A few days ago, at WonderCon 2025, prolific comic book writer Mark Waid said something that has DC Comics fans a-buzzin’. According to Waid, DC will be bringing back the Legion of Super-Heroes “soon,” and in a form that he is “confident everyone will embrace.” Those are bold words. If there’s one thing you can be certain about in comic books, it’s that there’s NOTHING that EVERYONE will embrace – there’s always some jackass out there willing to complain about something that everybody else loves. (For example, anyone who says something bad about Krypto in the Superman trailer.) But even if we’re accepting that Waid didn’t mean “everyone” literally, that he just meant it would satisfy the majority of readers, that’s still a pretty tall order. Because the Legion is kind of a tough nugget to crack these days.
Aw c’mon, how hard could it be?
Let’s do a little history lesson, shall we? Who exactly ARE the Legion of Super-Heroes?
The Legion first appeared in Adventure Comics #247 back in 1958, in the time when the headliner for that anthology series was Superboy (Clark Kent as a boy). In their first appearance, Superboy meets three super-powered teenagers like himself: Cosmic Boy, with power over magnetism! Saturn Girl, with telepathic abilities! Lightning Lad, amazing in that he is the only founding member whose name makes his powers obvious! The three of them are from 1000 years in the future. They were inspired by the stories of the legendary Superboy to become heroes in their own time, and they’ve come back to the 20th century to invite him to join their club.
Most kids in Smallville just joined the Mathletes.
The story turned out to be a hit, and Superboy’s time travel adventures with the Legion became a recurring feature. Pretty soon, DC realized that a team with just four members could hardly be called a “Legion,” and they started adding more and more characters: the shapeshifting Chameleon Boy, giant Colossal Boy, teeny-tiny Shrinking Violet, and more! Triplicate Girl, Bouncing Boy, Matter-Eater Lad – no, I am not making up those last two – and then eventually even characters who didn’t feel the need to announce their gender identity as part of their name like Wildfire, Dawnstar, and Blok. Even the descendent of one of Superman’s greatest enemies, Brainiac 5, became a heroic mainstay of the Legion. They spun out into their own feature and were a huge success for DC.
Then came 1986. Comic fans will remember this as the year that DC rebooted Superman entirely, and among the things that they changed was his history in Smallville. In the new continuity, Clark Kent’s powers didn’t fully develop until adulthood, and he had no career as Superboy. How, then, could Superboy have been the inspiration for – let alone a member of – the Legion of Super-Heroes?
And if there IS no Superboy, who keeps tearing up our damned billboards?
The answer came in a story where the Legion learned that the “Superboy” they knew was the inhabitant of a pocket universe created by their old enemy the Time Trapper, who had been playing a long con on them for the entirety of their existence. That Superboy, though, was still a hero through and through, and sacrificed his life to save the Legion from the Trapper. And the Legion continued.
But DC continuity started to get even more muddled, and in 1993 they decided to try to repair the timeline in their Zero Hour crossover, an effort to trim some of the more confusing contradictions in their history and make everything fit together. Although Zero Hour turned out to be a good story, I don’t know if anyone could claim it succeeded in making things easier to understand – Hawkman, for example, became more of a mess than ever. But in the case of the Legion, it was decided that the best way to clean things up was from a page-one reboot. The Legion started over from the beginning, this time without Superboy.
And billboards everywhere breathed a sigh of relief.
The history was wiped out and began anew. The characters – who had by now grown to adulthood – were teenagers again, and some of the names were “modernized.” (Lightning Lad became Live Wire, Colossal Boy became Leviathan, Matter-Eater Lad became…well, the team chef, with no superhero name, and so on.) This Legion again did pretty well for quite some time, and in fact, it’s the version that was dominant during my formative years, so it’s actually the one I remember most fondly. Eventually the current Superboy (Conner Kent, the one who spun out of the Reign of the Supermen storyline) would meet them and become a member.
Then in 2004, for reasons I’ve never quite understood, DC decided to reboot the Legion AGAIN. This “Threeboot” Legion, which was written by the aforementioned Mark Waid, again started from the ground-up. Waid brought back the more old-fashioned names, but this time it was a plot point. In this new continuity, galactic society had become stagnant and isolated. People kept to themselves and communicated mainly through electronics. (Waid was sadly prescient on that fact.)
Turns out Brainiac 5 was a big Beyonce fan.
This Legion was a sort of teenage rebellion story, about young heroes rising up against a culture that tried to keep them apart from one another, using the historical records (aka comic books) of the 20th and 21st century as their inspiration, hence the old-school names. Eventually, through still more timey wimey stuff, Supergirl became a member. While I didn’t WANT a reboot, I thought Waid did a good job, and I enjoyed the new version as long as it lasted…which was right up until 2007, when all of a sudden, the ORIGINAL version of the Legion started popping up again in places like the Superman and Justice League comic books.
I’m not being hyperbolic here — this is one of the greatest Legion stories of all time.
This eventually led to the Legion of Three Worlds miniseries by Geoff Johns and George Perez (which is technically a spinoff of the Final Crisis event, but can be read entirely independent of that larger story). This story revealed that each of the Legions was from a different world in the Multiverse – the original Legion, of which Clark Kent had been a member, was from the main DCU. Connor’s Reboot Legion was from a world that had been destroyed in one of the many, many crises that happen in DC Comics. Supergirl’s Legion – most interestingly of all – was actually from the distant future of Earth-Prime, ostensibly “our” universe, where all the stories of DC Comics are fictional. It turns out they misunderstood the ancient comic book stories and thought they were “real,” Galaxy Quest-style. I friggin’ love this miniseries. Aside from just being a great story, it also kind of “legitimized” all three Legions, and even when the Legion stories being told went back to focusing on the original, the other two were still “real.”
Then came the New 52 in 2011. :sigh: At this point, DC rebooted their ENTIRE universe, including the Legion. The newest version of the Legion (fourboot?) was pretty close to the original, although still perhaps a bit younger than they had been before their first reboot, and they were okay, but didn’t light the world on fire sales-wise. So in 2019 they decided to – you guessed it – reboot AGAIN.
In an effort to keep this blog as positive as possible, I shall simply confirm that this is in fact a comic book which was published, printed on paper made from trees, and then distributed to comic book stores for purchase by the general public.
This time Brian Michael Bendis took over, bringing in Superman’s son Jon Kent as a member. His was the wildest take on the Legion yet, making drastic changes and adding new characters alien to every previous version, such as a “Gold Lantern” and a future incarnation of Dr. Fate. Bendis’s Legion was…controversial. Many beloved characters were virtually unrecognizable, there was an uncomfortable emphasis on how everyone kept declaring that history would account Jon as the REAL Superman over his father. Perhaps most concerning of all, they turned popular member Mon-El into a Kryptonian descendant of Superman, which had never been the case in any previous continuity and didn’t really sit well with a lot of people.
Bendis’s Legion lasted only 12 issues, then a six-issue miniseries where they crossed over with the Justice League, and then they vanished. Since then, the Legion and its members have made only sporadic appearances, and there hasn’t really been a consistent version of “which” Legion showed up at any given time. But the fans, among whose number I enthusiastically include myself, want them back. The Legion may not have the largest fan base in comics, but I challenge you to find a more DEDICATED fan base. On average, I can’t think of a single character or IP in all of American comic books whose fans are more devoted than those of the Legion of Super-Heroes, so the fact that they’ve been sidelined for so long is really upsetting.
So how DO you bring the Legion back? What makes it work, as a property? What’s the core of the franchise that brings back the fans who are so, so dedicated? To a degree, I think the appeal of the Legion is similar to the appeal of Star Trek — it’s the promise of a better future, a hope that no matter how bad the world may seem at times, there will be days ahead where things aren’t quite so dark. What’s more, despite the fact that my formative era of the Legion is the Reboot era, which is the time that is least-connected to the Superman line, I still feel that the Legion is at its strongest with Superman at its core. It’s like the difference between your adult friends and the friends you grew up with. The Justice League are the friends Superman has as an adult, and you love those friends, but the Legion are the friends of his childhood, the ones who helped him become the man he would be. And that bond is unique, and irreproducible as an adult. One thing the 2006 animated Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon really got right was the notion that, although the Legion was inspired by the stories of Superman, it was joining them in their future that taught Clark Kent how to be a hero.
Whenever I see the Legion, that’s the dynamic that means the most to me.
Sometimes the adaptation just…GETS it, y’know?
Waid’s statement is particularly interesting in light of his own recently-announced project, a miniseries called The New History of the DCU. There was a History of the DC Universe miniseries back in the 80s, explaining how the timeline was changed in the wake of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, but there have been so many reboots and changes since then that a new history is probably well overdue. I can’t think of anybody better to write it than Mark Waid. He’s not only one of the best superhero writers of all time, but he’s a walking encyclopedia of comic book history. He knows everything about everything, and if there’s ANYONE who can make sense of it all, it’s gotta be him. In fact, it was only in 2019 that he wrote the six-issue History of the Marvel Universe, doing the same job for DC’s favorite rival. He streamlined that universe and showed how everything fit in, including the future.
Presumably, this new series will do the same thing for DC. And if he goes so far as to show us the future, that means Waid knows what the new status quo is going to be for the Legion of Super-Heroes. As far as what exactly that means and how exactly that will take a form “embraced by everyone”… well, I have no idea. But I do have high hopes. Since DC’s “All In” initiative last year, I’ve been really happy with most of the stories in the DCU, and Waid has written some of the best, including Batman/Superman: World’s Finest and Justice League Unlimited, and he’s about to take over Action Comics full-time, something that has me thrilled.
No one is suggesting that Waid will be writing a new Legion series himself – in fact there are comments that suggest that he only KNOWS what the plan is, not that he’s directly involved. But if it has his approval, that gives me hope. Like I said, the Legion fans are the most dedicated in comics, and I believe that Waid is truly one of us. Whatever is coming down the pipe, if it’s good enough for him, I have every reason to believe it will be good enough for me.
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’s got his own idea for how to fix the Legion, but as usual, nobody asked him.
It’s a new week and, for the first time in a month, I’m NOT going to be spending it with the Death of Superman storyline. As much as I love that story, I’m happy to move on to something else…but I’m also not really interested in doing anything “structured” this week. I kind of want to bounce around, hit all quarters, and read lots of different things. To that end, I asked folks on Social Media to suggest their favorite single-issue Superman stories. I already have my own list of these, but I wanted to do a little crowd sourcing and maybe find some stories that I wouldn’t have thought of, or maybe have never even read before. There are some interesting choices in here, so I’m going to spend a few days sifting through them. This week, it’s SUPERMAN BY REQUEST!
Wed., March 26
Comics:Justice League of America #194, Superman Annual #11
Next time, stick to Go Fish.
Notes: I’m starting off with this suggestion, an issue of the original Justice League run I’ve never read before. This one intrigued me, because although many of those old Justice League comics are great, there are few that I’ve seen that I would specifically mark off as a great SUPERMAN story. Let’s see what it is about this one that makes it stand out.
It starts at a carnival in Metropolis, where Lois Lane is racking up prizes on the midway and forcing Clark to carry them. Clark encounters a fortune teller who reveals his double identity, then casts some sort of spell rapidly turning him into an old man. Over the course of the issue we check in on other members of the League – Flash, Elongated Man, Green Lantern, Black Canary, and Zatanna – each of whom has an encounter with a different figure ripped from a deck of tarot cards before they all converge on the Justice League Satellite and track down the source of their woes: their old foe Amos Fortune.
This is kind of perplexing. It’s a perfectly good issue, and I enjoyed reading it. Gerry Conway had a decent run on Justice League and this story, with lovely art and an eye-popping cover by George Perez, comes from the high point of the era. But I specifically asked for great single-issue Superman stories, and he only really appears in the first few pages and the last few pages. Sure, he’s the one that takes down Fortune at the end, but this isn’t so much a “great single-issue Superman story” as it is a “good single-issue Justice League story featuring Superman.” But y’know, when I decided to crowdsource, I knew that I would be seeing different people’s takes on what makes for a good Superman story. I imagine the person who recommended this one did so because of Superman’s good standing at the end.
Worst birthday since that time I didn’t get the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier.
Having gone with one of the Internet’s suggestions, I’m going to move on to one of the issues that was on my own list, a comic that is frequently cited among the greatest Superman stories ever told (and was, in fact, included in the trade paperback anthology of that name): Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ “For the Man Who Has Everything” from Superman Annual #11. It’s Superman’s birthday, and Wonder Woman, Batman, and Robin (Jason Todd) are meeting him at the Fortress of Solitude for a little party. When they arrive, though, they find Superman tangled in the snares of the Black Mercy, an alien parasite that traps its host in a hallucination of their own deepest desires. As they try to free him, they are attacked by Mongul, who sent the creature in the first place, and their only chance to survive is to free the Man of Steel.
There are a lot of layers here to peel apart, starting with Superman’s hallucination. The Black Mercy shows him a world where Krypton was never destroyed, where he grew up there, married, and had children…however, in the decades since, a movement has arisen protesting the use of the Phantom Zone as a punishment for criminals. And since the Phantom Zone was discovered by Jor-El, the House of El is the target of their ire. It’s an intriguing sort of political debate, and it’s kind of sad to see that in his “deepest desire,” Superman still has to watch Krypton self-destruct, even if it’s metaphorical this time. This is, however, very much a product of its time. In the early 80s, it’s easy enough to imagine that Superman’s greatest dream would be a world where Krypton never was destroyed. In the post-Byrne era, he didn’t have that nostalgic love for Krypton (which makes more sense, since he has no memories of it), and even through all the changes that the character has undergone over the years, that aspect has never really come back, at least not to the degree it was in the Silver Age. Were this story to be told today, I think it’s more likely Clark’s dream would be a perfect Earth, free of crime and disaster, where a Superman was no longer needed.
I also love the interaction of Mongul with the others. Moore gets some great little witticisms, like asking Batman to make the “yellow creature” stop shuffling, or the point where he recognizes that human society makes distinctions based on age and gender and, therefore, asks them to tell him which one of them is the polite one for him to kill first. If this story had never happened, I think Mongul would have been just one of many would-be alien conquerors that litter the DC Universe. This is what made him stand out, made him memorable.
Once Superman is released, the fight is great too. The rage that Gibbons places in his eyes is both righteous and frightening. He really cuts loose, telling Mongul to “burn” as he blasts him with his heat vision – which was rare at the time. Heat vision was almost never used as an offensive weapon then, certainly not directly against the bad guy. It’s something that became more common later, and I think this is most likely where that came from.
This is a brilliant comic book, and deservedly considered one of the greatest Superman stories ever. It’s even the source for the ONLY adaptation of Alan Moore’s work that the man himself signs off on – an episode of Justice League Unlimited. I should watch that soon.
Thur., March 27
Comics: Superman Vol. 6 #26, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #5, Power Girl Vol. 3 #19, Shazam! Vol. 4 #20
Those two fronts, oddly enough, are a Nor’easter and the facade at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom at Disney World.
Notes: It’s another recent recap day for me. There were three Superman-adjacent books that his the stands this week, and I’m ready to pick into them, beginning with Superman #26, which I loved. Lex Luthor’s memory is slowly returning (since the events of the Lex Luthor Special, specifically). While this is good, in that he may be regaining the knowledge of how to deal with the stasis field holding Doomsday and the Radiant, it also opens us up to the danger of the old Luthor returning. Meanwhile, Lois “Superwoman” Lane goes on her first Justice League mission and winds up finding out something shocking about Supercorp. Everything builds up to a last scene and especially a last PAGE reveal that knocks your socks off. It’s the kind of issue that makes you want to go back and re-read the issues beforehand to admire how well the writer, Josh Williamson, has set everything up. I won’t be doing that today, exactly, but it feels like it may be in the cards before the 25th issue finale next month.
Mark Waid and Dan Mora come back for Justice League Unlimited #5, continuing the saga of the mysterious terrorist group called Inferno. The super terrorists attack globally at once, not only targeting power plants, but somehow kidnapping the attendees of the annual G20 summit, including dozens of world leaders and several members of the Justice League. And among the missing, only Supergirl has a clue where they’ve been taken. This issue kicks off the crossover event between this title and Waid’s Batman/Superman: World’s Finest, and it’s a story I’ve been looking forward to. It’s got time travel, it’s got oodles and oodles of heroes, and it’s linking two of the three best DC Universe books being published right now (the third being Superman itself).
Finally, Power Girl #19 shows us the missing heroes coming home just in time for Power Girl to get a pretty major surprise on the news. This issue, frankly, feels rushed, and I suspect that’s at least in part because next month appears to be the end of the series. There’s a sense here that Leah Williams was told the book was ending at issue #20 when she had a lot more planned, and she’s trying to race towards a satisfying conclusion. If that’s the case, I can’t really hold her accountable for that – it’s happened to a lot of good books over the years, and sometimes the first casualty of that kind of thing is coherence. That seems to be the case here.
Fri., March 28
I just have answer keys from old tests in MY file cabinet.
Comics: Action Comics #399
Notes: Action Comics #399 is an old favorite of mine. It’s one of those books that has a cover that can’t help but grab you – Superman in a morgue next to a guy in a suspiciously short skirt, with drawers containing two dead and pickled Supermen, telling him that the third empty drawer is waiting for him. This is a cover that DEMANDS answers. Why are there two other Supermen? Why is ours called “Superman III?” Why are they in jars? Where’s Richard Pryor?
Sometimes, you get a cover like this and wind up disappointed in the story inside. That happened frequently in the silver age – there was a period where the editor (usually the great Julius Schwartz) would have the cover artist whip up the wildest image he could think of, frequently involving some sort of monkey or gorilla, and then task the poor writer with coming up with some kind of story to justify that image. I don’t know that this is the case here, but where it was the script or the cover that came first, this is one where Leo Dorfman’s story lives up to the artwork.
It begins with Superman rushing off to stop a power generator explosion, something so volatile that is has the potential to ignite Earth’s atmosphere. Before he can deal with it, though, he is suddenly kidnapped, whisked away by a mysterious force and finding himself in a strange room with men who appear to be George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and George Custer. Superman quickly realizes his fellow captives are not imposters, but that they – and he – have been transported through time. He escapes and confronts his abductors, who turn out to be historians that have taken each of them from a point in time immediately before their deaths for study. Superman is then given an even greater shock: he is, in fact, the third Superman. After Superman died battling a “space vampire,” he was cloned, with the duplicate having no memory of his death. The clone, then, met a similar fate, making our Superman, in fact, Superman III – but the cloning will no longer be stable if another copy is needed, thus Superman III will be the last, and he is destined to die stopping the power generator from destroying the world.
At first, Superman is reluctant to take the trip back, but concedes when he realizes that staying in the future would result in the destruction of the timeline and the deaths of billions…but he somehow survives the explosion. It is then that he discovers the truth – he was taken not only through time, but to an alternate universe, where his fate and those of his fellow captors was different than in our own world. He lives on, but somewhere in the multiverse, Superman III is lying in state.
Man, I still can’t get away from the death of Superman, can I?
Anyway, I read this story in Superman From the 30s to the 70s, a book that I used to check out from the library religiously as a child. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to find a copy at a used bookstore, and it’s a treasure to me now. It’s full of great stories like this one and, in fact, is probably responsible for the bulk of my exposure to Superman before I became a full-time reader in those nascent days just before the Triangle Era began. I haven’t read this story in years, but I find it just as entertaining now as I did back then – a great sci-fi concept with the expected twist (Superman wasn’t REALLY going to die, even as a child I knew that), but the twist is done in such a way that it still carries weight. A Superman died, just not our Superman.
Hmm. I wonder if that universe still exists out there somewhere in the oft-rebooted and rebuilt DC Multiverse? That would be a fun project – a story that looks in on some of these one-shot alternate worlds from the Silver and Bronze Ages. Who at DC do I pitch that idea to?
Sat., March 29
Comic: Hitman #34
They say you should never meet your heroes, but when your hero is Superman, I think it’s okay.
Notes: This is such an odd book, on the outside, to include in this project. Hitman is by far the most successful alumni of DC’s Bloodlines crossover, and he had an ongoing series that lasted quite a while and still has a large fan base. The thing is, Hitman was created – and his series was written – by Garth Ennis, creator of The Boys, who you may know has a pretty vocal and heated distaste for superheroes. He doesn’t like ‘em. He created The Boys specifically to tear them down. But the one exception to that rule seems to be Superman. And it’s obvious when you read this comic, because it’s as tender and effusive a love letter to the Man of Steel as any comic book I’ve ever read.
In this issue, Tommy Monaghan – the titular Hitman – is on a rooftop in Gotham City when suddenly, inexplicably, he comes across Superman, brooding into the night sky. Monaghan turns into a stumbling fanboy for a moment until he realizes that something is bothering Superman. He convinces the hero to open up and he tells a story about a mission in space, a tragic failure, and how it’s eating away at him.
And then the most improbable thing in comic book history happens: Tommy Monaghan helps Superman.
The vast majority of this issue is simply a conversation between the two men on the rooftop. Superman tells the story of a doomed space flight and he confesses how he struggles sometimes with living up to what people expect him to be. Then Monaghan turns it all around, explaining what the idea of Superman means to people and framing him as a metaphor for America itself. “You’re everything that’s great about this country an’ you don’t even know it,” he says, and then goes on to explain a pretty singular philosophy that is just as true today as it was when this issue came out in 1998. In the end, he’s shared what he thinks Superman – and America itself – is really about, and Earth’s greatest hero returns to the sky, his failure no longer weighing on him quite as heavily as it did a few moments before.
Then, because it’s still an issue of Hitman, Tommy murders somebody, but you don’t really mind so much.
People talk often about Superman For All Seasons and All Star Superman (specifically the issue where Superman talks the girl off the ledge) as some of the stories that most perfectly exemplify who and what Superman is, and they’re right. Those are amazing stories, brilliant stories, stories I fully intend to revisit before the movie hits screens this July. But if someone wants to know what there is to love about Superman, I can’t think of any single issue of any comic book more suited to the task than this one.
And the fact that the guy who understands Superman so incredibly well has such a deep hatred of every other superhero still makes me chuckle.
Sun., March 30
“I’m sorry…I can’t do that, Clark…” (It’s a 2001 joke. Get some culture, people.)
Comic: Superman #300
Notes: Ah, another beloved classic. Once again it’s an “imaginary story,” as one can probably tell by the cover, and one that is particularly indicative of its time. In this alternate world, the destruction of Krypton happened much later, and baby Kal-El’s rocket came to Earth in the “present” of 1976. And rather than landing in a Kansas cornfield, it made a splashdown in the ocean as both American and Soviet vessels raced to snag it. The rocket – and the baby inside – was claimed by the Americans, and thus did the Cold War enter a new stage on this planet.
The story takes us through two more “acts.” In 1990, the teenage Kal-El (called “Skyboy” by the US military) is revealed to the world and tensions between nations almost precipitate World War III, sparking the young man to flee and go into hiding. Then in 2001, an imposter makes a move, claiming to be the star-child, and the boy – now a man – has to come out of hiding to save the world.
Whether you call them Elseworlds or Imaginary Stories or something else entirely, it’s always interesting to me how often these DC stories tweak things, then twist them around to make them fit the original universe. For instance, the “Skyboy” costume the military gives Kal-El is, of course, identical to the traditional “Superman” uniform, right down to the S-shield, even though in these days the symbol wasn’t a Kryptonian glyph that came to Earth with him like it’s usually portrayed these days. Nope, just a crazy coincidence. Second, when Kal-El goes into hiding, he decides to borrow the names of two of his father-figures, one Thomas Clark and Kent Garrett, making him…oh, come on, you can guess, right? And as this Clark Kent grows up…well whaddaya know…he becomes a reporter. It’s almost like the philosophy of these stories is that there are just some constants in the multiverse, and no matter what details are changed, the end result will be kind of the same. When you consider the thesis of more recent stories like Doomsday Clock (I’ll probably read that again at some point this year) it actually makes sense. Superman is, not only metaphorically, but literally, the center of the DC Universe. Everything revolves around him in one way or another, and it seems kind of fitting that the universe itself will take pains to make that path consistent.
Mon., March 31
Comics: DC Comics Presents #83, Superman #127
Seriously, you’re never gonna guess who they’re all grimacing at.
Notes: Let’s kick off Monday with another recommended comic, DC Comics Presents #83. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but DC Comics Presents was, essentially, the Superman team-up book of the era. Every issue had Superman pair off with a different guest star, and in this one, he’s joining up with Batman and the Outsiders. That team has an interesting pedigree as well – Batman has quit the Justice League over its refusal to get involved in an international incident, and winds up leading a new team of offbeat characters: Black Lightning, Geo-Force, Katana, Metamorpho, and Halo. As a result of his actions, tensions between Batman and Superman were rather high at this period, with the two best friends finding themselves at odds. This issue kicks off with the return of the ORIGINAL Outsider – Alfred Pennyworth. The Outsider was an evil and powerful alter-ego of his that apparently can be unleashed to wreak havoc on the world due to a simple bump on the head. Ah, it was a simpler time.
When the Outsider turns himself into a tornado (seriously, he was freakishly powerful) and attacks a farming community, Superman joins in the hunt. He winds up joining the OutsiderS to battle the OutsideR in the Batcave, while Batman himself chases down the issue’s real villain, his foe Ira “I.Q.” Quimby.
I’d have to check the timeline, but this issue appears to take place after Superman and Batman have buried the hatchet. There’s no trace of that earlier animosity over Batman quitting the League, and I recall that they specifically addressed it and came to terms in the book that starred both of them, World’s Finest Comics. So what you have here is a simple team-up. In fact, considering that it’s written by Batman and the Outsiders creator Mike W. Barr, it really feels more like an issue of that comic that guest-stars Superman than the other way around. It’s a good issue, and I find it interesting that someone out there declared it their favorite.
Jack Black played Superman in the 2005 version.
Let’s dive further back in time to Superman #127 from 1959. This issue kicks off with “When There Was NO Clark Kent!” In this one, Superman recalls a time when an accident led Lois to believe that Clark Kent had been killed in an explosion. Superman decides that his life will be less complicated if he just does away with being Clark and remains Superman full-time… then he asks Jimmy Olsen if he can be his roommate.
What the hell was going on in 1959?
Anyway, Superman’s new address gets leaked to the public by means of Jimmy Olsen being stupid enough to put Superman’s name on the buzzer in the apartment building, and he’s soon inundated with the demands of his adoring public 24/7, to say nothing of the demands of his Kryptonite-bearing enemies. By the end of the story, he finds a convoluted way to bring Clark back to life. This is a really funny story from a modern perspective, from years of reading a Superman who understands and even CRAVES the normality of Clark Kent’s life and who will do anything to preserve it. It’s so bizarre that back then he would have considered Clark so disposable.
“The Make-Believe Superman” is story #2 in this issue. In this one, a suburban dad – embarrassed at his pedestrian life – decides to tell his son’s class at school that he’s really Superman, because there is absolutely no flaw in this plan. Except, of course, when he gets caught up in a scheme by some robbers who have taken Clark Kent hostage and threaten to kill him unless “Superman” goes along with their scheme.
Hilarity ensues.
It’s really the third story in this issue that’s most significant, the first appearance of Titano the Super-Ape. A gentle ape named Toto is sent into outer space, where a burst of strange radiation turns him into a giant and gives him the power to shoot Kryptonite rays from his eyes. In true King Kong fashion, he falls in love with Lois Lane, who somehow has the presence of mind to re-named him “Titano” even as she’s afraid she’s going to get killed. That Lois, she gives new meaning to the term “clear-headed.” Titano would become a recurring foil for Superman, although most of the time he’s portrayed in much the way that his obvious cinematic inspiration is – a force of nature, an animal acting out his own nature, and not specifically evil. As far as the story itself goes, it’s cute.
Tues., April 1
Comic: Superman #145, DC Comics Presents #70
Remember that time Superman fought a Robert Frost poem?
