Last weekend was Fan Expo New Orleans. If you recall, during the full Year of Superman last year, I wrote about the Superman-related stuff I found at Fan Expo 2025. And right now, let’s all be grateful that was last year and not this year, because this year’s Fan Expo – I’m sorry to report – was kind of a bust. The big cons have been shedding comic and science fiction participation for years, that’s nothing new. The shows are becoming more and more focused on anime and photo ops. And look – it’s not like I think that everything has to cater to me personally. I know, I’m an old man and people need to chase the money young people are bringing to the table. But there are full-on anime cons out there. The convention culture was built around comic book and sci-fi geeks, such as myself, and it feels very much like we’re the ones getting left out in the cold. All of this is to say, after a Saturday afternoon of prowling the vendor floor, I probably spent less money at this year’s Expo than I ever have before.
Seeing as how this is “Superman Stuff,” I’m only going to run through the few related finds I got. I knew even before I got there that I was going to hit up one of the booths that sells custom LEGO-style minifigures, because I’ve got a display of Superman-related figures in my classroom and I wanted to add to it. There was a movie version of Superman and Krypto that I added to my display, but sadly, those were the only two Superman characters they had that I didn’t have already. (I did, however, pick up the movie Fantastic Four, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the core Heeler family from Bluey, so I came away satisfied.)
The comics were an even bigger bust. I like to hit the bargain bins – the dollar comics, the weird stuff. But I found only two such bins in the whole show. and I’m pretty sure there were only four or five comic book vendors TOTAL. I walked away with a handful of old Archie comics and some 80s Marvel goodness, but the only Superman comic that fell into my hands was a battered reading copy of Action Comics #342 from 1966, which I’m digging into today.
In “The Super-Human Bomb,” Brainiac is prowling space, trying to think of some way to defeat Superman, when he finds himself under attack by another alien named Grax, whose 20th level intelligence is obviously way above Brainiac’s mere 12th level. Grax has a beef with Superman as well, and has come up with a scheme to destroy him, but he needs a force field and somehow Mr. 20th Level can’t figure out how to make one, so he steals Brainiac’s. Grax tricks Superman with a missile that attaches a bomb to the man of steel, a bomb he claims is powerful enough to annihilate Earth, and it’s rigged to go off if Superman tries to remove it. Oh yeah, and just in case he gets any smart ideas about flying into space, Grax put Brainiac’s force field around Earth, trapping him here, with a 24-hour timer on the bomb.
I have to admit, inability to invent a force field notwithstanding, so far Grax is making a solid case for being eight levels smarter than Brainiac. He never got this far.
Superman spends the next 24 hours trying desperately to stop the bomb, but everything fails. He even offers to let Grax kill him if he will spare Earth, but Grax refuses. Minutes before the explosion, Brainiac messages Superman and tells him how to defeat Grax: build an enormous magnet (shaped like a horseshoe, because theming) and use it to draw Grax’s ship against the force field, trapping him in the blast radius of the bomb. Superman gets into Grax’s ship and hits the switch for the bomb, just as – in the most dramatic moment in comic book history – I realize that this $1 reading copy I purchased is missing pages out of the middle, so I can’t see how the story ends.
Incredible!
The back-up story, fortunately, is complete: Supergirl stars in “The Day Supergirl Became an Amazon.” College student Linda Danvers is on a trip to the South Pacific to gather specimens for the school aquarium, when their ship is struck by a heavy storm. Supergirl secretly guides the ship to an island, where the students casually decide to begin collecting their specimens rather than wondering about, y’know, getting rescued. But the island turns out to be occupied by an Amazon tribe that would later be sued by Themiscyra for trademark infringement.
The Amazons put Linda and her classmates in slave girl costumes because fun, and that night Linda puts her Supergirl costume on a bird so people will see it flying around and assume Supergirl is on a mission, and that may be one of the most confusing sentences I’ve ever written. The Amazons feed the girls a “nectar of strength” which doesn’t appear to impact Linda’s classmates, but she pretends that the nectar has given her super powers and starts wiping the floor with the Amazons in trial after trial. Eventually, Linda does such a good job of building a pyramid with the stones from the Amazon’s homes that the queen gets fed up with her and lets the girls go. The story is an absolute masterpiece, assuming that you don’t stop to wonder why Supergirl dropped their ship on the island instead of taking them to a safe place in the first place, why she felt it necessary to put her costume on a bird, or what Linda’s major was and what kind of college sends three random students to the South Pacific in a hovercraft.
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. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!
It’s the final Geek Punditry of 2025, and you know what that means. Everybody gets a slinky!
Here you go.
Well, that or…It’s time for the 2025 Pundy Awards, the ONLY awards show that is voted on by the exclusive governing body of Me, in which the best in pop culture for the year is given the accolades it deserves. But this year’s Pundies will be a little different. 2025 was a hectic year for me, for many reasons. One of those reasons is that I immersed myself in the Year of Superman project (which you no doubt have been following here on the blog with slavish devotion). As a result, I haven’t consumed as much new media this year as I usually do. Oh, there’s always a mountain of movies that I haven’t gotten around to yet, but I’ve fallen seriously behind in my TV viewing as well. I haven’t seen the new seasons of Stranger Things, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Abbott Elementary, or Bob’s Burgers, and as far as watching NEW shows – it just hasn’t happened. I’ve only even seen the first two episodes of Welcome to Derry.
The point is, I don’t have as big a pool of influence to draw from as I usually do. Even amongst the new stuff, you’ll probably notice a substantial slant towards stuff related to Superman or DC Comics in general. So this year’s Pundies aren’t really going to be all that structured. I’m going to talk a little bit more freeform about the stuff that I’ve enjoyed this year.
For example, I could tell you that my favorite new movie that I saw this year was Superman. You will not be surprised. I thought James Gunn’s reinvention of the DC Universe started off beautifully, that David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult were flawless in their respective roles, and that the future of the DCU looks very bright indeed. But if you want me to wax poetic about that, you can go back and read the review I wrote in July.
“When a cold wind blows it chills you, chills you to the bone…”
So besides Superman, what were my favorites out of the (relatively) few movies I watched this year? Let’s start with Guillermo Del Toro’s new version of Frankenstein for Netflix. I’ve loved almost everything I’ve ever seen from Del Toro, so I wasn’t surprised that I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. I was surprised at just how far it deviates from the original novel. Shifting Elizabeth’s role to the wife of Victor Frankenstein’s brother, rather than making her his own love interest, gives the story a different flavor entirely, one that I didn’t see coming and I’m not 100 percent sure if it’s an improvement. On the other hand, I loved the element of Christoph Waltz’s character funding Frankenstein’s experiments because he wants a “perfect” body for himself. Most surprisingly, though, was how he rewrote the ending of the story. In Mary Shelley’s novel, and in most adaptations, they play up the idea of Victor as a neglectful “father” for his creature, making the tragedies of the story indirectly his fault. The end of the film changes this narrative, being one of the few versions of the story in which we see him recognize his faults and show remorse for them. The only other version I can think of that does this, interestingly, is Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein.
The real sinners are the friends we made along the way.
Speaking of classic monsters, a lot of people have sung the praises of Ryan Coogler’s vampire movie Sinners this year. Some are even calling it a best picture candidate. I wouldn’t put it QUITE that high, but it IS an excellent movie. Michael B. Jordan plays a pair of twin brothers who return home to escape some of the sins of their past, but their attempt to become honest businessmen is broken immediately when the tavern they open is assaulted by…well…vampires. It’s not just another vampire movie, though. This film is deep, powerfully emotional, and at times even sadly beautiful. There’s a ton of killer music (excuse the pun), and Hailee Steinfeld’s performance adds to an already incredible performance by Jordan as two very different characters. It’s a horror movie, technically, but like we get from Del Toro, it’s a horror movie that appeals to people beyond the genre.
Evidence that comedy still exists.
Perhaps the most delightful surprise at the cinema this year, though, was Akiva Schaffer’s reboot of The Naked Gunwith Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson. The idea of “spoof” movies has taken a nasty hit in the past few years, with many of them being reduced to painful reference-fests bereft of actual humor like we get from the Friedberg/Seltzer team, so I honestly didn’t have high hopes for this one. To my shock, I got the funniest movie I’ve seen in years. The humor is spot-on, feeling like the classic Leslie Nielsen films brought back to life. What’s more, Neeson plays the son of Nielsen’s character, making this a legacy sequel rather than a remake, which I always prefer anyway. But the biggest surprise – and here’s a sentence I never thought I would be writing on January 1st – was Pamela Anderson. Pamela Anderson is a FANTASTIC comedic actress. She’s got perfect timing and flawless delivery, and she and Neeson have legitimate chemistry, which apparently is due to the fact that they actually fell in love on the set of this film. The Naked Gun is proof that the movie industry CAN still make good comedies. The hard part is getting people in the theater to WATCH them.
Moving on from movies, let’s talk television. As I said, I didn’t get to watch very much new TV this year, and once I catch up I may have totally different picks for my favorites. But of the new TV I DID watch in 2025, here are the three shows I enjoyed the most.
Do you really wanna — do you REALLY wanna taste it?
First of all – and I know that we’ve already talked about James Gunn – I loved the second season of Peacemaker. The John Cena-starring show is the one definite holdover from the previous DC Universe, and Gunn spends a bare minimum amount of effort in the first episode retooling it to fit the new DCU he’s created, then he plops it right into the time immediately post-Superman. John Cena’s Peacemaker is suffering from severe trauma following the events of the first season (which is still in-continuity in broad strokes) and finds a way to an alternate dimension where his father and brother are still alive and he’s celebrated as the hero he wants to be. It seems perfect…at first. Just like the first season, the show is funny and full of action, but this season really amplifies the drama. There’s a deep storyline between Cena’s Christopher Smith and Jennifer Holland’s Emilia Harcourt that drives the season in a very real way. Danielle Brooks meanwhile, puts in an award-worthy performance as Leota Adebayo, the best original character from a DC TV series since Harley Quinn was created in Batman: The Animated Series. The ending is bittersweet, in that it sets up a new storyline but, at the moment, there’s no season three planned. The setup here is for the future of the DC Universe, and I can only hope that when it IS picked up, wherever that happens to be, it’s not only Peacemaker that makes his triumphant return, but the entire group of 11th Street Kids that we’ve come to love.
Like Kermit the Frog crossed with Loki.
This was also, as I mentioned several months back, the year I discovered Dropout TV, specifically its signature show Game Changer. If you missed that previous column, Game Changer is a game show where the contestants are usually improv comedians and the game itself changes in every episode – they never know exactly what the game will be or what the rules are until they start playing. This year’s seventh season started off with “One Year Later,” an episode in which the three contestants were given a series of wild tasks and then a solid year in which to accomplish them. The comedy comes from the creative ways that they do things like bringing a cardboard cutout of Sam Reich (the host) to the most “remote” location they can or recording the best outgoing voicemail message. Later we get the “You-Lympics,” where they have to complete a series of stunts unaware of the fact that they’re going to have to do the same ones again, competing not against each other, but against their own prior scores. “Crowd Control” brings in stand-up comedians with skill at working the crowd and makes them face an audience full of highly unusual quirks and personal history to work with, an episode that was so successful it spun off into its own series.
Spin that wheel!
But my favorite of the season, the one that I would show a newcomer to Dropout to convince them to watch Game Changer, was “Ruelette.” The players spin a giant Price is Right-style wheel which lands on different rules that they have to abide by for the rest of the game, like wearing an oversized cowboy hat or having to say everything in a singsong voice. The rules stack and twists are thrown in, and the game quickly flies completely off the rails into one of the most unhinged episodes of television I’ve ever seen. It’s glorious.
Summer belongs to them — AGAIN!
Finally, let’s talk about the revival of Disney’s Phineas and Ferb, which dropped this year. Picking up the summer after the first four seasons of the show, season five begins with the last day of school at the beginning of a new, glorious summer of games, stunts, ridiculous inventions, and Buford’s endless quest for a hot tub made out of a giant bread bowl. The hiatus since the show’s previous cancellation hasn’t dulled it in the slightest – it’s still as charming, funny, and toe-tapping as it ever was. I cannot wait for the second half of the season to drop on Disney+ next month.
As if fairy tales weren’t creepy enough.
I read a lot of books this year, I’m proud to say, but I’ve actually read relatively few NEW books. Of the dozens of books that crossed my to-read pile in 2025, only three of them were actually PUBLISHED in 2025. One of them is not worth mentioning in this column. Another was the Stephen King/Maurice Sendak collaboration on a new version of Hansel and Gretel. King takes the classic fairy tale and adds a few touches that are distinctly his, and even links to his larger universe (specifically the Dark Tower books). Sendak’s illustrations, as expected, are whimsical and ghastly at the same time, and I loved it.
And y’know what? It IS my favorite scary movie.
The other new book from this year was a nonfiction history of my favorite horror movie franchise, Your Favorite Scary Movie: How the Scream Films Rewrote the Rules of Horror by Ashley Cullins. As a fan of the Scream films (I’ve mentioned it here once or twice, I think), I sincerely enjoyed this book. Although much of the history is stuff that fans probably already knew, Cullins did in-depth interviews with dozens of the actors, writers, and other creators involved in the series over the decades, fleshing out a familiar story. She gives insight to the things we already knew, and adds a lot of stuff that we didn’t. The centerpiece of the book is a very loving, respectful tribute to the late Wes Craven, something that fans of the franchise in general or Craven specifically will find touching and even tearjerking. The book is also extremely thorough, tracking the history of the franchise from the one-act play Kevin Williamson wrote in college that provided the germ of the idea for the first film right up to the eve of filming for the seventh movie, which isn’t even coming out until 2026. I’ve read a lot of stuff about Scream, and this is probably the best book on the series I’ve come across.
Wait — Superman? Since when does this blog talk about SUPERMAN?
Finally, I want to move into the world of comic books, and again, you’re gonna hear me talk about Superman. DC declared it the “Summer of Superman,” which makes the man behind the Year of Superman laugh kind of derisively, but they absolutely stepped up. The addition of a new series this year, Superman Unlimited, gave the Man of Steel four different ongoing titles, as it joined the ongoing Superman, Action Comics, and the title he shares with his best pal from Gotham, Batman and Superman: World’s Finest. All four of the books are great right now. Superman has been part of an ongoing storyline tying into the larger DC Universe, Unlimited has focused on a story about an enormous Kryptonite meteor landing on Earth and changing the game for everybody, Action Comics is telling new stories of Clark’s early career as Superboy, and Batman and Superman is full of stories of the characters several years ago as well. (Both of the books set in the past, I should note, are written by Mark Waid, while Joshua Williamson and Dan Slott are behind Superman and Unlimited, respectfully.)
She hasn’t had it this good since Helen Slater.
That’s not all, though. With her own movie coming out next year, Supergirl got a new series written and (usually) illustrated by Sophie Campbell. In the new Supergirl comic, Campbell has Supergirl moving back to her hometown of Midvale only to find a second Supergirl getting in her way. The series is eight issues in so far, and it’s become an absolutely lovely story about found family, with Supergirl building up a team of unexpected friends around her. Campbell’s art is great as well – a bit more cartoonish than your traditional superhero comic book, but perfectly suited for the series.
A boy and his dog indeed.
Not only that, but the Superman titles gave us two of the best miniseries of the year. Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton by Ryan North and Mike Norton, is the story of the breakout star from this summer’s hit movie. For the first time, we see Krypto’s point of view of the destruction of Krypton, his journey to Earth, and the path that eventually led him back to Kal-El in Smallville. There’s something about that dog that pulls on the heartstrings, and in the course of the five issues I cried no less than six times. Of course, I’m kind of a softie.
Kryptonite! Now in all the Kolors of the rainbow!
Finally, and I promise this is the end of me plugging Superman, I absolutely loved Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum by W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo. Prince and Morazzo have had a hit series through Image Comics for the past several years with Ice Cream Man, an existential horror series that takes some of our most human fears and anxieties and materializes them in stories that would feel suitable in The Twilight Zone. In The Kryptonite Spectrum, Superman encounters Kryptonite meteors in colors he’s never seen before and begins experimenting to determine what they do. What’s astonishing is that, although this is by no means a horror story, Price and Morazzo still manage to tackle some of the stranger, more esoteric kinds of stories that they’ve become so well known for. The stories deal with things like the nature of time and identity, and while they may not be frightening, they’re very atypical for Superman…and they’re great.
Step aside, boys, Sue’s got this one covered.
Okay, let’s forget Superman and talk about a few other great comic books. Once again, Ryan North’s Fantastic Four is the best title Marvel Comics is publishing. Relaunching this year with art by Humberto Ramos, Fantastic Four continues to be an exploration of Marvel’s first family with time-travel adventures, an alien pet, and a focus on characters that the series has historically neglected. In the early days of the series, Susan Storm – then the Invisible Girl – was written almost as an afterthought, and frequently as a damsel in distress. A lot of writers have improved her over the years, but North has gone a step further, showing how smart, brave, and capable the Invisible Woman can be. She’s taken a leadership role and is using her powers in ways that no writer has ever done before. North’s love for the FF shows in every panel. It was recently announced that he’s taking over DC’s The Flash with artist Gavin Guidry next year, and I absolutely cannot wait.
Stuff like this is the reason people don’t want to go to the movies anymore.
Finally, I want to talk about how great Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis’s horror comic Hyde Street was this year. Published through the Ghost Machine studio by Image Comics, Hyde Street is a series about a mysterious town populated by people who are under the thumb of an unseen Gamemaker. Each of them is a person of vice or cruelty that has been trapped on Hyde Street and given the task of corrupting a certain number of souls before they can leave. Some of them are desperate for release. Others, like the demonic boy scout “Pranky,” are far past their limit of souls but are having too much fun to leave. The format leaves the series open to tell an endless number of horror stories, while still having its own backstory and mythology that’s turning out to be a lot of fun to explore.
There’s been some great storytelling in 2025, and I’m hoping to get even more in 2026. If I missed one of your favorites – well, like I said, there’s a LOT of stuff I missed this year. Let me know what I need to add to my list for next year.
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. Also, for the 23rd consecutive year, the best food find of the year was the return of the McRib.
As I write this it’s December 17, one scant week until Christmas Eve. And I don’t mind telling you guys, we need a little Christmas right this very minute. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna quote the entire song. I will, however, spend the next several days reading some of my favorite classic Superman stories set around the holidays. I’ll also tackle this year’s DC Christmas special, which I’ve been sitting on in anticipation of this week, and I’ll take a look at the third Krypto short, Package Pandemonium.
Comic:DC Comics Presents #67, DC Go! Holiday Special #7 (Bizarro), DC Go! Holiday Special #8 (Sunshine Superman)
Notes: I’m starting this week with one of my all-time favorites, a comic book I’ve loved since I was a kid and I go back and re-read pretty much every year at this time. DC Comics Presents was, of course, the Superman team-up book for much of the 80s, and in issue #67 Superman teamed up with the greatest hero of them all: Santa Claus.
In “‘Twas the Fright Before Christmas” (a title which I feel has probably been used and reused hundreds of times over the years), Superman happens to pass by a kid using a toy gun to try to hold up a sidewalk Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Superman determines that the toy gun actually has a device that’s controlling the boy’s mind, and he whisks him off to the Fortress of Solitude to investigate. Superman breaks the mind control and the boy, “Timmy Dickens” (because Len Wein and E. Nelson Bridwell were not subtle writers) tells him how he found some of his Christmas presents early. Superman deduces that it’s the work of his old foe the Toyman, and bundles up Tim to bring him home. Just moments after he takes to the Arctic air, Timmy’s other toy blasts him with a ray that sends him crashing to the ground, unconscious. As Tim pleads with him to wake up, a group of tiny men with pointy ears appear as if from nowhere and take them both to safety.
Back in Metropolis, we see the Toyman monologing about how he found a chunk of white dwarf matter that he used to create heavy gravity, cancelling Superman’s powers, and believes him to be dead…but JUST in case (the Toyman may be crazy, but he’s not an idiot) he starts preparing a few other weapons. Superman, meanwhile, wakes up surrounded by his rescuers. When he asks where he is, his eyes clear and he sees Santa Claus standing over him, welcoming him to his top-secret workshop. He gives Superman a tour of the workshop, triggering memories in Superman of a holo-projector he played with as a baby, a gift from Jor-El that was lost when Krypton exploded. With Superman still weak from the gravity beam, Santa offers to give him and Timmy a lift back to Metropolis in his sleigh. They stop at Toyman’s hideout and Superman bursts in to stop his old foe, but between the earlier blast and Toyman’s Kryptonite-armed toys, the pushover of a villain turns out to be far more dangerous than usual. Santa drops down the chimney and lets some of his own toys out, and the tiny warriors help the Man of Steel defeat the Toyman in an epic battle. After the Toyman is taken away, Santa gives Superman safe toys to replace all of Toyman’s tainted gifts. As he finishes his rounds he’s about to take Tim home, but Tim’s toy blasts him again, knocking him out. He wakes up back in the arctic snow, Tim standing over him, and he believes the events of the evening to be a dream. But after he brings Timmy home, he returns to Clark Kent’s apartment to find a special gift in his cape pouch – the holo-toy his father made for him.
Usually, I despise the whole “It’s all a dream…or WAS it?” trope, but this is one of the few stories where I give it a pass. Part of it, I suppose, is the nostalgia behind it. I was probably ten or eleven years old the first time I read this story, and it’s as dear a holiday yarn to me as the likes of Rudolph and Frosty. There’s so much charm to it, and I just love Curt Swan’s depiction of Santa Claus. As much as he is one of the iconic Superman artists of all time, sometimes I wish he had gotten to do a Santa miniseries or something, just because his style lends itself so well to the character.
The story also plays on nostalgia as well, with Superman remembering the toy from Jor-El and thinking fondly of Christmases past. And while Superman’s initial skepticism about Santa DOES seem a little silly, considering all of the other outlandish things in the DC Universe that he knows are real (lest we forget, he has previously visited an alternate dimension occupied entirely by funny animals), they at least justify it by him saying that he would have seen Santa’s workshop at the North Pole if it existed and Santa casually telling him that nobody sees the workshop unless he WANTS them to. That whole “magic vulnerability” again, y’know?
This story, along with several other classics, was reprinted in 1988 in the first of two Christmas With the Super-Heroes specials. It was my first exposure to not only this story, but other classics like the Teen Titans “Swingin’ Christmas Carol” and “Silent Night of the Batman.” Both this issue and the entire special are – for once – available on the DC Infinity app, and if you want a little holiday cheer, it’s worth the read.
