking Santa around the world on an exercise tour, slimming him back down. As he’s about to head out, though, they find that Rasper ALSO drugged Santa’s reindeer (Santa needs to step up his security detail), so Superman agrees to pull that ol’ sleigh again. As they’re making their way south, they see that Rasper’s helicopter crashed on an iceberg. Superman saves him and the villain, just like our pals Grouch and Meany, has a miraculous change of heart.
Just when you think you’ve seen every Christmas story possible, we get a gem like “Villain makes Santa Claus too fat, so Superman becomes his fitness instructor.” It’s a magical time.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this week of holiday adventures friends, and I hope you and yours have the merriest of Christmases. And I hope to see you all next week, on New Year’s Day, when I’ll present the grand finale of my Year of Superman.
It’s the last somewhat “random” week of the year, my friends. With only three of these blogs left before the Year of Superman ends, I’ve got plans for weeks 51 and 52 – that means I’ve got seven days to scratch as many other items off my list as possible. And you know, I’ve narrowed down that list substantially over the last 49 weeks, but there are still a lot of things I haven’t gotten around to and, frankly, I know that I WON’T get around to before the year is out.
But you know, that’s okay. Just because the year is ending doesn’t mean I’ll stop talking about Superman.
More about that later, but for now, let’s jump into this week’s journey, shall we?
Notes: This is, I believe, the third installment in DC’s “The World” series of graphic novels, following Batman and the Joker. The concept here is that different creative teams from all over the world are invited to contribute short stories about the title character of the anthology. It’s a neat idea that, in the first two volumes, showed us some interesting perspectives on the titular characters. Let’s take a look at what creators from all over do with the man of steel.
The book starts with Dan Jurgens and Lee Weeks (who also did the Doom Rising graphic novel I read yesterday) contributing the American story, “Let Slip the Dogs of War.” Lois and Clark are on a flight into Metropolis (a tedious and frustrating enterprise for Clark) when their plane is diverted due to what appears to be a kaiju attacking the city. Superman, of course, gets out to do his thing, and discovers that the creature may not be the threat people take it for. It’s a very Jurgens-esque story, with a great big honkin’ alien and Superman being Superman in the most Superman way possible. I’ve made it abundantly clear that I don’t think there’s a creator in comics who gets Superman better than Dan Jurgens, and this is one more example of that.
Spain’s Jorge Jimenez contributes “Superman in Granada.” After stopping a meteorite from hitting Earth, Superman’s powers are neutralized and he finds himself stuck in Spain for about six hours before the effects wear off and he can get home. The story is partially a travelog about how beautiful and welcoming the city of Granada is (and Jimenez and colorist Alejandro Sanchez 100 percent sell you on that concept), while the rest of it is about Superman getting by in a place where people don’t quite believe who he is, because let’s be honest, if you saw a guy in a Superman costume walking around and trying to explain that he can’t fly at the moment, you probably wouldn’t believe him either. This one is really very sweet.
“Superman’s Inferno” comes from Italian writer Marco Nucci and artist Fabio Celoni. Lois and Clark are in Italy on the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante, author of the Divine Comedy, a day in which it was prophesied that a portal to Hell would open and flood the world with demons unless a lost incantation is recited. Lois dismisses it as legend, but Clark is uneasy, and when the clock strikes midnight – sure enough – the city is hit by an earthquake. The story traces Superman’s journey through the nine circles of hell – nice, if a little on-the nose. And the revelation of the “incantation” is perhaps just a shade too cute, but still clever. The artwork is top-notch, though, a journey through Hell that’s perhaps a little on the cartoonish side, but tells the story very well.
From Serbia, writer/artist Stevan Subic gives us “My Choice, Protecting the Light.” With his super-hearing, Superman picks up someone in Serbia threatening violence against another person who describes themself as “Superman’s friend,” trying to prevent the other from obtaining Kryptonite. This story is a little weak. Although Subic goes out of his way to say that the people of Serbia are Superman’s friends and to have Superman call them honorable, we don’t really SEE any of them, except a brief glimpse of the guards protecting the Kryptonite. It’s very much a case of telling instead of showing. The story would have been served better had the people taken a more active role in the fight scene, interacting with Superman and his mystery adversary a little bit more, rather than keep it so contained.
Cameroon’s writer Dr. Ejob Gauis and artist E.N. Ejob are the creators of “Chariot of the Gods.” A week after Superman stops a villain in Cameroon, damaging an ancient statue in the process, he is being forced into a battle against one of their champions. By breaking the statue, Superman cut the people off from their gods, and only a judgement by combat can complete the restoration ritual. The story is a bit of a treatise about respecting the boundaries and traditions of other cultures. It’s a little disjointed – like, why couldn’t anybody TELL Superman what the big deal was about the statue BEFORE they started punching each other? – but overall it works.
Rana Daggubati and Sid Koitan give us India’s entry, “To Be a Hero.” A young Superman, just a year into his career, is in India as Clark Kent when he gets invited into an expedition to find a lost civilization. When they come across it, though, they’ve been beaten by outsiders looting the temple of sacred artifacts. I really liked this one – a short, simple story of Superman doing the right thing with great artwork and a color scheme that feels like this was originally produced for the Red and Blue series, which of course is magnificent all around.
Mauro Mantella and Augustin Alessio are the creators of Argentina’s “The Last Seed of Krypton.” While Clark is in Argentina chasing a story, an energy-creature from what turns out to be a yellow Kryptonite meteor bursts free and attacks Superman, disrupting his powers as yellow Kryptonite does. The creature turns out to be a Kryptonian equivalent to Swamp Thing, hoping to merge with Earth’s Green. There are good ideas in this story, and I quite like the contradictory narration of Superman trying to find a way to defeat a foe whilst that foe sees him as a “Kryptonian brother” trying to bring him a gift. But it’s never quite clear why they’re fighting in the first place, other than the creature frightening people. There doesn’t seem to be any THREAT in allowing it to merge with the Green, or if there is, it isn’t made explicit. There’s also a point where Superman – his powers dwindling – has to find a way to amplify moonlight to recharge himself. Cool idea, except that nobody seemed to let the colorist know that this scene was supposed to take place at night – it seems to be broad daylight outside. There’s something here, but the execution falls kind of flat.
Turkish writer/artist Ethem Onur Bilgic’s story is “The Hero and the Bull.” Lois and Clark – who are seriously piling up Daily Planet travel expenses in this book – are in Turkey for a history symposium. A group of mercenaries is going after some sacred stones in this one, which can be used to summon a being from antiquity. This one is pretty cut-and-dried – bad guys want to use an old artifact to do a bad thing, Superman stops the bad thing. No twists or surprises, but it’s well done and the art is great.
“Superman in Paris” is by Sylvain Runberg and Marcial Toledano Vargas. Clark has taken Lois on a trip to France to visit an exhibit by her favorite artists, but King Shark swims up the Seine looking for a meal on the logic that French food is the best food in the world, the French people eat French food every day, therefore French people should be the most delicious prey on the planet. I mean…I can’t really fault that logic. It’s a funny story with a fairly standard Superhero fight in the middle of it. Again, though, the artwork by Vargas is top-notch.
Brazil’s Jefferson Costa writes and draws “The Red Mantle.” Clark is in Rio seeking an ancient artifact – the titular “red mantle” – that has been stolen from a museum exhibit. He winds up getting into a philosophical debate with the thief. It’s okay, but I’m starting to wish that DC had put a cap on the number of stories that deal with “an ancient artifact” in this book. I get it, the point is to showcase the culture of the creator’s country of origin, but how many times in a row can that fall on some sort of piece of antiquity being either misused or misunderstood?
“Marzanna” is Poland’s contribution, written by Bartosz Sztybor with art by Marek Oleksicki. In Poland, on the last day of winter, an effigy of the winter goddess Marzanna is drowned in effigy to signal the beginning of spring. But Clark Kent is there because for decades now, every year, a woman has gone missing on that day only to be found later, drowned in the river. You’d think somebody would have pieced together the link between the two before then, don’t you? Anyway, Superman finds some people trying to kill a live woman, believing that the effigy is not enough to prevent eternal winter, and he ends up fighting Marzanna herself. Now this is a good example of what I’m talking about – the story is deeply rooted in Polish culture, but it’s totally different from “watch out for that ancient artifact.” More of these, please.
Bernando Fernandez of Mexico is the creator of “To the Left of the Hummingbird.” In a story with delightfully cartoonish artwork, Clark is in Mexico City to write about the local street food scene (I really want his job), when the city is rocked by a series of Earthquakes. The quakes turn out to be the result of Huitzilopochtli, god of War, sending his harbinger beasts (which look an awful lot like elephants) to prepare the people for doom. You know, as good as “Marzanna” was, this story is making me realize that “Superman fights local god” is just as prevalent in this volume as “Superman deals with ancient artifact.” In some of the stories, like “The Hero and the Pull,” there’s even overlap. Come on, guys, how about a little variety? All that said, this story is really well done, and the ending has a nice, clever little twist that sets it apart.
“Man of Kruppstahl” is next, from German cartoonist Flix. (“Stahl” is German for “steel.” I checked.) Perry White gets a letter from Heinrich Rupp claiming that he’s invented steel stronger than Superman, and has even sent three plane tickets so they can send a team to check it out. For the first time in this book, someone other than Perry is footing the bill. That’s nice. Anyway, he sends Lois, Clark, and Jimmy Olsen to Germany to investigate the “K-Ruppsteel.” Rupp unveils a giant cage and has a “randomly selected lady” (Lois) tossed into it to demonstrate how tough it is, claiming that Superman MUST be afraid of his invention, or else he would be there. This flawless logic aside, Superman of course shows up to show his “metal.” Get it? Ah? Anyway, it’s a cute little story with wonderful artwork, provided you don’t think too hard about the logic behind it.
Stepan Kopriva and Michael Suchanek of the Czech Republic are behind “If Nihilism is the Answer, What is the Question?” which sounds like the title of an original series Star Trek episode. And in fact, the story takes place in the far future aboard a Czech space station, when an older Superman is summoned to protect the station from a meteor swarm. He becomes embroiled in a conflict between residents of the station who are happy to have him there and others who see him as a symbol of imperialism there to subjugate their autonomy. I admit, I don’t know much about Czech politics, but I get the distinct impression that this story is intended to be a satire of some common issues in that country. If anyone out there knows more about the topic than I do, let me know if the satire lands. That said, I like this story and I especially liked Suchanek’s design for the older Superman. It’s a great look.
The last story is the fifth chapter of the Japanese Manga series “Superman Vs. Meshi” by Satoshi Miyagawa and Kai Kitago. I covered the first chapter of this series earlier in the year. If you missed that blog, the story – and in fact, the entire series – is about the fact that Clark Kent loves Japanese chain restaurants and ducks over to Japan for lunch whenever possible. I’ve read this entire series on the DC Infinity app and I do enjoy it, but it’s still one of the most bizarre Superman projects I’ve ever seen. In this issue specifically, he gets there a little too late to go to his favorite restaurant, and instead discovers the wonders of Japanese convenience store food.
As with any anthology, the quality varies from story to story. Some of them are great, and none of them are true duds, although as I said, I would have liked a little more variety in the basic premise for some of them. Boy, the Japanese entry averts that problem, though.
TV Episode:Superman and Lois Season 3, Episode 10-11.
Thur., Dec. 11
Comics: World of Metropolis #1-4, DC Go! Holiday Special #3 (Supergirl and Superwoman of Earth-11), Justice League of America #52
Notes: Earlier this year, I covered John Byrne’s four-issue World of Smallville miniseries for Mother’s Day, as it was (sadly) one of the few stories I could find that gave a real focus to Martha Kent. But this was actually just the middle series in a trilogy that Byrne wrote in order to flesh out the new continuity he’d crafted for Superman with the oft-mentioned Man of Steel reboot. The first miniseries was World of Krypton (which took its title from one of DC’s early miniseries in the pre-Crisis days), and the trilogy wrapped up with World of Metropolis, written by Byrne with art by Win Mortimer. I’m going to dip my toes into this one today, four issues that each focus on a different member of Superman’s Metropolitan cast, beginning with Perry White in “A Reporter’s Story.”
After praising Jimmy Olsen for bringing in a front-page story about Superman beating one of those hulking bad guys that show up all the time, Perry comes across another story about LexCorp expanding into Ho Chi Minh city. Lex Luthor’s continued success bristles Perry, triggering a flashback to the time when Perry White, a young reporter at the time, came home after a year and a half away covering stories in an overseas warzone. Perry has a happy reunion with his girlfriend, Alice Spencer, not knowing that during his absence she’d been romanced by Lex, who deliberately kept her in the dark about Perry’s whereabouts or even if he was still alive. Perry is distraught when he learns his old friend Lex is planning to sell the Daily Planet. Luthor offers Perry a job anchoring the news on his TV station, but Perry demands that he’s a newspaper man. As he’s leaving, Lex has one of his many female assistants bring Alice an earring she left there before, revealing their dalliance. Perry and Alice reconcile and he finds an investor to buy the Planet and keep it open, but Lex still considers the victory his when Alice announces that she’s pregnant.
The story of Jerry White, Alice’s son whose fatherhood is somewhat ambiguous for a while, would become a running subplot in the late Byrne and post-Byrne comics for a while. The discovery that Lex was Jerry’s true father drove a wedge between Perry and Alice, and Jerry’s subsequent death only made it worse. Their marital woes became a running subplot for years in real time, and eventually led to them bonding over adopting a young boy, Keith. It’s interesting how something that was such a big element of the comics for so long started here in this spinoff.
Issue #2 is the Lois Lane spotlight, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” In flashback 15-year-old Lois Lane dragged her little sister with her to the Daily Planet office and tried to get a job out of Perry White, now the managing editor of the paper. He tells her to come back in about ten years, but on the way out Lois hears some men discussing something happening at LexCorp, and how anyone who scores that story will get major points with Perry White. Lois sneaks out that night and breaks into Luthor’s tower to try to find some sort of evidence. Although she’s captured with relative ease, Luthor is impressed by the fire he sees in the girl. She manages to sneak out a single slip of paper with information that impresses Perry as well, and she lands her first job.
Let’s hear it again, folks: “THIS is the way Lois should be written.” She’s smart and she’s gutsy, but at 15 she isn’t yet wise. In fact, it’s that teenage illusion of immortality that fuels this story, showing how she stumbles into a situation that could very well have gotten her killed in other hands. Byrne’s Lois kept her gumption when she grew up, but added the experience that would have kept her from ever making such childish mistakes. It’s a good look on her.
Lex comes across much worse, though, practically salivating over video footage of Lois having her clothes shredded and searched by one of his employees. It would be bad enough if he did that with adult Lois, but doing it to the 15-year-old adds an additional level of creepyness that I suppose has far greater weight today than it did when this was written in 1988. And while I often make the point that villains in fiction should be expected to do villainous things, this was perhaps a bridge too far. I don’t know that this particular plot point was ever referenced outside of this issue, and I doubt that it ever would have passed editorial if the comic came out today.
Clark Kent steps up in issue #3, “Mr. Kent Goes to Metropolis.” When he first arrives in Metropolis, young Clark Kent notices a shootout between the police and some criminals with heavy ordinance, holed up in an apartment building. Not yet having adopted his Superman identity, he tries to stop the shootout discreetly before he has to make it for an interview to enroll in Metropolis University. One night he spots a woman being chased by a car, but she escapes without his help. He does happen to overhear her name and where she works, though – it’s Lois Lane of the Daily Planet, and seeing her inspires Clark to pursue journalism.
This issue isn’t as solid or direct a story as the first two, with a large portion given over to a subplot about Clark getting a job at a diner through college, a waitress there getting a crush on him, and the fact that in the modern day they’ve remained friends, with her kids (with her husband Ed) even calling him “Uncle Clark.” Sweet story, very humanizing, but kind of forgettable. We’ve definitely seen this kind of thing with Clark Kent before.
Jimmy Olen gets the last story with “Friends in Need.” After Jimmy gets into one of those scrapes he’s always getting himself into, he summons Superman with his signal watch for a little help. After he’s safe, Jimmy remembers four years ago, when he came up with the idea for the watch in the first place. Only 14 at the time, Jimmy has a job as a copy boy at the Planet, sneaking out of his house to prove himself to folks like Lois and Clark, who is celebrating his one-year anniversary at the paper. The sneaking out gets him in trouble with his mom, but as she’s chewing him out Jimmy is visited by a troubled classmate, Chrissy, who has taken a bottle of pills and is fading fast. Jimmy’s mother tries to call emergency services, but she can’t get through, and Jimmy breaks the phone in frustration. As his mother rushes out to try to hail a car for help, Jimmy uses his radio kit to send out an ultrasonic signal that Superman hears, summoning him to get Chrissy to the hospital just in time. Jimmy, of course, adapted the technology into his signal watch, and today Chrissy has been taken out of her abusive home, giving her a happy ending of her own.
There’s some nice stuff in here, particularly in showing how clever Jimmy Olsen can be. For instance, a conversation with Lois has them questioning why Superman’s face is always blurry in photos, and just how it is that Clark gets so many Superman stories. Jimmy floats an…interesting idea that Lois quickly shoots down (in a fun reversal of the old Silver Age paradigm of Lois trying to prove that Clark is Superman). And of course, his quick thinking to save Chrissy’s life helps show off some technological skills that help flesh out the character as well. Too many writers forget that and just write Jimmy as some boneheaded kid, and “Superman’s pal” deserves better.
TV Episodes:Superman and Lois Season 3, Episode 12-13.
Fri., Dec. 12
Comics: Action Comics #309, DC Go! Holiday Special #4 (Bizarro and Earth-23 Superman)
Notes: I’m gonna be honest, I’m swamped today. I had work, of course, and working in a school in those three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas is like working backstage on the Muppet Show, only less organized. Later, I’ve got to take my son to basketball practice, and we’re following that up with our annual trip to Lafreniere Park and their lovely family Christmas Light display. So I need something quick to read. I choose Action Comics #309 from the remains of my list, the famous story where Superman tells his identity to – well, I’ll do my recap.
