Early in 2024, when DC and Marvel Comics announced that they were overcoming years of – let’s be frank – hostility with one another to release a pair of omnibus editions of their various crossovers from years past, I was excited. Not only that, but I was hopeful that this would lead to further collaborations between the two of them. Earlier this year, that hope was justified when the publishers released their first new crossover in almost 20 years, a pair of books teaming up Batman and Deadpool. Not only that, but each of those books would have several back-up stories featuring other team-ups, such as Green Lantern/Rocket Raccoon, Captain America/Wonder Woman, and Krypto the Superdog/Jeff the Land Shark. And it was nice.
Nice.
And then stuff started happening.
At first, it was stuff that wasn’t too difficult to see as an expansion of this new era of cooperation. Both Marvel and DC have been in the business of publishing “facsimile editions” of classic comics for a few years now – key issues reprinted in their entirety, including the original advertisements, letter columns, and other features that we don’t usually see when a story is reprinted elsewhere. In this spirit, they announced facsimile editions of the original Spider-Boy one-shot from the classic Amalgam Comics event, with a character that mashed up Spider-Man and Superboy (the Conner Kent version) into one hero. This is going to be followed by a facsimile edition of the first-ever meeting between Marvel and DC characters, 1976’s Superman Vs. the Amazing Spider-Man. And then the big magilla – although still not technically anything shocking – they announced that the two Batman/Deadpool comics would be followed some time in 2026 with two new Superman/Spider-Man events.
Awesome sauce, right?
But it didn’t end there, either.
Last week, totally out of the blue, subscribers to the Marvel Universe app (such as myself) got an email announcing a brand-new digital-only comic book…a crossover between Thor and Shazam! Not only that, but it was written by Al Ewing, who has been helming major books for both Marvel and DC for the past few years, including Thor’s ongoing series and DC’s Absolute Green Lantern, among others. Only minutes later, subscribers to the DC Infinity app (such as myself) ALSO got an e-mail, this time announcing a surprise digital crossover starring the Flash and the Fantastic Four, written by former Flash and current Green Lantern and Aquaman writer Jeremy Adams. Both of them were fun reads, totally unexpected, and available for free even if you didn’t have a subscription to the app.
It was like Christmas in November! Or, like every store in North America calls it, “Late Christmas.”
“What a nice surprise,” I thought to myself. It’s really rare that a comic book publisher these days would even change the color of Spider-Gwen’s shoelaces without putting out a press release about it, so a pair of totally unexpected crossovers was a delightful treat.
Then it really started to get weird.
Because the day after the crossovers dropped, Marvel and DC each sent out ANOTHER email. Marvel’s was a code for their subscribers to get a free 30-day trial of DC Infinity. And DC’s email? You guessed it – a code for 30 free days of Hello Fresh.
No, just kidding. Of course, it was a code for a free trial of the Marvel app. And at this point, I started to get uneasy. You see, Marvel and DC have historically been the two biggest competitors in the comic book game. And while there have always been creators who moved freely between the companies, working for one and then the other or even (such as is the case with Ewing) working for them both at the same time, the higher-ups have had a kind of bitter antagonism for the past few decades. Both Marvel and DC have undergone regime changes since the harshest days of the feud, though, and even the Omnibus editions were evidence that the temperature between them has cooled. Even so, seeing them shamelessly promoting each other is…unsettling. Imagine, for example, that you grew up in a household where your parents were fighting all of the time, and then suddenly without warning, the fighting just STOPPED. In some ways, the quiet would be even more disturbing than the fight.
That’s where comic book fans are at the moment. We’ve gone from “Isn’t it nice that Mom and Dad are being friendly again?” all the way around to “What in the HELL is going on?”
Because maybe it’s just me and the basic state of paranoia that exists hardwired right into my brain, but it feels like there’s more happening behind the scenes than the fans are being made aware of. And sure, it could just be more crossovers like Batman/Deadpool or Superman/Spider-Man. Maybe it will become a new annual event. Maybe even more than annual.
Or maybe it’s something else.
This is the only reasonable reaction.
The good thing is that I talk to a lot of comic nerds (shout out to my homies in the best Comic Book Collecting group on Facebook) so I know I’m not the ONLY one who feels this way. A few people have speculated that one of the publishers, or their parent companies, is considering buying the other one. I don’t really think this is the case, and I sincerely HOPE it isn’t, and for a few reasons. First, I think competition is healthy – putting the two biggest brands under a single umbrella would undercut that dramatically. Also, the odds of Warner Bros purchasing Marvel from Disney – one of Disney’s major cash cows, in a time when Warner Bros itself is on the market for a new owner – is virtually nonexistent. The possibility of the WB selling DC to Disney, on the other hand, feels more plausible, but that would be bad because…I’m going to be frank here…DC is crushing it right now. The comic book line’s sales and critical response are up and the movie and TV production is firing on all cylinders, despite what that one jackass who writes for “Cosmic Book News” is desperately trying to convince people. Handing that brand over to Disney and Marvel – whose works, let’s face it, have kind of been declining the last few years – would not be optimal for anybody.
Seriously, compared to “Cosmic Book News,” this thing is the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Another possibility, one that I would be far more open to, would be some sort of distribution partnership. Much has been made about the chaos behind the scenes of the comic book world with the slow death of Diamond Distribution this year, and seeing Marvel and DC cooperate on a new distribution venture would be not be out of the question and, frankly, would probably be a net benefit for the comic shops, although smaller publishers would justifiably be concerned about the two juggernauts creating a new distribution juggernaut before we’ve even buried the ashes of the old one. There’s also the possibility of the Marvel and DC apps perhaps being offered in a subscription bundle, not unlike many TV and movie streamers these days. As someone who has subscribed to both for quite some time, I wouldn’t hate that.
But what if it’s something else? What if the big thing they’re working on isn’t anything behind-the-scenes, but in the content? DC Studios boss James Gunn – whose rise to prominence came from helming the Guardians of the Galaxy movies for Marvel – has spoken more than once about liking the idea of some sort of crossover movie between the two, and Marvel head Kevin Feige has shown effusive support for Gunn himself.
You might even call this photo the smoking GUNN. Get it? GET IT?
And with both studios embracing the multiverse concept, it wouldn’t be that difficult from a story perspective. Can you imagine David Corenswet and Tom Holland in a Superman/Spider-Man movie? They would sell so many tickets that they’d have to bring in a third crossover character, such as the Count from Sesame Street, to keep track of them all.
BUT – and I hate to put a damper on things – Gunn’s DC Universe consists of exactly one movie and two seasons of television so far. There’s more on the horizon, of course – the Lanterns TV series and the Supergirl and Clayface movies are all on the schedule for 2026 – but I feel like Gunn probably needs more time to really establish his DCU before any sort of crossover becomes a real possibility.
The comics, on the other hand, are already well established. And they’ve played the crossover game many times before. But what if this time it was more than just this guy meets that guy? There have been larger crossovers in the past. DC Vs. Marvel not only pitted their entire universes against each other, but also included the Amalgam mashups. JLA/Avengers, famously, featured every character who had ever been a member of either team (at the time – if they did that these days the ways the rosters have expanded they would need another 16 issues). But these crossovers have almost NEVER been addressed in-canon. There have been only two exceptions that I’m aware of, both from DC. First was a random issue of Green Lantern that had a cameo by Access – a character introduced in DC Vs. Marvel with the power to move between the two universes – which happened to be written by Access’s co-creator Ro Marz. Second, an “egg” holding an embryonic universe that was created in JLA/Avengers later became a McGuffin in a JLA storyline written by that crossover’s writer, Kurt Busiek. References to the “other” universe have always been oblique outside of the crossovers themselves, which is understandable due to things like copyright and reprint considerations.
But what if they could get past all that and tell a story that REALLY impacts the two worlds?
They’ve wanted to do it for some time. In the 80s and 90s, there were infrequent appearances in the Marvel universe of a guy in a suit and glasses named “Clark,” always just for a panel or two, but a definite wink at the camera. Other Marvel multiverse storylines have often made vague references to the DC characters as well. DC has also played that game. In his Hawkman series, Robert Venditti heavily explored the fact that Hawkman is a character who has been reincarnated for thousands of years, not only on Earth but on other worlds such as Krypton. But he also dropped hints that some of Hawkman’s reincarnates may have included certain Marvel characters with “Hawk” in their name, such as Starhawk of the original Guardians of the Galaxy.
This is from an issue of Thor. Can you believe he’s using GLASSES as a disguise? What a dork.
Then there’s the big enchilada, Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s Doomsday Clock, the series which brought the world of Watchmen into direct conflict with the DC Universe. In that story Dr. Manhattan, who lives outside of linear time and can see the past, present, and future as if it’s all happening now, looked ahead to an event he called the “Secret Crisis” happening in 2030. In that crisis, he foresaw Superman fighting Thor (as a character from Norse mythology, anyone is allowed to use the name “Thor” without a copyright issue, so long as they don’t have a picture of the Marvel version of the character), as well as a “green behemoth” who would sacrifice his own life to save Superman, a clear reference to the Hulk. By the way, the Hulk’s comic book, at the moment, is written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, who is currently writing a miniseries at DC Comics about a character bouncing around in time…dang it, who is that again? Oh yeah…it’s Superman. In fact, the book is called Adventures of Superman: House of El, and it’s tying off plot threads leftover from Johnson’s run on the main Superman comics from a few years ago.
It’s prophecy, people!
Now Dr. M told us that the Secret Crisis would happen in 2030 and I don’t know that they would be making plans today for an event that wouldn’t see publication for another five years, but one of the major reveals of Doomsday Clock was an explanation of the elastic nature of time in the DC Universe, so skirting the exact date wouldn’t really be a problem. And both Marvel and DC are currently playing with the multiverse in various stories. So…y’know.
All of this, of course, is circumstantial evidence. None of it would hold up in court. But as far as pure speculation goes, I find it all AWFULLY interesting. Would it be possible, in this new spirit of cooperation between the two publishers, for them to go forth with a story that actually brings the two universes together in a way that is indisputably canonical? To tell a story that has actual weight and impact on the heroes of two worlds going forward? Would they actually kill the Hulk to save Superman? (I know they won’t kill the Hulk PERMANENTLY, this is comic book spiritualism, where Heaven is easier to escape than a prison in New Orleans. But that’s not the point.)
Ongoing comic books, especially the “Big Two,” exist in a state of what some writers call a “perpetual second act.” What that means is that although there are ongoing stories and things can change, at some point or another there’ll be another reset, because corporate characters like Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, or the X-Men are too valuable to ever take off the table. If the characters were allowed to truly have a “third act,” that would be the END of their story, and nobody REALLY wants that. With that mindset, is there any reason that the next “second act” couldn’t be a story that involves the two largest mythologies in American culture coming together for an event that would have lasting repercussions for them both? It’s worth noting that the original plans for DC Vs. Marvel included having She-Hulk and the Martian Manhunter stranded in each other’s universe for about a year after the crossover ended, but the lawyers at the time told them not to do it. A character swap right now sounds somewhat less impossible.
Is this what Marvel and DC are planning? Are they doing it right under our noses? Is the call coming from inside the house?
Maybe not.
But it’s sure a lot of fun to think about.
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. His own “permanent second act” involves a constant reset of where his son hid the remote control after watching YouTube.
As the chill finally returns to the air down here in southern Louisiana, I can feel the end of the year approaching. The last three months are always my favorite time of the year, although in this case they’re a little bittersweet. Spending this year with Superman has been fun for me, giving me something to look forward to…and while I have to admit I’m looking forward to finishing off the daily requirement, I also know I’m going to miss it. I’m thinking of ways to continue this blog without the daily stipulation into 2026 – no decisions yet, but there are things in my head.
At any rate, there are still a handful of themes I’ve got left that I want to do, but those are all anchored to specific times in one way or another, and none of them are this week. So get ready for another seven random days in the Year of Superman blog.
Notes: We’re going to start this week by looking at my list of stories that I wanted to hit this year at one point or another, but that didn’t fit into any particular theme. And if you’re not wise to the behind-the-scenes chaos that led to the writing of Superman #276, it seems as random as they come. Most comic book fans know the story behind the original Captain Marvel: originally published by Fawcett Comics, he was a smash hit and outsold pretty much every comic on the stands, including Superman at times. National Publications (the company that would later rebrand as DC) sued Fawcett, claiming Captain Marvel infringed on the Superman copyright due to the similarity in their appearance and powers. The case dragged on in court for years, until the post-World War II-era, in which superhero comics fell out of favor. Eventually, Fawcett settled the case, no longer making enough profit from the comics to continue to fight. Years later, DC would eventually license, then outright buy the characters from the Fawcett catalogue and bring them back to comics.
In 1974, DC Comics had been publishing Shazam! for over a year. His own title was set on “Earth-S,” home to the original Fawcett heroes, and although the multiverse was already very much in play at DC, for some reason editorial was wary of having him actually interact with the heroes of the DC Universe. Writer Elliot S! Maggin’s solution was this issue, “Make Way For Captain Thunder!” Using an early, rejected name for Captain Marvel, Maggin has Superman encounter a young boy – Willy Fawcett – who appears in the streets of Metropolis one day. Willie seems out of time, with a haircut that was popular 20 years earlier and expecting to pay a nickel for 35-cent bus fare. And the big clue that something isn’t kosher: he’s never heard of Superman before. Willie sees a helicopter about to rob an armored car, so he rubs his “magic belt buckle” and says the magic word “Thunder!” With a bolt of lightning (and the amusing sound effect “sha-boom!”) he transforms into…well, not Captain Marvel, but somebody who looks a hell of a lot like him.
As Captain Thunder swoops in to stop the robbery, something takes hold of his mind and, instead, he aids the crooks in stealing not only the contents, but the entire armored car. Superman comes in to save the car and Thunder turns back into Willie, who cannot remember anything that happened since his transformation. He decides to turn to Superman for help, and looks up his most famous “friend,” Clark Kent. (The notion that even a child from an alternate dimension can learn that Clark and Superman are pals within a few hours is perhaps the greatest strain on the credulity of Superman’s secret identity, by the way.) Willie tells Clark his origin – how, on a campout with his orphanage, he was summoned by an owl to follow it to a cave in the woods. There he encountered an ancient Native American medicine man, who bestowed on him the magic belt that would give him seven spiritual abilities: the power of a Tornado, the speed of a Hare, the bravery of Uncas, the wisdom of Nature, the toughness of Diamond, the flight of an Eagle, and the tenacity of a Ram!
Note to Maggin: If the editor needs to drop in a footnote explaining that Uncas was a warrior chief, you know that you’ve maybe stretched this bit to its limits.
Anyhoo, Willie became Captain Thunder, and – in my favorite page in the book – recounts his final battle with the Monster League of Evil, which was made of up, I kid you not, the Universal Monsters. The battle took place in a series of other dimensions (1953 of them, to be exact), but evidently, when Willie tried to get home he wound up on the wrong Earth, where he comes to understand that the League did something to Captain Thunder, making him turn evil when he transforms. Clark – an alien from another planet who hangs out with an Amazonian goddess and a guy from Mars and who routinely fights cyborgs and has traveled through time on countless occasions and more than once met an exact duplicate of himself from a world he calls Earth-2 – comes to the obvious conclusion that Willie is delusional.
Somehow THIS is the part that strained credulity.
Clarks recruit Lois to help him bring Willie to the police station for help, but another robbery summons his attention. He ducks away and becomes Superman, as Willie turns into his own alter-ego. But once again, as if he’s forgotten that he’ll turn evil, Captain Thunder turns evil. The crooks escape as Superman and Thunder battle it out in the skies over Metropolis. Superman manages to trick Thunder into turning back into Willie, because somehow he suddenly believes his story, and then holds him in a wrestling grip and tells Willie to change back, where he’ll somehow force Thunder to use his wisdom to overcome the Monster League’s brainwashing. There is absolutely no reason that this should work, but somehow it does, and Thunder furthermore figures out how to use his magic to return to his native dimension.
This is one of those stories that I like not in spite of how ridiculous it is, but BECAUSE of it. Details aside, there’s virtually no difference between Billy/Captain Marvel and Willie/Captain Thunder. If someone were to redraw his costume and the origin pages, it would fit perfectly as the first meeting between Big Blue and the Big Red Cheese. The incongruities also have a weird charm to it. The notion that Clark questions Willie’s story is laughable, the idea that he comes around so easily is absurd. The fight is…well, it’s an awful lot of fun. And I won’t lie, I would love to see the history of Captain Thunder’s battles against the likes of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Lon Chaney Jr.
There were so many different one-off universes that peppered DC Comics in the years before the original Crisis. I kinda wish we could visit some of them again.
Thur., Nov. 13
Comics: Superman Vs. Lobo #1-3, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #19, Justice League of America #40
Notes: Today I’ve selected the three-issue Superman Vs. Lobo miniseries from 2021, written by Tim Seely and Sarah Beattie with art by Mirka Andolfo. Why? Because just like when they published this miniseries, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
That sounds snarkier than I intended. This isn’t a bad series, not at all, but it’s part of the ill-defined “Black Label” imprint at DC. When it was first announced, “Black Label” was supposed to be a more “mature readers’” imprint featuring the DC characters. Then it started to publish comics that were creator-owned and had nothing to do with the DCU Universe. Then they folded the Vertigo imprint and made those properties Black Label books. Then they brought BACK the Vertigo Imprint and moved some of the Black Label originals over there. And all the while, they were reprinting some books under Black Label that didn’t make any sense at all – such as Kingdom Come – while also publishing a few new properties that didn’t really have any content that marked them as “mature readers,” such The Last Days of Lex Luthor, which would probably be best as an Elseworlds. Then they brought back Elseworlds. What I’m getting at is, I’m not entirely certain what Black Label is supposed to be and, based on all available evidence, neither is DC Comics.
None of that, however, is the fault of the creative team of this miniseries, nor does that make it a bad story. The story kicks off with the Martian Manhunter sending Superman out into space to check on a space station that’s been damaged near the orbit of Jupiter, with astronauts in grave peril. As he’s saving them, everyone’s favorite Main Man Lobo has a vacation ruined when the resort planet he’s on is attacked by a kaiju-sized monster that turns out to be a microscopic tardigrade which has somehow been blown up to gargantuan proportions. He also meets “biologist and wildlife photography” Dr. Semedea Flik, who is an expert on single survivors of extinct species, and therefore is delighted to meet Lobo, who famously murdered his entire planet of Czarnia. Lobo, of course, doesn’t care about the destruction his fight with the tardigrade is causing, but Superman happens to be passing by in space and dives in to save both the creature and the people endangered by its rampage. Lobo, of course, sees Superman as a killjoy, ruining the fun of his fight, but Flik is thrilled to meet TWO “sole survivors” in one day. (Unless you count Supergirl or the Kandorians or Lobo’s daughter or…) When the news coverage of the fight starts painting Superman as a hero, Lobo is furious and decides to “ruin” him.
Lobo comes to Earth and gets on LexTube to begin slandering Superman. Lois (with a little help from Batman) begins a counter-offensive against Lobo online, and the vitriol online begins to fuel an army of robots that the Toyman created to prove that social media is toxic. (I guess even Winslow Schott can’t be wrong all the time.) Superman combats it by urging people to get online and post positive things and – this is far less realistic than the tardigrade kaiju – they actually start to do it. Speaking of the tardigrade, it comes to Earth, only much smaller and now demonstrating extreme intelligence. Its name, it says, is Numen, and like Superman and Lobo is the last survivor of his homeworld. Flik is THRILLED. Feeling a kinship to the two of them, Numen decides to use his vast power to give them a gift: restore and send them back to their homeworlds, but he makes a little boo-boo. On the last page, Superman finds himself on Czarnia and Lobo on Krypton.
Issue two kicks off with the Justice League searching for the missing Superman, with J’onn discovering that Krypton has somehow been restored and Green Lantern learning that Czarnia’s extinct population has come back. Numen, in a scene as funny as it is creepy, has learned that people on Earth communicate via “tweeting,” so it makes all the birds in the world explain to people that he sent Superman and Lobo back to their home planets. Of course, he’s wrong. On Czarnia, Superman – whose powers are dying under the planet’s red-tinted sun – learns that most of the population seems kind and pleasant, and Lobo was an anomaly. On Krypton, Lobo is frustrated at how “lame” the place is, but changes his tune when he realizes that there’s a sect of Kryptonians who blame their cold, sterile ways for the planet’s destruction and have decided to revert to a culture of hedonism and debauchery, his two favorite things. Flik has technology that allows her to bounce between worlds, viewing a civil war slowly brewing on Krypton between Lobo’s wild friends and the traditionalists, while Superman starts to find evidence that the Czarnians aren’t actually as nice as they pretend to be, with a deep paranoia and distrust underlying their apparent sweetness.
Lobo’s Kryptonian pals decide to expand the influence of Krypton into space, and begin by cloning an army of Lobos and sending it to Czarnia to start the genocide all over again. Superman, meanwhile, discovers that the kindly woman he’s been staying with has been leeching his blood and his powers, and manages to reverse the cell drain after she’s killed by one of the clones. As Lobo returns to Czarnia to kill his clones – and everybody else all over again – only to learn that the resurrection has turned many of them as bloodthirsty as he is. Superman makes it to Krypton and finds his parents, but is horrified to learn that Jor-El planted a killer parasite into the Lobo clones, which are still living beings. Flick finds Numen and convinces him that he’s screwed up by bringing back the dead worlds, and Numen collapses in self-pity. He removes the two worlds, but not before Jor-El tells his son how proud he is that he became a man of compassion, even for those who despise him. Flik then tells Superman and Lobo that she’s studied Numen and discovered that there are people seeking out Numen, whose birth destroyed their entire universe…Union! Zealot! Maul! Helspont! And the almost-Superman himself, Mr. Majestic! Some of the most powerful characters from the Wildstorm Universe!
Not that they CALLED it “the Wildstorm Universe” in the text, mind you, but it was still a hell of a surprise. Also a nice reminder that most Black Label comics are non-canonical. The Wildstorm heroes had been firmly integrated into the DCU at this point, so I guess that means we’re looking at two different worlds in the vast multiverse right now. I’m okay with that.
In the third issue, Flik tells us Numen’s origin. He’s part of a species that feeds on the fundamental forces of reality. When one of them is born, they consume an entire universe in order to survive. Flik begs Superman and Lobo to help her protect Numen from the “Revenge Squad” that’s after him. Superman agrees because he’s Superman, Lobo agrees because Flik agrees to pay him, and the fighting starts. While Lobo tears through half the team, Majestic and Zealot team up against Superman. In the heat of battle, Superman concedes that Majestic is more powerful than he is, but that’s not going to stop him from fighting to defend Numen with his last breath. Proving that he is, perhaps, more like Superman than he thought, Majestic is moved to put down his arms and talk. Lobo double-crosses Flik, though, setting up Numen to be killed and taking her technology and Numen’s energy to create a new universe where he’s the hero and Superman went mad after the murder of Jimmy Olsen. Lois, though, in a wonderful bit of meta-commentary, quickly figures out that the new universe they’re in is full of bad stereotypes and tropes, like so many “evil Superman” stories we’ve read, and concludes that they’re trapped in a “badly written story authored by an edgelord.” Lobo takes that personally and a battle ensues, but to everyone’s shock, he breaks down with the realization that he’s wasted the power he stole to rewrite the universe just so people would love him instead of thinking, “Maybe…I shoulda just not been a giant piece of $#*.” He expends the energy restoring the universe and integrating the orphaned Wildstorm heroes into it (so maybe it IS canonical?).
The series works on a few levels. It’s satirical, but pointedly so. First of all, it’s a bit of a deconstruction of Lobo himself. Created in the 80s as a PARODY of over-the-top, violent characters like the Punisher, his runaway popularity instead made him the poster boy, despite the fact that he exists only to exhibit all of their worst characteristics. This comic doesn’t flinch from that, reminding us over and over again that he’s a scuzzball who does not deserve admiration. The best line in the series, for example, is Superman calling Lobo “the worst person I’ve ever met, and I regularly have to spend time with Lex Luthor.” The second best, though, is directed at Lobo himself: “You think everyone is as terrible as you, and that makes you the loneliest man I’ve ever met.” Yes, Superman pities even Lobo. And all of this helps build towards a mild sort of redemption for the character in the end. He doesn’t ATONE for his awfulness, but at the very least he grows enough that he can recognize it and admit it, which – considering the place that he starts from – is not inconsiderable.
The other element of satire is pointed at the media and social media, how it tries to manipulate the narrative and how we’ve taken a piece of technology that should have brought everybody together and created greater understanding of us all and instead have decided to use it to be nasty to each other and create little echo chambers where we can sit in a virtual room and pretend that everybody who isn’t in the chamber with us is stupid and evil. It may sound a little hypocritical of me to talk this way about social media – I obviously use it all the time – but in my defense I do my best to keep my interactions online positive. I talk about the things I love, I try to steer clear of railing against things that I hate, because seriously, who needs to hear that? Even this whole “year of Superman” project is dedicated to that purpose, to me devoting 365 days to something that means something powerful and wonderful to me.
I’m not saying that everyone should use social media exactly the way that I do, I’m just saying that the world might not seem quite as terrible if they did.
Lobo included.
Fri., Nov. 14
Comic: Superman Vol. 4 #12-13,Aquaman Vol. 5 #53 (Guest appearance), Justice League of America #41-42, Adventure Comics #267
Notes: Although it wasn’t my original intention, after two days of comics that amounted to “Superman Vs. another hero,” it seems as though the universe has chosen a theme for this week for me. Who am I to argue? So today I decided to seek out another such story, landing on the two-part “Super Monster” from the Rebirth era, written by Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason with art by Doug Mahnke. In this, Superman faces off against Frankenstein. Not the kind we saw in Halloween week, though, but the actual Frankenstein’s monster, who in the modern DC Universe has taken the name “Eric Frankenstein” and joined the supernatural spy agency S.H.A.D.E. The story starts with Lois meeting a friend of hers named Candice, editor of the Hamilton Horn newspaper, who is trying to lure her away from the Planet (she had recently returned at this point – long story) only for Frankenstein to interrupt the interview and attack the editor, claiming he’s been chasing her for some time. Lois blasts Frankenstein with a weapon she’d recently “borrowed” from Batman and she and Candice flee. Superman, naturally, arrives to defend his wife, and he and Frankenstein get into it. The creature manages to get his hands on Candice and rips her face off, revealing an alien beneath.
In the second issue, Frankenstein explains that “Candice” is really a war criminal named Kroog who has been fleeing justice from several planets. Superman is glad to have captured a criminal, but admonishes Frankenstein for going after him in a way that caused destruction and potential injury to innocent people. Before they can take Kroog away, though, Frankenstein’s estranged Bride shows up. No longer with S.H.A.D.E., the Bride is now a bounty hunter and has come to take Kroog and collect the money for his head. In the scuffle over who’s going to bring Kroog in, the alien escapes. Superman has to break up the squabbling exes and together they track the alien down to bring him to justice.
The real meat of this two-parter comes towards the end of the second part. After Frankenstein and the Bride fight each other, there’s a short sequence where Lois asks the Bride about what happened to drive them apart. The answer is horrific – they had a son who became a monster (like, spiritually) and the Bride was forced to kill him to save the lives of innocents. From here we start to extrapolate that their divide is not actually based on hatred or even a lack of love between the two of them, but on the pain of their loss. As this was the era where Jon Kent was still a child, and still a relatively new addition to the Superman mythos, the story hits both Lois and the reader hard. The story ends with a quiet, wordless few pages of Lois and Clark returning home, tucking their son into bed, and giving him a goodnight kiss.
If you’re a parent, you get why this hits so hard. If you’re not, I’m not sure if I can explain it to you.
Notes: Once I realized I had accidentally stumbled into a theme, I got on the DC Universe app and just starting randomly seeking out different stories about Superman – for whatever convoluted reason – coming to blows with other heroes, because why not? That reminded me of these early comics in which Superman faces off against his future JLA teammate Booster Gold. In Booster Gold #7 from 1986, Dan Jurgens had his time-travelling hero encounter the man of steel for the first time. A year later, John Byrne and Jurgens collaborated on a two-part story that crossed over with Action Comics.
Booster Gold #7 begins with Booster, Superman, and a few hangers-on having just been abducted by an alien warlord called Galeb who is accusing them of treason, despite the fact that they don’t even know who he is. Galeb accuses them of conspiring with Ranzee, an alien who claimed to be marooned on Earth. They try to fight their way out, but Galeb’s wife – a self-proclaimed mystic – sends out a burst of mental energy that knocks all of them out, even Superman, because magic. They awaken in prison, and Ranzee tells them of how Galeb has ruled his people as a tyrant for years, leading him to steal a spaceship and go to Earth to ask the legendary Superman for help after Galeb personally tortured and murdered his wife and child. Booster wants to jump right in and take Galeb out, but the more experienced Superman cautions him about jumping into a political situation without all of the information. Galeb comes to their cell and says that he is willing to release everyone but Ranzee, who is to be executed. When Booster tries to attack, Superman steps in to stop him and the two come to blows. Superman holds back, hoping to cool Booster off, but Booster just keeps going. Eventually, Skeets shorts out Booster’s suit to stop the fight. Skeets has been investigating and learned that Ranzee lied to them – he is actually Galeb’s stepbrother and has been attempting to overthrow Galeb for years. Superman takes Booster back to Earth with his tail between his legs, arriving home at the same time as Lois Lane, who came by to interview Metropolis’s newest hero. Superman flies off, not at all impressed at his new rival.
This story, it should be noted, was published in the midst of Crisis on Infinite Earths and technically features the pre-Crisis Superman, although there is little to differentiate him from the character that would soon appear in the Byrne reboot. But it’s really interesting to me just how much Superman dislikes Booster in their first meeting. Of course, this early in his career, Booster didn’t really give him much to like. He’s cocky, hard-headed, and impulsive, and those qualities would have caused disaster had Superman not been there to get in his way. The way the character grew and evolved over the years is really remarkable, and he’s become one of my favorite DC characters.
John Byrne did one of his cover swipes (a lot of artists do cover swipes, but Byrne got the bug earlier than many – the man draws a Fantastic Four #1 swipe more often than I change my socks) to show Superman and Booster’s next encounter. Mayor Berkowitz has declared it to be Superman Day in Metropolis. The festivities are upset, though, when Booster Gold blows up the Superman statue that was supposed to be dedicated that day. He then calls a press conference where he accuses Superman of crimes against humanity for his recent incursion in the terrorist state of Qurac. Booster calls Superman down for taking political action that way, which comes off as particularly hypocritical if you just read Booster Gold #7, in which Superman stopped him from doing exactly that. Booster then decides to lure Superman into a fight by abducting the mayor’s daughter. Hearing her call for help, Superman zips in and Booster hits him way harder than Superman expected. Booster begins to pummel Superman, beating him with relative ease. With Superman on the ropes, though, a SECOND Booster appears, calling the first an imposter.
The story concludes in Booster Gold #23, once again by Dan Jurgens. A flashback informs us that this fake Booster has been in action for several days, smearing Superman, as Booster was in mourning over the recent loss of his sister and wasn’t even aware of his doppelganger. In the present, Booster manages to shred the fake’s outer covering, revealing a robot underneath. When Booster destroys it, a chunk of Kryptonite falls out, explaining how he was beating Superman. The reader learns that – surprise, surprise – the robot was sent by Lex Luthor, who was using it to gather as much data as possible on Superman for Luthor reasons. He sends a second armored operative – human this time – to attack Superman and retrieve the Kryptonite, and although his drone gets away with Luthor’s glowing rock, Superman easily captures the goon. He knows it’s Luthor’s handiwork, but the guy inside the armor claims to work for Booster Gold, is carrying Booster Gold International ID, and even the components of his armor were made by Booster’s company. Superman doesn’t buy the frame-up for a second. Booster gets the best of Luthor that night, but the epilogue brings in a new challenge for Booster that looks pretty bleak. But this ain’t the “Year of Booster Gold,” no matter how much he might wish it was, so I’m going to let you look all that up for yourself.
The antagonism between Superman and Booster continues here, although by this time Booster has become somewhat more integrated in life in Metropolis. There are even references to previous interviews with Lois, despite Booster and Superman not having encountered one another in the interim. It’s also funny to read these books by Dan Jurgens, who would of course eventually go on to be one of the most significant Superman creators of the post-Crisis era, before he was actually writing or drawing Superman on a regular basis. The character (especially in issue #7) doesn’t quite look like Jurgens’ Superman, it’s more like he was still trying to figure out how to draw him. He got Superman’s personality right away, though, with the character feeling like himself right out of the gate.
Sun. Nov. 16
Comic Books: Firestorm, the Nuclear Man #2, Justice League of America #179-180
Notes: Early in his career – in his second issue, in fact – Firestorm bumped into Superman. Makes sense, really, when you consider just how powerful “the nuclear man” actually is, Superman and the Justice League would clearly want to keep tabs on him. Let’s see how that turned out, shall we?
After a little showboating and reflecting on his origin, because back in the day a superhero was required to recap his origin once an issue, teenage superhero Ronnie Raymond goes about his day. His crush Doreen seems to be into his secret identity (nice), but his father isn’t impressed, nervous about that kind of power in the hands of an individual. And Ronnie can’t even ask his other half Professor Martin Stein for help, because in these early days of the character, Stein didn’t remember anything that happened when he and Ronnie were merged as Firestorm. (I’ve never tracked down the story where that particular tidbit was overturned. If anyone knows when it happened, let me know, would you?) Clark Kent, meanwhile, reporting on the new hero for WGBS, decides that this is exactly the sort of thing that Superman should be keeping an eye on. As he flies to New York to check in on the kid, Stein is attacked in his lab by Multiplex, the Duplicate Menace. (The much better “Multiple Man” was obviously already taken.) Fortunately for Stein, Ronnie discovers the atomic bond he shares with the older man allows him to feel it when Stein is hit and know when he’s in danger. He also discovers that they don’t need to be physically next to one another to trigger their transformation, and Firestorm arrives to take on Multiplex. As Firestorm and Multiplex trade blows, Superman arrives just in time to see the young hero get pummeled, dampening his notions of inviting Firestorm into the Justice League. Superman saves him, and despite a moment of being star-struck, Firestorm zips off in search of Multiplex. Superman follows him and watches as Firestorm captures Multiplex, promising the young hero that he may be Justice League material after all.
Okay, so it was 1978, but that last part feels WILDLY presumptuous on Superman’s part. Suggesting Justice League membership to somebody he literally has just met, who he saw fight ONE supervillain? Because he’s got drive and wants to prove himself? It would make a little more sense today, in this era of Justice League Unlimited, where pretty much everybody with a mask gets a card and a ticket to the Watchtower, but wow.
Just for funsies, I decided to follow this up with Justice League of America #179 and 180, the issues where Firestorm actually DOES join the League, published less than two (real-time) years later, a membership that I’m sure in NO way was influenced by the fact that Firestorm’s creator Gerry Conway was writing the JLA title at the time. Anyway, true to his word, Superman sponsors Firestorm’s membership in this issue, saying that the rookie hero’s “youthful exuberance” will be an asset to the team. Then once he zones out when Batman starts explaining the procedural stuff involved in being a JLA member, Ronnie gives the reader another recap of his origin (I told you, it was required). After a hearty congratulations from Superman, Firestorm returns to Earth and splits up. Ronnie sends Martin Stein (still unaware of his double life) home in a cab, then he meets his friends to check out the hot new disco in town. Seriously, disco. Who says comics from 1980 aren’t timeless? Anyway, it turns out that one of Ronnie’s friends who was supposed to meet him at the club is missing, supposedly in the clutches of a woman called “the Satin Satan.” Ronnie calls Stein back – again, and Firestorm confronts the witchlike woman, feeling her power overtake him just in time to hit his brand-new JLA signal device.
In the next issue, the League arrives in the penthouse where Firestorm was abducted, only to find the place wrecked and empty. A few minutes later, Ronnie Raymond’s friends arrive with a security guard, looking for him. Zatanna’s magic powers manage to track down Satin Satan and Firestorm, helping him get free. Together, the League fights off Satin’s demons and apparently free her from the demonic influence that’s gripping her, then everybody except Green Arrow congratulates Firestorm on a great first case.
Look.
Gerry Conway is a comic book legend, we can all agree on that, right? And Firestorm is a great character – he was really bold and unique when he was created, and he’s been someone I’ve always thought deserves to be a constant presence in the DCU in one form or another, even during the periods in which he lies fallow.
All that said, NOTHING in these three issues suggests that Firestorm is Justice League material. Sure, he comes through in the end, but he makes mistake after mistake, fumbles into traps, and generally acts like a rank amateur. I can see why Superman would want to keep an eye on somebody so powerful, and making him a member of the League in order to train him and help him get better would make a lot of sense. But it’s not framed that way, it all comes across as the League – Superman especially – getting starry-eyed at this new kid and all the neat toys he’s got and wanting him to stick around so they can play together. It comes across a little bit like Conway’s pet.
I also realize that these issues don’t QUITE fit into the “Superman Vs.” theme I’ve kinda been going for this week, but as I didn’t even really intend to do a theme this week at all, I’m not going to feel bad about that. Maybe I’ll call this week “Superman And…” instead.
The weirdest thing, though, is that the issue ends with the clear implication that Satin Satan hasn’t REALLY been set free of her demonic possession – that there is an impending danger that will come back to plague the Justice League again. But a quick check online seems to suggest that these two issues are the ONLY ONES in which she EVER APPEARED. Really? With an ending like THAT? Nobody has picked up on it and tried to do something with the MODEL-GORGEOUS DEMONIC VILLAIN in the past FOUR AND A HALF DECADES?
I’ve now read over 1,000 individual comic book issues for this Year of Superman project, and that may be the wildest thing I’ve discovered yet.
TV Episode: Superman and Lois Season 3, Ep. 3, “In Cold Blood”
Mon, Nov. 17
Comic: Captain Atom #46, Action Comics #587, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #38 (Guest Appearance)
Notes: Like the first Firestorm comic I covered yesterday, I picked this one more or less because Superman was on the cover and I hadn’t read it before. Captain Atom wakes up on the moon, trapped in a crystalline crucifix along with several other heroes and villains, Superman included. He manages to free himself and Superman, and the two of them investigate their abduction, which turns out to be the work of a crystal alien called Kylstar (say it out loud). After a brief scuffle with their abductor, Kylstar’s translating droid tells them that his planet is ruled by an evil dictator, and he has been seeking sentient weapons – super-beings, in other words – to help him free his planet. He releases the other captives, one of whom is an alien who confirms his story (which is more than we had in the issue of Booster Gold the other day that had a lot of these same beats). Kylstar offers to return anyone who doesn’t want to go with him to their homeworld, but both Atom and Superman decide to return to Earth. After they’re gone, Kylstar casually reveals to Major Force – who agreed to accompany him – that he’s going to have to go ahead and conquer the entire galaxy to have a strong enough army to take on his enemy. Force is all about that. In the end, Superman does Cap a solid, helping him find his estranged daughter Peggy.
It’s an okay issue, and I wonder if the Kylstar storyline was picked up later on in the run. Major Force obviously made it back to Earth at some point, because he was available a few years later to commit the act that led to the “fridging” becoming a comic book-specific verb. But my appetite for a hero vs. hero fight hasn’t been satisfied. So I’ll go back to scratch that itch with another comic from John Byrne’s Action Comics team-up era, issue #587, featuring the Etrigan the Demon.