Dec. 18
Comics: Superman Vol. 2 #64, Adventures of Superman #487, DC Go! Holiday Special #12 (Super-Pets), DC Go! Holiday Special #13 (Bizarro)
Notes: This was probably the first Superman Christmas story I remember reading as an ongoing fan of the comic, surprisingly enough. I’d only come on-board 14 issues prior, during the Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite, and there wasn’t a Christmas story the previous year. This one made up for it, though, with “Metropolis Mailbag” written by Dan Jurgens with art by the late Butch Guice. This story established something that we’ve come back to in the Superman titles a few times over the years: people send letters to him all the time and they pile up in the Metropolis post office, as he doesn’t actually have an address. Then, a few days before Christmas, he comes by and reads and responds to as many of them as he actually can.
The task of reading the mail is arduous for Superman, the hero who wants to help everybody and sees the mountains of letters as a visual representation of all the desperate people beyond his help. This year, at least, he has a little company, as Lois is joining him in reading the letters so she can write a story about Superman’s tradition for the Daily Planet. After sifting through fan letters and get-rich-quick schemes, he starts to sift out the people he can actually help, such as an Auschwitz survivor who has discovered that the sister whom she thought died in the war is still alive, but she has no means to get to Germany to see her. The triumph of their reunion is quickly dulled, however, when he finds another letter from a boy whose father is dying from a brain tumor. Superman visits the child in the hospital, arriving just minutes after Terry Baldwin Sr. passes away. Although Mrs. Baldwin is grateful that he came, Terry Jr. – who wrote the letter – is outraged. Superman sits with the boy and tries to explain himself, but he’s not having it.
“But you’re SUPERman!” Terry shouts.
“No. I’m SuperMAN. And there are many, many things I just cannot do.”
After a few weepy panels (both for the characters and the reader), the doctors come by to ask Mrs. Baldwin if her husband was an organ donor. Superman, sensing an opportunity to take some good from this tragedy, tells her about a letter he received earlier from another woman in desperate need of a heart transplant. In what can only be categorized as a Christmas miracle, Baldwin’s heart is a perfect match, and Superman swiftly delivers it.
One last letter comes from a charity for disadvantaged kids that can’t afford Christmas presents or a Santa Claus this year, asking Superman to make an appearance to distract them from the lack of toys. As always, Superman does it one better with the help of his friends. Emil Hamilton whips up a sleigh and plays Santa, delivering a load of toys donated by one Mr. Bruce Wayne. Superman flies the sleigh down to visit the kids, incognito, and slips away before any of them suspect that they’ve witnessed anything other than Christmas magic.
This issue has been a favorite of mine for decades now. It’s a sweet, simple extrapolation of who Superman is and what would likely happen in a world where he existed – a mountain of pleas for his attention, of course, and the way he tries to handle as many of them as possible.
The story also humanizes Superman in ways that few other stories do. It’s natural enough to see him in pain over all the people he simply cannot help – that’s just part and parcel for who a Superman should be. But the panel where he’s arriving at the hospital, unable to save Terry Sr., cuts right into the gut. Jurgens has him pause for a moment on the hospital roof before going inside, thinking about the boy whose world he’s about to shatter, thinking, “I hope he understands. I hope he won’t hate me.” You read this panel, Guice drawing Superman’s face in shadow, and you’re not hearing the voice of the world’s greatest hero. You’re hearing a very human man who loves people, who desires connection, and allows a very relatable moment of despair at the thought that he’ll be blamed for something beyond his control. It’s one of those single panels that encapsulates the character just beautifully.
The story worked so well that it was revisited a few times, most notably one year later when Superman was “dead” after his battle with Doomsday and the rest of Earth’s heroes picked up his mail and dealt with it in his honor. But this original did it best. It’s a perennial read for me, a work of art, and it is as Superman as Superman gets.
Fri., Dec. 19
Comics: New Adventures of Superboy #39, DC Go! Holiday Special #19, 20
Notes: It’s the last work day of the year for me, and honestly, I’m ready for it. I need some time to decompress, although I fear terribly that those circumstances I keep talking about are going to do their best to prevent such decompression in the home stretch of the Year of Superman. Still, I spent Thanksgiving with Superboy, so I’m bringing him back for one last go today in “A World Without Christmas” by Paul Kupperberg and Kurt Schaffenberger.
It’s Christmas Eve in Smallville, but Clark’s classmate Bash isn’t feeling it. Bash – whose parents had to go out of town unexpectedly, leaving him alone – rants against the commercialization of Christmas and storms out of the Kents’ Christmas party. Clark heads after him, approaching him as Superboy, figuring that Bash would be more receptive to him that way. It doesn’t work – Bash continues to rail against the world. Playing a little Dickens, Superboy whisks Bash to an alternate reality where there is no Christmas, and Smallville is a dilapidated dump. Bash encounters that world’s Clark Kent, who runs away from him in fear, summoning an angry mob that’s out for blood, wanting to drive out the “costumed stranger” and the “Bashford Punk” from town. The two are separated, and Superboy is found by that world’s Jonathan Kent, one of the few decent people left. He takes Superboy to an underground hideout where, to Superboy’s shock, he finds Bash teaching Jonathan’s friends to sing “Silent Night.” Superboy takes Bash back home, his Christmas spirit renewed, neither of them ever learning that the leader of Jonathan’s resistance is that world’s Bash Bashford.
It’s a different kind of Christmas story, that’s for sure – kind of bleak and melancholy. Although I suppose the ultimate message is that good can be found anywhere, which is appropriate enough for the Christmas season. I’ll allow it.
Sat., Dec. 20
Short Film: Krypto Saves the Day: Package Pandemonium
Notes: It’s the third of the four Krypto shorts, this time giving us a warm, fuzzy tale of absolute chaos that feels delightfully appropriate for the holiday season. It’s Christmastime in Metropolis, and while Clark is sending out his Christmas cards, Krypto’s X-Ray vision happens to spot a postal worker carrying a package with a mouthwatering t-bone steak. Hunger overwhelms Krypto’s urge to be a good boy, and calamity ensues.
Okay, three cartoons in and I think it’s safe to say that this is the pattern for the Krypto shorts: he gets the urge to chase something for some reason, he causes lots of wacky shenanigans in his pursuit, and in the end he realizes he’s made a mistake and does his best to fix all the stuff that he’s wrecked. Yeah, it’s formulaic, but is it really any more of a formula than the classic Coyote and Roadrunner or Tom and Jerry shorts? They’ve all got their patterns, the real question is whether the filmmakers can find a little variety and a little fun while staying within the bounds of the formula. And I think this one does. The chaos is funny and Krypto’s remorse at the end feels genuine. Plus I’m still chuckling over the fact that Metropolis has a store literally named “Oversized Ornaments Outlet.”
Sun., Dec. 21
Comic:DC Special Series #21
Notes: Today I’m grabbing another old favorite from DC Special Series #21, aka the Super-Star Holiday Special. This book from 1979 featured several stories starring Jonah Hex, Batman, Sgt. Rock, and the House of Mystery. The one I’m reading this for, though, is Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes in “Star Light, Star Bright…Farthest Star I See Tonight!”
Superboy is bouncing forward in time for one of his regular visits to the Legion just in time for Christmas. His friends show him some of the futuristic holiday celebrations, and Superboy is left feeling nostalgic for a simple, old-fashioned Christmas. Then, to make all the Legion’s futuristic technology worthwhile, he proposes a little adventure: using their tech to try to track down the Star of Bethlehem. With Wildfire, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Phantom Girl joining him, the Legion sets out to look for the star. When they arrive where it should be, though, they find a planet in dire straights. The planet is entering an ice age, causing its three intelligent species problems. An aquatic race is dying because the plankton they feed upon is freezing. A land-dwelling mammalian race is so desperate for warmth that they’re setting fire to their own crops. Finally, ice storms are battering the nests of an avian race, threatening the eggs that hold their young. The Legionnaires help each of the tribes but know their aid is only temporary, until Superboy comes up with a plan. Together, the Legion uses their powers to carve out an underground catacomb where the three races can shelter from the storm and coexist with one another, sharing resources and warmth until the United Planets can find a way to safely evacuate them to a more suitable world. Although Wildfire remains characteristically skeptical, Superboy is happy to credit his quest for the Christmas star for saving an entire world that Christmas Eve.
The first time I ever read this story, like the DC Comics Presents story from a few days ago, was when it was reprinted in Christmas With the Super-Heroes from 1988. Dang – maybe I should have just read that book this year. But regardless, I really like the message here. The story is a bit light on traditional Christmas elements: no Santa Claus, no Angels, no carols or candy canes. Despite that, though, writer Paul Levitz leans on the spiritual aspects of the holiday even 1,000 years in the future, set against the backdrop of a story that feels like it could have come out of an episode of Star Trek. It’s not something that many writers would do today…in fact, more recent Legion stories have mashed all of the Earth’s winter festivals into a bland, homogenized “Holiday” (which is actually what it’s called), whereas Levitz recognizes and celebrates different traditions: while the story is explicitly a Christmas tale, we see other alien cultures, as well as other Earth festivals like Chanukkah, which is celebrated by Colossal Boy (whose Judaism isn’t frequently referenced, but it’s not ignored either).
I particularly like how Superboy has this sort of childlike wonder to him. He’s never got a hint of doubt that their quest will bear fruit, and although he doesn’t exactly find what he expected, the fact that his curiosity helped save three intelligent civilizations is evidence that he was right all along.
Although only the final story in this special is Superman related, the others have a lot going for them as well. The Jonah Hex story cracks open Jonah’s childhood to show the horrible cycle he’s trying to escape, the Batman story has some early Frank Miller art, and the House of Mystery is a wild little romp where most (if not all) of DC’s horror hosts of the era get into a little contest to see who can tell the best Christmas story. The special is available on the DC Universe Infinity app, and it’s worth cycling into your yuletide reading.
Mon. Dec. 22
Comic:Superman Vol. 2 #165, DC Go! Holiday Special #26, 29
Notes: I don’t talk about cover art often enough in these write-ups, but let’s take just a moment to appreciate this lovely little scene by Ed McGuinness: Superman and Lois looking down at a box of ornaments as Superman ponders that most inscrutable of holiday questions: what do you get the JLA for Christmas?
The story within, unfortunately, is somewhat less effusive with the holiday cheer. Written by Jeph Loeb, this story takes place in the aftermath of the election of Lex Luthor as President, with Superman struggling to wrap his head around the fact that such a thing could have happened. The issue is a series of vignettes, each by a different artist, in which he visits a member of the League, has largely the same conversation over and over again, and then gives them a token Christmas present. Some of them, like Green Lantern’s gift, are a bit of a gag, while others like Wonder Woman’s belie a deeper meaning.
I get the intent behind this issue. The President Luthor story was a big one, and it makes sense for Superman to struggle with it, even to the point of a mild existential crisis But in practice, this issue comes off as very repetitive, with each Leaguer’s respective stance being highly predictable. The rotating artists thing doesn’t work great either. Some of the scenes are sublime – having the late Mike Wieringo illustrate an outer space game of Satellite Baseball between Superman and Kyle Rayner is just lovely. Others are less so, but I suppose that Loeb was a big enough name at the time to want to work with his friends, and I can’t in good faith begrudge him that.
All said, despite the premise of this issue being that Superman is delivering Christmas presents to his teammates in the Justice League, this is probably the least Christmasy story I’ve read this week.
But again, that cover is a banger.
I had more fun with the DC Go! Holiday Special #29. This digital series has mostly taken short stories from the assorted DC holiday anthologies of the past and re-presented them one at a time in their “Infinite” format, so they aren’t new stories, but I honestly don’t remember where most of them were originally presented. In this case, we’ve got “A Lex-Tacular Christmas Carol” by Ethan Sacks with art by Soo Lee. It’s one of a thousand takes on the ol’ Dickens chestnut, but it’s an entertaining one. After sending an employee (named Bob, naturally) off to spend his Christmas Eve working instead of spending time with his family, Lex sets out to have a good night’s sleep, only to find himself visited by a variety of familiar spirits. Just when you think you’ve seen every iteration of A Christmas Carol that you could think of, you get hit with something like this. Whereas most of our Scrooge stand-ins go through the requisite character arc, Lex is utterly nonplussed about the ghosts. Even his own father as the stand-in for Jacob Marley doesn’t make Lex bat an eye, merely comparing his current appearance to what he looked like when Lex – y’know – murdered him. Sacks DOES give in to tradition just a hair at the end, but all in all, Lex makes for them the most delightfully unrepentant Ebenezer Scrooge you could possibly imagine.
Tues., Dec. 23
Comic:Batman and the Outsiders #19, DC’s I Saw Ma Hunkel Kissing Santa Claus #1, Titans Vol. 4 #30 (Guest Star Jon Kent)
Notes: I like it when Superman pops up as a guest star alongside other, younger heroes. It’s a good way to see just how he’s perceived by the hero community at large, and this Christmas story from Batman and the Outsiders #19 serves that purpose well. On Christmas Eve, Geo-Force (arguably the most powerful member of Batman’s mid-80s team) is with the young Halo when gets a phone call from a friend who has swallowed a bottle of pills. After getting the young woman, Denise, to medical attention, Geo-Force discovers that she was driven to this desperate situation after being sexually coerced by one of her college professors. Geo-Force sets out to kill the professor and Halo rushes off to Batman for help. Recognizing that he can’t possibly stop Geo-Force on his own, Batman makes a call to Metropolis. As Superman and Halo seek out Geo-Force, hoping to stop him before he does something he can’t take back, Batman uses his own skills to attack the lecherous professor in his own way.
Several things worth mentioning in this one. First, when Batman quit the Justice League and founded the Outsiders (a whole 19 issues ago) it caused a rift between himself and Superman that all of their assorted titles dealt with for months, particularly the title they co-starred in, World’s Finest Comics. The fact that Bruce immediately calls Clark for help when he realizes what Geo-Force is up to is a wonderful way to demonstrate that the rift has largely been healed at this point. It’s also cute to see Halo mooning over Superman when she meets him for the first time. The “young heroine gets a crush on Superman” trope wasn’t new even when this book was published in 1984, and often it gets tiresome. It works quite well with Halo, though – she’s a teenage girl who is struggling with assorted identity issues of her own while, at the same time, still dedicated to being a hero. She’s also the kind of person whose heroism shows brightly, cheerfully – she may be a member of Batman’s team, but she’s not the kind of hero who sulks in the shadows.
The Geo-Force fight is the really interesting part of this story, though. It’s often tempting to enact what TV Tropes calls “the Worf Effect” in stories like this one – having a character who should theoretically be much more powerful than his opponent suddenly become weak or ineffective. It’s an annoying trope, and when you hear “Superman Vs. Geo-Force” (who’s very much a rookie at this point) it doesn’t seem like it should be a contest. But Geo-Force not only holds his own, but writer Mike W. Barr sells you on its plausibility. Superman’s powers are, after all, due in part to the lower gravity of the Earth, and since part of Geo-Force’s powerset is the manipulation of gravity, it allows him to balance the playing field considerably, making for a more tense battle scene.
Despite the dark undercurrent of this story, the presentation at the end feels hopeful and bright, which is just what you want in a Christmas story, isn’t it?
Also on the docket today is this year’s DC Comics Christmas special, I Saw Ma Hunkel Kissing Santa Claus. (Again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, whoever it is in the DC marketing department that’s coming up with the titles for these holiday anthologies deserves a raise.) There are eight stories this time out, and I particularly liked the opening story starring Ma Hunkel herself, as well as the tales with Billy Batson, Animal Man, and Dr. Light. But I’m here to talk about the Supergirl story, “Holiday Woes” by Ash Padilla with art by Anthony Marques. Kara is spending Christmas in Smallville with Lois and Clark – her first since declaring herself the protector of National City, and she’s nervous that if she takes time away from her tasks as a superhero, people in her town will go undefended. But Clark wants her to loosen her up, and sets her up on a blind date at the Smallville Winter Festival. As is to be expected from a blind date in a comic book, things don’t go exactly as planned.
I’ll knock out the thing I didn’t care for: the retcon of Pete Ross’s son. As recently as the Summer of Superman special early this year, we saw that Pete and Lana’s son Clark Ross is still in continuity and still a child. A teenage son named Jonathan Ross doesn’t fit in anywhere here. Now it’s easy enough to dismiss the story as just being out of continuity, as the stories in these holiday specials rarely turn out to have any ongoing relevance. But in this case, darn it, I WANT this story to turn up again. The truth about Kara’s date is really sweet, and the kind of thing that appeals to an old-school fan like myself. (And truth be told, I’d like to see Dr. Light team up with the Atom again the way they do in this issue. What can I say? Like Clark Kent in this story, I love love.)
Notes: I’m going to wrap up this festive week with some Golden Age Goodies, beginning with what I have to assume is the first ever Superman Christmas one-shot, Superman’s Christmas Adventure from 1940. Lois and Clark convince their editor to begin a campaign to collect and refurbish used toys to give to needy children for Christmas. News of this campaign makes it all the way to the North Pole, where Santa is pleased to see that Lois and Clark are acting as his helpers this year. But a pair of villains who hate Christmas – Dr. Grouch and Mr. Meany – have sent a ship to the Pole where they try to convince Santa to convert his workshop to a commercial enterprise. Failing, they attack the Planet’s toy drive, setting the workshop on fire, with it only being spared thanks to Clark’s super-breath. Foiled again, they decide to attack Santa’s workshop directly, only to be driven back by his army of toy soldiers. Lois has stowed away on their ship (because of course she has) so they strap her to a rocket and blast her into the sky, where Superman rescues her. The villains split up, with one of them kidnapping Lois (again) and the other stealing Santa’s reindeer – a crime that statistically is far greater than stealing forty cakes. Santa radios Superman for help, and although he saves the reindeer, Grouch and Meany manage to gas them to sleep, rendering them unable to pull Santa’s sleigh. Superman, of course, steps up to help the big guy make his rounds.
This 16-page comic, originally published as a department store giveaway, is absolutely wild. It ends when Santa gives the bad guys Christmas presents, despite the fact that they quite clearly belong on the naughty list, and this makes them instantly reform and give up evil. Really, that’s all it takes. And I didn’t even mention the two-page sequence where Superman takes a spoiled rich kid on a tour of the less fortunate children of Metropolis to make him appreciate what he’s got and teach him the spirit of giving. That has NOTHING to do with the main plot. This story is wild, unfocused, a plot seemingly assembled by shotgun. And I of course loved every panel. Here’s hoping that Tom King is working on the gritty reboot of Grouch and Meany for next Christmas.
Action Comics #93 brings us “Christmas Around the World.” It’s 1945, and in the aftermath of World War II, Lois and Clark find an abundance of refugee children separated from their families during the war. Superman, of course, loads them up in a glider and begins a world tour, delivering food and supplies to impoverished areas while, at the same time, reuniting the children with their families, and spreading Christmas spirit along the way. It’s an odd little story. There’s no villain. There’s not even really any conflict. The closest we have is one boy who lies about wanting to go with Superman to be reunited with his father, but who only didn’t want to make his friends (whose fathers died in the war) feel bad. It’s just a little picture postcard of a world healing itself after its darkest hour.
I’m going to wrap up this week of yuletide joy with Action Comics #105, a comic so stuffed with holiday cheer that I am currently wearing a t-shirt with the cover on it. Millionaire Jasper Rasper is a mean man who hates Christmas. He sneaks off to the North Pole and tempts Santa with some candy that is specially formulated to make fatty tissue multiply at an alarming rate. When Superman gets wind of the scheme, he rushes to the Pole to find that Santa is now too plump to make it down the chimneys on Christmas Eve. Superman begins whisking Santa around the world on an exercise tour, slimming him back down. As he’s about to head out, though, they find that Rasper ALSO drugged Santa’s reindeer (Santa needs to step up his security detail), so Superman agrees to pull that ol’ sleigh again. As they’re making their way south, they see that Rasper’s helicopter crashed on an iceberg. Superman saves him and the villain, just like our pals Grouch and Meany, has a miraculous change of heart.
Just when you think you’ve seen every Christmas story possible, we get a gem like “Villain makes Santa Claus too fat, so Superman becomes his fitness instructor.” It’s a magical time.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this week of holiday adventures friends, and I hope you and yours have the merriest of Christmases. And I hope to see you all next week, on New Year’s Day, when I’ll present the grand finale of my Year of Superman.
It’s the last 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!
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.
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!
It happened when I got home from work on Aug. 13. I turned on my laptop, began to scroll Facebook, and saw the news I’ve been waiting for:
“Superman coming to 4K, Blu-Ray, and DVD on Sept. 23!”
Ah, a little something to take the edge off.
Rumors about a release date have been bouncing around for weeks now, but I have reached a point where I ignore anything that isn’t official from DC Studios. When I saw that the Blu-Ray was, in fact, available for pre-order, I showed it to my wife.
“Are you going to pre-order it?” she said.
“I don’t know. I know what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna pre-order it, then a week from now they’re going to announce some super ultra mega special edition that I’m going to have to get.”
“Well then wait.”
“But I want it.”
And then she gave me that Look (married guys reading this know exactly what Look I’m talking about) as I clicked pre-order and proudly announced that I saved $9.99 on shipping thanks to Amazon Prime.
Notes: For a few years now DC has been on a pretty good streak with their seasonal anthology specials, including ones for Valentine’s Day, Halloween, the December holiday smorgasbord, and then one that’s more generically “Summer.” The best thing about them are the titles. Are You Afraid of Darkseid? Grifter Got Run Overy By a Reindeer. How to Lose a Guy Gardner in 10 Days.
Awesome.
This summer’s special is Kal-El-Fornia Love and, for the first time in memory, it’s a seasonal special that is entirely focused around a single corner of the DCU, in this case, the Superman family having adventures on the West Coast. What else do you expect from the Summer of Superman? It came out a few weeks ago, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading it until now…I have to be honest, it always kinda bugs me that DC puts out their “Summer” specials right around the time that my summer vacation ENDS and I go back to work. If you can drop a Christmas special in November, DC, how about giving us the summer special in June next year?
The special kicks off with “See Spot Fly,” a Superman story by Bryan Q. Miller and Gerardo Sandoval. I know I wrote just a few weeks ago about how good Miller’s Multiversus miniseries was and how I wanted to see more from him, but…this wasn’t it. In the story, something falls from the moon and crashes into the western seaboard, prompting Superman to leap to the rescue…and somehow Lois is Loising in a way that doesn’t really solidify. It’s so weird, Lois is in danger and it’s obvious that Superman has to set out to save her, but the story jumps from the thing falling to Earth to Superman on the rescue so abruptly that I looked back three times to see if I had skipped a page. The story feels woefully incomplete and it doesn’t make a to of sense, and that makes me sad.