Notes: It seemed appropriate to read this particular issue today, although the pertinent reason doesn’t turn up until three stories deep. The first story, “The Secret Identity of Superman,” deals once again with Lois’s turmoil over the fact that Superman won’t marry her. (Really, they did Lois SO dirty in these stories.) This time, she thinks it’s because he’s afraid she couldn’t keep his secret identity a secret if she ever knew about it, so Jimmy Olsen decides to “help” by telling her Superman’s secret: he’s really science fiction writer Rock Stirling! Actually, Jimmy is just testing Lois to see if she CAN keep the secret, thinking that knowing the answer one way or another will be a favor to both of them. People who were alive in the 1950s – did you really pull this kind of crap on your friends back then?
Anyway, Lois turns out to be so hilariously bad at keeping the secret that four pages later, she’s inadvertently announced that Stirling is Superman on national television, prompting the real Superman to race to his rescue when some crooks come after the writer with Kryptonite. Stirling actually saves Superman by throwing his lead typewriter over the meteor, allowing Superman to melt it and get his strength back long enough to stop the crooks. In the end, Jimmy tells Lois to cheer up – “Superman thinks a lot of you! Maybe he’ll marry you some day even if you CAN’T keep a secret.”
There’s a reason the comic wasn’t called Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane’s Pal Jimmy Olsen.
Story #2 features Superman in “The Interplanetary Circus.” An alien circus comes to Earth to put on a show, and Lois and Clark head out to the big top. Lois – and virtually everyone else – thinks that the “alien” bit is just a gimmick and the fabulous creatures they see are all robots (which raises the question of just how good they thought robots could be at the time, because this is WAY beyond Pirates of the Caribbean), but Clark’s super-senses indicate that it’s all real. In fact, when Superman has to prevent a disaster at the circus, the ringmaster offers him a job. When he declines, he tries to take Superman by force, which of course works out about as well as you expect.
The Silver Age was such an odd time for Superman. After spending the Golden Age beating dangerous criminals, going into war zones, and stopping domestic violence, we got about a 20-year period where his major concerns seemed to be things like convincing aliens to leave Earth and preventing Lois Lane from marrying him. Different sensibilities, I suppose. These stories do have charm, but there’s a limit.
It’s the final story in this issue that made me decide to read it today. In “The Night of March 31st,” Clark Kent writers in his diary that “Nothing exciting happened today – will patrol Metropolis, as usual, tomorrow. Supergirl isn’t ready yet to have her existence revealed to the world.” Then, after writing all this stuff in a paper diary in plain English where anybody could read it, Clark goes to sleep. In the morning, he’s awakened by an urgent call from Perry White asking him to get Superman to meet him at the Daily Planet, only to find that Perry has somehow been transformed to a Bizarro. From there things only get wilder – he rushes to an oceanic observatory only to find his old girlfriend Lori Lemaris, the mermaid, with legs and drowning. Then Supergirl — at the time still acting as Superman’s “secret weapon” — shows up to put out a fire in broad daylight, revealing her existence to the world. Krypto and Streaky burst in at the Planet offices to play with Jimmy and Lois, Mr. Mxyzptlk shows up to take Lois out to lunch…every panel is full of strange occurrences and even stranger sight gags. We see Superman with no cape, wearing slacks over his costume, wearing Clark’s glasses, with a backwards S-shield, and dozens of other little visual oddities. Nothing about the story seems to make any sense whatsoever, even up to the point where Lex Luthor, Bizarro, and Brainiac team up to save him from a Kryptonite-wielding Lana Lang.
Why is all of this crazy stuff happening, you ask? It’s simple – we began with Clark writing his March 31st entry, then going to sleep, so then what day is it when he wakes up?
I personally hate April Fool’s Day, at least the way it exists today. It should be a day for gentle, harmless jokes and pranks, but far too many people use it as an excuse to pull mean-spirited gags and then brush it off with “Can’t you take a joke?” Social media has made it even worse – it’s hard enough these days to sort the truth from the nonsense online, and April Fool’s Day annually bombards us with an avalanche of garbage that gullible people panic over because they think it’s real. It’s gotten so bad that when Marvel Studios announced Spider-Man: Brand New Day as the title for the next movie, I went to Google and started looking for other sources to corroborate that it wasn’t just a joke.
All that said, though, this is actually a fun story. It’s completely ridiculous, and there’s a lot of fun to be had in going through it a panel at a time and picking out all of the ridiculous things that the writers and artists work in – things like the Leaning Tower of Pisa being in Metropolis, Lois’s hair changing from panel to panel, and Clark changing to Superman in front of a pair of onlookers that give off a kind of vibe that…well, see for yourself, I guess.
I honestly can’t decide which joke to go with here, friends, write one yourself.
Anyway, the story is utterly ridiculous, but it’s harmless fun, and that’s what April Fool’s Day SHOULD be.
The only kind of AI I’ll allow on this blog.
DC Comics Presents #70 has no seasonal contribution to make but it does have a personal connection for me. The Metal Men are some of my favorite B-list (or, even C-list, if we’re being honest here) DC characters, and this is the first story featuring them I ever read. I always just loved the concept – a team of robots, each of which is comprised of a single metal (Gold, Tin, Mercury, Lead, Steel, and Platinum), with personalities and powers associated with that metal. I suppose it was that I was also a huge Isaac Asimov fan, and as such anything with robots was really entertaining to me.
In this story, the robot heroes are abducted by a mysterious enemy and put through a series of trials, some of them being “eliminated” and removed along the way. Mercury and Tin, for example, can’t make the cut in severe cold, and Lead is bounced when he starts to melt in great heat. As their trials go on, an image flashes on Clark Kent’s computer at the Daily Planet, alerting him to their plight, and it’s Superman to the rescue…but the heat melting Lead is being powered by red solar energy, reducing Superman’s powers and making it a real fight.
I haven’t read this issue in quite a while, but I’ve always enjoyed this sort of “And Then There Were None” tale, where characters get picked off one by one. The only real strike against it comes when the villain finally stands revealed – a sort of standard mad scientist who is doing these trials out of fear of some ill-defined apocalypse that would eliminate the human race, hoping to find a way to preserve life. Superman himself points out how stupid his plan is, and that’s gotta smart.
And thus ends the first “Superman By Request” week. I may do more later in the year, especially if I need another break from longer storylines or themes as I did this week. But you know, I think I’m ready for a new theme next week…so in honor of the goodest boy in the universe and the REAL star of James Gunn’s first Superman trailer, I hereby declare April 2-April 8 to be KRYPTO WEEK. See you next Wednesday!
Another week, and finally some good news. For those of you who follow along in the blog and know about the car troubles that have been weighing me down the last couple of weeks, the car has been fixed and it’s on the road again. So I’m recharged and ready to get back into it. Let’s get started, shall we?
Wed., March 19
Animated Feature: Superman/Doomsday (2007)
Notes: Back in 2007, the big news was that Warner Bros. animation was starting a series of direct-to-DVD movies based on DC comics, starting with this one, the animated adaptation of the Death and Return saga. It was the first of an initiative that lasted (as far as I can tell) right up until last year, when the two-part Watchmen adaptation was released. I haven’t heard about any new films since then, though, save for a Japanese-produced sequel to Batman: Ninja. I hope that this series isn’t a casualty of the new James Gunn universe.
Anyway, when this movie first released, it was a big deal. We were psyched for it, excited to see a more adult animated version of the DC Universe. Don’t misunderstand, the Diniverse (home of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, Static Shock and more) was and remains a favorite…but within the constraints of a TV-PG rating. We wanted something a little more. The fact that it was a big deal that this movie was rated PG-13 is actually kind of quaint, considering we now live in a world where Wolverine drops F-bombs like Kanye West being dropped by his managers.
In 2007, we thought this was groundbreaking.
All that said, although I remember enjoying this movie at the time, it doesn’t hold up that well. Condensing the Death and Return trilogy into a scant 77 minutes was probably the first mistake. The battle with Doomsday is actually pretty well done, but it feels too brief considering the gravity of the situation. Then, the movie jettisons most of the “Funeral” and “Reign” storylines entirely, going from Superman’s death to a new Superman popping up to take in a bizarre version of Toman that even the great John DiMaggio can’t make entertaining. The result is that it feels like Superman is “dead” for about 20 minutes. Of course, it’s not the real Superman at this point, something that soon becomes evident as Lois realizes that he has none of Superman’s memories. Nope, this is a clone – but it ain’t Superboy. It’s a clone created by Lex Luthor (a clone he gets off on abusing under red solar lamps in one particularly squicky scene), crafted to give him the chance to ruin Superman’s reputation from beyond the grave. It starts to work when he begins getting more violent with the criminals he thwarts, going to extremes that even the Eradicator wouldn’t. But no problem, the REAL Superman wakes up in the Fortress of Solitude because…he can. Really, it’s just that on Earth, he can come back from death. That’s the only explanation we get.
The relationship between Superman and Lois is weird here too. The two of them are dating – he even takes her off at the beginning of the film for a romp at the Fortress of Solitude that, while not explicit, would certainly have strained the limits of a kid-friendly rating. But at the same time, she’s dating SUPERMAN, and still doesn’t know that he’s Clark Kent (although she has her suspicions). I guess it’s a more of a modernized take on the old Silver Age status quo, but that was a bad look then and it’s a bad look now. To be fair, they do work it into the plot, as she goes to seek out Martha Kent after Superman dies, trying to share her grief with the only person on Earth who MIGHT understand what she’s going through, but it could have been served just as well having a more traditional Lois/Clark relationship.
The casting has its ups and downs. Adam Baldwin is a decent Superman, and James Marsden is a great Lex Luthor, but Anne Heche is sorely miscast as Lois Lane. She doesn’t have the steel in her voice (excuse the pun) that Lois should have, and the way she goes after Superman to badger his secret identity out of him is an awful way to write the character. Plus, it makes HIM look bad for not trusting her with the secret. They even try to work around the fact that Clark goes missing after Superman dies because he was on assignment in Afghanistan, which is far too neat a solution.
I get it. It was their first attempt not only at adapting this storyline, but at making an animated DC superhero movie. There was a pretty steep learning curve that needed to be addressed. But man, am I glad that they came back a few years ago and took another swing at this storyline, because the two-parter was much, much better. I watched Part One, The Death of Superman, back in Week Nine of this project. I’ll try to tackle Reign of the Supermen before week 12 ends.
Comics:Black Lightning Vol. 4 #4 (Guest Appearances by Superman, John Henry & Natasha Irons), Jenny Sparks #7 (Guest Appearance)
Thur., March 20
I hear Spielberg used these covers as inspiration for that scene in Jaws.
Comics: Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey #1-3
Notes: About a year after his return from the grave, Dan Jurgens gave us this three-issue miniseries featuring what fans were clamoring for: a rematch between Superman and Doomsday. Apparently, since he came back, Clark has been suffering from recurring nightmares about the battle with Doomsday, worried about the fact that the Cyborg threw his body into space and parts unknown. The fears are justified – a space cruiser picks up the rock the Cyborg strapped him to and Doomsday wakes up, resuming his quest of slaughter amongst the crew. The ship brings him to Apokalips, where he begins a rampage that causes even Darkseid’s minions terror, and then it gets worse – the Cyborg himself returns, having transferred his consciousness onto a device he slipped onto Doomsday, where he just bided his time until he had the opportunity to construct a new body.
On Earth, Superman hunts down Waverider and the Linear Men, hoping they will tell him Doomsday’s secrets, but all he gets is a cryptic clue that points him to Apokalips. Oberon of the Justice League hooks him up with a Mother Box, and he sets out, just in time to see the Cyborg and Doomsday causing untold destruction, even beating down the mighty Darkseid.
This is the series that gives us the origin of Doomsday, and it turns out to be as horrific as one would expect. Millennia ago, an alien scientist strove to create a “perfect” being. And what better way to do that then by going to a planet so violent and inhospitable that virtually nothing could survive on the surface, jettison an infant to be brutally slaughtered, and then cloning him over and over again to find new ways to survive? The ultimate result of this experiment, after decades of violence and torture, was Doomsday, a creature who has the ability to evolve and recover from any injury. In short, he can never be killed the same way twice. Unfortunately for the scientists, he also evolved to consider literally any form of life a threat. He kills them all, then hitches a ride into space to begin a reign of terror. Oh yes, and the planet where all this happened? It was in the ancient past of a little world called Krypton. Eventually he was defeated by the Radiant, an energy being from another world, and was “buried” on an asteroid that, after untold centuries, crash landed on Earth.
Ah, you know the rest.
Issue three of this series is almost pure fight scene. By the end of it, Darkseid has trapped the Cyborg’s consciousness in a little ball, and Superman and Waverider throw Doomsday through time to be swallowed up by the end of the universe itself. He got better.
Jurgens takes advantage of the “prestige format” of this miniseries, free from the constraints of the comics code. While still relatively mild compared to a “mature readers” comic book, he really amps up the violence this time around. We see Doomsday’s victims ripped in half, their heads pulled off, and all manner of gore that was pretty intense compared to the typical Superman comic of the Triangle Era. Keeping the bulk of the story on Apokalips also nicely sidesteps the consequences of fitting this story into the regular Triangle books. Had the rematch happened on Earth, there would have had to have been a whole new subplot about the destruction, the devastation, the PTSD everyone suffered from Doomsday’s return. This way, only a handful of people on Earth even know that it happened, and it’s taken care of with everybody none the wiser. It’s well-constructed.
It’s also a nice showcase of the way that Jurgens – like many creators – shows off his pet creations. There are a few characters that Jurgens created or co-created that he keeps coming back to time and time again. Booster Gold is probably the most famous of these, but he also loved to keep coming back to Waverider and the Linear Men. I’m a big fan of them as well – to this day, I think Waverider has one of the coolest designs of any character that came out of the 90s (not a single pouch or pocket, even), and I also like a good time travel story. He fits in nicely, and on those rare occasions he shows up nowadays, I always like seeing him.
Of course, this wasn’t the end for Doomsday. Even throwing him into the heat death at the end of the universe wouldn’t be enough to take such a lucrative character off the table forever. But it would be a little while before he showed up in continuity again. In fact, the next time we saw him, it wouldn’t be set in the regular timeline at all.
Literature.
Novel: The Death and Life of Superman by Roger Stern (finished)
Notes: I wrote about the bulk of this novel in last week’s blog recap, so I don’t have too much more to say, other than to note how Roger Stern tweaked the ending. He left out Green Lantern’s involvement in the finale, which seems like an odd choice, considering how meticulously he stuck to the story in the earlier scenes with the Justice League. There’s also a bit of a change at the end: in the comic book, Superman’s powers were restored when the Cyborg tried to hit him with Kryptonite, but the Eradicator dove in front of the beam. The mingling of the Kryptonite and the Eradicator’s energy was what it took to bring Superman back to full power. In the novel, though, the Eradicator chooses to pour his energy into Superman and recharge him. I have to say, I like the comic book version better. Either way the Eradicator gets his heroic sacrifice, but somehow it’s more satisfying if he dies trying to SAVE Superman, rather than dying just to give him back his powers. Even more than the Green Lantern omission, I’m not sure what spurred this change in the story. All that said, none of this ruins the book. It’s a fun read, especially for completists like myself, and I suggest you poke around and find yourself a copy if you’re so inclined.
Fri., March 21
Comic:Doomsday Annual #1
You know, technically, there’s no such thing as “first annual.” Something can’t be a yearly event until it happens twice. This one didn’t happen twice. Please enjoy “Doomsday Not-Really-An-Annual #1.”
Notes: By 1995, DC had stopped doing annual crossover storylines like Bloodlines and, instead, began doing annual THEMES instead. This year, the annual theme was “Year One,” with every annual telling an early story of the character in question. Not a bad way to do it, really, I wish that modern annuals had any sort of rhyme or reason to them. Over at Marvel their Annual editors don’t even know there are numbers higher than “one.” But most interesting was how they would occasionally drop an “annual” for a character who didn’t even have a regular series, such as this. On the anniversary of Superman’s death, people have made a pilgrimage to the site where the monster first broke free from his confinement. As it turns out, the gathering was arranged by our old friend Mitch Anderson, he whose home was destroyed by Doomsday during the original rampage. The crowd and a group of soldiers guarding the area nearly come to blows until Superman arrives, settling things down, and begins to regale the people with stories of Doomsday’s past. The anthology issue includes the creature’s first battle against Darkseid, an ancient encounter with the Green Lantern Corps, and an epilogue of sorts to Hunter/Prey. It’s not bad – the Darkseid story especially is good, no doubt bolstered by the writing and artwork of Dan Jurgens – but compared to most of the other appearances of Doomsday, it’s a little forgettable.
Sat. March 22
Comics: Absolute Superman #5, Action Comics #1084, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #37, DC X Sonic the Hedgehog #1
Notes: It’s that time again, friends. Once again, I’m going to spend a Saturday afternoon checking in on the recent Superman comics – most of them, anyway. This week we got the long-delayed release of the second issue of Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor, a Black Label comic by Mark Waid and Bryan Hitch. The first issue, as I recall, was magnificent…but it came out nearly two years ago. I’ve got no idea what the cause was for the gargantuan wait, but I’ve frankly sort of forgotten what happened in issue one. I could go back and read it, but the third and final issue is supposedly going to come out next month. I think, instead, I’ll just hold off on reading #2 and hit all three of them when the final issue is released. So here are the other Superman and Superman-adjacent comics from the past few weeks:
The weird thing is that this image was originally drawn for a Pepto-Bismol commercial.
Absolute Superman #5: The newest DC Universe continues to reveal its secrets, with this issue telling the story of the last days of Krypton. I’ve said many times that I don’t really need origin stories anymore – we’ve seen them a billion times and there’s not really a need for them anymore, especially in terms of the most popular characters. I never again need to see the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, I never need to see Peter Parker get bitten by a spider, and I never need to see Krypton explode. The exception to this rule is the rare story that does it differently. In the Absolute Universe, Kal-El wasn’t sent to Earth as a baby. Here, as a child, he is one of a group of Kryptonians that Jor-El has gathered in an effort to escape Krypton’s destruction – not even a fraction of her population, but more than the sole survivor their son usually is. I’ve really been enjoying what they’ve done with the Absolute line. I wouldn’t want this to be the “main” DC Universe, but as an alternate reality, it works, and it’s working quite well.
Action Comics #1084: John Ridley’s “Force Majeure” arc ends this issue, and it does – to be fair – address my biggest issue with the arc. I’ve said before, I hate recidivism stories. No matter how realistic they may be, once I’ve watched a former villain go through a redemption arc I don’t like seeing them backslide, and Major Disaster is no exception. As this story ends, we at least get a slightly more palatable reason for his reversion to a crook. It helps, but it’s still just not the kind of story I want to read, especially in a Superman book. There’s enough darkness in the world, Action Comics is a place where I want to see the light shine through.
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #37: Although this title is ostensibly a Batman/Superman book, there are times where Mark Waid really uses it as his playground to touch upon the entire DC Universe. Batman and Superman are almost side characters in this issue, with the bulk of the story landing on the shoulders of Aquaman, Swamp Thing, and Lori Lemaris. Lori kissed Superman at the end of last issue, her old feelings for him resurfacing, and in this issue her husband is understandably having issues dealing with it. They work through their issues while the heroes fight to, y’know, save the world, as they do. Nobody knows the DC Universe like Mark Waid does, and it’s great to know that they’ve tapped him to write the upcoming New History of the DC Universe miniseries.
DC X Sonic the Hedgehog #1: Man, do I love a ridiculous crossover event, and this most certainly qualifies. In this issue, Darkseid has invaded the world of Sonic the Hedgehog aboard his “Ragna Rock,” a mobile battlestation that can cross dimensions. The Justice League follows him, and join forces with Sonic and friends to take him down. This is surprisingly refreshing for one of these crossover events. For starters, whenever there’s a crossover between two universes that can’t mix as easily as, say, DC and Marvel, it’s usually the characters from the less-grounded world coming to the more-grounded one – the DC/Looney Tunes crossover from years back being a prime example. Here we get the reverse, which is a nice change of pace. Second, there’s never even an iota of the usual “heroes get into a misunderstanding and fight before they team up against the bad guy” nonsense that we see time and time again. The League and Team Sonic immediately recognize each other as heroes and quickly not only partner up, but pair off, with the members of each team gravitating towards their most logical counterpart on the other. Superman winds up with Knuckles, the “strongest” of the Sonic heroes, and while their personalities are very different, there’s a mutual respect from the outset. I suspect at least part of this is because the comic is written by longtime Sonic writer Ian Flynn, who probably knows those characters better than anybody alive, and finds it fairly easy to integrate them with the world-famous Justice League. It’s a silly book, to be certain, but you know what? I like silly.
Sun., March 23
These covers, on the other hand, inspired a scene from Paddington 2.
Comics: Superman: The Doomsday Wars #1-3
Notes: The second Superman/Doomsday rematch, once again a Dan Jurgens joint, came in 1998. In another three-issue miniseries, we see Superman wrestling with his failures – specifically the death of Cat Grant’s son Adam at the hands of the Toyman. He keeps flashing back to a failure of his as a teenager, in which his family’s entire herd of cows froze to death while he was helpless to save them, and the dual failures are eating at him. Things are compounded when he learns that Lana Lang – who at this point was married to Pete Ross – has given birth, but the baby came prematurely and is near death. As Superman races to bring the child to medical attention, Doomsday returns and begins tearing through the Justice League…and this time, he’s not the mindless brute Superman faced before.
I have to say, as a sequel to the original Doomsday fight, I actually prefer this one to Hunter/Prey. The stakes are much more personal here, with Lana and Pete’s child hanging in the balance, and with Doomsday himself (spoiler) being propelled by Brainiac’s intelligence, making him far more dangerous. The story also takes place during the Grant Morrison era of the Justice League, so Doomsday is fighting a far more experienced and more powerful team than he did the first time. We don’t see the entire fight, but the stuff we see is really good, and in some instances (such as what he does to Plastic Man) downright chilling.
The one thing I’m not really down with is the characterization of Pete Ross. In the classic Superboy stories from the Silver Age, Pete was Clark’s best friend and the only one outside of the Kents who knew his secret identity, although Clark didn’t know that Pete knew it. After the Man of Steel reboot, the Superboy years never happened and the role of secret-keeper was switched to Lana, which was fine, but there are moments where Pete just doesn’t feel right. He’s outraged at Lana when she asks to speak to Clark privately (so she can ask him to have Superman save her son), and while a little insecurity about her speaking to the man Lana was in love with for so many years may be understandable, the blind rage he shows when he finds out that Superman is trying to save his child doesn’t make any sense at all. To be fair, Pete comes around by the end of the miniseries, but it’s a journey he never should have really been on in the first place.
Mon., March 24
Imagine this guy showing up on the bridge of the Cerritos.
Feature Film: Reign of the Supermen (2019)
Notes: The sequel to The Death of Superman picks up six months after the end of the first film, which in and of itself is an improvement over Superman/Doomsday, which made it seem as though the big guy was dead for about the length of an episode of Bluey. Almost simultaneously, four different people show up wearing the s-shield, and…oh, what the hell am I doing? You know how this story goes by now.
Instead of wasting time on a recap, let’s just talk about how this animated film works as an adaptation. The changes, for the most part, seem to be in service of making the story fit the animated DCU they were working with at the time. For example, in the absence of both Cadmus and WGBS, Superboy is a creation of LexCorp, although he still maintains his essentially good heart. In fact, his debut is interrupted by the Eradicator, showing up to eliminate “known criminal” Lex Luthor and winding up fighting the Kid, Steel, AND the Cyborg. It works pretty well – if there was anybody watching this who somehow didn’t know the story, it’s a good misdirect as far as hiding the Cyborg’s true nature. They also tie Superboy’s origin into the reconned version from his Teen Titans era – making him a mix of Superman and Lex’s DNA – which works better in this universe. An odd tweak has Henshaw, the Cyborg, initially working for Darkseid (deliciously voiced by the late, great Tony Todd) as part of his status as this DCU’s Big Bad. Instead of an attack on Coast City, Henshaw builds an army by offering them the same technology that “resurrected” him – really Apokalips tech. The end of the story isn’t quite as dramatic – we don’t get anything like the devastation of Coast City – but they manage to make the battle deeply personal, with the Cyborg’s rage being a bit more focused and less megalomaniacal.
There’s really good stuff with Lois in here, such as a nice early scene where she and Wonder Woman commiserate over Superman’s absence. Later, she deduces John Henry’s secret identity, then teams up with him to uncover who the Cyborg is – funny for a character who, in her own words, is “the worst with secret identities.” But it makes Lois look smarter, more capable, and gives her an agency that she lacked even in the original story. She’s also present for the finale this time, taking an active role in the battle with the Cyborg, and I love seeing it.
There are also nice Easter Eggs in this movie as well, such as newspaper cover photos that are based on the covers to the Reign of the Supermen comics. It’s the sort of thing that only the hardcore fans might notice but…well, if you haven’t noticed by now, I’m a hardcore fan.
I don’t want to spend too much more time talking about the casting of this one, as there isn’t much more to say this time around than I said when I watched the first one a few weeks ago, but I do need to point out Rainn Wilson’s Lex Luthor again. While still slick and serpentine, Wilson plays him a bit funnier this time around. There’s a dismissive conversation with Superboy about how a clone is no different than a biological child that left me laughing, for instance, and he carries that same sensibility throughout the film.
This is a far superior adaptation of the story than the animated DC’s first attempt. It’s not totally faithful, but it works well for the world in which it is set, and that’s what I’m asking for here.
Tues., March 25
I bought a bunch of these balloons once. My niece said I ruined her sixth birthday.
Comic Books: Superman: Day of Doom #1-4
Notes: To all things there must come an ending…even the saga of Superman’s death and return. I’m going to wrap up this surprisingly long dive into that storyline with the four-issue miniseries Superman: Day of Doom from 2002, published to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the story, written by Dan Jurgens with art by Jurgens and Bill Sienkiewicz. It’s the anniversary of Superman’s death in the DCU too (which anniversary isn’t really made explicit) and Daily Planet newbie Ty Duffyis tasked with writing a piece about people’s feelings about that monumental event. Despite not seeing the newsworthiness in a story that’s been told time and again, Duffy starts to dig, beginning with an interview with Blue Beetle and Booster Gold. (Remember what I said about Booster being one of Jurgens’s pet characters? This isn’t a complaint, I love seeing Booster Gold.) From there he begins an Odyssey that takes him to all walks of life in Metropolis, finding the stories that haven’t been told before.
The strength of this series, honestly, comes in those scenes where we hear new perspectives. Duffy talks to Perry White and Jimmy Olsen, but we saw them on the day. We know how they felt. It’s far more impactful when he talks to a random bystander who was left in a wheelchair thanks to Doomsday’s rampage, a priest who ministered to the suffering after the Coast City disaster, or uncovers the undisguised glee the Prankster felt when he heard that Superman was dead.
There’s a running thread throughout the series as well, about someone causing disasters along a path that perfectly mirrors Doomsday’s trail of destruction. As the trail reaches Metropolis at the end of the third issue, the two storylines finally collide, with Duffy laying in to Superman with the truth about why he resents the hero’s return from the dead so much, just pages before he too is taken by the mystery villain.
The story is surprisingly open-ended. Superman is forced to confront the tragedies that so many other people suffered during the battle with Doomsday and beyond, but the villain gets away and his true nature goes unrevealed. Even Duffy, who is the crux of this story’s emotional journey, doesn’t seem to really get the catharsis one would expect at the end. There’s a bitterness here that’s surprising. Don’t misunderstand – it’s pretty realistic. Even at the time of the original Doomsday storyline, the writers made it a point to refer to how many people Doomsday had killed, but they’d never really dug into those stories before. Even the most prominent Doomsday victims in the comics of the time – Mitch Anderson and his family – survived the rampage with the loss of their home, but no loss of life. And the Justice League showed up and built them a new house at Christmas, so where was the tragedy?
I have to wonder if writing this was a kind of catharsis for Jurgens himself. It feels almost like the writer is performing an act of penance, trying to atone for all the hundreds of fictional people that he killed (to say nothing of the seven million of Coast City) in the service of the story of the life and death of one man. It’s certainly the way that Duffy views the event, and it’s so odd that the comic book gives you the impression that – at least on some level – Dan Jurgens feels the same way.