The story begins with Clark receiving a letter for Superman from the President of the United States, who is asking him to recover the nose cone from a recent spaceflight to be presented as a gift to an astronaut on a TV show. This begins a series of chores where he’s asked to find different items to give to the honorees of the TV show, but when he arrives at the studio he discovers that everyone – even the President – was bamboozling him to keep him busy, as HE, Superman, is the first honoree on Our American Heroes. The show goes off as sort of a take on This is Your Life, as Superman is visited by friends such as Richard Parker (retired Smallville police chief whom he worked with as Superboy). Next come the three LLs in his life – Lois Lane, Lana Lang, and Lori Lemaris, then Supergirl and the Super-Pets. Before Superman can summon a robot from his fortress to appear on the show as “Clark Kent,” he overhears Lois and Lana planning to use a device that detects electronics to prove that he and Clark are the same person. As the show goes on, Superman meets more and more of his friends: the Kandorians, Pete Ross, Jimmy Olsen, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and Batman and Robin. But every possible replacement “Clark” is scratched off the list since they’re already there: his Kandorian double, the shapeshifting Chameleon Boy, Batman…even Pete (who Superman doesn’t know knows his dual identity) assumes that Superman will just summon a robot.
But sure enough, at the last minute, Clark Kent walks across the stage, baffling Lois and Lana when their device fails to register him as a robot. As the show ends, Superman takes “Clark” backstage, where he removes the makeup to reveal the one man that Superman recently did a favor for that he knows he can trust with his identity: President John F. Kennedy.
It was a more innocent time, friends.
The story is fun, but as often happened in the Silver Age the writers took some wild swings to justify cancelling out anybody who could have helped Clark in his predicament. The Legion has to go home to deal with an emergency, so Chameleon Boy couldn’t stick around. (They have a TIME MACHINE. Why do they have to go NOW?) Batman takes off his mask to show that he’s wearing Bizarro makeup because he thought it would be funny to show Lois Lane what a Bizarro-Batman would look like. After all, we all know just what a wacky prankster the Batman can be. Unfortunately, it would take far too long to take off the makeup and replace it with a Clark Kent disguise, so he’s no good either. It’s just a symptom of the storytelling – when you start with the end, that being “Superman needs the president to pretend to be Clark Kent,” you might just have to jump through some ridiculous hoops to make it work.
We also get a Supergirl story in this issue, “The Untold Story of Argo City.” After a visit to the Midvale Orphanage were she lived before she was adopted by the Danvers, Supergirl has dreams of her parents Zor-El and Allura, pleading with her and telling her they’re alive. Frightened by the dream, Supergirl ventures into the Phantom Zone, believing them to be there. The hordes of Kryptonian villains who inhabit the Zone taunt her, telling her that her parents ARE there, but they refuse to help. Leaving the Zone, she uses an invention of Superman’s that allows her to see the past to view Argo City’s destruction. As it turns out, before Argo died of the Kryptonite radiation from the ground beneath them, Zor-El found a different frequency of the Phantom Zone which he called the Survival Zone, but only he and Allura made it there in time. Now that they have found a way to contact their daughter, Supergirl vows to help her parents get free some day.
And she did, eventually, but that’s all pre-Crisis stuff. It didn’t happen that way anymore. Still fun to read, though.
Sat., Dec. 13
TV Episodes: Superman and Lois Season 4, Episodes 1-5.
Notes: My goal, I don’t mind telling you, is to include the final episode of this series in the last week of 2025. It’s going to be a week of endings, and I’ve heard a lot of great stuff about the finale of the series as a whole, so I’ve got high hopes.
I haven’t written too much about the last several episodes, even as I was watching them, but starting the final season feels like a good place to do a sort of recap. The Big Bad of season 3 of Superman and Lois actually turned out to be cancer, as the bulk of the season was taken up with Lois battling the disease. This ran parallel with a subplot about mobster Bruno Mannheim, who happened to own the hospital where Lois was being treated. She also befriended a fellow patient that turned out to be Bruno’s wife, and Natalie started dating a really nice, charming guy who turned out to be his son. It’s the sort of string of coincidences that we only accept in TV Land.
The Lois storyline, I admit, was effective. There was a good amount of sincere emotion built into it, with everything building up to a crescendo a few episodes before the finale. Then in the last two episodes the season went into a totally different direction: Mannheim’s downfall revealed information that exonerated Lex Luthor, who has been in jail for 17 years following an expose that Lois wrote about him. In those last two episodes he was released, threatening Lois. The last episode ended with a cliffhanger – Sam was kidnapped and Superman wound up fighting an awfully Doomsday-esque monster that was created through the systematic torture of the awfully Bizarro-esque Superman from another world from season two.
The third season kicks off with Luthor continuing to spread his threats, Sam in Luthor’s captivity, and Superman missing – the last glimpse we got of him is his tattered cape floating on the surface of the moon. If they’re going for another version of the Death of Superman story, they deserve credit for taking it in a very different direction than any of the previous iterations. But as they go through it, things get DARK. Sam is beaten and tortured by Lex, and he’s tossed into a grave to be buried alive with Lex giving the order to keep the sand wet to make it more painful. The boys are desperately looking for any sign of their father or grandfather, and Lois confronts Lex again, where he expresses his plan to move to Smallville permanently. Fortunately, Jordan’s super-hearing picks up on Sam choking and he and Lois manage to save him just in time. Still no sign of Clark, though. Not until the final moments of the episode, where Doomsday (is he officially Doomsday? Imma call him Doomsday) beats him into submission, then brings him back to Smallville and drops him in the middle of the street in front of Lois and the twins, then bounds away to give Luthor Superman’s heart as ordered to do. Lois, Jonathan, and Jordan fall to their knees in tears as the people of Smallville watch.
The opening of this final season is nicely tense, but there’s something seriously missing: the rest of the cast. After building a strong group of characters with John Henry, Natalie, and Lana Lang’s family in the first three seasons, the producers relegated everybody except for Lois, Clark, and the twins to “recurring” status, none of them having more than a handful of the ten episodes to their credit. It feels like a cheap money-saving measure, honestly, and while the episodes I’ve watched thus far aren’t bad, there’s a definite sense that things are missing. I’m hoping that their few remaining appearances will be enough to give their respective stories a sense of closure.
The second episode begins with Lana getting everyone in town to back off as Jordan brings his father to the Fortress, pleading with the AI of Lara to save him. Despite the fact that he’s literally missing his heart, she promises to do all she can and puts him into stasis. When he returns home, he tells Jonathan that the only way to save their father is to find the heart that Doomsday ripped from his chest. The whole episode is a cat-and-mouse game between Luthor and the Kents, and…
It’s definitely not going in any direction I could have predicted. I’m looking forward to how this shakes out.
Sun., Dec. 14
Comic Book:Superman: Under a Yellow Sun #1
Notes: Although it doesn’t come up very often these days, in the early years of post-Crisis continuity, John Byrne and other, later writers occasionally mentioned that Lois and Clark both had side hustles writing fiction in addition to their careers as journalists. I even recall one issue, although I don’t remember which one, in which Clark bemoans seeing one of his novels in a bookstore placed on a remainder table next to the horror novel Fear Book, which was written by – nice meta joke here – John Byrne. This 1994 one-shot by John Francis Moore takes the metafictional aspect a bit further by presenting Under a Yellow Sun, a novel by Clark Kent. The one-shot cuts between scenes from the novel illustrated by Eduardo Barreto and a subplot featuring Clark Kent’s adventures in “real” life that inspire the novel, with art by Kerry Gammill.
Clark is struggling to produce his novel, dodging his agent and throwing himself into a news story, something he’s more comfortable with. Gangs in Metropolis are getting their hands on high-tech ordinance that seems like it could only have come from LexCorp, and Clark gets entangled with a LexCorp executive named Joanna DaCosta, who may have the key to unlocking the mystery. Joanna, Luthor, and Clark’s usual supporting cast all bleed into the novel he’s working on, a potboiler about a former special forces agent named David Guthrie who’s caught up in an arms trafficking scheme in what seems to be an island paradise.
It’s fun to see Clark struggling with a problem that Superman cannot possibly help him with – writer’s block. And it’s fun to see the story bounce back and forth between Clark’s imagination and the stuff that feeds it. There are good bits with Lois as well – where she’s concerned about Clark’s relationship with Joanna (although published in 1994, this story is set before Lois and Clark were engaged or she knew his secret identity), and where she helps him at the end when his frustration over his failure to catch Luthor in the act leads him to write a bitter nihilistic ending that Lois rightly declares is unfitting for him.
It’s a romanticized version of a writer’s life, to be certain, but come on…it’s still Superman’s writer’s life. There are bound to be some liberties taken. But it’s a great opportunity to get eyes on a corner of Superman’s life that we rarely get to see.
Mon., Dec. 15
Comic: Superman Vol. 2 #9, DC Go! Holiday Special #6 (Team Member, Superdemon of the League of Shadows), Justice League of America #53 (Team Member)
Notes: ‘Tis the Monday before Christmas break, and for a teacher, that means it’s crunch time. I’ve got essays to assign, papers to grade…and as much as I hate to skimp, I think the next few days I’ll be looking at relatively quick things. Fortunately, after Friday hits I’ll be off work for the remainder of the Year of Superman, so hopefully I’ll be free to tackle a lot of the meatier stuff that’s still on my plate. For today, though, why don’t we take a look at the first meeting – post-Crisis, that is – between Superman and the Clown Prince of Crime? “To Laugh and Die in Metropolis” comes from John Byrne’s Superman #9.
Superman casually wanders into a jewelry store in Metropolis, but he’s uncharacteristically silent and unresponsive, despite a smile on his face. That smile grows deadly, though, peeling into a rictus as his face is bleached white and his hair turns green. Gas spews out of his ears, killing everyone in the store, and he loots a massive diamond. Opening the case triggers a silent alarm, though, and the REAL Superman hears it, zipping in to stop what turns out to be a robot – with a nuclear bomb in its chest cavity. He flies the robot into orbit before it explodes. The blast knocks Superman to the Mojave Desert, while back in Metropolis the Special Crimes Unit starts to clean up the victims. When Superman returns, he picks up a signal from Jimmy Olsen’s famous watch, only to find it attached to a balloon with a note from the Joker claiming he’s kidnapped Jimmy, Lois Lane, and Perry White, and sealed them in lead-lined coffins across the city with less than a half hour of air.
The Joker, meanwhile, is gloating in his secret hideout – a mobile tanker car – in which he’s got all three captives tied up. His plan is to have Superman waste time looking for them while he makes his escape, gleeful at the vacation from matching wits with Batman and only having to deal with a “muscle-bound clod” like Superman. The smile (literally) is wiped off his face seconds later when Superman lifts up the truck and brings him straight to prison.
The story is quick and fun, with Byrne taking the opportunity both to show that Superman is NOT – as the Joker assumed – just dumb muscle, and also to demonstrate something about his powers. The Joker thought that Superman not being able to see the lead coffins would make them impossible to find, when in fact, it made it easier. He simply swept the city with his X-Ray vision and quickly found and opened each coffin he COULDN’T see through. I feel as though Byrne wrote this story as much to clarify that aspect of Superman’s powers as he did for the sake of the story itself.
Although the main story is self-contained, Byrne had a lot of subplots going during his tenure, and this issue followed up on one of the main ones. In an earlier issue, someone had stolen Martha Kent’s scrapbook of Superman activity, and in this one it arrives at Clark Kent’s desk at the Planet. It’s part of the Amanda McCoy storyline – the Luthor employee who deduced Clark’s identity – that we’ve seen in bits and pieces across the year. There’s also a one-page vignette with Lana Lang that set up the later Millennium crossover.
The gem of the issue, though, is the short back-up story, “Metropolis 900 Miles.” Lex Luthor stops in at a random diner 900 miles from Metropolis (hence the title), where he meets an attractive young waitress named Jenny and invites her to spend a month with him in Metropolis. When she tells him she’s married, he doesn’t blink an eye and offers her a cool million dollars to be his for 30 days. After coldly telling her how meaningless her life is, he tells her he’ll wait for ten minutes in his car for her decision. Jenny has a few pages of pondering the offer, arguing with her coworkers and calling her husband, before looking out the window and seeing that Luthor is gone. In the final panels we see Luthor gloating with his driver, saying that Jenny will spend the rest of her life wondering what her answer would have been.
This is a particularly sadistic game to play, even for the likes of Lex Luthor, but that’s kind of what makes it work so well. Byrne was still in the mode of demonstrating the ruthless billionaire incarnation of Lex, the classic Mad Scientist being so close to people’s hearts for so long. I think this story went a long way to demonstrating just how cold, cruel, and manipulative the character actually was. It’s the kind of thing that makes you despise him even more…which is, ironically, also the very thing that makes him an interesting, compelling character, and which makes this story some of the best character building work Byrne ever did with the character. And all in a scant seven pages.
One of these days I’ve got to get around to doing a full readthrough of the Byrne era of Superman.
Don’t worry. I’ll let you know when I do.
Tues., Dec. 16
Comic: Adventures of Superman: House of El #4
Notes: Circumstances suck. We all have to deal with them at times, and they’re really never a good thing. Circumstances severely limited my time to do much of anything today, friends, and I admit, I dropped in a book that I knew I could read quickly without thinking too much about it. Adventures of Superman: House of El #4.
Still in the distant future, Superman is seeking his lost adoptive children, Otho and Osul, with the help of his descendant, Ronan Kent. The path leads them to a world called Lanternholm, where they’re going to have to confront Ronan’s estranged twin sister, Rowan, who is apparently part of a distant evolution of the many-colored Lantern Corps that we’re familiar with in our time. I have to say, this is probably the most interesting issue of the series for me so far. I’ve mentioned before how the fact that we know Superman will return to his own time kind of deflates the consequences for his book. There are a few more inasmuch as the fates of Otho and Osul, unlike Superman himself, are NOT written in stone…but at the same time, those two characters have been so out of focus in the comic since Kennedy’s original run ended that I’m not sure anybody would have even noticed if they were just never mentioned again.
Rowan and Lanternholm, on the other hand, are a different story There’s some interesting stuff happening here, with Rowan using what appear to be Star Sapphire powers in a different way than we’re used to, and implications that the Lanterns of this era are vastly different from those of our time. I’d like more exploration of this, to see what Lanternholm is and how it grew to that point, but I don’t know if we’ll get much more of that before this miniseries ends.
This week, I’m sorry to say, is ending on a bit of a low note. It was a rough day. But with only two weeks left until the end of the year, I’m hoping I’ll be able to latch on to some stuff that will bring some much-needed holiday joy into our household.
With Thanksgiving behind us (save for a refrigerator stuffed with leftovers) I for one am ready to dive headfirst into the Christmas season. I’m ready for decorations, lights, radio stations that play holiday classics 24/7 and, of course, Christmas movies and TV shows. But today, I want to focus on wonderful little subset of entertainment we know as the Christmas special. It’s not a regular episode of a TV show, it’s not long enough to count as a movie, but somehow it’s just not Christmas without them. We all know the Rankin and Bass all-stars, of course, and we’re well-versed in the antics of the Peanuts gang and the wiles of the Grinch. Those of us who are particularly sophisticated even indulge annually in Garfield’s Christmas shenanigans. But in the decades that Christmas specials have existed, there are many that have come and gone without leaving the mark that these other, better-known specials have… and some of them are outright BIZARRE. This week, to help you kick off the season, I’m going to give a spotlight to five lesser-known, sometimes baffling Christmas specials that you may have forgotten – heck, that you may never have heard of at all.
Twelve Hundred Ghosts
We’ve all seen A Christmas Carol, of course. In fact, we have no doubt seen it dozens of times, maybe even HUNDREDS of times, and we can do that without ever watching the same version twice. The story is a perennial that we’re all familiar with: On the night before Christmas Ebenezer Scrooge, professional miser, is visited by three spirits who show him visions of the past, present, and future in an attempt to get him to change his ways. Charles Dickens’ book was originally published in 1843 and became not only a classic, but in many ways helped reinvigorate the popularity of Christmas itself in a world where it had been waning. It is well-known and well-loved and this, combined with the fact that it’s in the public domain, means that it has been adapted perhaps more than any other story in history. Just think about how many different movies there have been based on the story, how many TV shows have borrowed its plot for Christmas episodes, how many times it’s been produced on stage, spoofed in commercials, adapted into comic books, and basically translated into every storytelling medium imaginable.
Heath Waterman imagined perhaps a bit TOO much, and in 2017 his imagination gave birth to Twelve Hundred Ghosts: A Christmas Carol in Supercut. Waterman spent a year and a half assembling clips from virtually every iteration of the story he could find – TV shows, movies, parodies, and plenty of others. Using only these clips, he assembled a retelling of the story that is surprisingly cohesive. Despite the fact that we can roll from a clip with Patrick Stewart to Mr. Magoo to Basil Rathbone in the blink of an eye, it’s amazing how well the narrative holds together. Even someone who has only a passing familiarity with the story could easily follow along with the tale as assembled by Waterman, and by the time its 53 minute running time is over, you’ve got a more complete telling of the story than many of the different versions tell you on their own.
Being a supercut made of copyrighted works, Waterman can’t market or sell his creation, and you won’t find it on Netflix or on DVD. But the whole thing is available on YouTube, and it’s worth the time to watch if you’re even remotely curious about how it works.
The Great Santa Claus Switch
Before The Muppet Show, Jim Henson’s Muppets appeared in a variety of different forms – in commercials, as performers in sketch comedy programs, and of course, on that new kids’ show Sesame Street. In 1970, Henson and his team produced The Great Santa Claus Switch as a special episode of The Ed Sullivan Show. In this hour-long special, an evil villain named Cosmo Sam (played by the great Art Carney) has decided he wants to take over Christmas for himself. To carry out his nefarious scheme, he’s going to kidnap Santa’s elves one at a time and replace them with his own minions, furry creatures called Frackles.
As you can tell from the description, Henson was never one to shy away from reusing certain resources. “Frackle,” for example, sounds an awful lot like the name of another pretty popular Henson production. He recycled actors as well – Art Carney wasn’t just Cosmo Sam, but also Santa Claus himself. (Carney, of course, would go on to star in another of the greatest Christmas movies of all time – The Star Wars Holiday Special.) And then there are the Frackle PUPPETS. Several of them were reused and repurposed into background characters a few years later when The Muppet Show premiered. You’d see them dancing in the background during sketches or hanging around in crowd shots…well, all except for one. One particular Frackle, a blue and purple weirdo with a hooked nose named “Snarl,” was given a new set of clothes and a new personality for The Muppet Show, not to mention a new name. You may have heard of him – these days he goes by Gonzo the Great.
This is a rare Muppet production that, as best I can tell, has never had an official media release. However, like 1200 Ghosts, the curious among you can watch it all right now on YouTube. It’s a decent enough special, and it’s really interesting as a piece of Muppet history that you may not have known about.