“The Gorilla Ex-Wife of Jimmy Olsen” is a sequel to Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #98, a comic I’ve actually never read but which features Jimmy Olsen marrying a gorilla, so I don’t know why the hell I don’t have eleven slabbed copies already. Written by Christof Bogacs with art by Jacoby Salcedo, Jimmy encounters his gorilla ex-wife, Bruna, an actress, whom he has not seen since be broke her heart. But now she’s mated with (and managed by) Gorilla Grodd. Jimmy is at a Hollywood party to get photos of the new actress, but afraid of an awkward conversation, he instead challenges Grodd to a “Gorilla Games” competition, because that sounds like an amazing idea. Bogacs is channeling his inner Matt Fraction here, telling a nicely comedic story in a way that feels like it could be a lost chapter from Fraction’s Jimmy Olsen series from a few years ago. In the end, though, we actually get to see a little maturity and growth from Jimmy, which can be rare.
Joshua Hale Fialkov and Bruno Abdias give us Power Girl in “Before Sunrise,” although you wouldn’t know it at first. The story actually kicks off with Ice enjoying a basketball game by herself when some nutjob tries to shoot up the place. Ice has the situation handled, but finds an unexpected assist when Power Girl shows up. The bad guys are dispatched quickly and the rest of the story is Ice and Power Girl kind of having a girls’ night – not a party night, but a night where they just go out and engage as friends, having conversations about their lives and their place in the world. It’s an odd little story, the sort of thing that I somehow doubt will ever be referenced again, but there’s a sweetness to it that I find pretty endearing. And I love the way Abdias draws both of the heroines.
“Against the Wind” by James Reid and Jon Mikel gives us Bizarro on a journey to become a hero. At least…he TRIES, but things like saving kittens from a bridge collapse instead of the humans using the logic that the kittens (unlike the humans) would never have had swimming lessons makes it a little hard to take him seriously. When he hears that there’s an open casting call for actors who want to play Superman in a movie, though, he sees a chance. I have mixed feelings about this one. It’s funny, it’s genuinely funny, but it also doesn’t seem as though Reid quite gets Bizarro. He’s an imperfect duplicate, he does the OPPOSITE of what he’s supposed to do, but that’s not what happens in this story. Is it FUNNY when he winds up at Mardi Gras instead of Hollywood because “Louisiana” and “Los Angeles” are both abbreviated “L.A.”? Sure. But that’s not OPPOSITE, that’s just him being stupid. The whole story is full of stuff like that, stuff that works for a GOOFY character, but doesn’t make sense even for Bizarro logic.
Lois Lane stars in “Bite of the Apple” by Meghan Fitzmartin and Marcial Toldedano Vargas. Lois is invited onto a podcast hosted by a razor-tongued host who wants to take Lois to task for her coverage of a recent murder case. Turns out there’s more to the podcast that meets the eye. It’s…okay. The story has a good handle on how Lois views the responsibility of a journalist, but it doesn’t really explain why she’d agree to be on a podcast like this in the first place, let alone why Wonder Woman shows up at the last second. (She says Lois’s sister contacted her. How the hell does Lucy Lane have Wonder Woman’s phone number?)
“Across the Room” by Brandon Thomas and Juni Ba stars the Steels, John Henry and Natasha Irons, hitting the beach on a little vacation. At least, they’re trying, but stuff just keeps happening. This is another confusing story, but this time I have to feel like the art is at least partially to blame. The story is kind of about Natasha hitting it off with a girl at the resort they’re staying at (in-between scenes of her behaving like a petulant teenager for no apparent reason), but there’s a focus on a Superman “birthmark” she has on her ankle. It’s drawn in such a way, though, that at first I wasn’t even sure whose ankle I was looking at. When it turns up again, when she’s in armor, there is ZERO explanation for why it’s visible. Where did her armor GO? Why is her foot bare? There’s goo on it – is the monster she’s fighting made of acid? Comic book art has to tell a story, and this one kind of falls short on that front.
Dave Wielgosz and Joey Vazquez give us “Who Do You Belong To?” The story starts with Jon Kent in flight over the forests of northern California trying to investigate something that has been ripping up the trees. The creature turns out to be an escapee from Cadmus, though, and he’s already got another member of the family on his trail: Conner Kent. Turns out the “monster” was once his pet at Cadmus, and he’s there to save him before someone destroys him. It’s a good setup, but the execution is a major split decision. Jon feels awkward around Conner, not knowing exactly who they are to one another, which is somewhat fair. Conner feels awkward around Jon because he feels inferior, like compared to Jon he doesn’t quite deserve the name “Superboy,” and that is utterly preposterous. Conner Kent was around for two decades of real time before Jon showed up. He proved himself time and again. He died saving the entire universe in Infinite Crisis. Jon…hasn’t. There is no world in which I accept Conner feeling inferior to Jon. Awkward? Sure. Confused? I’ll take it. Intimidated since Jon is Superman’s “real” son? Fine. Inferior? Hell no. This story is SO symptomatic of the fact that DC does not know what to do with these two characters anymore, a problem exacerbated by the fact that of Jon’s two identities, neither of them fit anymore. He was Superboy when Conner was MIA. He became Superman when his father was off-world. Now they’re both back and he has no identity. Even the recent Secret Six miniseries has been calling him “Super Son,” which is better than sharing somebody else’s name, but hardly a sustainable identity.
For God’s sake, DC, can we please all recognize the fact that the name “Valor” isn’t in use at the moment? I know it doesn’t start with an “S,” but it’s got history and it would at least START to fix this ridiculous problem you created for yourselves.
Anyhoo, the last story in the book is “Something in the Water” by George Mann and Travis Mercer. Supergirl hits the beach only to wind up fighting some sort of giant Kraken-type sea monster. Turns out it’s an eldritch abomination. Fortunately she has a little help – John Constantine drops by for a visit. The story is pretty straightforward, honestly. No twists, no surprises, it’s so barebones that it almost feels like a lost plot from the Silver Age. That said, the art is great, and the wildly different personalities between Kara and Constantine makes for a fun couple of pages.
I wish I liked this book more than I did, but of the eight stories, only the Jimmy Olsen, Power Girl, and Supergirl stories left me feeling fully satisfied. Three out of eight isn’t a great score.
Thurs., Aug. 14
It’s been sitting here all year, and I think the time has finally come for me to dig into the second of the two DC Vs. Marvel omnibus editions that came out last year, the one collecting the original DC Vs. Marvel miniseries, most of the Amalgam one-shots from the two waves that were released, and the two sequel miniseries DC/Marvel: All Access and Marvel/DC: Unlimited Access. It’s gonna take me a minute to get through this whole monster because, although the Year of Superman is clearly my calling, I do still have a job and a wife and a child. And I’m not going to write about EVERY comic in the omnibus either, just the ones featuring Superman, a member of the Superman family, or one of their Amalgamated versions. If I happen to hit a day where none of the books I read for this feature a Super, I’ll have to squeeze in some other content to keep the streak alive.
It’s a thankless job, but somebody has to do it.
Comic Books: DC Vs. Marvel #1, Marvel Vs. DC #2, Batman: Gotham By Gaslight-A League For Justice #1 (Team Member), Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #3
The shot heard ’round the nerd world.
Notes: This epic crossover, written by Ron Marz and Peter David (alternating issues) with art by Dan Jurgens and Claudio Castellini (jamming together on all four) starts simply: Spider-Man swinging through New York City and encountering a man trying to hold together a glowing cardboard box in an alley. He drops in to investigate, only to be struck by a shaft of light that transports him across universes to Gotham City, where he encounters the Joker. The box continues to send out streams of light, striking hero and villain alike and transporting them from one universe to another. As new alliances are forged, Clark Kent is paired up with the Daily Planet’s newest photographer, Peter Parker, and together they hope to solve the mystery. Meanwhile, in a place between worlds, the Spectre and the Living Tribunal are helpless to watch as two gargantuan entities, the Brothers, come into contact with one another. In the second issue, we learn that the Brothers were cosmic entities who came to blows untold eons ago, splitting into two different universes and forgetting their connection to one another. Now the awareness has returned and each brother, the embodiment of a different universe, seeks to prove his worlds’ superiority. They plan a contest, each choosing 11 champions from their respective worlds to do battle, with the world that loses vanishing forever. The first round ends with DC ahead 2-1, with Flash beating Quicksilver, Aquaman beating Namor, and Thor beating Captain Marvel. Meanwhile, a young man named Axel Asher learns the truth of his life – he is a sentient piece of the Brothers, and his powers are awakening.
I was in college when this miniseries came out, and when I say it was a big deal for comic fans, there can be no understating that. These were the fights that we’d been debating our entire lives, and now they were gonna be canon. Not only that, but fans were gonna get to VOTE on five of the eleven matches. And it was done by an all-star creative team, with only Claudio Castellini being kind of an unknown here in the States. It was a dream come true.
Looking back on it all this time later, there are things I like and things I don’t. In his introduction to the book, Ron Marz says that the decision was made to use the contemporary versions of the characters, such as the Ben Reilly Spider-Man, the long-haired Superman, and Thor wearing…whatever the hell he was wearing in the 90s. The argument was that part of the impetus for the miniseries was to pump new excitement into a comic industry that was in trouble, thus using the characters as they were currently appearing in the comics made the most sense. From a business standpoint I get it, and it worked, but you can’t deny that it dates this book badly, locking this in to a specific time period much more than many of the other crossovers I’ve read. Despite that, there are little moments that I just love: when Spider-Man meets the Joker, Joker refers to their previous encounters in the Batman/Spider-Man crossover – a crossover that Spidey doesn’t remember, but that the Fourth Wall-leaning Joker does. Peter David, in the second issue, really mines his well of comic knowledge, and do so with good humor as well: we get a scene of Rick Jones and Snapper Carr arguing over who’ll win the battle between Thor and Captain Marvel, for instance, and Aquaman’s victory comes when he wallops Namor with a killer whale, claiming that Namor’s weakness is that he’s too noble to cheat.
Superman’s part in the first two issues is somewhat minimal. We see him meet up with Juggernaut at the beginning, then it’s more of a Clark Kent/Peter Parker (but still Ben Reilly, don’t ask) team-up as they poke around fruitlessly, trying to figure out what’s happening. I like seeing those two characters together, but as their investigations ultimately go nowhere, it feels a bit like wasted space. Marz and David clearly were doing the best they could to have the characters of each world collide with one another on every page, and some of those pages feel like they could have been handled differently.
There’s a nostalgia inherent in these pages that I love, however, and even just two issues into this enormous book, I’m having fun already.
Notes: The third issue of Marvel Vs. DC is the main event, the issue where the rest of the battles are revealed, including the five matchups that the readers were allowed to vote on. It’s also, in many ways, the least satisfying part of the story, largely BECAUSE of those matches. Sure, there’s fun to be had in having the characters face off against each other. That’s kind of the point of the whole thing. But by leaving the results open to a vote, we were left with several fights that didn’t really work. I’m not the sort of reader who likes to get into the “who would in in a fight?” arguments online because the real answer is always the same: whoever the writer wants to win. But even then, it’s incumbent upon the writer to come up with a satisfying way to reach that conclusion, and that doesn’t always happen here with the fights that are nothing more than popularity contests. Storm defeats Wonder Woman by striking her with a bolt of lightning, something that a character of her power level should be able to shrug off with minimal trouble. Lobo loses to Wolverine by DUCKING BEHIND A BAR and having Wolverine as the only one who pops up, a cop-out so egregious that even writer Ron Marz recognizes it in the introduction to the Omnibus. And Batman manages to beat Captain America only because the latter is struck by a wave of storm runoff flushing through the sewer where their fight is taking place. None of these are satisfying in a narrative sense.
The two audience-decided fights with results I DO agree with, coincidentally, are the two fights involving a member of our Superman family. Superman faces off against the Hulk, and this being one of the eras in which the Hulk had Bruce Banner’s mind, getting him angrier doesn’t automatically ramp up his strength to absurd degrees as happens with some writers, so Superman’s victory is really never in question. Then Superboy faces off against Spider-Man, and although Superboy is far more powerful than Spidey, I give the tip of the hat to Spider-Man’s experience. Even this Spidey, the Ben Reilly Spidey, has had years of practice taking down opponents much more powerful than he is, so taking down a cocky Superboy isn’t a stretch.
This issue ends where the real fun begins, though, with the two Brothers deciding NOT to eliminate the losing universe after all, but instead attempting to re-form into a single being. In so doing, their universes merge as well. The Marvel Universe is gone! The DC Universe is gone! In their place stands only the AMALGAM AGE OF COMICS, a line of one-shots featuring merged version of the heroes of two worlds. The Amalgam comics had a great conceit – not only were they mashups of the Marvel and DC heroes, but they were written in such as way as though they had existed since the Golden Age, that there was a whole universe of history behind them, and that we were just seeing the first issues of a relaunched wave of titles.
“When Super-Soldier throws his mighty shieeeeeeld…”
Super-Soldier #1 is the first such issue in the volume, a comic by Mark Waid and Dave Gibbons featuring a fusion of Superman and Captain America. In 1938, an alien spacecraft crashed on Earth with no survivors, but the government used samples from the alien remains to enhance the ongoing super soldier program, giving incredible power to a new hero who could have won World War II almost singlehandedly had he not been lost in battle with the insidious Ultra-Metallo. It would be 50 years before he was found frozen in ice and thawed out by the Judgment League Avengers, returning to the world as Super-Soldier. Now, an attack on Daily Planet editor Jimmy Olsen sends the Super-Soldier into battle with his arch enemy: Lex Luthor, the Green Skull.
It’s a little hard to assign credit for this one. It’s unclear how much of the world is the result of the creative team of any individual issue and how much can be attributed to the think tank that crafted the Amalgam Universe as a whole. I’ll err on the side of caution, though, and praise Mark Waid and Dave Gibbons for just how well this comic book works. All the little bits and pieces of both Superman and Captain America lore link together seamlessly, without some of the clunky leaps in logic that plague many of the other Amalgam comics. It’s probably because this book had (in my opinion at least) the most talented creative team of the entire lot, but I loved Super-Soldier. I also love the fact that the Omnibus also includes a lot of the supplemental material, such as the fake letter pages from the original comics that drop nice tidbits about the world of Amalgam comics in the midst of inside jokes and Easter Eggs. It makes the read all the more enjoyable.
Sat. Aug 16
Short Film: Krypto Saves the Day: School Bus Scuffle
Look at that good, good, dopey-looking good boy.
Notes: I got an unexpected surprise this morning when I discovered that DC Studios has dropped the first of four Krypto animated shorts on their YouTube channel. School Bus Scuffle is first, with Coastal Catastrophe, Halloween Havoc, and Package Pandemonium all coming (presumably) soon. I love the fact that Krypto has kind of become the breakout character from the Superman movie (now available digitally!) and I’m gleeful to see what else they do with our good boy.
Written and directed by Ryan Kramer, in this short Krypto catches a glimpse of a pigeon and embarks upon an epic chase across the skies of Metropolis – a chase that quickly spirals into potential disaster for a school bus on the way to Metropolis Elementary School. Like in the movie, Kramer’s Krypto is very dog-like – easily distracted, prone to chasing things that look interesting, and with the potential to cause some real chaos with just the wag of his tail. But despite that, he shows that he really is a good boy at heart. There’s a lot of humor in this short, including running bits with the kids in the bus (including one who’s taking a nap) that are particularly amusing. I’m really looking forward to the next three shorts in this series.
Comics: Bruce Wayne: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #1, Spider-Boy #1
Notes: Although Bruce Wayne: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. by Chuck Dixon and Cary Nord doesn’t feature Super-Soldier or any other Superman family Amalgams, I thought it was worthy of mention because it does carry over the Green Skull Lex Luthor from Super-Soldier #1. In this one, Bruce Wayne’s parents were assassinated by Hydra as a child, prompting him to join S.H.I.E.L.D. when he grew up. Now he’s risen through the ranks and turned the spy organization into his personal army with one goal: vengeance against the Green Skull. Flash forward to the present day and he’s using a rig designed by Tony Stark to lead a strike force against Hydra, including special agents Moonwing (Moon Knight/Nightwing) and Huntress (Sharon Carter/Barbara Gordon). This is an interesting one, showing that the “Amalgamations” aren’t always one-to-one. Madame Hydra, for instance, is secretly Selina Luthor. Jason Todd shows up in a Deathlok suit, although the characterization doesn’t really fit either of them, and Bane MAY be mashed up with Crossbones, but he may just be mashed with a generic Hydra mook, too. We get to see Sgt. Rock with Nick Fury, though, and that’s good times.
Alas, ‘Ringo, we hardly knew ye.
Spider-Boy #1, by Karl Kesel and the late, legendary Mike Wieringo, is still one of the favorites of this event, and in fact, it was recently announced that this will be the first Marvel/DC crossover book to get the facsimile treatment that’s so popular these days. Mashing up Spider-Man and Superboy was probably a clever little joke on the fact that, act the time at least, they were both clones, and the result is one of the highlights of the entire DC Vs. Marvel era. The book opens up in Project CADMUS, with the titular Spider-Boy defending the genetic project from the invading Bizarnage. From there we get a glimpse of his origin: part of an experiment to replicate the Super-Soldier project, it wasn’t entirely successful, killing geneticist Peter Parker in the process. The resultant specimen had a portion of Super-Soldier’s strength and the ability to alter his personal gravity, making it appear as though he could cling to walls, thus the spider-theme.
I can only imagine the fun Karl Kesel had putting all the Super and Spider Lego pieces together in new ways here. The kid is raised by his “Uncle Gen,” aka GENeral Thunderbolt Ross, who is killed by a burglar. He creates a secret identity paying tribute to his two late “fathers,” calling himself Pete Ross. And Cadmus’s staff include a murderer’s row of big brains from both universes: Reed Richards, Ray Palmer, Hank Pym, Otto Octavius. We even get to see S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sue Storm, her brother Johnny, and Senator Ben “Rocky” Grimm. It’s the kind of absurd thing you create when you’re a kid, or wild fanfiction made semi-canon by circumstances.
All of it is wrapped up in the joyfully energetic and playful artwork of Mike Wieringo, the first face that would go on a Mt. Rushmore of great comic book artists whose careers – and lives – were tragically cut short. Under ‘Ringo’s hand the Kid looks – and behaves – far more like Superboy than Spider-Man, but that’s not a problem. Most of these Amalgams tend to lean a little harder on one “parent” than another, and the glorious mishmash of pieces in this comic book make it more than worth reading. No offense to Dan Slott or Bailey Briggs, but this is the character I’m always going to think of when somebody mentions Spider-Boy.
Sun., Aug 17
1938-2025
This is rapidly becoming my least-favorite part of the Year of Superman, but once again, we’ve lost someone who left an amazing impact on the world of the Man of Steel, and it’s only fitting that we take a moment to pay tribute. Oscar nominee and legendary actor Terence Stamp, best known as General Zod to fans of the Christopher Reeve Superman films, has passed away at the age of 87.
If you grew up watching the Reeve films, then Terrence Stamp is indelibly etched in your mind: a cold, stark face of villainy, with a voice that sends chills down your spine. Who among us can read the words “KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!” without hearing them in his voice? Stamp took a character who had been an occasional antagonist for Superman in the comics to being one of his most recognizable foes to the world at large, probably second only to Lex Luthor himself.
But beyond that, he had an incredible body of work in film and television, including another Superman connection that many of us forget. Despite being most famous as Zod, Stamp was tapped to provide the voice for Superman’s father, Jor-El, for several episodes of the Smallville TV show.
He was one of the greats, and he’ll never be forgotten.
Comics: X-Patrol #1, Assassins #1
Dreams like this are why you don’t eat burritos late at night.
Notes: Continuing my read of the Amalgam books, but there are less Super-connections in this batch. X-Patrol #1 features the titular team (a mashup of X-Force and the Doom Patrol, although like many Amalgam books, it picks up bits and pieces of other characters as well) in battle against the insidious Dr. Doomsday (Dr. Doom/Doomsday – do I really need to point some of these out?) as well as features a quick panel where we see “alternate dimensions” featuring fractured versions of the Amalgam heroes (in other words, the REAL Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, Wolverine, and Wonder Woman).
Assassins is a weird one: Catwoman and Elektra are merged into Catsai (a clever play on words), while Daredevil and Deathstroke are turned into the gender-flipped Dare the Terminator. The two of them are going after the Big Question (Kingpin/Riddler) in this book that, frankly, is kinda dull outside of giving us another half-dozen mashups. I mention it only because of the inclusion of Jimmy Urich, a combo of Jimmy Olsen and Ben Urich, naturally. The reason I’m bringing it up here is because it does kind of raise the question as to HOW tightly the Amalgam Universe was plotted out. We already saw Jimmy Olsen appear as an older version of himself in Super-Soldier, where it was somewhat implied that he filled the “Bucky” role in the Soldier’s World War II-era adventures. Having another mashup of him is curious. Not that this is the only character to appear more than once. This issue also has “Wired,” a combo of Cable and…I’m actually not sure who he’s supposed to be mashed up with. But we already saw Niles Cable over in X-Patrol, where he was mashed with the Doom Patrol’s Niles Caulder.
This is the kind of stuff that only mega nerds would care about, of course. But as an official mega nerd, I reserve the right to care.
Mon., Aug. 18
Comics: Taste of Justice #3, Fire and Ice: When Hell Freezes Over #4 (Guest Appearance)
Yeah, but you’re an easy mark, Arthur, be honest.
Notes: Today is Open House at my school for the fall semester, that night when parents are invited to come down and meet their children’ s teachers, discuss what’s going to happen in my class, and ask me vital questions like “Where’s room 121?” What that means for me, practically, is that I won’t have a chance to go home after work and read anything today. Instead, in the gap between my last class and when the parents start showing up, I’m going to squeeze in a couple of recent items from the DC Universe Infinite app, such as the DC Go! Comic Taste of Justice #3. I mentioned this comic before when I read issue #1: a clever little experiment in which the writer (Andrew Aydin) tries to work in a story surrounding a cooking demonstration. This issue is co-written by real life chefJosé Andrés, who appears in the story as a friend of reporter Clark Kent. Brainiac is doing Brainiac things that threaten the world food supply, with certain island nations being most directly affected, so Clark and Aquaman recruit Chef Andrés to help them feed an island community while the Justice League deals with Brainiac.
I have to give Aydin credit here. The concept of this book requires him to come up with a story that leaves a gap to insert a recipe in each issue, and it can’t be easy to come up with creative ways to do that. The first two issues (the first starring Lois Lane and the second starring Cyborg and Beast Boy) have taken the approach of someone trying to teach someone else how to cook. This time around he’s gotten more creative, using a crisis situation as a backdrop and making the food preparation aspart of the emergency response. We also get to see various Justice Leaguers using their powers to help out, such as Aquaman helping catch lionfish to cook and the Flash cleaning and filleting enough fish to feed the entire community in minutes.
Is the recipe itself any good? I’ve got no idea. I’ve not a chef and I’m pretty sure I’ve never eaten lionfish. But the way they handle things here makes it at least sound appetizing and not too difficult to prepare, which is pretty much what you want out of a comic book like this one.