To be fair, it’s a little tricky to decide if this even counts as “hero vs. hero,” as Demon’s status is kind of flexible. Depending on the writer, he’s either a demon who tries to do good or an evil spirit FORCED to do go via his association with Jason Blood. Byrne writes Etrigran more on the good side, though, without any internal quandaries over wanting to do bad and just doing the good, so it’ll fit nicely.
The story starts with Jason Blood and his friend Glenda Mark in an antique shop in Gotham City, where she accidentally activates an old piece that suddenly captures her in a metallic column. The column expands, capturing the others in the shop as if it were trying to create a miniature city, and Jason only barely manages to summon the Demon in time to avoid being taken himself. Superman is returning to Earth from space when he spots the metal city growing and completely overtaking Gotham. He comes in and tries to wreck the expanding columns, but Etrigan attacks, telling Superman he must not harm the towers. The two of them fight for a few pages before Etrigan shows Superman that every time they break one of the columns it bleeds human blood. Etrigan explains that each column is a human who has been transformed, and the only way to stop them from dying is to do so before they are cursed, and he casts a spell to send Superman back in time. As Etrigan existed in that time, he couldn’t go with Superman (this was an old time travel rule in DC Comics that doesn’t seem to apply anymore) but he gives Superman one hour before the spell wears off and returns him to his own time, and tells him to seek out Jason Blood. Superman finds 12th Century Jason, and together they track down Morgaine le Fay in the process of creating the very artifact that started the mess. Superman dives in despite the magic and disrupts the spell, resetting the timeline. An epilogue replays the scene in the Gotham antique shop, bereft of the artifact, and all is well.
The fight between Superman and Etrigan is short, but really effective. And it’s actually nice to see one of these scuffles where Superman – however well-meaning – is in the wrong. It’s a good change of pace. This issue also has several elements that I always enjoy: time travel, doses of Arthurian legend, and John Byrne artwork. Overall, it’s a fun read.
TV Episode: Superman and Lois Season 3, Episode 4, “Too Close to Home.”
I’ve been trying to squeeze in episodes of this show again because I still want to try to finish it by the end of the year. I haven’t been writing about all of them, though, because I kind of feel like I’ve run out of things to say. I like Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch. I love Wolé Parks as John Henry Irons. But the series as a whole hasn’t gripped me as much as I wanted it to. However, the scene in this episode of Clark – Clark, not Superman – in the diner, facing off against Emmitt Pergande? That’s absolute poetry.
Tues., Nov. 18
Comics: Superman/Shazam!: First Thunder #1-4
Notes: I started this inadvertent “Versus” week with Superman fighting the faux Captain Marvel, so it seems only appropriate that I end it with an early encounter with the real thing. And again, this isn’t actually a fight – Superman and Captain Marvel are never opposed to each other in this miniseries. But you know what? I don’t care. It’s still a good comic.
Published in 2005, this miniseries by Judd Winick and Josh Middleton was a contemporary take on the first meeting between Big Blue and Big Red. It begins with the wizard Shazam at the Rock of Eternity, early in “the second age of heroes,” observing the nascent members of the Justice League in action, then gives us a quick time skip to the rookie Captain Marvel averting a plane crash in Fawcett City. (It is amazing how often planes in comic book universes ALMOST crash. If it was as frequent in real life as it is in a comic book world, nobody would ever board an airplane ever again.) Meanwhile in Metropolis, Superman investigates a break-in at the Museum of Natural History that brings him into battle with a big, blue creature – a sign of that singular bane of his, magic. We also see Billy Batson homeless and refusing to go to yet another foster home, living in abandoned subway tunnels with some help from his friend, a kid named Scott. Looking at a recent newspaper, Billy sees a story about the museum robbery in Metropolis and decides to keep an eye on the Fawcett City museum. Sure enough, that night, there’s a break-in – the same crooks as in Metropolis, still trying to steal Russian artifacts. Once again, the crooks summon monsters and they hurl Captain Marvel out of the museum, where Superman is waiting to lend a hand.
In issue two, we start “one week ago,” with a summit between Dr. Thaddeus Sivana and Lex Luthor, where the two evil geniuses – despite their mutual dislike of one another – agree to cooperate, with Luthor giving Sivana use of an operative named Spec to trail Captain Marvel. Spec, we find out, managed to trail Marvel and witnessed his transformation into a child. Back in the “present,” Superman and Captain Marvel meet outside the museum for the first time and team up to fight the monsters summoned by the robbers. After fighting them off, Marvel asks Superman if they can “talk,” and the two of them have a casual conversation on the top of Mt. Everest, discussing their powers and what it’s like to be heroes. Their talk is disrupted when Superman hears a pair of dual threats coming from Fawcett – Sivana has summoned the demonic villain Sabbac via a spell which also creates a solar eclipse, and wouldn’t you know it? Dr. Bruce Gordon has once again been taken over by the spirit of Eclipso.
Yeah, he’s in this too.
Issue three kicks off with Spec finding his way to the homeless enclave where Billy Batson has been living, looking for information about “a little boy, about eleven years old, black hair,” and offering to pay handsomely. While Spec hunts Billy, Superman and Marvel take on Sabbac in Fawcett City. At the same time, Eclipso makes his move, using a satellite network to transform the people of Fawcett into – goodie! – more Eclipsos! Superman dismantles Eclipso’s machine, but still has to deal with a legion of innocent people who have been eclipsed and go on the attack, while Marvel is left to face Sabbac alone. Superman escapes and disrupts the coven that caused the Eclipse, breaking Eclipso’s hold on everyone, including Bruce Gordon, and Marvel tricks Sabbac into saying his own name, causing him to turn off his powers just like Billy uses the word “Shazam!” Superman and Marvel part as friends, but that night as Billy is reading about his own exploits in the newspaper, Sivanna (using Spec’s intel) sends an army of thugs to kidnap him.
In the final issue, Billy switches to Captain Marvel just before Sivanna’s goons open fire. He defeats them easily, but in the gunfire his friend Scott is mortally wounded. Marvel brings him to the hospital, but Scott succumbs to his injuries. Marvel bursts into the police station where Sivanna’s thugs have been taken and begins to brutalize one of them, demanding to know who hired him. Moments later, he’s ripped apart Sivanna’s corporate headquarters and has Sivanna’s throat in his hand. He chokes him, almost to death, but relents before Sivanna is killed and flees the scene. In Metropolis, Clark hears about the incident and finds Marvel again at Mt. Everest, where he plans to have him answer for attacking a police station, assaulting a prisoner, and destroying the top floor of the Sivana building…until he sees Marvel weeping. Superman is confused by Marvel’s sobbing about getting “his best friend killed,” until he says his magic word and becomes Billy Batson again. Superman demands that Billy take him to the Wizard Shazam, where he rips into him for putting a child in danger. “He’s just a boy,” he declares. Shazam replies, “He is. A boy who could use guidance.” In the last few pages, Clark Kent finds Billy in the abandoned building where he’s living now. He removes his glasses, unbuttons his shirt to reveal the “S,” and sits down to have a talk.
This is such a great story, all building up to the last few scenes, which are immensely powerful. At first, Superman sees Marvel as a contemporary, an equal, somebody who maybe can understand the burden of power that he carries because he shares it. When he discovers the truth about Billy Batson, the righteous anger that fills him is perfectly in keeping, although you have to wonder if he ever had a similar discussion with Batman about any of the Robins. In any case, this is such a great dynamic for the two of them. In a world where Superman and Billy Batson co-exist, Clark Kent would be a perfect mentor for the boy. Unfortunately, in all the reboots that have happened in the past 20 years, I’m fairly certain this story is no longer canon, and that’s a shame.
One other amusing thing I need to point out – Marvel defeats Sabbac by tricking him into saying his own name, which also happens to be the magic word that triggers his transformation. At this point, people had mistakenly been calling Captain Marvel “Shazam” for decades, since DC was using that word to secure the trademark. But Sabbac having a name that he can’t say is ridiculous, a problem Captain Marvel Jr. had since the beginning, and a problem that was exacerbated in the New 52 reboot when “Shazam” became Billy’s hero name. These days, in-universe, Billy’s alter ego is just “The Captain,” which sidesteps the problem, but it’s kind of lame as a superhero name. I dunno, maybe they should have just stuck with “Captain Thunder” in the first place.
Radio Program: The Adventures of Superman serial “The Clan of the Fiery Cross” episodes 1 and 2.
It’s the last full week before Halloween, and I’m going whole hog on the spooky content, friends. This week we’re going to find ourselves encountering some of the creepiest crawlies there are. Vampires, werewolves, mummies, and Dr. Frankenstein’s bouncing baby boy are all coming your way week, along with a few Halloween specials. We’re gonna wrap up October in classic Abbott and Costello fashion with Superman Meets the Monsters!
Comics:Superman: The Man of Steel #14, Superman Vol. 2 #70, Young Justice #3, Wonder Woman Vol. 6 #25 (Cameo)
Notes: We’re going to kick off this week with a two-part story from 1992 in which Tim Drake – at time the newly-minted Robin – pays a visit after news that an odd “blood plague” has jumped from Gotham City to Metropolis. Tim suspects that the victims, drained of blood and left to die, were the targets of a vampire, and he’s determined to hunt them down. Tim, being the smartest member of the Batman family, is absolutely right: we see the vampire appear in the home of the ill Lucy Lane whose boyfriend (at the time) Jimmy Olsen is at her bedside when he appears. The vampire pulls Lucy from her window to feast, his appearance constantly changing and cycling through various famous movie vampires, before Jimmy drives him off with the flashbulb of his camera. The next day he shows Lois the photo he took of Lucy hovering in the air, proof of the attack because vampires can’t be photographed. Dozens of people start disappearing, including Jimmy’s friend Babe (I didn’t name her, folks), a rocker girl who hired him for a photo shoot.
Since Superman is out of town dealing with a series of disasters and calamities, it’s up to the rest of our cast to do something about the situation. The next night, Jimmy, Lois, and Ella Lane (Lucy and Lois’s mom) treat her room with garlic and prepare to look out for her. Jimmy, meanwhile, goes full-out Monster Hunter with a kind of ridiculous getup that I can’t believe never made it into an action figure. Jimmy and Robin encounter each other on a rooftop (their first meeting) as they both track their suspect, the mysterious “Dr. Ruthven.” (Ruthven, by the way, I believe is an old Bulgarian name which means “Obviously I’m a vampire in disguise, I mean, come ON.”) But when Ruthven turns out to be more they can handle, Jimmy activates his signal watch, summoning Superman to his side. He manages to grab Ruthven as the sun is rising, and they watch him disintegrate. Their victory is short-lived, though, as they hear Ruthven laughing, mocking them, saying that sunlight can’t kill a “modern” vampire.
The story continues in Superman #70, with Superman and Robin patrolling the city and Robin trying to convince Superman that vampires are undead, and the usual no-killing rules therefore do not apply. Superman, meanwhile, isn’t convinced that driving a wooden stake through someone is the way to go. Jimmy, hospitalized from his own injuries fighting Ruthven, implores Superman to save Lucy. As he seeks her out, Jimmy and Robin begin making plans. That night, Superman is distracted by a subplot just long enough for Ruthven to return to Lucy’s apartment and take her away, but Jimmy and Robin trace him to an old cemetery where he’s gathered dozens of people he’s infected, including Lucy. Lucy is about to bite Superman (and, as her vampire powers are magical, it would probably work), and Jimmy tackles Robin to prevent him from staking her.
As all this is going on, the situation is being observed by the demon Blaze, an old foe of Superman’s who is concerned that there are certain dead people whose souls were marked for her, but are still in the land of the living, trapped in their undead forms. Blaze floods the cemetery with light that burns the vampire virus out of the victims. Ruthven falls onto a statue of a soldier with a bayonet, essentially staking himself. All seems to be well until the final panel, when we see a face in Babe’s eye that reveals she is not as free of the vampire influence as we would have hoped.
The Babe situation would become a running subplot for quite some time, not resolving itself until some time after Superman’s death and resurrection, so it clearly wasn’t the end of this particular storyline. But that’s how it was during the Triangle Era – this little two-parter set up lots of pieces that would pay off later. The Babe story was one of them, the Blaze storyline would flare up just a month later, and there were even seeds for the two-part “Crisis at Hand” story we read here a couple of weeks ago. It’s fun to see Jimmy hanging out with Robin as well, although there’s never any real explanation as to why Batman would have sent him to Metropolis to deal with a friggin’ vampire without any backup. This was during the period where Tim was enjoying a few miniseries before graduating to his own solo title, and the red-hot popularity of the character explains his appearance in a meta sense, but not in a story sense.
As we’ve seen before, though, it bothers me that the heroes didn’t actually win this one. Without Blaze’s intervention, Superman may well have been bitten and turned into a vampire. Ultimately, it’s hard to call this one a victory for the good guys, no matter how much fun the story actually was.
For a bonus bit of Halloween fun, let’s look at Young Justice #3 by the late Peter David with art by Todd Nauck. Tim’s back again, this time with his pals Superboy and Impulse, having fun at a Halloween party with their brand-new superhero team. Unfortunately, a cult nearby has – in an attempt to summon a demon – accidentally plucked a teenage Mr. Mxyzlptlk from back in time. He encounters the kids and, hearing about his future shenanigans from Superboy, resolves never to use his powers frivolously. Unfortunately, it’s one of those “would you kill Hitler as a baby?” scenarios – it may sound like a good idea, but the ripples through time turn out to be disastrous. Young Justice is then tasked with teaching Mxy HOW to be a prankster in order to save the world.
David’s run on Young Justice was simply a delight. It was a series that had plenty of humor and laughs, but at the same time, never once skimped on characterization. Early in this issue, for example, there’s a scene where Superboy defends Robin from a jerk at the party, not because he doesn’t think Robin can handle himself, but because as someone who hangs out WITH Robin, he’s afraid that if Robin comes off as a wimp it’ll make him look bad. There was a lot of character growth done in this series, and by the end of it Tim and Conner were fast friends, but that bond didn’t exist yet here. There’s also a subplot with Red Tornado, who was acting as a sort of senior advisor to the team, reconnecting with his daughter as she goes trick-or-treating. These little character moments were a trademark of David’s writing, and whether he was writing a cosmic epic or a goofy story about a Halloween party, either way it elevated his work and helped make it more than the sum of its parts. It’s only been a couple of months, but I miss his stuff already.
Notes: Today I’m going to tackle a couple of comics that only a Mummy could love, starting with Superboy #123, “The Curse of the Superboy Mummy.” The story begins in ancient Egypt, when an oracle sees a vision of the future with Superboy demonstrating his amazing powers. The oracle tells the royal magician how to create a potion that will turn his son Seth into a super-boy, even crafting a costume to match that in the vision. Neferti, daughter of the pharaoh, takes an interest in Seth, but he spurns her as he had no interest in her before he gained his powers. She turns to a rival magician for a charm to make Seth love her. He gives her a jade scarab, but the magician tricks her and the scarab strikes Seth down, causing both he and Neferti to drown in the sea. The two are mummified and buried together. In sorrow, Seth’s father carves a warning inscription into his son’s tomb about a calamity the oracle predicted, but he is driven out before it can be finished.
5,000 years later, Lana Lang and Clark Kent are digging up a pyramid in modern Egypt (this isn’t quite as random as it sounds – Lana’s father was an archaeology professor) and happen to unearth the mummies of Neferti and Seth who – wouldn’t you know – happen to EXACTLY resemble Lana and Superboy, whose costume Seth is still wearing. Lana doesn’t know what the inscription on the tomb says, but Clark knows ALL ancient languages, because when you’ve got super-speed you need to find some way to pass the time. It reads “Mighty Superboy! Behold Seth, the super-youth of our day, and Neferti, who slew him by mishap. Heed the warning of the magic shield which predicts that you, too, will be killed by the maid, Lana, of your time, unless you first destroy her…” The mummies crumble into dust, and Clark dismisses the prophecy. Upon returning to Smallville, Superboy gets a sudden chest pain when he picks up Lana the next day. It happens again every time he gets near Lana, which is frequent, as she seems even more trouble-prone than Silver Age Lois Lane. Together they crack the mystery – Lana foudn and has been wearing Neferti’s scarab, which is affecting Superboy much like Kryptonite. The inscription, which was never finished, was supposed to say “unless you first destroy her SCARAB.”
This is why it’s always important not to bury the lede, guys.
It’s a fun story, though, and although it has a lot of the sillier tropes of the era, it presents them in a fun, more unique way than a lot of the comics of the time. Superboy doesn’t actually FIGHT a mummy, I guess, but he’s almost killed by one, and that feels like it fits in with Halloween to me.
Clark would encounter a mummy again in the John Byrne era, in Superman #5, “The Mummy Strikes!” Clark comes in to work where Perry White shows him a video that Lois sent covering an archeological dig in South America. The video cut out, and Perry orders Clark on the next flight down there to find out what happened – of course, the fastest flight happens to be Air Superman. When he arrives he finds he camp safe, allows Lois to think Superman dropped him off (it’s not TECHNICALLY a lie) and discovers what’s going on. The archaeologists have uncovered a metal cylinder that seems to have been made by advanced technology, but is at least 6000 years old. What’s more, the pyramid they are excavating was built over a technological structure that predates human civilization. As they search the caverns, a gigantic creature wrapped like a mummy bursts through the walls and attacks them. Clark manages to “get separated” from the group so he can use his powers against the mummy, but it knocks him out. Lois finds him and the creature, whose trappings have fallen away to reveal an enormous robot. The story continues in issue #6, where Clark wakes up to find Lois holding up his Superman uniform. She tells him that he has been unconscious for “two solar days” and refers to Clark as a “handsome stranger.” Clark realizes that Lois, and the rest of the camp, have had their bodies taken over by alien forces. He learns that these creatures belong to a race that existed on Earth before humans, but who abandoned the planet when struck by a plague. About 500 of them chose to stay and placed their minds in the body of their robot, which would awaken when the race that replaced them reached a sufficient level of development, then take their planet back. Superman battles the robot, which still has the minds of most of the lost civilization, and forces it to release Lois and the rest of the team, who conveniently have no memory of their captivity. He tricks the robot into trying to download its consciousness into his Kryptonian body, which short-circuits the transfer sequence, causing the robot to explode. Superman gives Lois the story this time, “Clark” having been returned to Metropolis already.
I enjoyed this little John Byrne two-parter with its appropriate seasonal goodness. The first half, with the mummy, has some classic monster movie tropes, although the science fiction underpinnings show through the seams from the very beginning. The second half does away with those trappings (literally and figuratively), but the notion of a pre-human civilization trying to wipe out humanity is another classic trope that you could find in the sci-fi invasion films of the 50s, giving the entire thing a nice, old-school feel that’s wildly apropos for the season. There’s also a funny little runner about Clark having neglected to shave and trying not to let Lois notice that he and Superman are sporting the same five o’clock shadow. I know I usually defend Lois in the old days for not figuring out that Superman and Clark were the same person, but I have to admit, stories like this one make that tough sometimes.
I’ll close off today with the curious little book that is DC Comics Presents #53. Presents, as you may recall, was the Superman team-up book, with Superman partnering up with a different guest star in each issue. In this one, his guest star is House of Mystery, an odd choice in that it’s not exactly a CHARACTER. House of Mystery and its sister title, House of Secrets, were a pair of horror anthology comics hosted by the brothers, Cain and Abel, similar in concept to classic comics like Tales From the Crypt, but not quite as intense. In this issue, Mystery’s host Cain pops in to present to us the Superman story “The Haunting Dooms of Halloween.” The story starts with a kid – little Ricky (who probably not coincidentally looks like Ricky from Superman III,which had been released earlier that year) trick-or-treating in a Superman costume when suddenly, without warning, he turns into Superman himself. He rushes to Metropolis and bursts into Lois Lane’s Halloween party, where he abducts Lois. At the same time, Jimmy transforms into Thor – the costume HE was wearing – and tries to save her by…making it rain. Clark, wearing a Green Lantern costume, pretends that whatever magic is affecting Jimmy has struck him as well and uses his “power ring” to fly after the fake Superman.
Back at the House of Mystery, Cain is settling in to tell another story to a group of children when he gets a visitor – Mr. Mxyzptlk (Mxy seems to just LOVE Halloween), who brings in the fake Superman and Lois. He restores Ricky to normal, then starts zapping the other kids to become the monsters and ghosts they’re dressed as. The real Superman (in his own costume now) tracks them down and enters the House, and a voice warns him that he must find Lois by midnight or she’ll be lost forever. He stumbles through the house, facing not only his own fears, but assorted monsters that he’s reluctant to hurt when he realizes that they’re transformed children. As the clock strikes midnight, Superman stands in stark horror at his failure…until Mxy reveals himself, and he starts to laugh. Cain is confused until Superman explains – the whole thing is obviously a joke. Mxy may be a pest, but he wouldn’t actually HURT anyone. This is a WILD swing, by the way, as there are plenty of Mxyzptlk stories where he DOES hurt people, but in this case it seems to be right – Lois is freed from her own prank (being stuck in a room full of comic book artists chained to their drawing boards and begging her to set them free), and Mxy begins to plot his next Halloween stunt. He’s foiled not by Superman, but by little Ricky, who feeds Cain a clue to trick Mxy into banishing himself for another 90 days.
This is a really silly story, far more lighthearted than your typical House of Mystery fare, and Cain plays a more active role than he usually does. It’s very much in keeping with the Superman stories of the era, though, and a joy to read as part of my Halloween windup. I didn’t anticipate having two Mxyzptlk stories in two days, however. I suppose Halloween WOULD be his favorite time of the year, though. Hey, DC, if you’re listening, I’ve got an idea for NEXT year’s anthology theme…
Fri., Oct. 24
Comics: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #44, 52
Notes: If there’s one thing you can say about Jimmy Olsen, it’s that his life is NEVER boring. Whether he’s getting elastic powers or turning into a giant turtle, some sort of nonsense is ALWAYS happening to him. Today I’m going to take a peek into a couple of his hairiest adventures, beginning with Jimmy Olsen #44, “The Wolf-Man of Metropolis.” Superman, who has apparently learned nothing from all the times Jimmy has turned himself into a turtle, drops off a box of ancient bottles and jars that he recently uncovered, including one that purports to contain a potion that can turn someone into a “wolf-man.” When Lois asks Jimmy if it’s real, he decides to prove it’s just a superstition by drinking the contents of the bottle. (Side note: whether werewolves are real or not, is it really the best idea to drink from a bottle that’s been underground for centuries? This is why Jimmy is still a junior reporter after 85 years.) That night, the potion kicks in and turns him into a werewolf just before he’s supposed to take Lucy on a date to a masquerade party. He avoids admitting he’s a werewolf by getting her a Red Riding Hood costume, and they even win the costume contest. Over the next few nights, though, he keeps changing into a wolf and having to find increasingly unlikely explanations for why he’s still wearing the makeup. Lois immediately catches on to what happened and tells her sister, but Jimmy keeps evading the question instead of just fessing up and asking her to break the curse for him, as the bottle says it will end if he gets a kiss from a pretty girl. Jimmy gets desperate, even attempting to pay random women in the park to kiss him (had this story happened today it would be all over social media and Jimmy would be cancelled FOREVER) before Superman brings Jimmy into a dark room and gets his cousin, Supergirl, to give him a smooch and put him out of his misery.
This story makes Jimmy look so remarkably stupid that you can’t help but love it. From drinking the potion to refusing to admit it even after Lois has told Lucy about the boneheaded thing he did this time, Jimmy doesn’t make a single correct decision throughout the entirety of the tale. He doesn’t even know, at the end, that Supergirl is the one who saves him, because this is during that period when her existence was still being kept a secret, which is why Superman asks her to kiss him in the dark. I would love to have listened in when Superman called her to help with this one: “Hey, Linda, it’s Clark. My idiot friend drank a potion that – yes, AGAIN – a potion that turned him into a werewolf. Will you kiss him for me?”
Incidentally, in the backup story in this issue, Mr. Mxyzptlk disguises himself as a leprechaun. It may not be a Halloween story, but if this keeps up I may have to re-name this “Mr. Mxyzptlk” week.
Jimmy’s monstrous problems weren’t over, though. Just eight issues later, MYXYZPTLK COMES BACK! I am UTTERLY DELIGHTED. Mxy, dodging taking his own girlfriend out for a birthday date, comes to Metropolis and falls head over heels in love with Lucy Lane. Trying to find a way to sabotage Jimmy, he sees the b0ttle of wolf-man potion in Jimmy’s trophy collection and makes him drink it, but further uses his magic to turn the potion into water. It doesn’t affect Jimmy, but he doesn’t know that. Instead, Mxy places his own curse on Jimmy, one that is immune to the kiss of a beautiful girl. When the sun comes down, Jimmy becomes a wolf-man again. Once more, Superman summons Supergirl to make out with Jimmy in the dark, but it doesn’t work and he’s still stuck as a wolf. The next night, he’s working late at the Planet office when the sun goes down and he once again wolfs out. Lois takes pity on him and gives him a kiss, but once again, nothing happens. On Night Three, Lucy insists on Jimmy taking her to the zoo at night, because that’s apparently something girls did in the 1950s. Jimmy changes again, and this time Lucy kisses him (with her eyes closed, trying to pretend he’s somebody else), but again, no avail. It keeps going – Lori Lemaris, Lana Lang, nobody’s kiss saves him! Until a veiled girl on the street rushes up to him and gives him a smooch that turns him normal again. She whips off her veil to reveal the less-than-gorgeous face of Miss Gzptlsnz, Mxy’s spurned girlfriend, who enchanted her own lipstick to break Mxy’s magic. She tricks Mxy into going home and follows him, then he goes back to Lucy to tell her he’s normal again, but this time she spurns him because he’s kissed too many girls this week.
I have no notes. This story is perfect and, although I haven’t actually looked it up, I assume it won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Sat., Oct. 25
Comics: Superman #143, Action Comics #531, Green Lantern Vol. 8 #27 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Green Lantern Corps Vol. 4 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Green Lantern Vol. 8 #28 (Superboy Guest Appearance), Action Comics #1091, Superman Unlimited #6, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #44
Notes: Today we’re going to spend a little time with Superman and his encounters with my favorite creature of them all – the Frankenstein monster. The creature has been in the public domain since the dawn of comics, and he’s showed up everywhere. In modern times, the DC version has even become a secret agent and adopted the name “Eric Frankenstein.” But we’re going to look at earlier versions this time out, starting with Superman #143: “Bizarro Meets Frankenstein!”
On Bizarro World, the Bizarro kids love Earth movies – terrifying monsters like Charlie Chaplin and comedies starring the likes of the Wolfman and Mummy. But Bizarro #1 is outraged when he sees a commercial advertising a new Frankenstein movie as starring “the world’s scariest monster.” Determined to prove that he, Bizarro, is scarier than Frankenstein, he zips to Earth, scaring the crap out of a Yeti just to prove that he can before he makes his way to Metropolis. First, he finds the actor wearing the monster makeup and chucks him out of the window, then makes his way to the movie set. To his shock, though, instead of being terrified of him, everyone laughs and the actresses even line up to give him kisses. Unbeknownst to him, the director saw Superman on set earlier and told the girls that he must have put on Bizarro makeup to stir up publicity to his Frankenstein movie. I assume this story must take place on an alternate Earth where that kind of logic makes sense.
Bizarro’s attempts to generate terror continue to fail. A few actors on a western set shoot at him to make him dance (having accidentally chewed a loco weed that’s growing on the movie lot) and a couple of kids don’t fear him, but treat him like Santa Claus (Bizarro doesn’t know that the kids’ parents are part of a circus freakshow, so ain’t nothin’ gonna creep them out). Finally, he gets back to the Frankenstein set, where he starts tearing stuff up, but once again, there’s no fear on anyone’s faces. Superman finally drives Bizarro off by playing a recording to make Bizarro think someone is screaming in terror and a static electricity machine to make the actors’ hair stand on end. Back on Bizarro World, Bizarro decides to celebrate Halloween (Dec. 24, of course) with his kids with a marionette of the scariest monster on Earth – Superman.
My goodness, what a delightfully absurd story. Perhaps the funniest thing is that Bizarro himself isn’t the one acting backwards this time. His goal of proving that he’s the scariest monster of them all is actually pretty straightforward, and in truth, is more logical than most of his stories often are. But even for the Silver Age, the set of contrived coincidences that keep people from fearing him over and over again just stack up to a point of utter absurdity. I love this story for what it is, though: ridiculous, cheesy fun.
Action Comics #531gives us “The Devil and the Daily Planet!” Morgan Edge is making preparations to sell the Daily Planet to a sleazy tabloid publisher named Mort Waxman, a decision that has Clark and his colleagues quite upset. As he’s being shown around the building, Waxman is attacked Scooby-Doo style by a ghost who tells him to get out. The staff begins searching the building, and Lois and Clark run afoul of a Frankenstein-type monster dead set on getting Waxman, whom he calls his “creator,” and Jimmy and Perry wind up fighting a horde of demons that attack a mysterious woman in the printing room. The whole thing turns out to be the work of the ghost of the Planet’s original printer’s assistant, who loves the newspaper and refuses to see it destroyed by Waxman. In the end, Edge is convinced that the paper is too important to turn over to a profiteering scum merchant like Waxman, marking one of the few instances in comic book history of Morgan Edge demonstrating something like integrity.
Marv Wolfman and Joe Staton are responsible for this one, and it’s pretty good. This is from 1982, that era when the Superman comics as a whole were kind of stale, but this was a different sort of story. Superman wasn’t quite the hero in this one, facing a supernatural threat where he was confused as anybody else, but the story holds up the ideals of the character very well. I also really like Staton’s Frankenstein Monster – it’s a nice design that is more evocative of the original Mary Shelley novel than the more popular movie rendition, and it really works well for the character here.
In addition to the creepy content, I’m also going to read some of the recent Superman comics today – it’s been a couple of weeks, and I’ve got several of them built up. Action Comics #1091 continues Mark Waid’s Superboy story with Sam Lane trying to capture young Clark. He escapes easily, but the realization that the military is after him leaves Clark rattled, especially since he was sent there by Captain Comet. When he confronts him, Comet tells Clark he knew that Lane would try to catch him and he wanted to see how Superboy would handle a problem he couldn’t simply punch. Clark soon realizes there’s more going on than Adam Blake is telling him. I said an issue or two ago that I hoped Mark Waid wasn’t taking the route of turning Captain Comet, one of DC’s longest running heroes (maybe never an A-list hero, but still a hero) into a villain. The reveal in this issue is really well-planned, and the final pages between Superboy and Captain Comet are magnificent. It’s perfectly in character for both of them, and it’s wonderful to see a story where a Clark this young starts learning the lessons that will make him the greatest hero of them all.
Dan Slott and Rafael Albuquerque (with Mike Norton this time) continue their story in Superman Unlimited #6. A visit to the Kryptonite-rich country of El Cadero to retrieve a Kryptonian sunstone runs into some problems as Clark’s lead suit is ripped open, exposing him to the incredible amount of Kryptonite radiation permeating the country. At that moment, of course, the Kobra operatives choose to take action. This is the sixth issue, the half-year mark of the title, which is traditionally where the first trade paperback collection will end. That makes it a decent time to take stock of where the series as a whole is going. Slott has set up a really interesting status quo, with a potentially hostile nation having control of the largest Kryptonite stockpile on the planet, Superman discovering a new power, and of course, the return of the Supermobile. The last page also is extremely promising, setting up future storylines for a couple of characters who have been underutilized lately. I’m hoping the second half of this title’s first year is as good as its first, because it’s been a strong addition to the Superman family of titles.
Waid is back for Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #44. Superman and Batman decide to send Robin (Dick Grayson – remember, this series is set in the past) to investigate a company that may have ties to LexCorp. Concerned about his safety, though, they ask Supergirl – who hasn’t held the highest opinion of Robin since their disastrous and hilarious date back in issue #12 of this series, to keep an eye on him from a distance. When the facility they’re in turns out to be experimenting with a synthetic Kryptonite, the fight gets a lot harder, and funnier. I absolutely love the antagonistic attraction Waid laces into the interactions of these two characters. It’s a funny dynamic to play up that’s pretty unique in pairings between the Superman and Batman families. I hope, at some point, we get to see Waid write a contemporary story with the two of them to see how the grown-up Nightwing and Supergirl get along these days.
Sun., Oct. 26
Comics: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #142-143, Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #5, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #3, Supergirl Vol. 8 #6, Justice League Red #3, New History of the DC Universe #4
Notes: More monsterly fun begins today with Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #142, part of Jack Kirby’s run, in which Jimmy and Supes meet “The Man From Transilvane!” A vampire called Dragorin casts his spell on Laura Conway, secretary of Jimmy and Clark’s boss, Morgan Edge. When she passes out in the office, they quickly discover her vampiric affliction, and Dragorin appears to interrogate her about her previous employer, Dabney Donovan. Jimmy and Clark go to investigate Donovan’s old lab, where they face off with a werewolf, causing Clark to duck out and Superman to take his place. Together, they figure out that Dragorin is seeking information about a cemetery called Bloodmoor. They track Dragolin to Bloodmoor, where they find his secret – the miniature planet Transilvane, buried beneath his mausoleum! The story continues in issue #143, where we learn that Donovan created the entire planet, complete with its monster-like inhabitants, as one of his experiments. They find Dragorin in what looks like a coffin, but Superman realizes they’re more like decompression chambers, helping them make the transition from Transilvane to Earth. The monsters put Superman in a torture device, hoping to force him to reveal Donovan’s whereabouts. Unfortunately for them, Superman doesn’t know, and also, he’s Superman, so the torture device isn’t all that effective. Donovan’s machines are about to unleash a “Genocide Spray,” cleansing Transilvane’s surface of all life to prepare it for new experiments. Superman manages to stop the spray and send the Transilvanians back home. Together, he and Jimmy figure out that the beings from Transilvane were “copiers” – creatures of a fluid atomic base that transformed into monstrous forms because Donovan flooded their planet with images from horror movies. Superman decides to give them a more peaceful world, and they switch the movie in Donovan’s machine to Oklahoma.
There’s a reason they called Jack Kirby the King of Comics, and I suppose that reason is that no other man on Earth could have gotten away with starting a story by showing a vampire attacking a secretary and ending it by having Superman convert the entire population of a miniature planet into devotees of musical theatre. Kirby had no hesitation to take wild swings, and the more I read of his Jimmy Olsen run, the more convinced I am that this series showcased that better than anything else. Still, for all the fun I’ve had so far this week, I’ve seen relatively few legitimate monsters. There was a robot wrapped up like a mummy, an actor in Frankenstein makeup, kids turned into monsters by Mxy-magic, Jimmy turned into a wolfman without losing his inherent Jimmytude…and now this alien that’s kinda like a vampire. I feel the need for REAL monsters. Fortunately, I’ve got a few more comics lined up that may understand the assignment a little better.
Halfway through the Saints/Buccaneers football game, I decided that if I was going to cry this afternoon it should be for a GOOD reason, so I picked up Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #5. The final issue of Ryan North and Mike Norton’s miniseries is just as flawless as the first four issues as Krypto, still wandering, stumbles upon a family in trouble. Remembering some of the hardships he’s endured since coming to Earth, he comes to their rescue, and then something miraculous happens.
This is, simply put, a beautiful comic book. North has a pipeline right to the heart of the reader, tapping into emotion that greatly outstrips any other comic on the market right now. His Krypto never says a word, but nevertheless proves over and over again what kind of hero he truly is. Norton, meanwhile, is putting forth his A-game in every panel, filling Krypto’s canine face with courage and emotion.
This is the best miniseries of 2025. I’m putting it out there right now. It’s perfect.
Of course, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum may be a close second. The third issue of W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo’s Black Label series starts with a Superman who has been reduced to a teenager after exposure to a new kind of Cobalt Kryptonite, so the Justice League places him in the custody of one of the few people who can relate to what he’s going through: Billy Batson. As Batman tries to seek a cure to the Cobalt K’s effects, he stumbles upon a surprising revelation about the Rainbow Kryptonite in his possession. Billy and Clark, meanwhile, decide to visit a local amusement park that turns out to be a trap set by their respective foes, Dr. Sivana and the Toyman. Hilarity ensues.
Well, not “hilarity,” actually, but “existential drama ensues” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Prince layers his story with the same kind of deep questions and introspective moments that have made Ice Cream Man such a hit, but at the same time, respecting the characters and crafting a tone that feels kind of like the Silver Age taken a bit more seriously. It’s All Star Superman played for drama. And all of that is a good thing.
Sophie Campbell’s Supergirl #6 give us a brand-new Halloween tale. Kara is being plagued by bad dreams about her own past: her time as a Red Lantern, the time she was manipulated by Darkseid, and her own death in Crisis on Infinite Earths. As her friends try to figure out what’s wrong with her, Supergirl faces a demonic being called Nightflame who claims to be a facet of Kara’s own personality. It’s a quick, self-contained story, but there’s a lot to like about it. Campbell reflects a lot of elements of Supergirl’s past that seem to be intended to help differentiate which of her stories and versions are still in continuity these days (in addition to the previous stories I mentioned, her father’s tenure as a Cyborg Superman and the epic events of Woman of Tomorrow are both referenced). I have to wonder if DC disseminated Mark Waid’s notes for The New History of the DC Universe to its writers as they were coming in, because Campbell works hard to reflect the reality that miniseries has given us. But it doesn’t just show us the tough times in Supergirl’s past – it’s a story about a girl who has confronted her own demons and is working past them. For the most part, this series has been pretty lighthearted, but Supergirl is a character who has endured an awful lot of trauma (arguably much more than her cousin) and Campbell isn’t shying away from showing that.
Nightflame, by the way, is yet another Character from Supergirl’s past, and the cover is even an homage to her prior appearance from Adventure Comics #421. You’ve gotta appreciate the attention to detail.
The mystery deepens in Justice League Red #3. As Cyborg and Green Lantern try to save Red Canary from the Church of Blood, Power Girl confronts Red Tornado over the “gift” he offered her at the end of last issue. Red Tornado is starting to come apart – he’s afraid he’s losing his humanity and, at the same time, using his algorithm to try to predict future catastrophic events that his newly-assembled strike force is intended to prevent. But there’s one future – one REALLY bad future – that he’s got his eye on, and this issue he tells us what he’s going to need the team to do. I like the premise here, of Red Tornado putting together a red ops – um, black ops – team that does jobs he can’t divulge to the rest of the Justice League. I just hope writer Saladin Ahmed can pull it off without permanent damage to the character. I suppose it’ll all come down to how the rest of this miniseries shakes out.
Mark Waid finishes up his romp through the multiverse with New History of the DC Universe #4, with Barry Allen bringing us from the events of Blackest Night right up to the most recent events in the DCU. I’m a little surprised that he didn’t try to touch upon the Legion of Super-Heroes more, but I suppose that’s being saved for the regular comics. I did like how the notes at the end touch upon virtually all of the many potential futures of the DC Universe. There are a lot of great characters out there, and it would be kind of a shame to decanonize any of them. The book works well in terms of trying to explain the reason behind the assorted contradictions of DC history, if not explaining the contradictions themselves. By the end of it all, I feel like we have a solid foundation and understanding of just what stories matter, with a real pathway to the future. I’m going to have to go back at some point and read these four issues (and the extensive notes in the end) in one fell swoop.