The story of Superman’s death was tragic. The story of his return was triumphant. Day of Doom is a somewhat dark attempt to reconcile the two. It’s probably not something to be read in the immediate aftermath of the Death of Superman – after the upbeat ending of that story, it’s something that’ll bring you right down.
But it is most certainly a story that should be read.
Other Comics: Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #11,
And thus, finally, we reach the end of the epic saga of the Death and Life of Superman, and I am reminded why I decided not to do TOO many of these extended storylines over the course of this year. I do have one more planned, but it’s going to be a few months before I’m ready to tackle it. Starting tomorrow I’m planning to get a little more random again…but I’m also looking for some help. I’m asking you, dear readers, to suggest some of the best single-issue Superman stories ever written for me to dig into. After spending nearly a month with one story, I want shorts. So hit me in the comments with your suggestions. They can come from any era, any continuity, any Superman you want. They don’t even have to be from a Superman comic book – if you can find a really great story from an issue of Blue Devil or something, I’m down for it. Preference will be given to stories available on the DC Universe Infinite app, but that doesn’t mean I’ll automatically reject stories that aren’t. Next week, it’s gonna be SUPERMAN BY REQUEST!
This week we’ll reach the end of the “Reign of the Supermen” storyline (probably – I’m writing this on the afternoon of March 12 before I start reading any of them, so I suppose anything might happen). After that, I intend to touch upon some of the stories that follow and some of the ways that the Death and Return storyline were reflected in other media. Being such a fundamental part of the Superman mythology at this point, it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone to see that it’s been revisited many times. We won’t get to them all, but there’s plenty coming up.
Wed., March 12
Comics:Action Comics #690, Superman: The Man of Steel #25, Superman Vol. 2 #81, Adventures of Superman #504, Adventures of Superman Annual #5
“Eradication”? Get It? GET IT?
Notes: Let’s start with Action Comics #690. The Last Son of Krypton, close to death, returns to the Fortress of Solitude only to learn that his “power source” is gone – he’d been using the real Superman’s body to generate the energy he needed. The process has helped to resurrect him, though, and now Superman is on his way to Metropolis, charging across the ocean floor in a Kryptonian mech. The Kryptonian, meanwhile, sends what amounts to a deep fake video to the Justice League, blaming Coast City’s destruction on the Eradicator and sending the League and their most powerful allies on a wild goose chase into outer space to track him down. After all, it won’t be great for his plans if Earth’s most powerful heroes are still on Earth.
Two things of note in this issue. First of all, the robots in the Fortress help repair the Eradicator’s damaged memory, revealing to him (and the reader) his true identity. It’s been a long time, but I’m pretty sure I figured this one out ahead of this issue. You see, at this time I voraciously re-read my favorite comics. I’d start with the Man of Steel miniseries, read every subsequent Superman comic in order (I had begun – but not completed – the process of filling in the gaps) until I reached the most recent, then go back and start from the beginning. So I’d read the Eradicator story maybe five or six times, it was pretty fresh in my memory, and Roger Stern dropped a LOT of clues (unlike Dan Jurgens, who was pretty good at holding the Cyborg’s true identity close to the vest). The other thing I want to point out concerns Superboy, captive of the Cyborg, struggling to get free and save Metropolis from being destroyed like Coast City. Up until this point, Superboy had been motivated largely by his thirst for fame and adoration. There were glimpses of the good core of Superman in him, but this is the point where it really starts to come out, when he REALLY starts to see the big picture and find himself willing to put himself on the line. It’s a good look for the Kid.
That’s a face only a Martha could love.
In Man of Steel #25 Superboy is still being held by the Cyborg in the enormous engine built over the ruins of Coast City, unable to figure out why his powers don’t work the way he expects them to. He manages to escape, rushing back to Metropolis just as Supergirl, Steel, Lex Luthor, and Lois all converge at the Metropolis airport, where the Kryptonian mech we’ve been following for a few issues now emerges from the ocean. After a brief fight, Lois holds the others back, recognizing the Kryptonian battlesuit. It cracks open and spills open its precious cargo: a black-clad Superman, ready to put his life on the line for Metropolis once again. There’s so much to love about this issue. We get Lois back, for one thing: after her creepy friend Jeb Friedman makes a move on her she has a moment of crisis and realizes she’s lost herself, then is determined to make her way to Coast City to blow the lid off the Cyborg. Superboy continues gaining more of an awareness of himself as well, and bringing all of our heroes (and Lex) together again leads up to a really inspiring last page. From here, it’s a roller coaster to the end of the story, and I’m there for it.
Lois: “Superman never wore black like some executioner.” DC: But this will sell a LOT of action figures. Lois: I withdraw my objection.
Superman #81 picks up right here, as the others face off against this newest guy wearing Superman’s face, with nobody sure what to make of him — especially since he has no powers. He’s saying the same thing as everyone else: Ms. Lane, you know me, you’re the one who gave me my name, so forth, and Lois is struggling until he pulls out To Kill a Mockingbird. The mention of Clark Kent’s favorite movie gives Lois pause – could this actually be the real deal? After a brief conversation, he borrows a pair of flight boots from one of Team Luthor and he, Superboy, and Steel take off for Coast City. Meanwhile, one of the Cyborg’s minions fills in another one of the truth about their master – the former Hank Henshaw, reduced to a computer intelligence, conquered Mongul and is using him to destroy Earth in Superman’s name. The wraparound sequences are best here, with Clark and Lois, all touching moments even now. The middle of the book, with the Cyborg’s origin, is less interesting once you already know the story. At the time, though, it was necessary – Henshaw had been a relatively obscure character who had only made a few prior appearances, and they were actually just before I became a regular Superman reader, so I had to go back and learn who he was after the fact. I wonder if I would have picked up on who Henshaw was earlier had I already read those comics. Probably not, if I’m being honest, but I’m still curious.
Does anyone else remember the action figure line that came out after this with the slogan “Don’t mess with the S”? Wasn’t that an AWFUL slogan?
In Adventures #504, the trio lands in Coast City, where the powerless Superman scavenges weapons from the Warworlders as they fight their way to the heart of the engine. Cyborg’s got another missile prepared, though, and Superman and Steel watch helplessly as it blasts off for Metropolis, realizing only after the launch that Superboy is clinging to the side. He rides the missile across the country, trying to take it apart, before deflecting it from Metropolis at the last second, arcing it into the air where it explodes…seemingly taking the Kid with it. Spoiler alert: Superboy survived, but man I love this issue. If the Kid was going to stick around (as he did) he really needed a Hero Moment in this story, something to show that he was worthy of wearing the shield. I would say saving Metropolis from total destruction, possibly at the cost of his own life, does the trick.
Fortunately Superboy’s sense of timing got better later.
Of course, this DOES take us to Adventures of Superman Annual #5, our final Bloodlines check-in. Superboy wakes up in the hospital, having just stopped the missile, and is approached by Maggie Sawyer for help in hunting down the alien serial killers from the previous three Superman (and a dozen other) annuals. Meanwhile we meet the improbably named Donna Carol “D.C.” Force, youngest of the Force family. Everyone in D.C.’s fam has the metagene, but hers hasn’t activated yet, and she comes to Metropolis with her Uncle Harry chasing rumors of the alien killers who are making new metahumans. She winds up getting attacked, of course, and a paramedic’s defibrillators seem to give her the final ingredient, activating her gene and giving her electrical powers. D.C. teams up with Superboy to fight the aliens as Sparx.
Sparx was easily the most successful of the four New Bloods that came from the Superman books, becoming a series regular in Superboy and the Ravers a few years later and having assorted appearances in the years since. I really like the concept of a kid who comes from a family of metas who just wants to be a superhero, too – it’s a nice, kind of sweet idea. The real issue with this book is TIMING. Superman and Steel are back in Engine City on the other side of the country trying to prevent the Cyborg from destroying the entire planet, and Superboy takes time out for a SIDE QUEST? You’ve gotta be kidding me.
Thur., March 13
Comics: Action Comics #691, Superman: The Man of Steel #26, Green Lantern Vol. 3 #46, Superman Vol. 2 #82
Dammit, Clark, stop breaking the covers. Do you have any idea how expensive these are?
Notes: As Superman and Steel fight their way to the heart of Engine City in Action Comics #691, we discover that Supergirl has been following them since leaving Metropolis, using her invisibility to act as Superman’s “secret weapon” (a nice little nod to the original status quo of the original Supergirl). In the Fortress of Solitude, the Eradicator drains the power from the Fortress’s devices, leaving both the systems and robots dead, in order to recharge himself enough to return to the fight. And in the heart of the Engine, Mongul finds himself planning to turn on the Cyborg, while revealing that the Engine is powered by a gargantuan piece of Kryptonite. Good stuff in here. The book leans heavily on “If Lois believes he’s really Superman, that’s good enough for me,” and the man in black’s actions back it up. By the end of this issue, Steel is fully convinced that it’s the real deal, and even Mongul recognizes that this new enemy has far greater honor than the Cyborg, whose version of events must be twisted.
Speaking of the “man in black,” I wanted to point out something regarding the covers for these issues. You notice how, although they had Superman in the black recovery suit (which has become a fan favorite alternate Superman look) they gave him his usual short hair instead of the long hair he came out of the Kryptonian mech with and would keep for the next few years? I’ve never quite understood that. I wonder if it was a case of the covers being drawn far enough ahead of time that the long hair hadn’t been decided upon yet when they were released. It’s an interesting little artifact though, isn’t it?
I would totally wear this cover on a T-shirt.
In Man of Steel #26, Mongul reveals his plan: since Superboy stopped the missile from turning Metropolis into a second engine, which would have made Earth into a new Warworld, he’s going to content himself with firing the existing engine and just, y’know, destroying the world. As a powerless Superman faces Mongul, Steel plunges into the heart of the engine. And in a moment that will change the DCU forever, Green Lantern returns from space to investigate what has happened to his city. There are two great bits in this issue for me. First of all, the Cyborg underestimating Steel’s ability to stop the engine. No way a mere human could possibly throw a wrench into his plans, right? But Mama Irons didn’t name him after the steel-drivin’ man for no reason. The allegory of John Henry vs the Machine may be a bit on-the-nose, but holy crap, is it a fantastic story beat. The other thing, which doesn’t really have a ton of significance but I’ve always thought was funny, was Lois’s scuzzy friend Jeb Friedman watching her concern over the battle in California and asking her if her late finance Clark Kent ever realized she was really in love with Superman.
That caption would prove to be far more prophetic than anybody would have guessed.
Green Lantern #46 is next. As Hal Jordan returns from space to see the wreckage of his home, he dives into the heart of the engine to do battle with Mongul. It’s a brutal fight, Hal hampered not only by Mongul’s yellow skin, but by the fact that if he really cuts loose he’ll unleash the Kryptonite powering the engine, but in the end there’s a hell of a beatdown. You don’t usually find this issue in the collected editions anymore, and for two reasons. One, the more important of the two, is because DC (and Marvel) are reluctant to reprint any of the work of this issue’s writer, who was convicted a few years back of some rather unsuperhero-like behavior. (I’m not going to elaborate – if you don’t already know, Google will tell you.) The other reason you don’t see it is a story reason – the issue runs concurrently with Superman #82, the end of the storyline, and reveals how the reign ends, which is kind of a problem if someone hasn’t read it yet.
You know it’s special because CHROMIUM.
And here we are, Superman #82, the grand finale of “Reign of the Supermen.” Superboy and the Eradicator return to Coast City to rejoin the battle, but the others are cut off by the Cyborg, leaving him to face Superman and the Eradicator alone. In the depths of the Engine, they battle the Cyborg to a standstill. In a last-ditch effort, the Cyborg unleashes the power of the Kryptonite engine, draining it entirely in a massive power-blast, but the Eradicator hurls himself in front of Superman. The Kryptonite kills the Eradicator, but as the radiation passes through his body it transforms, restoring Superman’s powers. The other heroes break into the engine room just in time to see him defeat the Cyborg, and the true Superman stands revealed once and for all.
This really is a fantastic end to this storyline. Sure, neither the Eradicator nor the Cyborg turned out to be truly dead, and even Superman says in this issue that he doesn’t think Henshaw really CAN die, but try to forget the 30 years of comic book history that have passed since then. It’s Dan Jurgens at his finest, writing and drawing a fight for the ages. Images like the Cyborg inhabiting Steel’s armor and turning it against him are striking, as is the sight of the jawless Cyborg staggering around in pain before the end. Even the Eradicator gets his hero moment, sacrificing himself to save Superman, having been transformed by their psychic bond and abandoning his previous goal of restoring Krypton in favor of restoring her last son. Even now, all these years later, having read this story a dozen times, it’s awesome.
But although this is the finale of “Reign of the Supermen,” it’s not the end of the Death and Life saga. The next few issues of the Superman books would all feature epilogues of one sort or another and there were several follow-up miniseries such as Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey, which I’ll be tackling over the next several days. There’s still a lot of fun to come from our favorite hero biting the dust.
Fri., March 14
Comics: Adventures of Superman #505, Action Comics #692, Superman: The Man of Steel #27, Superman Vol. 2 #83, Adventures of Superman #506, Action Comics #693
You know it’s special because HOLOFOIL.
Notes: Now for what I’m gonna call “epilogue month” (and a half). After the Cyborg was defeated and the Reign of the Supermen ended, there were a LOT of loose ends left to tie up. Adventures #505 starts with Superman returning to Lois Lane, who had at this point spent several days worried about what was happening in Coast City. After a happy reunion, they start brainstorming – after all, Superman’s resurrection is one thing, but how are they going to explain Clark Kent being found alive after all this time? The issue continues with several other happy reunions – with Jimmy and Perry, Maggie Sawyer, and best of all, with Bibbo. There’s a good bit of set-up here, mapping out how things are going to go for Clark and Superboy in the coming months, but mostly it’s kind of a down issue in terms of action. Even the supervillain who briefly shows up, “Loophole,” is disposed of quickly and in a rather comical way. It’s like the writers knew that – after the emotional roller coaster we’d been on since Doomsday first cracked open his shell – we needed a break.
“It’s weird, when Clark was missing the broom closet was never locked…”
But just a week later, Action Comics #692 picks up right from that point, with Superman clearing away more Doomsday rubble and finding…CLARK KENT? Well no – not really. Turns out, Supergirl has used her shapeshifter powers to help complete the masquerade that brings Clark back from the dead. Although for everybody who ever complains about Clark’s glasses being an inadequate disguise, you have to wonder how nobody ever mentioned the fact that both he and Superman got long hair at the same time or how they both got it cut a few years later (comic book time) when Clark and Lois finally got married.
We also get more loose end-tying. Here we learn that the Eradicator’s body has been taken to STAR Labs, where a heartbeat is detected, and Steel is expected to make a full recovery. There’s also a really cute moment where Lex Luthor confronts Superman about how absent Supergirl has been lately. When Superman deftly tells him off for acting as if he owns the girl, even Lex Luthor has to smile, realizing the real Superman is back. Sure, it’s just because that means he’s still got a chance to kill him himself, but it’s still oddly sweet.
The issue ends with an unexpected visit from lesser-known DC Comics mystic Dr. Occult, whom Superman had met before. Occult is there to tell them just how close Superman got to dying, and that only a combination of several factors (including the efforts to revive him on the scene, the Eradicator’s interference, and Jonathan stopping his spirit from crossing over to the other side) managed to successfully bring about his resurrection. The point of this sequence is obviously to add back a little more dramatic tension in the future – DC no doubt felt that they HAD to convince the readers that Superman wasn’t immortal, even though later comics would pretty much say, “No, actually, he kinda is.” The issue ends with Occult dropping Lois and Clark off in Smallville for a joyful reunion with the Kents.
It’s just who he is, folks.
Man of Steel #27 shows us Clark’s welcome return to the Daily Planet, while Jonathan and Martha Kent go on a bit of a health kick that will ultimately redefine and modernize the characters a bit. Martha, from the John Byrne days onward, had been drawn as kind of a plumper version of Peter Parker’s Aunt May, and the makeover she soon undergoes makes her more youthful and vibrant, which was a welcome change. But the whole subplot is worth it for the panel where Jon Bogdanove draws Jonathan Kent pouting over the changes, hands stuffed in his pockets like a disappointed child. It’s like Power Pack, the Golden Years here. We also get the first hint that John Henry is going to relocate to Washington, D.C., which would be the setting when he got his own spinoff series later that year. Oh, and in the main plot, Lex throws a “Welcome Back” party for Superman that gets caught in the battle between the Underworlders (and their new leader) and Project Cadmus. This is set-up for future storylines that we won’t be covering from this blog, but it shows you how forward-thinking the writers were in this era.
“Yeah, this way we don’t have to do another cover design.”
Superman #83 is the most literal epilogue to the saga (it even says it on the cover) as the heroes of the DCU gather to mourn the devastation of Coast City. I’m really glad they did this issue – with the joy over the return of Superman, it would have been really easy to forget that seven million (fictional) people died, but they didn’t pull away from it here. Obviously it would become a much, MUCH bigger plot point in Green Lantern, but it needed to be addressed in the Superman titles as well. The memorial gets disrupted when Lex Luthor shows up and the heroes nearly come to blows over what to do with the Engine: Green Lantern wants to let the atrocity crumble into the ocean, but Aquaman points out that such a thing would be toxic to the seas. Oh yeah, and a few of the Warworld stragglers are still there, causing trouble. The ensuing battle causes the Engine to crumble, but the Lanterns use their powers to sterilize the remnants and make them safe to settle in the ocean. In the end, Superman uses pieces of the engine to construct an eternal flame in memorial to those lost.
Although the ramifications of the death and return storyline would be felt in the Superman books for a very long time, at this point they started to become a little less prominent as new storylines moved in and took their place. It only makes sense, of course, if you’re doing an ongoing serial like the four Superman titles were at the time, you never really get to call anything “the end.” More stuff always has to come in, and the Death and Return was, at this point, giving way to the stories of the future. But there are two last bits I want to mention. Adventures #505 brings back Superboy, where he learns the truth about himself and his powers. They’re based on Superman’s “aura” that gives him his invulnerability, but this causes Superboy’s powers to differ from the man himself in some interesting ways. The Kid finally accepts the Superboy name, and just like Steel, elements are put in place for his spinoff series. Finally, Action #693 brings Superman to STAR Labs, where the Eradicator’s body is still alive, but there is no spark of consciousness within him. A terminally ill doctor named David Connor is in charge of examining the body, but somehow (through comic booky science) winds up transferring his consciousness into it, thus making David Conner the new Eradicator. At this point, the status quo is more or less established for the foreseeable future – all of the remaining “Supermen” have a new lease on life and the cleanup of his death is more or less complete.
Sat., March 15
Essay: “The Superman Mythology: A Mini-Tribute to Edmond Hamilton by Jack Williamson” from The Krypton Companion
Notes: I don’t think I realized today was going to be a hard day earlier in the week. It’s been a rough few weeks for me, guys, the kind of period where having things like this blog to complete are what keeps me interacting with the universe instead of curling up into a ball, but March 15 is different even than that. March 15th is my mother’s birthday. We lost her in 2017, just ten days before Erin and I found out we were going to be parents. My son never knew his grandmother, and she never knew he was going to be born. I miss her a lot, and when times are bad I miss her even more. The point of all this is to say that I just did not have it in me to continue on today with “Death of Superman” stuff, even the aftermath.
Pictured: literature.
So instead, I turned to TwoMorrows’ excellent book of Superman minutia, The Krypton Companion and read a short piece about science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton and his connection to the Superman mythos. I’d heard of Hamilton before, but I’d never before connected him with our own Emil Hamilton, who Jerry Ordway confirmed was named for him. Emil was originally brought in as a one-off villain in Adventures of Superman, but Ordway pushed to rehabilitate him when John Byrne wanted a scientist-type friend for our hero. Ordway says he likes stories of bad guys being reformed. Me too – which is why it still ticks me off when they make Emil bad again.
Sorry I didn’t have more to say today, guys. I hope I’ll be in a better head space tomorrow.
March 16 & 17
Novel: The Death and Life of Superman by Roger Stern (Unfinished)
Notes: I’ve been riding the struggle bus lately. A few weeks ago I started having some car troubles and, frankly, the market ain’t great to replace it right now. This has had me under some greater-than-usual stress and, if I’m being honest, on those days when the stress gets particularly bad it’s been difficult to do even the things I want to do. One of the reasons behind “The Year of Superman” was to immerse myself in things that bring me joy, but when I’m in a bad headspace it’s hard to tackle that. All of that said, I haven’t missed a day of Superman content, I’ve just spent the last few days with Roger Stern’s novelization of The Death and Life of Superman, which was published back in 1993. I haven’t finished it yet – well, not this time around, anyway – but I’ve been enjoying it.
There are lots of novels based on comic book superheroes, but novels adapting specific storylines are a bit more rare. I guess once DC realized just how big an impact this storyline was having, they started looking for more ways to monetize it. So Stern wrote this novel, while Louise Simonson wrote a “Junior Novelization” called Superman: Doomsday and Beyond, which I’ve actually never found a copy of. This isn’t the first time I’ve read this book, of course. I got it when it first came out, and in fact, it was originally released on my birthday (a fact I remember because I still see the original ad for it when I look through comics of the time) so it’s likely I requested it as a birthday present that year. I remember enjoying it quite a bit at the time, and it must have sold pretty well because DC did another novelization the next year, this time Batman: Knightfall by Dennis O’Neil, which I also enjoyed. I’ve still got that hardback copy, but I also snagged a paperback last year in a used bookstore, having no notion at the time that I’d be using it for such a worthy cause as the Year of Superman. It’s my first time reading it in at least 20 years.
Totally not posting this just so that everyone knows when my birthday is.
Reading it concurrently with the comics has been a fun experience, and showcases just how closely Stern’s manuscript adheres to the originals. Much of the dialogue is left intact, and even minor scenes such as Lois seeing a man in a hat and mistakenly thinking it’s Clark back from the dead remain. The only large swaths Stern skips over (at least in the portion of the book I’ve read so far) are the subplots regarding the Underworlders and Keith from the Superman: The Man of Steel issues, which were great for ongoing readers of the books, but didn’t have any real impact on the story of Superman’s death, so their absence isn’t really felt.
Stern keeps the same Justice League lineup from the comics, even going into explanations of Superman’s history with the team (which, if you’ll recall, was relatively new at the time) and the backstory of Guy Gardner’s expulsion from the Green Lantern Corps. Most adaptations would gloss over these things, or change the team to a more “traditional” lineup (as was done in the Death of Superman animated film I watched not long ago), so there’s a sort of purity in this incarnation.
I also like how Stern brings in the backstory of the main cast – Superman, his relationship with Lois, and so forth. He plucks scenes from earlier comics, especially John Byrne’s Man of Steel miniseries, and uses them to fill in the world in which the story takes place. It’s really impressive how well the world is built up. Someone who has only a cursory knowledge of Superman can pick it up and pretty quickly get up-to-speed on everything they need to know about THIS incarnation of Superman. It’s pretty impressive, although I’m forced to wonder if anyone who isn’t familiar with the comics of the era would think it’s too much.
Like I said, I’m not quite done with the novel yet. I’ve got about a quarter of the book left to go, and I haven’t even gotten to the Cyborg’s big reveal yet, so I’ll have to come back when I get there to report on how well Stern sticks the landing. As of right now, I’m really quite happy with how good the adaptation has been.
Tues., March 18
Comic: Return of Superman 30th Anniversary Special
“Return” doesn’t look a day over 29, does it?
Notes: As they did with his death, in 2023 DC Comics came to us with an anniversary special for Superman’s return. And like that previous book, this one was a blend of then and now. The main story is set in the present, with Lois Lane adjusting to becoming the new editor of the Daily Planet, as Perry White was in a coma at the time. (Long story. It was Lex Luthor’s fault. Him and Brian Michael Bendis.) On the day of the frame story, Superman is occupied elsewhere, when the Cyborg Superman returns, once again attacking Metropolis. With the real deal out of the picture, Superboy, Steel, and the Eradicator return to clean up the pretender. Meanwhile, Lois and Ron Troupe go through Perry’s journals of the time when the would-be Supermen first appeared and reflect.
I really like the structure here. Perry White is, in my opinion, an underused character. We see Lois all the time, of course, and Jimmy had his own series that lasted a really long time, but I’ve always seen Perry as sort of a second (or third, depending on how you count) father figure to Clark and Lois both, and we don’t see his insights enough. Even though he was literally unconscious at the time of this story, using his journal for the frame to the flashback stories works really well to tap into his mindset.
The first of the four flashback sequences focuses on Steel and his effort to get the infamous Toastmaster guns off the streets of Metropolis. It’s a fine story, once again reuniting Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove to show off their character and what he came to mean to the less-affluent sections of Metropolis. In the Eradicator story, written and drawn by Jerry Ordway, Perry plays witness as he faces off against one of Ordway’s oft-used foes from his time on the Superman comics, mad scientist Thaddeus Killgrave. The story leaves Perry uncertain about the visored hero, and with good reason. Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett are together again for the Superboy story, and this may be my favorite of the bunch. The Kid is definitely playing the part he did back in 1993 – arrogant and thirsting for fame – but Perry is able to see the good in him. A sweet interlude at a skateboard park reveals the child inside, something few of the stories of the time bothered to do, and it works really well.
The last story, by Dan Jurgens, deals with Perry’s skepticism over the Cyborg Superman and how he tortured himself for publishing Ron Troupe’s story (from Superman #79) that indicated he was the real deal after the Cyborg’s true colors were shown. I love the angle we get here, how Perry never quite forgives himself for that mistake. He’s the editor of the Daily Planet, damn it, and his responsibility is to the truth. To have made such an egregious error eats at him. This is honestly pretty refreshing – the idea of a journalist in the modern day having the sort of integrity to take personal responsibility for what was an honest mistake…dang, when’s the last time you saw anything even close to that in the real world?
The special as a whole is fun. The thing that surprises me most of all is that, in the end, while it serves perfectly well as a spotlight on the four Supermen that rose up to take Clark’s place, it’s really kind of a celebration of Perry White.
Thus ends week 11. In week 12, I’ve still got some “Death of Superman” epilogues and odds and ends I intend to tackle, but I’m looking ahead to week 13. What I would like to do, friends, if you can help me, is try a sort of “Reader’s Choice” week. What are some of your favorite one-off stories about Superman? They can be from any time period, any continuity, and don’t even have to be from a Superman comic (maybe he makes a memorable guest appearance in Firestorm or something). I’d like to get a bunch of done-in-one stories to cover over a few days. Bonus points if the issue is available via the DC Universe app, but if it isn’t, that’s not necessarily a dealbreaker. I’ve got a pretty hefty collection, after all, and odds are that your favorites will be among mine as well. So head to the comments and hit me with your suggestions!
Last week, I spent most of my Superman time reading the story of his death from 1992. This week we’re jumping ahead over that gap in publication to look into the story that brought him back. Get ready for “Reign of the Supermen,” friends! But first…
It’s gonna get CRAAAAAAAZYYYYYYY…
Wed., March 5
Comics:Adventures of Superman #500
Supposedly, you could peel off the top layer of this cover and remove Jonathan’s hand. I never tried it. I don’t know why the hell anybody would want to.
Notes: The return of Superman begins right where Superman #77 ended with Jonathan Kent lying in a hospital in cardiac arrest. I think back to 1993, when we had to wait about three months in the relative hours that passed between these issues. It truly seemed, at the time, that Jonathan had died of grief over the death of his son, and unlike Clark, we didn’t really feel certain that Jonathan would necessarily be coming back. I think that’s one of the things that still makes this issue so damned good.
Before I get too deep into this I need to make something clear – if you have never read the “Reign of the Supermen” story before, I’m going to be spoiling stuff left and right, beginning in this little recap of this issue. I’m assuming that anyone reading this blog is a hardcore Superman fan and already knows the story pretty well, but on the off-chance that you don’t, consider this your spoiler warning. I didn’t worry quite as much about spoilers when it came to the Death of Superman because…well, it’s right there in the title. But there are a few twists coming in the story of his return, so if you don’t know (for example) who the four people who stepped up to fill Superman’s shoes are, this is your warning to go read the entire story first before you come back here.