I also worked in the recent Fire and Ice: When Hell Freezes Over #4. I got the first Fire and Ice miniseries last year because I love those two characters, and I have ever since the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League days. I decided not to get this sequel series because…well, I love the characters, and I found the first one profoundly disappointing. But not so disappointing that I won’t read it on the app. Superman makes a guest appearance in this issue, as Fire and Ice are in Hell dealing with Neron and Grodd attacks Smallville, which is their current home. There’s a cute little interaction with Superman and Martha Kent (who is a recurring member of the cast), but beyond that, I’m afraid there’s not much to recommend this issue. The supporting cast, like Fire and Ice, have been body-swapped, and the fact that I forgot that until halfway through the book is a testament to how uninteresting those characters have turned out to be. It’s a shame, because Bea and Tora are great characters and I love the fact that they’ve got a showcase. I just wish it were a better one.
Tues., Aug. 19
Comic Books: Doctor Strangefate #1, DC Vs. Marvel #4, Wonder Woman Vol. 6 #23 (Superman guest appearance), New Gods Vol. 5 #8 (Superman guest appearance), Batman: Justice Buster #26 (Superman guest appearance), Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #4
Notes: Today I’m finishing off the last of the Amalgam comics and the first DC Vs. Marvel crossover. The Amalgam books are mostly a little bit of silly fun, without contributing directly to the main storyline, many of them even ending on cliffhangers that were never meant to be resolved. The only exception was Doctor Strangefate #1, written by DC Vs. Marvel co-scribe Ron Marz. In this one, Access (the man with the power to step between the worlds) is being pursued by the titular Strangefate and some of his associates: the Shulk (Hulk/Solomon Grundy), Jade Nova (the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern/Frankie Raye Nova), and the White Witch (Scarlet Witch/Zatanna). Access, it seems, has two shards of the previous universes which can be used to separate them, and Strangefate is trying to stop that, knowing that if Access succeeds in restoring the previous universes, his world will be destroyed. Access escapes at the end of the issue, leading into the finale of the crossover. It’s not really a Superman-related comic, and I mention it mainly because it sets up the end. There is one small concession to the Superman mythos, though: Strangefate’s manservant is Mxy, a combination of Dr. Strange’s Wong and, of course, our old pal Mxyzptlk.
Imagine a sound like the biggest zipper in the multiverse.
Finally, DC Vs. Marvel ended the story with Access revealing that he hid the two missing shards inside of Batman and Captain America before the worlds merged, meaning that in this new universe they’re inside Dark Claw and Super-Soldier. He retrieves the shards and manages to “unzip” the universes, but the Brothers are now at each other’s throats. The worlds are on the verge of collapse, the sky itself is bleeding, even J. Jonah Jameson APOLOGIZES to Spider-Man for all the harassment over the years! And Peter Venkman thought dogs and cats living together was apocalyptic!
The destruction of the two most profitable universes in comics is prevented in an oddly fitting way: the Brothers are on the verge of destroying everything when they are confronted by the two men who briefly held pieces of their form, the men among gods called Batman and Captain America. And as each Brother examines the hero from his counterpart’s universe, they both come to the conclusion that the other world ain’t that bad after all and let the universes return to their natural state.
Makes you wish comic book FANS could learn that lesson, doesn’t it?
DC Vs. Marvel, as a whole, was a fun experiment, but it was kind of short on Superman. In this last issue we only see him briefly helping the Hulk fight the Mole Man in the Batcave, which sounds like somebody was doing “Superhero Mad Libs,” and then as Clark Kent arriving at the Daily Planet office so he can be with Lois as they face what they believe will be the end of the world. It’s to be expected, I suppose – a story of this size is bound to be heavier on plot than on character. Then again, that doesn’t mean it HAS to be this way.
I’m not done with the omnibus just yet. There was a second wave of Amalgam Comics, plus the two follow-up miniseries, so next week I’ll tap into the Superman-related issues of each of those. In the meantime, watch out for those bleeding skies.
With the movie (you know which one) so fresh in my mind, I thought quite a bit about what to do this week. I don’t know what Superman stories would be best to follow it. Certainly, anything that would be capable of TOPPING it is likely something I’ve already read. So rather than any of that, I decided to go in the opposite direction: parody. Parody is a classic format for stories, something that’s been around almost as long as storytelling itself. I’m pretty sure that after the first caveman, Ug, finished regaling his tribe with the story of how he singlehandedly took down a wooly mammoth, when he walked away his buddy Og stood up and started doing a mocking impression of Ug getting impaled by a tusk.
In the nearly 90 years of his existence, Superman has been parodied many times, and we’re going to look at those this week. We’ll look at his parodies from comics and magazines like Mad and Cracked, check out spoofs from shows like Saturday Night Live, and even delve into the times that the Looney Tunes did their own take on the Man of Steel. So this week, friends, let’s laugh.
Notes: Everybody has heard of Mad Magazine, but if you’re not a hardcore comic book nerd like myself you may not know that Mad actually started out as a comic, published by EC Comics, the same company responsible for classics like Tales From the Crypt and Weird Science. When the anti-comic furor of the 50s led to the creation of the Comics Code of America, an organization that at times seemed intended solely to crush EC out of existence, they pivoted and made Mad a magazine instead, because evidently making the page size larger and switching to black-and-white was enough to exempt it from the Code. I didn’t say it made sense, people.
But anyway, the fourth issue of Mad (the comic book) brought us one of the first Superman parodies in print: “Superduperman” by Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood. Here we meet Clark Bent, assistant copy boy at the Daily Dirt, a pathetic creature who has spent the last ten years saving up his meager salary (seventy-five cents and a good bus token) in the hopes of buying a pearl necklace for “girl reporter” Lois Pain. The city of Cosmopolis is being plagued by an “Unknown Monster,” and Clark dives into a phone booth (then a second because the first was occupied) to change into Superduperman. To his shock, he discovers that the “Monster” is, in fact, Captain Marbles, who has gone rogue and decided he’s just in it for the money.
A few interesting things here: Mad #4 was published in 1953, just a few months before Fawcett Comics would throw in the towel in their years-long court battle against National Comics over their claim that Captain Marvel infringed on their Superman copyright. So there’s a meta level to having Superduperman slug it out with Captain Marbles that I find pretty amusing, but I have to wonder if the average kid in 1953 would have gotten that joke. The depiction of “Clark Bent” is pretty striking here, taking the “meek, mild” Clark Kent that we all know and love and making him even more pathetic, making Lois a cold, cruel harpy, and making Superduperman kind of a dunce.
I think the biggest draw is Wally Wood’s artwork. He was one of the greatest comedic artists of the time, probably of ALL time, and the level of energy and fun he puts on every page is outstanding. The man was a giant and I’m so glad I included this story in the Year of Superman.
In 1988, Marvel Comics decided to get back into the parody game with What The–?!, the Marvel Mag of Mirth and Mayhem. I was 10 years old when this series started, and it was pretty much tailor-made for me. The second issue, though, was something that was actually more special than I realized at the time: Superbman versus the Fantastical Four in “My Badguy, My Enemy!” by none other than John Byrne.
In 1988, Byrne was wrapping up his time on Superman for DC and returning to Marvel, where had previously done a legendary run on Fantastic Four, so I suppose the idea of having him parody his two greatest achievements in comics to date was a natural match. Byrne wrote and drew this story (with inks by another Superman laureate, Jerry Ordway), which has reporters Park Bench and Nosy Dame travel to New York from their home in Metropopolopolis to report on the newest bankruptcy of the Fantastical Four. When the Human Scorch carelessly causes Nosey’s hairdo to wilt, Superbman jumps into action.
I loved this incredibly goofy story as a kid and, as an adult, I appreciate it on an entirely different level. Byrne was doing something that I admire the hell out of: making fun of himself and having a grand time doing it. The story makes several references to the way Superman was changed in Byrne’s own reboot, including comments about how he’s not as powerful as he was previously, how he’s not as square as he used to be, and how his cape is no longer indestructible. The last one led to a joke that 10-year-old me thought was the funniest thing he’d ever read and, if I’m being honest, adult me still thinks is pretty hilarious:
Even a parody of Ben Grimm still sounds like Ben Grimm, and I think that’s beautiful.
But as the fight between our heroes rages, off to the side there’s a battle of wits between Doctor Bloom, sworn enemy of the Fantastical Four, and Rex Ruthless, sworn enemy of Superbman (the Keeper of the Comics Code actually has to step in at one point to tell them to cut down on the swearing). The two super-geniuses begin arguing over their plots, with Bloom revealing that he faked the FF’s bankruptcy to lure Park Bent to report on it, having deduced that Bent was Superbman. Ruthless finds this HILARIOUS, in a page that I now recognize as being the real pearl of this story. He gives Bloom a lecture on how impossible that would be, a page where Byrne is parodying his own treatment of Lex Luthor from Superman (Vol. 2) #2, in which Luthor rejected the same line of logic connecting Clark and Superman. Byrne even gets into making jokes about his own predilections in panel layout here, stuff that as a kid I didn’t catch on to at all. (I wasn’t reading Superman comics yet at that point, and even if I had been I don’t know if I would have caught on to all the nuances.)
But perhaps the greatest inside joke in the comic is the way Byrne draws Superbman’s s-shield. I remember reading an introduction Byrne once wrote for Man of Steel in which he discussed his history with Superman and how, as a child, he didn’t realize the symbol was supposed to be an “s.” To him, he said, the shapes looked like a pair of fish swimming at one another. So when he got the chance to do a parody, that’s what he drew. That’s a joke that I bet almost NOBODY got – I certainly didn’t get it at the time – but it’s one of my favorites now.
I wish Byrne had done more comedy comics like this one. He had a real flair for it.
Thur. July 17
Magazines: Mad #208, Cracked #160
Notes: When I was younger I read Mad and Cracked pretty regularly, although I drifted away as I got older. This happened with a lot of stuff, but unlike other things I dropped as being “for kids” like Disney and Archie comics, I never really went back to Mad on a regular basis. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I think my sense of humor just grew in a different direction than those publications specialize in. Still, I’ve got a lot of them from when I was younger and I’ve tracked down others over the years that either featured or reprinted specific Superman comics – plus there are some available (you know where this is going) on the DC Universe Infinite app. So during Parody Week, I’m going to try to go through some of the ones that I’ve got in roughly the order of publication.
First up is Mad #208, which recycled the title “Superduperman” for its parody of the first Christopher Reeve movie. I can’t find a writer credit, oddly enough, but Mort Drucker’s signature appears on the first page and – let’s be frank – it would be pretty clear it was his art even without it. Drucker was a phenomenal caricaturist, the characters in his Mad parodies immediately recognizable as the celebrities he was spoofing, even when exaggerating or mocking their features. He even nails the design of Glenn Ford and Phillis Thaxter as Jonathan and Martha Kent in their brief appearance.
I’m not going to bother to recap the story here, because as a parody it’s a fairly by-the-beat retelling of the story of the movie. How well, then, does it succeed as a comedy?
Eeeeeeeh.
I think this is why I never quite got back to Mad once I got older. The comedy in many of these stories is dependent on straw man jokes and easy targets: a crack about how improbable it is that Lois can afford such an opulent apartment on a reporter’s salary, gags about how outrageously out-of-proportion Marlon Brando’s paycheck for this movie was, and of course, a joke about the glasses. Probably the best joke in the entire parody comes at the very end, after Superduperman spins time back to save “Lotus Lain.” As in the movie, Supes gets a vision of his father reminding him he’s not supposed to interfere with human history. In this version, though, there’s a second voice telling him to do it – it turns out to be the executives at Warner Bros. recognizing that they need Lotus alive for Superduperman II.
The same month that Mad’s parody came out, rival magazine Cracked gave us “Suped-Upman: The Satire.” Once again, there’s no credited creative team, but the artwork to me looks a hell of a lot like the great John Severin, who did stories for Cracked for decades.
The Cracked story isn’t specifically parodying the movie, but rather just giving us a goofy look at a Superman-type character, and honestly, I think it’s better for it. Freed from trying to draw the actors, Severin’s characters have a life and expressiveness where other parodies sometimes fall short. Cluck Clone doesn’t leave his parents’ farm to become a reporter, but rather gets a job at a delicatessen called the Deli Planet where he meets a lovely girl named Lewis Paine – whose safety takes top priority over gunshot victims when Suped-Upman goes into action a few pages later.
After reading just these two parodies, I feel like I’m already starting to gel a sort of theory of satire, at least how I see it. Of the two, the Cracked story is honestly much funnier and a lot of fun to read, and I think the reason for that is because whoever wrote it wasn’t simply retelling the story of the movie. He took the broad strokes of the Superman legend, tweaked them in a humorous way, and then told his own story rather than just filling in the blanks of the existing plotline like a complicated Mad Lib. Cracked is doing its own thing, and it’s a better story for it.
And you know, the same is true for all the great satires out there. Compare something like Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs to a Friedberg/Seltzer movie such as Epic Movie. Brooks simply uses the CONCEPTS of science fiction (especially, but not exclusively Star Wars) to tell a funny story, whereas Friedberg and Seltzer rip out chunks of existing stories and patch them together like some horrific Frankenquilt that seems to think that simply REFERRING to another movie is enough to qualify as a joke. All of this is building my brain up to what I think I’m going to refer to as Petit’s Law of Satire: Satire is funnier in broad strokes than in specifics. The two stories I read yesterday, from Mad #4 and What The–?! #2, were both really funny, and neither of them was parodying a specific story. The Cracked satire is funnier than the Mad by-the-beat parody.
I think I’m on to something here.
Let’s see if it holds up over the next few days.
Comic Books: New Gods Vol. 5 #7 (Guest Appearance), Green Lantern Vol. 8 #23 (Guest Appearance, Conner Kent)
Fri., July 18
Short Films: Super-Rabbit (1943), Stupor Duck (1956), Superior Duck (1996)
Notes: Today I decided to peek in on the second greatest collection of characters in the Warner Bros. catalogue, after the DC superheroes. I’m talking, of course, of the Looney Tunes. I have a deep, abiding love of the likes of Bugs and Daffy, and as each of those stalwarts took their turns poking fun at Superman, I wanted to include them here in Parody Week, starting with Bugs Bunny in Super-Rabbit.
Directed by Chuck Jones, this cartoon starts off with a spoof of the Flesicher shorts, parodying the old “faster than a speeding bullet” intro before bringing us to Super-Rabbit’s origin. Bugs Bunny is a lab animal in this one, given some super-powered carrots that give him incredible powers. He decides the best way to use these powers is to head to Texas and take on a hunter called Cottontail Smith who has dedicated himself to wiping out all rabbits. Bugs does his usual number on Smith and his horse until a midair mishap causes him to lose his power carrots, which Smith and the horse gobble them up. Just before he’s about to be pummeled, Bugs declares, “This looks like a job for a REAL Superman!” Then, in a bit of standard-for-the-time patriotism, he ducks into a phone booth, joins the army, and marches off in the direction of a road sign that inexplicably points to both Berlin AND Tokyo.
The superhero stuff in this cartoon is almost incidental. The opening sequence is where most of the tropes come in, with the Fleischer-specific parody, but once Bugs gets to Texas and comes to loggerheads with Smith the antics he pulls off are pretty standard for him. Could catching a cannonball and using it to play an impromptu game of basketball count as a feat of super-strength? Sure, but this is also BUGS BUNNY we’re talking about, a cosmic trickster with the ability to warp reality in any manner he deems the most amusing at the time, so I’m not convinced that the magic carrots are strictly necessary here. The only parts of the cartoon that seem specifically dedicated to a Superman parody, other than Bugs’s outfit, are the bits where he’s flying. That does, of course, give us the best joke in the entire short, as Bugs flies into the stratosphere and whips past a horse who is astonished to see a rabbit flying at 30,000 feet.
Think about that for a minute.
Anyway, it’s a good cartoon. Perhaps not the greatest parody in history, but it IS the cartoon that led to the awesome Super-Rabbit figure that adorns one of my Superman shelves, and it’s worth it for that alone.
Next up, in 1956 Robert McKimson drafted Daffy Duck for another poke at the man of steel in Stupor Duck. This one is a much more direct parody of Superman than Super-Rabbit, beginning with Daffy in disguise as “mild-mannered reporter Cluck Trent.” Daffy overhears his editor watching TV but, true to form, mistakes the broadcast for the braggadocio of a supervillain and sets out to thwart him, only to get thwarted himself over and over.
Bugs is a classic character, but in terms of parody, I think Daffy is actually more effective. A lot of the humor in this short comes from Daffy making a fool of himself in ways that just wouldn’t happen to Bugs. He saves a building from collapsing, for example, only to wind up getting punched out by the head of the demolition crew that was TRYING to demolish it. He saves a “sinking” ship and gets blasted by the cannon of the submarine he just pulled out of the water. It’s great, goofy stuff that is perfectly in keeping with Daffy Duck, but wouldn’t have worked with Bugs. I think I have to conclude, oddly enough, that although Super-Rabbit is a funnier cartoon, Stupor Duck is a better parody.
Director Chuck Jones would take one more swing at superheroes more than five decades after Super-Rabbit, teaming up with Daffy for the 1996 short Superior Duck. This time out, Daffy is a sort of mashup between Superman and Duck Dodgers, setting out to save the day only to be constantly thwarted by…his narrator.
Seriously, that’s the entire cartoon. Daffy is out to do some superheroics, but the narrator (voiced by the immortal Thurl Ravenscroft) cannot get his lines right, forcing Daffy into one increasingly-preposterous situation after another. It’s a less direct Superman parody than some of the others, but they make up for it with a last-act cameo that left me in stitches.
With Mel Blanc having left us by this point, we’re left with different voice actors, some of which work and others don’t. Frank Gorshin, TV’s Riddler, absolutely knocks it out of the park as Daffy and Foghorn Leghorn. Eric Goldberg does a good Porky and Marvin the Martian, but his Tweety left something to be desired. But this still feels like the same Chuck Jones who gave us the likes of Duck Amuck and One Froggy Evening. It’s a hoot.
TV Episode: The Looney Tunes Show, Season 2, Episode 26: “SuperRabbit.”
Notes: But we’re not done yet! In 2011, the Cartoon Network brought us the highly-underrated cartoon The Looney Tunes Show. I loved this show – rather than simply aping the classic Looney Tunes shorts, they merged those sensibilities with a TV sitcom, casting Bugs and Daffy as roommates in a kind of Odd Couple situation, with Bugs playing the more sensible, straightlaced one to Daffy’s aimless vagabond. If I had heard the show described as such before I watched it, I probably would have dismissed it outright, but I really grew to love the series and to this day wish it had lasted longer than two seasons.
The episode I’m focusing on was the season two finale (which, sadly, turned out to be the series finale as well), “SuperRabbit.” In this one, as Daffy starts scrounging through Bugs’s belongings looking for stuff to sell (did I mention he was a vagabond?) he comes across a strange crystal carrot. Bugs tries to divert Daffy’s attention from the carrot with a tale of his “true” origins. He isn’t REALLY Bugs Bunny, he claims, but an alien from the planet Crypton. (With a “C.” Because Daffy is WAAAAY too smart to fall for Bugs ripping off Superman’s origin by spelling it with a “K”.”) From there, we actually get an adventure of Bugs as SuperRabbit facing off against some of his greatest enemies: Brainiac (aka Marvin the Martian)! Lex Luthor! (Elmer Fudd, naturally)! And General Zod (Daffy himself)!
I hate to say it, but this was actually one of the weaker episodes of The Looney Tunes Show. The strength of the cartoon came from putting Bugs and Daffy into very sitcom-esque tropes and then spinning them wildly out of control. This episode mostly avoids that, electing instead to do a full-episode parody of what could have been a fairly standard Superman story with a few added jokes (such as Elmer’s Lex Luthor telling people “I’m hunting SuperWabbits”). It’s an okay parody, but it’s nowhere near the level of entertainment that this show was usually capable of, and it makes me sad that the show ended on this note.
Sat. July 19
Magazines: Mad #225, Cracked #183
Notes: Mad returned to the world of “Superduperman” with a parody of Superman II, with Mort Drucker once again providing artwork and Frank Jacobs writing it. For all I know, Jacobs wrote the first one as well, but as I said a couple of days ago, I couldn’t find a credit for that one. It certainly reads like it was written by the same author. Like the first one, “Superduperman II” is, in essence, a beat-for-beat retelling of the plot of the movie with added puns. Some of them, of course, land better than others. We have a very standard formula for a Mad parody: Jacobs and Drucker essentially break the movie down into single-panel moments; in each panel, the characters make wry observations about the situation they are currently in; and it ends with a punchline. Once you get used to it, the humor comes across as very staccato, with a rhythm that’s predictable, but not in a soothing way, so it’s not surprising that the funniest moments in the story are all things that are original to the comic. There’s a funny bit at the beginning, for example, where they mock the movie for opening up with flashbacks to the first film. Later, during the fight with the Phantom Zone criminals, Rocky Balboa randomly shows up for a panel to punch the Non parody, telling Superduperman that he’s there to get in shape for his own upcoming sequel. The funniest wholly original gag comes in a couplet where Superduperman is rushing off to Paris to save Lotus Lain, only to have to whip around because he forgot France is eastward.
Really effective comedy is based on surprise, and I think that’s pretty indicative of why I fell out of love with Mad parodies as I got older – they’re all pretty much the same, pretty predictable. Even at this point, in 1981, the good parts of the magazine were the things that didn’t parody a specific story, like Don Martin’s strips, Sergio Aragones’ marginals, and of course, “Spy Vs. Spy.”
Cracked, meanwhile, again chose not to do a direct parody of Superman II, instead choosing to run a three-page gag piece called “What Christopher Reeve (That Super Man) Will Be Like When He Gets Old.” The joke here is that, with Superman II being a huge hit, they assumed that they would go on to make dozens and dozens of sequels for decades to come, and the comic jokes about what an “old” Superman would be like: his powers being less impressive, using his strength to break a pound of spaghetti rather than bend steel, for example. The jokes were fair for the time – this was the era where movie sequels were just starting to get out of hand, and once popular movie franchise hit a certain point, there was an assumption that it would go on forever. (Remember the bit in Back to the Future Part II where Marty cringes from the holographic shark advertising Jaws 19, or the quick joke in Spaceballs in which a movie reviewer is about to talk about Rocky 5,000?) The problem here is obvious, and not at all the fault of anybody who worked on this comic: no matter how good the jokes may have seemed at the time, given what happened to Christopher Reeve, they’re just not funny anymore.
I want to note, briefly, that I’m going to try to cover as many Superman parodies as I can before this week is up, but that number is dependent on what’s actually available to me in my personal collection or the DC app, and also on my ability to locate them. I’ve scrouged up quite a few, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve identified them all. I bring that up because if Cracked did parodies of movies past Superman II, I either don’t have them or can’t find them. From here on out, the remaining print parodies on my list are all Mad.