Notes: There was more blood-sucking goodness to be had in Superman #344 from 1980, “The Monsters Among Us” by Paul Levitz and Curt Swan. Lois and Clark are sent to cover a seance at an old castle that is intended to summon the spirit of mystic Roland Randall on the 50th anniversary of his death. The medium, a blind woman named Cassandra Craft, tells Clark that she senses an “inner strength” to him, something he quickly denies. When the seance begins, Cassandra cries out and faints, waking up to say that Randall’s spirit is terrified of something. Clark spots two figures in the storm raging outside and ducks away so Superman can investigate. The two shapes burst into the room, appearing as Dracula and the Frankenstein monster, and they’re after Cassandra. After a quick battle with Superman the monsters escape, vowing to return. The next day, after a bizarre vignette where the Frankenstein monster steals some cakes from a bakery truck and briefly tousles with Superman, they return to the castle seeking Cassandra. He manages to fight them off, setting the creature on fire and creating a miniature sun with a hydrogen balloon to cripple Dracula. With the monsters out for the count, the Phantom Stranger appears out of nowhere and spirits them away.
No, really, that’s how it ends. No explanation, no rationalization, not even a “to be continued.” Dracula, at least, says something like “Not again!” but that doesn’t actually tell us ANYTHING. On the one hand, I’m glad that Superman actually had the monsters beaten already by the time the deus ex machina showed up, but on the other hand, what the hell, Paul Levitz? A good story with a very frustrating finale.
In Action Comics #577 by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming, Superman faces off with “Caitiff, the first vampire!” The Metropolis Center for Disease Control reports a number of “suspicious deaths.” Seeing a news report promising footage of what’s going on, a creature named Caitiff decides to stop it from airing again on the evening news, which means he’s going to target the WGBS anchor, Clark Kent. Clark, meanwhile, is reluctant to show the footage, which he believes to be the work of a vampire. (Isn’t it refreshing, by the way, that in most of these stories Clark doesn’t waste any time with the whole “vampires aren’t real” nonsense? The man is an alien, his best friend is an Amazon goddess, he frequently does battle with a pint-sized wizard from the fifth dimension – vampire skepticism would be absolutely absurd in the DC Universe.) Caitiff attacks Clark on the air but, as a vampire, his image doesn’t transmit over the broadcast, so he’s visible to the people in the studio. He vanishes into mist and Clark – as Superman – takes after him, further exacerbating the indigestion his frequent disappearances cause his director, Josh Coyne. Superman inhales the mist that makes up the vampire, but Caitiff attacks him psychically, stirring up feelings of immense loneliness and causing Superman to black out long enough for him to escape. He tracks the vampire to a subterranean lair full of desiccated skeletons. At first Superman is horrified, believing them to be Caitiff’s victims, but Caitiff reveals that these are the remains of his own family, his own people, who were exterminated by humans over the years, Catiff is the last of them. He slips away and Superman is left to pity the creature who, like Superman, is the last of his kind.
This is a dark tale, and really genuinely sad. It evokes the feeling of some of the great monster movies like The Wolfman or the original Frankenstein, where the creature comes across less as a demon and more like a victim of circumstance. Caitiff seems to have no true malice within him, only a well-justified fear of humans and their actions towards his kind. The panel where he talks about how human scientists dissected his own child is particularly chilling. This works very well as a sad meditation on humanity, which is something you often get out of good monster stories.
Superman faced a Lord of Darkness yet again in 2002, in Superman #180 by Jeph Loeb, Geoff Johns, and Ian Churchill. Lois, Clark, and Jimmy visit the home of the mysterious Count Rominoff “somewhere in eastern Europe.” Rominoff, an admirer of Lois’s work, has invited them to his castle where he promises a rare interview in light of the recent annexation of a nearby country by General Zod. That night, Lois is roused from her slumber and she roams the grounds, where Superman appears just in time to save her from a werewolf attack, then the appearance of a vampire. She passes out and wakes up in the morning with no memory of the late night excursion, which has Clark understandably worried. That night, as Rominoff’s thrall Elizabeth goes after Jimmy, Rominoff is revealed to be Dracula himself and clashes with Superman over Lois. Dracula reveals that he invited Lois specifically because he wanted to lure Superman to his castle. He uses his magic to hypnotize Superman and bites him, only to find himself suddenly in agonizing pain.
Remember what a vampire’s main weakness is? That’s right, the sun.
Remember Superman’s power source? That’s right. THE SUN.
Biting Superman turns out to be like biting into a solar battery. Dracula howls in pain and disintegrates, and Superman snaps out of it none the worse for the experience. Jimmy, meanwhile, has just managed to escape Elizabeth, but as the Planet staff goes home, we see that Elizabeth has found a new home of her own amongst the Creature Commandos.
The interesting thing about this is that, despite feeling like a mostly one-off story, it’s highly intertwined with plots that were running through the books at the time. The Zod thing is the most obvious part, but we also see that Lois is still bitter at Clark for choosing to save Wonder Woman’s life over that of Lois’s father during the recent Our Worlds at War crossover, and that friction between them persists throughout the issue. On the other hand, even though Superman doesn’t actually “beat” Dracula through his own agency, I absolutely LOVE the way Loeb wraps up the conflict. Connecting Superman’s solar cells to Dracula’s fatal weakness is the sort of little bit of cleverness that makes a story far more enjoyable to me. I’m sure that, in the 23 years since this story was written, Superman MUST have faced another vampire, but I’m not sure if this has come up again. I know it didn’t during the DC Vs. Vampires series, but that’s an Elseworlds. I want to believe this is a canon vampire immunity for the main line.
One last Super-family/Dracula clash came interestingly, in Batgirl #14 from 2010. This issue was part of Bryan Q. Miller’s excellent, underrated Batgirl run, which starred Stephanie Brown and was derailed by the New 52 reboot the following year. But one of the running subplots he had was a friendship between Stephanie and Supergirl. I really enjoyed that, and it’s a shame that they haven’t touched upon it again since Stephanie came back from comic book oblivion a few years ago. In “Terror in the 3rd Dimension,” Kara drops by Gotham City to have a girls’ night with Stephanie. Kara, who was still written as being new to Earth at the time, is in love with Stephanie’s relatively “normal” life, living with her mom and attending college, and she’s hoping to share in some of those experiences. They wind up deciding to take in a 3-D revival of a vampire movie. As they’re watching the film, an experiment at the campus super collider (of COURSE they have a super collider on a college campus in Gotham City) causes several Bela Lugosi-style Draculas to leap from the screen and terrorize the crowd. Batgirl and Supergirl find that the lab’s experiments in “hard light” force fields lasted one second, creating 24 Draculas – one for each frame of the film that played during that second. One of the science students who was behind the experiments gives them a set of control rods that will destabilize them if they, y’know, stake the Draculas through the heart.
It’s the sort of premise that’s so ridiculous that only works if the story KNOWS it’s ridiculous and refuses to take itself seriously. Fortunately, that’s a perfect description of Miller’s run on this book. Sure, it’s a Batman-family book, and sometimes it got dark, but Stephanie herself was kind of the antidote to that. It came out of the time when Bruce Wayne was believed to be dead and Dick Grayson took over as Batman, and the books as a whole were consumed with darkness. This title specifically, and her friendship with Supergirl in particular, made this feel like a light in that darkness. You’ve probably seen Mike Maihack’s delightful Supergirl/Batgirl comics online (how DC has yet to commission this man to do a graphic novel is beyond me). Although that’s the Barbara Gordon Batgirl instead of Stephanie, it’s got a similar tone to this book, and the relationship between our two heroines is lovely. Somebody pass this issue over to Sophie Campbell – I want this dynamic back.
DC’s latest crossover event has also begun, and it’s time to play a little catch-up on DC KO. The time-tossed heroes from the Omega Act special have come with dire news. Darkseid has placed a “Heart of Apokalips” at the center of Earth, something that will overrun the planet with Omega Energy and give Darkseid the power to reshape reality as he wishes. The only hope is for one of the Justice League to take it first – and the only way to get through it is through personal combat with one another, for reasons that writer Scott Snyder explains much better than I can here. Is it a comic book-y type of excuse to have a bunch of heroes fight each other? Heck no! Because the bad guys find out about it and sneak their way into the tournament, so it’s a comic book-y type of excuse to have a bunch of heroes AND villains fight each other!
That’s snarky, I know, because it’s all a little convoluted, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. Snyder does a really good job of selling the stakes and having the heroes prepare to do battle with each other without it seeming out of character. There are even some nice surprises in this one, including one character who doesn’t make it into the first round of the contest, something that’s going to surprise everyone. So far so good.
The spin-offs are hitting as well. In Titans #28, the Titans are tasked with evacuating Earth, assisted by Jonathan Kent. Superman #31, meanwhile, is not only tying into the crossover, but seriously paying off the assorted storylines that have been going on in this title since DC All-In started. Before leaving for the KO tournament, Superman consults the simulation of Jor-El at the Fortress of Solitude for any knowledge Krypton may have had about Darkseid and the Omega Energy. Failing that, he helps coordinate LexCorp’s resources – along with Brainiac’s miniaturization tech – to help facilitate the evacuation of Earth. After he leaves, Lois isn’t satisfied and makes her way to the Fortress to interview Jor-El herself. Her conversation with the Kryptonian archives brings unexpected fruit, and a surprise visitor to the Fortress turns everything on its head. It’s always nice, during these crossover events, when it feels as though the story has been planned out. Ever since the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, events have been plagued by “red skies” crossovers – issues with the event labelling but nothing to do with the story except the color of the sky to indicate something big is happening elsewhere. This feels like the opposite of that – a comic that has told its own story very well, but at the same time, contributes to the overall crossover AND uses it to extend its own storylines. It’s great stuff.
Tues., Oct. 28
Comics: DC’s Zatannic Panic (Cameo), DCU Halloween Special #1 (2008), Taste of Justice #15 (Starring Jimmy Olsen)
Notes: Let’s close off this week with some seasonal stuff, starting with the annual DC Halloween special. This year, the marketing people who come up with the titles for these things continue to earn their paycheck with Zatannic Panic, which – shockingly – has no stories starring anyone from the Superman family. Superman DOES make a brief appearance in the delightful Ambush Bug story that serves as a nice meta-commentary on the Halloween special as a whole, but that ain’t enough for me. So I dipped back into the DC Infinity archives and pulled out the 2008 DCU Halloween Special, a title that would last for three years, then fade away before the annual specials returned in the Rebirth era with a different wild title each year. (My favorite, by the way, is still the 2021 special, Are You Afraid of Darkseid?)
The 2008 special – hosted Cryptkeeper-style by the late Ralph and Sue Dibney – starts off with a Superman story. In “Deadline: Halloween” by Mike Johnson and Tony Shasteen, Clark is working late after the Daily Planet Halloween party, where Perry warns Clark to take it easy before he ends up like “Old Man McCampbell,” an old reporter who died before finishing his last story. Clark hears some odd noises, and when he investigates, he finds himself facing what appear to be ghosts of some of his greatest enemies. After getting knocked around a little, a ghostly Lex Luthor pulls him into a framed newspaper, which changes to a picture of Clark with the headline “Reporter Missing.” With him tapped in the paper, the ghost of McCampbell appears and commandeers Clark’s computer to finally finish his last story. Clark awakens at his computer, believing he finished his story in his sleep, then goes home where he greets a trio of trick-or-treaters dressed like Batman who mock Clark’s fake-looking Superman costume.
The nature of these specials sometimes works against the stories being told. I feel like there’s a good story here, something that would have worked well in a longer tale, but in seven pages there’s not enough buildup, not enough development of the McCampbell ghost to really feel like we’ve got a satisfying payoff. Looks like I will, yet again, have to seek some Super Halloween content elsewhere.
Animated Short: Krypto Saves the Day: Halloween Havoc
Notes: The second of the new DC Studios Krypto shorts just happens to be Halloween-themed, and even though it dropped a few weeks ago, I held off on watching it until this week so I could include it as a seasonally-appropriate addition to the blog. Halloween Havoc, written and directed by David Gemmill, in this one Clark Kent (dressed as Frankenstein) realizes he’s running low on Halloween candy and leaves Krypto in charge while he goes out to get more. This turns out to be a drastic mistake as Krypto is almost immediately distracted by a black cat and goes, once again, on a citywide chase trying to get his quarry, causing havoc (hey, I bet THAT’S where the title comes from!) and potentially ruining Halloween for children everywhere in the process.
Like the first short, “School Bus Scuffle,” this one is really cute and clever. The gags land and there are even a couple of Easter Eggs for DC Comics fans who are paying attention. The final punchline is perfect, and even helped to answer a concern I found myself thinking about as the short went on. And special mention has to go to musical composer Paul Fraser, who I imagine was given the instructions “Make it sound like The Munsters, but not enough to get sued.”
After two chase scene shorts, though, I’m very curious about the other two that haven’t dropped yet. Will they go in a different direction next time, or is Krypto going to be DC Studios’ answer to Tom and Jerry, every episode being a chaotic and futile effort to get his quarry before realizing the error of his ways and proving himself to be a good boy at the very end?
Hope you’ve enjoyed “Superman Meets the Monsters” week, friends. There are still three days left in October as I write this, but the next blog isn’t scheduled to be posted until Nov. 5, so I’m not going to do any more Halloween focus – although you may still get bits and pieces. Hope you all have a fun, safe, and (dare I say it?) SUPER Halloween!
“Evil Superman” has become a popular trope. In movies, video games, and – of course – comic books, people love to pick into the greatest hero in fiction and postulate what would happen in a world where he WASN’T a hero. I suppose it’s an extension of the Lex Luthor mindset, really – some people simply cannot fathom the notion that somebody with Superman’s powers would REALLY use them to do good. As such, they instead rewrite the world so that the hero is the bad guy. When done poorly, it’s tiresome and stale. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done well. This week, we’re going to take a look at some of the stories that have turned Superman bad and others where we see a faux Superman that goes down the wrong path.
TV Episodes: Justice League Season 2, Episodes 11-12, “A Better World” Parts 1 and 2.
Notes: In this classic two-parter, we begin with the Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman assaulting the White House where President Lex Luthor is in control. After battling his way to Oval Office, Superman hesitates as Luthor mocks him, telling him that he’s never had the guts to stop him the only way that could work for sure. Downstairs, Batman and Wonder Woman catch a whiff of something burning. When they find Superman in the slag of Luthor’s office, the president dead, Superman smiles and says he feels “great.”
We realize quickly that this isn’t OUR League, but we watch this group – the Justice Lords – as they take over their world and impose a strict, fascistic regime without the time for luxuries like elections. As they impose their will, their Batman finds a portal to other dimensions, glimpsing our world, where they’re surprised to see that the Flash is still alive, unlike in their universe. They decide to “help” the other world by extending their regime, and cut into our universe to capture our Justice League, leaving their Batman behind to keep things in line. With our League taken out of the picture, the Justice Lords begin to impose their own version of justice on a second world.
Our League manages to escape on the Lords’ world and begins looking for a way home, which finally comes when our Batman convinces theirs to turn. Their Batman concedes that the death of their Flash was a turning point, and that losing their group’s conscience sent them the wrong way. The League returns to their own world, engaging their counterparts in battle. As the League and the Lords battle, the evil Superman hesitates when he’s confronted by the Flash. Although he’s ready to kill this remnant of his conscience, he’s stopped when our Superman arrives with the concession he decided to make rather than lethal force – he’s brought his Lex Luthor along with a power disruptor that allows them to stop the Lords and send them home. The kicker is that, in exchange for his help, Luthor has been given a full pardon for his crimes. At the end of the episode, he announces that he’s given thought to trying his hand as politics.
This is an excellent two-parter, and it really does have Superman at the core of it. The Justice Lords version of the character is cold and bitter, but at the same time you get the sense that he was once not that different from the Superman that we know. That’s the trick that a lot of the “evil Superman” stories miss – they start out with a character so removed from the real Superman that any commentary they’re attempting to make falls flat. Although we don’t actually see the Flash’s death in their world, it’s easy enough to imagine that moment of darkness (in a universe that is otherwise relatively bright, Batman: The Animated Series notwithstanding) would be a breaking point for a Justice League that had been forced to endure too much. We wouldn’t ever accept a “real” Superman behaving this way, but the story is structured such that we buy it from the “other” Superman.
There are other nice moments in here as well. I’d forgotten that this was the episode that specifically pointed Lex Luthor down the road to his presidential run in this version of the DC Universe. It’s also kind of fun, I have to admit, to watch the Justice Lords facing off against the likes of Doomsday. The glimpses of the villains of the other world – a Joker and Poison Ivy who seem to have been essentially lobotomized – are really chilling when you compare them to the versions of the characters we know. It’s the old morality debate here – this brainwashed Joker is inarguably less dangerous than the one we usually see, but is it worth the price of a hero’s soul to make it happen? (This two-parter, it should be mentioned, originally aired in 2003 – one year before the main DC Universe would grapple with this same question in-continuity in the Identity Crisis storyline.)
But I think the gold star for this episode has to go to – you know it – the second-greatest character in the whole Superman mythology. Even before people realize that the Justice League has been replaced by their evil counterparts, Lois Lane sniffs out that something is wrong and, bold as brass, gives Justice Lord Superman a verbal cutdown that shows what she’s really made of. I’d like to think that even Justice Lord Superman admired her a little bit for that.
All that said…despite the fact that he’s a Superman gone wrong, I have to admit that Justice Lord Superman’s black-and-white costume is actually pretty sharp.
Comics:Aquaman Vol. 9 #9 (Guest-Star)
Thur., Oct. 16
Comics: Injustice: Gods Among Us #1-6
Notes: In 2013 we got the video game Injustice: Gods Among Us, and while it would be kind of neat to include a video game playthrough here in the Year of Superman, I’m not really a gamer. I don’t own a console and I wouldn’t even know where to look for this game 12 years later. But I read the tie-in comic written by Tom Taylor, which turned out to be way better than it really had any right being.
I don’t have time to read the entire five years’ worth of the comic for this project, so I’m going to stick to the six issues (or 18 of the digital comic, where it actually premiered) collected in the first trade paperback. It’s worth noting, though, that the entire first year of the series is available in DC’s handy-dandy Compact Comics edition, and it’s worth checking out.
The story begins as tragically as you can possibly imagine. On the night that Superman tells Batman that Lois Lane is pregnant, she is abducted (while working on a case, of course) by the Joker and Harley Quinn. They also murder Jimmy Olsen, but people forget that part. Batman mobilizes the League to try to track them down and Superman finds them on a submarine, where somehow they’ve managed to corral Doomsday. As Superman battles his foe, the rest of the League arrives and Batman unlocks the Joker’s real scheme: he’s blended some of the Scarecrow’s fear toxin with Kryptonite, making Superman susceptible. Superman believes he’s bringing Doomsday into orbit, but it’s really his own wife. The icing on the cake is that the Joker rigged a nuclear device in Metropolis to Lois’s heart. When she dies in outer space, Superman’s entire city is engulfed in a mushroom cloud.
This is, arguably, the nastiest Joker of any world in the Multiverse. And it just gets worse from there.
In issue two, Superman gives Lois’s body to Diana and takes off to Gotham, where Batman has taken the Joker. The rage has overtaken Superman, and he rips the Joker’s heart out in front of the Dark Knight. Green Arrow, meanwhile, finds Harley and takes her captive in his Arrowcave. Superman, consumed with grief and guilt, decides to never allow any tragedy to happen again. He starts in the country of Bialya, stopping a war and bringing its president to the United Nations, where he reveals his “Earth name” WAS Clark Kent, and that he’s going to stop all hostilities everywhere in the world, whether the world likes it or not.
Issue three shows us the government response: worried about Superman overreaching, they recruit Mirror Master to abduct Jonathan and Martha Kent. Rather than keeping Superman in check, though, the League mobilizes behind him in a rescue attempt. In Quaraq, meanwhile, one of the few places that has ignored Superman’s call for a cease-fire, Ares makes himself known in battle against Wonder Woman, a battle that does not go well for the God of War. Issue four is where things really start to go wrong – as Superman confronts Batman over the years he let the Joker live, a Japanese whaling fleet is attacked by forces of Atlantis. The League faces off against Aquaman, who intends to resist what he calls Superman’s coming reign, but Superman replies by having the League uproot Atlantis and drop it in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Aquaman buckles, and Superman has Batman’s Justice League communicator disconnected. The message is clear.
Issue five has the League put down a protest in Australia in a way that leaves the Flash shaken to his core, then decide it’s time to get rid of the Arkham inmates for the good of the world. When they arrive, Batman and Nightwing stand against them, but Robin decides to join Superman’s cause. As the two sides face off, Batman activates a virus he implanted in Cyborg years ago to immobilize him and reduce the League’s advantage. At the same time, Green Arrow has decided to bring Harley back to Arkham, but she takes advantage of the chaos to break out and start a prison riot. Robin, lashing out in the midst of the riot, accidentally killing Nightwing. This is, in many ways, the point of no return. Up until now, there was still the possibility of a peaceful resolution, but Dick Grayson’s death causes a schism that cannot be bridged. Superman and his Justice League – including Robin – begin consolidating power across the world, while Batman and Catwoman begin gathering a resistance movement against him.
Tom Taylor is a pretty big name in comics now, having a legendary run writing Nightwing under his belt, amongst his other triumphs. But I think it was his work on this series that really got him the attention he deserved. This story shares a lot of DNA with Kingdom Come, having virtually the same inciting incident, only amplified. But whereas Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s story showed a Superman who retreated from the world, Taylor’s version (the video game version, to be clear) decides to push his agenda forwards. That’s how “bad Superman” stories usually go, of course. They take what Lex Luthor claims is his greatest fear about Superman and make it fact, showing him imposing his will on a world that is helpless to resist.
What makes Taylor’s story better than most of those is the nuance. His Injustice is a remarkably slow burn, beginning five years before the events of the video game and showing everything that leads up to it. What’s more, Superman (at least at this point) is still a sympathetic character. Like Magneto and Dr. Doom, one of the things that makes him a compelling antagonist is the fact that the reader can understand his motivations, even if they can’t condone his actions. And as Superman’s humanity is slowly chipped away, we get moments where he keeps trying to bring it back. For example, after Nightwing’s death, Superman is the one who goes to Catwoman and urges her to go to Batman, knowing that he’ll need someone. It’s subtext, but the story feels like Superman is trying to get her to save Bruce before he loses his own humanity the way that Clark Kent has. Batman, on the flipside, isn’t painted as flawless – he makes his own errors in judgment — such as the virus he uses against Cyborg — which may not contribute to the tragedy directly, but at the very least hastenes it.
Of all the “dark Superman” stories that have been told, this is one of the smartest, most intelligent ones, one of the ones that goes down the dark path without utterly betraying the character. And if you’re the kind of person who wants to sit down for a long read, there’s plenty here – a full five years of comics, plus assorted annuals, spin-offs, and a sequel that went with the second video game. I haven’t even finished them all, but re-reading this first volume has put them back on my radar to get to the end of the story. Because despite preferring my Superman in the light, this story is honestly very good.
Fri. Oct. 17
Movie: Brightburn (2019)
Notes: Today we’re going to get to one of the first Superman “analogues” I’m going to be covering this week. While DC can – and obviously has – told their own stories of a Superman gone wrong, that hasn’t stopped other storytellers from putting their own spin on the concept with characters that aren’t REALLY Superman, but come on, let’s be honest here. One such character is Brandon Breyer, the main character of director David Yaroevsky’s 2019 film Brightburn. The story starts out in a VERY familiar way: a farm couple in Brightburn, Kansas, Kyle and Tori Breyer (David Denman and Elizabeth Banks), find a baby that seems to have fallen from the stars, and as they’ve been unable to conceive a child of their own, they take him in as their own. When Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) is about 12 years old, though, he begins acting oddly – mumbling in strange tongues as he struggles to open a door in the floor of the cellar, then waking up with no memory of what he was doing. Later, as he struggles with the motor of a stubborn lawnmower, Brandon finds himself strong enough to hurl it across the pasture and suffers no injury when he places his hand in the spinning blade.
The first real sign of trouble is when his aunt and uncle give him a rifle for his birthday. When his father takes the gift away, insisting that he doesn’t want him to have a gun at that age, Brandon pounds the table, disrupting the entire restaurant, and they bring him home. Later, after finding some disquieting literature under his mattress, Kyle tries to have “the talk” with him. It doesn’t go well. Brandon begins using his powers to stalk and harass a girl from school, later breaking her hand, and the chickens on the farm are found mutilated, although Tori insists it must be the work of a wolf. Although Tori continues to defend him, Kyle is growing increasingly terrified of his son, who has never been hurt, but now seems to be hurting others.
Finding a spacecraft in the cellar, Brandon insists Tori tell him the truth about where he came from, and she tells him a story that could have come word-for-word from Martha Kent. But rather than accepting his truth with the usual grace we’ve come to expect from Clark, Brandon lashes out, outraged at his parents for lying to him for his entire life. A message from the spacecraft echoes in Brandon’s head until he finally translates it into English: “Take the world.”
This moment happens a little less than halfway into the film, and from there, it’s a straight slide into darkness. Brandon uses his powers to begin taking his revenge on those he views as having wronged him, wearing a hand-stitched hood and cape he designed himself, but which makes him look more like a horror movie icon than a superhero. And this, to me, is where it really gets interesting. The film takes the familiar superhero tropes and approaches them from a completely different angle. Just how terrifying WOULD it be if someone – especially a petulant child – had Clark Kent’s powers but not Clark Kent’s ETHICS? The result is a movie that takes the elements of a superhero origin and instead applies them to a story that plays out like a slasher movie instead. Nobody is safe, not even Brandon’s parents. The whole package is suitably and appropriately chilling, and it leaves you coming away with an appreciation for the character we actually have. I’ve often said that the luckiest thing that ever happened in the DC Universe is that Kal-El’s rocket was found by Jonathan and Martha Kent instead of somebody else. This movie really drives that point home.
This movie has a very interesting pedigree, but only in retrospect. It’s written by Mark and Brian Gunn, cousin and brother (respectively) of one James Gunn, who also produced this movie several years before he got the job of running DC Studios and making what is perhaps the brightest, most optimistic Superman movie of all time. The film also includes a lot of James Gunn’s usual staple of actors – he’d worked with Elizabeth Banks and Michael Rooker before in Slither, Denman and Rooker appeared in season two of Peacemaker, Stephen Blackehart and Terence Rosemore played some of Lex Luthor’s entourage in Superman, and future Peacemaker regulars Steve Agee and Jennifer Holland (who married James Gunn a few years later) both have small roles in this one. As a fan of Gunn’s work in general, I always enjoy seeing members of his entourage turn up.
The first part of the film clings pretty close to the Superman pattern. If you filmed the scenes with less ominous lighting or more upbeat music, you could use the same dialogue in a Superman origin movie. What’s more, they take pains to show that the Breyers aren’t bad people. They’re parents trying to do the best they can in what turn out to be truly unprecedented circumstances. Tori even talks about how her own parents neglected her, and how she’s determined not to let her own child feel that way. But the child they’re trying to raise is unlike any other, and once his powers begin to develop, it quickly spins out of their control. The Breyers, from what we could see, weren’t BAD parents, although once Kyle starts realizing how bad things are, he starts to freak out and make some…let’s say “questionable” decisions. But the Kents were EXCEPTIONAL parents, capable of taking a godling and making him a force for good. There also seems to be an element of Bad Seed-ism in here as well. Although the psychic influence of his spacecraft was certainly a factor, the film gives us the impression that Brandon was fated for darkness no matter what.
Ultimately, the difference between Brandon Breyer and Clark Kent is that Brandon views himself as “special,” and in his mind, that places him above everybody else. Clark, on the other hand, views himself as human first, and doesn’t consider himself above ANYBODY, which makes the things he’s capable of all the more miraculous and amazing.
The film ends with a bit of a sequel hook, implying that this universe also plays home to dark, twisted versions of Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and possibly others. It’s a little surprising that it hasn’t been followed up anywhere. I suppose the notion of a superhuman serial killing child is a bit of a non-starter for a major franchise, which is probably why most of these dark Supermen wait until adulthood to break bad. It seems unlikely that James Gunn would touch this world again any time soon – he’s a little too busy shepherding the real DC Universe to spend much time on its evil mirror counterpart. But if someone were to come back to this world, I enjoyed this movie enough to want to see where it would go next.
Comics: Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #15, Action Comics #3, Justice League of America #32, DC Comics Presents #72
Sat., Oct. 18
Comics: The Boys #19-22
Notes: Garth Ennis is kind of an odd duck. An acclaimed comic book writer, he also has a very vocal and open disdain for superheroes. In fact, most of his superhero work has been intended to deconstruct and mock the genre. Despite this, though, he DOES have an affection for a very small number of characters, among them, Superman. Early this year, in fact, I covered an issue of his DC series Hitman, which was as tender and effusive a love letter to Superman as you could ever want to read.
However, his series The Boys is as brutal a condemnation of the superhero genre as one could ever want to read. Both the comic and the hit Amazon Prime franchise based on it are about a group of super-powered “heroes” that are as petty, cruel, and evil as any villain you can name, and the titular outsider group that is dedicated to destroying them is only barely better. Many of the “heroes” in the book are clear parodies of DC or Marvel characters, including the leader, an obvious Evil Superman type called Homelander. Due to the popularity of the TV show, Homelander is probably the best-known of all the bad Supermen out there, and I felt like I had to include him, but it’s not easy to distil exactly what makes him such a miserable excuse for a human being into one comic or story – to get the full picture of what a bastard he is you really need to read the entire series. But for the sake of discussion, I decided to go with the four-part “I Tell You No Lie, G.I.” from The Boys #19-22.
In this four-parter Hughie – the newest member of the Boys and the point of view character for most of the series – is told the history of superpowers in their universe. Without getting too deep into the lore of a series you may not have read, here’s the short version. Although the public is told stories of standard superhero origin stories, the truth is that Homelander and the rest of his team, the Seven, are powered by a substance called Compound V developed by their corporate sponsor, Vought-American. Rather than using their powers to rule the world, though, Vought is smart enough to use them for corporate supremacy – more money and less resistance. But the plan is angling towards weaponizing supers for the military, which we’re told is related to one of the big questions of the series to date – the reason there’s no more Brooklyn Bridge. In this universe, the events of Sept. 11, 2001 went somewhat differently. While some of the planes that were on their murderous trajectory were shot down, the Seven were sent in to divert one of them – and that turned out to be a disaster.
Homelander and Queen Maeve (this world’s answer to Wonder Woman) go into one plane to stop the terrorists, and instead just prove how utterly incompetent they are. Homelander, spewing racist slurs, pulverizes the terrorists in the cockpit into paste, but realizes too late that nobody there knows how to land an airplane. What’s more, attempts to catch the plane don’t work because the world of The Boys adheres at least somewhat more closely to actual physics than your usual comic book universe. And while things like saving the spaceplane in John Byrne’s Man of Steel or Brandon Routh’s rescue of the plane in Superman Returns make for great stories, the truth is that a real airplane would completely fall apart if someone tried to “catch” it the way that superheroes do so frequently. As the passengers on the plane plead for help, Homelander abandons them to their fate of spiraling into the doomed bridge.
The history lesson is intercut with scenes in the present day of the series, where Homelander is having a bit of a summit with Butcher, leader of the Boys, over some of the recent hostilities between the two groups and how their peace accords have been breached. In the course of this, Homelander is trying to find out why Butcher seems to hate him so much – not supers in general, but him SPECIFICALLY. Turns out that Homelander had a history with Butcher’s wife, something that ended poorly to say the least and gave him the fuel for Butcher’s hatred of Supes that was one of the building blocks of the entire series.
Although I don’t typically agree with Ennis’s pessimistic, nihilist stories, that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the fact that he’s good at what he does. The Boys is a well-crafted, brilliantly-scripted takedown of the superhero concept in general. Homelander specifically, though, doesn’t feel like Ennis is attacking Superman. Sure, in the world of the comic (and TV show) the public looks at him the same way that the people of Metropolis look up to Superman, but the character himself shares little with our hero except for a powerset. He never had a real childhood, as he’s just a product of Vought-American. Despite his power, he never really had much agency of his own, never really had a chance at heroism. He was only what his corporate masters made out of him. While Brightburn showed us how a Superman could go bad, Homelander is more of an amplification of what nihilistic people THINK Superman would be in the real world, as opposed to who he really is. Fans love to debate what would happen if Superman and Homelander ever got into a fight. The answer is really simple: Superman would stop Homelander from doing whatever it is that needs to be stopped, the entire time consumed with disappointment that somebody with such incredible gifts would waste them on being so selfish.
Sun., Oct. 19
Comic Book:Batman: The Devastator #1
Notes: In 2017 DC had one of Its frequent crisis events. This one, Dark Knights: Metal, revealed the existence of a “dark multiverse,” in which the different worlds played host to alternate versions of our DC heroes, but these were versions that specifically went “wrong.” I always found that concept sort of funny– there are plenty of worlds in the “bright” multiverse that aren’t exactly a basket full of kittens, after all. But this series gave DC a chance to take some wild swings. This included a series of one-shots starring Batman (because that’s where the money is) “merging” with different characters in some way or another, and those mergers had some gut-wrenching consequences. The Devastator was the book that gave us a dark knight that influenced by a man of steel (sort of) to disastrous results.
In the world featured in this issue (Earth Minus One), Superman went bad. Nobody ever found out how or why, which the Batman playing narrator tells us is the most frightening thing of all, but he went on a murderous rampage, slaughtering not only his world’s heroes, but even his own wife, that world’s Lois Lane. This, Batman tells us, is the point where hope was lost, and Batman decided the only way to stop Superman was to transform himself into the only one who’d ever beaten him: Doomsday. His plan succeeds – he kills the evil, rampaging Superman. But the transformation leeches any vestiges of hope and compassion from him, leaving a creature who – like Doomsday – sees reality purely in terms of threats that need to be eliminated. It gets worse when he’s approached by the Batman Who Laughs, another dark multiversal denizen who is a hideous amalgamation of Bruce Wayne and the Joker. He asks the Devastator Batman if he would like a shot at a world where people still think Superman is a hero, someone to admire…our world.
The Devastator comes to Earth-0 and, pretending to be our Bruce Wayne, infects our Lois with the same Doomsday virus that he used to transform himself. As she struggles against her transformation, she throws her son Jon (still ten years old at this point) into a Kryptonian-proof panic room she and Clark had built in preparation for the worst. The Devastator, meanwhile, goes to war against Supergirl, Superwoman (Lana Lang) and other heroes, while our Superman remains missing.
This story is only a fragment of the Dark Knights: Metal storyline, and honestly, the whole thing is far too detailed and intricate for me to really get into here. I’m more interested in the Superman angle anyway, after all. I find it interesting that the writers decided to avoid the question of WHAT made this Superman go bad. And for the purposes of the story, it makes sense. Their focus is on what happens to Earth Minus One’s Bruce Wayne, so the exact circumstances of their Superman’s corruption aren’t necessarily pertinent. I’ve got a different agenda, though, and it’s hard for me to conceive of a Superman so like our own going so totally, irrevocably bad, especially to the point of murdering Lois. It’s simply not any Superman that I can conceive. On the other hand, that’s probably the point. At any rate, the reaction to this evil Superman is suitable, I suppose. One of the hallmarks of a modern Batman is the way he’s so ridiculously overprepared for any given circumstance, so the idea that he would have devised a way to transform himself into Doomsday for just such an occasion isn’t farfetched at all. The idea of a Superman so evil that such a transformation would be necessary is the chilling part, the kind of thing that will keep you up at night.
Geez, maybe it’s for the best that we don’t know what exactly happened here.
Mon, Oct. 20
Comics: Irredeemable #1, Justice League of America #33
Notes: If you’ve been following this blog with the religious fervor it so richly deserves, you already know of my love and appreciation of the work of Mark Waid. Waid is currently shepherding Superman in three separate ongoing DC titles – Action Comics, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest, and Justice League Unlimited. He’s also literally rewriting history with the New History of the DC Universe miniseries, doing the best job anybody could hope to do of making some sense out of the past nine decades of continuity. Back in 2009, though, during a time when he was estranged from the current editorial leaders at DC Comics, he did his own take on the “evil Superman” trope with his masterful Boom! Studios comic book, Irredeemable. The series is 37 issues long, along with a spinoff series called Incorruptible. Both are excellent reads and well worth diving into – but as with The Boys, I just don’t have time to do the whole thing justice. So today I’m going to read the first issue of Irredeemable again, then discuss in broad strokes the series as a whole.
The story begins with the Plutonian – the bright, bold, caped hero that everyone knows and loves, engaged in an act of stalking and murder. He sweeps into the home of a hero called the Hornet (kind of this universe’s answer to Batman) and kills Hornet’s wife and infant child. Hornet and his older daughter flee to the cave beneath the house, but Plutonian finds them quickly. Although Hornet begs for his daughter’s life, Plutonian makes quick work of him, then turns to the daughter and says to her, “Do you know who I am, Sarah? I’m a super-hero.” The page turns and we see him flying away from the home, which has been reduced to cinders.
A quick time jump takes us to a week later, when the world’s remaining heroes are interrogating the Plutonian’s partner, Samsara, trying to figure out what could have gone wrong. Sam struggles with his memories, recalling a few times when Plutonian started to seem off, like he was going to unravel, but the pain of trying to access the memories proves to be too great. The camera pulls back to reveal that Sam is in his grave, dead, murdered by the Plutonian, who also seems to have carved out parts of Sam’s brain that access the memories of what made him go bad. One of the other heroes managed to briefly reanimate Sam for the interrogation, but as they realize it’s fruitless, they allow him to return to peace. As they begin to debate their next course of action, Plutonian finds them and attacks. They flee into a set of portals, but Plutonian smiles as they escape, and a comic book fan’s favorite words scroll across the bottom of the page: “To Be Continued…”
There’s so much to unpack in this series that it’s hard to know exactly where to begin. Let’s start, I guess, with a brief comparison to The Boys. Although both series have a similar conceit – heroes gone wrong – they approach it from very different angles. Garth Ennis’s series is a takedown of superheroes as a concept, a disdain for the very idea. Mark Waid, on the contrary, clearly loves superheroes (one need only read a few issues of his runs on comics like The Flash, Captain America, or JLA to fully embrace that supposition). Irredeemable, then, is less of a condemnation of superheroes and more of an examination of some of the darker possibilities.
As the series goes on we learn more and more about the Plutonian and what made him go wrong, and Waid plays up the parallels to Superman FAR more than Ennis does. Plutonian, like Superman, is not from Earth. He’s got a “human” secret identity and a human “girlfriend” that both factor into the story. And like Superman, he was considered by most to be the apex of what a hero should be. But there’s an incompleteness in Plutonian, a hole in him that doesn’t exist in the Man of Steel. And whereas Superman doesn’t do what he does for applause or accolades, we come to realize that Plutonian’s “Start of Darkness” is triggered by a growing realization (thanks to hearing and vision powers similar to Superman’s) that not EVERYBODY loves and cherishes him. He hears these mere humans talking about him behind his back, and those that are less than complimentary start to wear on him. How dare they – how DARE these pathetic mortal creatures show him anything less than pure adoration?