Okay, back to Adventures #500. The first half of the issue follows Jonathan into a near-death experience. In a strange realm somewhere between the living and the dead, Jonathan sees Clark being taken away by a contingent of Kryptonian spirits. He charges after his boy, uncovering the truth – the “Kryptonians” are minions of Clark’s old foe, the demon Blaze, and it’s up to Jonathan to convince “Kal-El” to turn around and come back to Earth.
I wonder if there was ever a temptation to have Superman fight this battle himself, do the sort of “power of will” ending that so many of his stories have had in the past. Certainly, it would have been adequate, but…this is better. Having him saved by Jonathan is just better. Showing the father risking everything to save his child is always something that’s going to tug on my heartstrings, and the fact that the child in question is Superman himself somehow makes it even better. “Oh, my son is the most powerful man in the world? Man of steel? Man of tomorrow? His symbol literally means ‘hope’? Shut up, hand me a shovel, and get out of my way.”
I love Jonathan in this book.
The shovel, by the way, is a really nice callback to the last chapter of John Byrne’s Man of Steel, where Clark was mesmerized by a hologram of Jor-El and Jonathan broke him free by smashing it with a shovel. Here it’s not really Jor-El, but demon wearing his form, but the fact that Jonathan manages to summon a shovel out of the ether to save his boy just makes me want to jump up and cheer.
The main story ends with Lois and Inspector Henderson of the Metropolis PD going to Superman’s tomb to find that it empty, just in case the Christ allegory in the character wasn’t obvious enough. After that, though, we get into our first sightings of the four new characters who stepped up as the stars of the series for the next few months, and each of them has an introduction that is quite fitting for the person they would prove himself to be. John Henry Irons is first glimpsed pulling himself from rubble and proclaiming that he’s got to stop Doomsday – the hero inherent in him is already clear. The “Last Son of Krypton” first shows up dishing out a rather brutal brand of justice – the right intentions, but the wrong path. “The Kid” (who at this point had no name) is broken free from Cadmus by the Newsboy Legion and demonstrates the pigheadedness that defined his early years with a simple proclamation: “Don’t ever call me Superboy!” And finally, the Cyborg makes his first appearance in a wordless sequence in which he lands in front of the Daily Planet building and destroys the marker that designates the spot where Superman died, proclaiming simply “I’m back.” As the true villain of the piece, it’s a nice introduction. Would the real Superman necessarily destroy his memorial? Possibly…but a villain intent on destroying Superman’s good name would definitely do so.
I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this again, my friends.
Thur., March 6
“One of these things is not like the others…”
Comics:Action Comics #687, Superman: The Man of Steel #22, Superman Vol. 2 #78, Adventures of Superman #501
Notes: The return storyline begins in earnest today. Like I said yesterday, I’m not going to bother to try to hide the reveals for these books, but at the same time, I’m also going to try to recreate the thought process we went through as readers when these books were still fresh, still coming out one week at a time (except for these first four issues, which were all released on the same day). The story begins with the “Last Son of Krypton,” who would eventually be revealed to be the Eradicator, being reconstituted in the Fortress of Solitude by the very robots that he built. Ever since he was supposedly destroyed back in Action Comics #667, the energy that made up his essence had been trapped in the walls of the Fortress, finally restored here. Roger Stern structures it in such a way, though, that it’s not immediately obvious that we’re looking at the Eradicator. It’s possible, or so it seemed at the time, that this energy-being who then went to retrieve Superman’s body, was actually Superman’s soul. He’s less compassionate than our Superman, less personal with Lois, but this too could have been an artifact of his encounter in the afterlife from Adventures #500.
Man of Steel #22 gives us John Henry Irons’ first full appearance, and we first see him sitting on the stoop of an apartment building, telling kids the story of John Henry versus the machine. Again, subtlety was not a strong suit for these comics. Anyway, John – under the alias “Henry Johnson,” is horrified when a gang hit kills one of the neighborhood kids using a weapon he recognizes as a “Toastmaster,” something he designed in his previous life. He remembers how Superman once saved his life, and told him to “make it count,” inspiring him to make the Man of Steel armor to clean the streets of his weapons. I’ve made no secret of my love of John Henry, and how of the four Supermen, he was my favorite. I think it’s important to point out, though, that the idea of him being the “real” Superman wasn’t out of the question at the time. Although the other three all LOOKED like Superman, John Henry was the one who ACTED the most like Superman. What’s more, this first issue introduces us to John’s neighbor Rosie, the clairvoyant, who claims the Man of Steel is a “walk-in spirit,” the result of a soul whose body has been killed but who instead finds another body to inhabit. If that sounds ridiculous to you, keep in mind that this is part of a universe that includes Deadman and the Spectre. Although it didn’t turn out to be true, at the time the notion that Clark Kent’s spirit was somehow inside John Henry’s body was not something that we could safely rule out.
In Superman #78, the Cyborg makes his big splash, breaking into Cadmus to take Doomsday’s body. In order to prevent Westfield from attempting to clone the creature, he brings it into space and chains it to an asteroid, drifting – seemingly – aimlessly. The Cyborg then encounters Lois, who insists he visit Professor Hamilton for study. To everyone’s shock, Hamilton’s tests reveal that the Cyborg’s metallic parts are indeed Kryptonian, and his body is genetically identical to Superman. He is, to all appearances, Superman brought bac to life. The truth is that Hank Henshaw, in a computer consciousness, stole the Kryptonian Matrix that brought Kal-El to Earth as an infant, giving him the material to build a convincing body. He was also clever in that the parts of his body that were replaced with metal corresponded pretty well to the areas that seemed to suffer the most damage during the battle with Doomsday. This was the Superman that I remember finding the most plausible in that first month, for the aforementioned reasons. There is, however, one other clue that convinced me pretty well that turned out to be a cheat: in his internal monologue, the Cyborg looks at Doomsday and thinks, “They didn’t bother to wash MY blood off you.” That particular possessive pronoun makes no sense for anybody to use except Superman, and was one of the strongest arguments – among readers – for the Cyborg’s claim to the throne. It still doesn’t make sense that the Cyborg would think that way. That’s a little bit of narrative cheating that bugs me to this day.
Last, we get Adventures of Superman #501, the introduction of the Metropolis Kid. The lad who would one day be Superboy comes to town saving joggers, fighting crime, and proving just how arrogant a super-powered 15-year-old would be. He’s upfront from the beginning, though, telling the world that he’s Superman’s clone, although this would later turn out to only be part of the story, and that story itself would change more than once before it settled on its current status quo. Of the four Supermen, this was the one that I never once thought could be “our” Superman brought back to life…however, that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t “real.” After all, if Rosie was right about John Henry’s body containing Superman’s soul, he would need somewhere to go, right? Some comic book science aging the Kid could have made a perfect vessel to contain it, had the story gone in that direction.
I’m remembering the fun of this storyline now. For the last 30 years, any time I’ve read these comics again it’s been with that perspective of knowing the ending. While I can’t throw that lens away, I’ve kinda rediscovered the way I looked at the stories at the time, trying to measure all the possibilities…and that’s a fun way to read these.
Fri. March 7
The “telescope” is literally a giant horseshoe magnet. Trust me, this image is cooler.
Animated Short:The Magnetic Telescope (1942)
Notes: Unsure if I can get in any reading time today, I decided to squeeze in the next Fleischer short while I have a chance. In this one, a scientist (I’ll let you decide for yourself if there should be a “mad” in there) invents a telescope with an enormous magnet attached, with the intention of drawing celestial bodies closer to Earth for further examination. The problem with this, of course, is that he is DRAWING CELESTIAL BODIES CLOSER TO EARTH. It doesn’t help when the police shut down his machine, cutting off the power after he’s already pulled a comet towards Metropolis and robbing him of the ability to send it back. Superman, naturally, is going to have to get in there and save the day. The short is pretty standard, with the usual gorgeous animation and a story that is fairly predictable. The most interesting thing, I think, is the lack of common sense displayed not only by the scientist, but by Clark Kent, who is taking a TAXI to the observatory after Lois calls in to report the catastrophe. It isn’t until the cab gets stopped by falling meteor chunks that Clark decides to switch to his costume and fly there. Why is he wasting money on a cab in the first place?
Sat. March 8
Comics: Superman: The Man of Steel Annual #2, Action Comics #688, Superman: The Man of Steel #23, Superman Vol. 2 #79, Adventures of Superman #502
It was the 90s, you see, there was nothing more important than “Edge.”
Notes: The tricky part of reading the “Reign of the Supermen” and related comics is going to be working in the annuals. As they don’t carry the “Triangle” numbers the way the regular issues do, I’m going to cycle them into the reading order as close as I can figure to when they were released, relative to the other comics, and that means I’ll be starting with Superman: The Man of Steel Annual #2. Now in 1993, DC’s summer annual event was a story called Bloodlines, in which a group of aliens came to Earth to feed on humans. Some of the humans they attacked, however, didn’t die, but instead had their metagene awakened, giving them superpowers. The result was that each annual this year introduced a new superhero or villain. Some of them were pretty cool, others were kind of lame, and the only one who had any real lasting impact was Hitman. Edge, for instance, the character that John Henry Irons meets in this issue, hasn’t made an appearance since 1995. It’s pretty tertiary to the ongoing story, with the biggest contribution being that it shows how the Man of Steel is becoming accepted in the neighborhood.
They’re fighting over who has the better hairstyle.
Moving back to the regular issues, we’d entered an interesting time. Although the Triangle Numbers and weekly serialization continued, each of the four would-be Supermen had their own plots and stories that lasted for the first couple of months of “Reign” before the Cyborg played his hand and tied the four titles together again for the rest of the run. In Action #688, for instance, we see a confrontation between the Eradicator and Guy Gardner. In a move that’s surprisingly touching, Gardner is outraged to see four people wearing Superman’s symbol, having gained a new respect for Superman following the Doomsday battle. Guy sets out to put a stop to them, but when he sees how brutal the Eradicator is with criminals, he decides that maybe this fellow IS the Superman Metropolis needs. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.
These two, on the other hand, are fighting over who has the goofier nickname on the cover.
Man of Steel #23 then gives us the first encounter between two of the would-be Supermen, Steel and Superboy. The kid makes a mistake that costs a Daily Planet helicopter pilot his life, and John Henry takes him to task for it, but considering that the weapon that dealt the killing blow was of his design, he grows into being more understanding. This is also the issue in which he meets Lois, who feels the same way about John as I always have – this is the only one of the pretenders who seems to have Clark’s spirit. In retrospect, I wonder if Lois’s endorsement was the reason I gravitated so strongly to John Henry, not only then, but in all the years since as well.
Schwarzenegger briefly considered copying this image for his Gubernatorial posters, but decided it was too low-key.
Superman #79 is told through a newspaper column written by Ron Troupe, who is trying to show himself worthy of replacing the (believed to be dead) Clark Kent at the Daily Planet. Perry White challenges him to bring in a story so big that he proves he deserves the job, and it’s hard to argue the SCALE of the story he brings in. Troupe lucks into being on the scene as the Cyborg thwarts a presidential assassination attempt, and in the process, uses a genetic scanner that seems to confirm that he is, in fact, the true Superman. There are two things about this issue that stick with me. First, although I don’t think I realized it at the time, it’s impressive how Dan Jurgens worked so hard to stay away from delving into the Cyborg’s life when he wasn’t in front of the public, and avoided giving us a glimpse into his thoughts (after that misstep in the previous issue). The other thing that stands out to me is that so many, so SO many comic book writers don’t have the slightest idea what a news article is supposed to read like. Even if I accept Ron’s writing as a column rather than a proper news article, the fact that he himself uses the genetic scanner on Superman makes the whole thing a gargantuan conflict of interests. I recognize the irony here, as Clark obviously made his career by writing about himself, but at least he tried to HIDE it.
All we need is Krypto! (Actually, there’s a version of him in this issue.)
Rounding out month two of “Reign,” in Adventures of Superman #502, Lex Luthor tries to lure Superboy away from WGBS by having Supergirl prance around in front of him in a slinky dress. I wish I was making that part up. But the kid sticks with WGBS when Vinnie Edge presents him with a new manager who also happens to have a teenage daughter…all while the kid is crushing on WGBS reporter Tana Moon. It’s odd, when these books came out I was roughly the same age as the kid is mentally, and I don’t remember being bothered by just how openly he’s manipulated through sex appeal. I suppose it’s the perspective of maturity, or whatever the hell you call it when you apply that particular characteristic to me. This issue is also the first in the “Reign” era to end on a cliffhanger, as Edge hires a villain called Stinger to attack the kid, and winds up blowing up a bridge, leaving Superboy and Supergirl shocked and unable to do anything because they’re out of pages! Man, I hope they figure out a way out of this in Action #689.
Sun., March 9
Comics: Superman Annual #5, Action Comics #689, Superman: The Man of Steel #24
“Myriad!” is Latin for “character who has made one appearance in the last 30 years.”
Notes: We’ve got another Bloodlines crossover for you this time. Unusually for this particular crossover, though, it actually picks up on threads from the ongoing comic book. Back in issue Superman #77, Lex Luthor murdered his martial arts instructor, partially because she embarrassed him in training, but mostly to prove he could still get away with it now that Superman was dead. In Superman Annual #5, one of the aliens gobbling up people left and right finds her discarded body in a landfill and makes her into a quick snack, inadvertently activating her metagene and resurrecting her. She wakes up with no memory of her life, but soon finds she can absorb the memories and personality of anyone she comes into contact with, and even control them. She clashes with Luthor and the Cyborg (which I suppose is appropriate, as it was technically his book at the time) before absorbing the memory and personality of one of Luthor’s assassins and vanishes. Myriad’s future, after the Bloodlines crossover, wasn’t much better than Edge. She popped up in an issue of Action Comics a few months later, then – as far as I can tell – nothing until a surprise appearance in a Batman one-shot, Legends of Gotham, in 2023. But you know, I’ve often believed that even the least-interesting characters can be made fascinating if you give them to the right writer and put them into the right story. Who knows? Maybe Myriad could have a comeback some day. At the very least, the next two newbies we’re going to meet stuck around a little bit longer than the first two.
This is exactly the way my brother watches March Madness.
Action Comics #689 picks up immediately after Adventures #502, and this is the point where the four books begin to really intertwine again. As Superboy and Supergirl rescue the victims of the bridge collapse, in the Fortress of Solitude a man crawls from the machinery that has been recharging him. At the time, it was intended to appear as though this was the Last Son of Krypton (aka the Eradicator) having rested up, but in retrospect, this was the issue where the real Superman actually came back, although we wouldn’t know it for some time. The Eradicator had taken his body from the tomb and was using it as a sort of power source in the Fortress, but in so doing, the machinery resurrected him, a process which – at the end of the storyline – they made damn sure to insist would never work again. Except that they kinda did it again years later when Superboy died. Ah well, who’s counting? Anyway, also in this issue we see Steel face off with the Eradicator over the latter’s more lethal techniques, something Steel vehemently opposes, once more proving that if any of these four EVER had a claim to the S-shield, it was John Henry Irons. Oh yeah, and Mongul is guiding a vast warship through outer space on a trajectory to Earth in order to exact his revenge on Superman. That couldn’t possibly be bad, though, right?
They were REALLY trying hard to make “Iron John” stick, weren’t they?
Man of Steel #24 follows this up as Steel and the Eradicator’s fight brings them to Coast City, California. Steel tries to convince the Kryptonian that his brutality is unbecoming of a Superman and, surprisingly, the Eradicator actually takes his words to heart. He promises to leave Metropolis to Steel, while he tackles injustice out on the west coast, a decision that would prove to be really, really unfortunate for an awful lot of people. The rest of the issue is concerned with John’s return to Metropolis and a battle with the White Rabbit, the source of the Toastmaster weapons plaguing the city and who also happens to be John’s ex. This issue – as well as most of the “Reign” issues – also briefly checks in with Lois, who is still struggling with Clark’s loss. As much as I like this storyline, I don’t care for how little of Lois we see. I get it – they need to tell the story of the four wannabes and, frankly, there isn’t too much to DO with Lois other than show her skepticism. Still, she’s as important to these books as Clark himself, and when she only shows up on two or three pages in an issue, I miss her.
Notes: I’m going to break with my effort to read the annuals in release order because I realized that, after this point, the Eradicator (at least in this form) doesn’t return to Metropolis for the remainder of the “Reign of the Supermen” storyline, however his Bloodlines annual is set in Metropolis, so even though it came out after, it must take place BEFORE the issues I’ve already read. Being a nerd is fun.
Note: nothing even remotely like this happens in the issue.
Anyway, Action Comics Annual #5 introduces us to Loose Cannon. Eddie Walker is a former Metropolis Special Crimes Unit officer whose reckless behavior (they always called him a “Loose Cannon” – GET IT???) leaves him partially crippled in an encounter with a metahuman perp. Maggie Sawyer calls him back into service to investigate the murders that are being carried out by the alien visitors , and he winds up becoming their next victim. Now, by night, he turns into a seven foot tall bruiser with blue skin that changes to different colors depending on his mood, because they had to make him at least a LITTLE different than the Hulk. He and the Eradicator throw down with the aliens, but they escape because the crossover was only halfway finished at this point. Loose Cannon fared slightly better than previous two “new bloods” we’ve read about, getting his own miniseries and sporadic appearances in the years since, but he’s never gonna be an A-lister. Not that this really sets him apart from the rest of the Bloodlines characters.
Superman #80 is where “Reign” REALLY takes a turn. Mongul’s warship arrives on Earth and heads to Green Lantern’s home of Coast City, which is conveniently where the Last Son of Krypton is currently operating. The Cyborg sweeps in to “investigate,” and riiiiight up until this point, you might still be thinking he’s the real Superman. Right up until the page where he blasts the Eradicator in the back and tells him, “You’ll be blamed for the deaths of millions.”
Oh. So HE’S the bad guy.
Three pages later, Mongul’s ship detonates 77,000 individual explosive devices, annihilating Coast City and murdering the seven million people who call it home.
I cannot stress this enough, the Cyborg really IS the bad guy.
The explosion reduces the Eradicator to his energy form and he retreats to the Fortress of Solitude, where again we get one of those fake-out scenes of “someone” piloting a Kryptonian mech, implied to be the Eradicator, but whom we who have read this story before know is our boy Clark. The issue ends with a wonderfully ominous page of Mongul kissing the Cyborg’s hand as he declares that Metropolis is his next target.
This issue was probably a bigger shocker back in the day than the actual death of Superman was. I mean, we all knew that Superman was going to die. It was on the NEWS. But nobody leaked word that Coast City – home of Hal Jordan and one of the more established fictional cities in the DCU after Metropolis and Gotham – was going to be wiped off the map. This wasn’t just something huge for the Superman books, it was going to have radical consequences for Green Lantern, which in turn would have consequences for the Justice League titles, Guy Gardner’s book, Flash…it was the beginning of a domino chain that reverberated for years. Even now, looking at the current status quo of the Green Lantern corner of the DC Universe, where Parallax is an entity that powers the Yellow Lanterns and each color has its own such entity…this is the book that led to the stories that led to that particular status quo years later. You have to wonder if, in that Superman retreat where the writers were trying to figure out what to do since Warner Bros made them delay the wedding of Lois and Clark because of the Dean Cain/Teri Hatcher TV show, they had any inkling of just how big the consequences of someone joking “Let’s just kill him!” would be.
Cyborg is really just envious of the leather jacket.
The Cyborg’s plot continues in Adventures of Superman #503. Having taken care of the Last Son of Krypton, he requests that Superboy be sent to the remains of Coast City to “assist” him, really planning to eliminate another of his rivals. He takes the Kid down fairly quickly, but not before making a grave mistake – talking about having powers like the Kid “when I was your age” on the WGBS news feed. Back in Metropolis, Lois hears this and knows for certain he’s an imposter – in this continuity, Clark’s powers hadn’t fully developed yet when he was 15. The real Superman, meanwhile, stumbles from the Fortress in his Kryptonian mech and begins the march back to civilization, and the Kid shows the first glimpse of the power that will later be called “tactile telekinesis,” further evidence that he is NOT – as Paul Westfield at Cadmus claimed – simply a clone of Superman. Without belaboring the point, because I don’t think it actually is clarified until after the “Reign” story ends, we eventually learn that Cadmus couldn’t totally crack Superman’s genetic code, so they manipulated a clone to LOOK like him and used what information they COULD get to give him similar – but different – powers. Years later Geoff Johns came in and further retconned the origins to its current status quo: Superboy is a clone whose DNA is a mix of Superman and Lex Luthor. But they co-parent like champs.
Tues., March 11
TV Episode: Justice League Unlimited Season 2, Episode 3: “The Doomsday Sanction”
“Okay, tell me when this starts to hurt…”
Notes: I didn’t have any reading time today, guys, and by the time I finally had a chance to sit down I was kind of exhausted. As much as I love reading, sometimes your brain just isn’t in that place, you know? So instead, I decided to dip into the excellent Justice League Unlimited cartoon to check out an episode centering around our old pal Doomsday.
Written by the late, great Dwayne McDuffie, this episode starts with Batman popping into Amanda Waller’s shower in a hell of a power move, confronting her over her activities with Project: Cadmus, which in the DCAU is a project dedicated to creating weapons capable of defeating the Justice League, including clones. One of the Cadmus doctors, Dr. Milo, is told his research is going to be defunded. Angry at being cut off, he goes to the cell where Doomsday is being held and tells the creature that he is an altered clone of Superman who was trained to hate the Man of Steel by Waller and Emil Hamilton, and it’s the two of them who should be his REAL target. Doomsday doesn’t care WHY he hates Superman, though, just that he does, and after dispatching Dr. Milo, he sets out, confronting Superman on a volcanic island the League is trying to evacuate. As the battle rages, Cadmus’s General Eiling sends a missile with a Kryptonite warhead to destroy both Superman AND Doomsday, not caring what it will do to the inhabitants of the island where the battle takes place…an attack that even Waller realizes is going too far. Batman stops the missiles while still over open ocean and Superman stops Doomsday by chucking him into the volcano. The League takes Doomsday into custody, and Superman exiles him to the Phantom Zone. That action doesn’t sit right with the recovering Batman, though, causing him to fear that maybe Cadmus has a point.
This was such a fantastic series. McDuffie’s handling of the characters was amazing, and the way he and the other writers pieced together all the different nuggets of the different DC heroes into a cohesive whole that made sense for this universe is nothing short of astonishing. They never did a real “adaptation” of the Death of Superman storyline, but they found interesting uses for Doomsday nonetheless. It’s a very different TYPE of Doomsday, I must say. He’s not a mindless beast – he’s intelligent and at least relatively verbose, able to exchange taunts with Superman and tell him he’ll live to regret exiling him before they send him off to the Zone. He is also clearly far less powerful than the Doomsday from the comics. Superman’s fight with him wasn’t EASY, don’t get me wrong, but considering that the only way he could be stopped in the comics was by the two of them killing each other, the fact that a mere volcanic eruption seems a little less impressive. Even more so the fact that he is held prisoner – both by Cadmus and by the League – with relatively little difficulty…this is a different Doomsday than the one who kills Superman in the comics. But for this world, for this universe, for a Saturday morning Cartoon Network series that was ostensibly aimed at children, it’s not a bad fit at all.
If there’s one thing I don’t like about this episode – this series as a whole, to be honest – it’s placing Emil Hamilton on the side of Waller’s Cadmus mad scientists. Hamilton is one of those characters from “my” Superman era – the good-hearted and sometimes absentminded scientist who, after making one mistake which Superman stopped before it could go TOO far, turned into one of Superman’s greatest allies. In the comics they eventually gave him a heel turn as well, and that’s something that has never sat right with me in all the years since. It’s been well over a decade since he’s made more than a token appearance anywhere, and honestly, I’m not even sure what his status even is anymore, vis-a-vis his relationship to Superman, after all the years of reboots both hard and soft. But they always say that comics are cyclical – it’s probably only a matter of time before somebody who loves Emil Hamilton the way I do steps into the shoes of writing Superman and finds a way to rehabilitate him and bring him back. At least, I sincerely hope so.
As I have said many times, the golden age of Superman comics – for me at least – was the late 80s and early 90s, the period we now wax nostalgically for as the “Triangle Era.” I could honestly have just spent this year reading John Byrne’s Man of Steel miniseries (that’s still coming – at some point I’m going to do an “origins” week) and then continuing on until the triangles ended ‘round about 2000 or so. But instead, I made a list of some of the most important stories and high points of the time and, those that don’t necessarily fit into another theme I have planned, I’m trying to hit in roughly chronological order. And as of now, I’m only planning to read two of the longer storylines from the era (although I reserve the right to add more later if I feel I’ve got the room), and having moved forward appropriately in the timeline, it’s time to get into one of the defining storylines of the character.
It’s October of 1992. I’m a 10th grade student with a subscription to the four Superman comics, eagerly awaiting their arrival each week and getting pretty darn mad when the US Postal service delivers them out of order (which happened, I must tell you, more than once). And even though I knew it was coming, even though it had been bandied about on TV and in newspapers for weeks prior to the beginning of the story, I didn’t know if I was really prepared for the story that — at the time – was called “Doomsday,” but that these days we typically refer to as “The Death of Superman.”
This was pretty much all I thought about for two months in the fall of 1992.
Wed., Feb. 26
Comics:Superman: The Man of Steel #18, Justice League America #69, Superman Vol. 2 #74, Adventures of Superman #497, Action Comics #684, Superman: The Man of Steel #19, Superman Vol. 2 #75
Notes: After a month of one-page prologues, the creature who would be known as Doomsday burst free from his subterranean prison in Man of Steel #18, and spends this issue stomping through the countryside, ripping up landscape and crushing animals before finding civilization. But the surprising thing, if you’re reading this for the first time, may be that Doomsday is the B-plot of this first issue. Most of the pages are used to deal with a running story from this particular series regarding a community of monsters in Metropolis’s underground. In the 90s, although the four separate Superman comics of the era continued into one another each week, each series tended to have its own subplots and stories to focus on, including the Underworlders. This issue also features Keith, an orphan who has befriended Superman and hopes to find his lost mother, and who would eventually be adopted by Perry and Alice White.
I really love the Keith sequences in particular. The creative team on this book of Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove had previously done a wonderful run together on Marvel’s Power Pack, a comic book about a group of brothers and sisters who are all given powers by a benevolent alien. It was one of Marvel’s best comics of the era, and whenever Simonson writes children she brings a really authentic feel to them. Her children are inexperienced and naive at times, but never stupid or foolish. There is an inherent realism to her kids that I absolutely love. Keith was out of focus in the comics for a very long time, and with all the reboots that have happened over the years I wasn’t even sure he still existed in the DCU until recently, when Perry White was running for mayor and Keith showed up at an event with him. I hope, now that Perry is the mayor of Metropolis, we see a little more of Keith White.
Next up was what essentially was the end of Superman’s tenure with the Justice League, which had begun only nine issues before. The JLA is called in to stop Doomsday’s rampage, but Superman is on live TV doing an interview on the Cat Grant show and unaware of their battle, leaving his teammates to face the beast without their most powerful member. As Superman talks to a group of high school students, the League – if we’re being candid – gets their asses handed to them. Guy Gardner is hurt, Bloodwynd is chucked into a fire, and Blue Beetle is rendered comatose just as he was about to crack the mystery of who Bloodwynd really is. (If you remember a few weeks ago from the Justice League issues I read, that was Beetle’s primary preoccupation in this period, and if I may toot my own horn a mite, I remember solving that mystery myself when I read this issue, using the same clue that made it click for Blue Beetle. It wasn’t confirmed in the comics for several months, though.) The fight is intense, and rolls right into the next issue of Superman, #74.
In fact, this was a running theme through the rest of this storyline. Each issue from this point on flowed seamlessly into the next and, starting with Adventures of Superman #497, each issue began to reduce the number of panels per page. Every page in that issue had four panels, the next three, then two, and in the final chapter the entire issue is told in full-page splash panels. What this does, essentially, is give the story a sense of ACCELERATION. Fewer panels means the story goes more quickly, each issue faster than the last, until we get to the final showdown on the streets of Metropolis in Superman #75.