Mad #243, for example, teamed Drucker with writer Stan Hart for “Stuporman ZZZ.” Changing up the writer didn’t change up the formula, though – it’s still your average beat-for-beat Mad parody. Each panel has that same ol’ rhythm, the same ol’ cadence, the same ol’ delivery. And once again, the funniest part is the stuff that’s NOT directly taken from the film: this time around, it’s a sequence after the “Kraptonite” makes Stuporman go bad, where he demonstrates this by using a joy buzzer to shake the Pope’s hand, giving a whoopee cushion to the UN Secretary-General, and mooning Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the White House. Reading these stories actually makes me feel sorry for Mort Drucker – he’s such a fantastic cartoonist and caricaturist, and I wish he’d been given better material to illustrate. Even the two-page “Don Martin’s Superman III Outtakes” strip is funnier than the main story.
I’m starting to get a little burned out on the Mad formula now, to the point where I’m looking forward to the point where I get to the parodies that came out after I fell off as a reader. Hopefully by that point, they’ll have discovered a second way to tell a joke.
Comics: Superman Unlimited #3, Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #2, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #41
Notes: It ain’t all parodies, though, friends. There are still new Superman comics this week, and I’m getting into those today too, starting with Dan Slott and Rafael Albuqueque’s Superman Unlimited #3. Told largely through Krypto’s eyes, in this issue we see our best boy catch some bad guys, get taken for a walk by Jon, and then catch scent of an old foe of Superman’s that he decides to track down.
At first, the story seems like a charming but inconsequential chapter of the Unlimited storyline. The first two issues largely dealt with the enormous Kryptonite meteor that fell to Earth and the havoc it’s wreaking everywhere, but that plotline doesn’t show up here for quite some time. The Krypto story is lovely, and there’s a great scene where Lois and Clark ask Jon what exactly he’s doing with himself these days (a question a lot of the readers are asking too – the character has been painfully aimless for entirely too long, and I’m not shy about laying the blame for that on the stupid age-up foisted on him during the Bendis run). In the last third of the book, though, there’s a nice reveal where we come to understand how the Krypto story is fitting in. Some new wrinkles to the Kryptonite story are added and a new player is added to the game, and that makes this book – which was already fun to read – feel much more significant.
Ryan North and Mike Norton are back for Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #2. I have no doubt that this miniseries owes its existence to the fact that Krypto has such a big role in the movie, and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if DC didn’t even have any intention of publishing a Krypto series until after he showed up in the trailer last December and got such a huge response. If that’s true, then that trailer has given us one of the best comics of the year.
In this second issue, Krypto has been taken in by – of all people – a young Lex Luthor. Having left his original home of Smallville, Lex is living with relatives he clearly despises and for some reason, decides to take in this stray dog he’s found. The ambition that will mark the adult Lex Luthor is already there, but in this early incarnation, he’s struggling with his morality. This would be a fascinating book even if it weren’t for Krypto. We’re seeing the kind of internal conflict that kind of determines who a character will eventually be – if given the chance for greatness at the expense of having to do something horrific, will they do it? Adult Lex, we know, wouldn’t hesitate, but seeing him at a young enough developmental stage where there’s still a last lingering shred of conscience is fascinating.
People who pick up this comic expecting to see the bounding, joyful Krypto of the movie might be a little put off, but if that’s not all you’re looking for, this comic is really phenomenal.
Finally, in Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #41, we start with Batman, Robin, and Superman inexplicably transported to Bizarro World. Bizarro World is actually kind of an appropriate element to bring in here in Parody Week, because bad Bizarro stories are kind of like a bad Mad satire: by-the-book tellings of an oaf doing things backwards. The good ones find new twists to put on it, and this one is pretty good. We start off with Robin as the point of view character, which is nice, as he’s never been to Bizarro World before and the sheer panic he goes through uses a normally unflappable character to show just how crazy it is. Then we get to the twist – there’s some sort of pandemic going through the Bizarros that warps their brains and makes them the worst thing a Bizarro can be: normal. Waid finds some fun ways to play with the Bizarro’s backwards nature in this issue, promising a fun story arc.
Sun. July 20
Comedy Sketches: “Bicycle Repairman” from Monty Python’s Flying Circus Season One, Episode Three, Assorted Saturday Night Live sketches
Notes: Okay, so we’ve taken a look at Superman parodies in comics and cartoons, but what about live action? These, I think, can give us a broader view of how pop culture views the Man of Steel, at least at the time each parody was made. We’ll start off with Monty Python’s “Bicycle Repairman” sketch from 1969. In this bit, we peek in on an inverted world in which everyone is Superman. At least, everyone wears a Superman costume and has padded muscles – we never actually witness any of these Supermen doing anything super. But when trouble happens, in the form of Terry Jones Superman falling off his bicycle, another Superman (Michael Palin) makes a quick change and rushes to save the day as…BICYCLE REPAIRMAN!
The Pythons, of course, were masters of surreal comedy. It doesn’t matter if the sketch makes no logical sense, it’s about the gags and about the underlying subversion that they’re sneaking in. And while this particular sketch doesn’t make any grand political statements, it IS interesting in what it shows us about how superheroes were viewed in 1969. First of all, there’s no particular reason for this sketch to be about Superman. They could have put virtually any superhero costume on the cast and the joke would have been exactly the same. But in 1969, Superman was viewed as the default superhero among most people. It’s who you automatically thought of when you said the word, and so that’s what they went with.
The sketch is also intriguing in how it reflects on one other non-Superman element. In the bit where Bicycle Repairman is (spoiler) repairing the bicycle, we get treated to nonsensical “sound effects” such as “Clink!”, “Inflate!” and “Alter Saddle!” They’re done in the style of the “Bow! Bam!” shots from the 1966 Batman TV show. Between these two things, I think it gives us a fairly accurate depiction of just how the general public viewed superheroes at the end of the 60s.
The rest of the sketches I’ve found all come from Saturday Night Live, although thankfully, they’re sometimes decades apart, so I think that gives us an interesting overview of the topic. We’re starting with the “Superhero Party” sketch from 1979, starring Margot Kidder herself as Lois Lane and Bill Murray as Superman, hosting their first party together.
We get an all-star roundup of comedians playing comic book characters in this one: Dan Akroyd as the Flash, John Belushi as the Hulk (who rotates being Grand Marshall of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade with Green Lantern) and Jane Curtain popping in as a delightfully catty Lana Lang who tries to convince Lois that Clark Kent is secretly the Flash (apparently Superman still hasn’t told her his secret identity, despite having been married for some time). Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, and the Thing all show up in off-the-rack costumes that conceal the presumed extras wearing them. The gem here is Garrett Morris as Ant-Man, a character who, at the time, was as D-list as you could get. I’m sure most of the audience watching this when it aired in 1979 assumed it was a fake character the SNL writers made up. Murray ducks out at one point and returns as “Clark Kent,” where Lois starts confiding to her old pal that life with Superman has become stiflingly dull. What really crushes his spirit, though, is finding out that Lois used to date the Hulk.
This sketch is full of hilarious, little moments. Murray prances around, “flying” from one spot in the room to another. Lois briefly admonishes him to allow her to open a housewarming gift because “not all of us have X-Ray vision,” and so forth. Unlike the Monty Python example, which just uses a surface level awareness of Superman, the writers of this sketch pull some deep cuts that I’m sure would zip past a lot of people, especially the Ant-Man reference (which nonetheless was so memorable that it got Morris a cameo in the first Ant-Man movie). The ending of the sketch, I confess, is a little weak, but at least it HAS an ending, which is more than you can say for most SNL segments of the past 20 years or so.
In 1985, Christopher Reeve hosted the show. Rather than actually parody Superman himself, though, they took the clever approach of telling the story of the “Superman Auditions.” Jim Belushi plays Richard Donner, auditioning the last three potential actors for the role of his Superman movie, including (of course) Christopher Reeve as himself. The three of them read sides opposite Donner’s assistant (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss). When they run the scene where Clark stops a mugger, Belushi suddenly fires a gun at Reeve. He’s angry when the bullet, rather than bouncing off his chest harmlessly, keeps bouncing off his chin and teeth and breaking windows. Reeve turns out to be at a serious disadvantage compared to the other two auditioners, one of whom catches the bullet in his teeth and the other of which is promptly shot dead.
The concept is so utterly absurd that it’s actually kind of delightful, and while nothing about it makes the slightest bit of sense, I keep laughing every time I see it. In terms of mannerisms, Reeve plays his Superman lines just the way he always does, but he keeps bumbling the use of his authentic super powers in a way that seems appropriate for his Clark Kent. And this time the punchline at the end of the sketch lands nicely.
The next sketch is VERY much of its time, “Superman’s Funeral” from 1992. As I mentioned waaaay back when I did my reread of the Death of Superman for this blog, it was big news – so big that it even inspired an SNL sketch. You have to understand, the “Superhero Party” and “Superman Auditions” sketches were 100 percent done just because they had Kidder and Reeve hosting the show, and when that happens, they tend to play off of some of the actor’s best-known characters. But that doesn’t apply to “Superman’s Funeral.” They did this bit just because it was such an enormous part of the cultural zeitgeist at just that moment. (Also in the zeitgeist: that episode’s host, comedian Sinbad.)
Superman, as you may expect, doesn’t actually appear in this bit. We instead have Rob Schneider as Jimmy Olsen acting as host for Superman’s funeral. He talks to the other heroes as they arrive: Aquaman (David Spade), Adam Sandler (the Flash), Tim Meadows (Green Lantern). Dana Carvey’s Batman breaks down in tears during the eulogy, leading to Robin (Chris Rock) trying to comfort him on the dais. Lex Luthor (Al Franken) ultimately has to confess that he’s actually pretty happy about the whole thing. Perry White (the immortal Phil Hartman) gives a speech where he can do little more than burble “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” over and over again. Chris Farley as the Hulk (some people from Marvel Comics came by to pay their respects) hilariously switches from incoherent Hulk-speech to being an erudite speaker when he switches to his notecards. And then at the end, Jimmy rushes in and reports that the Legion of Doom is attacking the Metropolis Arena. Batman quickly mobilizes the rest of the heroes to rush off and thwart them. The surprisingly touching moment (“Let’s do it for Superman!”) is slightly undercut – in traditional SNL style – by showing Black Lightning (Sinbad) swiping food from the catering table.
Again, I’m impressed by some of the details in this bit. Tim Meadows, for instance, wears a costume that’s actually accurate to what John Stewart was wearing in the comics at the time, as opposed to the standard GL uniform. And Sinbad’s Black Lightning is incensed at the fact that nobody at the funeral seems to know who he is. (This was funnier in 1992, before the character had his own television series.)
On the other hand, they weren’t married to modern continuity either. Lois Lane (Julia Sweeney) is confused that Clark Kent hasn’t shown up for the funeral. Given that most of the public, at this point, probably weren’t aware that Lois was in on the secret by now or that she and Clark were engaged, it’s a forgivable omission. I love this sketch. I remember watching it when it originally aired, being dumbfounded by the fact that stuff from comic books – from my comics, that I was reading – were actually being spoofed by SNL. And to be frank, this is what I consider their Golden Age, the era of Hartman, Carvey, Mike Myers and so forth. Once those guys left, the show fell off, and I’ve honestly never found it to be consistently funny ever since then. Does that make me sound like a grumpy old man? Well, what can I say? When you’re right, you’re right.
Future Black Adam Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson took on the Man of Steel in 2000 in a sketch called “Clark Kent.” (Oddly enough, unlike the other sketches, this one doesn’t appear to be available on YouTube. We’ll have to content ourselves with a random TikTok capture of it.) In this one, after Superman zips away from the Daily Planet, the newspaper staff (featuring Molly Shannon as Lois Lane, Jimmy Fallon as Jimmy Olsen, and Chris Parnell as Perry White) begrudgingly wait for Johnson’s Clark Kent to appear, like he always does. As he walks onto the scene, his Superman costume ridiculously poking out from beneath his suit, the others all crack up over how his pathetic attempts to conceal his secret identity.
That’s the whole joke in this sketch – the rest of the Planet staffers are painfully aware that Superman and Clark are the same person and constantly mock him behind his back. It’s a funny bit, too – while I think people don’t give the character enough credit for how he pulls off the masquerade (shown most effectively by Christopher Reeve and in the All Star Superman series), the joke is actually kind of funny at first. It does lapse into being a little mean-spirited as the three of them delight in screwing with him, not to mention some seriously dated jokes where they try to rile “Clark” by claiming “Superman” might be gay. This whole sketch is kind of endemic of SNL, though – a premise that has some potential, but that quickly spirals into jokes that tend to be more nasty than funny, then falling short at the end.
Finally, late last year, SNL dropped a sketch on YouTube that had apparently been cut for time earlier in the season, John Mulaney and Sarah Sherman as Superman and Lois, in an “alternate version” of the famous interview from the 1978 film. The bit starts off the same as the scene from the film, with Superman arriving at Lois’s apartment in the hopes of answering some of the questions the public may have about him, only to be interrupted by the sudden appearance of Lois’s heretofore unmentioned roommate Glenn (Chloe Fineman). Fineman shows up wearing an awful wig and an oversized bikini t-shirt, then stumbles into mispronouncing “Superman” as though it were a last name. From there Fineman just gets more and more debauched and inappropriate as Superman and Lois desperately attempt to conduct the interview.
I’m a big fan of John Mulaney. He’s one of the best stand-up performers in the public eye these days, he’s a GREAT voice actor (I loved him as Spider-Ham in Into the Spider-Verse), and if you’ve never seen his routine about the fun he and a friend had with a jukebox when they were kids, stop right now and watch it on YouTube. But the sketch just doesn’t work. The joke – the ONLY joke – is that Lois’s roommate is a debaucherous idiot. Not a FUNNY idiot, just an idiot. The only thing resembling humor comes towards the end when Superman tries to fly Lois away and is surprised to find her heavier than he expected. (It’s funny, you see, because she’s seen him lift a tank with his little finger.) The rest of it…John Mulaney deserves better. Hell, everyone in this sketch deserves better. I don’t know who wrote this sketch or who approved it, but the only person at SNL who was doing their job that week is the person who decided to cut it for time.
Animated Short: She-Sick Sailors (1944)
Notes: There’s one more cartoon I forgot to cover the other day, and as I doubt I’ll have a chance before this week ends, I’m gonna squeeze it in now. Seymour Kneitel, who directed several of the Fleischer Superman shorts, had one more shot at the character in 1944, in the Popeye cartoon She-Sick Sailors. When Popeye discovers that Olive Oyl is enamored of the Superman comic books (delightfully, complete with the Fleischer Superman anthem), Bluto decides to cut in on Popeye’s action by putting on a Superman costume, shaving his beard off, and impersonating the Man of Steel. From there, we get your average Popeye short, with the sailor and Bluto sparring over Olive’s affections, but with an added Superman element.
I love this short. It’s a perfect Popeye cartoon, using the formula to a tee, but at the same time it still manages to crack jokes about Superman himself and the expectations of the character, largely informed by the cartoons that the same studio had recently finished making. And it’s all worth it all just to hear Popeye deliver the line “Listen here, Stupidman! Ya still has ta proves ta ME that you’re a better man than I am!”
Mon., July 21
Magazines: Mad #415, Mad #468, #524
Notes: I’m jumping ahead now to 2002, and a Mad parody of a piece of Superman lore we’ve only briefly touched upon here so far: Smallville. Their “Smellville” parody (with art, once more, by the great Mort Drucker, written by Dick Debartolo), starts with the usual Mad Magazine double-page spread where we get a Mousketeer Roll Call of the cast, each giving us a brief description of who they are, their function on the show, and the only joke that the magazine seems to think the character is capable of providing.
It’s funny to notice some of the assumptions that this parody made about the show, which was still very early in its run when it was published. That opening double-paged spread, for instance, features caricatures of Margot Kidder and Teri Hatcher, each claiming they’re planning to be Lois Lane when they graduate. It feels like the writer is leaning on a prediction that Lois would eventually be revealed to be a Smallville High Student, but that of course didn’t happen. On the other hand, wondering what the impetus was behind that specific gag is more satisfying than reading the “satire” actually is.
The parody is only five pages long and utterly bereft of story. We get assorted vignettes that show bits and pieces of scenes from the show’s first season, a running gag about “weird stuff” happening in Smellville on Tuesday nights between 9 and 10 pm (which admittedly is amusing the first time they do it, but less funny each subsequent time), and then the whole thing ends abruptly with the iconic scene of Clark lashed to a scarecrow. This reads like a parody written by someone who hasn’t watched any of Smallville except for the commercials, taking a wild shot at what probably happens. This is arguably the weakest Mad parody we’ve seen yet.
Mad took a swipe at Superman Returns in 2006. Dick Debartolo returns for this one, with art by Tom Richmond. Here we have “Spider-Sham” recruited to narrate “Stuporman Returns,” the joke being that Mad wanted a hero who actually had a movie come out in this century to get people’s attention. (I’ll concede, that’s actually pretty funny.) From there, we get a quick recap of the original Superman (or at least the parts of it that were pertinent to Superman Returns), then we land on the joke the magazine has settled on for this one: Returns is just a retread of elements from the original movie. Which honestly is pretty fair for a satire of Superman Returns, but also pretty goddamn hypocritical for Mad Magazine, which from what I can tell abandoned its quest to develop a second joke somewhere around 1987.
There are good things to say. This one, unlike Smellville, actually has a story to it, although it is buoyed by the fact that it simply has to do the cut-and-paste, beat-by-beat recreation of the movie, so actually having a plot is no mean feat. Richmond’s art is pretty good as well, showing skills at caricature that match Drucker’s. Also, apparently Mad switched from black and white to full color some time between 2002 and 2006, which is earlier than I thought, and the color actually looks very good.
The last two panels are probably the funniest in the comic. There’s a good joke about the show House (which was a hit at the time), and a final panel playing on the weird ambiguity of Lois’s son, complete with a visual reference to Action Comics #1, which I’m sure will make certain collectors I know scramble to find a copy of this issue once they realize it.
It’s not great. It’s not particularly funny. But at least it’s better than “Smellville.”
The last issue of Mad I’m going to subject myself to before their reboot is their Man of Steel parody from issue #524 in 2013. In “Man of Veal” (because puns don’t actually have to be funny, they just have to rhyme), we get the by-the-book recap of the feature film that it’s satirizing, as is to be expected. However, I’ve got something surprising to say:
Some of the jokes in this one are actually pretty good.
However, not enough to make up for the ones that are absolutely horrific.
For example, there are some truly tasteless, vulgar jokes in here about Taylor Swift (and I don’t even care if you’re making fun of Taylor Swift, I care that the joke ISN’T FUNNY). Another panel about the sexual proclivities of Kryptonians (Kraptonians? Oh, who cares?) that isn’t even close to amusing enough to justify how gross it is. Digs at comic book readers that come out of nowhere. And when their Lois Lane shows up (I can’t even be bothered to flip back to see what pseudonym they used), she’s a painful straw feminist stereotype, prancing around and talking about femininity in terms that feel like they could have come from one of the Spice Girls at their most annoying. Is that what they thought Amy Adams was doing? It boggles the mind.
Despite the enthusiasm I had for Parody Week when I started, subjecting myself to one painful Mad garbagefest after another has made me start to regret the whole thing.
Tues. July 22
Magazines: Mad Magazine Vol. 2 #15, #44
Notes: At some point in their long history, the parent company of Mad Magazine was sold to Warner Bros, which of course also owns DC Comics, and the stewardship of Mad was handed over to them. In 2018, they decided to relaunch the magazine with a new first issue, because somehow there are still people who think that’s a positive thing. I’ve actually never read an issue of the “new” Mad before today, but as I started to look for entries for Parody Week, I discovered that the current state of the magazine seems to be a mixture of classic features and reprints, which I find surprisingly sad. Maybe because I don’t have a ton of faith in the reprints they have to choose from. But after some sifting around, I managed to find a couple of issues of the current Mad on the DC appthat have Superman-centric spoofs.
And may Rao have mercy on my soul.
Mad Vol. 2 #15, from 2020, has several superhero-centric reprints, including spoofs of the X-Men, Spider-Man, and others. There are a few Superman shorts in here, including a Sergio Aragones classic where Superman proves, to his chagrin, that he is in fact more powerful than a locomotive. The highlight of the issue, without question, is Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood’s “Bat Boy and Rubin” parody from 1953 – the same era and creative team that gave us the original “Superduperman” (which is also included as a “digital extra” in this issue). Then, just last month, issue #44 of the magazine gave us a mostly-Superman issue, with reprints of their parodies of the original Superman, Superman Returns, and Supergirl (which I didn’t read before). There are also a few new Superman strips, the best of which is “The Further Adventures of That Guy From the Cover of Action Comics #1.” The gag there is simply photoshopping “that guy” into various other comic book covers, but it’s actually pretty inventive. Or maybe I’ve just been desensitized.
This last issue that I’m going to cover this week makes a few things very clear, though. “Petit’s Law of Satire: Satire is funnier in broad strokes than in specifics,” is absolutely true. The funniest strips and shorts are invariably the ones that aren’t trying to zero in on a retelling of a specific story, but just use the tropes and concepts of what they’re mocking to do something original.
Look at the greats: Mel Brooks and the Zuckers did their greatest work parodying an entire genre like sci-fi (Spaceballs), westerns (Blazing Saddles) and disaster movies (Airplane). Even Young Frankenstein wasn’t a retelling of the original story, but a new one that built upon it. The same holds true in literature. Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy parodies sci-fi, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld uses fantasy tropes as a launchpad to parody any number of topics. If Adams had just tried to do a retelling of Star Trek or Pratchett had tried to copy Lord of the Rings, I doubt we’d still be reading either of their works today. Does anyone remember Star Wreck, a series of very Trek-specific parody books that came out in the 80s and 90s? No, just me? Thought so.
What’s more, I think that something else that’s pretty true has become evident to me: parody is also funnier if it’s loving. (Satire does NOT have to be loving, but parody and satire aren’t exactly the same thing.) The funniest things I’ve read this week were “Superduperman” and John Byrne’s “Superbman Vs. the Fantastical Four,” neither of which gave me the impression that they were being made by someone who disliked their target. They loved them enough, in fact, to have a deeper understanding of them that made the humor ring true. The worst of the Mad parodies, on the other hand, are nasty, mean-spirited hit pieces that seem to have been written by somebody who resents the original material for the crime of existing. Similarly, the best SNL sketches are the earlier ones. The ones with Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve both show some affection, and the “Superman’s Funeral” bit feels like there’s actual love behind it.
I’m sorry, folks – of all the theme weeks I planned out for this year, I was terribly unprepared how much of a dud this one would turn out to be. There have to be better Superman parodies out there that I’m not aware of. If you know of any, please let me know. I’d be happy to return to this topic in the future, as soon as we stumble across some parodies that are actually…you know…funny.