To be fair, this is by no means the ONLY factor in what makes the Plutonian turn bad, but I think it’s the one that shows most clearly just what makes him distinct from Superman. There have been plenty of stories over the years where public opinion has turned on Superman, but never once (at least not in an in-continuity story) has there been one where he’s considered breaking bad over it. It bothers him sometimes, but in a very human way. Rereading this comic now, it actually makes me think of the interview scene in James Gunn’s Superman, where Lois jibes Clark just a little about the way the trolls on the internet talk about him. It bothers Clark, even though he pretends it doesn’t, but there’s never a point where you’re afraid that he’s going to go out and turn his heat vision on the Justice Gang.
I find that each of these “dark Supermen” – the ones that aren’t Kal-El, at least – succeed in revealing some of the things that make Superman who he is. In Brightburn, Brandon’s initial flaw is embracing the idea that his powers make him better than other people. Plutonian’s need to be worshipped causes his undoing. Homelander is, in many ways, a soulless homunculus given Superman-like powers but without any of his humanity. Each of them proves something that I’ve always believed wholeheartedly, and that Superman detractors just can’t seem to accept. The powers do not make the hero. Kryptonian strength, heat vision, flight…these aren’t the things that gave us Superman. It’s the soul of Clark Kent, the child reared by Jonathan and Martha to be completely selfless and giving, that is the foundation of Superman. Every single Superman gone wrong is fueled by the absence of at least PART of that, and the consequences are disastrous. This week, for me at least, has proven that more than ever.
Irredeemable really is a great series, and I recommend reading it in concert with its spinoff. Incorruptible is its opposite – one of the Plutonian’s most bitter enemies sees what the hero has become and decides to try to balance out the scales by becoming a hero, only he doesn’t exactly know how to do it. The two books tell different stories, but interact nicely. And when you reach the end of it all, in the final issue of Irredeemable, there can be no doubt that this was written not as a condemnation of Superman, but as a tribute to who and what Superman actually is. It’s a love letter composed by Superman’s biggest fan.
Tues., Oct. 21
Graphic Novel: JLA: Earth 2, Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #314 (Supergirl, Team Member), Justice League of America #34 (Team Member)
Notes: For a week all about Superman gone bad, it wouldn’t seem right not to include perhaps the first such character, Ultraman. In the original DC Multiverse, Ultraman was a member of the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3, a world where the heroes of our world were reimagined as villains. Superman’s counterpart was Ultraman, Batman was Owlman, Wonder Woman was Superwoman, and so on. The tricky part is that there aren’t really any great stories ABOUT Ultraman. He, and most of the Crime Syndicate, rarely appear outside of their ensemble. And in the early days of the characters, when they appeared as occasional antagonists in the annual Justice League/Justice Society storylines, they weren’t exactly fleshed out and well developed.
So to get a solid look at what makes this evil Superman cook, I decided to go with Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s 1999 graphic novel JLA: Earth 2. Years before this creative team would bring us the remarkable All Star Superman, Morrison wrote this one-shot graphic novel as a spinoff of the main JLA comic. This was still during the period where DC’s “official” policy was that the multiverse no longer existed, except of course for when they wanted it to, so the “Earth 2” moniker was both a nod to the past and a reflection of the fact that no other worlds had TECHNICALLY been discovered in this continuity. In fact, in the story the title is only dropped as the name the Luthor from another universe uses to classify OURS. Nice reversal. Let’s get into the book, shall we?
After a pair of vignettes – one at a Watchtower that’s not quite like our own and a second where a ship crashes into a cornfield only to crack open to reveal a battle suit-wearing Lex Luthor – the story begins with the Justice League trying to avert a plane crash. Despite their best efforts, they find that everyone on the plane is already dead. Even more strange, several things on the plane don’t make sense – they carry money where George Washington’s picture has been replaced by Benedict Arnold, for example, and a cursory examination shows that their hearts are all on the wrong sides of their bodies. Perhaps most startling, when Aquaman recovers the tail of the plane from the ocean, he finds an insignia of a burning cross.
The League visits Lex Luthor for information, but he’s engaged in some – for him at least – unusual activity, such as diverting funding from his arms division to charities and giving his employees gargantuan raises. A quick interrogation reveals that this is NOT the Lex Luthor they know, but Alexander Luthor of another universe, a world he says is the reverse of our own – the sun orbits in the other directions, seasons are reversed, and the heroes of one world are the villains of the other. Ultraman, he reveals, was the first superhuman in his world: a human astronaut whose ship was damaged in hyperspace. An alien force rebuilt him with a superhuman body, but he returned to Earth with a horrific, twisted perspective that he used to raise up his Crime Syndicate to take over his world. Alexander is here to ask the League to return with him and overthrow the Crime Syndicate, but the League is divided. Batman feels that they need to focus on their own world, but Alexander promises that his plan will take only 48 hours to change his entire world.
Back on that world, the CSA have discovered that Luthor escaped to another universe, which they see as another world to conquer. The CSA isn’t the united front that the JLA is, though. Their Flash analogue, Johnny Quick, is essentially a drug addict, hooked on the compound that gives him his speed. Green Lantern’s counterpart Power Ring is a cowardly sleaze that’s possessed by the spirit called Volthoom that powers him. And Owlman and Superwoman are carrying out an affair behind Ultraman’s back. The League, meanwhile, is horrified by conditions on this world and quickly prepare their assault. They trap the CSA in their space station, and Wonder Woman goes on TV to announce that they have arrived to free the people of this earth from the tyranny of the Crime Syndicate: disarming hostile nations, providing food for the hungry, and in Gotham City, helping Commissioner Thomas Wayne Sr. finally try to clean up the streets.
In captivity, though, Owlman is cool and collected, having figured out that the plane crash we saw at the beginning was actually a swap between the two universes. The universes HAVE to balance themselves, and 24 hours after the JLA arrived on their world, the CSA vanishes and is sent to ours. Aquaman and J’onn J’onzz, who stayed behind, are toeing the line against the entire CSA as they attack Washington, DC. Both teams come to the same conclusion – the “good” characters cannot sustain a victory in the “evil” universe, and vice versa. Meanwhile, with Ultraman gone, his stooge Brainiac escapes – a computer conscience, he lies beyond the concepts of “Good” and “Evil,” and is poised to destroy both worlds by making them collide. The only way to win finally comes in the most unlikely gambit of all.
Ultraman is still part of an ensemble here as opposed to a solo star, but Morrison gives much greater depth and detail to this iteration of the Crime Syndicate than any previous version. We get a long look at this world and how diseased it is: “Boss” Gordon being the mafia lord of Gotham City, for example, or the horrific way that Lois Lane – aka Superwoman – treats her Jimmy Olsen. The conceit is unusual too, the idea that the JLA is incapable of victory in the CSA’s world just as the CSA can’t win in our own. Morrison treats “good” and “evil” not as abstract concepts here, but as something tangible. Morality almost has agency and is treated as though it were a law of physics rather than a philosophy. This is actually pretty in-keeping with a lot of Morrison’s work, and it’s executed well. In a way – and I know this is an odd comparison to make – it almost makes me think of the Final Destination films, where Death is not a physical being but an inexorable, invisible force that one way or another will have its due.
Hope you enjoyed “Superman Gone Wrong” week, friends. Next week is the last one before Halloween, and I’m going to have fun with it. Be back in seven days for “Superman Meets the Monsters!”
As you may know if you read my other blogs and watch my videos, I love Halloween. I love the last three months of the year, really, it’s the best part of the year and sometimes just waiting for it to happen is what makes me happy. And even here in the Year of Superman, I’ve got plans for October that will allow me to dip into the darkness, starting today with VILLAIN DEBUT WEEK. For the next seven days, I’ll be looking at the first appearances of some of Superman’s greatest – or at least most memorable – foes. And I gotta tell you, putting this together wasn’t as easy as you might think. As great a hero as Superman is, his rogues’ gallery doesn’t have as deep a bench as Batman, Spider-Man, or the Flash. What’s more, I’ve already covered the first appearances of several of his villains this year – Darkseid, Metallo, Doomsday, and the Cyborg Superman have all had their origins show up already. Others, like Conduit, had a long, protracted first storyline that I didn’t want to devote that much time to this week. Still more, also like Conduit, flamed brightly, but briefly, and then faded to obscurity. That said, I’ve picked what I think are enough memorable baddies to fill out the week, and I’m going to cover them in chronological order of first appearance.
Notes: I’m gonna start off Villains Origin Week with the first supervillain Superman ever fought, followed by the character who is now revered as his greatest enemy. We’ll begin in Action Comics #13 from 1939 – the first appearance of the Ultra-Humanite.
He had more work done than the entire Kardashian family.
The story starts pretty simply – Clark Kent is taking a cab to work at the Daily Star when he gets rammed by another taxi. He discovers that there’s a cab company exercising a protection racket against the other cabbies in town, trying to force them to sign up. After Superman busts Reynolds, the guy in charge of the racket, Reynolds is freed from a police transport. Superman takes off after him, chasing him to a cabin in the woods where his balding boss awaits. He introduces himself as the Ultra-Humanite and declares that a scientific experiment has given him the “most agile brain” on Earth, which he intends to use for world domination.
World domination, as we all know, frequently begins by muscling cab drivers for a percentage of their fare.
The Ultra-Humanite jolts Superman into unconsciousness with enough electricity to kill “five hundred men.” The waylaid hero is strapped to a board and driven into a circular saw, but the blade splinters on Superman’s skull and sends shrapnel around the room, one of the fragments piercing Reynold’s throat and killing him instantly (a pretty rare death indirectly caused by Superman). When Superman regains consciousness, the Ultra-Humanite flees in an airplane. Superman leaps into the air and smashes the plane’s propeller, sending it plummeting to the ground. When Superman examines the wreckage, there is no trace of the villain.
Wow, what a different story than the Superman we see today.
Not only is Superman far more cavalier about things like Reynolds’ death (even if it isn’t Superman’s fault), but he’s far more reckless when he causes the plane to crash. As for the Ultra-Humanite himself, he’s a far cry from the villain he would become. His schtick these days is his ability to leapfrog his mind from one body to another, with readers being most familiar with the albino gorilla body he uses most of the time these days. Not only is there no trace of his mental abilities, even his claim of having the “most agile” brain in the world doesn’t really hold up to much scrutiny here, as he doesn’t appear to have any greater intelligence than any other villain Superman had faced up to that point. He returns in issue #14, having escaped his death and once again nearly getting Superman in a deathtrap, but Superman got away again. I don’t know if Jerry Siegel – who wrote these stories – was deliberately trying to position the Ultra-Humanite as Superman’s greatest foe, but a lot of the elements inherent in this version of the character would soon be swapped with another, far more memorable villain.
Because Action Comics #23 gave us the first appearance of Lex Luthor.
Proof that sometimes losing your hair is a glow-up.
In a story that definitely feels like it inspired James Gunn at least a lil’ bit, Superman discovers evidence that a war between two nations is being spurred on by the machinations of a mysterious profiteer named Luthor. When Clark Kent goes public with this knowledge, Luthor goes on the attack. Although not as drastic as the change between the embryonic Ultra-Humanite and his later form, this early Luthor is much different than the one we would grow to know and love to hate. His first name is never mentioned, and he comes across as more of a war criminal than the mad scientist or ruthless businessman he would later evolve into. He also has his famous red hair in this one. The story goes that when Luthor was brought back in a later story, the artist looked at this original for reference and mixed up Lex with his bald-headed flunky, changing the course of comic book history. It’s amazing, though, how time changes all these characters. Looking back at this original story, one could hardly believe this character would grow into one of the greatest supervillains of all time.
Notes: When I made my list of which villains I intended to include in this Villains Origins week, I decided I would go through that list chronologically. Upon doing so, though, I noticed an interesting pattern. The villains in Superman’s life – obviously unintentionally – seem to have been introduced in themed phases. Yesterday, Luthor and the Ultra-Humanite gave us the evil genius era. Today, in the early 1940s, we’re going to visit a trio of villains that all happen to fall under the category of what I’d call “pests” rather than legitimate threats. These are crooks who all are more of a nuisance than actually evil, out to have a little fun and sow a little chaos – although that doesn’t mean that, in later (and darker) eras of comics they weren’t used for more malicious purposes. I’m talking, of course, about the Prankster, the Toyman, and everybody’s favorite fifth dimensional imp, Mr. Mxyzptlk.
Prankster turns up first, in Action #51 from 1942. The story begins with Superman foiling an old-fashioned bank robbery, but the crooks narrowly escape to meet up with their boss – a goofy, big-eared, buck-toothed crook in a bad suit that calls himself the Prankster. He embarks upon another robbery loaded with the kind of jokes that kids think are funny – a handkerchief that stains your face with black ink, guns that shoot corks or water instead of bullets, and so forth. He even leaves a ticking bag at the scene of a crime, a bomb that the police are terrified to approach. Of course, Lois Lane has no such fear, marching right past Metropolis’s finest to open up the bag and cause a harmless noise-making explosion in a bag full of money. The Prankster’s goons are baffled by why their boss is leaving money BEHIND at the scene of their crimes, but keep going along with it. At the scene of their third crime Superman rounds up the gang and the cops charge Prankster with robbery and assault with a deadly weapon – both charges which are swiftly dropped when the Prankster reveals that his gun only shoots toy parachutes and that, far from stealing from his victim, he has GIVEN him $30,000.
I have to admit, I’ve never wanted so badly to be a crime victim as I have while reading this story.
Prankster keeps going with his bizarre scheme, giving away thousands of dollars time and again, before finally showing up at the Metropolis National Bank. The bank manager, thinking he’s in for a windfall of his own, opens up the vault for the Prankster, who proceeds to relieve him of millions of dollars in currency and jewels, far more than he’s given away. Superman goes after him, saving Lois (because of course she got herself kidnapped) and fighting a variety of traps before the Prankster himself is seemingly killed in a cave-in. Superman was a hell of a lot less curious about the apparent deaths of his foes in those days. But to the credit of the writer, this time they don’t even PRETEND the villain is really dead – in the last two panels we see the Prankster hiding in his cave and planning his next scheme.
Of the three nuisance villains we’re reading about today, I have to admit, I’ve always found the Prankster the least interesting. He’s like the Riddler without the smarts or the Joker without the charisma. That said, I’ve never read his first appearance before, and I’m surprised. His scheme is actually pretty clever, and he also comes across more menacing than I expected, killing one of his own goons in a trap because the man dared question him. He became less and less interesting over time, I guess, but for a Golden Age villain origin, this is solid.
Pictured: Pure, unmitigated evil.
About a year after the Prankster’s debut, the Toyman showed up for the first time in Action #64. Lois and Clark are walking through the park when an automated Superman doll runs past them. Clark catches it and returns it to the creator, a goofy looking dude in a Little Lord Fauntleroy getup calling himself the Toyman. Impressed at his work, Lois asks if she could write an article about him and his shop. Lois doesn’t know, of course, that not all of his toys are so benign. Toyman sends a troop of toy soldiers into a bank (never trust your money in a Metropolis bank) where they expel knockout gas, allowing him to loot the cash drawers, getting away on a flying pogo stick. For his next trick, Toyman uses a toy fire truck to start a fire at an expensive apartment building, leaving him free to rob the penthouse at the top as Superman is busy rescuing people from the flames. He even sends a letter to the Daily Planet to brag about his third crime, using a toy truck to blow up a bridge while his men in scuba gear empty a real armored car that fell into the water. Superman catches the divers, but Lois is caught (OF COURSE SHE IS) by the Toyman and his toy battleship. Superman ultimately tracks him to his hideout using his super-senses, and Clark shows up to untie Lois – but not before he beats her to writing up the story of the Toyman for the newspaper.
I really like the last bit, where Clark gets the better of Lois for once. As for Toyman himself, this is a character who’s been reinvented many times. At least three different characters (one of them a hero) have used the name, and the original Winslow Schott has been at turns a child-hating creep, a child-loving creep, and a third stage that made him – in the 90s – one of the darkest foes Superman ever fought. We’ll get to that story later this month.
Me: Is it weird that I kinda prefer Mxyzptlk Version 1.0? My wife: For you? No, not at all.
In 1944, Superman #30 gave us the debut of the character we would come to know as Mr. Mxyzptlk, although it’s spelled “Mxyztplk” here, and the spelling changed later. I wanted to make sure I was clear about that – I’d hate for anybody to get confused. It all begins when a little man wearing a derby hat walks in front of a speeding truck and is seemingly killed. The paramedics can’t budge him, though, and he shocks the hell out of them by sitting up and encouraging them to try harder before stealing their ambulance, driving it straight up the side of the building, and making it explode. He next appears in a museum, loudly interrupting the unveiling of a new sculpture by howling for his friend “McGurk.” After disrupting the show, the sculpture is unveiled and comes to life, following the imp away. Superman finally chases down the little goober, but he vanishes. He continues to pop up in and around Metropolis causing chaos for several pages before slowing down long enough to tell Superman that he’s from another dimension and he thought using his powers in ours would be fun for a little while once he learned the magic words that could transport him back and forth. Superman deftly tricks him into saying the word that sends him home (“Klptzyxm,” natch) and he vanishes, but not before one last prank. Clark comes back to the Daily Planet to find that, rather than Clark’s story about Mxy’s pranks, he published a story mocking Lois Lane’s new hat.
This is a funny story, with great visuals and sight gags that click with this embryonic Mxyzptlk. There are even lots of little background jokes to populate the pages, like a kid telling his mom he wants to grow up to be like Superman only to be admonished that he has to eat his vegetables. It’s a great intro and no wonder that the imp was brought back time and again. He’s gone through a lot of incarnations as well. Sometimes he’s more malevolent, sometimes he’s more childlike, occasionally he even comes across as wanting to be Superman’s friend. Whatever the case, though, having him around is always amusing.
Fri. Oct. 3
Comics: Action Comics #242, Superboy #68
On his first cover, one could easily picture Brainiac singing “Neener neener neener.”
Notes: By the 50s, the era of the super-nuisance seemed to have passed, and the next batch of memorable villains to join Superman’s rogues gallery were of a more sci-fi bent: the alien Brainiac, the quasi-clone Bizarro and the cyborg Metallo. Metallo, coincidentally, made his first appearance in Action Comics #252, which I covered here several months ago, as it happens to be the same issue as the first appearance of Supergirl. But today I’ll look at Brainiac and Bizarro.
In Action #242, Brainiac comes to Earth to shrink its greatest cities and steal them to repopulate his own home planet, which was wiped out by a plague. After getting Paris and New York, Superman waits in Metropolis for his home town to be stolen as a way onto Brainiac’s ship. On board, the tiny Superman another city that was stolen: a city from his homeworld of Krypton – but upon entering the bottle, he loses his powers under the stimulated Kryptonian environment. He seeks help from a scientist named Kimda who happens to be his father Jor-El’s college roommate (I know that sounds like a joke, but I swear to God, that’s exactly what happened). Outside the bottle, Brainiac goes into suspended animation for his trip back home and Superman manages to escape the bottle. Using Kimda’s findings, Superman restores the cities of Earth, but then discovers that ray has only enough charge left for one more enlargement – either Superman or the Kryptonian city. Although he plans to restore the city, Kimda intervenes and turns the ray on, making Superman grow so that Earth would not be deprived of its greatest hero. Brainiac’s ship continues on its way while Superman brings the city to his Fortress of Solitude with a vow to find some way to restore it someday.
This is such a weird story to me. Brainiac has changed so much over the years that you almost wouldn’t recognize him – he’s usually painted as far more menacing and malevolent these days, and later incarnations would identify him as an artificial intelligence that occasionally uses flesh and blood bodies. Kandor itself would get massive development over the years – in fact, until I started to write this recap I didn’t even notice that the city was never identified by name in the original story, it was just “a Kryptonian city.” It’s really weird and fascinating to look back on these things, elements of Superman’s lore that would go on to become so important, and see how humbly they began.
This issue am worthless! Me no get it slabbed in plastic!
Bizarro first showed up in Superboy #58 later that same year. When one of Smallville’s seemingly infinite number of scientists asks Superboy to help him test a new “duplicator ray” he’s invented, he accidentally strikes Superboy with the beam and creates a “non-living” duplicate with a strange faceted skin and a feeble mind, but all of Superboy’s powers. Dubbed “Bizarro” the creature stumbles around Smallville for a while trying and failing to fit in, finally making friends with a young woman named Melissa who isn’t terrified of his appearance. The dim Bizarro, however, doesn’t realize that the girl is blind. When Bizarro decides to seek her out at Smallville High, Clark is forced to do some secretive super-feats to prevent the creature’s bumbling from accidentally killing half the class.
Superboy finds a chunk of Kryptonite and tries to use it to stop Bizarro, but it has no effect. He uses a marionette of Melissa to lure Bizarro to a military range, where the army fails to destroy the creature with heavy artillery. (Really, Clark, the creature obviously has all your powers, what were you thinking?) Bizarro returns to the real Melissa, where he discovers that she’s blind, and only his friend because she can’t see his real face. At the same time, Superboy learns that the irradiated pieces of the original duplicator ray have a Kryptonite-like effect on Bizarro. He approaches the creature with a piece of the metal and Bizarro hurls himself into it, exploding into a rain of dust. Somehow, the vibrations of his explosion trigger Melissa’s optic nerve and restore her sight, leaving her to wish she had seen the “kind face” of the creature who sacrificed himself for her.
This story goes to great lengths to remind us that Bizarro isn’t alive, over and over again, despite all evidence to the contrary. Doesn’t matter that he moves and thinks and has feelings and willingly sacrifices himself for the betterment of his only friend. None of those things are evidence of LIFE. After all, if he WERE alive, that would make Superboy a murderer, which probably would have been frowned upon. But alive or not, this Bizarro already carries a lot of the elements that the character would embody later, including his backwards thinking and speaking. He was brought back a year later, when the experiment that created Bizarro was duplicated on the adult Superman, creating a second Bizarro. This one would ironically go on to dub himself “Bizarro #1” when he created a whole planet of duplicates of himself and the Bizarro culture became fleshed out. John Byrne would also bring back the idea of Bizarro sacrificing himself to restore sight to a blind girl – this time Lucy Lane – when he rebooted the character in Man of Steel. The blueprint was there from the beginning, but it’s been greatly expanded over time.
Sat., Oct. 4
Comics: Superboy #83, Adventure Comics #283, Justice League: The Omega Act Special #1, Absolute Evil #1
It’s not the worst dream his parents could walk in on him having.
Notes: The next point we reached with the introduction of memorable villains seems to have brought us to an era of threats from home – specifically, Krypton. Superboy #83 brought us the debut of the Kryptonite Kid, who first appears to Superboy in a dream. The Kid, with a body (and a dog) made of Kryptonite vexes the sleeping Superboy. Even more baffling, Superboy soon figures out that Krypto is having the same dreams as he is. The dreams come true when they encounter the Kid at a playground. The Kid chases Superboy, demonstrating his ability to transform things into Kryptonite with a touch – a playground slide first, then the lead culvert Superboy tries to use for cover. The Kid warns Superboy and Krypto that they have to leave Earth or he’ll kill them, then flees the scene. After a few more encounters, one of which winds up with Smallville High School itself turning into Kryptonite, the Kid reveals his secret origin. Turns out he was an inmate at a prison in space who volunteered for an experiment in exchange for the commuting of his sentence. He wound up with the ability to turn things into Kryptonite and decided to use it to attack Superboy. (Projecting himself into Krypto and Clark’s dreams are evidently a natural ability of his alien race.) Just when it seems that Superboy’s down for the count, the Kid is zapped away by – of all people – the young imp Mxyzptlk. After all if Superboy dies, there’ll be no one left for him to play with.
What a bizarre story. The origin is pretty generic, and in the end Superboy has no hand in saving himself – the only reason he survives is because Mxy didn’t want him to die. It’s also interesting to note that, by this point, things had been retconned so that Clark first encountered Mxyzptlk as a kid in Smallville rather than an adult in Metropolis. Kryptonite Kid wasn’t the most memorable of villains, but he did pop in to vex Superboy several more times, and at least once after they were adults. But there would be other villains who picked up the name Kryptonite Man later and made it more fearsome.
Ma and Pa couldn’t understand why Clark ghosted them.
Clark was also Superboy in Adventure Comics, where he met perhaps the second greatest enemy he’d ever have, after Luthor himself: General Zod. It begins when a box falls to Earth in Smallville with Kryptonese writing on it. Superboy reads the inscription to learn that the box contains several weapons that were deemed too dangerous to leave lying around Krypton, so they shot them into space on a trajectory that would eventually cause them to fall onto a far less developed planet, because for all their scientific advancement and planetary harmony, the Kryptonians were kinda dumb. Among these devices, which Superboy learns were created by his own father, Jor-El (there were approximately seven people on Krypton when it exploded and they all were connected to the Els), is the infamous Phantom Zone projector. Superboy learns the history of the device, including how General Zod was banished into the Zone when he tried to stage a revolt on Krypton with an army of Bizarro-like duplicates of himself. The device is activated when a lizard steps on the button and turns Superboy into a Phantom, because — and I cannot reiterate this enough — Kryptonians were kinda dumb. The Phantom Superboy is forced to zip around Smallville – invisible and intangible – trying to find some way to get somebody to turn the device on and restore him. He finally gets a message to Jonathan Kent, using his super-brain to transmit a message to an electric typewriter. This works because earlier in the issue Lana Lang theorized it would. That’s the only reason.
Zod’s appearance in this issue is minimal, appearing only in the flashback that shows how the Phantom Zone projector works. Both he and the Phantom Zone would come back and become much more defined, although Zod himself was fairly unimpressive until the late Terrence Stamp played him in the first two Superman movies, elevating him to the A-list of Superman villains. Most versions of Zod in the comics since then have been based on the Stamp version of the character. The Phantom Zone, too, would be dramatically changed from merely turning the victim into a phantom into being a portal to a literal other dimension. There was a lot of refinement to this concept before it became what it is today.
Superman poses for a lot of covers where he holds a dying blonde in his arms.
I also grabbed this week’s new Superman comics today, including a pair of one-shots that are connected to the larger story of the DC Universe. The prelude to DC KO is presented in Justice League: The Omega Act Special. Superman has brought the lost Booster Gold back to the League, but he and the Doomsday/Time Trapper – along with the Flash – take a quick trip through time to discover what really happened when Darkseid died in the DC All-In Special. The upcoming conflict with the Absolute Universe is about to change everything, but Booster has been changed as well. And in addition to Booster, we get flashbacks to Krypton’s past when Lara (Superman’s mother) and Ursa (Zod’s wife) made a discovery that might change everything we know about a certain member of our cast. I’m really excited to see where this story is going.
Absolute Evil #1 is the a one-shot special celebrating the first anniversary of DC’s Absolute line, focusing (naturally) on the villains. Hector Hammond is summoned to a summit that includes Veronica Cale, Ra’s Al Ghul, and the humorless creature this universe calls Joker. Cale reveals how – in this universe – certain forces have operated to prevent the rise of costumed heroes, either through violence or temptation. We’re given glimpses of the would-be heroes of this world’s Golden Age and what happened to them, as well as an understanding of what these terribly powerful people have planned now that things have changed and superhumans are beginning to appear that are beyond their ability to control. The issue has a pretty decent recap of the broad strokes of the Absolute Universe to date, for those who maybe want to play catch-up, and there’s a pretty startling final page that leaves me scratching my chin and wondering where they’re planning to go with all this.
Sun., Oct. 5
Comics: Absolute Superman #12, Adventures of Superman: Book of El #2
“Dammit, he’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
Notes: I had a lot on my plate on this Sunday, so I’m going to hop in real quick and read the other two new Superman comics from this week, starting with Absolute Superman #12. “The Battle of Kansas” begins as Kal-El retreats to the one place on Earth he’s ever felt safe: Smallville. Lois and Jimmy have the same idea, seeking refuge in a diner where a face the readers will recognize immediately confronts them about their association with Lazarus. We also get some flashbacks to fill in a bit of Kal-El’s time on Earth, even as Ra’s Al Ghul prepares his revenge on the alien who dared to defy him. This may be my favorite issue of this series to date, with a real look at character and a bit of the flavor of hope we expect from a Superman story. The whole thesis of the Absolute universe is that “hope” is the underdog, and the whole world runs on darkness and conflict as befits a world spawned by the power of Darkseid. But even in a world this dark, this issue shows us how the light of this character shines through, and it feels really good.
I feel less good about Book of El #2. Superman is in the distant future with his descendant, Ronan Kent, seeking a way home. Meanwhile, the world has been taken over by one of his greatest foes. This issue explores that a little bit, but in a way that I frankly find irritating. Some science fiction writers have people in the future talk exactly like people do today, even though logically we know that’s not right. Language changes and evolves, and people from 1000 from now won’t talk exactly as we do any more than we talk like people from 1000 years ago. So other writers conjure up a “future speak” to address the issue. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t it can come across as REALLY annoying. Realistic or not, sometimes it’s better to just keep the language simple.
As a soulless monster who leeches the life force from unsuspecting victims, he went with “Parasite” because “Insurance Claims Adjuster” was just too evil.
Notes: Back to Villains Week. The Parasite was the next significant Superman villain to show up, in Action Comics #340 from 1966. Like many of the villains we’ve talked about this week, he’s gone through a lot of changes over the years, and several people have used the name (although the powers haven’t changed significantly). Let’s see what kind of tomfoolery the original got up to.
The story, by the late Jim Shooter, kicks off hard, with the opening narration declaring that the Parasite was “the most powerful foe Superman has ever faced!” And in this pre-Darkseid, pre-Doomsday world, that may not be hyperbole. The story starts with Superman helping out in a government science lab, conducting experiments with radioactive elements that would kill an ordinary person. When the facility’s janitor Jensen, is tapped to dispose of the waste from the experiment, he remembers a rumor he heard that sometimes labs ship their payroll inside of containers marked “radioactive waste” to fool criminals. Instead, he proves that criminals are fools by opening up the container and exposing himself to the toxic material. Jensen’s skin turns purple and deformed and he collapses, as if all his energy has been spent. When one of the scientists finds him, Jensen finds himself absorbing not only the man’s energy, but also his scientific knowledge. He fights his way to freedom, absorbing the strength and minds of everyone he comes across. Although the energy he absorbs doesn’t last long, he begins to plan a new life as a human Parasite.
He later picks up a little of Superman’s energy as the Man of Steel flies past his hideout, and he gets the idea to hunt him down. When he feels an enormous surge of energy coming from Clark Kent, the Parasite figures out a secret that Luthor and Brainiac had been struggling with for decades. When Superman tries to stop him from robbing a bank, the Parasite defeats him with his own power and threatens to expose his secret identity if Superman refuses to fight him to the finish. He’s shocked that, no matter how much power he drains from Superman, he still keeps getting up and he keeps absorbing more and more until finally his mortal body is overloaded by Superman’s power and he explodes.
We’ve talked before about how unimaginative people complain that Superman’s powers make him “boring,” but it IS true that it’s hard to come up with a suitable physical threat for him. Like Kryptonite Kid, this was an effort to do so. But like Kryptonite Kid, in the end, Superman’s victory is a passive one. He survives not because of anything he DOES, but because the Parasite simply bites off more than he can chew. The Parasite would become a recurring foe for Superman over the decades, and although he remained dangerous, they also started to play up the fact that he wasn’t all that smart, and subsequent victories gave Superman a bit more agency. Still, it’s kind of disappointing that their first tete-a-tete ended the way it did.
“No, my name is NOT JOHNNY BLAZE. Why does everybody keep ASKING me that?”
Next we jump ahead to 1978 and the first appearance of the Atomic Skull in Superman #323. Although the Skull has never quite cracked into the ranks of Superman’s A-list villains, he’s a B- (or, if I’m being honest, maybe C)-lister that I’ve always had a fondness for. Of course, I remember him better in his vastly different post-Crisis version that showed up in early issues of Superman: The Man of Steel. The original Skull appears in “The Man With the Self-Destruct Mind” by Martin Pasko and Curt Swan, and shows up on page one destroying a Superman statue and vowing to kill the real thing. Superman, meanwhile, is in space – he’s wearing a suit of lead armor trying to investigate a sudden preponderance of Kryptonite that’s been falling to Earth lately and coming into the possession of a group called the Skull Crime Organization. He soon discovers that “Krypton-Two,” a planet he once made out of chunks of Kryptonite, has somehow been destroyed and is showering Earth with Green K once again. The Skulls, meanwhile, kidnap a STAR Laps scientist and reveal that their craft is powered by their leader, the Atomic Skull, whose brain is creating miniature nuclear reactions. Furthermore, he is unmasked as former STAR Labs scientist Albert Michaels. (Michaels, it turns out, had made previous appearances as the leader of the Skulls – this is his first appearance with his new powers and costume.) As it turns out, Michaels has a rare nervous disorder that short-circuits his brain’s electrical impulses. A treatment for his condition only made it worse – not only does he still have seizures, but they are accompanied by energy bursts that are killing him, and he hates Superman because he’s jailed the only scientists (mad, I presume) who could have saved him. His plan involves loading up a rocket with the Kryptonite that’s falling to Earth and detonating it in the atmosphere, blanketing the planet with enough Kryptonite particles to remove Superman’s powers no matter where he is on the globe. And on the last page he plays his trump card – holding Superman at bay with the powers of Titano, the Super-Ape as he sends the rocket to blow up.
Part two of the story picks up in Superman #324, as Titano hits Superman with the rays of his Kryptonite vision. Superman manages to neutralize the ape by wrapping lead around its eyes, then takes out the Atomic Skull by redirecting one of his own energy-bursts. This leaves him with the problem of what to do with the Kryptonite missile, which he can’t approach to stop without exposing himself to fatal doses of Kryptonite. Titano comes after him again and, with his X-Ray vision, Superman determines that the Skull is controlling the ape via a device implanted in his brain. He manages to corral the ape and then use the Supermobile (God, I love the stupid, ridiculous Supermobile) to vacuum up the Kryptonite from the atmosphere.
Does James Bond have a car with robot fists? DOES HE?
I appreciate that they were trying to up the ante for the villains at Superman at this point. The late 70s and early 80s are really, for me, one of the dullest periods in the character’s history, with few memorable stories or characters appearing. The Skull is an exception. He’s a little generic – the mad scientist with atomic powers – but the idea that the powers are slowly killing him gives it a little more weight. I don’t think they did that much with the idea, though, and it’s been largely dropped from future versions of the character. Now, especially, where his head is encased in atomic fire, people write him off as a Ghost Rider knock-off. There’s more to it there, and I think the right writer could really make him into a top-level threat.
Thank God Dave Gibbons taught him correct posture.
In 1980, Len Wein and Jim Starlin gave us DC Comics Presents #27. This issue of the Superman team-up book paired him off with the Martian Manhunter and gave us the first appearance of the world-conquering Mongul. Superman is alone in Clark’s apartment when he receives a message from outer space – a yellow-skinned alien who reveals that he has kidnapped three of Clark’s colleagues – Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, and Steve Lombard – and threatens them if Superman refuses to retrieve for him a crystal key that is being held on the fifth planet in the Cygnus system. At this period, the Martian Manhunter has left Earth, establishing a “new Mars” on Cygnus’s FOURTH planet, and when Superman approaches the crypt where the key is being kept, J’onn shows up and tells him that the world is off-limits. J’onn tells Superman that the key must remain where it is or countless worlds will be in jeopardy. The key is the only thing that will allow someone to get past the defenses of an ancient and incredibly powerful satellite called Warworld, and thus it may be the most dangerous object in the universe. Although Superman sympathizes, the two friends come to blows. Each of them attacks the other with their weakness (Kryptonite for Superman, fire for J’onn), and ultimately Superman retrieves the key. When Mongul arrives, though, he refuses to turn it over. J’onn saves the hostages, but Mongul manages to get the key and escapes.
There’s good and bad in this issue. On the plus side, Mongul is a great villain. He’s the most fully-formed of all the villains I’ve read about this week, the one who is most like who he becomes from the very beginning. He’s cold, manipulative, and ambitious, all qualities that make him one of the greats. On the other hand, I really dislike the way Wein paints Superman and J’onn. The two of them have been friends forever at this point – the fact that they went straight to fighting instead of trying to work together to find a way out of this dilemma does a disservice to them both.
The story continued in the next issue, when Superman recruits Supergirl to help him track Mongul to Warworld. (Why J’onn didn’t come along, considering how important he considered the key to be, is a mystery.) They find the planet and are dazzled by the enormity of it, but Superman manages to defeat Mongul by outlasting him – he reasons that the aliens that created the satellite died one by one because the control helmet was too much for them and that it would eventually wear Mongul out, and he’s right. It does make one wonder, though, why the hell the aliens would make their entire weapon fueled by a device that would not only cause their own extinction, but do so in what seems to be a matter of minutes. Who the hell ever thought THAT was a good idea? Even in the real world, it takes us much longer to destroy ourselves.
Tues., Oct. 7
Comics: Action Comics #595, 645, Justice League of America #31
Notes: You may have noticed something about the villains I’ve covered so far this week. I know my wife certainly has. They’ve all been men. I refuse to take the blame for this. It’s not my fault that for five decades, the writers of Superman never seemed to come up with an interesting continuing female villain. I think part of it is the idea that you can’t have Superman punch out a lady – it’s not a good look for the strongest man in the world to punch out a woman. In fact, go back and look at any early Justice League issue where the team fights a villain GROUP – there’s always one female villain so that Wonder Woman has somebody to fight.
In an outfit like this, she ain’t no lady.
But eventually, it seems, people decided to address that, and in my chronological journey through Superman’s rogues’ gallery, the last three significant villains I’m going to talk about all happen to be female.. We’re going to start with Action Comics #595 and the first appearance of the Silver Banshee. This was part of the John Byrne era, coming out in 1987 during the period when Action Comics was the Superman team-up book. This particular issue, though, didn’t divulge who Superman’s guest-star was on the cover, leaving a string of question marks where the second hero’s name usually went. It’s a striking cover nonetheless – a stark black-and-white villain with a skeletal face standing over Superman’s dead body while his spirit comes at her from behind. That’s a book that’ll get your attention.
The story starts with the Banshee walking through Metropolis, invading bookstores where she casually touches bystanders, drains their life force, and leaves them dead. And when Superman arrives, she does the same to him. The world is stunned by the hero’s sudden loss and he’s placed in state in a glass casket for a memorial as the Banshee escapes. At the funeral, though, everyone witnesses Superman’s ghost rise from his body and take off after the Banshee. Jimmy, meanwhile, has tracked her down to yet another bookstore. She’s about to touch him when Superman’s ghost appears and engages her, shocking her when she realizes she can’t hurt him anymore. The Banshee unleashes her scream, trying to destroy Superman, but winds up exploding. (Superman villains used to explode a LOT.) Jimmy is pulled from the debris by a LIVING Superman, and watches in astonishment as the ghost Superman transforms into J’onn J’onzz, making his second appearance in Villains Week! Give the man a box of Chockos! On the last page we get an explanation for everything – the Banshee’s ability to kill was based on her knowing her victim’s identity (because magic), so she was helpless against the shapeshifter. Jimmy also figured out that she was targeting bookstores that had recently received a shipment of books from a certain castle in Ireland. That, of course, is the sort of thing that comes back later.