Superman #74: Superman joins the League to take on Doomsday. In the battle, Booster’s power suit is destroyed, Fire burns out her powers, Guy Gardner’s face is swollen so badly he can’t see, and Ice and Bloodwynd are taken down. The only one to escape unscathed is Maxima, and only because she leaves early to bring the near-death Blue Beetle to a hospital.
Adventures of Superman #497: When Superman has to go back to rescue a family and his teammates from the house Doomsday destroyed in the previous issue, he gets a head start and starts creating havoc, taking down military helicopters and smashing into a small town before Superman can catch up to him. Supergirl (the Matrix version) sees the destruction on TV and wants to help, but her boyfriend Lex Luthor Jr. (long story, just read the Wikipedia explanation) holds her back. Maxima returns but is taken out in short order, and Superman vows to defeat the beast alone.
Action Comics #684: The fight with Doomsday crashes into a department store, where a TV ad for an upcoming pro wrestling match at the Metropolis Area causes the beast to take notice of his destination: “Mhh-Trr-Plss…” A road sign that matches the advertisement points him towards Superman’s city as the Daily Planet helicopter – carrying Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen – arrives to report on the carnage. The battle destroys an abandoned territory called Habitat, but the creature escapes and bounds towards Metropolis.
What it feels like being a teacher the week before a holiday.
Superman: The Man of Steel #19: Doomsday arrives in Metropolis. Cameras broadcast the battle across the world, including Smallville, where the Kents watch their son’s battle for his life on television. Supergirl finally is sent to help, but one blow from Doomsday disrupts her synthetic body and takes her out. Emil Hamilton and Bibbo (perhaps the greatest supporting character ever) bring a laser cannon to the roof to try to help, but to no avail. The Metropolis Special Crimes Unit open fire with everything they have, but they don’t even chip his hide. And in the end, Superman vows to draw the line in Metropolis.
When I read this story in high school, this issue was a great fight scene, sure, but like so many things it hits different for me now, as a parent. It seems quite telling to me that most people, like Jimmy, have the attitude that he’ll be OKAY. He’s SUPERMAN. He always comes out of it okay. But his parents, Jonathan and Martha, voice the fears of parents: “They don’t think anything bad can really happen to him.” The implication, obviously, is that the Jimmys of the world are wrong…and wrong he is.
Superman #75: The end.
I remember distinctly the day this issue arrived in the mail. I got home from school before either of my parents got home from work, before the school bus dropped off my younger brother and sister, and I found this issue sitting in the mailbox. I brought it into the house, didn’t turn on the TV, didn’t even turn on the lights. The window in the living room gave me all the sunlight I needed as I slit open the plastic bag and opened the pages to witness the end of Earth’s greatest hero in quiet and solitude.
The story is swift, as befits an issue where every page is a single panel. Superman and Doomsday tear through Metropolis, trading blows until finally, with one last all-powerful punch, each of them collapse on the street. Lois rushes to his side and cradles him, his last words asking if Doomsday is defeated, his last thought for the city he was trying to protect, before the light fades from his eyes.
Yeah, I will admit, I cried when I read that. I still get misty today, even knowing that this was just the beginning of a much longer storyline it still hits like a kick to the gut. And even in 1992, when this was released, nobody really believed that Superman would stay dead. It was a story, and at the end of the story the status quo would be restored. That’s how these things went.
It didn’t make it hurt any less.
This BROKE me.
And that’s what makes it one of the all-time great comic book epics, that I can read it again today and still feel that pang of loss I had when I was 15 years old.
Man, this is a heavy way to start the week.
Thur., Feb. 27
When I woke up this morning, I went through my usual routine of showering, dressing, getting together a lunch for work, and then popping online for a few minutes until it was time to leave. Usually I want to see what the weather is going to be, if there’s any traffic snarls I should be aware of, that sort of thing.
I did not expect to begin the day with the news of the death of Gene Hackman.
1930-2025
Hackman, of course, was a legendary actor, known for countless roles in dozens of classic films, but to me (and, I suspect, most people around my age) he is indelibly linked to the role of Lex Luthor. His Luthor was smooth, slimy, cheerfully manipulative and yet prone to brief outbursts of rage when faced with incompetence, which makes you wonder why he so often surrounded himself with incompetence. As much as Christopher Reeve shaped our perception of Superman and Margot Kidder our Lois Lane, so too did Gene Hackman shape our Lex Luthor.
As of when I write this, Thursday morning, the news is reporting that Hackman, his wife, and their dog were all found dead in their home in Arizona. Although foul play is not suspected, no cause of death has been determined. It goes without saying that my heart goes out to their families, those who knew and loved them personally. But also, it feels like a moment to raise a glass in tribute as another little piece of our childhood has left us forever. And at my age, it feels like we lose one of those pieces every other day.
RIP, Mr. Hackman. See you in Otisburg.
Comics: Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special #1
Ah yes, “Death,” the traditional 30th anniversary theme.
Notes: Am I going a little out of order? Absolutely. But it feels more appropriate to read this now than to do so chronologically. In 2022, DC released this special with new stories by the same writers and artists behind the original Death of Superman event, followed up the next year with a special for the 30th anniversary of his return. I’ll get to that one too.
In the first story, Lois and Clark’s son Jon (still 10 years old, this is set before the Bendis aging controversy) in school when a familiar survivor of the Doomsday attack comes to talk to his class. This, as it turns out, is the first time Jon learns that his father died before Jon was born. I love this story – Lois’s talk with Jon is a nice sort of postmortem for everybody who read that story back when it was first published, encapsulating the feeling and emotion of the day while maintaining a bit of hope for the future. But as if that weren’t enough, we get a hell of a fight scene as well, as a construction worker who kept a chunk of Doomsday’s shattered bone all these years is suddenly transformed into a new version of the monster. The battle scene in the streets of Metropolis is pretty epic, and shows that Dan Jurgens hasn’t lost a step. It could have been published in 1992 and fit right in. It just makes it feel like more and more of a crime that he was bumped from Action Comics after issue #1000 when the status quo was upended. DC, I plead with you, find some way to have Jurgens writing and drawing Superman regularly again, preferably doing stories of Lois, Clark, and Jon in the past, like this one.
We also get three more stories, the first reuniting Adventures of Superman creators Jerry Ordway and Tom Grummett for a focus on Jonathan and Martha Kent. In the original “Death of Superman” we saw glimpses of the two of them watching the fight on TV. This story expands upon that, as they talk about some of the dark places and brutal battles their son had been in over the years. It’s a pretty good recap of the ‘86-’92 era of Superman through the eyes of the people who made Clark Kent the hero that he is. Martha’s Superman scrapbook is legendary, but this issue takes that concept one step further, showing the invisible impact Superman has on the world. It’s a really nice look at the character from a different angle.
The third story brings back Roger Stern and Butch Guice, then the creative team on Action Comics, for a story starring Guardian at Project Cadmus, which was one of their ongoing subplot. The story shows the events of the day of Superman’s death from Guardian’s perspective, and although it doesn’t really offer any new insight into the story, it’s really great to see Guardian, Dubbilex, Dan Turpin, and some of the characters that were so important to the books at the time.
Finally, Man of Steel creators Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove return for a story about John Henry Irons, the man who will be Steel, and what happened to him during the Doomsday rampage. Having recently been saved from falling to his death by Superman, John Henry is determined to help him fight Doomsday, but as he follows the path of destruction, he find himself stopping at one disaster after another, pausing to save other people even as Superman fights for his life. This is why I love John Henry as a character so much – out of the four “new” Supermen that rose after his death, he was always the one who most embodied the spirit of Superman. With no powers, no weapons, without even the armor he would soon build, John Henry risks his life again and again to save others. And that’s what a Superman is for.
Fri., Feb. 28
Legitimately some of the best stories of the era.
Comics:Justice League America #70, Adventures of Superman #498, Action Comics #685, Superman: The Man of Steel #20, Superman Vol. 2 #76, Adventures of Superman #499, Action Comics #686, Superman: The Man of Steel #21, Superman Vol. 2 #77
Notes: Although I can’t recall quite where, I remember reading an interview once with the creators behind the Death of Superman saga where one of them (probably Dan Jurgens) said that the stories that they were really interested in telling, the ones they found most compelling, were those from the “Funeral For a Friend” storyline. How does the world cope with the loss of Superman? How do we move on? How do we choose to honor his memory? The Doomsday story was a necessity to get them to that point, the “Reign of the Supermen” was the necessity to bring him back, but these stories are the heart of the saga.
Justice League America #70 picks up moments after the end of the battle with Doomsday, picking up the same dialogue – even the same narration – from the final pages of Superman #75. (And let’s hear it for Dan Jurgens, getting paid to write the same pages twice. Nice trick, sir!) The League is in a shambles: Blue Beetle comatose, Fire’s powers burned out and not returning, Ice injured, and Booster Gold’s future technology completely destroyed. As they try to pick up the pieces, the rest of the DCU’s heroes begin to assemble at JLA headquarters in New York to pay their respects to the fallen hero. It’s a touching book, with words of deep mourning and emotion that fit the grim day. For all intents and purposes, this was the end of Superman’s tenure with the League until it was restructured a few years later by Grant Morrison, but for what it was and when it was, this was a suitable ending.
Adventures of Superman #498 also picks up on the heels of Superman #75, showing the efforts to resuscitate the Man of Steel, and the ultimate futility of the attempt. This issue takes us everywhere: Supergirl tries to pull herself back together, Gangbuster is angry at himself for not being there, and in Smallville Jonathan and Martha Kent cling to one another and pray for a miracle. Somehow, even now, the thing that hits me hardest is the scene of Bibbo strapping on one of Professor Hamilton’s force field belts so he can withstand the jolt as he tried to hit Superman with hyper-charged defibrillator paddles. Bibbo is just one of those characters that’s too wholesome for the world – a big, gruff bruiser with the brains of a kid and the heart of a prince. The inherent goodness in him, in a man that the world would have cast aside, is what makes him such a perfect member of the Superman supporting cast. He’s another one we don’t see nearly enough nowadays.
Action Comics #685 picks up that evening, as a Daily Planet extra edition announces the news no one wants to hear: “SUPERMAN–DEAD: METROPOLIS MARVEL KILLED IN ACTION.” Paul Westfield and Project: Cadmus get into a fight with Guardian and Supergirl over the right to claim the body, while everywhere else we see the world beginning to mourn. Meanwhile, at the Daily Planet, people are starting to worry about Lois. In the wake of the fight with Doomsday, thousands of people are missing – and one of them is her fiancé, Clark Kent. When they say that this is the section of the story the creators were most interesting in telling, this is the issue that I always come back to. The final page is one of the single most affecting pages I’ve ever read in a comic book, as Bibbo – having cleared out his bar so he can be alone – gets down on one knee, says a “Hail Mary,” and prays…not for Superman, but for the protection of the world he left behind.
If this page doesn’t rip at your heart I’m not sure how to talk to you.
Superman: The Man of Steel #20 gives us the funeral. On a rainy day in Metropolis, millions of people line the streets to watch the processional as his body is brought to a hastily-erected monument in Centennial Park. In Kansas, meanwhile, the Kents hold a solemn, quiet ceremony of their own. Again, this issue shows us the impact of Superman on the world – people recalling the times he saved them, Batman deciding to take care of a guy with a bomb “Superman’s way,” and so on. We also get more of those Simonson-written kids that I like so much.
In issue #76 of Superman, it’s Christmas! Doesn’t quite feel that way, though, with Superman gone. So in his memory the Justice League and a few others gather in Metropolis to carry out one of Superman’s annual traditions – reading and answering letters from people in need. This is a great issue, a sequel to an earlier story where we saw how Superman spends Christmas, and which I’ll no doubt read and write about this December. We also get a pair of subplots: Jimmy Olsen and Bibbo help out Mitch Anderson, the kid whose house Doomsday destroyed, and the Kents come to Metropolis with Lana Lang to hold a private wake with Lois, as four of the only people who knew who Superman really was.
After this issue the stories take a turn. The immediate aftermath of his death and the period of mourning over, the story now becomes the struggle over his remains. In Adventures #499 we see that Westfield – defeated on the day Superman died – has burrowed into his tomb to steal his body for genetic experimentation. Action Comics #686 shows us that Cadmus is hoping to clone Superman, a storyline that obviously would become prominent later. Superman: The Man of Steel #21 takes us back to Smallville, where Jonathan’s memories of his lost son become overwhelming. In Metropolis, flooding helps Lois uncover the theft of Superman’s body, and takes the story to the front page. Finally, in Superman #77, after Supergirl and Lois recover Superman’s body and put it back where it belongs, Lex Luthor II (Lex pretending to be his own son) takes a moment to gloat in the tomb. In Smallville, though, Jonathan has been rushed to the hospital after collapsing in his field. After an issue of memories of his son, “Funeral For a Friend” ends with a chilling flatline.
The second half of “Funeral For a Friend” isn’t bad at all, but it’s there largely for setup. It plants a lot of seeds that would bear fruit in the upcoming “Reign” storyline. For pure emotional impact, the first half is one tearjerker after another, with a few more coming in the final two issues as Jonathan’s personal grief overtakes him. I know I say this a lot, but reading these issues as a parent makes them far, far more powerful than they were when I was a kid. As painful as it is to see Superman fall, seeing the utter devastation to the father who helped shape him into the hero he is may be the most heartbreaking part of the entire saga.
Other Comics: Justice League of America #17, New Adventures of Superboy #32
Sat. March 1
Animated Film: The Death of Superman (2018)
Notes: Everywhere else, it’s just Saturday, but here in Louisiana it’s the weekend before Mardi Gras. And while I’m not a particularly enthusiastic paradegoer, my son is, and as such I make the effort to take him. Today was the Krewe of Lul parade, a nice little family-friendly small-town parade local to my community, and even better, I’ve got a cousin who lives on the parade route and always invites us to watch the parade there. It was a great day, and someone on one of the floats threw my son a ridiculously large stuffed snake, which my wife doesn’t yet know about as she had to work today, and I cannot WAIT to see her face when she gets home.
It’s got nothing to do with Superman, but c’mon, LOOK at this thing.
Parades are a little exhausting, though, especially when it’s hot outside, and I’m still a little too sun-dazzled to want to read anything today. So my Year of Superman continues at the moment with the 2018 The Death of Superman animated movie. This was actually the second attempt at animating the story, but as the first condensed the entire trilogy into one film rather than splitting it into two like this one, I’m waiting until after I finish reading the whole thing before I rewatch it. It’ll come soon enough.
Clearly, this is traditional carnival viewing.
This film was made during the period of DC animation where the movies were all set in a single universe largely based on the New 52 incarnations of the characters. As such, the story is tweaked appropriately to make it fit: the Justice League that faces Doomsday is that incarnation of the team rather than the Jurgens-era lineup, for example. And while Lois and Clark weren’t a couple in the New 52 era, here they’re in the early stages of a budding romance. Lois wants to keep their relationship a secret from their coworkers at the Planet, she hasn’t met his parents yet, and – probably most importantly – she does not yet know the secret of his duel identity. Other changes aren’t necessarily New 52 related, but help to condense the story: Doomsday’s coming to Earth, for example, is connected to the disaster that kills Hank Henshaw’s crew and sets him on the path of villainy he’ll occupy in the next movie.
I’ve always been a fan of the voice cast here. It’s a little bit of stunt casting, placing real-life husband and wife Jerry O’Connell and Rebecca Romijn as Clark and Lois, but I like them both in their assigned roles. Rainn Wilson, meanwhile, is a deliciously wicked Lex Luthor, and Patrick Fabian has always sort of straddled the line between clean-cut and white collar crook, which somehow fits Hank Henshaw very well. We also get Rosario Dawson as a highly convincing Wonder Woman and Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern that a lot of us thought he should have played in live action (although I have every confidence he’ll nail Guy Gardner).
Pictured: First Officers Jack Ransom of the USS Cerritos and Una Chin-Riley of the USS Enterprise. (Colorized)
There’s a considerable amount of buildup here – it’s almost halfway into the movie before Doomsday’s rampage begins – but I think it’s necessary. This movie leans more heavily on the developing Lois/Clark romance, and that buildup is focused largely on that. We see Clark agonizing over whether to tell her his secret, Diana berating him for not telling Lois who he really is yet, even asking for advice from the soon-to-be-married Barry Allen about his relationship with Iris. That buildup to what should be the happiest moment of their lives, the engagement (and the reveal of the secret) is well-done, and thus when the battle with Doomsday begins and the inevitable happens, the whole thing feels even more tragic. The reveal is handled well too – I love the fact that Lois’s first reaction, once the shock wears off, is “This is so unethical! You’ve been writing stories about yourself!” The emotional resonance echoes after the battle too, as we see the Kents unable to get close to their son’s funeral, then see Bibbo’s beautiful prayer sequence recontextualized into a montage over the city in mourning.
The animation isn’t my favorite, to be honest. The characters are a bit too blocky, and they’re using the New 52-era designs, which means excessive lines EVERYWHERE, and Superman’s suit is too dark and kind of bland. But once we finally get to the fight with Doomsday it’s brutal and pretty epic. The killing blow is actually far more graphic than I expected, with Superman actually hitting Doomsday hard enough to make his head spin around, and it doesn’t look “cartoony” at all.
Also, Bibbo is in this movie. So, y’know, I like it.
Sun. March 2
Comics: Superman Vol. 6 #23, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #4, Power Girl Vol. 3 #18
But certainly, Doomsday must have mellowed out in the last 30 years, right?
Notes: I’m taking a quick break from the Death and Return saga to check in on this week’s new Superman-related titles. First up: Superman Vol. 6 #23, the latest in Joshua Williamson and Dan Mora’s ongoing saga. Doomsday is now the Time Trapper, and his control over the timestream is giving Lois a chance to pause while the contemporary Doomsday and Radiant battle it out in Metropolis as the Superman family tries to hold the line. I like what Williamson is doing here, using the original Death of Superman storyline (so I guess I’m not TOTALLY taking a break) as the framework for this new story, and giving us a neat focus on the characters . There’s a great speech from Lois when she talks about how she wept on the day Superman died, and how her tears may not have been for exactly the reasons one may have expected. It’s not a retcon, but rather a subtle recontextualization of the moment that I think actually works really well. And as usual, Dan Mora is killing it. I can’t say enough good things about his artwork. Over the past few years he’s become probably my favorite current artist in comics, and he’s earning his place on the Superman Mt. Rushmore with the likes of Curt Swan, John Byrne, and Dan Jurgens.
I’m not done with Mora yet, though – he also drew this week’s Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #4, this time teamed up with writer Mark Waid. The terrorist group called Inferno is unleashing havoc all over the world, with global fires crippling the Martian Manhunter and perhaps even killing Swamp Thing. In response, Mr. Terrific tries to recruit Alec Holland’s daughter Tefe, while Batman sees to the fallen J’onn J’onzz. Superman’s actual participation in this issue is minimal, appearing in just a few panels helping with the evacuation efforts from the wildfires while the big brains and the magic users try to solve the problem, but that’s actually one of the reasons I like this book so much. Waid has really stacked the deck by including virtually every hero in the DCU. It would be really tempting to still spend most of the time with the Big Guns, but Waid has done a great job crafting a story that allows for the lesser-known characters to rise to the front lines instead of Superman and Wonder Woman to be the A-team every single issue. It may be tangential to my “Year of Superman,” but it’s still maybe the best book DC is publishing right now.
Last but not least, Power Girl Vol. 3 18 continues Leah Williams and David Baldeon’s tale of the housewarming from hell. The grand opening celebration for the new Star building, complete with a bunch of guests from Asgard, is disrupted when a strange barrier traps everyone inside. Superman and Steel (John Henry) try to crack it open from the outside, while inside, Power Girl, Omen, and Steel (Natasha) attempt to get to the bottom of their predicament. This is an issue that feels very much like a middle chapter, incomplete and with a lot of questions. In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I don’t know if they structure the story quite enough to get us started before the story begins. We kick it off with the barrier already in place, then after several pages, flash back to how we got there. I don’t object to in medias res, but I don’t know if it really works well for this issue. Hopefully the next chapter of this particular story will clarify things a bit.
Mon., March 3
Comics: Legacy of Superman #1, Supergirl/Team Luthor Special #1
Notes: After the conclusion of the “Funeral For a Friend” storyline, DC took the rather bold – for the time – step of ceasing publication of the four Superman titles for a few months. They resumed in the spring with Adventures of Superman #500, and I have to give them credit for not doing what they would do today – namely, restart each series with a new first issue. Actually, in the gap they would have published four separate miniseries for the four Supermen who took his place, THEN restarted each series with a new first issue. But I digress. In the gap, they published a few specials about what was happening in Metropolis in the wake of the Death of Superman
Don’t get too attached to that kid in the upper right-hand corner.
Legacy of Superman includes five short stories about different defenders of Metropolis. First was a Guardian story, set during the time before Lois and Supergirl retrieved Superman’s body from Cadmus, about their efforts to map Kryptonian DNA. As several of the characters wrestled with the ethics of the situation, we are introduced to the hyper-advanced Guardian clone called Auron, a character who, as I recall, seemed like he was going to be more important that he eventually turned out to be. Next was a story that brought back the old character(s) Rose and Thorn. Rose Forrest is secretly the vigilante called Thorn – a secret that even she herself does not know. It’s what at the time was called Multiple Personality Disorder, or at least a comic book-level understanding of it. With Superman dead, crime in Metropolis is on the rise, and Thorn comes back to help out. It’s a perfectly fine story, but other than reintroducing Thorn, it’s not particularly significant. Of more significance is the Gangbuster story. The longtime Superman supporting cast member is trying to step up and fill his shoes, but the fight against Metropolis’s criminals is getting harder on him, wearing him down, and making him more brutal. Story number four features Sinbad, a young boy with telekinetic powers who had appeared in a three-issue storyline a few years prior. This story, like the issues that introduced him, was by the creative team of William Messner-Loeb and Curt Swan, and I’m pretty sure it’s the last time the character ever appeared.
The last story features Waverider, and for reasons I cannot fathom, it is not included in the DC Universe Infinite edition of this comic book. I swear that app seems less and less Infinite all the time. Fortunately, I’ve got the week off work and I’ve got the issue in my collection. Waverider (from the Armageddon 2001 storyline) has at this point joined the Linear Men (from the Time and Time Again storyline) and, upon learning of Superman’s death, is determined to use their time travel powers to save him. That is until their leader, Matthew Ryder (an alternate-timeline variant of Waverider himself) starts listing people whose contributions to history could have been greater had they lived longer and asking where they drew the line. It’s a good argument, but I’ve always wondered why Dan Jurgens didn’t take it a step further to the logical conclusion – that manipulating time for your own ends is as dangerous as the enemies to the timestream you fight, and that doing so (even with good intentions) has rarely ended well.
Laugh if you want, but do YOU have hair that magnificent?
The Supergirl/Team Luthor Special has two stories. The first, by Roger Stern and June Brigman, focuses on Supergirl and “Lex Luthor II”’s private police force stepping up to help fight crime in Metropolis, similar to some of the stories in the previous volume. Louise Simonson writes the second story, where Supergirl encounters some of the Underworlders whose story has been one of the major plots in Superman: The Man of Steel. Both of these stories, while perfectly fine, seemed somewhat insignificant at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, though, I see that they were planting seeds for stories that would play out in the next Supergirl miniseries and the accompanying Superman titles featuring the collapse of Project: Cadmus, the fall of the Underworld, and the end of Luthor’s charade – stories that, I’m fairly certain, wouldn’t be published for nearly a year. They plotted things REALLY well, those Triangle Era Superman writers.
Did Jimmy win a Pulitzer for this photo, or am I just imagining things?
Notes: In addition to the two one-shot comics published during the Superman Gap, DC also released a one-off edition of Newstime, a fictional news magazine that Clark Kent worked for briefly in the comics. The magazine, featuring a “photograph” on the cover taken by Jimmy Olsen as Superman lay dying, is a sort of defictionalized artifact of a news magazine from the DC Universe, giving us in the real world a glimpse into how the DCU reacted to Superman’s death. There are, as expected, news articles written about the battle with Doomsday, the reaction of the world to Superman’s death, and the chaos that the Justice League was left in with Superman dead and so many of their members injured or powerless. The magazine fits really nicely in with the comics, with bits updating the status of some of the celebrities that were reported missing in the comic books after Doomsday’s rampage. Baseball player Hank “The Hammer” Halloran, you’ll be happy to note, survived the attack, but comedian and actor Morty Beckman died in a collapsing building. Daily Planet reporter and former Newstime editor-in-chief Clark Kent is still among the missing.
Other things in the magazine are somewhat odd, like the article featuring quotes from assorted famous people about the death of Superman. Many of them are DC characters like Bruce Wayne, Lex Luthor II, Wonder Woman, and so on. Others, though, are from real-world figures, and they don’t all seem to be written from an in-universe perspective. A quote from William Shatner tells about how he used to dress as Superman when he was a child, Penn Jillette comments that Superman will have to die a few more times before he’ll be impressed, and John Goodman regales us with a bizarre story of his own personal encounter with Mr. Mxyzptlk following Superman’s death. I’m forced to wonder if some of these are legitimate comments they got from these people. After all, Superman’s death is one of the few comic book stories (especially back then) that made the major news cycles.
The book finishes off with a few pages of fake movie and music reviews and lots of fake ads, and I have to give the DC crew credit for how well it’s all put together. Except for the fact that the “photos” are mostly panels taken from the comics, this looks and feel like a real news magazine, albeit much thinner than most of them. And just in case anyone thought that they’d let a book like this go without any foreshadowing, there’s a two-page ad early in the book that was meaningless when the magazine was originally published, but became quite jarring in hindsight just a few months later.
😬
There’s one last thing I wanted to read from the “Death of Superman” era before we begin with the return tomorrow, and that’s this special Wizard Magazine tribute edition. I was a big fan of Wizard in its early years and was a subscriber for quite a long time. Eventually I got rid of all my old issues, a move which I now deeply regret, especially in the case of those few issues in which they published letters I wrote. But I held on to this Superman special, a nice little package released after the Death storyline but before the return really wrapped up. I haven’t read it in many years, though, and it’s interesting to go back and look at what the contents include.
Do you think anyone in comics has drawn versions of the same scene as many times as Dan Jurgens has this one?
There’s a piece by legendary Superman artist Curt Swan about his time with the character, to start. Jack Curtain provides a fairly comprehensive (although somewhat cynical) history of Superman, while Joel W. Tscherne gives us a good piece of the history of the post-Crisis Superman to date. Reading this article again, I’m jarred to realize that more time has passed for the most recent incarnation of Superman (the one we’ve had since DC Rebirth sort of merged the 90s Superman with the New 52 version) than had passed between John Byrne’s Man of Steel and the Doomsday story. Good grief, somebody get Waverider in here to make time slow down.
We get a retrospective on great Superman artists throughout history, a piece that is dying for a contemporary update to include all the greats who have worked on the character since then (including Stuart Immonen, Barry Kitson, Ron Frenz, Jim Lee, Ed McGuinness, Tim Sale, Frank Quitely, Alex Ross, Patrick Gleason, Jamal Campbell, and my current favorite Dan Mora – and that’s just off the top of my head). Next is a look ahead at the return of Superman, including interviews with the creators, especially Jerry Ordway, who ended his tenure as a Superman writer with Adventures of Superman #500. Then the writers for “Reign of the Supermen” talk about the four characters we’re going to meet very soon. Action Comics’s Roger Stern says that their Superman will be more “Kryptonian,” but cautions us that it’s not going to be someone trying to turn Earth INTO Krypton, like in the Eradicator storyline. Stern, you cheeky monkey. Ordway’s successor Karl Kesel talks about how Adventures of Superman will give us a more “modern” Superboy (he didn’t like being called that) who ties himself to WGBS, a TV station, rather than a stodgy old newspaper. Dan Jurgens talks a bit about the Cyborg Superman, although to me the part of this section that stands out is where he discusses Lois’s skepticism. Good for you, Lois. And Louise Simonson talks about John Henry Irons, even giving a lot of backstory about his family that I don’t know has ever been explored very much in the comic books, which is a shame.