This will be a slightly odd week in the blog, at least for me. I’m loading up this morning (June 18th, as I write this) to take a trip with my wife and son to Pittsburgh to visit some family and friends, and it just so happens that our travel days (today through Tuesday the 24th) exactly match up with my Year of Superman weeks. In other words, for the next week I’m gonna be on the move.
So to make certain that I’m going to be able to keep up, I’ve gone to the DC Universe Infinite app and downloaded several Superman-related graphic novels. As I’ve said before, I’ve got a massive list of comics I’m interested in reading before this year is out, but for this trip I’ve downloaded full trade paperbacks, most of which comprise a single story or theme. I’ve also deliberately selected books that don’t necessarily fit into one of the theme weeks I’ve got planned. So while this week may seem a little random to you, it’s going to be less random for me.
Notes: The plan for this trip, especially on travel days like this one, is to read the graphic novels I’ve downloaded on the DC app, which theoretically I should be able to do even once airborne, even if I stubbornly refuse to pay eight bucks for a wi-fi connection on the one-hour flight from New Orleans to Nashville. My flawless plan lasts until approximately four minutes after takeoff, when I discover that the book I chose to begin with — Superman: Kryptonite by the sadly late creative team of Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale — failed to download properly and I can’t finish reading it. I know from experience that the only way to deal with this particular problem is to delete the book and attempt to re-download it once I have wi-fi, presumably in the Nashville airport. However, the moment I delete the book, the entire app crashes. I try multiple times to restart it, clearing the cache, even restarting my tablet, but all efforts are met with failure. I know — also from experience — that it will be impossible to solve this problem in the air, so I surrender and return to the prose book I am currently reading, Teenagers From the Future, a collection of essays about the Legion of Super-Heroes edited by Timothy Callahan.
The DC app has existed, in some form or another, since 2018, and these kinds of technical problems have been constant. Through two phones and three tablets, I’ve never had a device for which this specific app wasn’t plagued by a morass of glitches and faulty downloads. I continue to subscribe because I love DC Comics and I love having access to the library, but I am BEGGING whoever is in charge of the tech side of this app, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.
In Nashville, we get to the gate with our connecting flight in just enough time for me to re-download Kryptonite, then check a few more of the downloaded books to make sure they’re downloaded properly. At some point, once I’m on hotel wi-fi, I’ll check them all, but as we lift off from the Music City I’m able to finish Cooke and Sale’s underrated gem. Both men are better remembered for other Superman or Superman-adjacent comics (New Frontier and Superman For All Seasons, respectively), and thus this book can be unfairly lost in the shuffle sometimes. Kryptonite is Cooke’s story of a young Superman, just months out from his public debut, who does not yet know his own origin. After having to break a date with Lois due to a volcanic eruption, she calls things off with him and begins dating Tony Gallo, a casino owner who turns out to have ties to organized crime. Gallo has something else as well: a ring with a green stone chipped from a much larger stone he has in his possession, composed of an unearthly mineral neither Superman nor anyone else has ever encountered. And it even has a surprise in the center, like an enormous, radioactive Kinder Egg.
I adore the Cooke/Sale perspective. This Superman isn’t just young, but also inexperienced in a way that few other stories have played with. He knows, for instance, that his powers make him resilient, but he hasn’t yet explored the limits of that invulnerability, so when he gets lost in a sea of molten lava he’s legitimately afraid he could die. Even more shocking, when he escapes relatively unharmed, Superman doesn’t rejoice in his power, but rather experiences an existential crisis, wondering what being indestructible means in terms of his humanity. When he finally encounters the Kryptonite and learns that there is something in the world capable of killing him, it actually triggers feelings of joy, as if he has regained a tether to the human race he was in danger of losing.
Although For All Seasons was written by Jeph Loeb, the continuity of Sale’s artwork and the themes therein really make this book a fine companion for that one. Sale’s work — both here and in many of his other works, such as he and Loeb’s storied Batman collaborations — is not truly timeless. Rather, it evokes times that don’t exist at all, with old art deco styles juxtaposed with modern technology. (The panel where Jimmy Olsen complains about the hassle of getting a new cell phone while dressed like a member of the cast of Newsies comes especially to mind.)
Compared to the other masterpieces its creators are associated with, this book doesn’t get the love it deserves. But I’m so, so glad I read it again today.
After the damn app let me download it, anyway.
The good news is that I am capable of reading much faster in the distraction-free environment of an airplane, so despite the download dilemma, I had time to knock out a second graphic novel before we landed in Pittsburgh. This time I chose the New 52 era story Superman Unchained by Scott Snyder and Jim Lee. A terrorist group called Ascension is planning a major strike that could destabilize the entire world, and if that weren’t bad enough, our old pal Lex Luthor has plans to piggyback on their attack with a strike of his own. Fortunately, Superman isn’t alone – Batman and Wonder Woman are there to lend a hand, as well as his new best frenemy, Wraith, an alien who has been in the employ of the United States government since the 1930s. Wraith is even more powerful than Superman, but he admires the Man of Steel – which makes it all the more tragic that he’s going to have to kill him.
If you’ve been reading this blog all along – as well you should – you may remember that I didn’t particularly care for Jim Lee’s previous work with Superman on the Brian Azzarello-written Superman: For Tomorrow. This nine-issue story proves quite conclusively that the problem was the writer, not the artist. Unchained is a great action movie in comic book form, with Superman leaping from one threat to another with nary a moment to catch his breath. This isn’t a story about deep characterization or quiet, personal moments with Clark Kent and his friends, it’s about Superman in an insane race to save the world from one threat to another.
The best characterization, in fact, comes in the person of Sam Lane. Sam is in charge of the Wraith project (of course) and there’s one moment where he takes Superman to task that I liked a lot. In most continuities where Sam is put in the antagonist role, his hatred of Superman is either a result of pure xenophobia or just the fact that he resents having someone that powerful around that he can’t control. This version is different. His work with Wraith (he says) proves that he doesn’t have a problem with aliens. His beef with Superman is that he considers him a coward for not using his powers to stop the real threats to the world. Superman usually stays out of politics and military conflicts, and Sam believes he should be using his powers to deal with THAT kind of threat, the way that he uses Wraith. Of course, there are countless stories that demonstrate why Superman doesn’t (and shouldn’t) use his powers that way, but Sam Lane doesn’t have the luxury of having read, for example, Mark Waid’s Irredeemable. In real life, if somebody says that Superman should use his powers this way, it just proves that they don’t understand Superman. But Sam legitimately DOESN’T understand Superman, which makes this a very clever way to motivate the character that’s a little out of the norm.
Wraith is an interesting character as well – a nice foil to Superman who has very similar powers, but has chosen to use them in a different way. This is the only story Wraith has appeared in, and I guess it’s probably for the best, but I feel like there’s more story potential out there for him. And Lee’s artwork was perfectly matched to this kind of high-octane, never-catch-your-breath story.
There isn’t anything particularly revelatory or world-changing for Superman in this graphic novel. It’s just, simply, a good Superman story. Perhaps the best of the New 52 Era, if I’m being honest.
Thur., June 19
Comic: Man and Superman 100-Page Super Spectacular #1
Notes: For a few years, DC had a nice run of 100-Page Super Spectaculars, usually specials that collected comics or storylines that were connected to a recent media tie in or a new event story, as an inexpensive way for readers to catch up. In 2019, they published this one, though, the anomalous Man and Superman 100-Page Super Spectacular, which collected four issues that had never been previously published. Legendary writer Marv Wolfman and artist Claudio Castellini had been commissioned, about a decade prior, to do a four-issue run on the Superman Confidential anthology series (the same series that gave us Superman: Kryptonite), but even though their story was finished, Confidential was cancelled before it was published, and Man and Superman sadly languished in limbo. Why they decided to publish it in this format instead of as a miniseries or an original graphic novel I don’t know, but I’m glad it finally made it out there. In his introduction, Wolfman says he thinks this is the best thing he’s ever written, and this is coming from the man behind Crisis on Infinite Earths and The New Teen Titans, so that’s a hell of a statement.
Having re-read the whole thing, do I think he’s right?
Well…calling it THE best may be a stretch. But it’s pretty damned good.
Wolfman’s story is his take on Superman coming to Metropolis for the first time. It is, of course, a story that has been told time and again. We looked at no less than seven different versions of that back in Origin Week, and honestly, I could have read this special back then and it would have fit. But this is Marv Wolfman’s take on it, and it’s good. Man and Superman is a character study, not an action movie. It’s about Clark Kent and who he was before he became Superman, about HOW he becomes Superman, and to a degree, it’s also about who Lois Lane is to him. As the story begins, Clark is moving to Metropolis for the first time, thirsty for a job as a reporter in a city that’s overcrowded with people trying to become reporters, desperate to find a way to make himself stand out. He and his parents have already made his uniform (insistent terminology in this book, too: it is a uniform, not a costume) but he isn’t quite ready to put it on yet. And thus Metropolis starts hearing reports of a mysterious “flying man.” Some people think he’s there to help, others are terrified of him, and Clark Kent is struggling to figure out how to be who he wants to be.
Lex Luthor is in the book too, because of course he is, but this is 100 percent Clark’s story. After two chapters of him trying to find his footing in a city that seems to be falling apart under the weight of a corrupt government and threats from a terrorist organization, Clark finally crosses paths with Lois Lane, and this is where the book really shines. Wolfman’s Lois is exactly who Lois is supposed to be – strong, brave, and dedicated to her craft as a journalist. When she meets Clark Kent, she doesn’t see him as either a mousey bookworm or a rival to be hated, as their early relationship is often depicted. Instead, Wolfman’s Lois relishes some healthy competition and is excited about the prospect of somebody else (FINALLY) showing up with the journalistic chops to present a real challenge to her. In Wolfman’s world, Clark Kent falls in love with Lois Lane not because she’s beautiful (although Castellini’s artwork makes it quite clear that she is), but because he finds in her the fire and inspiration he’s been lacking. She doesn’t know it, but it is the passion and courage of Lois Lane that gives Clark Kent the courage to put on his uniform and step out of the shadows.
Like so many of the stories I’ve read this year, Man and Superman is not part of current Superman continuity, and in fact, I don’t think it ever was. But increasingly, I find that doesn’t matter. Superman – all of the great heroes from the likes of DC and Marvel – are part of our modern mythology. And just like the stories of Odysseus, Hercules, and Thor take many different forms over the centuries, so do the stories of Superman, Batman, and Captain America in the nearly 90 years we’ve been lucky enough to enjoy them. That doesn’t make any of them more important than another, that doesn’t mean that they don’t matter. It just means that different people tell these stories in different ways, and all that really counts is whether or not it’s a good one.
This is most definitely a good one.
Fri., June 20
Graphic Novel: Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (Collects Superman/Batman #1-7)
Notes: Last week I watched the animated feature based on this graphic novel, so it felt like a good inclusion in my week of reading-on-the-go. I’m not going to get into a detailed recap, but here’s the quick one: a massive meteor made of Kryptonite is on a collision course for Earth, and President Lex Luthor is gaslighting the planet into thinking that Superman is responsible for it. Superman and Batman go on the run, chased by a squad of government-manipulated heroes led by Captain Atom, on a desperate chase to both clear Superman’s name and stop the meteor before it destroys all life on Earth.
The interesting thing, to me, is that while the movie did a pretty good job of adapting the overall plot including several bits where the dialogue was lifted straight from Jeph Loeb’s script, there was much more that was left OUT of the movie than I had remembered. For instance in the second chapter, while Superman is in the Batcave recovering from being shot by a Kryptonite bullet, he encounters and has a battle with a future version of himself. This older Superman has white at the temples and black in his costume – sort of an in-between step between his modern incarnation and the Superman people had come to embrace from Kingdom Come. (I have to remind myself that, at this period in DC history, Kingdom Come was still thought of as a possible future of the main DCU rather than a different world in the multiverse.) The movie also skips the sequence where the allies of the world’s finest attack the White House, believing Superman and Batman to be held hostage. I’m kind of disappointed they left that one out. There’s a good squad here: Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl, Huntress, Superboy, Supergirl (the mostly-forgotten Cir-El version), Steel, and Krypto all taking the fight to Luthor makes for a good sequence, and really helps cement who these two characters are to the rest of the DC Universe.
Mostly, though, the thing I appreciate about this graphic novel is how well Loeb writes this team. I’ve mentioned it before, both when I covered Batman: Hushand The Supergirl From Kryptonin this blog, but Loeb is very good with both of these characters. When it comes to writing them TOGETHER, though, he may well be the best. I hadn’t necessarily intended to read his entire Superman/Batman run for this blog project, but I’m kind of starting to feel inclined to do so. Between this one and the Supergirl story, I’m nearly halfway there anyway.
Sat. June 21
Graphic Novel: Superman/Batman: Saga of the Super-Sons (Collects World’s Finest Comics ##215-216, 221-222, 224, 228, 230, 231, 233, 238, 242, 263 and a story from Elseworlds 80-Page Giant #1)
Notes: Last week, during my discussion of Superman/Wonder Woman, I mentioned how often team-up comic book starring characters who have their own ongoing series can often feel somewhat irrelevant. World’s Finest Comics, during the later years when Superman and Batman’s individual comics became more episodic, definitely fell victim to that particular problem. Bob Haney found an interesting solution to that in 1972, when he started a serial in World’s Finest starring not Superman and Batman, but their sons, Clark Kent Jr. and Bruce Wayne Jr. This series ran through 12 (mostly non-consecutive) issues of World’s Finest, and right from the jump it’s a little hard to define this series. I suppose it’s an “imaginary tale,” as they were called at the time. There wasn’t really an effort to make the stories seem like a possible future, as the styles and slang felt very much of the late 60s and early 70s. Years later, it would even be established that this was yet another world in the DC Multiverse, although whether it’s a world that exists in the current multiverse or not, I’m honestly not sure.
The conceit is that both Superman and Batman marry and have sons who are virtually identical to them. When the Juniors reach adulthood, they decide to take up their fathers’ mantles as Superman Jr. and Batman Jr., despite Clark Jr. having only half of his father’s powers, as his mother is human. These adventures are, again, pretty of the time. There are a few issues where they roam the country like Green Lantern and Green Arrow, stumbling into different situations that need their help. In others they set out to solve a problem or a mystery, such as the issue where they wind up in alternate camps of a pair of sociologists trying to use a primitive tribe attempting to prove whether human nature is basically good (Clark’s perspective) or evil (Bruce’s). There’s even a particularly cruel issue in which Bruce Sr. is murdered, leading to a feud between Bruce Jr. and Dick Grayson over who deserves to take over as Batman, before ultimately revealing that Bruce Sr.’s death was a ruse to catch a criminal because of course it was, and he didn’t let anybody except for Superman Sr. know about it because of course he didn’t.
The weird thing to me about these stories is just HOW wild they get, HOW inconsistent they are, despite all being from writer Bob Haney. Depending on which issue you’re reading, Clark and Bruce Senior are either loving, devoted fathers or cookie cutter stereotypes in the “Parents just don’t understand” vein. Similarly, the boys bounce back and forth between showing respect and disdain for their fathers. Even their origins vary wildly: in the first issue, Bruce Jr. resents his father for hiding the fact that he was Batman from him while he was growing up, but only a few issues later he tells Clark he believes humans are inherently evil because of all the times in his childhood that he saw his dad come home after nearly getting killed by the bad guys Batman was trying to clean up.
It’s also pretty amusing to me how Haney (perhaps due to editorial edict) constantly steps around the question of who Clark and Bruce’s respective mothers are. Both Clark and Bruce Sr. are happily married to the mothers of their sons in this series, but they are never addressed by name, and whenever they appear on-panel it’s either with their back turned, their faces obscured in shadow, or (my favorite) wearing comically oversized hats to try to hide their features. Which is kind of funny, as Dick Dillin (the usual artist) draws virtually the same face for Clark Sr., Clark Jr., Bruce Sr., and Bruce Jr. The only discernible differences are the glasses the Clarks wear, Clark Jr.’s slightly longer hair, and Bruce Jr.’s sideburns. What I’m getting at here is that showing the faces of the moms likely would be of no help as to determining who they were. As it is, we DO see Clark’s mom with very dark, Lois Lane-shaded locks, whereas Bruce’s mom has brown hair that could be any number of women that Bruce Sr. had dalliances with over the years, but I personally choose to believe it was Selina Kyle.
The last two stories in this book are both bizarre and, in the case of the first one, almost insulting. Dennis O’Neil took over the writing chores for one last Super-Sons story nearly four years after Haney finished his run, claiming that the stories of the Super-Sons were just a simulation run on the computer in the Fortress of Solitude. Not sure why that was necessary, but okay… Then the simulated sons somehow are released from the computer and fight briefly alongside their super-dads before being made to disintegrate themselves for reasons. Haney did come back 20 years later for one final story in the Elseworlds 80-Page Giant, ignoring O’Neil’s story and substituting his own, in which Clark Sr. fakes HIS own death. This time, though, it’s not to catch a criminal, it’s for the much more reasonable and parental reason of teaching his son a dang lesson.
The book is a curiosity. It’s fun and nostalgic, which I certainly appreciate, but it’s not necessarily great comics. The best part of its legacy, really, is the fact that it kind of paved the way for the eventual Jon Kent/Damian Wayne series by Peter Tomasi, which was excellent, and which I intend to read again before this year is out.
Comic: Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #1
Notes: Whenever I travel, I like to hit local comic shops, and this week’s trip to Pittsburgh is no different. Although I already preordered Krypto #1 by Ryan North and Mike Norton at my local comic shop back home, BSI Comics, when we visited New Dimension Comics here in Pittsburgh I couldn’t resist picking up the variant cover by Dan Mora. I am not typically a variant guy, but I love Mora’s artwork and, as we get closer and closer to July 11th, my enthusiasm for the movie is reaching a fever pitch. So I picked up the comic and read it in the hotel room.
Damn it, Ryan North, you’re going to make me cry with every issue, aren’t you?
We all know the story of Krypto, of course: pet of Jor-El and Lara, sent to Earth in a prototype of the rocket that would eventually take Kal-El and make him Superman. North is telling that story from a different point of view – that of Krypto himself. This is not the super-smart Krypto of the Silver Age, with human-level intellect and thoughts. This is just Krypto, dog, who has no idea what kind of calamity his people are dealing with. North’s script takes us through the dying days of Krypton, as Jor-El and Lara make preparations to create the spacecraft they hope will allow them to escape Krypton’s destruction, ultimately leading to using Krypto as a test subject. Norton’s wonderful artwork, though, stays pretty much at dog-level, with the humans often talking above him. They even play a neat trick with the word bubbles – most of the dialogue is lowercase and faded, with only certain words showing up in typical comic book all caps and bold: words like Krypto’s name and other words the pup is likely to recognize. All this talk about the destabilization of the planet’s core, after all, is probably so much gibberish to even a very good boy like Krypto.
As much as Mora is my favorite artist in comics these days, Ryan North has been fighting his way to the top of my list of writers. His run on Fantastic Four has been incredible, his work on Star Trek: Lower Decks has been as funny and poignant as the show itself. I am not surprised at just how good, how MOVING this issue was. It’s a thing of beauty, and I can’t wait for the rest of the story.
Sun., June 22
Graphic Novels: Superman ‘78; Superman ‘78: The Metal Curtain (Each collecting six issues of the respective miniseries)
Notes: A few years ago, DC Comics finally did something that fans have wanted for a long time and officially established certain movie and TV properties of theirs as part of the DC Multiverse. In particular, the Christopher Reeve Superman and Michael Keaton Batman movies (the first two of each, anyway) were canonized as happening on the same world, designated Earth-789, And to inaugurate them properly, each of them got a miniseries, then a later follow-up. Today, I reread the two Superman books that continued the adventures of the Richard Donner Superman world.
The first Superman ‘78, written by Robert Venditti with art by Wilfredo Torres, shows us this very familiar world’s first face-off against Brainiac. The computer intelligence from Colu comes to Earth, surprised to find a Kryptonian there. Overwhelmed by this new threat, Superman turns to an unlikely ally – the recently-paroled from prison criminal mastermind Lex Luthor. But Superman winds up in Brainiac’s clutches, startled to learn that before Krypton was destroyed he miniaturized its capital city, Kandor, and all the people who lived there – including Superman’s parents, Jor-El and Lara.
The sequel was called Superman ‘78: The Metal Curtain, once again written by Venditti, with Gavin Guidry handling the artwork this time. A rain of Kryptonite meteors falls in the Soviet Union, spurring on the creation of a new armored “super man” of their own. Calling himself Metallo, the Soviet villain takes on Superman publicly in an effort to demonstrate Russian superiority.
Both of these books are fantastic. Venditti has a natural feel for the world of the Donner movies, capturing the characters and their voices perfectly. Luthor has a line, for instance, where he casually insults Superman by saying “all of your muscles are BELOW the neck” – a quick way to call his hated foe stupid (which, of course, is not true) that absolutely rings with the voice of the late Gene Hackman. Luthor, Perry White, Lois Lane, and especially Clark Kent feel absolutely true to the actors who performed the roles and the lines that were written for them.
The stories, too, feel very indicative of the time period, especially the second one. Venditti plays on Cold War fears in a way that feels very natural for the era, but ends it in a way that maintains optimism and positivity that is so inherent in Superman. In truth, considering how it plays on some of the same themes, it’s a far better way of dealing with the politics of the 80s than Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.
I also greatly appreciate the way these two miniseries expanded the world of the movies by bringing in other characters who hadn’t appeared. Brainiac and Metallo, of course, the two main villains fall into this category, but we also get the Superman ‘78 versions of Steve Lombard and Sam Lane, plus hints that indicate that this universe may not be without a Hawkman or a Green Lantern. The two Batman ‘89 miniseries (once they were finally over, after a series of egregious delays) did the same thing, adding new versions of the Scarecrow and Harley Quinn, plus versions of Robin, Two-Face, and Batgirl that fit better with this world than the versions from the Joel Schumaker films, which I think we can all be grateful to see excised from canon. Now that the second Batman ‘89 is FINALLY finished, I’m really hoping that DC will follow this up with an Earth-789 Justice League, bringing in the John Wesley Shipp version of the Flash and the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman (neither of which have been confirmed as taking place on Earth-789 yet, but there’s nothing saying that they DON’T take place on this Earth either).
Wilfredo Torres’ artwork is good, but the first Superman ‘78 was originally created as a digital comic before being collected in print, and for some reason DC at the time insisted on a digital format that basically makes each digital “page” a half-page of a print comic. It’s not too bothersome when you read it on a tablet, but reading it in print gives you a gutter cutting right through the center of every page, which eventually becomes very noticeable and distracting. Guidry had no such limitation for the second volume and the artwork is much stronger for it. Both artists do a good job of capturing the likenesses of the actors who played the characters, and largely escape the problem that some artists fall into by trying to make them SO photorealistic that the images feel static and lifeless. That’s never a problem here.