Beebo Saves Christmas
The “Arrowverse” era of DC Comics television was a fun one. Beginning with Arrow, the line went on to encompass shows like The Flash, Black Lightning, Batwoman, Supergirl, and most pertinently, Legends of Tomorrow. That last one featured a team of superheroes on a time-travelling ship, with a cast that rotated with surprising frequency over the years. After a couple of seasons the show got stranger and stranger and eventually, they just embraced it. At one point, for reasons that are far too complicated to explain, the heroes wound up summoning a giant version of a blue, furry doll called Beebo to help fight demons. I swear, it makes sense in context. The show was utterly bonkers and once it accepted that fact, it transcended to the level of genius.
In 2021, they took it one step further and made an actual Christmas special, Beebo Saves Christmas. This was ostensibly an animated special that existed in the world of the show, a tie-in to the Beebo toys, kind of like how Pixar told us that Lightyear was the movie that Andy’s favorite Toy Story character was based on, except that the Beebo special was actually entertaining. In the special, an elf named Sprinkles (Chris Kattan) becomes obsessed with efficiency and convinces himself that he can handle the demands of the Christmas season better than Santa Claus (Ernie Hudson). So it’s up to our fluffy pal Beebo (Ben Diskin) to gather his friends and…well, you read the title.
The astonishing thing about this special is how genuine and earnest it feels. It has all the hallmarks of a TV special that’s meant to shill toys but, at the same time, has a sort of warmth and heart to it. The people who made this weren’t just phoning it in to sell merch, because there WAS no merch. They were making a show to PRETEND they were selling merch, and they clearly had fun with it.
“So Blake,” you may be asking, “Where can we watch this holiday masterpiece?” Well, that’s the bad news. The main Legends of Tomorrow series is currently streaming on Netflix. (Why not on HBO Max? Because – and I cannot stress this enough – Warner Bros doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.) But the Beebo special, which was not technically an episode of the series and was never presented as such, does not appear to be streaming anywhere. And I think we can all agree that this is a true disgrace.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: We Wish You a Turtle Christmas
Remember in the 90s, at the height of Turtlemania, when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles somehow transcended the pages of comic books, fought free of the television screen, broke out of the movies, and became a real-life rock band? How they actually toured and you could see them live? And somehow, in 1994, they got a live-action half-hour musical Christmas special? How could you possibly FORGET, right?
There’s not even an attempt at a plot for this one. It’s a series of short music videos, some of them original songs, some of them turtle-ized twists on Christmas classics, and all of them absolutely terrible. These are some of the worst Christmas songs you’ll ever hear in your life. The music is lousy, the voices are awful, and the attempts at humor fall flat and cause ear-splitting, heart-rending agony in anybody unfortunate enough to have to hear them. It is perhaps the single worst Christmas special ever made.
Speaking of trendy pop-culture characters that got overexposed, isn’t it wild that Pac-Man had a hit cartoon show? The game is just a circle running through a maze eating dots and occasionally ghosts. Somehow, Hanna-Barbera turned that into a Saturday morning TV series that built out the world and the mythology of “Pac-Land” and Pac-Man’s family crafting an entire world where everything is round and bulbous and susceptible to the kind of puns that I am absolutely DYING to make except that I try to keep these columns as PG as possible. And in 1982, that popularity spilled over into a half-hour special.
In Christmas Comes to Pac-Land, on Christmas Eve Pac-Man and his family munch the ghosts, as they do, and the ghosts’s eyes float away, as they do. But on this Christmas Eve, the eyes happen to spook Santa’s reindeer, causing a crash in Pac-Land. But the Pacs, as it turns out, have never heard of Christmas before, and Santa has to explain it to them, then enlist their help to find the toys that got spilled across the countryside before Christmas is ruined.
I’m never sure what to make of this special. Are we to understand that Pac-Land is a place in our own world, a place that Santa Claus glides over in his sleigh every year, but has never visited before? That we’ve never spotted? And if that is the case, what does the existence of ghosts imply? The theological implications of this special cannot be understated, and conflicting Biblical scholars have been debating the results of its teachings for over four decades now. Frankly, it was highly irresponsible of Hanna-Barbera to release this at all, and they now bear the responsibility for causing the greatest religious schism since the Protestant reformation. Merry Christmas!
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 may have gotten a little carried away on the Disney Universe thing, but he has no regrets.
As Week 47 dawns, I find myself in a quandary. You see, with only six weeks left in the year, I am looking down at the list of stuff I wanted to cover and I know there’s simply no way I’m going to get around to everything. I expected that, to be honest. But there are certain things that I feel I SHOULD cover, particularly different media productions of Superman that I’ve barely touched upon, if at all. From today, Nov. 19, I looked at this week – after Saturday I’ll be on Thanksgiving break. That will give me a little bit more time to do some of these things, but will it be enough? Can I squeeze in ALL of the movies and TV shows I haven’t done? Or would I have to wait until next week, which will begin the day before Thanksgiving…but I’ll be back at work that Monday. And in the meantime, there are several days where I know that my time will be limited – Thanksgiving itself, at least one “shopping” day, and two days during the break which are devoted to taking the family to the Louisiana Renaissance Festival and taking my son to see Zootopia 2. How can I POSSIBLY choose a week to fit all of these things in? I’m sitting here pulling out my hair…
And then the answer hits me.
“You dummy,” the answer says, “this is YOUR challenge. You can make the rules whatever you want. Who says it has to be just ONE week?”
Doy.
So over the next TWO weeks, I’m going to endeavor to cross off as many of the remaining Superman adaptations as I possibly can, while allowing myself the days where I know I’ll have to find something short to read that will not fit the theme. I am choosing to be kind to myself. Superman would approve.
I’ve created for myself a list of every Superman movie – theatrical or animated – I have not already reviewed this year. I’ve also added the pilot episodes of any show I haven’t discussed substantially. (I feel like I’ve written, at various points, enough about Superman: The Animated Series, Superman and Lois, and My Adventures With Superman that I’m okay skipping those.) I’ve also added in the old theatrical serials, a few significant documentaries, and a few adaptations that are too weird to resist. All in all, there are about 30 different things I hope to watch, and I make no promises of getting to them all, but I’ll do my best.
And I’m going to start with something entirely different.
Radio Program:The Adventures of Superman serial “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” episodes 3-12.
Notes: I’m gonna share a little behind-the-scenes magic with you guys. That internal monologue I just shared with you? That didn’t happen today. I went through it a few days ago. Please continue to trust me.
That said, once I decided to do this format, I knew that one of the things I HAD to include was the Adventures of Superman radio show, which starred Bud Collyer – the Superman of the Fleischer animated shorts – as Clark Kent and Superman. Beginning in 1940, the radio program was the way that a lot of people were first introduced to the Man of Steel, and between that and the Fleischer shorts, helped make him a household name. In particular, there was one storyline from 1946 that I’d intended to listen to from the day I decided on the Year of Superman project, and this seems like the perfect time to do it. The story, which lasted for about 15 installments of daily 15-minute episodes, is titled “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” and it is EXACTLY what it sounds like.
Clark Kent is hanging out with cub reporter Jimmy Olsen (Jackie Kelk) who tells him about the hot new pitcher on the Unity House baseball team, a kid named Tommy Lee. Their previous pitcher, Chuck Riggs, is pretty sore that Tommy took his spot when he moved to Metropolis. He keeps harassing Tommy, even intentionally hogging the plate in practice, resulting in him getting beaned by a pitch. Jimmy, the manager, throws Chuck off the team for his behavior. Chuck goes home to his Uncle Matt and tells him the story, and Matt brings Chuck to repeat his tale to a “secret meeting,” embellishing and lying to make it seem like Tommy hit him malevolently. Chuck’s group, the Clan of the Fiery Cross, uses this as an excuse to launch an attack against Tommy and his family, especially his father, a doctor who was recently awarded the job of the city’s top Bacteriologist. As the Clan’s activities get more frightening and brutal, even kidnapping Jimmy and Perry White over an anti-Clan editorial, Jimmy’s pal Superman naturally has to step in to preserve the fight for truth, justice, and the American way.
I apologize if the following description offends anybody, but I have to say it: putting this story on the radio in 1946 was ballsy as hell. Without ever using the real name, the story was a direct attack on the Ku Klux Klan, painting Matt and his cronies as bitter, angry cowards and not flinching away from the nasty portrayal of their bigotry. The story was inspired by a man named Stetson Kennedy, who infiltrated the real KKK and suggested the story to the show’s producers, even giving them details about real Klan rituals, some of which were used in the show. The writers also took great pains to paint the average Clansman as weak and cowardly. One of the most amusing parts comes in the final few episodes, when Matt Riggs flees to the leader of the Clan, only to learn that his “Superior” doesn’t even believe in the racist bile that they’ve been spewing. He sees the Clan as nothing more than a means to milk money out of hateful, pathetic men. I’m not sure if that makes him better or worse than the true believers, but either way, it’s food for thought.
The show reportedly had a real-world impact as well, trivializing groups like the Klan and cutting into their recruitment and membership, taking away the power. For the first time, Superman wasn’t just a fictional hero, but was doing real, measurable good in the real world.
To make it even better, the story itself not only cuts some real world bad guys off at the knees, but it’s a corker of a story, too. One of the things I like about it is how they slowly build the threat. In the first episode (each of which is only a little more than ten minutes, with the commercials cut out) all we really see is that Chuck hates Tommy for taking his spot on the baseball team. The implications are pretty subtle for the first and second episode, with it not quite being overt just WHY Uncle Matt hates Tommy’s family so much. The only clear comment I remember hearing, in fact, is Tommy shouting the word “yellow” in the midst of an argument, and with multiple people shouting it would be easy to miss or to misconstrue as meaning “coward.” The Clan is introduced in episode two, and it was obvious from the outset just what group the producers were parodying, but it’s not until episode three that Tommy and his family are explicitly stated to be Chinese. Now to be fair, I’m not a historian. It’s entirely possible that in 1946, just having the last name “Lee” would have been a dead giveaway. But they don’t SAY it. Tommy has no accent and never says anything that would betray his heritage, helping drive home the point that he’s just like the rest of the boys on the baseball team, so by the time we know his family is Chinese we’re already on his side. If a listener was the type of person who would have been put off by that, the structure cuts them off at the pass.
On a pure character note, I appreciate how much of this story is taken up with Clark Kent, rather than Superman. Clark is the one who encourages Tommy, then Tommy’s father, to stand up to the Clan. Clark is the one who frequently puts out speeches about how cowardly and vile the Clan is and what it means to be a true American. In fact, he doesn’t even put on his Superman costume at all until episode six, when he has to save an injured Tommy from drowning in the river. Jimmy, on the other hand, is brave and stalwart, but comes off as a little dim. There are several instances where Clark has to use his powers in a way that causes Jimmy to question how he knew something (like the bomb he spots with his X-Ray vision) or where he went (saving Tommy from a deliberately hurled baseball bat), but when he asks about it, Clark simply changes the subject and Jimmy never thinks to bring it up again. This is why you’ve been a cub reporter for 90 years, James.
The one-off characters are served well, too. Tommy and his father are well-drawn characters, with realistic actions and motivations. And even Chuck Riggs gets a redemption arc, struggling with whether to help Clark Kent track down his uncle once he realizes just how vicious the Clan actually is. I love a good redemption arc, probably because it speaks to a belief that somewhere inside, most people are good at heart.
It can be a little heavy-handed at times – at least once an episode somebody (usually, but not always Clark) launches into a speech about how bad the Clan is and how people can be as American as anybody else regardless of “the color of their skin or the church they attend” (not an exact quote, but that’s the gist of it). I usually find it off-putting when a movie or TV show hammers their point in like this, even when it’s a point I happen to agree with, but it’s easier to swallow here when you remind yourself that this was a different time (a time when the Clan’s ideas were far more popular than they are today), that it was a show for children who maybe NEEDED to hear it over and over again, and that the show was originally presented as a daily serial and perhaps needed to restack not only the theme, but also the plot frequently.
I’ve always enjoyed old radio shows, but most of the time I listen to the comedies. This was a fun, exciting trip to the past with Superman, and although I haven’t quite finished the story as of this writing, I’m really happy to have made it into the rotation. A few years ago Gene Luen Yang adapted it into a three-issue miniseries, which was also excellent, and I’m going to try to squeeze it in before the end of the year. But the year is already pretty packed, so no promises.
Comics:Aquaman: Yo-Ho-Hold On to Your Hook #20 (Guest appearance, Power Girl), Justice League of America #44
Thur., Nov. 20
Radio Program:The Adventures of Superman serial “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” episodes 13-16.
Comics: Spawn #10 (Oblique Cameo), Justice League of America #46 (Team Member)
Movie:Superman and the Mole Men (1951)
Notes: My goal, over the next two weeks, is to scratch off as many movies and pilot episodes of the various Superman adaptations as I can. Today I got to do two in one. Superman and the Mole Men was a short theatrical film (only 58 minutes!) starring George Reeves and Phyllis Coates in a sort of trial run for the Adventures of Superman TV series, which would premiere in 1952. Reeves and Coates, of course, carried over to play Superman and Lois Lane, but Coates would later leave the series and be replaced by Noel Neill, who had previously played Lois during the Kirk Alyn movie serials, at least one of which I’m going to try to watch in this block on a day where I’ve actually got the time. (Those suckers are four hours long, all together.) This short movie was later edited down into two TV episodes at the end of the first season of the TV show.
Which is easy to do, honestly, because at the time there wasn’t really the insistence we have today on pilot episodes setting up a series. If you watch the first episode of most TV shows from the last few decades, be they comedies, dramas, or genre shows, that first episode almost always includes a story that sets up the status quo for the series: a new person joins the workforce, a family moves to a new town, a superhero gets an origin, and so forth. In the 50s, though, pretty much every series was given a status quo right out of the box that never deviated, allowing people to watch any episode in any order without any risk of confusing them. So George Reeves’ Superman never got an origin beyond the opening narration that tells us about the ol’ “Strange visitor from another planet” and “Who, disguised as Clark Kent” routine.
In Superman and the Mole Men, Clark Kent and Lois Lane are sent out to write a story on the world’s deepest oil well. The night they arrive, though, a pair of bizarre, furry creatures climb out of the oil shaft, frightening the night watchmen enough to trigger a fatal heart attack. As Lois and Clark try to investigate his mysterious death, Lois spots the “mole men” and we get the classic Cassandra bit of her telling people all about it, but them not believing her, at least not initially. When the mole men are spotted in town, an angry mob forms and attacks, shooting one of them. Superman rescues the wounded creature, taking it to the hospital, where the mob follows them, but Superman protects the recovering mole man. Three more of the creatures come out of the drill shaft, this time with a laser gun. They fire on the mob, but Superman blocks the laser to protect the humans. He returns the injured mole creature to his people and they take him back down into the Earth, destroying the well on their way down.
As a movie, this isn’t exactly the sort of thing that burns up the screen. The story is pretty small and we barely even glimpse the world of Superman – we never see the Daily Planet office or even any of the city of Metropolis, after all. But that’s judging it by modern standards. At the time, this would have fit in perfectly with the sort of B-roll movies that studios turned out to fit the back half of a double feature. And looking at it as a pair of TV episodes, it’s clearly got a bigger budget and wider scope than the standard episode of The Adventures of Superman usually did. It also does a great job of establishing Superman’s values right away: he protects EVERYBODY. He saves the mole man from an angry mob, then he saves the angry mob from the mole men. He gives the rioters a good talking-to, admonishing their behavior like a disappointed high school principal even as he’s taking their guns away from them, but even then he’s not going to let them get hurt either. There’s my Superman for ya.
The most important thing about this is George Reeves himself. From the outset, his Superman and Clark Kent are fully formed characters – brave, noble, and dauntless in their pursuit of what is right. If there’s any flaw to his performance, is that he doesn’t do enough to distinguish Clark from Superman. Clark is TOO bold, TOO heroic, and the notion that Lois Lane wouldn’t see through his disguise in ten seconds is more laughable here than in any other iteration of the franchise. Reeves’ Superman is great, and I love his performance dearly, but he’s exactly the same whether he’s wearing glasses or tights.
As for Phyllis Coates as Lois Lane…I would never say her performance is BAD, but she lacks the sort of fire and verve that I like my Loises to have. I grew up watching reruns of this show on Nick at Nite, and even as a kid I could see a distinct level up when Coates left the show and Noel Neill took over. But I’ll get my chance to talk about her when we get to the movie serials.
This movie isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s a fascinating piece of Superman lore, and if you’re a real fan of the character who has never seen this (or at least seen the edited two-parter of the TV show) it’s worth looking up.
Fri, Nov. 21
Comic Books: New Adventures of Superboy #37, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #41 (Guest Appearance), World’s Finest Comics #307
Notes: I mentioned in my preface this week that there will be days over the next few weeks where I just flat-out know I won’t have the time to watch anything longform, or possibly anything at all, and today is such a day. So I’m going to sneak in The New Adventures of Superboy #37 from 1983, mostly because issue #38 is an all-too-rare Thanksgiving story, and I want that to be available to read next week.
This is actually part two of a story I read a little while back but didn’t blog about, in which Clark’s teacher William Wright gets mental powers. In the previous issue, he managed to defeat Superboy while using his powers to make some of his students rob a bank. Superboy approaches him, but Mr. Wright again stops him, throwing a car at him and somehow taking away his ability to fly. Wright tells Superboy that he’s discovered that he can do literally anything, provided he BELIEVES in it strongly enough, and that linking his brain to the teenagers enhances his powers. Despite his repeated defeats, Superboy confronts him again and Wright uses his powers to believe that the moon will stop orbiting the Earth. Superboy’s super-senses immediately confirm that it worked, but he pretends that it didn’t in order to put a chink in Wright’s belief system. He bluffs his way into making Wright’s powers diminish, then he helps Pete Ross – one of Wright’s mind-slaves – break out of his control, further weakening Wright’s powers. Eventually, he defeats Wright, using the reasoning that if Wright’s powers only work because he believes they can, they WON’T work if his victims DON’T believe they will.
It is, of course, infallible logic.
There are a few things, I think, we can take away from this story. First, it is incredibly stupid for anyone – hero or villain – to explain exactly how his powers work to his opponent. That’s just a recipe for defeat. And second, the Small County, Kansas Department of Education really needs to tighten up its screening process for potential hires.