The Silver Banshee has always been one of the most memorable new villains from this period. She’s got a phenomenal look, first of all – a really unique appearance that’s totally unlike any of Superman’s other villains. Also, considering how everyone remembers his vulnerability to magic, it’s surprising that he doesn’t have more enemies for whom magic is their usual shtick. Later stories would flesh out the character more, revealing a tragic backstory and making her more sympathetic. In recent years she’s wavered between villain and antihero, and she’s even (in her human form) dated Jimmy Olsen. In fact, I think she still is – Jimmy’s been a little out of focus in the comics lately, they really should address that. Anyway, the point is, she’s a good character.
Stalker with a crush, anyone?
Maxima, the warrior queen from the planet Almerac, made her first appearance in Action Comics #645 by Roger Stern and George Perez. I’ve written about Maxima in the Year of Superman many times, of course. She was a member of the Justice League during the Doomsday storyline, broke bad again in the electric era, and she’s had a smattering of other appearances over the last ten months. Today, though, we’re going to see where she came from in the first place.
The story begins with a stunning redhead strutting the streets of Metropolis and being accosted by a few gang members, one of whom quickly (and fatally) learns that pulling a knife on her isn’t a good idea. Maxima, along with an attendant named Sazu, is looking for Superman, and winds up at the Daily Planet office after being told he has connections there. Superman isn’t in attendance, though, and after leaving the entire staff in a trance, she leaves. Clark shows up, fresh from a fight with the Parasite in Starman’s comic (Stern was writing both books and liked to tie them together), shows up and snaps them out of it. They tell him about their attacker and he finds her pretty easily, as she’s now at City Hall holding the mayor hostage. When he arrives, she puts him under mental assault as a means of testing him. She’s testing Superman’s “worthiness” and finds him acceptable, but Sazu revolts. She claims that Superman is “unworthy” and unleashes her own mental powers against Maxima, who…explodes.
No, really.
Sazu is taken into custody and Superman is left confused, but the last page clues the reader in to the fact that the Maxima who blew up was just a simulacrum. The real Maxima is in outer space and now, dang it, she’s gonna have to come to Earth herself to make Superman hers.
And she did show up again, and several times after that, as her motivation was revealed: she was seeking a consort of superior bloodline with which to procreate and extend the line of the Royal Family of Almerac. As villain motivations go, it’s a lot more flattering than wanting to destroy him because he thinks it’s Superman’s fault that he went bald. It’s also interesting how the gender roles are inverted here. When you consider the revelation about Kal-El’s parents in James Gunn’s movie, it’s not all that different, but it’s definitely more controversial. Part of that, of course, is because Jor-El is usually portrayed more benevolently, but even were it a brand new character I think people would have found it more insidious than they did when Maxima shows up wanting pretty much the same thing. There’s probably a whole dissertation that could be written about the differences here, but that’s somewhat above my pay grade. At any rate, it makes Maxima one of the more memorable villains of the era, and she’s had the kind of longevity that it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see her show up in a new movie or TV show. There’s something interesting about this character that’s fun in a cheesy sci-fi sort of way.
TV Episode: Superman: The Animated Series Season 2, Episode 5, “Livewire”
She’s got an ELECTRIC personality! Haha! Get it? Ah, I’ll show myself out.
Notes: The last villain we’re going to discuss on this avenue of animosity did not make her first appearance in comics, but rather on TV. No doubt trying to duplicate the smash hit they had when they created Harley Quinn on Batman: The Animated Series, the producers of the Superman cartoon introduced this new female foe in 1997, an electrical harpy called Livewire. Although she hasn’t QUITE had the degree of cultural penetration that Harley has (and to be fair, who HAS?), she, too, made the leap to comic books and has crossed swords with Superman occasionally ever since.
In “Livewire” we’re introduced to Leslie Willis (voiced by Lori Petty), a radio shock jock who’s riding a ratings high she’s getting off of trash-talking Superman. She goes through with her show’s anniversary celebration in Centennial Park despite a thunderstorm pouring down on them, and suffers the consequences when lightning overloads her equipment. Superman tries to shield her, but Leslie is bombarded by electricity, bleaching her skin white and her hair blue. When she wakes up in the hospital, she discovers she’s developed electrical powers, including the ability to control electronic devices, and attempts to hold the city of Metropolis hostage. She attacks the city’s hydroelectric plant, where Superman comes in to hold her off. After a pitched battle, Livewire blasts a hole in the dam and is washed over with water, causing her to EXPLODE!!!
Just kidding.
No, she stays in one piece, but the water DOES short-circuit her powers, allowing Superman to repair the damage to the power plant and bring her in. When we last see her, a radio voiceover tells us that Lex Luthor has volunteered (through the goodness of his heart, of course) to pay for her treatments, but the image we have of her strapped into a chair with wires all over her seem to indicate that she isn’t receiving the best of care.
I like Livewire, not just because Superman could use more female villains, but because she’s got a unique attitude. She’s not jealous of Superman’s popularity. She’s not out to prove that she’s more powerful than he is. She doesn’t want to outsmart him or outthink him, and she CERTAINLY doesn’t want to have his babies. Nope, Livewire is just a jerk, a loudmouthed radio asshole like Howard Stern, only more lifelike, and that’s an entertaining dynamic to play.
This first week of October was a fun one, but it’s just the beginning. Like I said, I intend to spend this month peering into the dark side (not to be confused with the Darkseid) of the Man of Steel, and I mean it. Come back next week for my discussion of Superman’s Darkest Hours.
The monthlong journey through Superman’s electric era was fun, but I’m ready to mix it up again and get back to some different types of stories. So this week I’ve decided to go without a theme. I’ll grab random stories to enjoy each day, without any overarching plan or goal. I’ll get back to themes in October. And I’ve got plans for October.
Comics:Superman #162, Taste of Justice #12 (Krypto Appearance), Harley Quinn in Paradise #37 (Cameo), Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #13
Notes: With the saga of Electric Superman behind me, I realized that there’s one thing I should have read that I forgot to include. Like “The Death of Superman,” the long-running epic of Superman Red and Superman Blue was not a unique idea to the Triangle Era, having drawn a little inspiration from a Silver Age “Imaginary Story.” Today, even though I’m purposely leaving this week open for random readings as the mood strikes me, I wanted to go back and read the original story of Superman Red and Superman Blue from 1963. I read this story for the first time when I was a kid, included in the delightful Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told trade paperback, which now that I think about it, may be the first trade paperback I ever got. I wonder how the contents of that would change were they to make a new volume today.
Anyway, in “The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue” by Leo Dorfman, with art by the immortal Curt Swan, we start off with a discussion of Superman’s many failings. The publisher of the Daily Planet puts out a post listing raises for every employee except for Clark Kent (in fact it specifically says “Clark Kent: No Increase,” like that time on The Simpsons that the power plant announced layoffs in alphabetical order and only said “Simpson, Homer”), and before the bruising has even subsided, he’s summoned to the Fortress of Solitude where the citizens of Kandor are pissed that he hasn’t gotten around to enlarging them yet. And while they’re on the subject, why hasn’t he found a cure for Kryptonite poisoning or eradicated crime on Earth? Is he a Superman or isn’t he?
I gotta be honest, the Kandorians kinda seem like assholes in this one.
At any rate, they give him six months to try to accomplish all of these feats or they’re going to have him switch places with a Kandorian citizen and let the new guy try to do it. Superman, apparently forgetting the fact that he is – relative to them – the size of the Empire State Building, agrees to their terms. He tells Supergirl that he’s invented a “brain evolution machine” that could theoretically improve his mental power a hundredfold. The catch is that the machine is powered by radiation from all different colors of Kryptonite, so there’s a significant chance that something could go wrong. As it turns out, though, something goes extraordinarily RIGHT. The machine splits Superman into two beings, each 100 times smarter than the original. Unlike the last time this happened under the influence of Red Kryptonite, though, this time there’s no evil twin – they’re both still good.
The two super-geniuses quickly put their brains to work solving the issues that Kandor set forth for them, beginning with repairing Brainiac’s enlarging ray (which he’d never been able to do before) and restoring Krypton by causing a chain reaction that magnetically draws every chunk of Kryptonite in the universe to the planet and, at the same time, neutralizing their harmful rays. Kandor is enlarged on its rebuilt homeworld, and the first two problems on his list are solved just like that.
Before they can move on to the next item on their list, they get a telepathic signal from Lori Lemaris. The Atlanteans saw what they did for Kandor and ask them to help them find an uninhabited ocean planet to live on, since they’re “tired of being considered freaks here on Earth.” This is kind of a crazy notion – it’s not like the existence of Atlantis was common knowledge at the time, so who exactly was calling them freaks? It’s also weird that nobody ever stops to consider what Aquaman has to say about all this, although I suppose you need to remember that at this time, DC didn’t care nearly as much about continuity as they would later.
Once that’s taken care of, it’s crime time. The Supermen invent a ray that can “erase all thoughts of evil” from the minds of the world’s criminals, which they swiftly deploy through a series of satellites. Instantaneously, every villain on Earth is reformed. Bank robbers return their loot, escaped prisoners turn themselves in, the Soviet Union dumps all its missiles into the sea! Even Brainiac, coming from space to attack Superman again, has a change of heart when he gets in range of the satellites. And GEEZ, is this a story that would take on a different aspect if it were written today. If you were reading comics in the mid-aughts, you probably remember Identity Crisis, the DC event which revealed that certain members of the Justice League had agreed to use Zatanna’s magic to essentially brainwash certain criminals over time, removing memories and – in the case of Dr. Light – turning him from a serious threat into a buffoon. The revelation of their actions caused a schism in the League that nearly destroyed it before it was rebuilt in the wake of Infinite Crisis. One could argue that what happens in this story is far worse. Sure, there’s no more crime, but it’s at the cost of effectively brainwashing the entire planet. These are our HEROES, folks.
Not to say it’s all bad. Once the rays hit Lex Luthor and reform him, he whips up a serum that, after the Supermen distribute it into the world’s drinking water supply, instantaneously eradicates all disease from the Earth, even allowing him to grow his hair back. Yes, they even eradicate male pattern baldness.
The final chapter of this three-part “novel” shows us the end of the Supermen’s career. With Krypton restored and crime wiped out, Supergirl releases the Phantom Zone criminals (who are immediately reformed by the rays) and together they decide to go back to live on New Krypton, but not before the Legion of Super-Heroes pops in to say goodbye to her, and also give her a spaceship. Remember that, people, good friends are the greatest treasure. The Supermen then decide to turn their attention to the greatest danger of all: women. Superman, it seems, had always struggled between two girls, Lois Lane and Lana Lang, and unable to make a decision, kept them at arm’s length. Now that there’s no crime to endanger Superman’s wife, there’s no longer any reason to stay single. For the first time it turns out that Red and Blue aren’t EXACTLY alike – Red prefers Lois, while Blue is conveniently Team Lana, so each of them goes to reveal his identity and propose to the girl he loves. They each agree immediately to marry Superman (they most certainly would NOT have married Clark, let’s be honest), but are stunned when they discover that there are two of him.
Have they not been watching the news? I…I feel like the two Supermen who eradicated crime and spread Lex Luthor’s serum to cure all disease would have made the news.
Wait, LOIS AND LANA would have made the news, they BOTH WORKED for news organizations.
Anyway, their double wedding is disrupted when Best Man Jimmy Olsen and Maid of Honor Lucy Lane decide to tie the knot as well, making Lois and Lana considerably more understanding than any bride who was ever featured on TLC. Red decides he wants to retire to Krypton, taking Lois, Krypto, and Comet the Super-Horse with him, while Blue stays on Earth to devote his life to science while his robots take over the job of patrolling the Earth for natural disasters and accidents, which surprises me inasmuch as Dorfman didn’t have him invent an anti-Earthquake ray or something. The end.
This story…It’s been several years since I read it, and I have to admit, it hits a little differently than it used to. I still enjoy it. It’s got that sweet, naive charm of the Silver Age, and I’ve got a heavy chain of nostalgia that makes me appreciate it. At the same time, though, there’s a lot of stuff in here that very much would not fly today. In fact, I’m kind of surprised that nobody has latched on to this for one of the far-too-frequent “evil Superman” stories, returning to this “imaginary world” (which is now just considered part of the multiverse) to look into the consequences of actually manipulating the brains of the entire planet the way these Supermen do. There are several other things in the story that are a little iffy, but nothing as awe-inspiringly wild as that.
It was a different world 60 years ago, wasn’t it?
Thur. Sept. 26
Comics: Adventures of Superman #473
Notes: When I started this year, I compiled a sizable document listing the assorted theme weeks I had planned or was considering, along with another list of specific stories that I wanted to include for one reason or another. With the end of the year coming faster than it seems, I’ve decided to pepper these weeks that aren’t adhering to any particular theme with more of these random stories that made the list because I remember reading them and I wanted to visit them again. Such is the case with Adventures of Superman #473.
This issue came immediately after Lois and Clark’s engagement in Superman #50 which – if you recall when I wrote about the whole “Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite” storyline months ago – is the story that actually locked me in as a regular Superman reader. That makes this one of the earliest Superman stories that drew me into this incarnation of the character, as well as the one that showed me a bit of what was then the status quo of the Green Lantern Corps, which at the time didn’t really exist. It was kind of foundational for my entry into the DCU.
Plus, that Dan Jurgens cover just slaps.
The story starts with Lois and Clark telling Jimmy the news of their engagement over lunch – a lunch disrupted when an enormous Green Lantern symbol appears in the sky over Metropolis. When the symbol morphs into an S-Shield, Lois rushes to write up the story that one of the Lanterns is trying to contact Superman, leaving Clark (who still hasn’t told her his identity at this point) the opportunity to sneak off. He flies to New York to find Guy Gardner, but Gardner didn’t send the signal. Gardner uses his ring to track the signal to a location in Wyoming where Hal Jordan is being held by a giant alien whose ship crashed on Earth centuries ago. Hal is helpless, his ring’s charge having been spent just as he signaled Superman, plus the alien is siphoning energy from his power battery. They find him beneath an air force base where Hal escapes and recharges his ring, then with the addition of Superman’s will, they take back the emerald energy he stole. The alien is despondent, believing himself trapped on Earth, but Superman and the Lanterns take pity on him and restore his ship to space with enough energy to finally, after centuries, return home.
This is a nice self-contained issue, with the only major link to the ongoing storylines being Lois and Clark’s engagement and a few references to the still-fresh wound of the death of Jerry White. But the book turned out to be pretty fundamental to me. As I said, I was still relatively new to DC at the time it came out, and this served as something of a gateway for me to both the Justice League America series that Guy was a member of, as well as the then-new Green Lantern series featuring the down-and-out, gray-templed, globetrotting Hal Jordan that existed at the time. I knew who the Justice League and Green Lantern were, of course, but at this point my perspectives on the characters were built primarily around pre-Crisis comics that my uncle had given me and the way they were depicted on shows like Super Friends. With this book my eyes were opened to a larger world. I became a fan of these properties, especially Green Lantern, and I’ve been a faithful reader of that comic ever since (with the exception of one writer whose run turned me off so much that I dropped the book until it ended – but the less said about that bleak period the better).
This book is also a great glimpse at the way the characters were written at the time. Gardner, for example, had the same stupid, brash attitude that Nathan Fillion made so much fun in the movie, although he’s perhaps even a little more dimwitted. There’s one point, for instance, where Superman shows his exasperation that the alien has allied himself with two old sparring partners of his named Dreadnaught and Psi-Phon, and Gardner takes that as a cue to go after them with a power ring-generated chainsaw. There’s some interesting contradictions here as well – he’s jingoistic enough to casually wish for a new war so he could show what he can do, but too dense to realize that the airplanes attacking them are American. Fortunately, this particular facet of the character has dulled over time.
Superman, meanwhile, is all him. When the alien believes himself to be stranded, Superman hits him with a classic observation: “How come extraterrestrials are always coming here and causing all kinds of trouble instead of asking for assistance? All you have to do is ASK!” The giant alien is suitably ashamed of his behavior before Superman helps him out anyway, because of course, he’s Superman.
A fun book from early in Jurgens’ run, and I enjoyed revisiting it again after all this time.
Fri., Sept. 26
Comics: Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #139, 141, All-Star Squadron #36 (Team Member)
Notes: Here’s a fun, weird one that should have been worked into the week of Superman’s Strangest Team-Ups. Jack Kirby, who at this point was doing pretty much whatever he wanted with this title, had made Project: Cadmus a regular co-feature of Jimmy Olsen’s adventures. This is the issue where the Project unveiled the Guardian, the clone of the Golden Age hero who became a regular member of Superman’s supporting cast in this same basic form during the Triangle Era. Guardian changed a bit before the 90s, though. In this one he’s much more focused on being a clone, even commenting how it’s always an “experience” to meet an “original” human like Clark Kent. (That’s what we call dramatic irony, by the way, kiddos.) By the Triangle Era, Guardian had shed the conceit of making his status as a clone such a big part of his identity and was just the original Jim Harper in a new body.
The rest of the story involves “Goody Rickels,” WGBS employee with an uncanny resemblance to Don Rickles. Morgan Edge can’t stand him and tries to manipulate things to get rid of him, and honestly, it’s hard to blame him. It’s a really weird little story and, despite the promise on the cover of “Two Rickles,” the real Don doesn’t appear until part two of the story, which comes in issue #141. (Issue #140 was a giant-sized issue of reprints.) The second part begins with the bold cover proclamation: “Kirby says: Don’t ask! Just buy it!” Jimmy, Guardian, and Goody have been given a meal with a toxin that will activate and cause them to explode within 24 hours if they don’t get the antidote. As Guardian searches for it, Jimmy and Goody wind up at WBGS where the real Don Rickles is in a meeting with Morgan Edge. There’s a big dust-up and Goody is on the verge of exploding when Guardian shows up with the antidote. This also happens to be the issue where Clark Kent, in space with the New Gods, gets his first-ever glimpse of Apokolips, which is an interesting historical note for a comic book with Don Rickles on the cover.
Sat., Sept. 27
Comics: Superman Unlimited #5, Superman Vol. 6 #30, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #11, New History of the DC Universe #3, Aquaman: Yo-Ho-Hold on To Your Hook #11 (Guest Appearance)
Notes: Once again, today I’m picking up the new Superman-related comics for the week, including two new issues of the ongoing, Justice League Unlimited, and a return to the reshaping of DC’s history.
We’re starting it off with Superman Unlimited #5. The Daily Planet gets word that the Kult of Kobra is operating in El Caldero, the “Kryptonite Kingdom.” What’s more, the Calderan mining operation is about to uncover a Kryptonian Sunstone, the same kind of technology that built Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. Donning a suit of Kryptonite-proof armor and catching a ride in one of the most gloriously anachronistic pieces of Superman tech, he heads to Caldero to try to get the Sunstone before Kobra. The story seems to be picking up a little here. Previous issues have been largely one-off stories that connect to the larger story of the Kryptonite Kingdom, but this one gives us a nice little cliffhanger. It looks like the story is opening up, and I’m excited to see where it’s going to go.
The story of Darkseid’s Legion continues in Superman #30. Superman’s supposed ally, Superboy-Prime, has turned (insert surprised Pikachu face here), joining Darkseid’s Legion and capturing him, along with the long-suffering Booster Gold. The issue wraps up this (surprisingly short) storyline, but also acts as a lead-in to the upcoming DC KO event, and although I don’t want to get into too much more detail about what happens, Joshua Williamson pulls off a hell of a trick. There’s a brilliant reversal of expectations in this book, leading up to a climax (before the epilogue) that felt positively stirring. There’s a reason Superman is the greatest hero there is, and it’s got nothing to do with his powers. It’s about what he represents, what he stands for, what he means to other people. And boy-howdy, does this issue understand that. I love Superman, I love the Legion, I love Booster Gold…and I love what this issue does with all three of them.
We also, incidentally, get to use Prime’s meta awareness to give us what is objectively one of the most funny panels in a Superman comic all year. You’ll know it when you see it.
Justice League Unlimited #11 is another prelude to DC KO, this one starting off with the Justice League Watchtower being invaded by an army of Parademons. At the same time, beneath the country of Markovia, a League squad including Power Girl and Captain Atom find themselves in battle against some of Darkseid’s Legion. The battle goes poorly on both fronts and we get Leaguers down before a last page that ties very nicely into this week’s issue of Superman. I love when comics pull off tricks like this one, two stories that happen simultaneously and tie together in the end. It’s a nice way to make the shared universe conceit work, and theoretically, you don’t HAVE to read both of them to understand either one. It sure makes it more satisfying when you do, though.
And Waid returns with a plethora of artists to bring us New History of the DC Universe #3. Picking up on the aftermath of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, Barry begins to recount the era of the DC Universe that made for my foundational years – the late 80s and early 90s – all the way up to Barry Allen’s resurrection in Final Crisis. As Barry is, in fact the narrator of this series, you could simply call this issue “stuff that happened while I was dead.” Once again, I’m impressed at how Mark Waid has gone about smoothing over certain elements of the combined/rebooted/revamped DC Universe. For instance, when Supergirl came back in 2004, she was introduced as though she were a brand-new character, her death in the original Crisis being removed from continuity. Waid has it both ways here – Supergirl DID die in the crisis, and the story we read in Jeph Loeb’s Superman/Batman run has been retconned slightly – rather than introducing her to Earth to use her as a weapon, now Darkseid actually resurrected Supergirl for the same reason. Waid also, once again, brings in elements of the Milestone Universe, specifically the 90s incarnations of the characters, marking them as denizens of the DCU proper in such a way that certainly makes it seem as though there are plans afoot to bring them back again.
This series really is a nerd’s dream. And as a nerd, I approve.
Sun., Sept. 28
Comics: Superman #125, DC Vs. Vampires: World War V #11 (Appearances by Supergirl, Steel, Lois Lane)
Notes: Let me tell you something about my family. My son is a football nut. Like, he’s crazed. If there is an NFL game on, he is insistent upon watching it, to the point that he begged me to take him to church yesterday on Saturday afternoon so that he could stay home this morning, Sunday, and watch the Steelers/Vikings game in Dublin at 8:30 am. He also gets up and gets VERY excited and VERY hyper, and the point is, by the time the early game ended and the noon game began, I was already exhausted by this little creature which I am emotionally, biologically, and legally responsible for. I didn’t really have it in me to get into any deep Superman lore today, so I scrolled through the DC app looking for the silliest, most ridiculous one-off comic I could find. The winner turned out to be Superman #125 from 1958.
The first story, “Lois Lane’s Super-Dream,” begins with Lois falling into a coma when she falls from a ten-foot ledge trying to sneak into the Metropolis Science Fair a week early, which has got to be the stupidest way she’s ever almost gotten herself killed, even in the Silver Age. She gets a blood transfusion to save her life, but her subconscious mind thinks she got it from Superman, and she has a dream where his blood gave her powers as well. In the dream she puts on a red wig and starts calling herself “Power Girl,” and she’s actually fairly effective until – again, in the dream – Clark Kent is nearly killed in an explosion. Power Lois gives Clark a transfusion of her blood, and now HE’S got powers too. Go figure. So she makes him a Power Man costume and the most comically ridiculous mustache anyone not named Oliver Queen has ever worn and makes him join her as a superhero. But Power Clark, in Lois’s subconscious, keeps screwing things up due to a combination of cowardice and ineptitude. The whole story kind of makes Lois look bad, showing not only what she really thinks of Clark, but the particularly cruel way she treats him as her sidekick.
“Clark Kent’s College Days” is next, the beginning of an “Untold Tales of Superman” series. I’ve read this story many times, as it too was included in either the Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told or Superman From the 30’s to the 70’s books (I honestly don’t remember which) I read so many times as a kid. Clark gets an invitation to his college class reunion and begins to reminisce about his early days at Metropolis University, where he’s putting on his weakling act and letting the upper classmen haze him. The seniors aren’t the real problem, though – in year two, Clark’s teacher Professor Maxwell catches Clark using his vision powers to weld a seam in a robot and immediately deduces that one of his students must be Superboy. In this next class, he begins hooking his students up to a lie detector and asking if they’re Superboy, which makes you wonder what the hell he’s supposed to be teaching. Clark barely escapes being interviewed before class ends, and Maxwell begins a series of schemes that could make Lucy Ricardo proud, attempting to prove that Clark is Superboy, even to the point of exposing him to Kryptonite. But Clark winds up outsmarting him every time, and finally escapes the Professor’s attention by strapping in and letting him ask if he’s Superboy. Clark says “No,” and passes the test. Is it because of his powers? His Kryptonian physiology being incompatible with the machine? Nah, it’s because he decided, right at that moment, that it was time to consider himself an adult and start referring to himself as “Superman.”
The cover story that got me to read this issue comes last, “Superman’s New Power.” Superman finds a pocket of fires in the core of the Earth that are causing tremors above in Metropolis. As he stabilizes the fires, he uncovers a tiny space ship that seems to have been embedded in Earth’s crust for eons. The ship blows up, and he later realizes his powers have changed. His normal powers (except, conveniently, invulnerability) have vanished, even as he gains the new ability to shoot a tiny replica of himself from his fingertips. The mini Superman has all his normal powers, so Superman’s career as a crimefighter shifts to being more of a puppeteer, sending Lil’ Superman into danger instead. While he proves just as effective as the real thing, Superman finds himself feeling emasculated at sitting on the sidelines while his teeny proxy goes into danger. The story ends when Tiny sacrifices himself to save Superman from a chunk of Kryptonite some crooks hurl at him. The Kryptonite makes Tiny vanish and Superman’s powers return to normal, ending with a panel where he contemplates whether Tiny had a consciousness and will of his own and made the sacrifice deliberately.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the 50s were a wild time.
Mon., Sept. 29
Comics: Superman Vol. 2 #2, Justice League of America #30 (Team Member)
Notes: Returning to my list of random Superman stories that I’ve read at some point, here’s yet another that I remember reading first in the old Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told trade paperback. The second issue of the John Byrne reboot in Superman #2 is a good story, and it’s got one of the best Lex Luthor moments of all time…at least, “best” in the sense that it’s one of the greatest expressions of who Lex is as a character, not in that it makes him look good.
At this point, Superman had been active for a few years (mostly glossed over in the Man of Steel miniseries), and Luthor is looking for any clues that could potentially help him destroy the Man of Steel. He finds them, along with analyst Amanda McCoy, in the form of a red-haired woman who seems to keep showing up when Superman is active. As they search for the strange woman, Luthor turns to his frequent flunky Sidney Happersan, who is examining the Metallo cyborg they captured in Superman #1. Determining that the Kryptonite heart in Metallo’s chest is potentially fatal to Superman, Lex ruthlessly rips it from him even though Happersan warns him that it will kill the cyborg. (Don’t worry, he got better.)
In Smallville, a pair of Luthor’s goons are looking for things that link Clark Kent to Superman, as Clark seems to be the one who gets all the big scoops. They drug Jonathan and Martha Kent then ransack their house, stealing Martha’s scrapbook of newspaper clippings regarding Superman. As they leave the house, they’re spotted by the passing Lana Lang, whom they drug and (realizing that she can identify them) kidnap. Imagine Lex’s glee, of course, when she turns out to be the very red-haired woman his people are searching for.
Days later, Clark Kent comes home to find a series of bloody footprints leading to his apartment and Lana hiding there, having been tortured for information that she refused to give. Sensing Luthor’s involvement, Superman barges into LexCorp, only to find that Luthor’s got a new piece of jewelry – a ring with a glowing green stone that keeps Superman at bay. Stymied, and with no actual proof of Luthor’s involvement, he takes Lana back to Smallville. In Metropolis, Amanda runs all the data they’ve found through the computer, seeking the link between Superman and Clark Kent, and she arrives at one inexorable conclusion: Clark Kent IS Superman.
And Luthor is furious at the absurdity of it. “I know that no man with the power of Superman would ever PRETEND to be a mere HUMAN!” he shouts, firing Amanda McCoy on the spot because “I have no place in my organization for people who cannot see the OBVIOUS.”
Ah, what a fantastic story, Mr. Byrne. This is the ultimate platonic ideal of who and what Lex Luthor is, especially at that time. He’s ruthless and cruel – his treatment of Lana, of Amanda, even of Metallo all demonstrate that. He’s intelligent, but not the super-scientist he was in the Silver Age or would become again. But he’s also so unbelievably arrogant that when the answer to all of his questions is served up to him on a silver platter, he rejects it because he cannot fathom anyone with Superman’s power being so good that he would “pretend” to be Clark Kent. Byrne actually used this as part of the punchline in his “Superbman Vs. the Fantastical Four” story from Marvel’s What The–?! #2, with the fake Dr. Doom telling Rex Ruthless that Superbman COULDN’T be a normal human because that would make him “nicer than us.”
This story is also important in that it sets up a number of different elements that would be of tremendous importance later, especially the Kryptonite Ring. That little domino would set off multiple chains. Luthor would learn to his grave error that he was wrong about the radiation being harmless to humans, and that wearing the ring constantly gives him cancer. This ultimately leads to him faking his own death, cloning a younger body, and returning to Metropolis pretending to be his own son. Amanda McCoy came back later desperate to prove she was right, stealing the ring but being killed in an alley for it, leading to theDark Knight Over Metropolis story where Superman gave the ring to Batman, a concept which has been a consistent part of the characterization of the two heroes ever since.
It’s also a pretty good showing for Lana, proving – even under torture – that she’s a good friend and worthy of Clark’s trust, never betraying his secret. In Man of Steel, Byrne had turned Lana into something of a broken bird, heartbroken at the realization that Clark Kent was too big and too important to the world to be in her life the way that she wanted. It took a long time to rebuild her character, and this issue I think was the beginning of that.
Even these short stories can be great sometimes.
Tues., Sept. 30
Graphic Novel: Superman: True Brit
Notes: I decided to cap off this week with something relatively lighthearted – perhaps even a bit silly, and this 2004 Elseworlds graphic novel certainly fits the bill. True Brit brought John Byrne back to do artwork for the Man of Steel again, but this time in a story written by Kim Johnson “with some help” by Monty Python legend John Cleese, who of course is most famous for that one “Bicycle Repairman” sketch that we covered back in Parody Week. (There’s a brief shout-out to that bit in the book, as well.) Like many Elseworlds, it starts with a “what if” type of scenario – Jor-El sends his infant son to Earth. Instead of Kansas, though, this time his spacecraft lands in what Jor-El calls “their most advanced, most powerful nation – the British Empire!” Kal-El is found by a British farm couple, Jonathan and Martha Clark, who raise him as their son Colin. He struggles to control his powers, even after being told of his true alien heritage, and when the time comes to go off to University Mrs. Clark admonishes him to keep the powers hidden away in shame.
Studying journalism, he becomes smitten with his classmate Louisa Layne-Ferret, but she doesn’t show any interest in him until he accidentally impales a classmate with a cricket bat just before graduation. He winds up using his powers to get stories for a sleazy rag called the Daily Smear, where he finds out the famous rock band the Rutles (another in-joke) are in mortal danger, forcing him for the first time to act publicly in a Union Jack-adored Superman costume.
The Smear runs with it, making the Superman stories more outrageous and scandalous, to the point where the Clarks even move without telling Colin where they’re going. But his fortunes change when the Queen sets him some “impossible” tasks – making the trains run on time, reducing the wait time for hip operations (the solution, by the way, is to convince the surgeons to play less golf), and raising the quality of the programming of the BBC. But all his work may come to a screeching halt when he runs afoul of his greatest enemy: the Bat-Man.
The story is rife with gags and jokes that almost could have qualified this graphic novel for Parody Week in and of itself. For instance, when his adoptive parents think Colin can fly, they advise him to flap his arms like a bird, which causes a bit of amusing chaos and resultant property damage. When he finally does fly – with a horse – the poor animal has to be carted away to a veterinary hospital and treated for shock. An attempt to milk the cows with his super-speed and strength leaves them…let’s say “unhinged.” Perhaps my favorite joke comes when his mother tries to steer him into being a postman rather than a journalist, and he fires back with “I don’t CARE about respect! I’d rather be a REPORTER!”
Ah, maybe it’s just the ex-reporter in me that finds that hilarious, I dunno. But that seems to be the main thesis of this book. Rather than telling a story about Superman in another culture, True Brit comes across as Howard and Cleese giving a scathing indictment of the British media. Most of the book comes down to a heavy and brutal satire of the state of the British press, with the more lurid types of publications rising in prominence and the few legitimate reporters being buried. It’s a funny book, although I imagine a lot of the Britishisms are lost on an American audience.
Byrne’s artwork is interesting here. While not as cartoonish as he used in his What The–?! story, nor is it as clean and straightforward as his usual style as seen in his Superman run. He somewhat splits the difference here, drawing a world that still feels like part of the DC Multiverse but, at the same time, having enough fun with it to allow some silly sight gags, outrageous facial expressions, and goofy poses.
This week was a nice change of pace, friends, but October begins tomorrow. And October begins my favorite part of the year — those last three months that I love so much. And this year being the Year of Superman, it’s gonna be even better. For the next few weeks, as we approach Halloween, we’re going to be looking at darker versions of Superman, Superman gone wrong, a focus on his greatest villain, and more! See you then!
It feels like I just started yesterday, but here we are in the fourth week of my journey through the era of Electric Superman. The Man of Energy has been split into two – a red and a blue version of himself. But time is almost up, because we’re on the cusp of the crossover event that ended this era, the Millennium Giants. Let’s get into it!
Comics:Superman Vol. 2 #133, Adventures of Superman #556, Action Comics #743, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #6 (Guest Appearance), Taste of Justice #11 (Supergirl and Krypto)
Notes:Superman #133 starts with Red and Blue bickering over which of them is going to go in to work and write their column, with Red winning the argument and banging out a piece that’s both more pointed and more jovial than his usual style, to the point that Perry asks him to rewrite it. An explosion summons Superman Red to Cadmus, where he finds Guardian beaten to hell and the three deities that Superman fought on Halloween proclaiming “The Time of the Millennium Giants is at hand!” In a backup story, Jimmy and Misa are still on the run from the Black Crucible. When they get pinned down, Misa uses a device to signal for help. Blue Clark, meanwhile, is back at the Planet office where he’s rewritten Red’s column, only to turn in one that’s too bland and analytical. He bolts away and saves Jimmy from the Crucible, whose leader says the Medallion Jimmy is carrying will signal the end of the world. Suddenly, the Medallion AND the members of the Black Crucible just…disappear.
Ominous, no?
Adventures #556 picks up right there with Red facing off against the Millennium Guard. They summon the Medallion to them (explaining where it went in Superman #133) and then take off in three different directions. Blue, meanwhile, is helping Jimmy and Misa fix up their vehicle when the three of them are attacked by a huge monster straight out of a Kirby sci-fi comic. The conclusion of that fight is ALSO the sort of supremely goofy thing that would have happened in a book of this era, but it’s actually pretty charming as well in its silliness. And even though at the end of the book Jimmy is still running for his life from Intergang, his standing up to the monster convinces Misa that maybe he’s not so lame after all – it’s a rare win for Jimmy in this era.
Action Comics #743 has Blue returning to Metropolis, where he encounters detective Slam Bradley, who’s chasing a nasty sort that calls himself the Inkling. Blue stops Inkling, who the reader learns is another product of Hunter Thompson’s experiments at S.T.A.R. Labs (the same ones that gave us the Ripper not long ago). He knows Thompson is bad news, but has no proof, which has gotta be frustrating for a guy as cool and logical as Superman Blue. Also, in space, the Millennium Guard has taken positions in orbit ready to “purge the Earth,” which always sounds like a good time.
In Red’s story, the Guard has bolted away, leaving Superman drained of energy. Jimmy and Misa find him and give him a lift back to Metropolis, where they stumble into the Intergang squad that’s been chasing Jimmy for months. Misa finds a dandy solution, using a device that makes Jimmy completely invisible to them and, in fact, making them forget he ever existed. That’s a quick little solution to that subplot just before things get wild next week.
These three issues all use the same format, with two different stories for the respective Red and Blue, and I have to say, I’m impressed with how well it works. The stories weave in and out of each other, connecting at various points and showing the consequences of one story in the other. It works so well, honestly, that I’m surprised it really only happened for three issues, plus the two issues we read at the tail end of last week, Action #742 and Man of Steel #77, which each devoted an entire issue to one of the Supermen but otherwise worked the same way.
I suppose time has shaped my perspective, but I could have sworn the Red/Blue era lasted longer. As it turned out, only about two or three months pass between the split and the story that’s going to end with the two of them re-forming and Superman’s powers going back to normal. Maybe it was the fact that back then I had to wait a week for each new issue to come out, whereas today I’m simply clicking “next issue” in the DC Universe app and bouncing ahead seven days to get the next installment.
At any rate, I really liked the way these issues were told, and while I don’t want Superman to get split in half again, I’d like to see someone else use this trick. I’m not sure how, exactly – maybe Firestorm, whose whole gimmick is that he’s two people who fuse into one superhero would be a good candidate. Or perhaps a run about a couple of Green Lantern sector partners that used this formula. Or hell, do it with Jonathan and Conner Kent, the two Super-Brothers. That might actually give Jonathan something interesting to do for a change. But somehow, it’s a trick I would like to see done again.
Thurs., Sept. 18
Comics: Superman: The Man of Steel #78, Aquaman Vol. 5 #43, Challengers of the Unknown Vol. 3 #15, Superman Vol. 2 #135, Teen Titans Vol. 2 #19, Supergirl Vol. 4 #20, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #11
Notes: There are different degrees of crossover events. There are the bigs ones, the huge ones that have a main miniseries and spin-offs and chapters appearing in various different comics – from the original Crisis on Infinite Earths down to lesser examples like Genesis. There are the small-scale ones that only involve titles in the same group, like the Superman or Batman titles. Then there’s stuff in the middle like Millennium Giants. This one is clearly a Superman story and it plays out in the four main Superman titles, but it also brings in Steel and Supergirl, as well as a few books with no relation to Superman at all. They also did a neat thing with the covers of the first nine (out of 11) issues: they assemble into a sort of large puzzle featuring the giants and the respective heroes facing them, along with our two Supermen zipping around and appearing on every cover.
The fun starts off in Man of Steel #78. The three members of the Millennium Guard have taken their spots in three places on the globe, including the site of a volcanic eruption where the native religion sees them as a harbinger of the end of the world. Red and Blue, after a brief squabble, agree to split up and each take on one of the Guard. But as it turns out, the Guard are only there to facilitate the release of the Millennium Giants – three enormous deities who burst from the ground.
The story picks up in Aquaman #43. One of the giants is marching through the ocean on a beeline for the Atlantean city of Poseidonis. Aquaman and Tempest try to confront it when he takes out Superman Red, but the creature keeps walking, sending tidal waves towards nearby coastlines. As Tempest protects the shore, Aquaman tries to communicate with the giant telepathically, but he fails and it goes into battle against the heroes and the HEAVILY armed Poseidonis. Man, this really makes me want to go back and read Peter David’s Aquaman all the way through. Maybe next year. Anyway, Superman and Aquaman try their best to hold back the creature but it crushes an underwater city on its march across the ocean.
This is really how a crossover SHOULD work. It’s not a coincidence or shoehorned in – it makes PERFECT sense for Aquaman to get involved when a freaking giant is threatening his kingdom, and it brings him in to make him a player in the rest of the crossover too. Perfectly done.