I’ll probably rewatch the other continuation of the Donner Universe, Superman Returns, some time in the next couple of weeks before the new movie drops. As much as I like that movie, though, these two books have totally supplanted it in my mind as the definitive continuation of the Reeve/Donner Superman, with all the wonder and glory that I’ve loved since I was a kid. I sincerely hope that we haven’t seen the last of this world.
Comic Book: New Gods Vol. 5 #6 (Guest Appearance)
Mon. June 23
Graphic Novel: Superman: Red and Blue (Collects issues #1-6)
Notes: Today we’re tackling Superman: Red and Blue. This series has its genesis way back in 1996, when DC did a Batman: Black and White anthology series, in which a wealth of different writers and artists did short Batman stories without color. The idea has been resurrected several times, as backup stories in other comics and in subsequent miniseries, but oddly enough it took until 2021 before it occurred to them to try it with a different character. In Superman: Red and Blue, assorted teams told bite-sized Superman stories in which red and blue are usually the only colors used (although a few stories broke that rule, usually with skin tones). That was followed up by Wonder Woman: Black and Gold, then Marvel got in the game with their assorted Black, White, and Blood series, which to me kind of miss the point, as the DC books all focus creators telling personal stories indicating what the character means to them, whereas the Marvel books are kind of just an excuse to ramp up the violence.
But I digress.
Red and Blue is an anthology, and like all anthologies, the quality of the stories therein can vary greatly. Some of them are good, some of them are adequate, some of them are darn near masterpieces. And it can turn on a dime from one page to another, and different readers will invariably find themselves attached to different stories. I’m not going to go through a recap of the dozens of stories in this book, but some of my personal favorites include:
“Human Colors,” written by Dan Watters with art by Dani. A 5th dimensional imp of the Mxyzptlk variety not only steals color from Earth, but erases the concept from the collective minds of the human race. The story is an interesting meditation on color and what color means, with plenty of that symbolism crap we English teachers like so much.
“Into the Ghost Zone” by Chuck Brown and Denys Cowan, a story of Val-Zod, the Superman of DC’s Earth-2 series. He’s a good character that doesn’t turn up too often these days, and I really should try to find some of his greatest hits to cover in this blog before the year runs out.
“My Best Friend Superman” by Stephanie Phillips and Marley Zarconne. A little girl comes to school for show-and-tell with a memento of an encounter she had with Superman…but kids are kids, and not everyone believes her.
“Deadline” by Jesse J. Holland and Lauren Braga, has Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince at lunch making a wager over whether Clark is going to join them on time or if, as always seems to be the case, something is going to come up.
“A Man Most Saved” by Brandon Thomas and Berat Pekmezci shows a man whose life has been saved by Superman a dozen times – and who finally has a chance to return the favor.
“Namrepus” by Mark Waid and Audrey Mok is a charming story about Superman turning the tables on Mxyzptlk.
“Prospect of Tomorrow” by Francis Manapul is a beautiful tale of Superman and Bizarro on the surface of Mars.
“Generations” by Daniel Warren Johnson, a quiet story about the love of a parent and how that love can save the world.
“Hissy Fit” by Sophie Campbell, who is now the writer/artist of the new Supergirl ongoing series. This wordless tale is a funny little yarn about Streaky.
And this is me trying to be abbreviated. I may have a problem.
The stories in this book cover pretty much every era of Superman. We have modern stories, stories of the Golden Age, stories of alternate continuities. (John Ridley kicks the series off with a sequel to a story from World’s Finest Comics from 1970.) And while the stories cover a lot of territory and a lot of perspectives, there are certain themes that turn up over and over again. Many writers choose to focus on Clark Kent’s early years – stories about his life in Smallville, or how Jonathan and Martha taught him valuable lessons. Other stories are about the relationships other characters have with him – Jimmy Olsen, Bizarro, various stories told from the perspective of people he’s saved. These stories, the best stories in this book, all seem to center around Superman as an ideal – a symbol of hope. But it’s not just a matter of seeing some far-off symbol in the sky and trusting that he’ll be there to stop Brainiac’s invasion or something. He’s there and present and a part of these people’s lives. He visits a little girl who’s being picked on because she believes in him. He has lunch with the guy whose life he’s saved over and over. Jimmy reveals that his favorite picture he’s ever taken of Superman isn’t one of the iconic shots of him in battle, but an accidental picture he took of the two of them together when he realized he’d forgotten to take the lens cap off his camera.
There are very few big action scenes in this book. The stories, for the most part, are small and personal. And that’s what makes them special. If you want a story of the adventures of Superman, those stories are plentiful and easy to find. But the stories that really explain what makes Superman such a powerful symbol aren’t always the ones that get the attention. This book puts those kinds of stories in the spotlight for once, and I love it for that.
Tues., June 24
Graphic Novels: Superman: Lost (Collects issues #1-10), Superman: Lois and Clark (Collects issues #1-8), Superman: The Final Days of Superman (Collects Superman Vol. 3 #51-52, Action Comics Vol. 2 #51-52, Batman/Superman #31-32, Superman/Wonder Woman #28-29), Superman Reborn (Collects Action Comics #973-976, Superman Vol. 4 #18-19)
Notes: My week of Superman-On-the-Go concludes today as the family hops a plane in Pittsburgh to wing our way back home to Louisiana. I’m writing this at the Atlanta airport during our layover, after having read two graphic novels on the flight from PA, with the intention of reading more on our final leg, assuming nothing goes wrong.
First was Superman: Lost, written by Christopher Priest with art by Carlo Pagulayan, (with a few pages assisted by others). In this story, Clark is called away from Lois for a routine mission with the Justice League, but when he returns home only a few hours later, he reveals that for him, twenty years have passed. Lois is shocked, of course, and her shock quickly turns to anger as she realizes how two decades in outer space have affected her husband.
The ten issues of this series bounce back and forth between Superman’s experiences during his twenty-year exile and how he deals with his return. After being pulled into a time anomaly, Superman finds himself in an unfamiliar galaxy on a world with a sun turning red and rapidly draining his powers. This part of the story is taken up with his efforts to get home, as well as his experiences on a world he calls “Newark,” and the people there he is forced to abandon. Back home, Superman struggles to cope with the trauma of his experiences in space, especially the notion that there is a world out there on the brink of destruction that he promised to help – and failed.
Priest loosely based this story on The Odyssey, with Superman in the role of the storm-tossed Odysseus and Lois playing one righteously angry Penelope. We also get a sort of Circe in the form of an alien woman whose name translates most closely to “Hope.” Hope has a Green Lantern ring, but no connection to the Corps or way to contact the Guardians, and it becomes clear early on that she would much rather keep Clark with her than help him find his way home.
For the most part, I really enjoy this story. Priest finds a way to prey on Superman’s greatest fear: that of being unable to help people. Every second he’s in space there are people on Earth he’s unable to save. Once he finds his way home, he is broken with the knowledge that he abandoned the people of Newark. The two desires cannot be reconciled, and while I’m no expert on the idea, the Earthbound side of this story (of which Lois is unabashedly the protagonist) comes across as an exploration of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Lois’s husband returned to her only hours after he left, but he isn’t her husband anymore, and the pain he’s going through takes its toll on her as well.
The book is great, but I have to be frank: I’m not really a fan of the ending. I feel like it’s kind of a cop-out, and I can’t explain why without spoiling it, so consider this your warning. If you don’t want to know how the story ends, skip the next two paragraphs.
Superman makes it home by finding a time warp in which he encounters an older version of himself. This older Superman, he is told, is one of several possible versions of himself who suffered from his Odyssey (sorry, but I couldn’t think of another word), but he eventually finds his way to the familiar planet Rann and returns to Earth with the help of Adam Strange. But after months of being unable to reacclimate to Earth, he returns to the time anomaly and realizes that the older version of himself he encountered before wasn’t a possible future, it was HIM in the future. He returns himself to Lois by altering the timestream and helping an earlier version of himself find his way home in just days rather than decades, then takes his place as the guardian of the anomaly.
In the end, Lois gets “her” Clark back, which is all well and good, but what this ultimately means is that the Superman we have at the end of the story didn’t experience any of the ordeals that we’ve read about. It’s not quite as bad as changing the timeline so that it never happened, but it’s CLOSE, and as an ending trope, I NEVER like that. It makes it feel as though everything we’ve just experienced is somehow inconsequential. I’m not saying I have a better way to restore the status quo, mind you – Priest is a great writer and I wouldn’t presume to tell him how to do his job. But it does leave me with a slightly sour taste in my mouth.
On the other hand, I had no problem enjoying the second book I read from beginning to end: Superman: Lois and Clark. The New 52 era, as I’ve mentioned before, erased Lois and Clark’s marriage from continuity. But in 2015, the Convergence event revealed that every version of the DCU still existed in the multiverse, including the pre-Flashpoint version I grew up reading and loving, and THAT Lois and Clark were still married and, moreover, had a child. At the end of Convergence, they wound up on the New 52 Earth, and decided to adopt new identities (Lois and Clark White) and raise their son Jonathan in privacy.
Of course, neither Lois nor Clark is content just sitting on the sidelines. Since the world already has a Superman, Clark goes out and averts disasters, saves lives, and captures villains in secret, even going so far as to build a new Fortress, complete with prison. Lois, meanwhile, using the not-at-all suspicious pseudonym “Author X,” resumes her career as an investigative journalist, and is on the verge of publishing a new book exposing Intergang to the world as the story begins in earnest.
Dan Jurgens, who writes this one, bounces back and forth between scenes from the lives of the “White” family and their current-day exploits, which include Clark fearing that this new universe’s version of Hank Henshaw is about to go down the path of the version he remembers, the one who became the horrific Cyborg Superman. Intergang, meanwhile, is trying to track down Author X, putting both Lois and Jon in danger – a danger that may only be survivable if a certain little boy finds the steel inside himself.
Although he was born during Convergence, this is the book that really established Jon Kent as a character, beginning my love for him that didn’t end until Bendis Bendised the character in a way that only Bendis can Bendis. But my goodness, it was glorious to see Lois and Clark as young parents, to watch Jonathan discover his father’s secret, and ESPECIALLY the scenes where Jon discovers his own powers. It’s no surprise that I enjoyed Dan Jurgens’ work so much – he’s been one of my favorite Superman creators for over 30 years now, and this was basically the Lois and Clark whose stories he guided for so long brought back to us. It’s a fun, exciting book that feels so authentic to the characters in a way that other books of the era did not. I loved it so much that when we sat down to wait for our flight in Atlanta, I hopped on the wifi and downloaded two more books that sort of complete a trilogy with this one, the stories that restored “my” Lois and Clark permanently: The Final Days of Superman and Superman Reborn, which I’ll read in the air between Atlanta and New Orleans.
Now I’m back home in Louisiana, finishing this write-up and feeling really satisfied with the whole thing. The Final Days of Superman is one of the reasons why. DC Comics decided to end the New 52 era in favor of Rebirth, which was more of a soft reboot than the previous one. There weren’t any massive, sweeping continuity changes (yet), but rather an attempt to reset parts of the DCU that had gotten away from them back to what had worked before. In the case of the Superman books, that meant clearing the slate. The New 52 version of Superman, at this point, had gone through a period of losing his powers, regaining his powers, and then having his identity go public. In this story, which ran through the last two issues of each of the New 52-era Superman titles (Superman, Action Comics, Superman/Wonder Woman and Batman/Superman), Clark finds out he’s dying due to a combination of various traumas he recently encountered. With no hope for a cure, he decides to make peace with his friends and try to prepare a new champion for Earth. He asks Batman to help him track down the missing Supergirl and reluctantly tells Wonder Woman – who he’s dating at this point, remember – that he’s dying. At the same time, a strange man with unfathomable energy powers begins to cut a swath through Metropolis, claiming to be Superman.
Without getting too much into the plot, this was a surprisingly good story, and it frankly had the deck stacked against it. Unlike the classic Death of Superman storyline, by the time this one started, DC Rebirth had already been announced. We all knew that the old-school Clark – the one from the Lois and Clark miniseries – was going to be the main Superman again. But that in no way stopped writer Peter J. Tomasi from giving the character a proper send-off. Superman is resigned to his fate, but doesn’t use that as an excuse to quit, fighting every step of the way. The fact that the story crossed over into the books he shared with Batman and Wonder Woman works in its favor as well, making them a major part of his “final days.” The climactic battle includes not only the two of them, but also Supergirl, Steel, Lois Lane, Lana Lang, and the pre-Flashpoint Superman, all of them at his side. And his death is quite surprising as well – not falling inert as Superman did after fighting Doomsday, but exploding into energy and turning into dust.
What was that all about?
We didn’t have to wait too long to find out.
Superman Reborn came almost a year into the Rebirth era, but concluded the mystery of New 52 Superman’s death. What had happened in the interim, to summarize: New 52 Lois Lane and Lana Lang both mysteriously gained Superwoman powers, but Lois burned out and died, with the pre-Flashpoint Lois stepping into her role at the Daily Planet. At the same time, everyone forgot Superman’s identity, and a new, totally-human Clark Kent appeared at the Planet offices. Reborn (by Tomasi and Jurgens, writers of the two previous books) ties it all up in a neat little bow as we discover that much of this was due to the machinations of our old friend Mr. Mxyzptlk. Mxy was, in fact, the human Clark, and had taken the role (even going so far as to erase his own memories) in order to “help out” after Superman died. He even wiped the knowledge of his dual identity from the world in a way that fit neatly.
The best thing, though, was the revelation that, despite what he’d been led to believe, this Earth was the one that Pre-Flashpoint Lois and Clark were from, and that a mysterious force had split them each into two. The New 52 Lois and Clark, both of whom are “dead,” are fused with the Pre-Flashpoint versions, reassembling their history and their place in the universe. Jurgens and Tomasi found a satisfying way to completely reinsert the old Lois and Clark without utterly dismissing what the creators of the New 52 era had done with the character. It was all “true,” it was all “real,” and it was really OUR Lois and Clark all along. It’s not often that you find a way to have your cake and eat it too, but they nailed it.
It was a long week, friends – not just for Superman, but also for me. But I’m home and happy now, and with our family trip for this summer behind me, there’s only one thing left on my radar. That’s right: the 40th anniversary of Back to the Future!
Nah, you know what I’m talking about. July 11th is right around the corner, and I’ve got so much more to watch and read and talk to you about before then.
With her own movie coming out next year, DC Comics has wisely decided to bring back Supergirl’s ongoing series, and with the first issue hitting stands last week, I thought it would be appropriate to dedicate Week 21 of the Year of Superman to Kara Zor-El. This week I’ll be digging into some of the most important and best stories of the girl of steel in comics, television, movies, and more. I’m specifically going to limit myself to stories featuring the Kara Zor-El version of the character. There are other Supergirls, to be certain, and I’ll probably touch upon them at some point, but I’ve already got more Supergirl stories than I’ll likely have time to cover on my list even BEFORE I add stuff starring the Matrix/Linda Danvers version. So Peter David fans, just sit tight. I don’t know exactly when it’ll happen, but I’ll get to your Supergirl before the year is out.
Notes: I’ll start off, appropriately enough, with Supergirl’s first appearance from Action Comics #252, by Otto Binder and Al Plastino. Although as was often the case at the time, the cover story was not the FIRST story in the issue. It starts with the first appearance of Metallo. I won’t get too much into that story, except to note that one plot point involves Metallo being able to impersonate Superman merely by shaving off his mustache. In the Silver Age DC Universe, there were apparently only three faces that everyone had to share.
And a million pubescent boys felt an awakening…
After a Congorilla story, we finally get to the main event: “The Supergirl From Krypton.” Superman is summoned to the site of a crashing rocketship, where he is stunned to discover a teenage girl who has all the same powers as he does. It turns out that she’s a survivor of Krypton as well, from a city that escaped Krypton’s destruction and protected itself by covering the ground with lead to save them from the remains of their home turning into deadly Kryptonite. But when a meteor shower destroys the lead, the girl’s parents put her into a spacecraft and sent her to Earth, where they’d been watching the last son of Krypton through a space telescope. Superman and the girl, Kara, discover that their fathers were brothers, making them cousins, and just like a good cousin, Superman immediately puts a wig on her and drops her off at a local orphanage until she’s trained in using her powers. She randomly chooses the name “Linda Lee,” another “L.L.,” which at this point is so unlikely that even Superman himself has to point it out.
This is kind of an embryonic version of Supergirl’s origin. There are several aspects that would later change and others that would be added – for instance, the original story doesn’t identify her home as “Argo City,” as later stories would, nor did it establish that the city escaped Krypton’s destruction because it was beneath a transparent dome. Instead it just sort of…made it somehow. Also, in this version, the Zor-El family peeked at Earth for years, but never connected the dots that Superman was the son of Jor-El. Later stories would make it clear that they knew that Superman was one of their family and that they sent Kara to him specifically for that reason.
The last thing that I have to point out is just how quickly Superman decides to drop his cousin off at an orphanage. It’s a bizarre situation – he doesn’t even make it to another PAGE before he brings her to Midvale. I get it – it was the Silver Age and DC Comics would never have allowed them to upset the status quo in such a way that Clark Kent now had a teenage girl living under his roof…but still, it feels kind of cold-hearted. Modern-day Clark Kent would NEVER do that. At this point, especially since the Warworld storyline a couple of years ago, he’s collecting new family members like he’s a Pokémon trainer.
The next few stories I’m going to cover come from Supergirl’s early days, when she was living in hiding as Superman’s “Secret Weapon.” He decided to keep her existence a secret from the world for…reasons that I’ve frankly never understood. I guess it had something to do with not wanting her to go public until she had command of her abilities or something, but that sure never stopped Batman from throwing a Robin out onto the street with him. Action Comics #275 starts with the dandy Brainiac story “The Menace of Red-Green Kryptonite,” where an insidious device from Brainiac makes Superman start…stealing hats. He confides the truth about the ray to Supergirl and eventually beats Brainiac after only a minor international incident, covering the fact that the ray actually made him grow a third eye in the back of his head. It was the Silver Age, people, what’reya gonna do?
But the real reason I read this issue was for the second story, “Ma and Pa Kent Adopt Supergirl.” In what is essentially an “imaginary story” (although it doesn’t carry that label), Supergirl is sad because Superman was raised by a loving family while she’s stuck at an orphanage. (GO FIGURE, CLARK.) So that night, she has a dream in which she, not Kal-El, was the child of Jor-El and Lara, and was the first Kryptonian to come to Earth and be adopted by the Kents. Her early years are similar to those of Clark, until her teenage years where we start to see some curveballs. Her bestie, Lana Lang, winds up dating the guy “Linda” is crushing on, so she’s stuck with some dude named Lex Luthor. A Kryptonian rocket somes to Earth, but instead of Krypto the Superdog, she finds a super-parrot from Krypton to be her super-pet. The biggest change? Whereas young Clark Kent helps his father run his general store, young Linda Kent stays at home to help her mother clean. Because she’s a girl.
I can’t even sometimes.
It gets even wackier when Lex overhears Linda’s parrot “Squawky,” sitting on his perch, chirping “Linda Kent is Supergirl!” Lex, knowing Linda is crushing on Bob Benson, tells him her secret so that he’ll pay attention to her. The dream ends when Linda finds out that Bob is only interested in her now because she’s Supergirl, and she dumps him.
As far as dream sequences go, it’s funny to note how even Kara’s subconscious has the same sort of inherent misogyny that so many Lois Lane stories of the time enjoyed.
Supergirl finally gets her wish for parents in Action Comics #279…after a story in which Hercules and Sampson show up in Metropolis and try to court Lois Lane and Lana Lang. It’s such a ridiculous story, even by Silver Age standards, that I don’t even know what to say about it. So let’s move on to “Supergirl’s Secret Enemy.” In this one, a jealous girl from Krypton named Lesla-Lar…
Yes. Lesla-Lar.
I mean, I get it, in college I knew an inordinate number of girls whose first initial was “A,” but Superman makes it RIDICULOUS.
…has stolen Supergirl’s powers with a Kryptonite ray. Stuck as a normal human girl, Supergirl allows herself to be adopted, because apparently the existence of her super powers is what kept her from being adoptable before. She goes home with Mr. and Mrs. Fred Danvers, where her new dad immediately tells her to change her hair because she’s too old to be wearing pigtails, which if we’re being honest, is creepy as hell. Superman, meanwhile, vows to try to find a way to restore her powers, but Lesla-Lar isn’t finished yet. As Linda sleeps that night, Lesla teleports her to Kandor and brainwashes her, then switches places with her at the Danvers’ home, her own Kryptonian powers intact.
This nonsense goes on for several issues, with Lesla swapping with Linda while she’s asleep and Linda having no idea she’s being abducted and living a second life in Kandor. My favorite bit comes in Action #281. As Superman and the fake Supergirl prepare to reveal herself to the world, Krypto the Superdog figures out that she’s an imposter via his sense of super-smell recognizing that Lesla wears the wrong perfume. (I love that friggin’ dog.) With his super-vision, he sees the real Supergirl in Kandor. Krypto hits a switch to swap Linda and Lesla again, but the brainwashing continues. She has no memory of the swap and STILL Doesn’t have her powers. Testing a theory, Superman brings her back in time, where she discovers she still has her powers! That’s right! Science means NOTHING! So he LEAVES HER THERE, only for her to realize he’s dropped her off in the year 1692! She begins to use her powers openly, making people think she’s a witch, then gives up and uses her powers to return home…where her powers once again disappear, making this whole time-travel segment utterly meaningless and nonsensical.
Action Comics #282 begins with me being genuinely baffled at how this ridiculous story isn’t over yet. Superman has built Supergirl a replica of the Legion of Super-Heroes’ time machine so she can test out whether her powers will return if she goes to the future. He can’t go with her, though, because he’s busy with “urgent problems.” Hey Superman, you know what makes “urgent” problems less urgent? A FREAKING TIME MACHINE. Anyway, in the future, Linda discovers that her powers have once again returned, and starts superheroing again. She saves the Earth from a Martian invasion (has anyone talked to J’onn J’onzz about this?) but when she gets back her powers are gone again…UNTIL THEY RETURN. And now she’s even STRONGER than Superman! And in Kandor, Lesla-Lar is arrested! And in the end, we find out that Mr. Mxyzptlk is responsible for giving her powers back AND making her immune to Kryptonite! Did they have a DART BOARD with random plot points in the DC offices back in 1961?
The next two issues each feature a pair of red Kryptonite stories, one each for Superman and Supergirl, at the end of which Mxyzptlk’s tampering wears off, leaving Supergirl again vulnerable to GREEN Kryptonite…but also, somehow, her regular powers are back. There is absolutely no explanation as to why her powers return to normal, but I don’t even care at this point, because the whole reason I read this little chain of bonkers was to get to issue #285, in which Superman FINALLY reveals Supergirl to the world.