Sat., Nov. 22
Comic: Superman Unlimited #7
Notes: I just got home from a long – and fun – day in Hammond for the annual Louisiana Renaissance Festival. We don’t go every year, but it’s been a few years since the last time we went and Eddie has gotten much more attentive. We wanted to see how our older little guy would enjoy it, and also, my wife wanted to consume a comically large turkey leg. All of our goals, I am pleased to announce, were satisfied during the course of the day.
But the Year of Superman waits for no Festival, and even though I’m bone tired and my dogs are barkin’, I cannot go to bed without getting a little Kryptonian Kontent. Fortunately, yesterday one of the various errands I ran involved picking up the last couple of weeks of Superman comics from the local shop, so as Eddie watches LSU football, I’m snuggling into the couch with issue #7 of Dan Slott, Jeremy Adams, and Lucas Meyer’s Superman Unlimited.
In Smallville, Jon Kent is helping John Henry Irons test out some special gauntlets that are supposed to neutralize Kryptonite radiation. While he’s there, a message from Lois leads him to the brand-new Smallville office of the Daily Planet, which she’s asking him to head up, challenging him to start his new career by bringing in a story as Jon Kent, without the powers of Superman. The hunt for a story leads him underground, where he encounters an enormous drilling robot with some surprisingly familiar pilots.
First of all, I have to give Slott and Adams (pinch hitting on the dialogue for this issue) credit for trying to find some sort of structure in Jon’s life. The character has been utterly aimless for entirely too long, and although I’m never going to be happy about the way he was aged up in the Bendis run, if he’s going to be an adult at least they’re making an effort at actually treating him like one. It also provides us with a few amusing scenes, like a Steelworks employee who completely fails to see through Jon’s glasses despite the fact that he was crushing on him while in costume a few scenes earlier and John Henry being flabbergasted that the disguise actually works.
Second, in one of those little moments of serendipity that you just can’t plan for, this issue brings in none other than – drumroll please – the Mole Men! Yes, the co-stars of the first-ever Superman theatrical feature film starring George Reeves, the one we talked about just a few days ago, are brought into the DC Universe proper in the pages of this issue. The comic was released on Wednesday and I didn’t watch and blog about Superman and the Mole Men until Thursday, but I swear, this was a total coincidence. It’s just one of those little moments of serendipity that make my career as a world-famous, jet-setting Superman blogger all the more rewarding, y’know?
Sun., Nov. 23
TV Episode: The New Adventures of Superman Season 1, Episode 1, “The Force Phantom”; The Adventures of Superboy Season 1, Episodes 1-2, “The Spy From Outer Space” Parts 1 and 2.
Notes: In 1966, over a decade after the George Reeves TV show left the airwaves, Filmation reunited Fleisher and radio stars Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander for a new series of Superman adventures, cleverly titled The New Adventures of Superman. This was one of several DC comics adapted into animated form at the time and shown in blocks with each other. There were a total of 68 seven-minute shorts in this series, and I’m about to watch the first one “The Force Phantom.”
In “The Force Phantom,” a beam of energy from outer space arrives on Earth and coalesces into a being of pure force that begins destroying space bases across Earth, on a Westward march towards the United States. Fearing that Cape Kennedy is next, Superman zips down to Florida to stand sentinel. At the same time, a flying saucer from Mars orbits the Earth, and its inhabitants send the Force Phantom down to Earth to attack Cape Kennedy. Superman rescues an American rocket from the creature, but its rampage continues, hitting Superman hard enough to drive him into the ground. Superman’s relentless attack damages the machine generating the creature from the flying saucer, and Superman races into orbit to stop the Martians. He fights the Phantom again, in space, this time overloading and destroying the generator. He drives them back to Mars and returns to Earth, giving the story of Superman’s latest adventure to Perry White.
The episode has the legendarily limited animation that we’ve come to associate with Filmation studios. Although not as bad as, for example, the early Marvel Comics cartoons (which were little more than slideshows), the characters move slowly and their action is stilted, with mouths that only barely match the words that are being spoken. That said, there are some cool visuals here. It may have been cheap to produce, but I actually really like the design of the Force Phantom itself – basically a bunch of lightning bolts in humanoid shape with empty space within its body. And the Martians themselves look like old-fashioned stereotypical “evil invaders from outer space,” right down to the insidious mustaches. Collyer is doing his best in this cartoon, still sounding like Superman, but one has to wonder if he ever pondered the fact that he went from starring in the most beautiful, lushly animated cartoons of the era to something that looked like it could have been done via a flipbook.
One of the other DC properties that joined Superman in the 1966 Filmation block just happened to be his younger alter-ego, given his first TV appearance with The Adventures of Superboy, starring Bob Hastings as Superboy and Judy Jetson herself, Janet Waldo, as Lana Lang. Superboy’s cartoon kicked off with a two-parter, “The Spy From Outer Space.” The cartoon begins with Krypto waiting for his master when a green man from outer space appears and begins melting a nearby mountain into lava! Krypto rushes off to summon Superboy, who happens to be in class at Smallville High at the moment, but he ducks out and joins his dog, keeping in the canonicity of the Superboy comic I read a few days ago which showed that the education system in Small County left a lot to be desired. Superboy and Krypto dig a trench to stop the lava from reaching civilization, while elsewhere the alien summons bolts of lightning and tornados to smash up nearby farms. Superboy stops the freak weather and Krypto leads him to the alien, which includes the objectively hilarious moment when Superboy looks down from the sky to see a green-skinned alien wearing a jetpack and asks his dog, “Is that the one?”
Superboy catches the alien and brings him to the police, where he confesses to being a spy and then giggles as he teleports away. The boy and his dog track the alien to his homeworld only to find that the planet’s red sun drains Superboy’s powers. He’s captured and the aliens and tell him of their plan to invade Earth, but Krypto finds a way to block the red sunlight and restore Superboy’s powers (why doesn’t the red sun drain Krypto’s powers, you may ask – and you will not get an answer) and he takes off to chase the invasion fleet. The aliens use giant magnifying glasses to start forest fires, like kids burning ants, but Superboy smashes the lenses and blows out the fire. The aliens try creating more and more disasters, but the Boy of Steel thwarts each one. Finally, he and Krypto attack the rockets directly, hurling some of them away from Earth and sending the others to retreat in fear.
Although the Superboy episodes obviously suffer from the same cheap animation style, being another Filmation cartoon of the 60s, I actually like these more. I think having a two-part story allows it to breathe a little more and allows the writers to do more with it. And I love having Krypto along for the ride. Superman has never really had a traditional sidekick like Robin or Bucky. Even Supergirl has traditionally been the star of her own feature rather than a partner to Superman. Using Krypto in this way is very entertaining.
I still don’t get why Krypto was immune to the red sun, though. Somebody make that one make sense. And don’t say that the aliens’ planet must be orbiting Sirius, the Dog Star, because I already thought of that joke.
Comic:Batman/Static Beyond #1 (Guest Appearance)
Mon., Nov. 24
Musical: It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman! (1975)
Notes: So the plan these couple of weeks was to cover as many different Superman adaptations as possible, and that includes one of the weirdest versions – the 1966 Broadway musical, It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman! The musical that was so awful that it closed in only four months! And yet, in 1975, they took this stinker of a musical and turned it into a TV movie, so I guess that’s what I’m watching. The TV version starred David Wilson as Superman, Lesley Anne Warren as Lois Lane, and David Wayne as “Dr. Abner Sedgewick,” our supervillain who should have just been Lex Luthor, because come on.
Following a recap of his origin (it was REQUIRED) the people of Metropolis launch into our opening number, “We Need Him,” a weak and forgettable number about just how much they love Superman. Get ready, by the way, “weak and forgettable” is the prevailing description for the music in this one. The underworld of Metropolis, on the other hand, is having a rough time, and so a mob boss puts out a hit on Superman. Dr. Sedgwick arrives at the Daily Planet office, where he tells Lois Lane that the city is “doomed.” So see, the death ray installed at Metropolis University last year to put down student uprisings has been stolen. Lois is remarkably nonchalant about that, but agrees to contact Superman. What he doesn’t know is that it’s a trap by Sedgewick, who has lost the Nobel Prize ten times and logically concluded that the best way to get revenge on the world is to kill Superman. You see, if he DOESN’T kill Superman first, Superman will stop him when he tries to destroy Sweden.
I am not making up this motivation, friends.
I need you to understand something here: my lack of enthusiasm for this special is not because I don’t like musicals. I LOVE them. Before I had a kid, back when I actually had time, I performed in several of them. I was Max Biaylistock in the Thibodaux Playhouse’s 2015 run of The Producers, for cryin’ out loud. So it is as a lover of musical theater that I tell you that this is one of the worst musicals ever written. The songs are bland and forgettable – although I have to say that the original cast album from ‘66 is FAR better than the weird version they have here, where they’ve added synthesizers and what may be an attempt at an occasional disco beat. What’s more, most of the actors are so unenthusiastic that you have to wonder if they’re being blackmailed into performing. The one exception is Lesley Anne Warren, who is as radiant as ever and does the best she could with the plate of garbage she was given. Warren even screen tested for Lois Lane in the first Christopher Reeve film a few years later, and while Margot Kidder was the perfect Lois for that movie, I have to say that Warren could have nailed the part as well.
The staging for this TV movie does the actors no favors, either. Still in the era of “Pow! Bam!” birthed by the 1966 Batman TV series, the sets are all dressed to look like comic book sketches (or at least what somebody thought comic book sketches looked like), complete with Ben-Day dots, inexplicably, in black and white. For Dr. Sedgewick’s motive rant/patter song, he paces around the room staring directly into the camera, which is just about the most boring way a musical number can possibly be staged. This particular theatrical crime is repeated later during Superman’s awful, self-indulgent song where he whines that the people of Metropolis don’t love him anymore (which, of course, is part of Sedgwick’s plan, because somehow that’s necessary to kill him).
The story and characterization are the kind of thing that somebody who has never read a Superman story thinks a Superman story is about. Wilson’s Clark Kent is weak, whiney, and mealy-mouthed, while his Superman starts out pompous and arrogant, then BECOMES whiney and mealy-mouthed. At one point he even moans, “I don’t DESERVE love!” to which I had to nod and concur. Even worse is how they treat Lois Lane, who does nothing in this musical except for moon over Superman – she literally forgets that Clark Kent EXISTS at one point. I can forgive a little winking at the camera and a helping of cheese, but the character assassination of Lois Joanne Lane is unforgivable.
Yeah, I looked up her middle name just so I could drive that point home.
Then there’s a subplot with Planet columnist Max Mencken (Kenneth Mars) who helps out Sedgewick because he hates Superman for “stealing” Lois Lane from him, even though he’s dating another columnist played by Loretta Swit. And let’s face it, this is the only universe in which a Kenneth Mars could pull a Loretta Swit, so what’s he complaining about? To be fair, though, Mencken does provide us with one of the few funny jokes in this clunker, although it’s really only funny in retrospect: Sedgwick’s computer deduces that Superman’s secret identity is that of a Daily Planet employee who is obsessed with Lois Lane, so he must be Max Mencken. Max says the computer is wrong, at which point it beeps and Sedgewick announces, “The computer says it’s NEVER wrong!” So if nothing else, they accurately predicted the existence of people who use Chat GPT.
The baffling thing to me is not that this musical closed in four months. If anything, that was three and a half months too long. The amazing thing is that it closed despite positive reviews. I’ve often found that when there’s a large discrepancy between the “Critics’ Score” and the “Audience Score” on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m more likely to agree with the audience, and I guess this movie is proof that some things just never change. Is it the worst incarnation of Superman ever? Well no, Chuck Austen DID write Action Comics for a whole-ass year. But it’s gotta be on the bottom ten list.
Comic:Titans Vol. 4 #29 (Jon Kent cameo)
TV Episode: Superman and Lois Season 3, Episode 5, “Head On.”
Tues., Nov. 25
TV Episode: Superman (1988), Season 1, Episode 1, “Destroy the Defendroids/The Adoption.”
Notes: In 1988, Ruby-Spears animation took a swing at another Superman cartoon, this time bringing in elements from a lot of different sources. The theme music is a riff on the John Williams theme from the movies, for instance, but a lot of the characterization came from the post-Crisis John Byrne reboot, probably because the head story editor for the series was comic book legend Marv Wolfman, who was also writing the Adventures of Superman comic at the time. Gil Kane, another comic mastermind, provided the character designs. The cast included Beau Weaver as Superman and Ginny McSwain as Lois Lane, with some animation all-stars filling out the cast: Michael Bell (Duke from G.I. Joe) as Lex Luthor, and voice acting royalty Alan Oppenheimer and Tress MacNeillie as Jonathan and Martha Kent.
“Destroy the Defendroids” starts with Superman taking Lois on a flight through the sky in a scene very reminiscent of the “Can You Read My Mind?” bit from the movie. Their date is disrupted, though, when he’s called upon to stop a high-tech robot running amok in the city. The robot is riddled with LexCorp components, but when Superman arrives to arrest Lex he’s stymied by Lex’s new piece of jewelry – a ring with a Kryptonite stone. Lex makes it clear, of course, that although his company MADE those parts that doesn’t mean that HE was the one who built the robot. After all, anyone could have bought them and assembled them into a menace. The next day, though, he debuts his newest innovation to Metropolis – a swarm of robots called the Defendroids, which he offers to fight crime. Superman pretends to leave town to keep an eye on Luthor, but snaps back to save Lois, Jimmy, and Clark (whom he “wraps up in his cape” for the escape) when they’re nearly killed thanks to the Defendroids antics. When Lois and Jimmy approach LexCorp tower in a helicopter, the robots shoot them out of the sky and take them captive. Superman trails after them, despite the robots’ Kryptonite weapons. He saves them, naturally, but their danger was only a distraction as Lex uses the Defendroids to rob a train. (Lex’s assistant points out how irrational it is for someone of his wealth to stoop to a train robbery, but nobody ever accused Lex Luthor of being rational.) Superman thwarts the robbery, but Lex has naturally covered his tracks, blaming the robots’ actions on “a short circuit.” Which in the Ruby-Spears universe apparently is enough to absolve you from both criminal AND civil charges.
My favorite thing about this cartoon was that each half-hour episode consisted of the main story followed by a short, a story from Martha Kent’s Family Album. The short in this first episode was “The Adoption.” Jonathan and Martha bring a child to Smallville Orphanage, having “found” him on their farm, and express their interest in adopting him, but the head of the orphanage, Mr. Warner, dismisses them as being too old to adopt. As different parents come in to visit the new baby, they keep walking into things like a trashed playroom, the boy flying around the room on a rocking horse, or him riding a lion that he liberated from the zoo. At night, the baby flies away from the orphanage and finds his way back to the Kent farm, where Jonathan and Martha find him sleeping soundly between them in the morning. Jonathan vows to convince Warner to allow them to adopt the child, and they name him – try to act surprised – Clark.
Both parts of this show were really good. The animation is very much of the 80s, which is to say, better than the Filmation cartoons we watched yesterday, but not as good as it was going to get just a few years later. But the stories landed, at least they did for the 11-year-old kid who was watching them at the time. The characterizations were consistent with the comics, and although the stories weren’t quite as sophisticated, they were pretty good for a Saturday morning cartoon. And the “Superman’s Family Album” segments were just charming and delightful. Up until this point, there had been precious little depiction of Jonathan and Martha Kent in the media – really just their sporadic appearances in The Adventures of Superboy and the scenes in the first half of the 1978 movie. This would be the first time a lot of people really got to see them as parents, and I appreciate that to this day.
The cartoon sadly lasted only 13 episodes, its run going from only September to December of 1988. It’s a shame, it really did deserve more. On the other hand, if it had a long run, we may not have gotten Superman: The Animated Series in 1996…so I guess all things considered, it was an even trade.
“Superman through the ages” continues next week, friends. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!
Early in 2024, when DC and Marvel Comics announced that they were overcoming years of – let’s be frank – hostility with one another to release a pair of omnibus editions of their various crossovers from years past, I was excited. Not only that, but I was hopeful that this would lead to further collaborations between the two of them. Earlier this year, that hope was justified when the publishers released their first new crossover in almost 20 years, a pair of books teaming up Batman and Deadpool. Not only that, but each of those books would have several back-up stories featuring other team-ups, such as Green Lantern/Rocket Raccoon, Captain America/Wonder Woman, and Krypto the Superdog/Jeff the Land Shark. And it was nice.
Nice.
And then stuff started happening.
At first, it was stuff that wasn’t too difficult to see as an expansion of this new era of cooperation. Both Marvel and DC have been in the business of publishing “facsimile editions” of classic comics for a few years now – key issues reprinted in their entirety, including the original advertisements, letter columns, and other features that we don’t usually see when a story is reprinted elsewhere. In this spirit, they announced facsimile editions of the original Spider-Boy one-shot from the classic Amalgam Comics event, with a character that mashed up Spider-Man and Superboy (the Conner Kent version) into one hero. This is going to be followed by a facsimile edition of the first-ever meeting between Marvel and DC characters, 1976’s Superman Vs. the Amazing Spider-Man. And then the big magilla – although still not technically anything shocking – they announced that the two Batman/Deadpool comics would be followed some time in 2026 with two new Superman/Spider-Man events.
Awesome sauce, right?
But it didn’t end there, either.
Last week, totally out of the blue, subscribers to the Marvel Universe app (such as myself) got an email announcing a brand-new digital-only comic book…a crossover between Thor and Shazam! Not only that, but it was written by Al Ewing, who has been helming major books for both Marvel and DC for the past few years, including Thor’s ongoing series and DC’s Absolute Green Lantern, among others. Only minutes later, subscribers to the DC Infinity app (such as myself) ALSO got an e-mail, this time announcing a surprise digital crossover starring the Flash and the Fantastic Four, written by former Flash and current Green Lantern and Aquaman writer Jeremy Adams. Both of them were fun reads, totally unexpected, and available for free even if you didn’t have a subscription to the app.
It was like Christmas in November! Or, like every store in North America calls it, “Late Christmas.”
“What a nice surprise,” I thought to myself. It’s really rare that a comic book publisher these days would even change the color of Spider-Gwen’s shoelaces without putting out a press release about it, so a pair of totally unexpected crossovers was a delightful treat.
Then it really started to get weird.
Because the day after the crossovers dropped, Marvel and DC each sent out ANOTHER email. Marvel’s was a code for their subscribers to get a free 30-day trial of DC Infinity. And DC’s email? You guessed it – a code for 30 free days of Hello Fresh.