There’s a lot more in here, including a piece from Elliot S! Maggin about Superman as a pop icon, Andy Mangels talking about Superman’s history on TV and in film, and lots of other articles about various pieces of Superman’s history. I’ve gotten psyched to go back and read more of these, and I probably will in the coming weeks, but hopefully the stuff I’ve talked about will give you the impetus to dust off your copy (or find one on eBay) to go back and revisit this interesting time capsule of who and what Superman was in those months between his death and his return.
After the chaos of the last couple of weeks, I wanted to stabilize things a little bit, so it’s time for another theme week. He’s called the fastest man alive, but he’s often been forced to defend that title against the Man of Steel, so for the next seven days I’m going to put my attention on the competitions between Superman and the scarlet speedster himself. Yes, it’s Superman Vs. the Flash Week!
(Superman versus the) FLASH! (Bum bum bum bum bum) AAAH-AAAAAH!!!
Okay, I think I should make one thing clear here: in a straight-up foot race between Superman and the Flash, the Flash should win every time. Whether we’re talking about Barry Allen or Wally West, it doesn’t matter. The Flash’s entire job description is the fact that there’s nobody faster than him, and if you take that away it diminishes the character. Even Superman shouldn’t be allowed to do that.
That said, there have been many stories over the years that pit them against each other, and some of them are an awful lot of fun.
Wed., Feb. 12
Comics:Superman #199, Flash #175
Literally, the starting line for this whole thing.
Notes: The first-ever Superman/Flash race, at least as far as I can tell, is Superman #199 from 1967. The United Nations recruit Superman and Flash to race for one another to raise funds for charity, a basic enough premise that reasonably pits the two of them against each other without some sort of contrived misunderstanding, which I greatly appreciate. Unfortunately, a pair of major crime syndicates also bet a fortune on the outcome of the race, one on Superman and one on the Flash, and so they both hatch schemes to make sure their chosen hero is the winner. After uncovering the schemes and beating the gangsters, Superman and Flash conspire to end the race in a precise tie so that neither crime syndicate can cash in on their winnings and, conveniently, so that DC Comics doesn’t have to definitively answer the question of which of the two men is the faster.
What I find funny about this story is that, even though the story is contrived in such a way that the race ends in a tie, writer Jim Shooter almost seems to do so grudgingly. There are several times that we see the Flash doing things that seem to demonstrate that, as far as foot speed goes, he’s superior. As they race across the ocean, Flash is running on top of the water, whereas Superman has to swim at superspeed. Similarly, Supes has to burrow through sand dunes and climb over pyramids in the desert, while the Flash is simply vibrating right through them. At one point, Flash even employs a super-speed trick to rescue Superman from a random chunk of Kryptonite vomited up by a volcano without Superman even noticing. The only times Superman has an advantage is when his invulnerability or other non-speed powers give him an edge – in freezing cold, diving down a waterfall, or maintaining his balance across a frozen lake. Every task shows that the Flash’s super-speed tricks are superior, even if the story itself has to skirt the issue at the end. This would be a running theme through future competitions between Superman and Barry Allen.
It’s covers like this, Superman. Covers like this are why some people call you a jerk.
Only a few months later, they got together for a rematch in Flash #175. It starts when the two heroes wind up muscling in on each other’s territory, each of them getting an emergency alert from the other on their Justice League signal devices that their teammate denies sending out. When the JLA assembles, it turns out the signal was sent by a pair of aliens Superman and Batman have encountered before. The aliens had placed a wager on the first race and, as it ended in a tie, insist on a rematch. Instead of lapping the Earth this time, though, they’re going to force the heroes to race across the Milky Way. Oh, and just in case they need a little added incentive, they promise to annihilate Central City if the Flash loses and Metropolis if Superman is the loser. So as sports commissioners, they’re still slightly less evil than Roger Goodell.
The aliens throw lots of traps and obstacles in front of our heroes, each of whom independently finds evidence that the race isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But it’s the Silver Age, so neither of them ever thinks to just TELL his teammate that the race is a fake, they make vague statements about things being “off” until they beat the aliens on the last two pages, with the race once again not having any definitive winner.
As snarky as I sound, I actually did enjoy this issue. It was a pretty decent follow-up to the first race, and it gets bonus points for the last panel, where Flash and Superman look directly at the reader and invite them to go back to the finish line on Page 21 and decide for themselves who they think won. You can’t get away with stuff like that these days.
Thur., Feb. 13
Comics: World’s Finest Comics #198-199
“Okay, we’re ACTUALLY gonna declare a winner this time, right? No more cop-outs?
Notes: Three years after the first two races, DC decided to try it again. Although World’s Finest has, historically, been the Superman/Batman team-up book, there was a period in which it was a Superman team-up title, with Superman as the anchor and different guest-stars for each issue, so it was here that they staged the next installment in this saga. And THIS time, the cover of issue #198 proclaims, “There MUST be a winner!”
Race #3 has the wildest conceit yet – the Guardians of the Universe (the little blue guys who sponsor the Green Lantern Corps) have detected an incursion of “Arachronids,” faster-than-light lifeforms that are disrupting space and time. The only way to save the universe is for two people to race in a path opposite that of the Arachronids, and the only ones speedy enough to do the job are Superman and the Flash. (This is in the days before the “Flash Family,” of course, there was only Barry and Wally West as Kid Flash. If this were to happen today there are roughly a dozen speedsters more qualified than Superman to handle this deal.) Anyway, the Guardians provide the Flash with an amulet that will allow him to race in space and he suggests – since we never actually settled the question of who’s faster – why not make this another race?
Things are going swimmingly until the Arachronids destroy a sun, knocking our heroes off-track on a planet where the sunlight keeps shifting from yellow to red, which negates Superman’s powers. Oh, and did I mention that the time-disruptions have chucked Jimmy Olsen back to ancient Rome, where he’s about to get executed by a firing squad of archers?
Part two of the story reveals the truth: the Arachronids were created by General Zod and a group of Phantom Zone escapees, and they’ve got Superman and the Flash captured on a planet that straddles the line between dimensions. They wind up on a world where the red sun is draining Superman’s powers and the Flash has his swiftness curtailed when the baddies steal the amulet given to him by the Guardians, leaving them to crawl towards the device that’s causing all the chaos. WHO WILL MAKE IT FIRST?
This is the first time I’ve read this particular two-parter and, I’ve gotta say, I really enjoyed it. It’s a different angle on the Superman/Flash race, one that’s apart from the usual “racing for charity” conceit or the other various contrivances that have pit them against one another. No, this time it’s a totally original contrivance, and I appreciate that. I also appreciate the fact that they TECHNICALLY declare a winner of the race this time (it’s the Flash, spoiler alert), but they do so on a world where both heroes are virtually powerless and are literally crawling towards their destination, so the question as to who’s really faster when they’re at normal power is still left up in the air. I’m sure that was the mandate at the time. I’m glad that they eventually got over that mandate, though, as some of the later stories we’re going to get around to reading will demonstrate.
Other Comics:Jenny Sparks #6 (Superman appearance), Black Lightning Vol. 4 #3 (Steel II appearance), The Question: All Along the Watchtower #3 (Superman Cameo), Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #10
Fri., Feb. 14
Comics: DC Comics Presents #1-2
“Barry? Clark. Hey, wanna be the first guest in my new team-up book? Noooo…not a race this time…I wouldn’t do that to you…”
Notes: Eventually, World’s Finest went back to being a Superman/Batman book, and while Batman had his own team-up series (The Brave and the Bold), Superman was given his own with DC Comics Presents. In the first two issues of this series, published in 1978, we got the next installment of the friendly rivalry between Superman and the Flash – and, in fact, I’m pretty sure this was the last such story before Barry’s death in Crisis on Infinite Earths. (If I’m wrong, by all means, correct me in the comments.)
This time around, our heroes are captured by a pair of warring alien races, one of whom has sent an agent forward in time to go through the “cosmic curtain” that separates the end of the timeline to the beginning. (Time, you see, is evidently a giant loop, but their time machines only go FORWARD, so they have to take the long way around, as if they were flying across Europe and Asia to get to California from Florida. Flat-timers hate this issue.) Since the Flash “won” the previous race, they send him to help their agent in the future, with the consequence for failure being the destruction of Earth. The other aliens, though, force Superman’s hand by telling him that if their enemy succeeds in changing time, Krypton will explode SOONER than it was supposed to, and Superman will never exist.
The major difference between this two-parter and the previous three races between Superman and the Flash is that the race is across time, rather than space, and it’s a significant enough change to really make this one stand out. Superman’s actions seem a bit out of character, of course – he’s risking the destruction of Earth to save his own life, a task even the VILLAINS are surprised to see him willingly take. Naturally, it turns out to all be part of the plan.
This one, unlike the other three races we’ve seen, doesn’t even really try to address the issue of who “wins.” Once Superman’s plan is unveiled, the heroes work together (as it should be) to thwart BOTH sects of warring aliens and fix all the timey-wimey chaos before anyone is killed, especially Jimmy Olsen. The conclusion, then, is satisfying, but leaves the central question essentially unanswered. In fact, the first time we get anything resembling a true answer, it would have to come from Barry’s protege, Wally West, another 12 years later.
Other Comics:Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #135, Justice League of America #16, Action Comics #372
Podcast: DC Studios Showcase Episode 1 (Discussion of documentary film Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story)
Valentine’s Day Stuff: Today is, in case you forgot, Valentine’s Day. (And if you DID forget, this isn’t going to be posted until February 19th, so you are SERIOUSLY out of luck.) But I couldn’t let the day pass without noting my darling wife, Erin, and how she indulged my quest for the Year of Superman today.
Pictured: Love. And personal hygiene products.
She got me the McFarlane Toys Super Powers Fleischer-style Superman, a figure I’ve been hunting for ever since I found out it existed, but have been resisting paying eBay prices. If I won the lottery, I would build an entire toy display room in my palatial mansion, and one full wall would be dedicated to a collection of Super Powers figures, Marvel Secret Wars figures, and figures from comparable toy lines like the Archie Mighty Crusaders and Defenders of the Earth series of my youth. She also got me a set of the new Superman-branded Old Spice body wash and deodorant, which I first saw in an ad a week or two ago where it was being promoted along with Batman-branded products, prompting me to ask her, “Who do you think smells better? Superman or Batman? I bet Batman sweats a lot.”
And yet, she’s been married to me for over 10 years now. Get you one who understands you like mine understands me, friends.
Sat., Feb. 15
Comic Books: Adventures of Superman #463, Flash Vol. 2 #53
“On your marks! Get se–wait a second, haven’t we done this before?”
Notes: The next time the Man of Steel and the Scarlet Speedster would face off against one another wouldn’t come until 1990, at which point both of them had experienced some drastic changes. Superman had gone through the post-Crisis John Byrne reboot, whereas Barry Allen had died in Crisis on Infinite Earths and been replaced by his protege, former Kid Flash Wally West. Like a lot of Superman history, it’s unclear if any of the previous races with Barry were canon to Superman at this time, but the story makes it quite clear that it’s the first time he’s faced off against Wally, at least, and it’s a distinction that Superman takes pretty seriously.
This story involves our old pal from the Fifth Dimension, Mr. Mxyzptlk, who shows up on Earth this time restructuring Mount Rushmore to include his own face. The Flash happens to get there first and, when Mxy finds out that he’s supposedly the “fastest man alive,” he decides to put that claim to a test. If Superman can beat the Flash in a race around the world, he says, he’ll pop out of our dimension for the usual 90 days. Superman notes, rather dismissively, that Wally hasn’t been the Flash that long and strongly implies that beating KID Flash won’t be too difficult, and Wally does his best impression of Michael Jordan in that meme. The race is on.
From here out, the story is actually pretty straightforward. Unlike most of the races we don’t have to deal with any shady stipulations, misdirects for the reader, or bad guys trying to fix the outcome of the race, except for your typical Mxy shenanigans. There is a nice little scene I’d forgotten about, where Mxyzptlk tries to offer Lex Luthor a hunk of red Kryptonite but Lex turns him down, which actually makes this story a stealth prequel to the Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite story we read last month. But as far as the actual RACE goes, it’s pretty cut and dried, with both heroes putting the pedal to the metal until, in the final stretch, Wally reaches out and beats Superman by a nose.
Totally saving the day! As it turns out, Mxy had learned about deception from Lex in a previous visit and so he was trying it out. Although he SAID he was only going to leave Earth if Superman won, he had always REALLY planned to leave if the FLASH won. It never occurs to him to simply lie again, which is actually kind of a silly, charming hat to put on this dude in his silly, charming hat.
This was the first Superman/Flash race I ever read, and as such it’s always held a place of esteem in my personal pantheon of Superman stories, but I think it’s important to note which versions of the characters we’re looking at. Superman was only a few years post-Byrne, an era in which his power had been scaled down dramatically to make him less “godlike.” Over the years his powers would slowly creep up in strength again until today he’s more powerful than ever before, but as Supermen go, the one in this story was relatively slow. However, this was also early in Wally’s tenure as the Flash, a period during which he was much slower than Barry ever was. When Mark Waid took over Wally’s series a few years later he established that Wally had a subconscious fear of overshadowing his predecessor and had a self-imposed mental block limiting his speed. Once he got over that, he became the fastest Flash there ever was. The point is that if you took the current versions of either Superman OR the Flash and popped them into the race during this era, either of them could smoke the two characters we watched race today.
This time it’s a METAPHORICAL race! The greatest kind of race there is!
I also read issue #53 of Wally’s first solo title, a story which was NOT actually a race, despite what the cover promised. In this one, Jimmy Olsen has gotten himself captured by some South American warlord (because that’s what Jimmy Olsen DOES) and Superman decides to recruit the only person alive faster than him (as established in the previous race) to help find Jimmy before he’s unalived. This is a typical superhero team-up story: good, not special, but enjoyable. I think the most interesting thing about it, the thing that gives it a spot of interest in superhero history, is that this happens to be the issue in which Wally’s pal the Pied Piper (former villain, now reformed) comes out to him as gay. I don’t know if this is the FIRST openly gay character in mainstream comics, but he’s certainly ONE of the first, and while it’s no big deal in today’s comic book landscape, for 1991 it was a pretty surprising revelation. There ya go, ya learned something today.
Sun., Feb. 16
Comic Book:DC First: Superman/Flash #1
Big Good Vs. Big Good.
Notes: I’ve got a sick kid to take care of this afternoon and, as a parent, that has to take precedence over pretty much everything. But in-between far too frequent trips to the bathroom and a larger-than-average number of baths, I made it a point to squeeze in the next story in the Superman/Flash pantheon. This time we leap ahead to 2002 for DC First: Superman/Flash. This was a series of one-shots DC did that showed the first meetings between various characters – but as Superman’s first races between Barry Allen and Wally West were already pretty well documented, for this special they did something a little different and very cool: they showed Superman’s first race with Jay Garrick, the original Golden Age Flash.
This issue reads more as a special issue of the then-current Flash run. It’s written by Geoff Johns, who was writing that book at the time, and it deals with subplots involving Pied Piper and Jay’s wife, Joan, with Superman’s involvement coming in coincidentally. Wally and Jay head to Metropolis to a bookshop where they’ve sourced a rare book as a gift for Joan, only to run afoul of the old Flash rogue Abra Kadabra. The faux wizard of the 64th century casts a spell that begins causing Wally to age rapidly, then tells Superman and Jay they can save him if they can catch him in a race – with the caveat that whoever touches Wally first will take the curse upon themselves. What you’ve got, then, is perhaps the greatest conceit for a Superman/Flash race of them all. They aren’t racing for charity, they aren’t racing for ego, they aren’t even racing with the fate of the world at stake. They are literally racing one another for the RIGHT TO SACRIFICE THEMSELVES TO SAVE WALLY. There is no better motivation for these two heroes.
I know I read this book when it first came out. It’s in my collection, and I was an avid reader of both the Superman comics (duh) and Flash, so I am 100 percent certain I read it. But it came out 23 years ago, and I didn’t really remember the story at all until I sat down to read it this afternoon, and it honestly blew me away. Even though it’s more of a Flash story than a Superman story, it really exemplifies the values of Superman in a way that a lot of these other races failed to do. It may be my favorite read for this week to date.
Mon., Feb. 17
Comics: Flash: Rebirth #3, Superman #709
This issue, as far as I’m concerned, is the final word on the whole thing.
Notes: I actually struggled with whether to include this issue of Flash: Rebirth from 2009 in my Year of Superman reading. It’s the middle of a storyline, and Superman’s appearance is barely a cameo, but that one sequence in which he appears is significant enough that I felt it warranted inclusion. Barry Allen, having returned from the dead in the terribly inaccurately named Final Crisis event, is being transformed into a new Black Flash, essentially the spirit of death for speedsters such as himself. To protect Wally, his grandson Bart, and everyone else he loves, he decides he’s going to rush back into the Speed Force before the transformation can happen, and Superman takes off after him. At this point, the League had gone through its share of recent tragedies, and both Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter were dead (they got better), so Clark isn’t about to let Barry die again.
This leads to one of my favorite pages that Geoff Johns ever wrote, as the two of them are racing each other up the Daily Planet building and Superman says, “I’ve raced you before, Barry. I even won some of those races.”*
Barry simply says, “Those were for charity, Clark.”
And then he leaves him in the dust.
Like I keep saying, the Flash SHOULD be faster than Superman. This issue is the best evidence of that ever.
(*By the way, despite what he says, I don’t actually recall Superman ever winning one of those races. There were a few ties, but every time a victor was declared it was the guy in red. I’m going to assume, from the way Clark talks, that there may have been other charity races off-panel that we didn’t get to watch. And now that I’ve said it, it’s going to manifest in the universe as a seven-part time-travel crossover event, coming this fall.)
“You’re GROUNDED young man! That means no disrupting the time stream! Just do your homework and straight to bed!”
The final Superman/Flash face-off I could find in comics came in Superman #709 from 2011, part of J. Michael Straczynski’s “Grounded” storyline. In this arc, Superman decides he needs to reconnect with the ordinary people he is sworn to protect, so he commits himself to walk across the United States. It’s an interesting concept, to be certain, and Straczynski is an excellent writer, but the general consensus on this storyline is that it sort of fell flat. I think the problem is that it went on for far too long (who wants an entire year of Superman just…walking?) and even Straczynski himself seemed to lose interest in it, as evidenced by the fact that he bowed out before the story was over and it was completed by Chris Roberson.
The “race” part of this issue is over fairly quickly. While walking through Boulder, Colorado, the entire town is suddenly transformed into a Kryptonian city. Superman soon figures out that the transformation is the work of the Flash, who has been overtaken by a Kryptonian artifact and he needs Superman to set him free. After he does so, they have a cup of coffee and talk about legacy. This is what I mean, by the way, when I say that the “Grounded” story went on too long. The story of this issue is perfectly fine, in and of itself, but when you read it in the context of the entire year-long storyline, it was too much of the same thing over and over: Superman walking somewhere, doubting himself, having a significant encounter with various characters (both new and previously established) and coming to a peaceful resolution. That’s great ONCE, but do you really want to read it twelve issues in a row?
The most interesting thing to me about this issue is that it happens concurrently with that month’s issue of Superboy, in which the Kid of Steel races KID Flash for the first time, and which Clark and Barry catch a glimpse of on a diner television. I’ll take a look at that issue tomorrow when I look at the few races I could find between members of the Superman and Flash families other than the patriarchs.
TV Episode: Superman: The Animated Series, Season Two, Episode 4, “Speed Demons”
“Loved you on Wings, by the way.”
Notes: That’s all the comic book Superman/Flash races I could find, but there’s still this episode of Superman: The Animated Series, the first appearance of the Flash in the DC Animated Universe. In this episode he’s voiced by Charlie Schlatter, although Michael Rosenbaum would take over the character for the Justice League cartoons. (Tim Daly would be replaced as Superman by George Newburn too. I guess not everyone can be Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill.) In this episode, Superman and the Flash are pitted against each other in, as per their first-ever encounter, a charity race. This time the rules are a bit more sensible for the two of them: the winner will be the first to complete 100 laps around the globe. Of course, just like many of their races in the comics, there’s a catch – the arm bands they’re wearing to track their progress are, in truth, using them to build up ionic energy to power a plot by the Weather Wizard. (Weather Wizard, by the way, was voiced by the late Miguel Ferrer in a delightfully dastardly way.)
This episode never makes it clear which Flash we’re watching, Barry or Wally. In terms of attitude and personality, it’s definitely influenced by the early days of Wally’s solo title. He’s slick, he’s cocky, and he relentlessly flirts with Lois Lane, none of which are things you could ever imagine Barry doing. It takes plenty of cues from the classic comics, though, such as the race itself being derailed halfway through when Superman and the Flash catch wind (rimshot) of the Weather Wizard’s plan and call it off to get around to some good ol’ fashioned thwartin’. It’s easy to forget that the Batman cartoon almost never had guest-stars from outside the Batman family, so this was one of the first times we really started to see an animated universe begin to form in the Paul Dini/Bruce Timm era. It was a real delight to revisit this episode again.
There is ONE other Superman/Flash race that I haven’t covered here, but for what I consider a good reason. It’s part of Tom King’s Superman: Up in the Sky series, which is a magnificent comic in its own right, and I intend to cover it in its entirety at some point this year. Plus, looking at the issue with the race on its own wouldn’t really make a ton of sense, absent of the context. I’m bringing it up here mainly so that nobody thinks I forgot about it.
Tues., Feb. 18
Comics:Superboy Vol. 4 #5, Supergirl: The Fastest Women Alive #1
“I don’t know why Barry and Clark always make such a big deal about this.”
Notes: I had one day left in “Superman Vs. The Flash Week,” but I had run out of actual Superman/Flash races, so I decided to close it out with a pair of comics featuring other members of the respective Super- and Flash-Families strapping on their jogging shoes to see who’s swiftest. First was Superboy Vol. 4 #5 from 2011, the first ever Superboy/Kid Flash race (this Kid Flash being Bart Allen, Barry’s grandson, who previously had gone by “Impulse” and since has retaken that name). In this era, Superboy was living in Smallville, and his presence had rocked the town with a few supervillain attacks that resulted in some pretty major damage. This time around, the race is scheduled to raise money to rebuild the town. As the two old friends zip across the globe, though, Bart can tell that Conner Kent’s mind is elsewhere.
This issue is part of Jeff Lemire’s run on the title, a tenure that was cut tragically short by the New 52 reboot later that year. Lemire was doing a great job at grounding Superboy in a way that this version of the character so rarely is, giving him a home and a family in Smallville to contend with, and making his adventures a mix of the cosmic and the mundane, something Lemire is exceptionally good at. (And if you don’t believe me, check out his series Black Hammer.) Despite the race being a backdrop, the mundane part is the focus of the issue, with nary a supervillain plot or alien invader to disrupt things. Instead, in the midst of a race across the globe, Conner just confides in his friend about his pain over his recent breakup with Wonder Girl.
The ending of the race is a cop-out, which we’ve all come to expect, but this may be the biggest one yet. (Spoiler: somehow, Krypto crosses the finish line first and everyone accepts it, even though it feels as legit as Harry Potter’s name being tossed in the Goblet of Fire.) Still, if you’re thinking of reading this book, the Lemire run is extremely worthy of your time – it’s just that this issue, by itself, may not be quite so satisfying without the context of the rest of the run.
Finally, we’ve got the bizarre little one-shot Supergirl: The Fastest Women Alive, a special comic from 2019 presented by Snickers. Very, very much by Snickers. There is Snickers branding on nearly every page, and even the captions that tell you where the racers are at the moment are branded in the Snickers logo font. The message, just in case you missed it, is: Snickers.
Did we mention it’s presented by Snickers?
For the first half of the issue, though, this is actually a decent enough race between Supergirl and Jesse Quick. It uses most of the tropes of the previous races, such as it being a charity race, Supergirl not being allowed to fly, and so forth. The turn comes halfway through, though, when the racers discover that the Parasite has attacked the arena where the race began and will end, and he’s already got Superman and the Flash on the ropes. The lightning ladies rush back to save the day, but how can they possibly get the energy they need to overload and defeat the energy-sucking Parasite?
HOW CAN THEY FIND THE NECESSARY ENERGY?
SNICKERS? GOT A SUGGESTION?
This story is a full-issue equivalent of the delightfully goofy old Hostess comic book ads, only way less subtle.
I kinda love it.
And thus, friends, concludes Superman Vs. The Flash week. My feelings haven’t really changed, I must say. In any contest of speed between a Super of any stripe and a Flash by any name, the Flashes should always be the ones to come out on top. Sorry, Superman, but it’s their whole entire deal. You can’t really compete.
But this week has proven it’s fun to watch you try anyway.
Today I’m going to start the first of the Theme Weeks I’m planning to do for this little project. It won’t be every week, nor will the content of those weeks be 100 percent dedicated to that theme. There’s still a lot of Superman and Lois to catch up on, after all. But on these theme weeks, I’m going to focus on a specific character, creator, or concept related to Superman. For this first week, I’m going to put the spotlight on the second-most important character in the entire Superman mythos, one of the best comic book characters ever created. Welcome, friends, to Lois Lane Week! Lois has been around since day one, appearing in Action Comics #1 along with Superman himself, and over the years has grown and evolved into one of the most complex and engaging characters in comics…when she’s written correctly. In the Golden Age, Lois was a tough-as-nails, courageous, crusading reporter. The modern incarnation has a lot of the same qualities. When written properly, Lois Lane is brilliant, fearless, and a force of nature. The only Lois I’m not crazy about, honestly, is the Silver Age Lois, a character who seemed more interested in marrying Superman or proving his secret identity (because somehow that would convince him to marry her). I’m going to try to look at all ages of Lois this week.
Wed., Jan. 22
Comics:Showcase #9
Notes: DC’s Showcase comic book, in the 50s, was essentially a try-out series. Every issue or two they would change the headliner, basically using the series to test the possibilities of a new character or new title, many of which eventually spun off into their own series. Most famously, this is the series that gave us the Barry Allen Flash and the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, but today we’re focusing on Showcase #9, the prototype for the series that would be called Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane.
If you swapped Lois with Chili and Superman with Bandit, this is any given episode of Bluey.
This Showcase issue is pretty indistinguishable from the early years of Lois’s solo title, with three stories each dedicated to Lois’s love life with Superman, while he treated her in a way that would have pretty much everybody on Reddit telling her to dump him, and frankly, I can’t blame them. The first story is “The Girl From Superman’s Past.” Lana Lang – Superboy’s old flame from Smallville – moves to Metropolis, and she and Lois immediately wind up sparring for the affection of the now-adult Superman, up to and including placing themselves in danger to see which one he was going choose to rescue. At the end of the story, of course, Superman has refrained from making a decision, probably because both of these women are behaving like lunatics.
“The New Lois Lane” is even more bonkers. When Superman learns that a group of crooks are on the verge of unveiling his secret identity, he creates a new alter-ego, “Allen Todd,” and counts on Lois’s trademark snooping to reveal Mr. Todd as being the real Superman. Unfortunately for him, Lois recently used a Weight and Fortune Telling Machine (no, really) that told her to change her strategy to help get the man she loves – so instead of trying to reveal his secret, she starts going behind his back to “help” him HIDE it. I tell you, some of these Silver Age Lois Lane stories are positively Shakespearean, in that they’re predicated on absurd coincidences and ridiculous misunderstandings that could easily be cleared up if either of the people involved were capable of having a simple adult conversation, for God’s sake.
Finally, there’s “Mrs. Superman,” in which Lois gets a head injury and has a coma dream about her fondest wish: marrying Superman. To get her out of it, Superman sits by her bedside and feeds her “false” information to try to snap her out of the fantasy – you know, horrible things like Superman’s real identity being Clark Kent, or that he’s cheating on her with a woman named Lulu, because every woman in Metropolis is legally required to have a name beginning with the letter “L.” I guess in this one Superman is at least trying to help Lois. Technically.