The next installment brings us to Challengers of the Unknown #15. Classically, the Challengers were a group of daredevils and specialists who each survived a near-death experience and, believing themselves to be “living on borrowed time,” became adventurers. They weren’t QUITE superheroes, but they often ran across them. This series was one of DC’s periodic attempts to update the concept with new characters and a dash of X-Files style paranormal investigation. The Prime Minister of the UK summons the Challs to investigate the giant that erupted from Stonehenge and is marching across the countryside. This issue is more skippable than the Aquaman chapter, seeming to take place BEFORE that one (the English Giant is the one Aquaman and Superman Red fight in the ocean), and Superman doesn’t actually appear. It does end with the Challs uncovering some info that they want to bring to Superman’s attention, though.
In Superman #135, the two Supermen have reconvened in Mexico, where another Giant has climbed out of a volcano. Blue wants to evacuate, but the impetuous Red charges in headfirst, attacking. They manage to barely pull off a save, and Lois (who is there covering the Giants, of course) confronts her two husbands, both of whom now seem to be pretty happy with the ability to be in two places at one and have no intention of trying to fuse together again. The split up yet again, with Blue staying on the giant in Mexico and Red zipping to the Pacific. Back in Metropolis the Teen Titans (whose book, you may recall, was written by Dan Jurgens at the time) decide to head to Egypt to take on the third giant, while the Challengers are on their way to Mexico. Neither of the Supermen are effective in their attacks on the giants, though, with Red failing to save an entire pacific fleet of 200 American ships.
Teen Titans #19 starts with Tempest saving Red after his failure in the Pacific before following the people whose comic it actually is as they attempt to hold off the Giant that’s threatening Egypt. The bulk of the issue is Superman Red and the Titans facing off against the Giant, failing time and again and finally accepting that they need to focus on saving the people in its path rather than fight it directly. That may not sound like the most exciting take for this issue, but Jurgens does a good job of painting it as the sensible route, showcasing his Titans to readers who may not have been exposed to them before and showing some hidden depths to a few of them as well. The issue ends with the Giant marching off to sea and the team planning to head to Markovia, where the third Giant is wreaking havoc.
Supergirl #20 brings back Peter David again, kicking things off with a woman in a mental institution claiming to be Cassandra (the Greek one) and screaming with terror about the encroaching giants. And like Cassandra, her fears are dismissed. Supergirl, meanwhile, has just left her family in the midst of a personal crisis to help deal with the crisis of the Giants. She tries to use her powers as an “Earth Born Angel” (read everything Peter David ever wrote, really) to hold it off, but falls into the ocean where both she and “Cassandra” are saved by Superman Red. It’s kind of a quick chapter, really, but it showcases Supergirl well and it’s always a delight to read David’s stuff again.
Fri. Sept. 19
Comics: Adventures of Superman #557, Steel #50, Action Comics #744, Superman: The Man of Steel #79, Superman Vol. 2 #135, Superman Forever #1
Notes: In Adventures #557, Steel calls in Superboy and the Justice League to join the fight as Blue faces the Mexican Giant Cabraca while Geo-Force and Terra hold the line against Cerne in Markovia. Blue, Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter face Cabraca while the others join the Titans, Supergirl, and Red in Markovia, where Cerne and Ronal are now converging. The giants lift an entire chunk of Markovia into the sky, the heroes only barely managing to evacuate it before it’s gone. And the icing on the cake comes when Cerne crosses the Atlantic to re-emerge in Metropolis harbor.
Steel #50 continues as John Henry – who has recently joined the Justice League and is eager to prove himself – works with J’onn J’onzz to construct a weapon to stop the Giants by disrupting their connection to Earth’s magnetic Ley Lines. The device seems to work, but John shuts it down, fearing that it will cause even greater destruction than the Giants if the field breaks down. He winds up fighting his own teammates over it, destroying the device and finding himself on the opposite side of the rest of the JLA.
In Action #744, while Cerne approaches Metropolis, the Challengers of the Unknown come to Lois Lane in the hopes that she can get their findings to Superman. Their theory is that the Giants – who appear in myths from cultures all over the world – have arisen because of an anomaly in the Earth’s energy field. They believe that the two Supermen, working together, could drain the Giants of their energy and stop the rampage. Red draws all the power from Metropolis to turn himself into a giant, ripping Cabraca into space. The effort is fruitless, however – Cabraca crumbles, falls back to Earth as a meteor shower, and re-forms in Australia. His suit shredded, Red begins to dissipate.
Blue zips into space to save Red in Man of Steel #79, but Red refuses his help, fearing that weaving the circuitry of their respective suits will cause them to re-merge. Blue saves him anyway, and although they don’t merge, the two Supermen are now tethered together. Steel has modified his device and gives it to the Supermen to try to trigger it in Cabraca’s heart – which they do but find themselves transported to the “Heart of the World,” where a strange being calling himself the Keeper of the Flame says that their alien energies awakened the giants. He can help them, but only at the cost of their lives. The Supermen trigger a chain reaction that topples the Giants, but their victory is short-lived. It turns out that stopping the Giants has also stopped the flow of the energy that binds Earth together, and it’s on the verge of a massive eruption that would duplicate the fate of a little world called Krypton.
It all comes to a head in Superman #135! An old Aboriginal man tells the Supermen that salvation can be found with the Medallion of the Damned, which is deep inside Cerne’s body. The three of them dive into the Giant’s form, where they find the Medallion on the body of an insectoid creature. Here they learn that the only way to restore Earth’s magnetic lines is for each of them to expel their energy, one at the center of the Earth and one from orbit. And although they have spent this entire time fighting and bickering one another, the two Supermen do it – because at the core, they’re still both Superman. The skies turn red, the ground turns blue, and Earth is saved…but when it’s over, J’onn J’onzz casts out a telepathic web to search for the men of energy…and finds nothing.
Are they gone? Are they dead?
Of course not. They’re in Superman Forever, a giant-sized one-shot with a fancy lenticular cover by Alex Ross to tie the whole thing up. The Kents are driving through their fields at night, worried about their missing son, when they see a meteor streak across the sky. It’s not the first time this has happened, and they rush to the site to see Clark lying in a crater: unconscious, naked, and burning with fever. They bring him back to their farmhouse where he sleeps for over 24 hours before waking up and realizing he can hear them speaking outside. Somehow, the expenditure of his energy powers made him fuse back into a single being with his original powers again. How? Clark himself theorizes that it was some kind of “reward.”
Who am I to argue?
Martha being Martha, she just happens to have one of his original costumes handy for him to put on,and he takes off to let the world know that Superman is back!
Of course, it’s only page 14, and there’s a lot left to go. Turns out Superman is being watched by Kismet, a cosmic entity he’s encountered a few times before, who sees (YET ANOTHER) threat on the horizon. Superman returns to Metropolis where he joins in with Supergirl, Superboy, and Steel saving an airplane from a crash… a plane that just happens to have Lois on it. The woman has the WORST luck when it comes to air travel, I tell you.
Also in this special, Jimmy Olsen returns to the Planet with his tail between his legs to beg for his job back, only for Perry to give it to him without hesitation. While they’re celebrating, though, Lex Luthor barges into the office, furious that the Planet published a photo of his daughter. While he’s railing against Perry, he gets call that Lena has been kidnapped.
The creative team on this book (like the Wedding Special and the Red/Blue special, it’s a mashup of the creators of the regular books with a few guests) took an interesting approach. There are really three different, almost totally unconnected sections of the book. The first act, where the Kents find Clark and he returns to Metropolis, is part one. Act two is the kidnapping storyline, with Superman doing everything he can to find the missing daughter of his worst enemy, because that’s the kind of man he is. This has virtually nothing to do with what happened before, except for the fact that every person who encounters him makes a comment about the fact that he’s gone back to his original powers and costume, then goes on with their day because they all live in Metropolis and they see more inexplicable stuff than that before their Pop-Tarts come out of the toaster in the morning. Then, after that story is resolved, we get four separate epilogues, each of them showing Superman in different eras that seem to roughly correspond to the Golden, Silver, and Bronze ages, and a third that is set 1000 years in the future. It’s a setup for the Dominus story that would consume the books for the next several months – which is totally fair, except for the fact that, again, it seems to have nothing to do with anything that’s come before it. In fact, I almost feel like I don’t need to read these books again , but it’s been a long time and I enjoy a good timey wimey story.
Besides, if I don’t read them, I’ll just be cliffhangering myself. And I promised me that I would treat me more nicely.
Sat., Sept. 20
Comics: Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #2, Action Comics #1090, Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #4
Notes: I’m not going to get to Dominus just yet, though. After a couple weeks, I’ve once again liberated my new comics from my local shop and I’m going to spend today (and maybe tomorrow too) reading the new Superman-related books. And although only one of the back-up stories is Superman-related, I’ll start with the painfully-titled Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1.
I objectively got the best cover.
The main story and most of the back-ups are really quite good. Zeb Wells, who writes the Deadpool/Batman tale, finds a new spin on combining the universes that’s really quite suitable for Deadpool. Most of the others simply take the old-fashioned tactic of assuming the characters inhabit the same world. The Captain America/Wonder Woman story by Chip Zdarsky goes so far as to showing a whole history between the two characters that goes all the way back to World War II. There are also two pages by Frank Miller, the less is said about which, the better.
But mostly, I’m here to talk about the Krypto/Jeff the Land Shark story by Jeff’s usual creative team of Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru. This mostly-wordless story is set in the Arctic, as Krypto and Jeff romp and play games with one another outside the Fortress of Solitude. That’s it. That’s the whole story. And it’s really adorable. It fits perfectly in with the usual Jeff stories, and were it not for the fact that his co-star is an inhabitant of the DC Universe, it could easily be an issue of his own comic.
Now I have to say, were you only buying this book for a Superman story, dropping $6.99 for a story co-starring Krypto is probably too much. But if you’re a fan of comics and crossovers in general, this really is a great package.
The second issue of Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum is next. Continuing from issue one, Superman and Batman are still experimenting with the new types of Kryptonite when one of them turns the man of steel into a giant. Batman thinks he can concoct a fix, but before it’s ready, Lex Luthor ups the ante by exposing the Kaiju-sized Superman to a dose of RED Kryptonite, sending him on a rampage that the Justice League has to come in and try to stop. Like the first issue, I’m tremendously impressed at how W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo are applying their signature style to the DC Universe. There’s still very much the same flavor of weirdness we get from Ice Cream Man, but the horror elements are replaced with a take on silver age-style superheroism that feels more like a loving parody than an attack. It’s a glorious little story with a climax and cliffhanger that literally made me laugh out loud. That doesn’t happen often, even with comics that are intended as straight-up comedies. This is rapidly climbing my list of best comics of the year.
In Action #1090 Mark Waid and Skylar Partridge continue the story that – no matter what the eventual trade paperback is gonna be called – is essentially “Superboy: Year One.” Clark finally gets a date with Lana, only for two disasters to happen. First, she tells him how she REALLY feels, and second, Captain Comet summons him to a battle scene. Raze, the villain Superboy caught a few issues ago, has come back with some friends and he’s attacking the lab of noted AI specialist and metallurgist Will Magnus, and Superboy is needed to save the day. Turns out that Comet had a little surprise of his own, though.
Waid is taking classic tropes of the Pre-Crisis Superboy and putting a modern spin on them, particularly in the context of Clark and Lana’s relationship. Although the writing is modern, the themes and tone could fit in just as well in the 1950s, and that’s really perfect. On the other hand, the more sinister Captain Comet is an interesting choice, although I imagine we’ll get some sort of revelation on his part before this story ends to keep from casting him as an outright villain.
Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #4 starts with a content warning. It says “This is a sad one. Read it with someone to hug nearby.”
THIS is a sad one.
AS IF THE LAST THREE ISSUES DIDN’T ALL REDUCE ME TO A GIBBERING MESS.
Anyway, in this one the still-wandering Krypto befriends another stray dog, and together the two of them befriend a group of children, and together the kids and the dogs activate an alien intelligence that threatens all life on Earth. And Krypto is a very good boy. And so is his friend. And eventually, after I soak through a couple of Kleenex, we get to a last page that promises – FINALLY – a glimmer of hope in this terrible, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, magnificent, beautiful series.
Sun., Sept. 21
Comics: Supergirl Vol. 8 #5, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #43, Justice League Red #2 (Team Member Power Girl)
Notes: Supergirl #5 is a largely one-off issue that focuses on the Super Pets. Supergirl and Lesla leave their respective superpowered animal pals with Lena, who loses them almost immediately, leading to two separate adventures. Krypto and Kandy the Super-Rabbit wind up in battle with Princess Shark, who has come to Midvale to get her revenge on Supergirl, while Streaky and the miniature Super-Ape Tinytano stumble across a litter of kittens who have inadvertently gained super powers. The story is light, airy, ridiculous, and charming.
Sophie Campbell takes this issue off from the art chores, but she still writes the issue. Pencils instead are handed over to Paulina Ganucheau for the Krypto half of the issue and Rosi Kampe on the Streaky half. Both of their respective styles are fine, but they’re very different from one another. Ganucheau’s art is a little looser and cartoony, more in line with Campbell’s usual style. Kampe’s art is tighter and looks like a more traditional superhero comic. Again, neither of them are bad, but the switch halfway through the book is somewhat jarring.
In World’s Finest #43, the Bizarro World storyline comes to a close. As we learned, the alien who infected the Bizarros with a pandemic that “fixed” their brains did so in the hopes that they would realize their planet was about to be destroyed by the physical laws that say a square planet can’t exist. This issue, our heroes struggle against the twin problems of the planet’s collapse and the pandemic, and in each case, a solution is found by a most unexpected mind. I really love the way Mark Waid plays these characters here, showing an intelligence in one of our heroes that he isn’t usually credited with having, and pulling a rabbit out of his hat with a new Bizarro that is hilarious and brilliant. This arc was an awful lot of fun, and that’s all we really want out of World’s Finest, isn’t it?
The new Super-titles wrap up with Power Girl in Justice League Red #2. Power Girl, Green Lantern, and Cyborg are comparing notes, all of them realizing that the missions Red Tornado has been sending them on are less than savory, and they demand answers from their teammate. Red Tornado reveals that his actions are linked to another Leaguer in jeopardy, but none of that quite explains just how underhanded he’s been acting. The heroes don’t know what to make of it but, at the same time, they’re not going to abandon one of their own. I’m still not quite sure what to make of this title. I’ve enjoyed the first two issues, but I can’t tell where they’re going with Red Tornado here. If the miniseries ends with him becoming a villain I’m going to be pretty disappointed, but as I said after issue one, I think it’s going to turn out to be more nuanced than that when all is said and done. All that said, the cliffhanger at the end of this issue is just dandy.
Mon, Sept. 22
Comics: Adventures of Superman #558, Action Comics #745, Superman: The Man of Steel #80, Superman Vol. 2 #136, Adventures of Superman #559, Action Comics #746, Superman: The Man of Steel #81, Superman Vol. 2 #137
Notes: Welp, Superman is one person again and his powers are back to normal. You’d think his troubles are over, right? No, you silly person. Now it’s weirder than ever, because it seems as though there are FOUR Supermen (again), except this time, each of them is in a different era. In Adventures of Superman #558, we’re in a world that seems highly reminiscent of the Silver Age, with Superman and his family having a friendly game of baseball that spans the globe using a mine launched by an enemy submarine as the ball. We’ve got Steel on the top of Mt. Everest, Superboy (wearing an old-school costume) in France, and most surprising, a Kara Zor-El Supergirl in outer space. And the game stops when Krypto fetches the ”ball!” (I feel like we should remember that, at this point, the “Superman is the only Kryptonian survivor” edict was still in place – neither Kara nor Krypto existed in this continuity.) Jimmy Olsen, meanwhile, has stumbled into yet another of one of those transformations that seemed to happen to him so frequently in this era, this time drinking an alien isotope that turns him into a green-skinned spaceman. When word gets out that Alien Jimmy has been blessed – or cursed – with a Midas Touch, turning anything he touches into gold, he’s kidnapped by the world’s most ingenious criminal scientist, Lex Luthor.
I can only imagine co-writers Karl Kesel and Jerry Ordway putting this one together, an issue that’s a wild and charming mashup of the modern Superman (with elements like Steel and Dabney Donovan) with a story that could very easily have been a lost plot from an issue published in 1955. Jimmy’s wild transformations were a staple of the time, and we see the old (and often frustrating) trope of Lois being desperate to marry a Superman who keeps resisting her advances. By the end of the issue, nothing has really been resolved – it comes across as an entertaining oddity, but as of yet there’s no clue as to what’s actually happening.
Action Comics #745 takes a similar approach to what the writers call the “Polyester Age” in a story that roughly approximates the Superman comics of the late 70s. Superman comes in to save an unruly mob that has gathered on the collapsing Queensland Bridge, each of whom is carrying a bogus deed indicating they own it. Superman plans to investigate, but first he has to head to his job at WGBS to report the news with his co-anchor, Lana Lang. The story spins out into a fairly standard Prankster story, in which he takes over a cruise ship, kidnaps Lana Lang, places her in a trap that Superman can’t spring without exposing her to a deadly toxin, and in a script-flipping cliffhanger, asking Superman to officiate his and Lana’s MARRIAGE.
We journey back to the Golden Age with Man of Steel #80, and in the most literal way possible. The story begins reenacting a scene from Action Comics #1, with Superman barging into the governor’s mansion to demand a stay of execution for a woman he’s proven to be innocent of the crime for which she’s about to be electrocuted, then immediately bounding in to stop a man from beating his wife. It’s here, for the first time, that we really get a glimpse of what’s actually happening – a little girl with white hair appears briefly as Superman stops the wife-beater proclaiming “It’s all wrong! Everything’s wrong!” When Superman looks out the window to see that the police has arrived, the child vanishes. Superman doesn’t have time to solve the mystery, though – he’s expected by his editor, George Taylor, at the Daily Star. Lois and Clark are sent to cover an American Nazi rally that is eventually broken up by Superman, making Lois swoon.
Louise Simonson’s writing on this issue evokes the tone of the Golden Age, especially with a cold, aloof Lois that doesn’t give Clark the time of day, while he is utterly smitten with her. On the other hand, she manages to avoid some of the more problematic tropes of the original stories – she recreates the wife-beater scene almost perfectly, but omits the infamous “You’re not dealing with a woman now!” line. Jon Bogdanove, for his part, is perhaps more in his element than ever before. He adjusts his art style just SLIGHTLY, and it becomes a perfect update of a Golden Age Superman. He even gives us a panel emulating the legendary cover to Action #1. Reading this issue makes me ache for a full Elseworlds-style series set in this time period with Bogs handling the pencils.
Superman #136 takes us to the year 2999 (with yet another Action #1 homage cover, by Dan Jurgens this time). Years after the death of the last great champion, Superman XVIII, a new Superman appears saving a spaceship from disaster…or at least, he tries, but the rookie Superman winds up ripping off one of the ship’s stabilizers. Another craft manages to save the ship in a stasis field, including Lena Luthor, who gives us the infodump that Superman’s father died bringing Lena’s father to justice. We explore this future world, meeting “Klar Ken’s” coworkers, his younger sister Kara, and get information about the Superman legacy that has lasted a millennium. This one, too, ends with a cliffhanger, as Superman 2999 faces against a futuristic menace called Muto, and we get another glimpse of the girl with the white hair.
Back to the Silver Age for Adventures of Superman #559, which kicks off with Superman busting Brainiac and his shrinking ray. The next morning, though, things get really bizarre as some mysterious force gives everyone in Metropolis super powers. And I do mean everyone – Perry, Lois, Jimmy, Maggie Sawyer, the Newsboy Legion – it’s an epidemic. Everyone, it seems, except for MCU Officer Dan Turpin. It comes in handy when Metallo attacks and his Kryptonite heart affects EVERYONE except for Dan and his bazooka. The reveal about where the powers came from is fantastic, perfectly in keeping with a Silver Age story, and it’s really nice to see Turpin get hailed as the hero for once…until the girl with the white hair shows up again on the last page repeating her warning: “Can’t you feel it? It is ALL WRONG!” And then poof – she’s gone.
Things aren’t going great in Action Comics #746. Superman manages to save Lana from the Prankster, but she’s so angry that Clark bailed out on the situation (so he could be Superman) that she gets him fired from his job at WGBS. He’s doing the cardboard box walk of shame when the White Haired Girl AGAIN shows up and vanishes. They gotta start going somewhere with this soon, right?
And they do! Man of Steel #81 begins immediately with the White Haired Girl stuck on a railroad track as a train speeds towards her. Fortunately, ol’ “More Powerful Than a Locomotive” gets her away even as she keeps pleading “Everything is wrong.” She vanishes as soon as she appears, though, and we get to the main plot – Superman and Lois each stow away on a ship to Nazi Germany. The issue really does showcase the vast changes Superman underwent after the Golden Age. While for most of his history, Superman has been reluctant to involve himself in political situations (in fact, in the 1978 movie Jor-El specifically forbid that), here he actually thinks “Someone has got to settle these world affairs once and for all – and who else can do it but me?”
This issue gets pretty bleak, as Superman and Lois each independently delve into the Nazi concentration camps. Simonson doesn’t hold back from showing the horrors of the era, and in the end we’re just left more unsettled as we end on a cliffhanger, with Lois in dire straights that make being caught by the Prankster seem like a tropical vacation.
I’ll end today with Superman #137, in which the man of tomorrow (that being 2999) faces Muto – a fight that’s going poorly before he’s rescued by some of the other heroes of the era: 2999’s Green Lantern, the future Aquaman, and from Gotham City, “The Bat.” Superman and the other heroes face Muto at his orbital Fortress of Solitude, and Dan Jurgens plays off of Despero’s chess set from Justice League of America #1 for the second time this year (the first being when we read Superman’s adventures with the JLA in the era just before Doomsday).
Tues., Sept. 23
Comics: Adventures of Superman #560, Action Comics #747, Superman: The Man of Steel #82, Superman Vol. 2 #138, Adventures of Superman #561, Action Comics #748, Superman: The Man of Steel #83, Superman Vol. 2 #139
Notes: Today I’m getting into the finale of the Dominus storyline (at least this one), starting with Adventures #560. Silver Age Superman is stunned to find out that Lois Lane – the girl he loves but keeps at arm’s length – has a date with his pal Batman. The story seems to be going in the same direction as the previous two issues – a kind of standard Silver Age type story involving Lois’s feelings, Batman, and a sliver of Red Kryptonite. Halfway through, though, there’s a turn, as Batman reveals – even to Superman – that the two of them were BOTH adopted by the Kents after their respective origin tragedies and grew up as brothers. From there we get a quick chain reaction as all of Superman’s dreams seem to be coming true: Emil Hamilton shows up with a cure for Red Kryptonite, Jor-El and Lara appear alive, promising to take him back to Krypton’s Hypersector with them, Lois professes her love and vows to go with him…but Batman transforms into the White Haired girl, who reveals herself to be Kismet. The universe fades as Superman and Lois embrace one another.
Action #747 goes in a very different direction. The story, free of dialogue, unfolds as we watch Clark return to the Daily Planet, Lois kidnapped by the Prankster, and Superman come to the rescue. Throughout, although there are no speech bubbles or conversations among the characters, an unseen narrator gives us a monologue about godhood, divinity, chaos, and order. The narrator is manipulating Lois, trying to bring her into a position where she kills Superman, but in the end she can’t do it. The dialogue finally comes back in the last few pages, when the White Haired girl again reveals herself as Kismet and the narrator redoubles on his plan to control the universe, revealing himself as an entity called Dominus. This issue is really jarring, being SO different from the previous two (and, in fact, from the rest of this storyline altogether). I’m not sure if it entirely works, to be honest, especially since the girl’s reveal at the end was done in the previous week’s issue, and now I’m sure we’ll see it again two more times.
Man of Steel #82 picks up with Golden Age Superman determined to halt a train laden with prisoners bound for the concentration camps, unaware that one of the prisoners is the captive Lois. Saving her from the train he kisses her and – just for a second – glimpses the real, modern world. Kismet (still as the White Haired Girl) hopes that putting the two of them together again will help them to break whatever Dominus has been doing, but Superman’s attention is focused on liberating the Nazi’s prisoners (because, you know, he’s Superman). Kismet tells Lois and Superman that their bond is the one thing Dominus can’t break, and when she brings them together again, the three of them find themselves back in Metropolis in the modern day. But the Nazi Commandant has come with them, revealing himself to be Dominus. Superman again recognizes the girl as Kismet, who helped lead him back to life back in Adventures of Superman #500, but Dominus attacks the girl and Superman is swallowed by nothingness.
The future ain’t what it used to be in Superman #138. Superman returns to Metropolis with his allies – and several new ones – announcing the formation of a Justice Alliance (with a logo that looks like an odd mashup of the Justice League and Legion of Super-Heroes emblems). But the ceremony is disrupted by the White Haired Girl, and we begin flashing between the four timelines we’ve been following. Kismet reveals that Dominus has trapped Superman in a sort of “reality prison” and split his consciousness into four separate simulated realities. As he breaks free from Dominus’s will, he returns to the real, modern Metropolis with Kismet. We discover that, in the last moments of Superman Forever, Dominus placed him in this “reality prison,” and Superman has been tearing through Metropolis ever since, acting out the scenarios we’ve been reading across the four titles. (It really makes you wonder what people were watching him do when he was carrying around his sad little box after being fired from WGBS.) Kismet brings Superman to a secluded place where she tells us that she thought Dominus was trying to control him, but it turns out that she’s his REAL target, and Dominus was using the false scenarios to draw her out of Superman so he can usurp her power. Dominus appears and attacks, hurling Superman away as Kismet flees.
In Adventures #561 Waverider appears and implores Superman to help find Kismet, as if he needed to ask. The White Haired Girl reappears as Clark is having lunch with Jimmy and Lois, and he takes off after her. It turns out NOT to be Kismet, though, but rather the girl whose appearance Kismet adopted. And as Superman takes her home, Waverider reveals himself to be Dominus in disguise, using Superman to find the REAL Kismet.
Incidentally, this issue also sets up the NEXT big story arc for the Superman titles, in which the Daily Planet is put up for sale. That’s an interesting arc in its own right, but I’m not going to get into the whole thing because…well geez, I gotta draw the line SOMEWHERE.
Action Comics #747 brings Dominus – disguised as Superman – to Smallville to talk about Kismet with Jonathan Kent, who also met her back in Adventures #500. He fails to draw her out, though and leaves. Dominus makes his next play against Superman, but his constant manipulation of reality leads the two of them into a conflict that spirals into some really cool page design by Stuart Immonen before finally – hopefully – bringing the REAL Waverider into the conflict. In Man of Steel #83, Waverider and the Linear Men try to break Superman from all the reality warping that Dominus has been putting Superman through, but by now he doesn’t trust his old allies, believing them all to be Dominus. Finally, in Superman #138, as Superman holds Dominus off Waverider – the real one – takes Kismet back in time and hides her inside a young girl from Smallville, Kansas. Dominus leaves, swearing his revenge, and the story finally ends…
For now, at least. Both Dominus and Kismet would return in later story arcs, but this is as good a place as any to draw the line and end the saga of Electric Superman, plus the Dominus epilogue. So let’s do a post-mortum of the era, shall we? When this saga was originally being published, back in 1996 and 1997, I remember having some rather uncharitable feelings about it. I knew even then that it was a temporary change, and I felt like it was disingenuous of DC to try to paint this as a new status quo for Superman. With age, I’m definitely wiser in that respect. I realize now that DC was never really trying to pretend this would be Superman “Forever,” and any comments to the contrary were nothing more than kayfabe. I think that accepting that sort of thing has made me more accepting of other, later long-form stories, like when Dr. Octopus took over Peter Parker’s body for a year or two, or when Captain America was revealed to be a Hydra Agent. I’ve gotten better about judging stories like these on their own merits, rather than having a knee-jerk reaction to any sort of change, and I think I enjoy comics better because of it.
As for the Electric Saga as a whole…I’m actually struck by how much I enjoyed reading these comics again. This time around I’ve really gained an appreciation for how intricately the stories of the Triangle Era were woven together. Even when I read the whole Death and Return of Superman earlier this year, it wasn’t as clear because EVERY storyline was put on hold at the time to serve the larger one. This time around, between the time Clark’s power changed and the time he split into two, the power thing was almost incidental. We were still getting Superman stories with the ongoing plots and subplots, with things being set up far in advance that would pay off much further down the line. It’s really impressive to me just how well these things were plotted, and frankly, I miss the days when a comic book like this could put out a new installment each and every week. These days, likely, will not come again.
Next, I think I’ll take a week to be random before I get back to themes. I’ve only got 14 weeks left, and I definitely have several categories that I intend to dig into before it’s all over…but for now, I’m going to give myself a teeny break and just spend a week with whatever Superman Stuff suits my fancy.
After last week’s extended wind-up, this week it’s time to do a deep dive into the era of Electric Blue Superman. I’ve honestly got no idea how far into the run I’ll get in the next seven days, but I intended to have a good time finding out.
Before I get into it, though, some fun news hit today. James Gunn hopped on social media earlier with a post of image by Jim Lee: Superman (in the David Corenswet costume) and Lex Luthor in his power armor. Along with the image came the caption, “Man of Tomorrow. July 9, 2027.” This is pretty exciting. We knew he was working on the next movie already, but this is far more information than I thought we would possibly get before next year. We’ve got what seems to be a title, and maybe even a hint of the plot, with Lex in his armor. Obviously, I’m pumped.
After all, isn’t the one thing Superman has always been missing a screwdriver?
But I gotta tell you this story. I got a message right before lunch and, being in class at the time, I obviously couldn’t stop to look at my phone. When the lunch bell rang, the students left the room and I checked to see that Mark had shared this image. I got excited, I replied, and then I stepped out into the hall. Not 90 seconds after I got Mark’s message, a student ran up to me – not even a student I teach, just one who knows me – who wanted to know if I had seen James Gunn’s announcement yet.
Comics:Adventures of Superman #546, Action Comics #733, Superman: The Man of Steel #68, Superman Vol. 2 #124
That image looks…familiar somehow.
Notes: In Adventures of Superman #546, Lois Lane has her first meeting with her new and improved husband. As glad as she is to see him okay, he’s just as angry when he sees that the Daily Planet’s inflammatory new columnist Dirk Armstrong has painted him as a menace…mostly because Clark thinks he was right. When word comes in that Dirk’s blind daughter, Ashbury, has been kidnapped, Superman races to search for her, only to get sidetracked when he’s attacked by his old foe Metallo, who wants to try his hand at facing the new Superman. Don’t worry about the kidnapping victim, though – Ashbury is rescued by Scorn, who she briefly mistakes for Superman. Liking the role of hero, Scorn puts on Superman’s old symbol as his own.
In Action #733, Superman just manages to escape from Metallo’s clutches by switching to his human form, but winds up injured in the process. Hoping to gain more control over his new powers he seeks out someone who has similar experience: the energy-hero called the Ray. After a few tips, Metallo rises again, and Superman figures out some new tricks to take him down. This is an interesting issue – Ray only appears on a few pages, despite getting a nice “guest-starring” credit and half the cover. But what he does here isn’t insignificant, helping Superman start to figure out his powers and even theorizing that the reason he has no powers in his human form is because he subconsciously is imitating humans as he sees them. I like the fact that Superman isn’t above going to a younger hero for help when he needs it, even one as relatively inexperienced as the Ray. It’s the sort of thing that works well as a character beat, showing how even-tempered and nuanced he is.
The battle with Metallo continues in Man of Steel #68, and courtesy of Jimmy Olsen, it gets a lot harder. At this period, Jimmy was working as a TV reporter for WGBS news instead of his traditional photographer gig, and desperate to stay on top of the ratings heap, he starts covering the Metallo fight and explaining Superman’s new powers based on information he got from Professor Hamilton. Metallo is monitoring the TV broadcast, though, and using Jimmy’s broadcast to change his tactics. Superman manages to beat him, but winds up spinning into space, having absorbed far too much energy.
After ending Man of Steel #68, Dan Jurgens makes the rather odd choice to begin Superman #124 after the crisis has been resolved, with Lois and Clark discussing how the Planet’s publisher, Franklin Stern, is angry over his frequent absences lately. Then Clark dives into a flashback in which he’s saved from dissipating into energy in outer space by the timely intervention of one of Jurgens’ favorite creations, Booster Gold. The rescue fries the armor Booster has been wearing for some time, though – actually, ever since his original super-suit was destroyed in battle with Doomsday. Superman brings Booster to Hamilton, who uses the leftover weave from Superman’s containment suit and combines it with the remaining future technology Booster brought back from the future with him, giving him a new suit that’s a bit more in line with his classic one. I love when you see stuff like this – Jurgens clearly wasn’t happy with how the writers that followed him on Justice League America changed Booster’s armor and used this opportunity to fix it a little bit.
This issue gives us a lot of advancement on several subplots as well. Jimmy kind of patches up his relationship with Lois and Clark, ashamed of how his broadcast had endangered Superman, just in time for Perry White to storm into the Planet office and announce that his cancer is in remission and demand his job back. In Kandor, the town’s rulers find evidence that the bottled city – which is actually out of phase in another dimension – is on the verge of destruction. And Scorn is drawn to Lois and Clark’s apartment, where he finds one of Clark’s old costumes.
Reading these issues this way, one after another, following the story for long periods of time, is really making me feel nostalgic for the Triangle Era in a way that not even the Death of Superman. I love having this quick progression of story, so unlike a typical monthly comic book story. Even right now, when the Superman comics are really good, this is a different feeling. It’s a feeling I like.
Ah, I wish we could get it back.
Thur., Sept. 4
Comics: Adventures of Superman #547, Action Comics #734, Superman: The Man of Steel #69, Superman Vol. 2 #125, Secret Six Vol. 5 (Super-Son)
The Atom only went along because Superman told him they’d go spelunking instead of skydiving.
Notes: Still adjusting to his new powers, in Adventures #547, Superman is alerted to the crisis in Kandor and decides to reach out to a hero with experience in size manipulation: the Atom. At this point, though, Ray Palmer had gone through an even more radical transformation than Superman, having been reduced in age to a teenager. He was currently the leader of a new, very different version of the Teen Titans in a book written and drawn by our old pal Dan Jurgens. Still, despite having a teenager’s body and attitude, he retained his memories, and as a former Justice Leaguer, jumps at the chance to work with one of the big guns. Hamilton journeys to the Fortress with the two heroes, and Superman and the Atom dive down into Kandor. Scorn, meanwhile, is wandering around Metropolis stalking Ashbury and carrying around the Superman costume he took from Clark’s apartment, seemingly trying to decide what he wants his path to be now that he’s free of Kandor.
Action #734 picks up with Ashbury reuniting with Scorn, although the blind girl is still under the misapprehension that he’s Superman. At that same time Rock – a villain Superman caught a few months back – breaks out. With Superman and the Atom in Kandor, though, Scorn takes care of Rock by himself, to the confusion of the SCU, who sees this horned, blue brute wearing Superman’s old costume. In Kandor, Superman and the Atom fight off some of the city’s peacekeepers who are still loyal to their original captor, Tolos, and a group of dissidents manage to attack the city’s environmental generator. The city is beginning to freeze, but that’s not even the real issue. They’ve got one hour to get the generator back online before everyone in Kandor suffocates to death.
In Man of Steel #69, Superman, the Atom, and a telekinetic local named Faern try to get to the generator to start it up again. But the generator is bombed, and in the explosion, Tolos is revealed to be alive and hiding in Faern’s body. He escapes and takes over Superman, which I’m sure you can imagine is inconvenient for everyone. Outside of Kandor, Scorn has crashed at Ashbury’s apartment, with the blind girl finally figuring out that he’s not actually Superman, but she befriends him anyway. When her dad shows up, though, he thinks Scorn is a menace and Scorn, not realizing Dirk is Ash’s father, leaps from the window with her in his arms. Perry White demands that Planet staff get to the bottom of the Scorn situation, and still more questions about Clark’s attendance issue are raised.
I bring up that last point mostly because I think it’s an interesting note for the character. One of the reasons for Clark choosing the job of a reporter is usually the notion that it will allow him to be absent frequently to act as Superman under the guise of “covering a story.” That might work if he’s gone for a few hours, but as we’ve seen in these books lately, his other job sometimes has to take him away for days, weeks, even months at a time. The excuses he (and later, Lois) come up with to explain his disappearances often strain credulity and are frequently lampshaded these days. All of this is just to say that things like this are why I like the interpretation of the characters that say Perry White knows – or at least strongly suspects – that Clark is Superman, because otherwise he’d never put up with this.
The Kandor story wraps up in Superman #125. Tolos, controlling Superman’s body, frees himself from Kandor and attacks Hamilton, who’s been holding vigil over the bottled city. But Hamilton manages to science Tolos out, sending them both – separately – back into the bottle. Superman manages to trick Tolos, trapping him in the “glass” of the bottle, which is actually an energy barrier containing the city in its pocket dimension. Reuniting with the Atom, the two heroes manage to fix the machines that maintain the city’s environment, and the story ends with Superman swearing to the people of Kandor to find a way and a place to release them from the bottle and set them free.
It sounds awfully familiar, actually.
The first extended team-up between Energy Superman and the Atom is an interesting glimpse at the characters and the time. Superman is still learning the ropes of his energy form, but he’s still essentially the same person at his core. The Atom, on the other hand, has his memories and powers intact, but the brashness and eagerness of a teenager. Almost every other page in these four issues includes a reference to him hoping to impress Superman enough that he’ll score an invitation into the newly-formed (at the time) Justice League. The story flows together the way the Triangle Era did, and although this version of Kandor has been excised from continuity, there’s some interesting stuff going on. I especially like Scorn – a character who looks like a monster but decides that, if he’s gonna be stuck on Earth, there are worse things to be than Superman. He’s not wrong.
Fri., Sept. 5
Comics: Adventures of Superman #548, Action Comics #735, Superman: The Man of Steel #70
“Why you electrocuting yourself? Why you electrocuting yourself?”
Notes: In an epilogue to last month’s adventure, Kandor is shifting its allegiance from Tolos to Superman. In fact, his shield (the current, electric blue one) is showing up as a graffiti tag on city walls. Superman tells the Atom he’d be willing to recommend the Atom to rejoin the League, but suggests he could be of more use leading the Teen Titans, which he decides to take as a challenge. Clark returns to the Planet and tries to excuse his absence by saying he was hunting down the story on the new Superman, to which Perry replies, “Which one?” But while working on the story, Lois drops a bomb on Clark that he hadn’t been made aware of before: that the electronic fabric in his new suit was supplied by Lex Luthor. He rushes to LexCorp Tower, suspecting Lex of being involved with his power change as he’s tried tampering with them in the past, but leaves when Erica fakes a problem with her pregnancy. And in a moment that’s chilling to any long-time DC fan, the Phantom Stranger pops in to tell Clark that there’s some great disturbance in the universe, something that may or may not be connected to Superman’s new powers. And the fact that he’s not sure should be pretty scary to anyone.
(Wait — has anyone told Booster Gold that HIS suit has LexCorp tech too?)
Action #735 brings us the return of Saviour, a delusional serial killer who wants to “punish” liars and fakes, and who doesn’t believe that Superman actually returned from the dead and is dedicated to killing the “imposter” using his name. Ashbury, meanwhile, has found a hiding place for Scorn in the abandoned pool at her school. When Scorn hears Saviour on the radio calling Superman out, he is determined to help. Superman’s new energy powers allow him to find a way to cancel out Saviour’s energy, taking him out, but he manages to slip away and vow revenge.