No, just kidding. Of course, it was a code for a free trial of the Marvel app. And at this point, I started to get uneasy. You see, Marvel and DC have historically been the two biggest competitors in the comic book game. And while there have always been creators who moved freely between the companies, working for one and then the other or even (such as is the case with Ewing) working for them both at the same time, the higher-ups have had a kind of bitter antagonism for the past few decades. Both Marvel and DC have undergone regime changes since the harshest days of the feud, though, and even the Omnibus editions were evidence that the temperature between them has cooled. Even so, seeing them shamelessly promoting each other is…unsettling. Imagine, for example, that you grew up in a household where your parents were fighting all of the time, and then suddenly without warning, the fighting just STOPPED. In some ways, the quiet would be even more disturbing than the fight.
That’s where comic book fans are at the moment. We’ve gone from “Isn’t it nice that Mom and Dad are being friendly again?” all the way around to “What in the HELL is going on?”
Because maybe it’s just me and the basic state of paranoia that exists hardwired right into my brain, but it feels like there’s more happening behind the scenes than the fans are being made aware of. And sure, it could just be more crossovers like Batman/Deadpool or Superman/Spider-Man. Maybe it will become a new annual event. Maybe even more than annual.
Or maybe it’s something else.
This is the only reasonable reaction.
The good thing is that I talk to a lot of comic nerds (shout out to my homies in the best Comic Book Collecting group on Facebook) so I know I’m not the ONLY one who feels this way. A few people have speculated that one of the publishers, or their parent companies, is considering buying the other one. I don’t really think this is the case, and I sincerely HOPE it isn’t, and for a few reasons. First, I think competition is healthy – putting the two biggest brands under a single umbrella would undercut that dramatically. Also, the odds of Warner Bros purchasing Marvel from Disney – one of Disney’s major cash cows, in a time when Warner Bros itself is on the market for a new owner – is virtually nonexistent. The possibility of the WB selling DC to Disney, on the other hand, feels more plausible, but that would be bad because…I’m going to be frank here…DC is crushing it right now. The comic book line’s sales and critical response are up and the movie and TV production is firing on all cylinders, despite what that one jackass who writes for “Cosmic Book News” is desperately trying to convince people. Handing that brand over to Disney and Marvel – whose works, let’s face it, have kind of been declining the last few years – would not be optimal for anybody.
Seriously, compared to “Cosmic Book News,” this thing is the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Another possibility, one that I would be far more open to, would be some sort of distribution partnership. Much has been made about the chaos behind the scenes of the comic book world with the slow death of Diamond Distribution this year, and seeing Marvel and DC cooperate on a new distribution venture would be not be out of the question and, frankly, would probably be a net benefit for the comic shops, although smaller publishers would justifiably be concerned about the two juggernauts creating a new distribution juggernaut before we’ve even buried the ashes of the old one. There’s also the possibility of the Marvel and DC apps perhaps being offered in a subscription bundle, not unlike many TV and movie streamers these days. As someone who has subscribed to both for quite some time, I wouldn’t hate that.
But what if it’s something else? What if the big thing they’re working on isn’t anything behind-the-scenes, but in the content? DC Studios boss James Gunn – whose rise to prominence came from helming the Guardians of the Galaxy movies for Marvel – has spoken more than once about liking the idea of some sort of crossover movie between the two, and Marvel head Kevin Feige has shown effusive support for Gunn himself.
You might even call this photo the smoking GUNN. Get it? GET IT?
And with both studios embracing the multiverse concept, it wouldn’t be that difficult from a story perspective. Can you imagine David Corenswet and Tom Holland in a Superman/Spider-Man movie? They would sell so many tickets that they’d have to bring in a third crossover character, such as the Count from Sesame Street, to keep track of them all.
BUT – and I hate to put a damper on things – Gunn’s DC Universe consists of exactly one movie and two seasons of television so far. There’s more on the horizon, of course – the Lanterns TV series and the Supergirl and Clayface movies are all on the schedule for 2026 – but I feel like Gunn probably needs more time to really establish his DCU before any sort of crossover becomes a real possibility.
The comics, on the other hand, are already well established. And they’ve played the crossover game many times before. But what if this time it was more than just this guy meets that guy? There have been larger crossovers in the past. DC Vs. Marvel not only pitted their entire universes against each other, but also included the Amalgam mashups. JLA/Avengers, famously, featured every character who had ever been a member of either team (at the time – if they did that these days the ways the rosters have expanded they would need another 16 issues). But these crossovers have almost NEVER been addressed in-canon. There have been only two exceptions that I’m aware of, both from DC. First was a random issue of Green Lantern that had a cameo by Access – a character introduced in DC Vs. Marvel with the power to move between the two universes – which happened to be written by Access’s co-creator Ro Marz. Second, an “egg” holding an embryonic universe that was created in JLA/Avengers later became a McGuffin in a JLA storyline written by that crossover’s writer, Kurt Busiek. References to the “other” universe have always been oblique outside of the crossovers themselves, which is understandable due to things like copyright and reprint considerations.
But what if they could get past all that and tell a story that REALLY impacts the two worlds?
They’ve wanted to do it for some time. In the 80s and 90s, there were infrequent appearances in the Marvel universe of a guy in a suit and glasses named “Clark,” always just for a panel or two, but a definite wink at the camera. Other Marvel multiverse storylines have often made vague references to the DC characters as well. DC has also played that game. In his Hawkman series, Robert Venditti heavily explored the fact that Hawkman is a character who has been reincarnated for thousands of years, not only on Earth but on other worlds such as Krypton. But he also dropped hints that some of Hawkman’s reincarnates may have included certain Marvel characters with “Hawk” in their name, such as Starhawk of the original Guardians of the Galaxy.
This is from an issue of Thor. Can you believe he’s using GLASSES as a disguise? What a dork.
Then there’s the big enchilada, Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s Doomsday Clock, the series which brought the world of Watchmen into direct conflict with the DC Universe. In that story Dr. Manhattan, who lives outside of linear time and can see the past, present, and future as if it’s all happening now, looked ahead to an event he called the “Secret Crisis” happening in 2030. In that crisis, he foresaw Superman fighting Thor (as a character from Norse mythology, anyone is allowed to use the name “Thor” without a copyright issue, so long as they don’t have a picture of the Marvel version of the character), as well as a “green behemoth” who would sacrifice his own life to save Superman, a clear reference to the Hulk. By the way, the Hulk’s comic book, at the moment, is written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, who is currently writing a miniseries at DC Comics about a character bouncing around in time…dang it, who is that again? Oh yeah…it’s Superman. In fact, the book is called Adventures of Superman: House of El, and it’s tying off plot threads leftover from Johnson’s run on the main Superman comics from a few years ago.
It’s prophecy, people!
Now Dr. M told us that the Secret Crisis would happen in 2030 and I don’t know that they would be making plans today for an event that wouldn’t see publication for another five years, but one of the major reveals of Doomsday Clock was an explanation of the elastic nature of time in the DC Universe, so skirting the exact date wouldn’t really be a problem. And both Marvel and DC are currently playing with the multiverse in various stories. So…y’know.
All of this, of course, is circumstantial evidence. None of it would hold up in court. But as far as pure speculation goes, I find it all AWFULLY interesting. Would it be possible, in this new spirit of cooperation between the two publishers, for them to go forth with a story that actually brings the two universes together in a way that is indisputably canonical? To tell a story that has actual weight and impact on the heroes of two worlds going forward? Would they actually kill the Hulk to save Superman? (I know they won’t kill the Hulk PERMANENTLY, this is comic book spiritualism, where Heaven is easier to escape than a prison in New Orleans. But that’s not the point.)
Ongoing comic books, especially the “Big Two,” exist in a state of what some writers call a “perpetual second act.” What that means is that although there are ongoing stories and things can change, at some point or another there’ll be another reset, because corporate characters like Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, or the X-Men are too valuable to ever take off the table. If the characters were allowed to truly have a “third act,” that would be the END of their story, and nobody REALLY wants that. With that mindset, is there any reason that the next “second act” couldn’t be a story that involves the two largest mythologies in American culture coming together for an event that would have lasting repercussions for them both? It’s worth noting that the original plans for DC Vs. Marvel included having She-Hulk and the Martian Manhunter stranded in each other’s universe for about a year after the crossover ended, but the lawyers at the time told them not to do it. A character swap right now sounds somewhat less impossible.
Is this what Marvel and DC are planning? Are they doing it right under our noses? Is the call coming from inside the house?
Maybe not.
But it’s sure a lot of fun to think about.
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. His own “permanent second act” involves a constant reset of where his son hid the remote control after watching YouTube.
As the chill finally returns to the air down here in southern Louisiana, I can feel the end of the year approaching. The last three months are always my favorite time of the year, although in this case they’re a little bittersweet. Spending this year with Superman has been fun for me, giving me something to look forward to…and while I have to admit I’m looking forward to finishing off the daily requirement, I also know I’m going to miss it. I’m thinking of ways to continue this blog without the daily stipulation into 2026 – no decisions yet, but there are things in my head.
At any rate, there are still a handful of themes I’ve got left that I want to do, but those are all anchored to specific times in one way or another, and none of them are this week. So get ready for another seven random days in the Year of Superman blog.
Notes: We’re going to start this week by looking at my list of stories that I wanted to hit this year at one point or another, but that didn’t fit into any particular theme. And if you’re not wise to the behind-the-scenes chaos that led to the writing of Superman #276, it seems as random as they come. Most comic book fans know the story behind the original Captain Marvel: originally published by Fawcett Comics, he was a smash hit and outsold pretty much every comic on the stands, including Superman at times. National Publications (the company that would later rebrand as DC) sued Fawcett, claiming Captain Marvel infringed on the Superman copyright due to the similarity in their appearance and powers. The case dragged on in court for years, until the post-World War II-era, in which superhero comics fell out of favor. Eventually, Fawcett settled the case, no longer making enough profit from the comics to continue to fight. Years later, DC would eventually license, then outright buy the characters from the Fawcett catalogue and bring them back to comics.
In 1974, DC Comics had been publishing Shazam! for over a year. His own title was set on “Earth-S,” home to the original Fawcett heroes, and although the multiverse was already very much in play at DC, for some reason editorial was wary of having him actually interact with the heroes of the DC Universe. Writer Elliot S! Maggin’s solution was this issue, “Make Way For Captain Thunder!” Using an early, rejected name for Captain Marvel, Maggin has Superman encounter a young boy – Willy Fawcett – who appears in the streets of Metropolis one day. Willie seems out of time, with a haircut that was popular 20 years earlier and expecting to pay a nickel for 35-cent bus fare. And the big clue that something isn’t kosher: he’s never heard of Superman before. Willie sees a helicopter about to rob an armored car, so he rubs his “magic belt buckle” and says the magic word “Thunder!” With a bolt of lightning (and the amusing sound effect “sha-boom!”) he transforms into…well, not Captain Marvel, but somebody who looks a hell of a lot like him.
As Captain Thunder swoops in to stop the robbery, something takes hold of his mind and, instead, he aids the crooks in stealing not only the contents, but the entire armored car. Superman comes in to save the car and Thunder turns back into Willie, who cannot remember anything that happened since his transformation. He decides to turn to Superman for help, and looks up his most famous “friend,” Clark Kent. (The notion that even a child from an alternate dimension can learn that Clark and Superman are pals within a few hours is perhaps the greatest strain on the credulity of Superman’s secret identity, by the way.) Willie tells Clark his origin – how, on a campout with his orphanage, he was summoned by an owl to follow it to a cave in the woods. There he encountered an ancient Native American medicine man, who bestowed on him the magic belt that would give him seven spiritual abilities: the power of a Tornado, the speed of a Hare, the bravery of Uncas, the wisdom of Nature, the toughness of Diamond, the flight of an Eagle, and the tenacity of a Ram!
Note to Maggin: If the editor needs to drop in a footnote explaining that Uncas was a warrior chief, you know that you’ve maybe stretched this bit to its limits.
Anyhoo, Willie became Captain Thunder, and – in my favorite page in the book – recounts his final battle with the Monster League of Evil, which was made of up, I kid you not, the Universal Monsters. The battle took place in a series of other dimensions (1953 of them, to be exact), but evidently, when Willie tried to get home he wound up on the wrong Earth, where he comes to understand that the League did something to Captain Thunder, making him turn evil when he transforms. Clark – an alien from another planet who hangs out with an Amazonian goddess and a guy from Mars and who routinely fights cyborgs and has traveled through time on countless occasions and more than once met an exact duplicate of himself from a world he calls Earth-2 – comes to the obvious conclusion that Willie is delusional.
Somehow THIS is the part that strained credulity.
Clarks recruit Lois to help him bring Willie to the police station for help, but another robbery summons his attention. He ducks away and becomes Superman, as Willie turns into his own alter-ego. But once again, as if he’s forgotten that he’ll turn evil, Captain Thunder turns evil. The crooks escape as Superman and Thunder battle it out in the skies over Metropolis. Superman manages to trick Thunder into turning back into Willie, because somehow he suddenly believes his story, and then holds him in a wrestling grip and tells Willie to change back, where he’ll somehow force Thunder to use his wisdom to overcome the Monster League’s brainwashing. There is absolutely no reason that this should work, but somehow it does, and Thunder furthermore figures out how to use his magic to return to his native dimension.
This is one of those stories that I like not in spite of how ridiculous it is, but BECAUSE of it. Details aside, there’s virtually no difference between Billy/Captain Marvel and Willie/Captain Thunder. If someone were to redraw his costume and the origin pages, it would fit perfectly as the first meeting between Big Blue and the Big Red Cheese. The incongruities also have a weird charm to it. The notion that Clark questions Willie’s story is laughable, the idea that he comes around so easily is absurd. The fight is…well, it’s an awful lot of fun. And I won’t lie, I would love to see the history of Captain Thunder’s battles against the likes of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Lon Chaney Jr.
There were so many different one-off universes that peppered DC Comics in the years before the original Crisis. I kinda wish we could visit some of them again.
Thur., Nov. 13
Comics: Superman Vs. Lobo #1-3, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #19, Justice League of America #40
Notes: Today I’ve selected the three-issue Superman Vs. Lobo miniseries from 2021, written by Tim Seely and Sarah Beattie with art by Mirka Andolfo. Why? Because just like when they published this miniseries, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
That sounds snarkier than I intended. This isn’t a bad series, not at all, but it’s part of the ill-defined “Black Label” imprint at DC. When it was first announced, “Black Label” was supposed to be a more “mature readers’” imprint featuring the DC characters. Then it started to publish comics that were creator-owned and had nothing to do with the DCU Universe. Then they folded the Vertigo imprint and made those properties Black Label books. Then they brought BACK the Vertigo Imprint and moved some of the Black Label originals over there. And all the while, they were reprinting some books under Black Label that didn’t make any sense at all – such as Kingdom Come – while also publishing a few new properties that didn’t really have any content that marked them as “mature readers,” such The Last Days of Lex Luthor, which would probably be best as an Elseworlds. Then they brought back Elseworlds. What I’m getting at is, I’m not entirely certain what Black Label is supposed to be and, based on all available evidence, neither is DC Comics.
None of that, however, is the fault of the creative team of this miniseries, nor does that make it a bad story. The story kicks off with the Martian Manhunter sending Superman out into space to check on a space station that’s been damaged near the orbit of Jupiter, with astronauts in grave peril. As he’s saving them, everyone’s favorite Main Man Lobo has a vacation ruined when the resort planet he’s on is attacked by a kaiju-sized monster that turns out to be a microscopic tardigrade which has somehow been blown up to gargantuan proportions. He also meets “biologist and wildlife photography” Dr. Semedea Flik, who is an expert on single survivors of extinct species, and therefore is delighted to meet Lobo, who famously murdered his entire planet of Czarnia. Lobo, of course, doesn’t care about the destruction his fight with the tardigrade is causing, but Superman happens to be passing by in space and dives in to save both the creature and the people endangered by its rampage. Lobo, of course, sees Superman as a killjoy, ruining the fun of his fight, but Flik is thrilled to meet TWO “sole survivors” in one day. (Unless you count Supergirl or the Kandorians or Lobo’s daughter or…) When the news coverage of the fight starts painting Superman as a hero, Lobo is furious and decides to “ruin” him.
Lobo comes to Earth and gets on LexTube to begin slandering Superman. Lois (with a little help from Batman) begins a counter-offensive against Lobo online, and the vitriol online begins to fuel an army of robots that the Toyman created to prove that social media is toxic. (I guess even Winslow Schott can’t be wrong all the time.) Superman combats it by urging people to get online and post positive things and – this is far less realistic than the tardigrade kaiju – they actually start to do it. Speaking of the tardigrade, it comes to Earth, only much smaller and now demonstrating extreme intelligence. Its name, it says, is Numen, and like Superman and Lobo is the last survivor of his homeworld. Flik is THRILLED. Feeling a kinship to the two of them, Numen decides to use his vast power to give them a gift: restore and send them back to their homeworlds, but he makes a little boo-boo. On the last page, Superman finds himself on Czarnia and Lobo on Krypton.
Issue two kicks off with the Justice League searching for the missing Superman, with J’onn discovering that Krypton has somehow been restored and Green Lantern learning that Czarnia’s extinct population has come back. Numen, in a scene as funny as it is creepy, has learned that people on Earth communicate via “tweeting,” so it makes all the birds in the world explain to people that he sent Superman and Lobo back to their home planets. Of course, he’s wrong. On Czarnia, Superman – whose powers are dying under the planet’s red-tinted sun – learns that most of the population seems kind and pleasant, and Lobo was an anomaly. On Krypton, Lobo is frustrated at how “lame” the place is, but changes his tune when he realizes that there’s a sect of Kryptonians who blame their cold, sterile ways for the planet’s destruction and have decided to revert to a culture of hedonism and debauchery, his two favorite things. Flik has technology that allows her to bounce between worlds, viewing a civil war slowly brewing on Krypton between Lobo’s wild friends and the traditionalists, while Superman starts to find evidence that the Czarnians aren’t actually as nice as they pretend to be, with a deep paranoia and distrust underlying their apparent sweetness.