The idea, I suppose, was to make a comic book that fit in with the popular romance comics of the time, although these stories were even sillier and more convoluted than a lot of those. I guess it was popular, though, as this series lasted for 16 years and 137 issues before being merged with the Jimmy Olsen title as Superman Family. But sitting from where I am, where my Loises are all strong, independent, and smart as a whip, it’s bonkers to me that this incarnation of the character lasted as long as she did.
Articles: “A Fond Remembrance of Mort Weisinger By His Son” and “The Superman Mythos: Roots of the Superman Confluence,” both by Eddy Zeno, from The Krypton Companion
Thur., Jan. 23
Comics: DC Horror Presents… #3 (Cameo), Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #21, Action Comics #662, Superman Vol. 2 #53
Notes: Returning to the shockingly meager offerings on DC Universe Infinite for this series, I decided to check in on Lois Lane #21, featuring a pretty well-known cover with Lois and Lana somehow superpowered and slugging it out for Superman’s affections, but I don’t think I’ve ever read this one before. The first two stories in this issue, though, are a two-parter unrelated to the cover. In “Dolls of Doom” and “Trapped in Kandor,” Lois is tricked into posing for a Lois Lane doll by a gang of criminals planning to use her against Superman. This somehow winds up with her sent to the bottled city of Kandor where she falls in love with a Kandorian who is – shockingly – a dead ringer for Superman.
I’m sorry to not have a better synopsis for this story, but I refuse to take total blame for it, because the DC Universe app has the PAGES IN THE WRONG ORDER. The middle of chapter two appears in chapter one and vice-versa, and while it is theoretically possible to read the pages in the correct order by flipping back and forth in the app, by the time I realized what the problem was I was so angry about it that I stopped trying. Hey, DC Universe Infinite: FIX THIS CRAP.
After all, with the pages scrambled, some people may find this confusing.
The last story is the one I was really interested in anyway. “The Battle Between Super-Lois and Super-Lana” features Superman’s two favorite girls, now rival reporters, who stumble upon a magic lake that conveniently gives super powers to anyone who bathes in it. Realizing they now have all of Superman’s powers, they decide that this is the perfect time to make him choose between them by doing things like cooking giant food, finding and wearing priceless jewelry that has been lost to antiquity, and carving their own faces into mountainsides. The story ends, predictably, with the magic water wearing off and Superman once again getting out of having to make up his mind. The most important part of the legacy of this issue is that the “magic water” came back into play decades later in Alan Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” (which of course you can be certain I’ll read before this Year of Superman is over.)
It’s unfathomable to me how the book lasted this long with stories that make the title character look like an obsessed stalker and make Superman look like an indecisive jackass. I think I need an palate cleanser, so I decide to read the issues I skipped between “Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite” and “Time and Time Again” – the story of how Clark Kent finally revealed his secret identity to Lois Lane.
The face of “WHAT THE ACTUAL F@#??”
It happened in Action Comics #662, and before I get into the story, can we talk about the cover for a minute? This is a classic by Kerry Gammill and Brett Breeding, and it’s wild to me that this hasn’t made the echelon of often-homaged covers like Action Comics #1, Superman #1, or even Superman Vol. 2 #75 (the Death of Superman issue). The angle, from Clark’s point-of-view, is perfect, and the look of total amazement on Lois’s face just kills me every time I look at it. I love this cover.
As for the story itself, the issue begins with Lois and Clark having a comics code-approved romantic evening at home, with Clark about to tell Lois the big secret just as they’re interrupted by the Silver Banshee. Her magic told her that Superman was in that apartment, but all she finds there is this tall drink of water in a pair of glasses, so she dashes out. Clark goes after her, leaving Lois somewhat confused. The middle part of the issue is pretty standard for the time period – Superman fighting the Banshee (who, I should mention, has one of the coolest designs for any Superman villain ever) while in a subplot, a LexCorp employee digs into the mystery of the company CEO’s death and his potential heir. The Lois story doesn’t come back until the last couple of pages, where Clark gives the big reveal on a full-page splash panel at the very end of the issue, leading into Superman Vol. 2 #53.
The first few pages of this issue are devoted to the Lois and Clark story, as she tells him that she thinks – on some level – she knew his secret for a long time, but had always dismissed it, then she (understandably) asks for a little time to process this major revelation. The rest of the issue deals with Superman being asked to help escort a political prisoner being brought from the Middle East back to the ol’ U.S. of A. It’s a perfectly fine issue, but it definitely illustrates the way the Superman comics were written in the 90s. Each issue had an A-plot (which may or may not continue next week) and several ongoing B-plots that were often specific to the individual titles and writers. Anything dealing with the Clark Kent side of his life was usually relegated to the B-plots, even something as monumental as this. If this story were being told today, the revelation would have been its own one-shot issue with a half-dozen miniseries spin-offs dealing with the fallout. In these two issues, it’s less than ten pages total.
All that said, I like how they dealt with Lois here. Rather than make her look or feel foolish for not having known Clark’s secret, she confesses to having had a gut feeling. In the Silver Age, that “gut feeling” was half of her reason for existence. This is a much smarter, more mature Lois Lane, and it’s a much better interpretation of the character.
Fri., Jan. 24
TV Episode: Superman: The Animated Series, Season 2, Episode 7, “Target”
Notes: Except for Margot Kidder, I think Dana Delaney may just be my favorite Lois Lane. Her wit and sarcasm feels so completely perfect for the character – I love the way she knows she’s the smartest one in the room, but doesn’t lord it over anybody unless they’re asking for it. It’s like if Bugs Bunny were a reporter. One of the things I particularly liked about Superman: The Animated Series is that they wrote Lois the way she SHOULD have been written in an era before she and Clark were allowed to be together. This is a Lois who, like the Lois of the Golden Age, finds Superman more fascinating than Clark. However, she doesn’t spend all her time mooning over him or trying to crack the secret of his identity. She’s someone with a thirst for truth and, along with that, a hefty appreciation of justice.
And if we’re being totally honest, there’s just something about a gal with purple eyes.
In this episode, Lois is sent a death threat just seconds before receiving a prestigious journalism award. After a quick rescue by Superman (as per usual) she embarks upon a quest to find out who’s gunning for her, with more and deadlier attempts following her as she seeks out the truth. Although both Clark and Superman appear and factor heavily into the plot, we never actually see the transition from one to the other, aiding the conceit that this is an episode told from Lois’s perspective. It’s a great episode for showing how smart and, ultimately, dangerous she can be to the wrong people (the “corrupt” that she mentions in her acceptance speech), and I like the fact that she refuses sensible precautions like staying under house arrest when there are super criminals gunning for her. It’s the kind of reckless that is 100 percent indicative of Lois Lane. And it’s great that she cracks the mystery on her own, without Superman’s help or without even hearing the clue that tells him where to find her at the end. If I have any complaint, though, it’s that she doesn’t show herself quite as capable as I’d like. Every deathtrap is escaped, narrowly, by Superman’s interference. Sure, it’s part of the usual schtick for these two, but it would have been nice if just ONCE she managed to get herself out of trouble by herself.
Notes: Like the episodes of the cartoon, Superman Adventures #12 demonstrates ably who Lois Lane should be. Superman has been infected with a Kryptonian virus, and Lois and Professor Emil Hamilton are in the midst of a war zone trying to get an essential ingredient for an antidote. Once the cure for the man of steel is synthesized, it’s up to Lois to transport it back to Metropolis through battlefields, across oceans, and in the midst of an awful lot of criminal types who would be perfectly happy if the cure never makes it to its destination. The story, written by Scott McCloud, perfectly showcases the cartoon’s version of Lois. We see how strong and gutsy she is, every step of the way. The best thing is that she’s not doing it because she’s in LOVE with Superman, she’s doing it because the world NEEDS Superman. A+ Lois Laning in this issue, guys.
Sat. Jan. 25
Answering the question, “What if we write Lois Lane, but for the Pretty Little Liars demographic?”
Novel: Fallout (2015) by Gwenda Bond
Notes: This is part of a larger push to put the DC characters into young adult novels, a practice that I think is a good idea. Get ‘em while they’re young, get ‘em reading, get ‘em loving the characters. In this version, Lois is a teenager in the modern day – or at least in the modern day of 2015, when this was published, which cannot possibly be 10 years ago, so this is just more proof that math is a liar. Young Lois and her family have recently moved to Metropolis, the latest in a long line of homes as befits her army brat lifestyle, but the Lanes are hoping to put down roots this time. At a new school, Lois struggles making friends until she’s recruited for a special initiative of the Daily Planet to bring in high school students with an interest in journalism. As Lois tries to acclimate to her new passion, she finds that a group of bullies at the school may be more than they seem, and the principal may be part of a larger conspiracy.
This book, part of a trilogy by Gwenda Bond, gives me serious Nancy Drew vibes. This is not a criticism, mind you, I think that’s actually quite appropriate for a young Lois Lane. Although the story is structured to lead her towards her destiny as the world’s greatest reporter, for most of the plot she’s doing a detective’s job, trying to crack a mystery with the help of a few sometimes reluctant friends. In fact, the only one who’s totally on her side from the beginning is her online friend, who goes by the handle “SmallvilleGuy” and is shockingly hesitant to cough up details about himself.
I liked this book a lot more than I expected to, if I’m being honest. I’ve read a lot of novels based on comic book characters and too many of them are sort of bland, lifeless retellings of a story that would be better served as a comic book. But Gwenda Bond has a fine voice for Lois, and the way she builds up the sometimes antagonistic nature of her relationship with her father works well. Bond’s Sam Lane hits all of the right beats for that character – he’s tough, he’s strict, and he wants things to be done his way. At the same time, though, he’s not an ogre. He’s a father who wants what’s best for his children, and the conflict stems from the fact that what he thinks is best is not necessarily what Lois wants, not because he’s evil.
The interactions with “SmallvilleGuy” are fun, but maybe a little too much like the writer is winking at the camera. I don’t mind a little bit of that, but when you spin this whole mystery around a question that the audience already knows the answer to, it doesn’t necessarily hit right. It’s not like it makes Lois look stupid or anything (just because SmallvilleGuy’s in-game avatar is an alien is no reason Lois should suspect that he’s the real thing), but you do start to twirl your finger a little and say, “Okay, let’s get on with it.”
All that said, I did like this book. I did like this Lois. And while I don’t know if I’ll get around to them right away, I’m adding the other two books in this trilogy (Double Down and Triple Threat) to my massive to-be-read list. That’s not a promise that I’ll ever get to them, if I’m being 100 percent honest, but they’re definitely on the radar.
Notes: The current run of the main Superman comic has been really good. Written by Joshua Williamson with art by Dan Mora – who, in case I haven’t mentioned it recently, is far and away the best Superman artist of the modern era – our heroes find themselves in a very precarious position. Doomsday, the creature who killed Superman once, is the target of an alien invading force, forcing Superman to work with the instrument of his own destruction. He’s not alone, though – Lois is currently Superwoman. I have to say “currently” because you know that, sooner or later, the status quo will reassert itself, but giving her Kryptonian powers (however temporary) is making for an interesting twist to the dynamic. The entire Superman family has sort of become a team, defending Metropolis together, and Super-Lois has essentially been made co-leader along with her husband. This isn’t the first time that Lois has gotten powers, of course, but this is a way of portraying that relationship that I’m pretty sure we’ve never seen before. With this being my “Year of Superman,” with the movie coming out in July, and with DC giving the Man of Steel a much bigger push than they have in recent years, I couldn’t be happier that this monthly comic is really good right now.
Sun., Jan. 26
The After School Special of Lois Lore.
Comic Books: Lois Lane #1-2
Notes: The early 80s were a weird time for Lois Lane in the comics. After all those decades of chasing after him, she “broke up” with Superman, feeling as though the relationship wasn’t going anywhere (go figure). What’s more, Clark started dating Lana Lang, which was admittedly a nice change of pace, as she was now interested in Clark Kent rather than Superboy/man, and it changed things up for a while. But the problem was, then, what do you do with Lois?
The answer, it seems, is this miniseries: two double-sized issues of two chapters each which were clearly originally intended to be a four-issue miniseries, but they condensed it for some reason. Regardless, in this refreshingly Superman-free story, Lois is covering a police investigation that turns up the body of a child, a horrifying moment that sends her deep into the investigation of child abduction and trafficking. I would have been about nine years old when this miniseries was published, so I can tell you that the whole “stranger danger” scare was a big thing at the time, and this miniseries feels very much like an attempt to connect to the After School Special audience by telling a story with an important message. Not that the message isn’t important, of course – sadly, it’s possibly even more relevant today than it was almost 40 years ago. But the way they tell the story is a bit heavy-handed, as many of these “Very Special Episodes” tend to be.
On the other hand, it’s good to see a story where Lois is being Lois – doing reporter work, digging into a story and trying to uncover the truth. The sad thing is that Lois comes off as awfully antagonistic throughout the story: she clashes with her editor, she clashes with her sister Lucy…she clashes with everybody. And there’s a point where it feels less like frustration about her serious story not being taken seriously and a bit more like Lois has some sort of chip on her shoulder. (It may have helped if the story at any point recapped just why she and Lucy were at each other’s throats at this period.) As it is, though, we get none of that. We learn nothing about why Lois is behaving the way she is, save for general sensitivity over the subject matter. It’s a pretty dark topic , but it’s hard to conceive of a seasoned reporter like Lois Lane suddenly lashing out at everybody around her over something like this. Half the characters assume she’s upset over her breakup with Superman, and while that too would be completely out of character for her, at least it would be an explanation.
We DO get a shocking revelation about Lana Lang…a revelation that, to the best of my knowledge, was never referenced again, and certainly has been wiped out in the half dozen or so continuity reboots since then. And in the end, the story doesn’t really have a resolution. We just run out of threads to follow. That’s how stuff like this happens in reality, sadly. But this isn’t reality, it’s fiction, and as much as I enjoy seeing a spotlight on Lois Lane, this spotlight is given to a story that forever will seem incomplete.
Enjoy it now, kids. Once Jon is born, even this won’t be far enough to get some peace and quiet.
Notes: So after getting engaged, finding out her fiancé was really Superman, losing him to time-travel shenanigans, and dealing with a dozen other problems that cropped up in the course of the four Superman comics of the era, in this issue Lois FINALLY has a chance to stop and talk to Clark about what it would mean for the two of them to be married. I’ve always enjoyed this issue.
The first half is a series of events where Lois keeps getting left behind as Clark rushes off to deal with one emergency or another – a sunken submarine, a homeless man who’s gotten his hands on a super-villain’s discarded weapons stash…you know, typical stuff. But in the second half, Clark bundles Lois up and takes her off to the top of Mt. Fuji, one place where he doubts that an emergency will call him away, for a conversation. The scene itself only takes a couple of pages, but it’s powerful. Lois asks why Clark, with all his power, would choose to be Superman, and he gives the most Superman answer imaginable: “Because no one else can.” They talk about their relationship and what they mean to one another, and by the time they return to Metropolis, it feels like a hurdle has been passed. After this, the relationship in the comics was usually rock-solid (except for that brief period where they broke up, but which eventually led directly into their wedding, and for the New 52 reboot, but we can dismiss that for timey-wimey reasons). I hate when writers throw a breakup/makeup dynamic onto their characters just because they can’t think of a way to tell compelling stories about a couple without threatening their relationship (lookin’ at you, Spider-Man writers). I’m really glad that this issue ended that era for Lois and Clark in a satisfying way.
Also of note: this issue is kind of an epilogue to the Time and Time Again storyline from last week as well. One of the Linear Men, Liri Lee, feels responsible for the months that Superman was lost in time, so she tries to make it up to him by pausing time for Lois and Clark (without their knowledge) and allowing them to discuss their relationship uninterrupted. It’s a nice little conceit and although I don’t think it was strictly necessary, it served the purpose of showing that the original Linear Man did not act alone (something that would become significant later) and perhaps gave a little more plausibility to the notion that Superman could go that long without picking up on a disaster somewhere that needed his attention.
Geez, how many Robins does that guy NEED?
Next up is a dandy two-parter from Superman Vol. 2 #168 and Detective Comics #756. This story comes from the era in which Lex Luthor had been elected President of the United States, and things kick off when Lois learns from her father (Lex’s secretary of state) that he’s somehow regained possession of the Kryptonite ring we last mentioned back in the Dark Knight Over Metropolis storyline. Superman, being Superman, is reluctant to break into the White House to get the ring, so Lois decides to enlist the help of somebody somewhat less reluctant: Batman.
This is a great story. I love seeing Lois being proactive and using her husband’s ties to the superhero community to right a wrong. I also love how Superman winds up in conflict with his wife and best friend in a way that doesn’t seem convoluted or out of character. Of course Superman would refuse to break into the White House, no matter who’s sitting in that chair or what the provocation, and of course Lois and Bruce wouldn’t give a damn about all that when it comes to getting that sort of a weapon out of Lex Luthor’s hands. It’s a dandy little character play from writers Jeph Loeb and Greg Rucka (respectively) and it’s only slightly undermined by the ending. I don’t mind at all that Clark and Bruce hatched a scheme of their own, but I’m admittedly a tad disappointed that they didn’t let Lois in on it. That said, it’s a fine story that shows, as the best stories do, just how proactive Lois Lane can be.
Just as grounded in reality as her ’86 miniseries.
I’ll wrap up today with Superman: Lois Lane, a one-shot from the New 52 era. I won’t get into the pros and cons of that time period at the moment – odds are at some point later this year I’ll get into it a little bit – but I will say one of my least favorite things about that period was the way DC erased pretty much every superhero marriage and returned to the old status quo of Lois not knowing Clark’s identity and, for most of the run, not having any sort of relationship with him either. In fact, Superman only makes a cameo in this issue, and Clark isn’t mentioned at all.
That said, if you just change the costume Superman wears in his cameo, this story could very easily be dropped into pretty much any continuity or any time period for Superman. It’s a self-contained story about Lois, starting with her sister Lucy showing up on her doorstep, injured, begging for help. Lucy’s roommate, Amanda, has been transformed into some sort of monster by a strange street drug, and she pleads with Lois to rescue her. Like a lot of the best Lois stories, this one showcases her detective skills, hunting down the origin of the drug that’s terrorizing Amanda and going to whatever lengths it takes to save her. It’s not a bad story, although it does showcase just how much Lucy Lane has become something of a punching bag over the years. That poor girl never seems to catch a break.
Tues., Jan. 28
AKA Superman versus the Three Stooges
Movie: Superman II
Notes: The first Superman film, with Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, remains one of my favorite movies ever made, and by far my favorite superhero film. But ever since the release of the “Donner Cut” in 2006 I’ve harbored a belief that, had the film been completed as intended, Superman II would have surpassed it.
Not to say that the Superman II we have isn’t good. Quite to the contrary, it’s a great movie. Superman facing off against a trio of Kryptonian villains, Lex Luthor bouncing from enemy to ally to, at the end, a desperate attempt at becoming a frenemy before Superman deposits him with the police. And most importantly this week, this is the movie where I feel like Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane gets her best moments. In this film, Lois discovers the truth, that Clark Kent is Superman. They share a tender love story in which he decides to give up his powers, which his mother Lara (or rather, her approximation in a Kryptonian data crystal) tells him is the only way he can ever be with a human woman. But when Zod and company attack Earth, seeking the son of Jor-El, he has to find a way to restore himself and save the world. It’s a great superhero movie mixed up with a beautifully tragic love story. But there are two things about it I’ve never cared for. One is the end, where Superman erases Lois’s memory with a…well…a super-kiss. It’s a dumb power, one that we’ve never seen show up anywhere else except for a short gag in Scott Kurtz’s PVP comic strip, but the power itself isn’t the problem. It feels awfully cruel of Clark to do that to Lois, not unlike the stupid kinds of things that we saw from Superman throughout the Silver Age. Even if you couch it in the belief that Lois will be happier without knowing the truth, I don’t care for that.
The other problem is something that was much better in the Donner cut: the way that Lois discovers Clark’s secret. In the film, as completed, Lois hurls herself from Niagara Falls, expecting Superman to save her and finally prove her suspicion that he and Clark are one and the same. Clark manages to pull her out without divulging his identity, but only minutes later, he pointlessly trips and falls into a fireplace, allowing her to see that he isn’t harmed. It’s awful. Clark is way too experienced – not to mention way too smart – to give away the world’s greatest secret that way.
The Donner cut is SO. MUCH. BETTER. If you’ve never seen it, you can watch the pertinent scene on YouTube, and I urge you to do so if you haven’t. (I believe that the YouTube version was actually cobbled together from screen tests and was not intended for use in the final film, but that doesn’t matter.) If you don’t feel like watching it, allow me to explain what makes it so great.
As in the finished movie, Lois has failed in an attempt at proving Clark is Superman, and is discussing her suspicions with him. Suddenly, she pulls a gun. He goes into his usual blubbering Clark routine, trying to talk her out of doing something rash, but to his horror, she pulls the trigger. He starts for a moment, but then, realizing there’s no way out of this one, he stands up, straight as a board, glaring at her. He takes off his glasses, activating that Clark-to-Superman transformation that Christopher Reeve could pull off like nobody else, and says, “You realize, of course, if you’d been wrong Clark Kent would have been killed.” Lois raises the gun and says, “Well, they’re blank.” Clark’s head falls to his chest, realizing just how deftly he’s been outsmarted.
A face that says, “God help me, I love this infuriating woman so, so much.”
No Lois Lane has ever Lois Laned as hard as Margot Kidder Lois Laned in this scene.
Comics: Superwoman Special #1, DC Comics Presents #69, Supergirl Vol. 2 #21, Justice League of America #15, New Adventures of Superboy #31
She was always a woman of steel. She just has the jammies now.
Notes: I decided to close out “Lois Week” with a re-reading of Superwoman Special #1, which came out just over a month ago and is part of the current ongoing storyline in the Superman comics. A few months back, Lois suddenly started showing up in a Superwoman costume, displaying the same powers as her super-hubby and fighting alongside him, with no indication as to how this happened. This special finally gives us the skinny as Lois tells the other two super-women in Metropolis, Lana Lang and Kara, how she got her powers. In last fall’s Absolute Power crossover, Amanda Waller set out to steal the powers from the world’s heroes (and villains, but mostly the heroes). Waller was, of course, defeated, but when the powers were restored not everything went as planned. Some powers were altered and some went to the wrong people, including Lois suddenly having Kryptonian powers. An examination from Mr. Terrific and the Atom concludes that Lois does, indeed, have Kryptonian powers, but there seems to be a limit – every time she uses them, she is in danger of burning them out. Being Lois, she isn’t content to sit on the sidelines when people are in danger, hence the new Superwoman. The other thing the reader learns in this issue that the heroes don’t is where, exactly, her powers came from. She has inadvertently stolen the powers from one of Superman’s greatest enemies, General Zod, and it seems unlikely that he’s going to be happy when he finds out where his powers have gone.
This special is kind of a fill-in-the-blanks moment, revealing the backstory in the currently ongoing storyline, but there are a few moments I really like. The coffee klatch with Lois, Supergirl, and Lana Lang (who has also been a Superwoman for a few years now, if you haven’t kept up) works really well to help establish the relationship between these three women, arguably the most important ones in Clark’s life, except of course for Martha. Second, I love the scene where Lois reveals to Clark that she’s gained powers. There’s no moment of shock or disbelief – Clark has seen enough weird stuff that it doesn’t even phase him. They just decide to have a nice, romantic flight together before it’s time to get to the bottom of it all.
The last thing I really like is the one thing that I think may possibly be a permanent, or at least long-term change. Lois isn’t going to keep Zod’s powers forever, I don’t think anybody even remotely familiar with comic books thinks that’s going to happen. But her OTHER new job that is showcased in this issue MAY last for a good while. Perry White, in recent issues, stepped down as editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet to run for mayor of Metropolis, leaving Lois in charge. Once he won the election, her temporary position became less temporary. It’s actually been really fun to see Lois as the boss, particularly those moments where her journalistic integrity clashes with her knowledge as Superman’s wife. (There was a story in one of the other titles recently where she took Clark off of any Superman-related stories as they were a conflict of interest, even if the two of them are the only ones who know it.) I really love having Lois in charge, and as great a character as Perry White is, this new dynamic is one that I think has a lot of storytelling mileage in it, and I hope they don’t revert to status quo on this one any time soon.
This week, friends, I have gone out of my way to prove myself even nerdier than I already was. I’ve started a Facebook group dedicated specifically to this little Year of Superman project. These weekly blog posts aren’t going anywhere, but in the Facebook group I’m going to do a daily post (unless I forget), as well as talk about any Superman news that comes out, such as the recent announcement of the new Superman Unlimited comic book series by Dan Slott and Rafael Albuquerque. I’ll also be using the group to crowdsource ideas for upcoming theme weeks, so if you want to be part of the conversation, please join us there at the Year of Superman Facebook Group.
Wed., Jan. 15
Funko Pop: Joey Tribbiani (from Friends) as Superman
It looks great, but I keep hearing this voice behind me saying, “Hey, Lois, how YOU doiiiiiin’…?”
Notes: In my classroom, behind my desk, I have a bit of a Superman shrine. A few shelves of the bookcase immediately behind where I sit are devoted to assorted Superman toys and knick knacks, including a good collection of Funko Pops. In fact, tracking down the assorted Superman-related Funkos is a nice little side hobby. Today I’ve got a new one, a late Christmas present from my wife Erin, because it was a pre-order that didn’t come in until this week. It’s Joey from Friends wearing a Superman costume (like he did in that one episode). I’m excited to put him on the shelf next to Phoebe from Friends wearing a Supergirl costume (like she did in that one episode). I’m also slightly nervous because they’ve announced a new wave of Smallville Pops including Clark in his “Blur” jacket and Kara in the Supergirl colors, plus I have no doubt whatsoever that the James Gunn movie later this year will have a wave of Funkos to accompany it. I need to add more shelves to my classroom, is what I’m saying.
Comics: Time and Time Again, originally printed in Adventures of Superman #467, Action Comics #663, Superman Vol. 2 #54, Adventures of Superman #468, Action Comics #664, Superman Vol. 2 #55, Adventures of Superman #469, Action Comics #665; Challengers of the Unknown Vol. 5 #1 (Superman as temporary member)
Whereas if I could time travel, I’d just go to July 11th so I could watch the movie.
Notes: I decided to try to only do one 90s storyline per week, so as to avoid overload, but it’s interesting how closely grouped together they’ve all been so far. This story, which takes place only a few months after the Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite I read last week, picks up on many of those same threads, particularly Lois and Clark’s engagement. In the books I skipped over to get to this storyline there were a couple I maybe should have read: the issues where Clark reveals his identity to Lois. This story begins with the two of them having a frank and – refreshingly mature and adult – conversation about that revelation. Lois was planning to marry Clark Kent, and the knowledge that she’s also marrying Superman has her worried about the implications behind that. (Can you IMAGINE the Lois of the 1950s having this reaction? It’s so great.) Their conversation, though, is interrupted when a time traveler calling himself the Linear Man attacks Booster Gold in the skies above Metropolis, planning to take Booster back to his original time period in the 25th century. Superman sees the fight and jumps in to help, but damages the Linear Man’s equipment and winds up getting lost in the timestream, bouncing between the past and the future for, oh, about seven issues or so.
I do like a time travel story, and this is a fun one, with Superman bouncing back and forth through time, encountering the Justice Society and Etrigan the Demon in the past, and the Legion of Super-Heroes at three different points in their own history. The story does sharply remind me, though, that this particular incarnation of Superman (thanks to the 1986 John Byrne reboot) was never a member of the Legion. The Legion is another of my favorite DC properties, although it’s been terribly mishandled in recent years, but I’ve always felt it works best if you keep the anchor to Superman – he’s the inspiration for the group, and what’s more, I like seeing him as a member. Seeing these brief interactions with them in their early years, again in their heyday, and once more in the “Five Years Later” era just makes me want to read more Legion stories. But this is the year of SUPERMAN…I’ll just have to give them their own theme week.