In Man of Steel #70 Superman and Scorn part as friends, but not before Superman tells the alien he has to bring Ashbury – a 17-year-old girl – back to her father. Although Ash protests, Scorn trusts Superman’s judgment, and she finally acquiesces upon learning her absence is taking its toll on Dirk’s health. WGBS, meanwhile, airs Jimmy’s interview with Hamilton about Superman’s new powers, despite the fact that it gave Metallo an edge in the fight, and this time Saviour picks up on it. With his reality-warming, he starts to mimic Superman’s new powers to get his attention. Scorn and even Bibbo get in on it, with Bibbo snatching a crib sheet Saviour wrote to keep track of what he learned about Superman’s powers. Superman and Scorn beat Saviour, but Jimmy’s relationship with his friends is damaged even further.
Jimmy could rarely catch a break during the Triangle Era. A running theme seemed to be him making a foolish mistake and then having one consequence after another stacked up on him like an enormous Dagwood Sandwich of Suck. It honestly could get a little tiresome after a while. These days we don’t see him quite as often as I’d like, but when we do, it’s usually more in the vein of the weirdness magnet that Matt Fraction (and, to a lesser degree, James Gunn) used him as. I prefer that.
Sat. Sept. 6
Comic Books: Adventures of Superman: Book of El #1, Absolute Superman #11, Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 #4
Notes: I’m taking a break today from the electric saga to pick into this week’s new Superman titles, starting with Adventures of Superman: Book of El #1.
🎶”Who wrote the book of El?”🎶 “I told you, Phillip Kennedy Johnson. Stop singing.”
This new miniseries is written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson as sort of the conclusion to his run on the Super-titles that followed Brian Michael Bendis’s run and lasted into the Dawn of DC era before he stepped aside. I had mixed feelings about his run. Coming off of the (ahem) previous writer it was inevitable that it would be an improvement, and there were certainly things about Johnson’s run that I enjoyed, but I ultimately got turned off. In this period, Johnson wrote about a Superman that was depowered on Warworld, and for most of that run, it was the only regular comic featuring Clark Kent. (The Superman title was sidelined and replaced with Jon Kent as Superman: Son of Kal-El.) I got burned out on Warworld eventually. Towards the end of the run I realized what the problem was – it was simply too long. A solid year of Superman on another planet and separated from Lois, Metropolis, and all the other elements that make Superman so great just didn’t work for me. In the Triangle Era they could have gotten away with it because a twelve-issue storyline would still only last three months, but 12 was too much. I greatly preferred the final section of Johnson’s run, after Superman returned to Earth and Action Comics became kind of a Superman Family title.
All that said, let’s look at what Book of El gives us. The story starts on a lazy day in Smallville, with the Kent family all together: Lois and Clark, Jonathan and Martha, Jon, and the adopted twins from Johnson’s run, Otho-Ra and Osul-Ra, who have ostensibly been living with Lois and Clark this whole time but who even the good writers of the modern Superman titles consistently forget about. Their idyllic afternoon is shattered by an attack by Kryl-Ux, an enemy from Warworld, leading an invasion force and – seemingly – hurling Superman into the future. On the last few pages Clark encounters Ronan Kent, a descendent of his from Johnson’s Future State comics, and the knowledge that he disappeared from Earth hundreds of years ago.
I really do like the way Johnson writes the whole Kent family together. He gives each character a voice that fits them, and his Lois and Clark interactions (so infrequent during his Warworld storyline) are excellent. The revelation at the end takes all the air out of the tires, though. Clark is missing for centuries? Presumed dead? And the invasion of Earth is successful? The whole thing may as well end with a big banner that says “THIS STORY WILL BE RESET AND THIS FUTURE WILL NOT HAPPEN.” By the end of this miniseries, I have absolutely ZERO doubt, something will happen that will eliminate the future of Ronan Kent from being a potential future. That doesn’t mean the story can’t still be good, but it excises the whole thing from consequence in continuity, and that hurts.
Brainiac doing his best Cryptkeeper voice: “What the matter, Kal? Got GORE-gia on your mind? HEEHEHEEHEHEHEHEEEE!!!”
In Absolute Superman #11, Kal-El is in the clutches of Brainiac, who is forcing him to experience hundreds of torturous simulations of the final days of Krypton with the intention of brainwashing him into becoming a tool for Ra’s Al Ghul. Despite some early success, though, Kal-El begins to resist the reprogramming. Meanwhile, Lois and Jimmy are captives of Talia, and find a very unexpected rescuer coming to their aid. This series is progressing a little slowly, to be honest, but this issue is solid. There’s a lot of action and great stuff with Kal-El and Brainiac, and I particularly like the way Jason Aaron is playing with [REDACTED] when that particular character comes to the rescue. Good stuff here.
Finally, we have Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 #4. The League is trying to recruit Godzilla to help with the current situation, but something in the other realm where Godzilla resides is preventing the Kryptonians from fully processing the solar radiation that powers them. To even the score, Mr. Terrific whips up a device that will temporarily make Superman kaiju-size…but at the same time, reduce his intellect to a point where he’s operating on pure instinct. That’s right: it’s Godzilla vs. Kaiju-Superman!
And somebody decided to go with a cover of a few random League members facing a water monster that doesn’t even appear in this issue. I swear, boneheaded movies like this are the reason I should be put in charge of comic books.
Sun., Sept. 7
Comic Books: Superman Vol. 2 #126, Adventures of Superman #549, Action Comics #736, Superman: The Man of Steel #71, Superman Vol. 2 #127
Clark had trouble making friends in this era.
Notes: It’s back to the electric era today, starting with Superman #126, in which our new electrified hero faces his Dark Knight buddy. Lex Luthor is planning his legal defense for his…well, trillions of crimes. But his scheme is to argue that he was somehow influenced by the Kryptonite ring that gave him cancer. Despite the fact that it might help Luthor, Mr. Truth and Justice Superman has no choice but to go to Batman and retrieve the ring. He returns it after some tests or run – or so he thinks. Luthor had one of his “scientists” pull a fast one, replacing the ring with a duplicate. Superman and Batman don’t know that the ring in the Batcave is a fake…but Luthor doesn’t know that Kryptonite no longer affects Superman in his energy form.
There’s an awful lot going on in this issue. In addition to the main plot I just recapped, there’s a great sequence where Superman saves the city from a plane crash, having to figure out how to use his new powers to do something that would have been relatively simple for the “old” Superman. Scorn is also convinced to abandon the Superman costume he’s been wearing and forge a name for himself. There’s good stuff there, but the actual Superman/Batman meeting is kind of a letdown. I would have hoped Batman would have more to say about Clark’s transformation, as this is presumably the first time they’ve encountered each other since it happened, but Batman barely seems to notice. It feels like those early Byrne issues where the two were tense rivals at best. Granted, they weren’t yet Superbesties again at this period, but as teammates in Grant Morrison’s Justice League, I would have expected them to be a bit more cordial to one another.
Adventures of Superman #549 stars with Superman forced to do something he didn’t need to do when he had hearing and vision powers: go on patrol. Instead of stumbling on Intergang, though, he winds up in the middle of a rumble between the Newsboy Legion and the Dingbats of Danger Street. No, really, those are actual comic book characters. Jimmy, meanwhile, is struggling to find some credibility after his recent struggles. He decides to check in on Lois and Clark, but arrives just as Intergang firebombs their building as a warning to Lois to back off. Superman evacuates the building, but is then forced to go back in as a powerless Clark to protect his identity. After spending the night in the hospital suffering from smoke inhalation, he goes to Professor Hamilton to ask if he’s discovered a way to restore his powers to normal, but Hamilton gives him the shocking news that this change seems to be permanent. Also at the end, Superman brings in yet another obscure group of DC kid characters to settle the issue between the Newsboys and the Dingbats, and Jimmy decides he’s going to resurrect his career by making one of the stupidest decisions he’s ever made in his entire life, and keep in mind that this is a man who once married a gorilla.
Action Comics #736: The mysterious shadowy figure who recently assembled a Superman Revenge Squad starts assembling…well…a new Superman Revenge Squad. He busts Barrage out of prison, then recruits Rock and the Parasite to his cause, with a promise of more to come. Clark, meanwhile, is depressed over the revelation that the change to his powers will be permanent. He heads to Pennsylvania on assignment for the Planet, only to get trapped in a coal mine collapse with a bunch of miners. The old Superman could get them out in moments, of course, but if he were to fire up his new electrical powers, he runs the risk of igniting the coal dust in the air and killing them all. This is the kind of story that they do every so often to prove that Superman is more than his powers – he’s actually got a brain, too. Clark finds a way to save everybody without his powers, because that’s what Superman does, no matter what costume he’s wearing.
Man of Steel #71 picks up on the Jimmy Olsen Bonehead Show. After the incident at the apartment, Jimmy is convinced he’s figured out Superman’s secret identity, and the rest of the crew at WBGS news is trying to convince him to pursue and report it. But at the same time Bibbo, who punched Jimmy out a few issues ago for his LAST boneheaded move, gets back in the boxing ring and wins, then surrenders his title as penance for hitting Jimmy. Somehow this is enough to cause a moral quandary in a man who should have NO moral quandary about the question of WHETHER OR NOT TO RUIN THE LIFE OF HIS BEST FRIEND, JAMES BARTHOLOMEW OLSEN, WHAT IN THE NAME OF NERON ARE YOU THINKING?
Ahem.
Also, the mysterious recruiter picks up a new villain, an electrical woman named Baud, to join his new Revenge Squad, and his identity is revealed as…Morgan Edge. It’s not the most dramatic reveal, honestly, but it tracks. He sends them to fight Superman, because that’s what he does.
And in Superman #127, Superman narrowly escapes the Revenge Squad as they start to fight amongst themselves. Superman lets the Parasite take out the other three, then bounces in and reverses things on his magenta rival, defeating him by using his new powers to suck the excess energy from him and leaving him helpless. Then, Lois and Clark get a visit from Jimmy, who asks their advice on whether he should pursue the story of the century, even if it will get someone “really mad at him.” Clark, being Clark, tells him that the truth is the most important thing, and Jimmy leaves renewed in his determination to blow Superman’s secret identity, because they are really writing him as unforgivably stupid at this point in the series. Honestly, I’d forgotten about all this. Jimmy. James. Jimothy. What the hell, dude?
Mon., Sept. 8
Comics: Adventures of Superman#550, Action Comics #737, Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #9, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #7, Justice League of America #28
Or “The Adventures of Superman’s Stupidest Friend, Jimmy Olsen.”
Notes: Jimmy’s giant bonehead extravaganza comes to a head in the “double-sized anniversary issue” Adventures of Superman #550. As he prepares his news special in which he plans to reveal Superman’s identity, he tries to justify it in his head by saying that, without his hearing and vision powers to alert him to danger, Superman’s identity being public would make it SO MUCH EASIER for people to come to him for help, displaying the kind of mental gymnastics that wouldn’t be associated with Superman again until Zack Snyder fans started to desperately try to pretend that the James Gunn movie wasn’t successful. Jimmy invites Lois and Clark to the taping of his special, along with two other guests: former football pro Johnny Dakota and Newstime magazine publisher Collin Thornton, both of whom also happen to live in the same building as our happy couple. Lois storms out of taping as Jimmy reveals what’s up his slave, but Clark instead gives Jimmy a kind but firm dressing-down about how Superman wouldn’t do anything to hurt anybody. The speech doesn’t fall on deaf ears, but Jimmy realizes it’s too late to back down now, and so on live TV he announces that Superman’s secret identity is…NOBODY!
Okay, he did the right thing in the end, but Jimmy B. Olsen comes across – both in-universe and to the reader – as one of the dumbest characters in the entire DCU.
Predictably, he gets fired from WGBS and he decides to take a little time off, even keeping the truth about Superman’s secret to himself…that Superman is really, of course, Collin Thornton.
I dislike this take on Jimmy so, SO much. I’ve talked before about how I prefer it when characters are played to the top of their intelligence, and this is as far from that as it could possibly go. Not only does Jimmy completely miss every clue that Clark is, in fact Superman, a fact that even a child could infer from the speech Clark gives him in this issue, but his emotional intelligence would have that same child look at him in disgust. One of my favorite bits of the new movie is the scene in the end, where Perry White and Jimmy Olsen quip about how long Lois and Superman have been hooking up. The scene can be read one of two ways: either they know Lois is involved with their biggest headline, OR they know that Lois is involved with Clark and that Clark happens to be Superman. There’s been quite a lot of chatter online about this, and personally, I prefer the latter interpretation, much for the same reason that I believe that James Gordon knows that Batman is really Bruce Wayne – he’s just too smart NOT to have figured it out, but he knows it’s best to keep it to himself. THAT’s the Perry and Jimmy I want to read about.
Not this assclown.
But as it turns out, the dumbification of Jimmy Olsen wasn’t over yet. Action Comics #737picks up the thread, as (in an issue by guest writer Mark Waid) Olsen is attacked by Intergang, who isn’t buying his claim that Superman has no secret identity, and they’re ready to get the truth out of him. Jimmy just barely manages to escape – in only his boxers, which only serves to deepen his public humiliation when he’s picked up by the police. It just gets worse when the people who bail him out turn out not to be family or friends, but the same Intergang agents who were after him before. Meanwhile, at Lex Luthor’s trial, Lex’s lawyer argues that Lex, while dying of Kryptonite radiation, was saved by one of his research team, but lay comatose for months, only coming out of it shortly before the Final Night crisis. The real criminal was his clone, “Lex Luthor Jr.” (which is technically true, if you ignore the fact that Junior was just Lex’s brain in a younger body). The real kicker, though, is when the defense actually produces the clone – now aging, infirm, and raging in court. The judge, reluctantly, allows Lex to go free.
There are a couple of good bits in this one, even as Jimmy continues to act like a bonehead. First, after Lex’s trial, a snide and confident Lex Luthor informs his lawyer that everything he just said in court was bupkis, he was indeed the one responsible for the “clone’s” crimes, and he’s about to go launch a plan to destroy the Justice League which the attorney can’t tell anyone about due to attorney/client privilege. It’s just the kind of utterly arrogant thing that makes Lex such a delicious villain, and Waid sells it nicely. Another good bit is at the end, when a desperate Jimmy turns to Bibbo for help. The same Bibbo who punched Jimmy out for his jackass behavior not that long ago comes to his aid because, in his own words, “We’re both pals o’ Superman, and dat’s a pretty solid brotherhood.”
The world needs more Bibbo Bibbowski in it.
A quick note about the next book I’m going to be reading, Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #9. During the “Triangle Era” we had four monthly Superman comics, which equaled 48 issues of Superman a year. As you may have heard, though, years actually have about 52 weeks. Comic books come out on Wednesday, and roughly four times a year you get a month with five Wednesdays in it instead of four. DC decided to fill in these gap weeks with Man of Tomorrow, a bonus title that only appeared in these missing Wednesdays. It was a fun idea, but they rarely added anything substantial to the ongoing storyline (I suppose DC knew that even with a triangle on the cover some people would skip it) and eventually it was phased out in lieu of DC’s “fifth week” events, where they’d fill Wednesday #5 with a series of themed one-shots like Girlfrenzy or New Year’s Evil.
Anyhoo, Man of Tomorrow #9 is kind of the perfect expression of this series. It’s a one-off story in which Jonathan and Martha – talking about their son’s recent transformation – run down all of the other trials and tribulations he’s faced over the years. The book is really nothing but a condensed history lesson of all the main storylines that had happened to the character in the decade since John Byrne’s Man of Steel reboot, which is kind of an odd choice for a book they’re afraid would only be purchased by the most intrepid of readers, because they would be far more likely than the casuals to already know all of this stuff. The cover is pretty misleading too, with a banner that proclaims “The Secrets of Superman’s Costume!” Spoiler alert: there are absolutely no secrets in this book, just a parade of Superman’s history with a visual focus – courtesy of artists Paul Ryan and Brett Breeding – on the assorted different costumes and appearances Superman had over the years. We got glimpses of pretty much everything, from the armor he wore during Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite to the circus strongman getup from Time and Time Again to the battle suit Mother Box gave him in Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey. In fact, if I were a toy manufacturer looking to do a really comprehensive line of figures featuring every different getup Superman ever wore, this book would be a pretty valuable resource for this time period. As a story it’s cute, but kind of a throwaway.
Tues., Sept. 9
Short Film: Superman 75
And he doesn’t look a day over 87.
Notes: My original plan for today was to read the Superman annuals that featured ol’ Electric Blue, but September 9th turned out to be one of those days that just gets away from you. I had my hands full with various things, and by the time I’m writing this at nearly 7:30 pm, I haven’t had a chance to indulge in any Superman content. It’s time to play one of the little “emergency cards” I had planned out at the beginning of the year – a quickie I could sneak in on a day like this one, when time is of the essence and I might not have another chance to keep my streak alive. Today I chose Superman 75, a two-minute animated short directed by Zack Snyder and Bruce Timm to celebrate Superman’s 75th anniversary back in 2013.
Say what you will about Snyder (and at some point, before the year ends, I intend to do so), but this short really does show a respect for the character of Superman. In two minutes, Snyder and Timm craft a wonderful little visual retrospective of Superman’s 75-year history, which I still can’t believe was already 12 years ago. I hope DC has some plans in place for year 90, it’s going to be here before they know it.
Anyway, over the two minutes of the short – which is mostly set to the classic John Williams score — we start off with an extreme close-up of the S-shield from the cover of Action Comics #1, which then springs to life and then begins evolving through the various ages of the character. At turn, we see glimpses of the Fleisher Superman, some Golden Age comics, George Reeves, the proliferation of new heroes and villains that joined Superman in the Silver Age, a glimpse of the Super Friends, a dip into the 70s when Superman boxed Muhammad Ali, the death and return, the electric era, the Animated Series, Smallville, Kingdom Come, and the New 52 (WHEW!) before the short finally wraps with a glimpse of Henry Cavill in that first promo shot we ever saw of him, where Superman was standing in the rubble of what looked like a bank vault. For the last segment the music shifts to the Hans Zimmer score, paying what I still think was a suitable tribute to the character as he was at the time.
I’ve watched this cartoon probably a half-dozen times since it was first released, and I enjoy it every single time. It’s a nice visual history of my favorite hero, and it’s the sort of thing I’d like to see them revisit and update every so often. But when I watched it on my laptop this time, something interesting happened. My son, Eddie, heard the now-familiar strains of the John Williams music coming from the computer and asked what I was watching. So I had him sit on the couch next to me so we could watch it together. As we went through the short I briefly informed him which eras we were passing through, and he thrilled at the appearance of Krypto during the Silver Age segment. Of course he did – we all love Krypto. If James Gunn throws Beppo into the Man of Tomorrow movie, I’ll show this short to Eddie again and he’ll go wild over that.
Assuming I have a little more time tomorrow, I’ll get around to those annuals, and then continue on my journey through Superman’s electrical era. Until then, friends!
When I started the Year of Superman back in January, I decided early on that I wasn’t going to spend the entire year reading stories from the “Triangle Era,” even though that is hands-down my favorite period of Superman comics. I did decide, though, that I would allow myself two indulgences. I would give myself a few weeks to delve into the epic and game-changing Death and Return of Superman storyline in the early part of the year. Then, later, I would allow myself to read the longer and more divisive saga of “Electric” Superman. The period where Superman’s powers and costume changed so radically was a major point of contention for a lot of readers at the time, although I feel that — like many stories of the era — it is looked back upon more fondly than it was initially received. But I have never gone back and read that era as a whole since it first came out.
I think it’s time.
That said, there’s a question that must be answered: exactly WHEN does this saga begin and end? It’s not as cut-and-dried as the Death of Superman, beginning with Doomsday’s appearance in Man of Steel #18. This story doesn’t begin in the issue where he gets the new costume. Superman’s power change is at least partially a result of an attempt to restore his powers after they are lost during the Final Night crossover. And after he is returned to “normal,” that issue ends with a cliffhanger that dovetails into a time-travel adventure against the villain Dominus that lasts several months before things are finally reset. Along the way he participates in more than one crossover event, is a regular member of the Justice League, and makes multiple guest appearances in lots of comics, including the Ultimate Access miniseries I read last week. All told, were I to read EVERY comic book with Electric Superman, it would be more than double (possibly triple) the number of issues in the Death and Return saga. That’s a LOT.
So here’s what I’ve decided:
I’m going to read all of the issues of the regular Superman titles from the beginning of Final Night to the end of the Dominus storyline. I’ll read the main issues of any crossover in which Electric Superman appears, as well as crossover chapters in which Superman or members of the family appear. I’ll also read the annuals with Electric Superman. I’m going to skip the JLA issues, because after all, it’s part of Grant Morrison’s run and that whole thing is really one massive story in and of itself. And I’m not going to get into every guest-appearance he makes just because I think it would be a pain to try to track them all down, but I reserve the right to sneak one in if I really want to.
Even shortened like this, it’s still going to be the single largest endeavor of the Year of Superman. And I’m kind of excited to get into it.
All of this is to say, buckle up. It’s time to get sparkly.
Comics:Final Night #0-4, Power of Shazam! #20, Superman Vol. 2 #117, Adventures of Superman #540, Supergirl Vol. 4 #3, Action Comics #727, Superboy Vol. 3 #33, Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 4 #86, Superman: The Man of Steel #62, Green Lantern Vol. 3 #81
Notes: It was a weird time in DC Comics. Hal Jordan had gone mad after the destruction of Coast City and took on the villain name Parallax following Zero Hour. Kyle Rayner was Green Lantern. Half of the Legion of Super-Heroes was stranded in the 20th century. And Lois Lane had ended her engagement to Clark Kent. Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, some idiot turns out the lights.
In The Final Night, by Karl Kesel and Stuart Immonen, an alien identifying herself as Dusk crashes her ship into Metropolis, where she is confronted by Superman, the Special Crimes Unit, and the time-tossed Legion of Super-Heroes. Dusk warns that a Sun Eater is approaching Earth, and that she has rushed ahead of it from world to world, trying to save people from its devastation, but thus far she has always failed. Superman quickly rallies the world’s heroes (and even some of the villains – they’ve got just as much to lose if the sun is eaten as the heroes do) and they take to space to try to stop the Sun Eater, but despite their best efforts, at the end of the first issue, Earth’s sun is consumed and the world is plunged into darkness.
Issue two begins in rather dramatic fashion, when Lex Luthor – who has been in hiding – appears to offer his aid to the Justice League and Earth’s heroes in saving the world, including a powerful splash page of Superman and his worst enemy shaking hands in the face of a common threat. Meanwhile, the worlds’ heroes are in overdrive trying to protect people both from the drastic climate crisis as well as from each other. It soon becomes apparent, however, that with the sun gone, Superman’s powers are declining rapidly. Amidst all of this a new hero appears: a young man calling himself Ferro.
In issue three things go from bad to worse. Turns out the sun isn’t actually GONE, but cut off inside the Sun Eater, where it’s trying to heal itself, but Luthor and Brainiac 5 realize that they have less than 24 hours left before the sun goes hyper-nova, wiping out everything in the solar system. Dusk makes plans to leave Earth before the end, as she has so many times before, but the Phantom Stranger takes her on a whirlwind Ebenezer Scrooge-like tour of the Earth, allowing her to witness our heroes’ refusal to give up, even in what is literally the darkest of hours. And as everyone begins making preparations for the bitter end, Guy Gardner is surprised by the appearance of a bright, beautiful green.
Final Night #4 brings us to the brink. Luthor and Brainiac 5 have constructed a series of force-field bombs they believe will contain the nova and destroy the Sun Eater, but their chosen pilot, Green Lantern, disappears. Superman insists on going himself, and takes a moment to write a farewell letter to Lois, from whom he was estranged at the time. As he’s writing, through, Ferro steals the ship with the intention of making the suicide run on his own. As they try to stop him, Parallax arrives and offers to save the sun. Despite the reservations of some of the heroes (especially Batman), he does so – at the cost of his own life. Hal Jordan, once and future Green Lantern, falls as he dispels the darkness within.
The end of the story doesn’t quite hit the same now as it did in 1996, knowing as we all do that Hal would eventually return and become Green Lantern again. But as a way to end the arc he had been on since the Death of Superman it was fitting. Also fitting was the reaction of the other heroes: Superman chooses to believe that Hal Jordan found redemption in the end for the atrocities of Parallax, whereas Batman believes a moment of good at the end can never erase the slate. It says quite a bit about each of these heroes, and the book seems to recognize that. At the end of the issue, as Clark and Bruce debate Hal’s sacrifice, Karl Kesel writes a caption that has always stuck with me: “They are the world’s finest heroes, and all the rest follow the lead of one or the other.”
It’s an interesting perspective on the philosophy of the DC Universe, isn’t it?
Let’s talk for a moment about the assorted spin-off chapters. As I said, I didn’t read all of the assorted spin-offs, only those featuring Superman or a member of the family, but that still added an additional nine books to the five-issue main series. I’ll hit the high points in order, as dictated by the reading list on the DC Infinite app:
Power of Shazam! #20: As the weather begins deteriorating with the loss of the sun, Superman and the Marvels go into first responder mode while the wizards Shazam and Ibis try to find a magical solution to the problem. Superman’s presence here is minor, but there are interesting notes. First, this happens right after the sun is lost, so Superman’s powers are only beginning to wane. Second, there’s an amusing moment where Captain Marvel promises Superman “I won’t be distracted like when I faced that Thunder God,” a funny and oblique reference to the events of DC Vs. Marvel.
Superman #117: This one is a cheat. Despite the banner on the cover, it’s not really part of the crossover. The issue wraps up an ongoing story with Superman and Professor Hamilton in the Fortress of Solitude and advances a few subplots, but it only ties in to the Final Night on the last few pages, when Superman receives word that something is approaching Earth. If you’re doing a readthrough of the story, this is utterly skippable.
Adventures of Superman #540: Perry White fights valiantly to put out an edition of the Daily Planet, reasoning that failure to do so would be like giving up and admitting defeat. Emil, still in the Fortress of Solitude, starts transmitting his own research to S.T.A.R. Labs in an attempt to help. And in Metropolis, as Superman’s powers continue to dwindle, Ferro gets a rather heartbreaking origin. The Perry stuff is great, and the Ferro stuff sets the character up nicely for his future with the Legion.
Supergirl #3: Peter David’s epic run was interrupted pretty early by this crossover appearance. Supergirl (this is the Matrix version, remember), has very recently found herself bound to a mortal girl named Linda Danvers, and in her new home of Leesburg, people are beginning to fall apart as they beg for the return of the sun. The issue is mostly spent developing subplots for the series in the context of the crossover, and skippable if you just want to read Final Night, but it reminds me as always just how good David’s run on this character was. I may not be able to fit it in before the end of the year (it’s a total of 80 issues, plus assorted crossovers, annuals, and specials), but so, so worth reading.
Action Comics #727: A somewhat quiet, subdued issue. As Metropolis is blanketed with snow, a Superman whose powers are nearly gone struggles to keep the peace. Meanwhile, a desperate man finds new hope. Inconsequential to the main story, but this is actually one of those times where I really feel a crossover event works well, telling an emotional self-contained tale against the backdrop of the greater events.
Superboy #33: In Superboy’s home of Hawaii, people are gathering at the base of an active volcano for warmth. Roxy Leech, his manager’s daughter and Superboy’s best friend, decides that with the world ending in 24 hours there’s nothing left to lose and confesses her love for him, which is kind of awkward, as his girlfriend Tana Moon is on TV reporting on the crisis just as the volcano erupts. Turns out it’s a monster with the inventive name of Lava causing trouble. The ending here is particularly bittersweet, and surprisingly effective.
Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 4 #86: Ferro proves his mettle (get it?) by offering to dive into the sun with an enormous bomb to get it going again. Luthor and Brainiac already have devised their plan to send Green Lantern instead, though, but when he mysteriously vanishes (whisked away by Parallax, as it happened), Superman steps up to do it instead…something that doesn’t sit too well with Ferro.
Superman: The Man of Steel #62: An interesting little side-trip. Almost de-powered, Superman tries to help a power plant stay functional to keep people from freezing in the dark. Meanwhile, Hamilton discovers that imminent destruction of the sun and sends word to the Daily Planet, while learning about the last days of Krypton and how eerily reminiscent they are of the current situation.
Green Lantern #81: An epilogue to the Final Night story featuring the funeral of Hal Jordan. Kyle Rayner is nervous, finding himself in the position of being asked to speak the death of a man he never met until he turned bad. Superman begins the ceremony, calling Hal a hero, before calling up other speakers who knew him best: Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Black Canary (speaking in the stead of the also dead-at-the-time Oliver Queen), the Flash, Carol Ferris, and finally Kyle. The heroes travel to the Coast City memorial, where Alan Scott turns the eternal flame green, and then Swamp Thing (making a rare non-Vertigo appearance for the time period) brings life back to the desolated landscape. In the end, even Batman finds it within himself to forgive.
A lovely story, although of course, it wouldn’t be the end at all. Nor is it the end for Superman because – as you may have noticed – I haven’t mentioned anything about his powers coming BACK yet. After the sun was restored, he – and everyone else – assumed his powers would go back to normal. But as we’re going to see soon, that isn’t what happened at all.
Thur., Aug 28
Comics: Superman Vol. 6 #29, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #10, Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special #1, Green Lantern Vol. 8 #25 (Superboy Guest Appearance)
Notes: Gonna take a quick pause from the burgeoning Electric storyline to read some of the new Superman comics that dropped this week. Superman #29 continues the “Legion of Darkseid” story as Superman plans a trip to the future to save the Legion of Super-Heroes with the most unexpected partner of all time.
It’s going to be hard to talk about this issue – I don’t really want to spoil anything, so can I just talk about vibes? As in, “I freaking love the vibes from this book”? Superman going into the future to save the Legion is exactly what I’ve been thirsting for. What’s more, writer Joshua Williamson is showing respect for EVERY incarnation of the Legion to date, weaving them all into this story (somehow) whilst still tying everything in to the ongoing “DC All In” saga. Again, without spoiling anything, if you haven’t read last year’s DC All-In Special or the Summer of Superman Specialthat came out in April, you’re missing out on the building blocks of this story. Superman even gets one of his trademark rousing speeches in which he espouses exactly what I’ve always felt is true: he may have been the inspiration for the Legion, but the Legion was every bit as much an inspiration to HIM.
Despite the darkness of this story, something about it is feeling…right. It rings true. And by the time the tale ends and the dust has settled, I feel like we just might finally have a true Legion again.
Justice League Unlimited #10 actually takes place before the “Darkseid’s Legion” storyline, and involves the League trying to protect the Doomsday Time Trapper, who feels the encroachment of Darkseid and his Legion. Meanwhile, the Trinity have a little heart-to-heart about what happened with Air Wave (the whole “tricked by Grodd” thing) and how they need to approach Justice League recruitment in the future. As always, Mark Waid proves just how well he knows these characters, placing Superman and Batman at odds with one another on this matter, with Wonder Woman as the mediator between the two. Clark also gets in a pretty sharp jab at Bruce, which I don’t think he gets to do quite often enough.
Also, Dan Mora drew both of these issues, and he’s phenomenal. Really, any time these days I read a comic book where I don’t feel the artwork is up to snuff, I wish that they could clone Mora and have him do all of it.
I also read the Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special, which came out a few weeks ago but, somehow, I’d missed. I’m glad I grabbed it, though, because it feels pretty significant to this whole All In/Darkseid story that’s going on. Someone is hunting down and killing time travelers, which puts roughly half the Justice League at risk – especially those time-lost heroes from the “We Are Yesterday” crossover. A mysterious time-traveler calling himself “Legend” partners up with Air Wave and the lost heroes to try to save them. The issue is both an epilogue to “We Are Yesterday” and a prologue to future stories (including “Darkseid’s Legion” and the upcoming “DC KO”), and although the Super-family participation is minimal, it definitely feels significant, and if you’re following the ongoing saga of the DCU these days, you should pick it up.
Fri., Aug. 29
Comic Books: Superman Vol. 2 #118, Superman: The Wedding Album #1
Notes: I only briefly mentioned it when I read Final Night the other day, but at this point Lois and Clark were separated, she having called off their engagement and taken an assignment in Asia to get away from him. It was a bit of a delaying tactic – Warner Bros wanted corporate synergy and refused to allow DC Comics to have the two of them get married until they were also married on the then-running Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman TV show. It was actually that edict that led to the Death of Superman in the first place, when they had to scrap their plans to marry them off in 1992. Here, four years later, after one delaying tactic after another, they finally got married on the show, and DC had to quickly follow suit.
In Superman #118 we pick up on her, chasing down a heroin ring in the far East. Back in Metropolis, meanwhile, S.T.A.R. Labs is working on the fact that, despite the sun coming back, Superman’s powers are still gone. After a seemingly-pointless reiteration of his origin, Wonder Woman and Lori Lemaris convince Superman to try to get Lois back. Lois, meanwhile, encounters a young man who tells her a lesson he learned as a child from an American stranger. It’s pretty clear where this is going from the very beginning, but Lois is still taken by surprise when she learns who her new friend’s old friend happens to be, and she makes a decision to return to Metropolis. Short? Abrupt? Hell yeah. But DC wasn’t given a lot of time to get things back in order – they needed to have the wedding of the century align with the TV show.
And this brings us to Superman: The Wedding Album, an event nearly 60 years in the making. This 88-page whopper told a hefty tale written by the five writers of the Superman comics of the era (Dan Jurgens, Karl Kesel, David Michelinie, Louise Simonson, and Roger Stern), with art by the regular teams and several other artists who had worked with Superman over the years, including John Byrne, Gil Kane, Paul Ryan, Tom Grummett, and a flashback sequence using pages by the great Curt Swan. It’s a nicely fitting tribute to the characters, kicking off with Lois being Lois – pretending to want to marry the head of the drug trafficking ring as a way to both bust him, at the same time, hitch a ride on his private jet back to Metropolis. She storms into the Daily Planet office wearing a ragged and torn wedding dress, then has it out with Clark. He fills her in on what’s been going on in her absence: he’s acting as Managing Editor of the Planet while Perry recovers from chemotherapy, oh yeah, and his powers are gone. (There’s a particularly funny line here: “Remember when the sun went out a while ago, Lois?” As if that’s the sort of thing a person could just forget.) The sequence ends with the entire Planet staff crowding around, trying to peek through the door, and seeing the two of them in an embrace, back where they belong.
The bulk of the special, after that, is all about wedding preparations: Lois’s bridal shower, the happy couple picking out their dress and tux, and house-hunting. And while it’s all fairly normal, non-superhero stuff, the writers manage to really infuse it with character. Lois’s mom is desperate to control things while her father makes no effort to disguise his distaste at his daughter’s choice of partner. Clark’s parents, meanwhile, do their best to play mediator. A fight breaks out at the Ace O’Clubs during the bachelor party, and Clark gets a visit from a friend to tell him that Metropolis will be taken care of during his honeymoon. Oh yeah – and the apartment that Lois fell in love with but couldn’t get is now theirs, courtesy of the building’s owner, one Bruce Wayne.
I’m really glad that they avoided the typical superhero wedding episode, where the ceremony is disrupted by a villain causing havoc or some natural disaster. The closest thing we get is Mr. Mxyzptlk popping in right before the blessed occasion to tell Clark he’s looking forward to screwing around with Mr. and Mrs. Kent very soon. Then it all closes off with a nice, simple, uneventful wedding that is heartfelt, sincere, and lavishly illustrated (with several members of the creative team in attendance).
It’s a sweet issue, one that finally puts the will they/won’t they of six decades to rest and allows us to move on to something new.
Turns out they were saving the chaos for the honeymoon.
Sat., Aug. 30
Podcast: Back to the Bins Episode #685: Superman S.C.O.R.E. III
Notes: It’s finally here! Regular blog readers may recall a while back when I joined Paul Spataro to record an episode of his Back to the Bins podcast, each of us discussing comics about the relationship between Superman and Wonder Woman. The episode has finally dropped, so make sure you check it out. It’s available on the Two True Freaks Podcast Network page, or you can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you download your podcasts. Join us for a chat about this unique super-couple.
Comics: Taste of Justice #6, Adventures of Superman #541, Action Comics #728, Superman: The Man of Steel #63
Notes: A quick peek at Taste of Justice #6 – a short but fun story in which Martha Kent is injured (mildly – this series seems to specialize in minor mishaps most of the time), leaving Clark and Jonathan to try their hand at making her famous rhubarb pie. Interestingly, whereas most chapters of this online serial comic have led up to a triumphant dish being prepared, this one takes a different tack – the resultant pie isn’t up to Martha’s usual standards, a fact which she clearly finds somewhat amusing. I didn’t see that coming.
That done, it’s a dive back to 1996, where we’re going to read the comics that make up Lois and Clark’s honeymoon. After a surprisingly low-key and uneventful wedding, their trip to Hawaii makes up for it. Adventures of Superman #541 picks up at the wedding reception, after which the happy couple whisks off to the island paradise, where their celebrations are interrupted by an explosion. With Superman still powerless, fortunately, they happen to be on Superboy’s home turf. The explosion was caused by a creature that claims to be an island spirit called a Menehune, and the happy couple wind up meeting up with Superboy and his own reporter girlfriend, Tana Moon. The story is okay – more like we’re seeing a “Lower Decks” style peek in an issue of Superboy really. But the side quest is derailed on the last page, when Clark is shot and kidnapped by men in a speedboat. Of course, these guys don’t seem to realize that they’ve just made the biggest mistake of their lives: they’ve pissed off Lois Lane.
Action Comics #728 picks up with Clark waking up in the custody of the brother of the very drug trafficker that Lois captured in the Wedding Album. Apparently Rajiv, as his name goes, holds something of a familial grudge. I have to admit, I found this issue kind of underwhelming. Clark spends most of the issue engrossed in a flashback to another time when his powers weren’t of any use, facing a terrorist armed with a chunk of Kryptonite. The flashback really adds nothing to the story, save for eventually reminding Clark that he has studied techniques to make it appear as though his heart has stopped beating – techniques that work just as well if he has powers or not. He uses his little trick to attempt an escape, only to learn that any such effort will be futile, as he’s being held captive on a submarine at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Good reveal, but it leaves us with about two pages of plot progression for the whole issue.
Superman: The Man of Steel #63 picks up with Clark being brought to a private island belonging to Rajiv as Lois begins the task of doing what she does best: following leads. In this case, she’s trying to track down her missing husband, which takes her all of four pages before she begins a guerilla assault on Rajiv’s compound. (And they call Batman the world’s greatest detective.) As she attempts her rescue, Clark learns that Rajiv isn’t tracking her out of petty revenge: when she bested his brother, Lois made off with a knife that, unbeknownst to her, has hidden in its hilt computer codes capable of hacking satellite technology and bringing down aircraft at will. As Clark stalls for time, trying to convince Rajiv that Lois found and sold the codes, she breaks in and saves the day.