Lobo’s Kryptonian pals decide to expand the influence of Krypton into space, and begin by cloning an army of Lobos and sending it to Czarnia to start the genocide all over again. Superman, meanwhile, discovers that the kindly woman he’s been staying with has been leeching his blood and his powers, and manages to reverse the cell drain after she’s killed by one of the clones. As Lobo returns to Czarnia to kill his clones – and everybody else all over again – only to learn that the resurrection has turned many of them as bloodthirsty as he is. Superman makes it to Krypton and finds his parents, but is horrified to learn that Jor-El planted a killer parasite into the Lobo clones, which are still living beings. Flick finds Numen and convinces him that he’s screwed up by bringing back the dead worlds, and Numen collapses in self-pity. He removes the two worlds, but not before Jor-El tells his son how proud he is that he became a man of compassion, even for those who despise him. Flik then tells Superman and Lobo that she’s studied Numen and discovered that there are people seeking out Numen, whose birth destroyed their entire universe…Union! Zealot! Maul! Helspont! And the almost-Superman himself, Mr. Majestic! Some of the most powerful characters from the Wildstorm Universe!
Not that they CALLED it “the Wildstorm Universe” in the text, mind you, but it was still a hell of a surprise. Also a nice reminder that most Black Label comics are non-canonical. The Wildstorm heroes had been firmly integrated into the DCU at this point, so I guess that means we’re looking at two different worlds in the vast multiverse right now. I’m okay with that.
In the third issue, Flik tells us Numen’s origin. He’s part of a species that feeds on the fundamental forces of reality. When one of them is born, they consume an entire universe in order to survive. Flik begs Superman and Lobo to help her protect Numen from the “Revenge Squad” that’s after him. Superman agrees because he’s Superman, Lobo agrees because Flik agrees to pay him, and the fighting starts. While Lobo tears through half the team, Majestic and Zealot team up against Superman. In the heat of battle, Superman concedes that Majestic is more powerful than he is, but that’s not going to stop him from fighting to defend Numen with his last breath. Proving that he is, perhaps, more like Superman than he thought, Majestic is moved to put down his arms and talk. Lobo double-crosses Flik, though, setting up Numen to be killed and taking her technology and Numen’s energy to create a new universe where he’s the hero and Superman went mad after the murder of Jimmy Olsen. Lois, though, in a wonderful bit of meta-commentary, quickly figures out that the new universe they’re in is full of bad stereotypes and tropes, like so many “evil Superman” stories we’ve read, and concludes that they’re trapped in a “badly written story authored by an edgelord.” Lobo takes that personally and a battle ensues, but to everyone’s shock, he breaks down with the realization that he’s wasted the power he stole to rewrite the universe just so people would love him instead of thinking, “Maybe…I shoulda just not been a giant piece of $#*.” He expends the energy restoring the universe and integrating the orphaned Wildstorm heroes into it (so maybe it IS canonical?).
The series works on a few levels. It’s satirical, but pointedly so. First of all, it’s a bit of a deconstruction of Lobo himself. Created in the 80s as a PARODY of over-the-top, violent characters like the Punisher, his runaway popularity instead made him the poster boy, despite the fact that he exists only to exhibit all of their worst characteristics. This comic doesn’t flinch from that, reminding us over and over again that he’s a scuzzball who does not deserve admiration. The best line in the series, for example, is Superman calling Lobo “the worst person I’ve ever met, and I regularly have to spend time with Lex Luthor.” The second best, though, is directed at Lobo himself: “You think everyone is as terrible as you, and that makes you the loneliest man I’ve ever met.” Yes, Superman pities even Lobo. And all of this helps build towards a mild sort of redemption for the character in the end. He doesn’t ATONE for his awfulness, but at the very least he grows enough that he can recognize it and admit it, which – considering the place that he starts from – is not inconsiderable.
The other element of satire is pointed at the media and social media, how it tries to manipulate the narrative and how we’ve taken a piece of technology that should have brought everybody together and created greater understanding of us all and instead have decided to use it to be nasty to each other and create little echo chambers where we can sit in a virtual room and pretend that everybody who isn’t in the chamber with us is stupid and evil. It may sound a little hypocritical of me to talk this way about social media – I obviously use it all the time – but in my defense I do my best to keep my interactions online positive. I talk about the things I love, I try to steer clear of railing against things that I hate, because seriously, who needs to hear that? Even this whole “year of Superman” project is dedicated to that purpose, to me devoting 365 days to something that means something powerful and wonderful to me.
I’m not saying that everyone should use social media exactly the way that I do, I’m just saying that the world might not seem quite as terrible if they did.
Lobo included.
Fri., Nov. 14
Comic: Superman Vol. 4 #12-13,Aquaman Vol. 5 #53 (Guest appearance), Justice League of America #41-42, Adventure Comics #267
Notes: Although it wasn’t my original intention, after two days of comics that amounted to “Superman Vs. another hero,” it seems as though the universe has chosen a theme for this week for me. Who am I to argue? So today I decided to seek out another such story, landing on the two-part “Super Monster” from the Rebirth era, written by Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason with art by Doug Mahnke. In this, Superman faces off against Frankenstein. Not the kind we saw in Halloween week, though, but the actual Frankenstein’s monster, who in the modern DC Universe has taken the name “Eric Frankenstein” and joined the supernatural spy agency S.H.A.D.E. The story starts with Lois meeting a friend of hers named Candice, editor of the Hamilton Horn newspaper, who is trying to lure her away from the Planet (she had recently returned at this point – long story) only for Frankenstein to interrupt the interview and attack the editor, claiming he’s been chasing her for some time. Lois blasts Frankenstein with a weapon she’d recently “borrowed” from Batman and she and Candice flee. Superman, naturally, arrives to defend his wife, and he and Frankenstein get into it. The creature manages to get his hands on Candice and rips her face off, revealing an alien beneath.
In the second issue, Frankenstein explains that “Candice” is really a war criminal named Kroog who has been fleeing justice from several planets. Superman is glad to have captured a criminal, but admonishes Frankenstein for going after him in a way that caused destruction and potential injury to innocent people. Before they can take Kroog away, though, Frankenstein’s estranged Bride shows up. No longer with S.H.A.D.E., the Bride is now a bounty hunter and has come to take Kroog and collect the money for his head. In the scuffle over who’s going to bring Kroog in, the alien escapes. Superman has to break up the squabbling exes and together they track the alien down to bring him to justice.
The real meat of this two-parter comes towards the end of the second part. After Frankenstein and the Bride fight each other, there’s a short sequence where Lois asks the Bride about what happened to drive them apart. The answer is horrific – they had a son who became a monster (like, spiritually) and the Bride was forced to kill him to save the lives of innocents. From here we start to extrapolate that their divide is not actually based on hatred or even a lack of love between the two of them, but on the pain of their loss. As this was the era where Jon Kent was still a child, and still a relatively new addition to the Superman mythos, the story hits both Lois and the reader hard. The story ends with a quiet, wordless few pages of Lois and Clark returning home, tucking their son into bed, and giving him a goodnight kiss.
If you’re a parent, you get why this hits so hard. If you’re not, I’m not sure if I can explain it to you.
Notes: Once I realized I had accidentally stumbled into a theme, I got on the DC Universe app and just starting randomly seeking out different stories about Superman – for whatever convoluted reason – coming to blows with other heroes, because why not? That reminded me of these early comics in which Superman faces off against his future JLA teammate Booster Gold. In Booster Gold #7 from 1986, Dan Jurgens had his time-travelling hero encounter the man of steel for the first time. A year later, John Byrne and Jurgens collaborated on a two-part story that crossed over with Action Comics.
Booster Gold #7 begins with Booster, Superman, and a few hangers-on having just been abducted by an alien warlord called Galeb who is accusing them of treason, despite the fact that they don’t even know who he is. Galeb accuses them of conspiring with Ranzee, an alien who claimed to be marooned on Earth. They try to fight their way out, but Galeb’s wife – a self-proclaimed mystic – sends out a burst of mental energy that knocks all of them out, even Superman, because magic. They awaken in prison, and Ranzee tells them of how Galeb has ruled his people as a tyrant for years, leading him to steal a spaceship and go to Earth to ask the legendary Superman for help after Galeb personally tortured and murdered his wife and child. Booster wants to jump right in and take Galeb out, but the more experienced Superman cautions him about jumping into a political situation without all of the information. Galeb comes to their cell and says that he is willing to release everyone but Ranzee, who is to be executed. When Booster tries to attack, Superman steps in to stop him and the two come to blows. Superman holds back, hoping to cool Booster off, but Booster just keeps going. Eventually, Skeets shorts out Booster’s suit to stop the fight. Skeets has been investigating and learned that Ranzee lied to them – he is actually Galeb’s stepbrother and has been attempting to overthrow Galeb for years. Superman takes Booster back to Earth with his tail between his legs, arriving home at the same time as Lois Lane, who came by to interview Metropolis’s newest hero. Superman flies off, not at all impressed at his new rival.
This story, it should be noted, was published in the midst of Crisis on Infinite Earths and technically features the pre-Crisis Superman, although there is little to differentiate him from the character that would soon appear in the Byrne reboot. But it’s really interesting to me just how much Superman dislikes Booster in their first meeting. Of course, this early in his career, Booster didn’t really give him much to like. He’s cocky, hard-headed, and impulsive, and those qualities would have caused disaster had Superman not been there to get in his way. The way the character grew and evolved over the years is really remarkable, and he’s become one of my favorite DC characters.
John Byrne did one of his cover swipes (a lot of artists do cover swipes, but Byrne got the bug earlier than many – the man draws a Fantastic Four #1 swipe more often than I change my socks) to show Superman and Booster’s next encounter. Mayor Berkowitz has declared it to be Superman Day in Metropolis. The festivities are upset, though, when Booster Gold blows up the Superman statue that was supposed to be dedicated that day. He then calls a press conference where he accuses Superman of crimes against humanity for his recent incursion in the terrorist state of Qurac. Booster calls Superman down for taking political action that way, which comes off as particularly hypocritical if you just read Booster Gold #7, in which Superman stopped him from doing exactly that. Booster then decides to lure Superman into a fight by abducting the mayor’s daughter. Hearing her call for help, Superman zips in and Booster hits him way harder than Superman expected. Booster begins to pummel Superman, beating him with relative ease. With Superman on the ropes, though, a SECOND Booster appears, calling the first an imposter.
The story concludes in Booster Gold #23, once again by Dan Jurgens. A flashback informs us that this fake Booster has been in action for several days, smearing Superman, as Booster was in mourning over the recent loss of his sister and wasn’t even aware of his doppelganger. In the present, Booster manages to shred the fake’s outer covering, revealing a robot underneath. When Booster destroys it, a chunk of Kryptonite falls out, explaining how he was beating Superman. The reader learns that – surprise, surprise – the robot was sent by Lex Luthor, who was using it to gather as much data as possible on Superman for Luthor reasons. He sends a second armored operative – human this time – to attack Superman and retrieve the Kryptonite, and although his drone gets away with Luthor’s glowing rock, Superman easily captures the goon. He knows it’s Luthor’s handiwork, but the guy inside the armor claims to work for Booster Gold, is carrying Booster Gold International ID, and even the components of his armor were made by Booster’s company. Superman doesn’t buy the frame-up for a second. Booster gets the best of Luthor that night, but the epilogue brings in a new challenge for Booster that looks pretty bleak. But this ain’t the “Year of Booster Gold,” no matter how much he might wish it was, so I’m going to let you look all that up for yourself.
The antagonism between Superman and Booster continues here, although by this time Booster has become somewhat more integrated in life in Metropolis. There are even references to previous interviews with Lois, despite Booster and Superman not having encountered one another in the interim. It’s also funny to read these books by Dan Jurgens, who would of course eventually go on to be one of the most significant Superman creators of the post-Crisis era, before he was actually writing or drawing Superman on a regular basis. The character (especially in issue #7) doesn’t quite look like Jurgens’ Superman, it’s more like he was still trying to figure out how to draw him. He got Superman’s personality right away, though, with the character feeling like himself right out of the gate.
Sun. Nov. 16
Comic Books: Firestorm, the Nuclear Man #2, Justice League of America #179-180
Notes: Early in his career – in his second issue, in fact – Firestorm bumped into Superman. Makes sense, really, when you consider just how powerful “the nuclear man” actually is, Superman and the Justice League would clearly want to keep tabs on him. Let’s see how that turned out, shall we?
After a little showboating and reflecting on his origin, because back in the day a superhero was required to recap his origin once an issue, teenage superhero Ronnie Raymond goes about his day. His crush Doreen seems to be into his secret identity (nice), but his father isn’t impressed, nervous about that kind of power in the hands of an individual. And Ronnie can’t even ask his other half Professor Martin Stein for help, because in these early days of the character, Stein didn’t remember anything that happened when he and Ronnie were merged as Firestorm. (I’ve never tracked down the story where that particular tidbit was overturned. If anyone knows when it happened, let me know, would you?) Clark Kent, meanwhile, reporting on the new hero for WGBS, decides that this is exactly the sort of thing that Superman should be keeping an eye on. As he flies to New York to check in on the kid, Stein is attacked in his lab by Multiplex, the Duplicate Menace. (The much better “Multiple Man” was obviously already taken.) Fortunately for Stein, Ronnie discovers the atomic bond he shares with the older man allows him to feel it when Stein is hit and know when he’s in danger. He also discovers that they don’t need to be physically next to one another to trigger their transformation, and Firestorm arrives to take on Multiplex. As Firestorm and Multiplex trade blows, Superman arrives just in time to see the young hero get pummeled, dampening his notions of inviting Firestorm into the Justice League. Superman saves him, and despite a moment of being star-struck, Firestorm zips off in search of Multiplex. Superman follows him and watches as Firestorm captures Multiplex, promising the young hero that he may be Justice League material after all.
Okay, so it was 1978, but that last part feels WILDLY presumptuous on Superman’s part. Suggesting Justice League membership to somebody he literally has just met, who he saw fight ONE supervillain? Because he’s got drive and wants to prove himself? It would make a little more sense today, in this era of Justice League Unlimited, where pretty much everybody with a mask gets a card and a ticket to the Watchtower, but wow.
Just for funsies, I decided to follow this up with Justice League of America #179 and 180, the issues where Firestorm actually DOES join the League, published less than two (real-time) years later, a membership that I’m sure in NO way was influenced by the fact that Firestorm’s creator Gerry Conway was writing the JLA title at the time. Anyway, true to his word, Superman sponsors Firestorm’s membership in this issue, saying that the rookie hero’s “youthful exuberance” will be an asset to the team. Then once he zones out when Batman starts explaining the procedural stuff involved in being a JLA member, Ronnie gives the reader another recap of his origin (I told you, it was required). After a hearty congratulations from Superman, Firestorm returns to Earth and splits up. Ronnie sends Martin Stein (still unaware of his double life) home in a cab, then he meets his friends to check out the hot new disco in town. Seriously, disco. Who says comics from 1980 aren’t timeless? Anyway, it turns out that one of Ronnie’s friends who was supposed to meet him at the club is missing, supposedly in the clutches of a woman called “the Satin Satan.” Ronnie calls Stein back – again, and Firestorm confronts the witchlike woman, feeling her power overtake him just in time to hit his brand-new JLA signal device.
In the next issue, the League arrives in the penthouse where Firestorm was abducted, only to find the place wrecked and empty. A few minutes later, Ronnie Raymond’s friends arrive with a security guard, looking for him. Zatanna’s magic powers manage to track down Satin Satan and Firestorm, helping him get free. Together, the League fights off Satin’s demons and apparently free her from the demonic influence that’s gripping her, then everybody except Green Arrow congratulates Firestorm on a great first case.
Look.
Gerry Conway is a comic book legend, we can all agree on that, right? And Firestorm is a great character – he was really bold and unique when he was created, and he’s been someone I’ve always thought deserves to be a constant presence in the DCU in one form or another, even during the periods in which he lies fallow.
All that said, NOTHING in these three issues suggests that Firestorm is Justice League material. Sure, he comes through in the end, but he makes mistake after mistake, fumbles into traps, and generally acts like a rank amateur. I can see why Superman would want to keep an eye on somebody so powerful, and making him a member of the League in order to train him and help him get better would make a lot of sense. But it’s not framed that way, it all comes across as the League – Superman especially – getting starry-eyed at this new kid and all the neat toys he’s got and wanting him to stick around so they can play together. It comes across a little bit like Conway’s pet.
I also realize that these issues don’t QUITE fit into the “Superman Vs.” theme I’ve kinda been going for this week, but as I didn’t even really intend to do a theme this week at all, I’m not going to feel bad about that. Maybe I’ll call this week “Superman And…” instead.
The weirdest thing, though, is that the issue ends with the clear implication that Satin Satan hasn’t REALLY been set free of her demonic possession – that there is an impending danger that will come back to plague the Justice League again. But a quick check online seems to suggest that these two issues are the ONLY ONES in which she EVER APPEARED. Really? With an ending like THAT? Nobody has picked up on it and tried to do something with the MODEL-GORGEOUS DEMONIC VILLAIN in the past FOUR AND A HALF DECADES?
I’ve now read over 1,000 individual comic book issues for this Year of Superman project, and that may be the wildest thing I’ve discovered yet.
TV Episode: Superman and Lois Season 3, Ep. 3, “In Cold Blood”
Mon, Nov. 17
Comic: Captain Atom #46, Action Comics #587, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #38 (Guest Appearance)
Notes: Like the first Firestorm comic I covered yesterday, I picked this one more or less because Superman was on the cover and I hadn’t read it before. Captain Atom wakes up on the moon, trapped in a crystalline crucifix along with several other heroes and villains, Superman included. He manages to free himself and Superman, and the two of them investigate their abduction, which turns out to be the work of a crystal alien called Kylstar (say it out loud). After a brief scuffle with their abductor, Kylstar’s translating droid tells them that his planet is ruled by an evil dictator, and he has been seeking sentient weapons – super-beings, in other words – to help him free his planet. He releases the other captives, one of whom is an alien who confirms his story (which is more than we had in the issue of Booster Gold the other day that had a lot of these same beats). Kylstar offers to return anyone who doesn’t want to go with him to their homeworld, but both Atom and Superman decide to return to Earth. After they’re gone, Kylstar casually reveals to Major Force – who agreed to accompany him – that he’s going to have to go ahead and conquer the entire galaxy to have a strong enough army to take on his enemy. Force is all about that. In the end, Superman does Cap a solid, helping him find his estranged daughter Peggy.
It’s an okay issue, and I wonder if the Kylstar storyline was picked up later on in the run. Major Force obviously made it back to Earth at some point, because he was available a few years later to commit the act that led to the “fridging” becoming a comic book-specific verb. But my appetite for a hero vs. hero fight hasn’t been satisfied. So I’ll go back to scratch that itch with another comic from John Byrne’s Action Comics team-up era, issue #587, featuring the Etrigan the Demon.