Each chapter of this story, after the first one, goes back to the “present” in Metropolis, showing various members of Superman’s supporting cast for one or two panels. We see Jimmy Olsen’s mom interrupt his date with Lucy Lane, Perry and Alice White coming together over the grief of the death of their son, LexCorp struggling with what to do in the wake of Lex Luthor’s (seeming) death, and Bibbo being Bibbo. Most of these are setting up things that will come to fruition in later issues, but all of them end up unresolved in the final chapter, where Superman bounces back to the present day, lands on the moon, and heads for home. I actually went on and read the next issue – Action Comics #665 – to see if any of this was addressed. What we got was a good scene with Lois and Clark reuniting, he having been lost in time for several months, but her only having experienced a few hours since he left her. I really like this scene – it’s a good bookend for the beginning of the story, where they were talking about their relationship. They didn’t make it explicit, but I feel like this experience of “losing” Clark for a few hours is what helped Lois come to terms with what being married to Superman would be like. And the last 34 years have pretty much proven that to be correct.
Thur., Jan. 16
Podcast: It All Comes Back to Superman Series 2, Episode 6
Podcasting’s Michael Bailey is – to use the vernacular of my generation – a buddy of mine. Although I have not yet been fortunate enough to meet him in person, we’ve had a long and friendly association over the years as colleagues – as podcasters (before my unfortunate retirement from that arena), as columnists, as bloggers, and most importantly, as Superman fans. Whenever there’s any new Superman news coming down the pipe, I’m always interested to hear Michael’s take on it. He is one of the very few people I know who, were they to tell me to my face they were a bigger Superman fan than I am, I would not attempt to argue the point.
It’s like “Six Degress of Kevin Bacon,” but with a spit curl.
Today (and a bit of yesterday) I fired up his podcast It All Comes Back to Supermanon my drive to and from work to listen to his take on the trailer for the James Gunn Superman, the same trailer that started me on this whole journey. For over an hour, Michael breaks down the trailer and talks about it, comparing the way it is made to those of the previous two theatrical Superman attempts and placing it in a bit of historical context, in addition to giving his personal feelings on it. I’m happy – but not surprised – to hear that his feelings are a virtual mirror of my own. He sounds excited, enthusiastic, and energized, not just by the trailer itself, but by the specific elements of the trailer that touched me the most (things like the use of the John Williams score, the boy raising the Superman flag, and of course, Krypto).
There are a lot of people out there podcasting about this kind of stuff. If you’re a Superman fan and want the thoughts of a fellow Superman fan, this is really the podcast to check out.
Comics: Wonder Woman Vol. 6 #16 (Clark Kent cameo, Jimmy Olsen appearance), Plastic Man No More! #4 (Superman appearance), Jenny Sparks #5 (Superman Appearance), Justice League of America #14 (Team Member)
Fri., Jan 17
Say what you will, but Washington has always been a weird town.
Notes: By the 60s, a lot of the silliness of the Silver Age had begun to die down, but that didn’t stop this 1969 issue of Action Comics from bringing in just a hint of it for good measure. In this story, Superman gets partial amnesia from a space mission – he remembers that he’s Superman, but somehow completely loses the memory of being Clark Kent. As he sets out to discover who he really is, he decides to ask the one person he suspects he may have shared his secret with: Batman!
Ha ha! Just kidding. No, that would make sense. No, instead Superman deduces that he may have told his secret to the President of the United States. And if that assumption seems absurd, this next one is gonna knock you for a loop. When he arrives in Washington he learns that the President is missing, and obviously concludes that he IS the President. So with a little prosthetic makeup, he settles back into his presidential role of meeting dignitaries and dancing with the visiting Lois Lane from the Daily Planet. An assassin makes an attempt on his life, only for him to be saved by Lois’s fellow Planet reporter, Clark Kent. Or, actually, a spy disguising himself as Clark in an effort to get close to the president. They say that in real life we expect coincidence but in fiction we don’t stand for it. Stories like this are the reason why.
Anyway, this goofy story ends with the real President returning but Superman not getting his memory back. It’s going to be continued next issue, where we’re promised that Superman is going to think he’s a professional wrestler. I’m gonna have to read that one, but first, this story makes me think of a different story in which Superman becomes President.
Action Comics Annual #3 was part of the Armageddon 2001 storyline, in which a time-traveler named Waverider comes back in time because, in his future, one of Earth’s superheroes has become a tyrant that has taken over the world. Waverider is trying to find the person who will one day become Monarch by using his powers to view their futures. It’s a great concept for a crossover event because it allows all of the annuals to be self-contained “Elseworlds”-type stories about possible futures for the DC heroes, such as this one, in which Superman is elected President of the United States. I remember being really excited for this series when it came out and I sought out and devoured every installment, even those for titles I didn’t usually read. This was one of the best. In this possible future, Clark’s old friend Pete Ross is running for president when Clark has to save him from an assassination attempt that winds up revealing his identity to the world. With Pete alive but injured, he implores Clark to take over and run for office himself.
What I’ve always enjoyed about this issue is how overwhelmingly positive it is. Although there is conflict, we watch as Superman uses his power, his wisdom, and his connections with the greater superhero community to bring peace to the world. In the last few years it’s become increasingly popular to tell stories of a “Superman gone bad,” losing his mind and taking over the world. And yeah, some of those stories have been pretty good. (The comic adaptation of the video game Injustice: Gods Among Us stands out to me as being one of the better-made examples of this trope.) But it’s a trope that has become majorly overdone. This issue, published over 30 years ago, is the antidote to that. Although I doubt that the mainstream comics would never go down the route of making Superman an overtly political figure (in fact, I sincerely hope they never do), showing a world under his control that changes for the better instead of the worse feels far more in keeping with who and what Superman is.
Other Comics:Superman #6, Action Comics #556
Notes on Superman #6: There isn’t much to say about this issue until the last page. Lois, injured, is in need of a blood transfusion, and Clark “tears open his skin” so that he can donate to her. In modern comics, this would probably result in her getting super powers and becoming Superwoman (as she currently is, as I’m writing this), but back in 1940 the only effect was her making a startlingly rapid recovery and feeling just great afterwards. The last panel is what stays with me, though, where we see Clark thinking about how he’s feeling an inclination to tell Lois the secret of his double identity. I’ve heard from different sources over the years that Siegel and Shuster had planned to have Superman reveal his identity to Lois and for the two of them to get married way back in the 1940s, but the editors wouldn’t allow them to do it. It took over 50 years before they finally got the two of them down the aisle, and I can’t help but wonder what the history of Superman would have looked like had they been allowed to get them together way back when.
Sat., Jan. 18
TV Episodes: Superman and Lois, Season One, Ep. 13, “Fail Safe”; Ep. 14, “The Eradicator”; Ep. 15 (Season Finale), “The Last Sons of Krypton”.
TV’s second-best dad after Bandit Heeler.
Notes: In “Fail Safe,” the title comes from a conversation Superman has with Lois’s dad, General Sam Lane, who is promising to dismantle the weapons systems his people had prepared to deal with him should Superman ever go bad. Clark tells him not to, however, recognizing the possibility of him being taken over again, and knowing that a “fail safe” is a good idea. The scene has some slight echoes of Dark Knight Over Metropolis, where he gives a similar speech to Batman, but it’s really interesting to see him say it to Sam. In the comics, Sam Lane usually has a far more antagonistic relationship with Superman. This version has shades of that, but on the whole is much more level-headed and reasonable, perhaps because this is one of the few continuities in which he knows Clark’s dual identity. He’s so reasonable, in fact, that he contacts Lois and tells her about Clark’s request. The resulting conversation leads to the fail safe being taken out of Lane’s hands and given to the one other person Clark trusts with it: John Henry Irons. Much like in the comics, John Henry is quickly becoming one of my favorite side-characters on this show.
We also see Jonathan, in a low moment, hanging out with John Henry. I don’t know where this particular storyline is going, but I can see a version of this where the non-powered Jonathan, in an effort to keep up with his superpowered family, might become a sort of apprentice to Steel. I like this idea, as a concept – Jonathan feeling inferior to his dad and twin brother is a nice impetus to push him in this direction and make him a distinct, unique version of the character.
“The Eradicator” is your standard penultimate episode of the season. There’s a lot of setup and a cliffhanger. Among other things, we see Jonathan pushing harder to become part of John Henry’s weapon-building projects, Lana’s family deciding to leave Smallville, Jordan getting upset over this because he only started dating Lana’s daughter Sarah about 20 minutes ago, and the people of Smallville getting increasingly angry over the presence of Sam Lane’s DOD troops are they try to clean the caverns near the town of X-Kryptonite and hunt down Morgan Edge, who has managed to merge himself with the deadly Kryptonian artifact called the Eradicator. If you’re not familiar with the term from the comic books, take it from me when I tell you that the Eradicator is about as friendly as the name would imply. The episode, of course, ends with a cliffhanger – the uber-powered Edge attacking Sam, Sarah, and the twins on the road and taking Jordan captive, then Jordan being taken over by the conscious of an evil Kryptonian. I hate when that happens.
“The Last Sons of Krypton,” the season finale, starts off with Clark being forced to fight his own son. The old trope of Jordan moving his mouth with an old man’s voice coming out of it is…cheesy. But at the same time, the scene hits me in my Dad bone. The idea of your child turning against you, against their will, placing you in a position where you may have to hurt them to save the world…it’s hard to imagine a more nightmarish position for a parent to be in. The scene later in the episode, where Jonathan helps his brother break free, really takes it out of me. It’s corny as hell. It’s overdone and overused and overwritten, and somehow it’s making my eyes a little blurry, because there’s something about that familial love that cuts right into me no matter how corny and overdone and overwritten the scene may be.
At the end of this first season of the show, I think I need to look back and see how they’re doing so far. It’s a CW show, and it has a lot of the same flavor that we go with shows like Smallville, The Flash, and of course, Supergirl. At the same time, this is a different angle than those other shows. I hesitate to use the term more “mature,” because that makes it seem like it’s intended for older viewers, and I think this may be the most family-accessible out of all of them. But it’s not told from the point of view of a teenager or a young twentysomething like most of the other shows that network produced. That teen angle is still there, through the twins, but the title characters are older, are parents, and the show is reflective of this different perspective. For a superhero show, that’s really refreshing. For a Superman show, it’s practically a necessity. Overall, I would give this first season a B+.
Sun., Jan. 19
I’ve always been fascinated at how the Kryptonian justice system was based on album covers.
Comics: Action Comics #1091, #1092
Notes: Action Comics #1091finishes off the 12-issue “Phantoms” storyline written by Mark Waid. Waid was ascendant during my fundamental 90s reading years, with a dominant run on Flash and going on to do memorable work with the JLA, Captain America, and plenty of others. One of the greatest Superman stories of all time, Kingdom Come, was written by him. And yet he’s never had an extended run on the character. The closest he’s come is his three years (and counting) on Batman/Superman: World’s Finest, which is only half a Superman book and is set in the past. I would love to see him take over one of the regular, modern continuity Superman comics full time one of these days, but stories like “Phantoms” make for good reading until that happens. This Waid doing what Waid is good at – taking old-school concepts (in this case, the Phantom Zone) and using them as the focal point for a story with modern sensibilities. Best of all, he rescues Mon-El of the Legion of Super-Heroes from the… (oh man, how do I be kind here?) …from the controversial interpretation of the most recent Brian Michael Bendis run on the title. Actually, if there’s no space for Waid on a Superman book at the moment, how about we let him fix the Legion? They need it.
Issue #1092 continues with the “Superman Superstars” initiative (rather than having a single creative team for Action Comics these days, they’re bringing on big-name creators for short-term arcs). In this story, part one of John Ridley’s “Force Majeure,” we saw Clark confronting Major Disaster. Disaster is an old-school villain who has tried to go straight in the past, but in this issue we see him backslide, leading to a Superman who is uncharacteristically angry and disappointed. I’m not sure how I feel about this story, frankly. Superman being disappointed by an enemy he thought had reformed is reasonable, but the anger he displays seems almost out of character. I’m also not wild about Major Disaster going bad again. It’s not unusual to see a comic book story where a villain goes straight, but those are almost always “overturned” by later writers who make them villains again. I’m never a fan of that trope. It feels like it undermines the story from the writer who reformed them in the first place (although I suppose the same argument could be made for a writer who turns a bad guy good). Moreover, it also speaks to a kind of cynicism, as though redemption is not possible. That’s not a theme that I buy into, and frankly, I don’t think Superman would buy it either. But it’s just the first part of the story. Let’s wait and see where it goes.
Mon. Jan. 20
Short: “The Arctic Giant”
Here in southern Louisiana, we’re prepping for a winter storm the likes of which we almost never see. Seriously, they’re calling for the heaviest snowfall we’ve seen in these parts in 130 years. So when I saw that the next Fleischer short to watch was “The Arctic Giant…” well, I simply couldn’t resist.
In this cartoon, arctic scientists find a tyrannosaurus frozen in ice, with the added discovery that the creature may still be alive, should it happen to thaw out. I don’t know why anybody would say such a thing out loud, because that pretty much guarantees that’s exactly what will happen – especially when Lois Lane is in the building.
Pictured: Arctic
I know that I shouldn’t exactly expect scientific accuracy from these shorts, but this “tyrannosaurus” looks like Dino from the Flintstones with green skin and pointy teeth. Still, I have never and will never mind a little silliness in these cartoons. There’s a weird delight in watching this impossible creature stomp around Metropolis like a proto-Godzilla, stomping on bridges and wapping buildings with his gorgeously-animated tail. The scene where it destroys a bridge, similarly, is a sight to behold. It sounds odd to call such a thing “beautiful,” but the animation of its devastation is so well done that I can’t think of a better word to use.
We also get one of my favorite bits of characterization from any of these shorts. After Superman saves Lois from the dinosaur he tells her to stay put, to which she bows and replies in a deliciously snarky, “Yes, m’lord.” Joan Alexander nails this line with just the perfect level of sarcasm.
I don’t know if this is the BEST of the four Superman shorts so far, but I think it’s my favorite.
Comic: DC Vs. Vampires: World War V #6 (Lois Lane, Supergirl appearances)
Tues. Jan. 21
Comic Read: Superman #266
Notes: Today is, to put it simply, a very unusual day here in Louisiana. I mentioned in yesterday’s entry that we were gearing up for a winter storm like we rarely see here. It’s turned out to be far beyond anyone’s expectations – higher snowfall than we’ve seen in the past 130 years has buried the region. Schools are closed, businesses are closed, ROADS are closed, and I’m cuddled with my family, nice and warm. We took Eddie out to play in the snow a little bit, but he made it quite clear that he prefers the warmth, so it didn’t last long. I did, I should note, wear my Superman beanie when I went outside – bought it a few years ago before a particularly cold Mardi Gras parade and it’s stayed in my jacket pocket ever since for just such an occasion.
This is NOT a normal Tuesday down here.
Back inside, I decided for my Superman reading today I should find something appropriately arctic. My first thought was to find a comic centering on the Fortress of Solitude, but that turned out to be harder than I thought. You see, I do love the DC Universe Infinite app, I use it every day, but there are some egregious holes in the catalog. For example, the first run of Action Comics – the one that lasted until the New 52 reboot – lasted for 904 issues. The app, as of this writing, includes 480 of them. That’s a pretty substantial lapse, and it includes issues like the classic Fortress story from issue #241, “The Super-Key to Fort Superman.” The other assorted long-running Superman titles have similar gaps, and other relevant issues like DC Special Series #26 (the Fortress of Solitude treasury edition special) are all missing. To be fair, it’s not only Superman that has this problem. If you look at most of the long runners – Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. – you’ll see similar holes in the run. So DC, if you’re reading this – and I know you are – consider this my plea to start filling in these gaps. We would greatly appreciate it.
“It was more impressive when Neal Adams did this bit with the sand guy.”
Anyway, with the Fortress idea shot down, I continued to look for something cold-themed, finally settling on Superman #266, “The Nightmare Maker.” In this issue from 1973, Superman faces off against a villain who claims to be THE Abominable Snowman, although he doesn’t look anything like that guy from the Rudolph cartoon. It’s an okay story, but it sort of falls into an early Bronze-age miasma that a lot of the Superman comics lapsed into. They had mostly outgrown the Silver Age silliness, but the character and the world was still struggling to find an identity, so there are a lot of issues like this one, the sort of thing Smallville fans would eventually dub “freak of the week” stories. Eventually, I know, the characters got richer and the world grew more complex. But this is just from an era of Superman that I don’t vibe with as well.
Next week, guys, I’m going to do the first of what I imagine will be fairly regular “theme weeks” here. I’ve got several ideas for different characters or tropes to focus on this year, and while I won’t make EVERYTHING that week about the theme (still got a lot of episodes of Superman and Lois to catch up on), on those weeks I’ll have a specific focus. For my first theme week, I’m going to turn my attention to the most important character in the entire mythos other than Superman himself: Lois Lane. If you have suggestions for specific comic book stories or TV episodes that you think are the Best of Lois – either on her own or focusing on her relationship with Clark Kent – let me know in the comments, or at the new Year of Superman Facebook Group!
They say the holidays can bring people down. In my experience, though, it’s not the holiday itself that causes depression, it’s that other things that would upset you regardless seem even worse when they happen in the Christmas season. I was having a lousy December. My computer died unexpectedly and needed to be replaced, I had issues with other electronics, and dozens of other small things all seemed to erupt at the same time. None of them, in and of themselves, were that bad, but when bad luck stacks up it feels like multiplication, not addition. And when these things happen during that holiday stretch, the time when you’re supposed to be happy and joyous, it seems massively unfair and that makes everything that much worse. I was having a lousy December, is what I’m getting at.
Until Dec. 19.
On the second-to-last day of the school year I was having a hard time feeling anything happy or gleeful. It barely felt like Christmas was coming. Then the news came: the trailer was about to hit. THE trailer, the one I had been eagerly awaiting for…well, definitely over a year. It came out around 8 a.m. my time, which meant I couldn’t watch it because, of course, I had classes to teach. Somehow this didn’t seem to be an issue for my students. Over the next few hours kids kept coming up to me – knowing just how much I was looking forward to it – and asking me if I’d seen the trailer yet. No, I said, I haven’t. Ask me after lunch. No, I’m talking about complex sentences right now, ask me after lunch. Guys, I’ve had thirty of you in my room at all times, there has been no opportunity to watch a 2 ½ minute movie trailer, ask me after lunch.
Finally, when my lunch break started and my room was empty of students, I pulled up YouTube on the big Promethean board in the front of class. I did a search, but it wasn’t hard – it was already close to 12 million views at that point. I hit play and I stepped back.
Pictured: My classroom at 12:02 PM, Dec. 19, 2024.
And over an ice-covered waste, I heard an electric guitar begin to strum a beautifully triumphant melody.
And somehow, things were…better.
Superman matters.
Fiction matters, if I’m being completely clear. It’s stupid and dismissive to say that something is “just” a story, because stories are our entire culture. They’re our history, they’re our religions, they’re where our heroes are built, whether those heroes are sports figures or survivalists or children sent to our planet from a dying world. And it doesn’t take too long for anyone who meets me to discover that, of these stories, Superman is my favorite. I waited for ages for the first glimpse of James Gunn’s new vision of the Man of Steel, and that trailer hit every fiber of my heart just when I needed it most. Somehow, after watching it, I looked at my problems with greater perspective. The darkness surrounding me was lifting. I felt – as cheesy as it may seem – I felt hope. There had been so much talk of whether the guy who made Guardians of the Galaxy could possibly touch the right chords for Superman, but…this trailer eradicated any fears I may have had.
I think it’s the trunks. Corenswet insisted on the trunks, did you know that?
A lot of people are dismissive of Superman. “He’s too powerful,” they say. “He’s boring.” But you see, it’s not the fact of his power that makes him interesting. Superman has the power to rule the world, but instead chooses to use it to SAVE the world. That’s what makes him a fascinating character. What kind of man, if given the opportunity that Clark Kent was given, would use it altruistically? How do you make that character believable or relatable?
“He’s too old-fashioned,” the detractors say. “He’s too corny.” But again, isn’t that sort of the point? Superman is a relic of a time when people believed in one another and had faith that, in the end, good wins out. It’s true that this is a sentiment that much of the world has turned against, but that just means that we need a Superman now more than ever.
It’s heartening to me to know that I’m not alone in this opinion. Within 48 hours of the trailer’s release on YouTube it had become the fourth most-watched trailer ever, and is currently the most-watched trailer in Warner Bros. history…and it’s worth noting that the three trailers ahead of it are the last two Avengers movies and Spider-Man: No Way Home, each of which has been gathering views for at least half a decade now. And IMBD announced this week that, according to its user survey,Superman is the most-anticipated movie of 2025. I don’t know if it’s because everyone, like me, was charged up by this trailer or if it’s just the goodwill carrying over from James Gunn’s previous movies, but I don’t care. People want to see this movie. And watching the trailer for the 37th time, as I did while writing this, it’s not hard to see why.
The trailer shows a Superman broken and beaten, calling for help…and when that help arrives, it comes in the form of his dog, Krypto. James Gunn has the guts to pull out the old “man’s best friend” trope for this movie. There’s an inherent goodness in that idea – even people who have completely given up on the human race will usually admit that dogs are, on the whole, a lot of Very Good Boys. How can you dislike anyone whose dog loves him that much?
Tell me that’s not the face of a Good Boy.
We also see, in the trailer, Superman shielding a little girl from a monster’s attack. He is a protector. We see a child in what appears to be a warzone raise a flag bearing the S-shield and whispering Superman’s name – because he believes.
This kid believes in Superman. EVERYBODY should believe in Superman, because SUPERMAN WOULD BELIEVE IN YOU.
This is the important thing about Superman, the thing that the people who call him boring and old-fashioned will never understand. The question, remember, is what kind of person would use the power of a god only to HELP people, and the answer to that question is “someone who BELIEVES in people.” That’s who Superman is, more than anything else: he’s someone who believes the absolute best of EVERYBODY.
And the wild thing is, HE MEANS IT.
He believes that even his worst enemy is never beyond redemption, that there is a spark of good even in the darkest soul, if only it can be fanned into a flame. When Superman fights Lex Luthor, he doesn’t react out of anger at his enemy, but instead he mourns the fact that such a brilliant mind has chosen to waste its potential on evil. He hopes every single time that someday Lex will see the light – and on more than one occasion Lex Luthor, however reluctantly, has shown that Superman is right about him. There IS good in there, buried deep. Lex has, in desperate times, used his intellect to save the world, and even if that good is just because he wants to prove that he’s better than Superman, he still has done it, and that keeps Superman’s hope alive.
I’m sure, of course, that people who choose to look hard enough can find stories that contradict my view of the character. Quentin Tarantino sure did. But that’s kind of symptomatic of having a character that has been continually published for 87 years. Of COURSE there will be different interpretations, and not all of them will be good. I’m talking about MY Superman, though, the versions of the character that mean something to ME, the ones that I turn to when I have those days where it feels like nothing will go right and the universe itself is conspiring against me and I need to remind itself that it’s not.
And so, thanks to James Gunn, I’ve decided that I’m going to make 2025 my Year of Superman.
What does that mean? Glad you asked – here’s what’s going to happen.
For the next year, I’m going to make an effort to read, watch, or listen to something Superman-related every single day. I might not make it – I know how I get, and there are some days where I might slip up or forget, but should that happen I resolve not to beat myself up about it, because I know that Superman wouldn’t. But I’m going to TRY.
What exactly does that entail, though? Well, obviously that means comic books, movies, or TV shows featuring Superman. Either his own stories, stories where he makes a guest-appearance, stories where he serves as a member of the Justice League or Legion of Super-Heroes – any of those will count. I read the new Superman comics as they are published, and I’m going to go back this year and revisit some of my favorite stories of the past, including (but by no means limited to) things like “For the Man Who Has Everything,” “Time and Time Again,” “Panic in the Sky,” and the Death and Return of Superman saga. I’ll go back and revisit the stories that reportedly influenced James Gunn’s version of Superman, such as the graphic novels All-Star Superman and Superman For All Seasons. I will also include comics and graphic novels featuring other members of the Superman family, such as Superboy, Supergirl, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Steel. And although it’s looking forward an entire year, I’m planning to close 2025 by reading what I consider to be the perfect “final” Superman story, Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s seminal graphic novel Kingdom Come.
This is a good start.
I’m going to watch Superman movies and TV shows. The Christopher Reeve movies, of course, but I’ll also watch the Brandon Routh film, the Henry Cavill movies, the Fleischer animated shorts, and the DC animated films. I’ll go back to the original movie serial starring Kirk Alyn, the first ever Superman on film. And I’ll try to visit all of the TV versions of Superman as well – George Reeves, Gerard Christopher & John Newton’s Superboy series, Dean Cain, Tom Welling, and Tyler Hoechlin. I certainly won’t have time to binge all of those shows, but I’ll try to watch at least a little of each – and I WILL spend this year finally finishing the Superman and Lois series.
I feel like this picture needs more spit-curls.
And books, of course. There are novels about Superman, some written by comic luminaries like Elliot S. Maggin and Roger Stern, others written by writers who would be less-familiar to comic book readers. I’ll work as many of them into my reading rotation as possible.
But that’s not all. I’m not only going to explore media starring Superman. I’ll also delve into things ABOUT Superman: books like Superman and Philosophy, Grant Morrison’s Supergods, or the recent Christopher Reeve documentary. I’ll listen to podcasts about Superman, such as my pal Michael Bailey’s “It All Comes Back to Superman.” I’ll read about Superman’s history and influence.
And I’m going one step further: I’ll also include those stories that are influences ON Superman. For example, I’ve already begun reading Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel Gladiator, about a young man whose scientist father experiments on him, giving him remarkable strength and speed and then urging the boy to use his powers for good. Is there any wonder that many people believe Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had this in mind when they created the man of steel? And in the comics, Clark Kent has told Lois Lane that his favorite movie is To Kill a Mockingbird, so I’m going to throw that movie into my Year of Superman rotation, as well as the original novel, to see where the DNA of Harper Lee’s work has intertwined with that of Siegel and Shuster. I’ll look for more such examples as the year goes on, and I’ll certainly welcome suggestions.
You put these two together and you basically get Superman.
I’ll keep a daily journal of what Superman media I enjoyed that day, and each week I’ll write a quick wrap-up of that week in my Year of Superman, telling you what I read or watched and what some of the best “Superman moments” in that week were. Don’t worry, I’ll make that a separate post from the usual Geek Punditry, so those of you who aren’t interested will still have other, non-Super babbling from me as well. It’ll probably be on Wednesdays, since that’s when the year began this time around. Each week I’ll tell you what I watched or read, with whatever notes or thoughts feel appropriate.
Thoughts like, “I KNOW I have two dozen Superman shirts, but I don’t have THAT one.”
And of course, the centerpiece of this whole experiment will come on July 11th, when the new Superman movie comes out. I’m excited to see it, of course. I think that much is abundantly clear. But perhaps even more importantly, I want to take my son Eddie to see the movie with me. I want him to understand how much this means to me. And while I don’t want to ever force him to be into the things I’m into, I still want to share them with him. But he’s seven, he’s on the spectrum, and he’s never sat still for a “grownup” movie before. I don’t know for sure if he’ll even want to see it.
On Dec. 19, after I picked him up from school, I brought him home and we sat together and watched the trailer on YouTube, then I looked at him and said, “Do you want to see that movie next summer?” He said, “Yes,” but he says “yes” to virtually everything. Sometimes I think he does it just because he thinks if he agrees we’ll leave him alone and he can go back to watching videos of failed field goal attempts, which is his most recent obsession.
But then, a few days after Christmas, my wife and I brought him to the movies to watch Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Until now, all of the movies he’s seen in the theater have been pure cartoons, and while there’s still an awful lot of animated content in Sonic, this is still the first time he watched anything in a theater with a significant amount of live-action. I considered this a test run. The lights dimmed and the trailers started. And after trailers for Dog Man and other such kiddie fare, the screen shifted to an empty arctic landscape that looked remarkably familiar. And I heard those strums of an electric guitar.
And then there was a little hand grabbing my arm. Eddie looked up at me, a huge smile on his face and excitement in his eyes, and he whispered, “Superman.”
The year is off to a pretty good start.
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 believes that this experiment will ultimately be far more successful than the previously-suggested “Year of the Toxic Avenger.”
Blake M. Petit 