The honeymoon arc as a whole is okay. You all should know by now how much I love a story where Lois has a chance to kick some ass, and she most certainly does that in the Man of Steel issue. For all the times Clark has saved her over the years, it’s really great to see how capable she is when the need arises. My beef really comes with how quick the whole thing is, especially the sequence where Lois tracks down Rajiv’s island. It just comes far too easily, even for someone as smart and capable as Lois. Considering that she only appeared on one page of Action #728, that issue feels even more superfluous than it does at first blush. It would have been far more satisfying, in my opinion, to truncate the flashback sequence in that issue and devote those pages to showing Lois hunting down Clark. It would make the Action issue feel far more relevant and the Man of Steel issue feel less rushed. It’s all about the pacing, people.
Still, kudos to Lois and Clark for having a honeymoon they could never forget. But when their vacation to paradise ends, it’s going to be time to get down to the real issue at hand: finding a way to restore Superman’s missing powers.
Sun., Aug. 31
Comic Books: Superman Vol. 2 #119, Adventures of Superman #542, Action Comics #729, Superman: The Man of Steel #64
Notes: With the honeymoon over, it’s time to figure out what’s up with Clark’s powers. In Superman #119, Superman and the time-tossed Legion of Super-Heroes both arrive at LexCorp looking for help with their respective predicaments. They take a ship to the same orbital platform we saw back in the Superman/Aliens crossover (a rare instance of such a crossover being addressed as canon, helped no doubt by the fact that Dan Jurgens wrote both of them) and Brainiac 5 attempts to draw solar energy to jumpstart Clark’s powers…an effort met with failure. And in the midst of this Lex gets some surprising news: he’s going to be a daddy.
In Adventures #542, Superman heads to Project Cadmus for help but, again, finds himself stonewalled. Instead, he simply winds up on a brief psychedelic adventure with some of Jack Kirby’s stranger creations, the Hairies, before borrowing Guardian’s Whiz Wagon. He flies it down to Action Comics #729, where – en route to his Fortress in the Antarctic – he winds up at an energy research station where the crew has unwittingly unleashed a strange entity from the center of the Earth. Superman manages to best the creature even without his powers (paralleled with a subplot about Perry White going through chemotherapy) before finally making it to the Fortress where Emil Hamilton has been all this time. But even all his Kryptonian tech doesn’t restore his powers before Mr. Miracle and Big Barda pop in via Boom Tube, saying that the fate of the universe depends on Superman’s powers.
Finally, “Power Struggle” concludes in Man of Steel #64. The New Gods tell Superman that their world of New Genesis has somehow been destroyed, and the only hope of finding the truth is to retrieve the datacore in Metron’s suit…a datacore that can only be accessed by melting the suit in the heat of the sun itself. Metron assures Superman that their dive into the sun will recharge his powers quickly enough to pull them both out of the star before they’re killed…and miraculously, it works. Superman’s powers are restored, Metron is saved, and the data is retrieved. It all seems just so…neat and tidy. TOO neat and tidy, if you catch my drift.
Getting his powers back, as it would turn out, was just the beginning.
Bonus: Comics in the wild!
Notes: Some time ago, DC announced that they were going to start selling comics at Dollar Tree locations. The comics would all be reprints, of course: most of them either the first issue in a story that is available in graphic novel form or a standalone comic, including many aimed at kids. The program expanded to reach various convenience stores, grocery stores, and other outlets. But today was the first time I ever actually saw any in the wild. After my son’s birthday party, we stopped for gas and I saw the rack inside the station. I had to go through it, fascinated by some of the choices for their reprint specials. The first appearance of the modern Supergirl from Superman/Batman is in the mix, as well as at least two current issues of Mark Waid’s World’s Finest series (each the beginning of a storyline, of course), and the first issue of Christopher Priest’s Superman: Lost. They weren’t ALL Superman comics, of course – there was the expected assortment of Batman comics, Harley Quinn comics, and Scooby-Doo comics, some of them all at the same time – but the very existence of this rack out there, outside of comic book stores where they can be seen by anybody…it was heartwarming to me.
Of course I had to get a couple. I picked up the reprint of John Byrne’s Superman #1 from 1987, as well as the reprint of the first issue of Batman Adventures Vol. 2. Like the Compact Comics, I feel like it’s important we support these things, friends.
Mon., Sept. 1
Comics: Superman Vol. 2#120,Adventures of Superman #543, Action Comics #730, Superman: The Man of Steel #65, Superman Vol. 2 #121,Adventures of Superman #544, Action Comics #731, Superman: The Man of Steel #66, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #6, Gotham City Sirens: Unfit For Orbit #5 (Power Girl guest appearance)
Notes: There was a bit of a lull in the Superman comics after he got his powers back but before they transformed. Let’s see what we can get through today. In Superman #120, Lex Luthor has a dream about his oncoming child idolizing Superman, a dream that chills him to the bone and opens up an issue of different characters talking about what they would do with Superman’s powers: Lex, Emil Hamilton, Jimmy Olsen, Cat Grant, Perry White, and a random kid who gets locked out of his house and needs Superman’s help. It’s a cute little breather of an issue, which was probably due at this point, although it had been entirely too long since we saw Lois. She hadn’t had a significant appearance since the honeymoon ended, and it’s time to really get into the adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Superman. There is one significant piece of foreshadowing, though: when Emil studies Superman to make sure that his powers are, indeed, back to normal, the scanner he’s using shorts out due to an unexpected electrical surge.
In the immortal words of C+C Music Factory, “Things That Make You Go Hmmmm…”
Adventures of Superman #543 shows us the newlyweds finally settling into their new apartment and Superman checking into a couple of escaped villains. Turns out the villains in question are being recruited for a new version of the good ol’ Superman Revenge Squad. A strange figure watching from the shadows has pulled together Anomaly, Barrage, Misa, Riot, and most troublingly, Maxima. When DC released this year’s Superman Treasury Edition I mentioned that I was disappointed to see Maxima reverting to her old villainous ways. I guess I’d forgotten that this wasn’t the first time she’d suffered from a bout of recidivism. The Squad makes its attack in Action Comics #730, but not before one of the very-frequent scenes of Superman flying over Metropolis pondering recent events to bring any casual readers up to speed. I never noticed until this read-through just how frequently that happened in the Triangle Era. I suppose they clung to the idea that any comic book could be somebody’s first, and they were doing their best to make sure that everyone knew what was going on. Admirable – but these days I’m very curious as to whether that old adage still bears any truth at all. Anyway, the fight goes poorly – the five villains, used to working on their own, wind up stumbling over each other and stabbing each other in the back, but by the last panel they manage to have Superman down, his head covered with a slime that Misa is using the block his powers. Geez, Misa, he JUST got them back.
Man of Steel #65 wraps the story up as the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit arrives on the scene and joins the fight. For a full-issue fight scene, it’s not bad. It’s really nice to see the SCU used to the top of their intelligence, being legitimately effective in a fight against superpowered villains instead of just coming across as the useless cops that so often populate superhero comics. As the Revenge Squad is rounded up, their mysterious benefactor watches and plans his next move. I’ll tell you what I REALLY like here – it’s been so long since I read these issues that I’ve completely forgotten who the mysterious bad guy is that pulled the Revenge Squad together. I don’t know when the reveal is going to come, but I hope it lands.
Superman #121 has writer Dan Jurgens once again pick up penciling duties (a rarity for this era) for a “very special issue” about Clark Kent befriending a ten-year-old girl who witnessed a gang shooting. When Superman tries to eliminate the guns from her housing project, thinking it will make it safe for her…well, let’s just say I’m kind of surprised that Jurgens would have written Superman as being so naive.
Adventures #544 starts off with what I’m comfortable calling a controversial moment: Clark Kent is gunned down in the middle of a busy streetcorner. If that’s not confusing enough, it gets weirder when Lois arrives on the scene at the same time as…another Clark. Turns out the doppelganger is tied into the return of Intergang, which no doubt is going to cause trouble later on. Action #731 features another return: Lois and Clark are trying to enjoy an evening at home together when word comes of an attack by an old foe of his Cauldron – but he’s different than before. While Clark holds him off, Lois helps unravel the mystery of who is controlling the cyborg villain this time.
Finally (for today) let’s look at Superman: The Man of Steel #66. Remember Rajiv, the creep who messed up Lois and Clark’s honeymoon trying to get his hands on codes that would allow him to take over a satellite defense network? Well, seems like he got the codes, because in this issue he starts raining fire all over the world, demanding a billion-dollar ransom to stop. The story cuts between Superman taking to space to stop him and scenes on the ground where various people, including Bibbo, Jimmy Olsen, and Perry White’s family, try to help in their own way. It’s an interesting little experiment by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove, a story ostensibly about how the S-shield itself stands for something to people and the power it has even on its own. It would be another decade before the concept of the shield being the Kryptonian word for “Hope” came about, but this has some of that same feel to it, and I like it on that level.
It’s odd, in retrospect, how these stories feel so disconnected from what’s coming. Except for the electric spark in Superman #120, there’s really been no buildup to the power switch. The news had already come out that the story was coming, of course, people knew that Superman was about to get a new costume and new power set, but they didn’t expend a lot of shoe leather on the concept for the first two months after the wedding storyline ended.
That’ll change very soon.
Tues., Sept. 2
Comic Books: Superman Vol. 2 #122, Adventures of Superman #545, Action Comics #732, Superman: The Man of Steel #67, Superman Vol. 2 #123
Notes: The final month before the big switch begins in Superman #122. At this time, DC was still under the edict that Kal-El was to be the ONLY Kryptonian who survived the destruction of Krypton. That said, they had found ways around that with alternatives to the Kryptonian characters and concepts of the past: the Matrix Supergirl, an Earth dog Bibbo named “Krypto,” and most recently, a new version of the city of Kandor. In this continuity, Kandor was still a miniaturized city in a bottle that Superman was keeping safe in the Fortress of Solitude, but rather than a Kryptonian city, it was a town made of aliens from various worlds, all collected by an entity named Tolos before Superman saved them. In this issue, his powers start to go wild, causing electrical devices to explode and his body to phase in and out. Superman takes Lois to the Fortress to try to get to the bottom of it, wondering if the dimensional phase that had brought him to Kandor could be responsible, but inadvertently winds up releasing a blue-skinned, horned alien called Ceritak. In Adventures #545, things just get worse as Superman’s powers go out of control. He sparks uncontrollably, falling through walls and losing the ability to fly, all of which contribute to a power outage that goes across the city and frees the Atomic Skull from prison. The Skull, suffering from the delusion that he was the hero of an old movie serial and that Superman and everyone else were characters in the serial, winds up in battle against Superman, seeming to atomize him.
Action #732 continues the battle because, obviously, Superman isn’t really dead. His energy was somehow dissipated by the skull, and he finds himself reconstituting at that Antarctic energy research station he stopped by when he was powerless a few issues back. Lois plays along with the Skull’s delusion as a delaying tactic and, making his way back to Metropolis, Superman starts to learn some of the capabilities of his new powers. He isn’t strong anymore and can’t fly, but he can bound around like energy, control magnetic waves, and access computer systems by touch. Eventually, he manages to bring the Skull down, but he has no idea what’s happening to him.
Superman: The Man of Steel #67 is next, although the title has become highly inaccurate at this point. (This is a good opportunity to talk about how, were this story to be told today, it would reach this point and then DC would likely cancel all four series and re-start them with new first issues, including changing the title of this one. Man of Energy doesn’t really have the same ring, though. I don’t know what they’d call it.) As news of Superman’s mutating powers starts to leak out, Lois clashes with the Planet’s new sensationalist circulation manager over their coverage. Meanwhile, Ceritak has made his way to Metropolis, where he’s inadvertently sewing some chaos. In the midst of the battle between the two Superman’s powers go absolutely haywire, causing a citywide blackout.
A quick aside before I move on to the main event: Jon Bogdanove. He’s one of my favorite Superman artists, mostly because his style has a sort of classic, old-fashioned sensibility that meshes perfectly with Superman. He gives us a huge, barrel-chested, squared-jawed hero that not only fits, but practically DEFINES the classic Superman mold. As Superman shifts from his traditional status quo to the electrical version, you’d think it would clash with his style…but somehow it doesn’t. Along with fine art and color work by Denis Janke and Digital Chameleon, he makes a creature of pure energy still invoke the core of Superman. That, along with several well-placed and highly amusing visual gags in this issue, call to mind some of his best work on Marvel’s Power Pack. I don’t think Bogs gets enough credit in general, and I wanted to call out this issue in particular as being a high point.
Finally, after a week of reading, we come to the book that I started this journey for: Superman #123. As Superman fights with the confused Ceritak (who Bibbo accidentally renames “Scorn”), he winds up in Hamilton’s lab, unable to control his new energy-body. Hamilton is approached by Erica del Portenza, wife (at the time) of Lex Luthor, who has an experimental cyber-woven polymer that she believes may be of assistance. Loath as they are to accept help from Luthor, Hamilton sees no choice and uses the fabric to create a containment suit. In his new duds, Superman finds that he can control his power while in energy-form as well as shift back to a fully human (and powerless) Clark Kent. As he says on the last page, “there’s a new Superman in town.”
This is such a wild story so far. After a rather slow buildup, we’ve got a Superman now with a completely different power set and costume, and while I don’t think I believed even then that this change was intended to be permanent, DC did their best to pretend this new status quo was going to last. So looking ahead to reading more of this, I’m expecting to see the sort of subplots and side-stories that defined the Triangle Era while, at the same time, continuing the story of the electro-Superman, leading up to the era of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue.
And despite feeling a bit of scorn (no pun intended) for this storyline for a very long time now, I find myself kind of looking forward to it.
I spent last week dipping my toes into the DC Vs. Marvel crossover, as well as the first wave of Amalgam Comics titles. But I’m not done yet: I’ve still got over half the huge Amalgam Age Omnibus to get through, including two sequel miniseries and the second wave of Amalgam Comics. Not only that, but after a few weeks where the beginning of the school year has kept me busy, I finally get a chance to sit down and catch up on more recent Superman comics. Oh yeah – and Peacemaker season two drops this week, and while I don’t expect to see Superman to show up, James Gunn has promised that the story of this season follow on from the film, so there’s a pretty good chance I’ll have some thoughts to share about that. Let’s begin, shall we?
I had the same look on my face as Access when I read Civil War II.
Notes: I’m going to say something that may be controversial here. I actually like the follow-up miniseries, like DC/Marvel: All-Access, better than the DC Vs. Marvel event itself. DC Vs. Marvel was a fun experiment, but the plot was really just a flimsy excuse to show off fights between the characters and frame the Amalgam specials. All-Access, on the other hand, has an actual STORY to it, and I appreciate that. Written by Ron Marz with art by Butch Guice, whom you may remember passed away earlier this year, All-Access starts out with Axel Asher, the man who straddles the line between the Marvel and DC Universes as Access. A psychic flash warns him that Venom has somehow hopped universes, and if anyone from either universe stays in the other one for too long it could cause the worlds to fuse into the Amalgam Universe again, so the cosmic hall monitor has to get to work. He comes across Venom in Metropolis, where he’s throwing down with Superman, and so Access decides to get some backup by calling in someone who knows what Venom’s deal is: Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man.
This is all in the first issue of the miniseries, by the way, which almost works very well as a standalone Superman/Spider-Man team-up. There’s no gratuitous hero-on-hero fighting here, just two good men teaming up to take down one bad one, and Marz plays them both perfectly. Re-reading this issue is where I started to realize that this is kind of what I had hoped DC Vs. Marvel would have been all along.
Superman doesn’t show up again until the last page of issue #3, but in the meantime, Jubilee convinces Access to take her back to the DC Universe because when she and Robin were supposed to be fighting each other, they kind of fell in love. (To this day, it’s probably the best relationship Tim Drake has ever had.) Their reunion is interrupted by an encounter with Two-Face, then again when the Scorpion appears, once again mysteriously having been pulled from the other universe. Access recruits Batman to help him solve the mystery of the “crossovers,” and Batman suggests that they track down the man who, in the combined universe, was supposed to be its defender: Dr. Stephen Strange. Batman approaches Strange, suspecting that he’s causing the crossovers somehow, and Jubilee calls in the X-Men to hold him off. Issue three ends with Access once again calling in the cavalry, bringing in the rest of the Justice League.
Issue four is X-Men vs. JLA, at least at first. Things change when Access discovers that Dr. Strangefate has been hiding in Strange’s subconscious ever since the merger and used him to cause the crossovers in an attempt to restore the Amalgam Universe. He fuses Wonder Woman and Storm once again into their Amalgam counterpart, Amazon, but when he realizes he doesn’t have the right parts to put together anyone else, he starts creating NEW Amalgams: Superman and Bishop! Iceman and Aquaman! Jean Grey and the Martian Manhunter! Things get wild!
The story ends with a nice little promise, the Amalgam Universe restored as a sort of pocket universe where Strangefate is locked away, and the Marvel and DC Universes get to remain separate. But this miniseries was so much fun, seeing the characters actually interact in ways that didn’t go straight to the fisticuffs. The Robin/Jubilee stuff in particular was fantastic, and I loved seeing Superman and Spider-Man working together again.
It’ll never happen, but I’d love to see a longer Access series, say a 12-issue event in which he’s trying to solve some sort of mystery that encompasses both worlds. And I’d love if, during this year, he appears not only in his own series, but in the ongoing comics of both companies, bringing surprise guest stars with him. But seeing as how the original plan was for DC Vs. Marvel to end with She-Hulk and Martian Manhunter swapping universes for a year until that plan was nixed by the lawyers, it’s doubtful that anything like that could happen. It’s not like the world has gotten LESS litigious since 1996, after all.
Thur., Aug 21
Comic Books: Super-Soldier: Man of War #1
The amalgamated Snyder Brothers fans get SO angry that they gave Super-Soldier his trunks back.
Notes: A year after DC Vs. Marvel, a second wave of 12 Amalgam one-shots were released, six of them continuing adventures of the characters from the first, six of them with all-new Amalgamations. What’s interesting is that even the books that carried over didn’t continue the STORIES from the original. Some of them were unrelated stories, some made brief reference to the previous, and some went REALLY wild, like Dark Claw Adventures giving us an adventure of the Amalgamated Batman/Wolverine combo in a Batman: The Animated Series style. For our first visit with the Super family, Super-Soldier: Man of War dipped back in time to give us an adventure of the character from World War II. Mark Waid and Dave Gibbons reunite for this story, which kicks off with Super-Soldier at a meeting of the All-Star Winners Squadron. But he’s only there long enough for us to notice some new Amalagams (such as the Human Torch/Green Lantern mashup Human Lantern) before it’s off to join Jimmy Olsen for a special undercover Daily Planet assignment overseas.
On the ship to Europe, Clark and Jimmy make the acquaintance of Sgt. Rock and the Howling Commandos, and Clark is later chagrined to find that Winston Churchill has fallen for the do-gooder act of his arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor, husband of Lois Lane. In a way, Luthor’s involvement actually makes this a prequel to the previous story, as the issue ends with him unveiling the plans for the Ultra-Metallo that Super-Soldier fought the first time we read one of his adventures. Kinda makes you wonder why it took Luthor 50 years to get it together.
As before, Waid and Gibbons do a great job lacing together the Superman and Captain America characters, this time bringing in the World War II-era heroes of Easy Company and the Howlers as well. Peggy Carter, for instance, shows up here as a member of the French Resistance (although I couldn’t figure out which member of Easy Company she was supposed to be mashed up with). The appearance of Major Zemo and his War Wheel pushes this over the top – silly and gleeful. These Amalgam books, when done well, are just an enormous amount of fun. Is it too much to hope that the new DC/Marvel crossover books that are about to come out will open the door for the return of this mixed-up universe?
Fri., Aug 22
No, you give YOUR dog an invisible bone!
Last night was the premiere of Peacemaker season 2. I thought that meant I would be able to watch it when I got home from work, but apparently, it dropped at 8 p.m. EST, by which time my sports fanatic son was engrossed in a preseason game between two teams that nobody in our house has any personal connection to. But that was okay, I figured that I would just watch it the next day. I guess that was pretty stupid of me, though, to assume that I could wait a whole 20 hours and not have anything spoiled for me. Before the game was even over, though, posts were appearing on social media that spoiled something that really pissed me off. You see, season one was made BEFORE James Gunn was given the job of revamping the DCU, and was intended as part of the previous iteration of the DC Extended Universe. With the new DCU that began in Creature Commandos and continued into Superman, though, there were questions as to which parts of the season were still canon. Gunn has been exploring that in the official podcast for the show, but there was a moment in the finale that they were going to have to work a little bit to reconcile.
Naturally, looking at Facebook last night, I was spammed with different pages that I don’t even follow sharing a screenshot that ruined a pretty amusing moment. How dare I assume that people wouldn’t make it into a headline? It had been an entire 180 minutes since the show dropped! What are they, made of stone?
Here’s the rule: If you’re posting spoilers about a show on the day it airs, you’re an asshole. That goes for individuals as well as all of those pages that I have since blocked.
By the time you read this it will have been nearly a week since that episode, and I STILL wouldn’t talk about it without giving you a warning. So in the next paragraph I’m going to spoil a few things about the end of Peacemaker season one and the beginning of season two. If you haven’t watched them and want to remain pure, skip ahead to Saturday.
TV Show: Peacemaker Season 2, Episode 1: “The Ties that Grind.”
Season one of Peacemaker ended with the titular hero and his team, the 11th Street Kids, saving the world from an invasion of alien butterflies. It’s more impressive than it sounds. But in the battle, Emelia Harcourt was nearly killed. Towards the end of the episode, Peacemaker is carrying her to safety when, lo and behold, the Justice League appeared – too late to do any good. The League, in this case, included silhouettes of Superman and Wonder Woman, as well as Jason Momoa as Aquaman and Ezra Miller as the Flash. It was a funny scene, but as that Justice League doesn’t exist, that scene clearly was no longer canon.
Gunn promised to explain it away and he did at the very beginning of the episode, in the “Previously on…” montage, where the League was replaced by the Justice GANG from the movie. The silhouettes of Superman, Mr. Terrific, and Supergirl all appeared, as well as a quick and the cameos have been replaced by Isabela Merced’s Hawkgirl and Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner. It was a funny bit. But I bet it would have been funnier if not for the asshats on the internet posting it the night before I got to watch it.
Fillion and Merced appear later in the episode as well, alongside Sean Gunn as Maxwell Lord allowing Peacemaker to audition for the Justice Gang. Watching the episode, it’s clear why DC put out the digital version of Superman last week – there are a lot of things in this show that build directly on that movie, although it’s still Peacemaker’s story of course. Rick Flagg shows up, worried about another dimensional rift like the “Luthor Incident” that happened this summer. Besides the connections to Superman, the show also starts trickling in new characters, like a surprising cameo by White Rabbit and references to the likes of the Ultra-Humanite and Captain Triumph. Rick Flagg is even working with Sasha Bordeaux, a supporting character from Greg Rucka’s Batman comics. Gunn seems to be using this season of Peacemaker to lay in chunks of the history of the DCU that Superman only hinted at, and I’m really quite excited by that.
Look, it’s not a HUGE Superman link, and it’s DEFINITELY not a show I’m gonna watch with my seven-year-old like the movie, but this show is starting to look like it’s going to be part of the fundamental fabric of the new DCU, and that would make it worth watching even if it WEREN’T really good.
Comics:Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #5
Notes: The beginning of a new school year traditionally keeps me busy, and today was the first time I’ve made it in to pick up my new comics in a few weeks. As such, I’ve got a hefty nine Superman or Superman-related comics sitting in my stack, waiting to read and discuss, including the much-anticipated Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #1. This Black Label series is by W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo, the creative team behind Image Comics’ incredible existential horror series Ice Cream Man. That’s the only thing of theirs that I’ve read before, however, and while I’m a big fan, I’ve been curious ever since this was announced as to just how their sensibilities would translate over to the Man of Steel.
As it turns out, they translate wonderfully.
In this story, Superman discovers four new strains of Kryptonite beyond the usual colors we’re aware of, and recruits Batman to help him experiment with them and find out what they do. The first, a Purple K, distorts Superman’s perception of time – something that is especially concerning as Lex Luthor chooses just that minute to unleash Solomon Grundy in Metropolis.
It would be fair for someone to question whether a creative team best known for a cosmic mind-tripping horror comic would be an appropriate choice for a Superman story, but Prince and Morazzo acquit themselves right away. The Kryptonite Spectrum isn’t a horror story by any stretch, but when Superman’s concept of linear time is skewed, we get a story that drifts into the kind of psychological twists that make Ice Cream Man so compelling while skipping the actual terror. Prince uses this conceit to play with the reader’s concept of time as well, and the script even twists Superman’s interactions with his friends, with a few scenes with Lois Lane dipping into the very real anxieties that Ice Cream Man so frequently mines for pure horror. Here, though, rather than terror, Prince uses them for character drama, displaying things about the relationships between the characters that feel very true, very human. This may not have the “Elseworlds” label, but the story clearly isn’t set in the mainstream DC Universe, with Superman and Lois’s relationship framed in a way that doesn’t fit that world, but feels quite appropriate for the story that Prince and Morazzo are telling. This is a great first issue of a very different kind of Superman story, and I enjoyed it heartily.
Remember this the next time one of you wants to give me grief for putting up my Halloween decorations in September.
Dan Slott and Rafael Albuquerque are back with Superman Unlimited #4. With the Daily Planet expanding to a global operation, Jimmy Olsen has been tasked with helping set up their Gotham City office. While he’s in town, he and his ape city sidekick Tee-Nah run across Man-Bat and wind up summoning Superman for help. What they don’t know, though, is that this is a new Man-Bat, one who can transmit its curse via a bite…and a chance encounter with all the Kryptonite on Earth these days has left Superman just vulnerable enough to get nipped. Soon it’s Robin and the Birds of Prey vs. Superman-Bat!
This book is really turning out to be just what I wanted. There’s an ongoing storyline – that of the Kryptonite meteor that fell to Earth and the consequences of that – however, each issue feels like it’s telling a complete and self-contained story. The A-plot, the “Superman-Bat” thing, is done in one and it’s over. The background story of the Kryptonite and the expanded operations of the Planet continue. Although it’s a single monthly comic, in a lot of ways it feels like the structure of the glorious “Triangle Era” of the Superman comics, and I love it for that. Slott also works in some nice tidbits regarding Superman’s interaction with the Batman family, which – coming right on the heels of having read The Kryptonite Spectrum #1 – makes it feel as if DC is using the month of August to make sure everyone remembers that Superman and Batman are best buds. Which, of course, I approve of wholeheartedly.
This is what happens when you don’t use fluoride.
Supergirl #4 continues Sophie Campbell’s new(ish) take on the Woman of Tomorrow. Having defeated her doppelganger Lesla-Lar last issue, this issue Supergirl takes her back to Kandor where she does something her cousin would most certainly approve of wholeheartedly: she goes to bat for her. Supergirl argues that Lesla has the drive to become a real hero, if only given the proper guidance, and volunteers to take that task upon herself. That’s the very beginning of the issue – afterwards we see Lesla make earnest attempts to prove her worth, leading up to a strange but entertaining encounter at a Goth club where she makes a mistake in judgment that winds up having the Supergirl squad face the forces of Decay.
I just adore Campbell’s take on Supergirl. This issue in particular feels so true to the character – she comes off as someone who has demons in her past but, having largely conquered them, is sworn to help other people do the same. And following Lesla in this issue just magnifies that fact, demonstrating the effect that just being in proximity of someone like Supergirl can have on a soul that’s not truly evil, but merely lost. It’s such a good look for her and for the entire Superman family, and Campbell is nailing it in a delightful way. I also appreciate how Campbell is mining Supergirl’s past – the “new” villain, Decay, is a new version of an obscure character from Supergirl’s ‘80s series who, to the best of my knowledge, hasn’t reappeared since then. She knows this character’s history and she’s using it to her best advantage, which makes for a really rewarding read.
Sun., Aug. 24
Comics: Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #3, Action Comics #1089, Justice League Red #1
Notes: After a busy Sunday of groceries, shoe shopping, making my weekly LitReel and, of course, a required stop at Spirit Halloween, it’s nearly 7 pm before I have a chance to sit down and read anything. Fortunately, I’ve still got six more new Superman-related books to dig into. Let’s see how many I get to this evening.
Beware the fetch.
Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #3 is first. Wandering alone after abandoning Lex Luthor, Krypto is stumbling through the woods when he comes across a little girl who’s as lost as he is. Roaming through the freezing woods, Krypto takes it upon himself to take care of the child, and in the process, proves just what a good boy he really is.
The first two issues of this miniseries blew me away. This one… DAMN it, Ryan North. Three issues in a row – THREE ISSUES IN A ROW – and you’ve got me in tears reading about KRYPTO THE SUPERDOG.
Honestly, if you’re not reading this comic book I don’t know what even is wrong with you.
When a teenager loses one of his contact lenses.
Action Comics #1089 may not have me sobbing over the adventures of a dog, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. Last issue, young Clark Kent was surprised when his history teacher showed up on his doorstep and revealed that he knew Clark was Superboy. This issue, Mr. Blake has a reveal of his own and, frankly, I’m kind of irritated with myself for not picking up on who he was in the first place. Mark Waid is being Mark Waid here, tapping on his seemingly infinite awareness of the DC Universe to bring back a character who hasn’t been seen in a while and recontextualizing him in the world of Superboy’s Smallville. I can’t get much more specific without spoiling anything here, and in case you haven’t read the issue yet, I don’t want to do that But Waid is doing really interesting stuff in this issue.
My one complaint is actually the cover by Ryan Sook. It’s a great piece of art – evocative and certainly sure to get a reader’s attention…only it doesn’t seem to actually fit anything in the story. I hate when comic book covers are dull, generic pin-ups, but it may be even worse when the cover is of a scene that doesn’t even appear in the book.
Wait, some of these costumes need more red.
The last book I squeeze in before I’m alerted by my child that he’s hungry and he has expectations of something called “dinner” is the first issue of the latest DC All-In era Justice League spinoff, Justice League Red. Ever since the Justice League re-formed, Red Tornado has been serving as the computer intelligence running the operations for the team. This issue, Power Girl and Green Lantern Simon Baz get a red alert on their League ID cards that summon them to a satellite Red Tornado built without the knowledge of the rest of the League. His computer mind has been running millions of simulations and has determined that the new League is somehow going to lead to a catastrophe on Earth, and he needs a few trusted members to handle secret tasks the rest of the League cannot learn about in order to stop it.
Writer Saladin Ahmed is taking an interesting path in this book. The story leads us to believe that Red Tornado is unstable, and that all of these predictions and algorithms he’s run are unreliable. Even as Power Girl and Simon carry out their first mission, they’re skeptical as to whether they’re doing the right thing and whether they can trust their robot teammate. But to play that hand so early, to make it seem from the very beginning that Red Tornado may be going off the rails…it feels kind of like a feint to me. I’m willing to bet that we’re going to find out along the way that things are even worse than believing Red Tornado is wrong: we’re going to find out that somehow, he’s RIGHT. Interesting set-up, and I look forward to seeing where this goes.
Mon. Aug. 25
Comics: Absolute Superman #10, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #42, Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 #3
Confirmed: I still can’t see John Cena.
Notes: Time to wrap up my catch-up weekend (plus one day) with the final three Superman-related comics from my visit to the comic shop. I’m kicking it off with Absolute Superman #10. The battle continues between the Omega Men and Ra’s Al Ghul’s Peacemakers, with Peacemaker Smith on the front line in the hunt for Kal-El. With a Kryptonite bullet in Smith’s gun, Kal-El is faced with a decision, and a reflection onto a hard choice his father once made brings about a surprising result.
The conceit of the Absolute comics is that this is an entire universe tainted by Darkseid, where hope is the eternal underdog and the sort of values that characterize the traditional DC heroes are absent. This issue, Kal-El is faced with the kind of choice that Superman inevitably comes down to at some point in his career, and it’s a testament to Jason Aaron’s writing that, right up until the choice is made, I’m not entirely certain which way I think he’s going to go.
I like the way the Absolute world plays with characters as well. Concepts like the Omega Men, Peacemaker, and especially Ra’s Al Ghul are not traditional elements of the Superman corner of the DC Universe, but they work in the story we’re getting here. Overall, it’s a good chapter in this saga.
This am bad serious book.
In World’s Finest #42, Superman and the Dynamic Duo have been summoned to Bizarro World to help with a plague. The Bizarros (including Bizarro Superman #1 and Batzarro) who are infected find their minds realigned to a more Earth-like way of thinking. Such a danger can’t be allowed to spread, so they’ve turned to our heroes to save them…but together, they find that the danger may be greater than even the plague seemed to be.
Mark Waid is doing some really interesting things with the Bizarros here. He plays with the notion of how science and physics don’t really allow for something like a square planet and what the consequences of such a world would be. At the same time, he tackles the Bizarro philosophy of things being “backwards” as well, in a way that makes me feel slightly abashed for my criticism of the Bizarro story in the recent Kal-El-Fornia Love summer special. There’s also a great moment for Batman here – Robin (understandably) questions why it would be such a bad thing if the Bizarros all had their minds reversed to what we think of as “normal.” Batman’s response is a little unexpected, at least until he gives his reasoning, displaying a depth of compassion that Batman isn’t often given credit for. It’s a good look on Bruce.
So they’re sitting around watching Japanese movies, so what?
I finally get to the end of the new Superman titles (less than 48 hours before this week’s comics go on sale) with Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong 2 #3. At the center of the Earth, Superman and Lex Luthor are forced into an uneasy alliance as they come across a herd of giant gorillas. (A herd? A pride? What are a group of gorillas called? I should probably look that up.) On the surface, meanwhile, Supergirl and Wonder Woman get to work liberating a Monarch base being held captive by Task Force X, and Harley Quinn gets involved in a rather…unique therapy session.
Obviously, I love crossovers, and seeing the League facing off against the Kaiju of the Legendary Monsterverse is a lot of fun. I particularly like bringing in the Suicide Squad as an alternative antagonist in this story. But it’s the sort of thing that’s a little hard to hold in your head from month to month. Waiting for the trade isn’t a practice I care for, but this is probably a situation where the story will read better in collected form than issue-to-issue. Once it’s over, I’ll have to re-read the whole thing in a lump.
Notes: We’re going to end our journey through the Amalgam Universe and the DC/Marvel Omnibus today with Spider-Boy Team-Up #1, and the subsequent Unlimited Access miniseries. The final one-shot, written by Roger Stern and Karl Kesel (cleverly Amalgamated into R.K. Sternsel) with art by Jose Ladronn, features the return of the Arach-kid with a special guest appearance by his pals in the Legion of Galactic Guardians 2099, and that in and of itself should tell you that at this point they were going WILD with the Amalgamations. At Cadmus, as preparations are made for the Kid’s upcoming nuptials to Mary Jane Watson, aka the Insect Queen, the Kid is plucked from the timestream and brought to the far-flung future, where the Legion is about to elect a new leader. Will it be Vance Cosmic? Martinex 5? Cannonfire? Multiple Mai–you know what, there’s too many, I’m not going to list them all. But it’s pretty interesting to note that there are so many Legionnaires that there aren’t enough Guardians to Amalgamate them all (or at least, there weren’t at the time) so they wind up mashing together with virtually any Marvel character that fits: Dream Girl and Destiny made up Dream Date, Matter-Eater Lad and the Trapster made Paste-Eater Pete, and my personal favorite, Bouncing Boy and Speedball mashed into Bouncing Ball. Unfortunately, Spider-Boy’s time displacement is causing stress on the time stream, and he winds up falling into different time periods, meeting different incarnations of the Legion.
The book turns out to be a real celebration and gentle parody of the Legion, poking some lighthearted fun at the various reboots the team has undergone over the years, a topic with which I have some passing familiarity. Even Ladronn’s artwork works really well, emulating the different styles of Keith Giffen’s Five Years Later era just as neatly as he does the Chris Sprouse-inspired Reboot Legion. The ending is a really nice touch, tying together the “2099” part of the melding with the only Legionnaire that it could possibly have been. Even divorced from the rest of the Amalgam comics, Spider-Boy was a glorious, joyful, wild experiment. Man, I hope the upcoming facsimile edition is just a precursor of things to come.
Something about Thor-El is kinda…compelling…
The last gasp – both for the Amalgams and for the Access concept of Marvel/DC Crossovers, came in the 1998 miniseries Unlimited Access by Karl Kesel and Pat Olliffe. The story starts with Access, the “Cosmic Hall Monitor,” popping back to his home in Marvel’s New York after sorting out a recent encounter between Spider-Man and Batman. Kesel implies here that this particular crossover had Access looking on from the background trying to keep things straight. As a concept, it actually would work to explain EVERY Marvel/DC crossover – Access, or someone like him, keeping an eye on temporary fusions between the worlds, which the respective heroes forget after the fact. If they decided to run with it that way.
Access has to untangle the appearance of Mantis – one of Darkseid’s lesser goons – in battle with Spider-Man, a fight that gets escalated when Juggernaut and Wonder Woman wind up in the mix. Things get even crazier when he takes Diana home only to find himself tangled in a fight between a still-savage Hulk and Green Lantern Hal Jordan…who is DEAD.
Superman doesn’t actually show up in the first few issues of this miniseries, so I’ll cut to the chase: as it turns out, Access doesn’t just bounce back and forth between universes, but discovers he can bounce back and forth in TIME as well, allowing him to meet the different versions of the Marvel and DC heroes from any point in the timestream (including the “Days of Future Past” X-Men from the distant year 2012). He’s also got the ability to create Amalgams, merging characters from the two worlds into one, which comes in handy when it turns out he’s being tracked by Darkseid, who wants his ability to traverse the worlds. By issue three, Amazing Grace has hypnotized the original Avengers and Justice League into battling each other, and Access decides to reach out for the only hero who stands a chance of fixing this mess: big blue himself, Superman. And I mean Superman during his electric blue era. It takes literally seconds for Superman to jolt everyone back to their senses, then he and Captain America mobilize the two teams to fight off Darkseid’s invasion of the Marvel Earth. But the crazy just keeps coming with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the original X-Men, and a group of teen heroes who – just months later – would wind up getting their own title as Young Justice.
By issue four, Darkseid and Magneto are teaming up to take over the world (this is early Magneto, when he was still into that kind of thing) and the heroes decide to combine their powers – literally – into a single strikeforce of Amalgams. Black Canary and Jean Grey: Jean Black! Giant-Man and Green Lantern: Green Goliath! Captain America and Captain Marvel Jr.: Captain America Jr.! I know, I didn’t write it. And of course, Superman and Thor are fused together as Thor-El.
The fun part here is seeing these new Amalgams throw out casual references to help the reader to understand what they’re like in their own minds: Captain America Jr. possessing the “wisdom of Lincoln,” for example, or Thor-El referencing the Valhalla Zone. The series, and the history of Access, end with him accepting the truth about himself, beating Darkseid, and swearing to prevent a future he doesn’t want to experience.
Reading this story again now, there’s so much potential left in this concept, and thanks to the nature of Access’s powers, there’s no reason that Marvel and DC couldn’t pick up on it again at any time. With new crossovers (finally) on the horizon between the two of them, the chance is right there. I don’t know if they’ll take it – I certainly hope so.
But for now, at least, our journey with Superman and the heroes of other worlds has come to an end. And I think it’s time to rededicate myself to stories focused around Clark Kent himself. That in mind, next week, I’m going to embark upon my re-read of the longest Superman saga I’ll have yet tackled for the Year of Superman blog. See you then!
Blake M. Petit 