To be fair, it’s a little tricky to decide if this even counts as “hero vs. hero,” as Demon’s status is kind of flexible. Depending on the writer, he’s either a demon who tries to do good or an evil spirit FORCED to do go via his association with Jason Blood. Byrne writes Etrigran more on the good side, though, without any internal quandaries over wanting to do bad and just doing the good, so it’ll fit nicely.
The story starts with Jason Blood and his friend Glenda Mark in an antique shop in Gotham City, where she accidentally activates an old piece that suddenly captures her in a metallic column. The column expands, capturing the others in the shop as if it were trying to create a miniature city, and Jason only barely manages to summon the Demon in time to avoid being taken himself. Superman is returning to Earth from space when he spots the metal city growing and completely overtaking Gotham. He comes in and tries to wreck the expanding columns, but Etrigan attacks, telling Superman he must not harm the towers. The two of them fight for a few pages before Etrigan shows Superman that every time they break one of the columns it bleeds human blood. Etrigan explains that each column is a human who has been transformed, and the only way to stop them from dying is to do so before they are cursed, and he casts a spell to send Superman back in time. As Etrigan existed in that time, he couldn’t go with Superman (this was an old time travel rule in DC Comics that doesn’t seem to apply anymore) but he gives Superman one hour before the spell wears off and returns him to his own time, and tells him to seek out Jason Blood. Superman finds 12th Century Jason, and together they track down Morgaine le Fay in the process of creating the very artifact that started the mess. Superman dives in despite the magic and disrupts the spell, resetting the timeline. An epilogue replays the scene in the Gotham antique shop, bereft of the artifact, and all is well.
The fight between Superman and Etrigan is short, but really effective. And it’s actually nice to see one of these scuffles where Superman – however well-meaning – is in the wrong. It’s a good change of pace. This issue also has several elements that I always enjoy: time travel, doses of Arthurian legend, and John Byrne artwork. Overall, it’s a fun read.
TV Episode: Superman and Lois Season 3, Episode 4, “Too Close to Home.”
I’ve been trying to squeeze in episodes of this show again because I still want to try to finish it by the end of the year. I haven’t been writing about all of them, though, because I kind of feel like I’ve run out of things to say. I like Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch. I love Wolé Parks as John Henry Irons. But the series as a whole hasn’t gripped me as much as I wanted it to. However, the scene in this episode of Clark – Clark, not Superman – in the diner, facing off against Emmitt Pergande? That’s absolute poetry.
Tues., Nov. 18
Comics: Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder #1-4
Notes: I started this inadvertent “Versus” week with Superman fighting the faux Captain Marvel, so it seems only appropriate that I end it with an early encounter with the real thing. And again, this isn’t actually a fight – Superman and Captain Marvel are never opposed to each other in this miniseries. But you know what? I don’t care. It’s still a good comic.
Published in 2005, this miniseries by Judd Winick and Josh Middleton was a contemporary take on the first meeting between Big Blue and Big Red. It begins with the wizard Shazam at the Rock of Eternity, early in “the second age of heroes,” observing the nascent members of the Justice League in action, then gives us a quick time skip to the rookie Captain Marvel averting a plane crash in Fawcett City. (It is amazing how often planes in comic book universes ALMOST crash. If it was as frequent in real life as it is in a comic book world, nobody would ever board an airplane ever again.) Meanwhile in Metropolis, Superman investigates a break-in at the Museum of Natural History that brings him into battle with a big, blue creature – a sign of that singular bane of his, magic. We also see Billy Batson homeless and refusing to go to yet another foster home, living in abandoned subway tunnels with some help from his friend, a kid named Scott. Looking at a recent newspaper, Billy sees a story about the museum robbery in Metropolis and decides to keep an eye on the Fawcett City museum. Sure enough, that night, there’s a break-in – the same crooks as in Metropolis, still trying to steal Russian artifacts. Once again, the crooks summon monsters and they hurl Captain Marvel out of the museum, where Superman is waiting to lend a hand.
In issue two, we start “one week ago,” with a summit between Dr. Thaddeus Sivana and Lex Luthor, where the two evil geniuses – despite their mutual dislike of one another – agree to cooperate, with Luthor giving Sivana use of an operative named Spec to trail Captain Marvel. Spec, we find out, managed to trail Marvel and witnessed his transformation into a child. Back in the “present,” Superman and Captain Marvel meet outside the museum for the first time and team up to fight the monsters summoned by the robbers. After fighting them off, Marvel asks Superman if they can “talk,” and the two of them have a casual conversation on the top of Mt. Everest, discussing their powers and what it’s like to be heroes. Their talk is disrupted when Superman hears a pair of dual threats coming from Fawcett – Sivana has summoned the demonic villain Sabbac via a spell which also creates a solar eclipse, and wouldn’t you know it? Dr. Bruce Gordon has once again been taken over by the spirit of Eclipso.
Yeah, he’s in this too.
Issue three kicks off with Spec finding his way to the homeless enclave where Billy Batson has been living, looking for information about “a little boy, about eleven years old, black hair,” and offering to pay handsomely. While Spec hunts Billy, Superman and Marvel take on Sabbac in Fawcett City. At the same time, Eclipso makes his move, using a satellite network to transform the people of Fawcett into – goodie! – more Eclipsos! Superman dismantles Eclipso’s machine, but still has to deal with a legion of innocent people who have been eclipsed and go on the attack, while Marvel is left to face Sabbac alone. Superman escapes and disrupts the coven that caused the Eclipse, breaking Eclipso’s hold on everyone, including Bruce Gordon, and Marvel tricks Sabbac into saying his own name, causing him to turn off his powers just like Billy uses the word “Shazam!” Superman and Marvel part as friends, but that night as Billy is reading about his own exploits in the newspaper, Sivanna (using Spec’s intel) sends an army of thugs to kidnap him.
In the final issue, Billy switches to Captain Marvel just before Sivanna’s goons open fire. He defeats them easily, but in the gunfire his friend Scott is mortally wounded. Marvel brings him to the hospital, but Scott succumbs to his injuries. Marvel bursts into the police station where Sivanna’s thugs have been taken and begins to brutalize one of them, demanding to know who hired him. Moments later, he’s ripped apart Sivanna’s corporate headquarters and has Sivanna’s throat in his hand. He chokes him, almost to death, but relents before Sivanna is killed and flees the scene. In Metropolis, Clark hears about the incident and finds Marvel again at Mt. Everest, where he plans to have him answer for attacking a police station, assaulting a prisoner, and destroying the top floor of the Sivana building…until he sees Marvel weeping. Superman is confused by Marvel’s sobbing about getting “his best friend killed,” until he says his magic word and becomes Billy Batson again. Superman demands that Billy take him to the Wizard Shazam, where he rips into him for putting a child in danger. “He’s just a boy,” he declares. Shazam replies, “He is. A boy who could use guidance.” In the last few pages, Clark Kent finds Billy in the abandoned building where he’s living now. He removes his glasses, unbuttons his shirt to reveal the “S,” and sits down to have a talk.
This is such a great story, all building up to the last few scenes, which are immensely powerful. At first, Superman sees Marvel as a contemporary, an equal, somebody who maybe can understand the burden of power that he carries because he shares it. When he discovers the truth about Billy Batson, the righteous anger that fills him is perfectly in keeping, although you have to wonder if he ever had a similar discussion with Batman about any of the Robins. In any case, this is such a great dynamic for the two of them. In a world where Superman and Billy Batson co-exist, Clark Kent would be a perfect mentor for the boy. Unfortunately, in all the reboots that have happened in the past 20 years, I’m fairly certain this story is no longer canon, and that’s a shame.
One other amusing thing I need to point out – Marvel defeats Sabbac by tricking him into saying his own name, which also happens to be the magic word that triggers his transformation. At this point, people had mistakenly been calling Captain Marvel “Shazam” for decades, since DC was using that word to secure the trademark. But Sabbac having a name that he can’t say is ridiculous, a problem Captain Marvel Jr. had since the beginning, and a problem that was exacerbated in the New 52 reboot when “Shazam” became Billy’s hero name. These days, in-universe, Billy’s alter ego is just “The Captain,” which sidesteps the problem, but it’s kind of lame as a superhero name. I dunno, maybe they should have just stuck with “Captain Thunder” in the first place.
Radio Program: The Adventures of Superman serial “The Clan of the Fiery Cross” episodes 1 and 2.
As I write this, it’s Oct. 29 and I am still very much in the Halloween mood. I know, however, that this isn’t going to be posted until Nov. 5, and I respect the fact that you guys have probably shifted gears by now. So I’m going to do another random week for you, bouncing from one story to another at will and not beholden to anything in particular. You may still see a vampire or two, I make no promises.
Well, except for the promise that you’ll see a picture of my kid in his Halloween costume when we get to Friday. I can absolutely promise you THAT.
Comics:Superman #410, 412, 413, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #16
Notes: With the end of the year looming, I’m going to try to tick off some of the more random comics on my list that I haven’t gotten around to, books that don’t fit into any particular theme or week, but that I want to read for one reason or another. And I’m going to start in 1985 with a three-part Lex Luthor story that has become a minor classic.
Superman #410 starts normally enough, with Superman saving Honolulu from a plunging satellite. With Hawaii safe, Clark returns to the Daily Planet office and dutifully types out the story, turning it over to Perry White to put on the front page of the paper. As the evening edition hits the streets, though, Morgan Edge comes to Perry with horrifying news – the satellite Superman supposedly stopped is still in orbit, making the story he “told” Clark Kent seem fake. Superman zips to space to investigate and finds the satellite he clearly remembers catching floating in orbit where it belongs. Superman is faced with a horrible choice – tell Edge the truth and have people believe Superman is losing his grip on reality, or allow him to think Clark falsified the story. Given a choice between shattering peoples’ trust in Superman or in Clark Kent, he allows Edge to think Clark was at fault. Edge and Perry immediately fire Clark from both the Planet and WGBS news. As Clark tries to find the truth about what happened, we see Lex Luthor in a secluded island hideaway, boasting to his minions how he has found a way to broadcast false memories into Superman’s mind.
The trilogy skips issue #411, the legendary tribute to Julius Schwartz issue, and resumes in Superman #412, which begins with a humiliated Clark Kent on the unemployment line. He’s called away just as he’s about to be served, as Superman is needed to prevent a nearby construction disaster. Meanwhile, as Perry, Lois, Jimmy, and Lana agonize over Clark’s dismissal, Luthor is gloating over how Superman “allowed” his old pal Clark to take the fall for his own false memories. Lana, in fact, tears into Superman the next time she sees him for the same reason. Clark turns to his old friend Steve Lombard – who now owns a sporting goods store – for work. They’re hanging out when Luthor arrives in Metropolis, planting a series of “Scrambler Rods” around the city and nearly impaling Steve in the process. As he catches up to Luthor, an enraged Superman drives his fist into Luthor’s chest, killing him. When he withdraws his hand, Luthor’s armor explodes in an atomic wave that destroys the entire city of Metropolis!
For, like, a panel, before Superman finds himself clinging to the top of a skyscraper, having hallucinated the entire encounter. Luthor, meanwhile, has finished planting his rods, ready for the final phase of his “Ultimate Revenge” plan.
The final chapter picks up just seconds later, Superman still at the top of the building, having lost all faith in his own grip on reality. Even though he’s certain that Luthor is behind all of his current troubles, he no longer trusts his own senses, destroying his effectiveness as Superman. He stumbles back to Steve’s store, where Steve receives a phone call from Lois with a plan of her own. She has Steve invite Clark to a “charity bash” that evening, to which he reluctantly agrees. As he ponders his future, another hallucination hits – Steve’s store seems to vanish, then the entire city block, then the entire city, including his friends. Clark is missing, then, when the “charity bash” begins – actually a dinner in honor of Clark thrown by the people who still believe in him. While his friends give testimonies in Clark’s honor, Superman watches in horror as Luthor makes him believe he is obliterating the entire planet Earth. While Luthor has Superman captive, suffering from his hallucinations, Clark’s friends are growing worried, searching for him, wondering where he’s gone. When Superman’s hearing picks up on their fervent pleas, it breaks through Luthor’s spell. He goes after Luthor, but a strange vortex plucks Luthor from his clutches before he can bring him to justice. Superman joins Clark’s “other” friends at the dinner, claiming the whole thing was part of a plan of his to smoke Luthor out, thanks Clark for going along with it, and says he’s SURE Clark is looking forward to getting back to work.
I’ve said several times that the late 70s and early 80s were kind of a pallid era for the Superman comics. The villains and stories felt recycled and pointless, and although there were attempts at change (Lois “breaking up” with Superman, Clark dating Lana, etc.) none of it felt particularly important or consequential. But in the last year or so before the John Byrne reboot, they took some chances, and this story is one of the better ones. Although the conclusion still puts everything back in its neat little box, the journey to get there is an interesting one and I like the whole concept of everybody coming out in support not of Superman, but of Clark Kent. This was a time when Clark was usually still written as the disguise and Superman as the real personality, so having people in Clark’s corner for once was fresh and satisfying. Luthor’s getaway is a little irritating, but the knowledge that the vortex was sucking him up to participate in Crisis on Infinite Earths helps a bit. I almost wish they hadn’t given Clark his job back at the end – with the reboot on the horizon it wouldn’t have really made much of a difference, but may have made this story even more memorable.
Thur. Oct. 30
Podcast: Totally Rad Christmas, Episode, “Superboy-Young Dracula (w/CM Chuck)”
Notes: It’s the day before Halloween, so I decided to take a break from my usual Star Trek podcast on the way to work and see if the Totally Rad Christmas podcast had dropped any Halloween episodes this year. To my delight, I found that Gerry D and CM Chuck had gotten together to review an episode of the 1988 Superboy series in which young Clark faced off against…well, Young Dracula. I haven’t really gone back and watched this series in a long time, and I’m not sure at the moment where to find it. I own the first season on DVD, but not the subsequent ones, and although I know at one point it was available on DC Universe, that before it was merged with HBO Max and before Warner Bros. lost their collective minds and started throwing their IP to the four winds in the hopes of finding somebody desperate enough to buy them. The whole situation is ridiculous.
But anyway, the podcast. I don’t really remember the episode they’re discussing, and I wish I had it readily available to watch, as I’ve still got so many other Superman/vampire encounters fresh in my mind. I was glad to see that Gerry did enough research to unearth Superman #180, which I talked about last week, and how it demonstrated that a vampire biting a solar-powered Kryptonian wasn’t the best idea for the vampire. But that was a side conversation, not about the show itself, and the scattershot nature of this particular podcast does a nice job of emulating a conversation hanging around the comic shop, but isn’t exactly comprehensive in its coverage of the topic at hand. I’ll have to find this episode on my own somehow.
Comics: Superman: Silver Banshee #1-2, Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League #3 (Cameo), Saga of the Swamp Thing #24 (Guest Appearance), Justice League of America #36 (Team Member), Flash Vol. 6 #26 (Guest Appearance), Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #12 (Team Member)
Notes: In the comments to last week’s blog, Ben Herman asked if I’d ever read Dan Brereton’s two-issue Superman: Silver Banshee miniseries from 1998. And I know I have, I bought it when it came out and it’s still in my collection, but I probably haven’t read it SINCE the original publication. And as it, too, is a Halloween story (which I had forgotten, or I would have included it last week), this seems like an excellent opportunity to revisit it.
On Halloween Eve, Lois Lane gets a tip that will help her uncover a notorious gang of art thieves called the “Trickertreaters.” At the same time, in the Netherworld, Silver Banshee learns that there is one remaining descendant of the MacDougal clan, the clan responsible for her curse, and that she will never be free until the last MacDougal has perished. On Halloween, though, there are other options – she can go to Earth again, and if she uses the power of “good works,” the final MacDougal can lift the curse freely, without need for further death. Lacy MacElwain, her target, now lives in Metropolis (because of course she does) and the Banshee sets out to find her, but instead is snared by a summoning spell cast by the devil queen Hecate. Hecate – as it happens – is the one who lured Lois Lane with the promise of catching the Trickertreaters, whose newest member happens to be…oh come on, you can guess…yep. Lacy MacElwain herself.
Funny how things work out sometimes.
Anyway, Hecate’s stooge Thorpe knocks out Lois and ties her up as the art thieves arrive with their newest acquisition, an amulet that has no apparent monetary value, but that Hecate needs so she can do evil witch stuff. She tries to dismiss them without payment, but they take offense to that and wind up battling Thorpe, who turns out to be some kind of were-demon-thing. That’s an industry term, peeps. Lacy manages to get her hands on the amulet, which she brings to the mystic web where the Silver Banshee is held captive. The two of them are transported away from Hecate’s lair, and the Banshee tells Lacy that she will be freed of her curse if Lacy destroys the amulet, but it turns out to be fairly powerful. Thorpe tracks them down, but Superman (who got a little concerned when he found a dead body in the church where his wife was supposed to be meeting an informant) has caught up to them and saves her. As he confronts Hecate, Lacy flees for home, but the Banshee follows her, demanding she destroy the amulet. Unfortunately for Lacy, Hecate’s demons – including the transformed Trickertreaters – have trailed her as well.
In issue two, the Banshee tries to defend Lacy from the attack, but is forced to merge the two of them into a single body to prevent her death. In their shared form, the Banshee promises Lacy that destroying the amulet will set them both free. Unfortunately, Thorpe has his hands on it now. Superman, meanwhile is trapped by Hecate’s magic, and she plans to use Superman and Lois in her scheme. She gets the amulet back from a reluctant Thorpe, and the Banshee/Lacy hybrid attacks. The Banshee’s wail is surprisingly effective against Hecate, but she can’t free Superman or Thorpe from the Puppeteer demon that is holding them. In the battle, Lacy is killed, and the Banshee is freed from her curse, but unwilling to allow Lacy to sacrifice herself, she follows her into the afterlife, where the two of them are consumed by light. When the light fades, Superman, Lois, and a back-from-the-dead Lacy are all that remain. Lacy goes home, only to find that in saving her, the Banshee is now bound to her…no longer merged, but more of a regular haunt.
I’m really glad that Ben suggested I read this one again. The Silver Banshee has always been an interesting sort of anti-villain – she does bad things (murdering people, y’know) but she doesn’t do them out of actual malice or evil, merely out of a desire to free herself from a torturous curse. Once that curse is lifted, you can take the character in different directions, and this two-issue story is a nice sort of capstone to the status quo John Byrne first established for the character. She’s been used periodically ever since, sometimes as a villain, sometimes almost as a hero. I don’t recall offhand how long Lacy stuck around, but I don’t think she’s currently a factor when the Banshee shows up. Still, if there can be THREE ongoing series starring Batman bad girls who keep straddling the line between villain and kinda-sorta-hero, I think it’s well past time the Silver Banshee got at least another miniseries or something to give her the spotlight.
Notes: I don’t have a ton of time to read, though, because there’s trick-or-treatin’ to do, so I pulled the 2010 Supergirl annual, in which Kara is accidentally bounced 1000 years into the future and encounters the Legion – but NOT the Legion SHE knew. This is her cousin Kal-El’s Legion (recently restored in Action Comics) when they were teenagers. Brainiac 5 wants to find a way send her back immediately, worried about her disrupting the timestream the way he always worries when Superboy shows up, but it’s not that simple. She’s there for a month, joining the team and lending a hand, and learning – tragically – the circumstances of her own death. When a horned villain calling herself “Satan Girl” attacks, Kara and Brainy bounce four days into the future to see that Satan Girl has destroyed Metropolis, possessed the Legion, and taken over the world. It gets worse when she realizes that Brainy himself summoned her, but is arrogantly dismissing his own part in it.
An epic battle ensues between Satan Girl and the possessed Legion, with Kara, Brainy, and an army of animatronic Jimmy Olsens on the other (it makes sense in context). In the end, Brainy manages to send them back and prevent himself from summoning Satan Girl in the first place, then brings Kara home. In the process, they erase her memory of the future, including that of her own death, but Brainiac swears to do something to save her.
I like this story for a lot of reasons. Don’t ask me to explain why, but the various versions of the Legion that have flirted with a Supergirl/Brainiac 5 romance over the years have always appealed to me, and this one plays with that element as well. I hate it when people get into “shipping wars” over their preferred pairings, but I have to admit that I have a few of my own, and this is one of them. It works for the characters as they were at the time, and I hope that when the dust settles around the whole All In/DC KO thingamabob and we have a new, proper Legion again, this is an element that will be touched upon.
That said, I’m a little bummed because the reason I chose this particular issue is that the DC Universe app describes it as a Halloween story and…it ain’t. I mean, it was released in October and there’s the whole “Satan Girl” thing, but there’s no mention of Halloween in the story whatsoever. I assume that most of the listings on the DC app are copies of the original solicitations for the comics, especially for something as relatively recent as this, but that gets me a little grumpy that I skipped over a chance for some prime Halloween content.
There are greener – relatively speaking – pastures with the Halloween story from Superman/Batman #65. The story begins with Superman trying to save a falling plane as he’s done thousands of times. And this one, of course, has Lois Lane on it, as it has thousands of times. But it also has Perry White, his parents, Jimmy Olsen – and Superman watches in confusion as the plane goes down, killing everyone he loves. The scene shifts and we see that Superman is actually unconscious, as are Batman, the Joker, and Lex Luthor, all of whom had been engaged in a battle, then all taken down by an outside force. We watch the Joker live through his worst nightmare – a place where people actually treat his terrors as a joke. Lex Luthor’s worst nightmare, it turns out, is living out the bland, boring life of a subservient, specifically Jimmy Olsen. And Batman has a nightmare of a family – married to Selina Kyle, a son named Richard, his parents alive — and then watching them all gunned down by Alfred so he can bring things back to “the way it has to be.” The dream is nightmarish enough for Batman to wake up and realize all of them have been captured by – and are about to be buried alive by – the Scarecrow. Superman comes to next, stopping Batman from going too far in his revenge, and in the end we see a glimpse of the Scarecrow’s own worst nightmare – a land where he’s just an ordinary man of straw, one without a brain. It’s a cute story, and definitely one that feels more seasonally appropriate than the Supergirl one. But I think that’ll do it for Halloween in this blog. Until next time, anyway.
Halloween Bonus: I know you won’t believe me when I say this, but I had no influence on my son’s choice of Halloween costume this year. Well, not directly anyway. Obviously, his sphere of reference is influenced by proximity to me, and I wasn’t exactly subtle when I told him how happy it made me to bring him to watch the new James Gunn movie back in July. But at no point did I deliberately try to influence or manipulate him when the time came for him to select a Halloween costume.
“Eddie,” I asked him during one of our 27 trips to the various Spirit Halloween locations in our area, “What do you want to be for Halloween this year?”
“SUPERMAN!” he announced.
“Nobody is ever gonna believe I had nothing to do with this,” I said.
We wound up getting his costume at Walmart rather than Spirit, since they somehow got an exclusive on costumes from the movie. But we got the black hair color spray from Spirit, and I finally got a chance to wear the Superman pajamas he and his mom got me for Father’s Day back in June.
And I may be a little biased, but amongst all the arguing about Reeves and Cavill and Corenswet…well, with all due respect to those gentlemen, I may have a new favorite Superman.
Sat., Nov. 1
Comics: Superman: Red and Blue 2025 Special
Notes: This summer, during my family’s annual trip to Pittsburgh, I used the time to read over a lot of collected editions of various Superman books that didn’t quite fit in anywhere else. One of those was the collection of the delightful anthology series Superman: Red and Blue. I was quite happy when DC announced that they were bringing the concept back this year for a one-shot special with four new stories.
First up is “Priceless,” written by Paul Dini with art by Mirka Andolfo. Dini’s story features Superman on a mission to collect a rare mineral he needs to bail Supergirl out of an alien prison. It looks as though Dini is maintaining the characterization of Supergirl from the movie – a sort of hard-partying girl who gets into a little trouble with her dog. The story is funny and the art is wonderful, but there’s a nice little turn at the end that shows us that things weren’t exactly what Superman had assumed – and, in fact, family is everything.
“All the Time in the World” by Michael Walsh is a pretty simple story, a day in the life of Superman set in the era when Jonathan was still a toddler and Clark is desperately trying to find the time to be a husband and a father in a world where the demands for Superman’s gifts are neverending. This one…hits. I mean, there’s nothing world-changing or anything going on here, but it’s a theme that is particularly significant to me, right now, at this moment, where I’m looking at a schedule and trying to figure out how to fit in my son’s choir rehearsal and his basketball practice and his speech therapy and my own job and my wife’s job and if it is even possible, in the entire totality of the universe, to carve out even a single afternoon where I’m not going to be pulled into yet another thing that I don’t even know is going to happen now but it going to turn out to be of universe-altering consequence approximately 30 minutes before it has to happen. I may not have any literal fires to put out or people to catch as they fall off a building, but this is real. I know nothing about Michael Walsh, but I have to assume he’s a parent, because how the hell else could he understand this so well?
Next is Dan Abnett and Caitlin Yarsky’s “Out of the Ordinary.” When Superman saves a small town in Canada from a giant robot – you know, like you do – he is approached by a reporter for the tiny local paper who sheepishly asks for an interview. And to the surprise of absolutely nobody who understands Superman, he graciously agrees to one. The bulk of the story is just a quiet conversation between Superman and this young woman in a small-town diner, about what it’s like to be him and what it means to be “ordinary.” It’s a lovely story that really does nail the character, and in fact it functions very nicely as a (Clark Kent-ian polite) kind of rebuttal to Quentin Tarantino and anybody else who thinks that Superman is the “real” identity and Clark is a mask.
Last is “Red-Letter Days” by Rainbow Rowell and Cian Tomey. On Lois and Clark’s anniversary, Superman is summoned away by one of those regular world-threatening crisis type events. By the time he gets back, Lois has gotten a tip on an enormous story that deserves front-page coverage, but it’s going to take her and her husband staying up all night to get the sources and get the news straight. This isn’t a Superman story, it’s a Lois and Clark story, and I love it for that. We see the two of them doing what they do best (when Clark isn’t wearing a cape, that is) and in a way that isn’t interrupted by supervillains, alien invaders, time travel, or any of the other thousands of things that screw up a superhero’s life on a daily basis. It’s a story of a loving couple that struggles a little sometimes to find time for each other, and it’s delightful.
Superman’s the greatest hero there is, I think I’ve fairly well established my position on that by now. But for all the stories where he saves the world or the universe or a cat in a tree, there aren’t enough stories like the ones in this anthology. Four stories that lean on the man part of his name rather than the Super. There aren’t enough of these, and I hope that the Red and Blue anthology comes back again and again.
Sun., Nov. 2
Comic: Brave and the Bold Vol. 3 #16
Notes: Sundays aren’t days of rest for teachers. We’ve gotta get ready for the week, and I’ve got a ton of stuff on my plate today, so I decided to look for a one-off story I could read without sacrificing a huge chunk of time. I decided on this issue from the 2007 reboot of DC’s Brave and the Bold, which in this incarnation was a team-up title without a specific anchor character – there was never any telling which two characters would wind up with each other on any given issue. And as you can tell from the look on Superman’s face, this team-up with Catwoman surprised him as much as anybody.
Written by our old pal Mark Waid with art by Scott Kolins, the story begins with Superman responding to a bat-signal, telling Gordon that Batman asked him to cover for him while he was out of town. Gordon asks him to look into a rumored underworld auction, and Superman’s hearing picks up a burglary nearby. He finds Catwoman stealing an enormous jeweled egg, and Catwoman – a little smitten with the Man of Steel – tells him she needed it to get into the same crime auction. The evening’s prize is allegedly a map that leads to a certain hidden cave outside of Gotham City. Superman reluctantly agrees to work with Catwoman to stop the map from falling into the wrong hands. Selina dresses the two of them up to go undercover at the auction and a comedy of errors follows, most of them based on Superman’s attempts to sidestep actually giving any sort of aid to the criminal element around them. In the end they manage to prevent the contents of the cave from being used for nefarious purposes, and their encounter ends in a bit of a stalemate…but one that leaves Catwoman smiling.
I really enjoyed this issue. Batman never makes an appearance, but the story is essentially about him – specifically about how Superman and Catwoman, respectively, each feel about the Dark Knight and how that common ground allows them to put aside their differences and work together. And while you don’t get the impression that Catwoman’s flirting with Superman is entirely serious, it doesn’t seem as though she’s entirely joking either. After spending her life playing with the bad boys, a “date” with the ultimate good guy seems to be a refreshing change of pace for her, and even when Superman gets a little bit of an upper hand on her in the last few panels, she doesn’t seem to mind all that much. It’s just a simple, charming little story, the likes of which we could certainly use more of.
Mon., Nov. 3
Animated Feature: The Batman/Superman Movie: World’s Finest (1997)
Notes: When I woke up this morning at around 2:30 with a rumbling in my stomach I had every intention of going to work. However, as the rumbling continued to have pointed conversations with me for the next several hours, I eventually resigned myself to a day on the couch. And since getting off the couch to find something to read didn’t seem like a fun time, I decided that today’s Superman fare would consist of something I could access via my remote control. Bizarrely, The Batman/Superman Movie: World’s Finest doesn’t appear to currently be streaming anywhere, not even on HBO Max. Although I could theoretically have watched the individual episodes of Superman: The Animated Series that were cut together to make the film, I once again am grateful for my adherence to physical media and how I’ve used that to meticulously populate my own Plex server.
Younger people reading this blog (and of course, we all know how popular it is with the kids) may not realize just what a big deal this movie was. Today, when everybody and their brother is trying to create a cinematic shared universe, it seems like a film of this nature would be a no-brainer. But in 1997, despite the fact that these characters were all owned by the same companies and their shows were worked on by the same people, there was still relatively little crossover. Batman: The Animated Series was a smash hit, and when the same creators put their work into a Superman series this is exactly what everybody was hoping for, but it was far from a foregone conclusion that we would GET it, at least not until it got gotten.
The movie starts off with the Joker and Harley Quinn stealing a jade dragon from a shop in Gotham City. Batman’s examination of the crime scene sets off some alarm bells, and he makes plans to head to Metropolis. In Superman’s town, the Joker and Harley rather forcibly coerce Lex Luthor into a partnership, presenting him with the “jade” dragon, which is actually made of Kryptonite. Lois and Clark are on-hand when Bruce Wayne flies into Metropolis for a business summit with Luthor, and feeling like she’d made a fool of herself in front of Superman earlier, Lois finds herself smitten with Bruce, who invites her out to dinner to discuss his plans in Metropolis. Although Bruce and Luthor have a business deal in place, Bruce pulls back from parts of it that are intended to create militarized robots, something that burns Lex.
That evening, as Batman roughs up some hoodlums in a bar to find information about the Joker’s whereabouts, Superman bursts in to stop his “vigilantism.” He’s shocked when he uses his X-Ray vision to peer through Batman’s cowl to see Bruce Wayne’s face, and Batman warns him about the Joker’s Kryptonite by taking out a shard to hold him back, allowing him to escape. When Clark returns to his apartment, he gets two surprises: a phone call from Lois informing him that she’ll be having breakfast with Bruce tomorrow, and a bat-shaped tracking device on his cape that alerts him to the fact that he was followed, and that Batman is watching him from a nearby building, his own identity revealed.
The next day, as Bruce arrives at the Planet to pick up Lois, he and Clark briefly compare notes on the Joker’s schemes. Clark is also a bit concerned about Bruce’s burgeoning relationship with Lois, to which Bruce replies, “It seems to me you had your chance.” At their date that night, though, the Joker swoops in and kidnaps her, despite Bruce’s efforts to keep her safe. The heroes go to her rescue, but despite knowing they’re walking into a trap, the Joker manages to get the upper hand and nearly kills them all before escaping.
Lois’s relationship with Bruce gets more and more serious, with her even requesting a transfer to the Planet’s Gotham office, but when she discovers he’s Batman (during an uncharacteristic moment in which his mask is yanked away) the brakes are put on. The heroes naturally team up to stop the Joker and Luthor, complete with his army of murderbots, and ultimately have to save both Luthor AND Metropolis from the Joker’s lunacy. Lois breaks up with Bruce, with the supreme irony of her not wanting to be in a relationship with a man with a dual identity, and Bruce and Clark part perhaps not as friends, but at least with respect and cooperation.
At the time this movie was released, the comics were still in a kind of nebulous state for Superman and Batman. The antagonistic relationship they had in the early years of the post-Crisis reboot had largely vanished and they were teammates in the Justice League again, but they had not yet re-forged the friendship that they’d enjoyed in years past. The movie does a quick job of fast-forwarding through that relationship to get them to a more stable place: when Batman and Superman first encounter one another in costume, they’re antagonists. The next day, each of them having learned the others’ identity, they immediately begin working together, if grudgingly. The cast is top-notch, of course. Tim Daly and Kevin Conroy ARE Superman and Batman for so many of us, but perhaps even better than the two of them together are the interactions between Mark Hamill’s Joker and Clancy Brown’s Luthor, perhaps the two greatest villain voices in animation history. I loved this movie when it first came out, and I still have fun watching it today.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my stomach is doing that thing again.
Tues., Nov. 4
Comic: Batman Adventures #25, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #29 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #17
Notes: I went back to work today, although I’m still not really at 100 percent. But I’m a teacher, and if you ask any teacher they’ll tell you that it’s sometimes easier to go to work feeling like garbage than it is to prepare for a class without you in it. At any rate, after the classing is done, I still need to work in something Superman, and I want it to be something quick. Continuing the theme from yesterday, with the World’s Finest movie, I decided to take a peek at Batman Adventures #25 from 1994, the first team-up between the animated Batman and Superman. Well, kinda, anyway. This comic came out before there was a Superman: The Animated Series, and the Superman that appears is based more on Superman as he appeared in comics at the time, long hair and all. Still, writer Kelley Puckett did an admirable job, and the artwork by the brilliant (and gone far too soon) Mike Parobeck make this issue a delight to revisit.
The story opens with Bruce Wayne at a party, unaware that there are crooks planting a bomb in the kitchen. Among the people he schmoozes with at the time is a Lex Luthor with long, red locks and a beard (befitting his “Lex Luthor Jr.” persona from the books) and a ponytailed Clark Kent. LexCorp and WayneTech are competing for a military bid, but the discussion is lost when Clark’s superhearing picks up the ticking bomb under a table. Bruce also notices something amiss and the two of them dismiss themselves, Superman appearing moments later to dispose of the bomb. While he takes it into space, Batman apprehends the crooks who planted the bomb in the first place. Superman comes down to help finish mopping up, and the two icons meet for the first time.
Maxie Zeus sends Commissioner Gordon a video taking credit for the attack and promising to blow up Gotham City if he doesn’t get the “proper tribute” by midnight, and although Zeus is clearly insane (demanding such ransom as “five hundred head of oxen” and “two hundred vestal virgins”), Gordon is clear that he doesn’t bluff. As the heroes search for Zeus’s explosives, Luthor offers his military hunter robots to aid in the search. Superman and Batman find Zeus’s lair, along with the controls of the bomb, just as Luthor’s robots crash in and attack everyone, including Superman, which he tries to explain away as saying the robots “mistook him for an enemy” – but shoot, isn’t it impressive that their weapons can slow him down? They defeat Zeus, but Batman soon deduces that the whole thing was staged by Luthor to secure the military bid. He confronts Luthor with the evidence, telling him to withdraw his bid or he’ll present the evidence to the military. In the end, he and Superman part on terms a bit friendlier than they did in the later movie.
It’s fun to go back and look at this sort of embryonic animated Superman here. Setting the story in Gotham gets them out of having to deal with elements like Lois, Perry, or the Daily Planet, with only Superman himself and Lex standing out as being from that world. And truly, visuals aside, they’re not that far off. Give each of them a haircut (and a shave, in Lex’s case) and tweak the dialogue a little so that this no longer comes across as their first meeting; you could quite easily make this canonical to the animated series. The relationship is slightly warmer, without the initial antagonism we saw in the movie, and is a little more in line with who they would become once they joined the Justice League together. The story works nicely as a little bit of a time capsule, looking at the world of Batman: The Animated Series before that world had a Superman in it and kind of guessing how he would fit in. The later Adventures in the DC Universe series would do the same thing with lots of characters, which made the whole thing kind of out of sorts when those same characters eventually appeared in different forms in the cartoon…but it was no less fun.
It was a nice week off from themes, folks, but we’re running out of 2025 and I’ve still got several themes left that I intend to tackle. So next week, I’m going to mirror something I did in October with “Superman gone bad.” Starting tomorrow, I’m going to spend seven days exploring the Supermen of Other Worlds – and I’m not just talkin’ Elseworlds, my friends. See you in seven!
Blake M. Petit 