“World’s greatest heroine?” Clark? She’s been on Earth for twelve seconds. Does Diana mean NOTHING to you?
It starts off with telling the Danvers that they adopted a Supergirl (something that would have been a little hard to disguise, as she had to catch their car when Fred drove off a bridge), then goes on to a televised announcement that makes the world so excited you’d think the McRib had come back. The first half of the issue is just showing how the entire world – nay, the UNIVERSE – has become #TeamSupergirl. In the second half, while Superman is in space, she fights a Kaiju.
I think that’s enough Silver Age silliness. I make jokes, but I hope it’s also evident that I have a real soft spot for these stories. No matter how ridiculous or silly they may seem, there’s a heart to them that not all comic books have, and even the silliest elements (such as a dog wearing a cape) can bear the seeds of greatness. Plenty of that to come for the girl of steel.
Thur., May 22
Comics: Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, Superman #415, Christmas With the Super-Heroes #2, Supergirl Vol. 8 #1, Superman Unlimited #1, Action Comics #1086, DC X Sonic the Hedgehog #3, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #39
Notes: So yesterday we dug into the origins of the Silver Age Supergirl. Today we’re gonna look at her ending. After years of secret adventures, time-travel with the Legion of Super-Heroes, and attempts to modernize her in the 70s and 80s by making her a college student and, later, a teacher, when the decision was made to restructure the DC Universe in the mid-80s, Supergirl was going to be taken off the table. So Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 gave her a heroic send-off (with one of the most iconic comic book covers of all time).
I rank this cover right after Marvel’s Madballs #6.
I’m not going to dig TOO deeply into the lore of Crisis. (I’m actually still contemplating whether I’ll do a week or two dedicated to the assorted DC crisis events and the roles of the Supers in each one – it’s a good idea, I think, but kind of a daunting task when you look at it.) Here’s the TL:DR: the Anti-Monitor is causing the destruction of the Multiverse, and at this point, only five universes remain. After a discussion of how the Multiverse was created in the first place, the heroes launch an assault on the Anti-Monitor’s citadel. Superman and Dr. Light find an enormous solar collector, an engine that is reducing the vibrational differences between the multiple Earths, causing them to occupy the same space and destroy one another. Superman winds up in a head-to-head battle against the Anti-Monitor, a being so immensely powerful that he’s being beaten to death – until Supergirl swoops in to the rescue. With her cousin on the ropes, Supergirl drives the Anti-Monitor into his own solar collector. When she looks back to check on Superman and Dr. Light, the Anti-Monitor unleashes a fatal attack, then escapes to lick his wounds. Kara lives just long enough to know that she succeeded – the solar collector is destroyed and the remaining worlds are saved.
For now.
And then she dies in Kal-El’s arms.
If there’s one thing that bristles me in these crisis events, it’s when a hero dies a meaningless death. And these days, the revolving door in comic book heaven has begun to swing so rapidly that it’s impossible to take ANY death seriously. That said, if the story itself is good, it can still be impactful. Marv Wolfman and George Perez gave Kara the send-off she deserved – dying not only to save the entirety of the Multiverse, but specifically, to save her cousin. In terms of sheer scope, not even the Death of Superman can match up to it.
That wasn’t quite the end for the original Kara Zor-El, however. I also want to look at a pair of epilogues to her story. The first came shortly after her death, in Superman #415.
This issue was the direct inspiration for The Maury Povich Show.
With the knowledge that this entire continuity would soon be rendered moot by the Man of Steel anyway, the creative teams on the Superman books took some big swings in their last year, including this story by Cary Bates and Curt Swan. Superman’s fancy ears pick up on a hypersonic code used to access the Fortress of Solitude, and since the only other person who knew that code is the late Supergirl, he races there immediately, finding an extraterrestrial invader stealing something from his memorial to her. The alien identifies himself as Salkor, superhero of his planet, and regales us with the story of how, two years ago, he found Supergirl drifting in space suffering from Kryptonite poisoning. He saved her, but she awakened with no memory of who she was (another amnesia story – I should be taking a tally of these). Salkor dubs the beautiful stranger ”Jasma.” The two of them become partners in defending his world, quickly falling in love. They got married, and Salkor gave her a device called a Hokku, which can record memories. But Jasma vanished one day after battling a mercenary called Naxx, and Salkor eventually tracked her down to Earth, where the news of her death broke his heart. He went to the Fortress merely to retrieve the Hokku he gave her.
But Naxx is there as well, seeking revenge against Supergirl for defeating him. The two men she loved the most team up to defeat the mercenary, then find a holographic message left for both of them. In it, Kara tells Salkor that she regained her memories, but lost knowledge of him, making her way back to Earth, her full memories not being restored until later. Superman and Salkor part as friends, united in their grief for the girl of steel.
It’s kind of a wild story. Cary Bates is counting on the reader accepting that Kara – upon regaining her memory – wouldn’t tell Clark or anybody else about her marriage on another planet. (Although I guess keeping that kind of thing a secret would be sort of a Silver Age thing to do.) The other thing is that Kara supposedly got her memory back after a battle that happened in her own series, and having read that series, I gotta tell you that the issues after that battle do NOT read like a girl mourning her lost love from across the universe.
Still, none of that makes this a bad story. It’s a sad, bittersweet farewell to a beloved character that DC knew was about to be taken off the table very definitively, in that once Byrne’s reboot kicked in she wouldn’t exist at all.
The most enduring epilogue to the story of Supergirl, however, didn’t come until 1989 and DC’s second Christmas With the Super-Heroes special…which I have to admit, I feel weird about reading in May, as I’m usually quite strict about limiting seasonal content to the appropriate season. But hey, this is Christmas with a purpose. There are several good stories in this issue, starting with an uncharacteristically dour Superman story by Paul Chadwick (but it’s got an optimistic ending). Then, after stories featuring Batman, Wonder Woman, Enemy Ace, Green Lantern and the Flash, we finally get to the real reason we’re including this in Supergirl week: the Deadman story!
Bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this.
In “Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot” by Alan Brennert and Dick Giordano, Deadman is drifting around having a very bitter Christmas. The lights, the music, the goodwill – to a ghost, denied even the pleasure of human touch unless he steals those moments away from someone who is living – well, it’s all kind of depressing. After a few brief encounters where he does just that, steals time from the living, a despondent Boston Brand rages against the goddess that trapped him in this state…until he’s suddenly approached by a young woman who can see him, hear him – even touch him, as evidenced when she whips off his mask. Deadman has been feeling sorry for himself, for the fact that for all the good he’s done, nobody even knows about it. The young woman looks him in the eye and says, “We do it because it needs to be done. Because if we don’t, no one else will. And we do it even if no one knows what we’ve done. Even if no one knows we exist. Even if no one remembers we EVER existed.” Having restored some of Boston’s faith, the woman turns to leave, but he stops her, saying “I don’t even know your name.”
Like fun it doesn’t.
It didn’t mean anything to Deadman, but it meant a hell of a lot to us.
To this day, I’m kind of surprised that DC allowed this story to go through. The edict was that Superman was the sole survivor of Krypton, that he always had been, that we were supposed to pretend that Supergirl and Krypto and the Kandorians and all the rest just…never were. But Alan Brennert used that edict to surreptitiously pay tribute to a fallen hero and give all the fans a little wink at the camera.
Man, I love this story.
But enough about the past – how about the present? I’m going to take a few paragraphs now to talk about some of the new Superman-family comics that have come out in the last couple of weeks, starting with the first issue of the new volume of Supergirl.
Remember when comics were fun? IT’S HAPPENING AGAIN, PEOPLE!
The new series, with story and art by Sophie Campbell, starts off with a great recap of Supergirl’s current status quo. Considering how much it’s changed and been warped over the years, this is pretty necessary, even for regular readers like me. Here’s the quick version: Supergirl (now a young adult who seems to have carried over some of the history of her pre-Crisis version) returns to Midvale, where the Danvers have returned to their old home. When she gets there, she finds that the town is obsessed with being the home of Supergirl, which sets Kara off a little bit…especially when she encounters another girl wearing a Supergirl costume who seems to have convinced the town that she’s the real deal. I absolutely LOVED this first issue. Campbell does a great job bringing new readers up to speed on who Kara is these days, including lots of little Easter Eggs like her hair color-changing comb, a reference to the late (apparently) Dick Malverne, and some of her old costumes. The art style is also awesome – it looks like it could have come from a cartoon, although not a SPECIFIC cartoon. It’s not aping Superman: The Animated Series or anything else, it’s just a kind of playful, lightly inked style that feels very much like a cartoon, and I hope everyone understands that I mean that as a compliment. I put this first issue down feeling very good about the future of the Girl of Steel.
Okay, it’s not Supergirl. But isn’t it pretty?
Also launching this week is Dan Slott and Rafael Albuquerque’s Superman Unlimited, which we got a preview of on Free Comic Book Day. The first act of this issue are the same pages from that book, in which we learn about the Daily Planet’s new status quo as a global news organization, then Superman flies into space where he finds an enormous Kryptonite meteor plummeting towards Earth. Superman’s life flashes before his eyes, providing a VERY handy recap of all the major points of his story in continuity for the sake of anybody who has never read Superman, or at least, hasn’t read him in a long time. (Most importantly to me: Slott establishes that Clark WAS, in fact, Superboy, and he WAS, in fact, a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and for reinstating that piece of continuity I believe he deserves, at minimum, the Nobel Prize.)
The book ends on a nice little cliffhanger, and while most of it is set-up, it’s a really satisfying set-up. Slott has a good handle on the character, and Albuquerque’s artwork is great. DC is very much living up to their “Summer of Superman” pledge thus far.
This is already shaping up to be the longest blog in the history of the Year of Superman (so far), so lemme rapid-fire the last few. Action Comics #1086 is the finale of “Solitude” by G. Willow Wilson and Gavin Guidry, finishing up Superman’s battle against the Kilg%re in the Arctic. Good issue, great art, and I still really like the Arctic costume Superman wears in this one. I want it on a Funko Pop. Issue #2 of DC X Sonic the Hedgehog ended with the Justice League trapped in Sonic’s world and Team Sonic on Earth. In issue 3, the Sonic characters have to step up and replace the Justice League, not only when it comes to protecting Earth, but also in finding the Chaos Emeralds needed to reopen the portal to return home. They do so while wearing the Justice League’s uniforms, and there will most certainly be action figures of these. Finally, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #39 brings us part four of “We Are Yesterday.” The modern day Superman, Batman, and Nightwing get swapped with their respective counterparts from the World’s Finest era in a charming story. While the versions from the past keep getting glimpses of the future, the current versions are stuck trying not to alter anything from history. There are a few really great moments in this issue, and I’m psyched for the last two chapters.
Fri., May 23
Comics: Superman/Batman #8-13, 19
“I’ve got a telegram from Will Smith. It says ‘Welcome to Earf.’ I know you don’t get it yet, but you’ve got a lot of human pop culture to catch up on.”
Notes: After nearly two decades of a Superman Status Quo that allowed for no other Kryptonians, the tide finally changed in the early 2000s. First came the restoration of Krypto, and then “The Supergirl From Krypton,” a six-issue story from Superman/Batman #8-13, written by Jeph Loeb with art by the late Michael Turner. With Superman in hiding as the rest of the world’s heroes try to gather up Kryptonite from a massive meteor that fell in the previous storyline (yeah, Unlimited isn’t the first time such a thing has been done), Batman is called upon to investigate an enormous chunk in Gotham Harbor. That chunk includes a rocket, and in that rocket turns out to be a confused teenage girl speaking Kryptonian. When she’s brought to Superman, the two converse in Kryptonian and he proudly introduces her to Bruce as Kara Zor-el, his cousin.
The two keep Supergirl in hiding for months, Batman in particular feeling skeptical as to the truth about who she says she is, before Wonder Woman demands to bring her to Themyscira. Kara trains there for a time, but the island is attacked by Darkseid’s forces (including Doomsday clones) who kidnap Kara and take her to Apokolips. The three heroes team up with Big Barda to mount a rescue effort, only to find that Kara has been brainwashed by Darkseid. Clark has to break her out of it, bringing her back to Earth. As he takes her to Smallville, though, Darkseid attacks again, seemingly killing Kara with his Omega Beams. Superman unleashes like never before, taking Darkseid to space and trapping him in the Source Wall, where he declares the Lord of Apokalips will never bother them again (spoiler alert: he was wrong). Kara, we then learn, was teleported to safety, and Superman introduces Supergirl to Earth’s heroes.
Hey, look at that. I CAN write a shorter recap.
Anyway, as far as modern interpretations of Kara’s origin go, this works out much better than finding her in a rocket and immediately taking her to the orphanage. It was inevitable that Batman would play a large part in the story (remember the title of the series, after all), but it’s nice to note how heavily they leaned on Wonder Woman in this too. If there’s anyone on Earth that Kara could relate to in her first few days on the planet, after all, it’s probably her. This is – more or less – the Kara that exists today, although there are some continuity questions that definitely arise, such as her having lived with the Danvers in her current series.
There was also an epilogue of sorts a few issues later, issue #19, where we saw more of Kara trying to fit in and taking down bad guys. That issue was later reprinted as issue #0 of her next ongoing series (I believe it was Supergirl Vol. 4), which eventually established some things about Kara that have remained in continuity – such as the idea that she was actually OLDER than Kal-El, but trapped in suspended animation for decades as he grew up, and the notion that her powers are potentially greater than his. I rather like both of these conceits and I’m glad that DC, as well as most of the adaptations, have stuck with them over the years.
Sat., May 24
Comics: Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #1-8
“IIIIIII HAAAAAAAVE THE POWEEEEEEEEEER!”
Notes: Today I decided to jump to the most acclaimed Supergirl story of the modern era, and the inspiration for her upcoming movie, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely. In this 2021-2022 miniseries, Supergirl has taken Krypto on a little spaceflight to celebrate her 21st birthday, off for a party on a planet where a red sun diminishes her powers. On this world, she meets a child named Ruthye Marye Knoll, who tries to hire Supergirl to hunt down and kill an assassin named Krem of the Yellow Hills, the man who murdered Ruthye’s father. Supergirl initially refuses, but when a fight against Krem mortally wounds Krypto, Supergirl’s only hope is to track down Krem and get a sample of the poison that is killing our good, good boy. What follows is an eight-issue odyssey across the universe as Supergirl and Ruthye seek Krem and, in the process, learn where true power comes from.
Tom King is, as I’ve said before in this blog, a somewhat divisive writer. And honestly, I don’t agree with it. I’ve never read a story by Tom King that I really hated, even the ones that get the most vitriol online. In fact – here’s a confession for you – if you had asked me the summer of 2022 what my least-favorite King story was, I probably would have said Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.
And I would have been wrong.
Allow me to explain. This book is a slow burn. There’s some action, yes, but it’s only a superhero comic by a technicality. There are very few superhero elements to it, and even fewer science fiction elements. In fact, between the purple prose and the gorgeous artwork by Bilquis Evely, it reads more like a fantasy epic than either of the other more logical genres into which it is usually placed. And I don’t mind a slow burn at all, but slow burns don’t always work in monthly comic books. By the time each issue of Woman of Tomorrow came out, I had sort of forgotten and lost track of where the story was, and that made it a difficult read. I don’t like the process of “writing for the trade paperback” that some writers engage in, and this is a perfect example of why.
Last summer, though, on an airplane to Pittsburgh, I decided to give this story another chance. I read it in its entirety for the first time, and when I did THAT, it was a totally different ballgame. Suddenly I understood why it was so highly acclaimed. I understood why DC Studios had chosen it to be the inspiration for the upcoming movie, because when you read all eight chapters together, my friends, it’s a beautiful thing.
The story is told not through Supergirl’s eyes, but through a book written by Ruthye years after the events have taken place. So instead of hearing inner monologue from Kara about how misguided this poor, orphaned child is to seek revenge, we get Ruthye’s interpretation of events, and we get to see how she is shaped and changed by the presence of Supergirl in her life. This isn’t an action story, but a character study and a meditation on what is needed to bring peace to a troubled soul. The S-shield, as we all know, stands for hope, and that’s the characteristic that we all so often attribute to Superman. That’s fine. But when it comes to SuperGIRL, I think her strongest power is her compassion, her capacity to love, and her ability to impart those feelings on others. This story sells it without misstep.
The ending of the book, I have to warn you, is oddly ambiguous. In fact, it wasn’t until my third reading that I really think I’ve fully grasped what happened. It’s a character moment that fits perfectly, and if my interpretation is correct, it’s actually one of the few spots of humor in what is otherwise a very dramatic tale. But there’s debate out there over what actually happened, so I’ll leave it to you to read and decide for yourself what you think is the final fate of Ruthye Marye Knoll and Krem of the Yellow Hills.
I’m also tremendously impressed that they’re going with this story, in particular, to base a MOVIE on. I’m not sure exactly HOW faithful it’ll be to the comic book. They have, of course, included both Ruthye and Krem in the cast (played respectively by Eve Ridley and Matthias Schoenaerts), but they’ve also thrown in Jason Momoa as Lobo, who doesn’t appear anywhere in the story. If they keep it MOSTLY faithful, though, it’s going to be quite a departure for superhero fans. We’ve gotten used to years of movies where the stakes just keep getting raised – gotta beat the villain becomes gotta win the war becomes gotta save the world becomes gotta save half the universe. Now we’ve even got multiple universes at risk. But at its core, the stakes for Woman of Tomorrow are relatively small. There are no universes, planets, or civilizations in danger. The struggles in this comic book are done for the sake of one dog wounded by poisoned arrows and one girl wounded by a shattered heart. Compared to your average superhero movie, that’s small potatoes. But I think that’s exactly what we need – a reminder that a story need not be about the sake of the entire universe to be compelling, and that the battle for a single soul is just as worthy of telling. It’s a beautiful comic book. Here’s hoping we get a beautiful movie, too.
Sun., May 25
RIP Peter David, 1956-2025
Once again, we’ve got to pause the Year of Superman to pay tribute to a creator who has left us. Today it was announced that legendary comic book writer and novelist Peter David has passed away. David may have been one of the most prolific writers of the last half-century, having done epic runs on Marvel comics like Incredible Hulk , Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, and X-Factor, having co-created Spider-Man 2099, adapting Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, and work at DC on books like Young Justice, Aquaman, and Star Trek. David also wrote dozens of novels, including Star Trek adaptations and original stories, works adapting various other comics, movies, and TV shows, and his own original works such as Sir Apropos of Nothing. He wrote for TV and movies as well, including episodes of Babylon 5 and, with Bill Mumy, creating the Nickelodeon sci-fi series Space Cases. David never did an extended run on Superman, but his Supergirl series from the 90s took the Matrix version of that character and turned it on its ear, reinventing her, melding bits of classic Supergirl lore, and turning her into an entirely unique creation the likes of which neither DC nor anybody else had ever seen before. In fact, the only page of original comic book art I own is a page by Leonard Kirk from one of David’s Supergirl issues, in which she encounters Mary Marvel. I had already planned to cover at least the beginning of David’s Supergirl run in a later week, but I feel like it’s going to be sooner than I intended now.
His characters were always rich and his prose was full of humor and imagination. He was a favorite of mine for a very long time, and although his output has dwindled in recent years as his health declined, the knowledge that there will never be more has me deeply saddened.
RIP, “Writer of Stuff.” You are already missed.
TV Episodes: Superman: The Animated Series Season 2, Episode 27-28, “Little Girl Lost” Parts 1 and 2
She pulls that shirt off better than I do, I’m not gonna lie.
Notes: Superman takes a craft into deep space, following the path of the rocket that brought him to Earth, in the hopes of finding some remnant of his destroyed homeworld. To his dismay, the planet is nothing but debris, but his spacecraft picks up a distress beacon from another world in the system. Superman arrives to find a frozen planet and a hologram telling him that this world was Argo, sister planet of Krypton, which was thrown out of its orbit when Krypton was destroyed. Superman finds a single survivor, a young girl in suspended animation. He brings the girl, Kara, back to Earth, where the Kents care for her as she acclimates to Earth. But Kara, anxious to explore the world, rushes to Metropolis in the hopes of “helping” Clark deal with his current Intergang problem. Instead of listening to Clark’s warning to wait in his apartment, though, Kara flirts her way into accompanying Jimmy Olsen on his own Intergang investigation. Part one of the two-parter ends with Jimmy and Kara going a bit too far and coming face-to-face with Granny Goodness and the Female Furies of Apokalips. In part two, as Supergirl throws down with the Furies, Superman shows up to help, but gets captured by the Furies. Supergirl finds a device in the rubble to open a portal to Apokalips and heads off to rescue him. She does, but destroys the machine that would have stopped a comet Darkseid has hurtled towards Earth. Superman tries stopping it the hard way, but the momentum is just too great, prompting Kara to fly into it at top speed, destroying it. You know – like Supergirls do. In the end, Jimmy gets the scoop of the year – Supergirl stops Intergang AND saves the world – and Earth gets a brand-new hero.
I may be cheating here just a little bit. I said that this week I was only going to focus on Kara Zor-El, and TECHNICALLY, this Supergirl doesn’t qualify, as she’s actually Kara In-Ze of Argo. But I’m including it anyway for a few reasons. First: this was obviously the compromise Paul Dini and Bruce Timm came up with when DC wouldn’t allow them to have a Kryptonian Supergirl. Second: this two-part episode is too classic not to include. And third: It’s my blog, dammit.
Kryptonian or not, in terms of personality, this is EXACTLY who I think Supergirl should be in her early days on Earth. She’s young, earnest, eager to help people, but also restless and impatient, faced with an entire new planet to explore in the hopes of finding a new home to replace the one that she lost. There have been times (lookin’ at YOU, New 52) where Supergirl has been played more angsty, more angry at having lost her homeworld…and while that may be justified, that doesn’t really feel like her character to me. Whereas Robin is the tempering influence to Batman, bringing light into the darkness of his world, I see Supergirl as a sort of conduit to Superman’s youth, a reminder that even to heroes with the power and responsibilities of gods, there is still room for joy. This, I think, is my favorite Supergirl, and the animated series captured that masterfully.
TV Episode: Smallville, Season 7, Episode 2, “Kara”
Notes: I was a devoted viewer of Smallville during its TV run. I never missed an episode, and I enjoyed most of it. But I actually haven’t really revisited the show that much since the initial airing, so this is an interesting experience. I know I’ve seen this episode before, but watching it out of context like this, I’m trying to remember just what was going on in the show. Lois and Clark aren’t a couple yet, and she doesn’t seem to know about his powers, but where are all the 1,001 CW subplots at this point in season 7? Maybe it’s time to do a full rewatch.
Maybe not just yet, I’ve got a LOT of other Superman on my plate.
“STOP! In the NAAAAME of DOUBLE-L NAAAAAAMES!”
Anyway, in this episode Clark and Lois find a spacecraft and encounter a young woman who swiftly knocks out Lois and warns Clark not to touch her stuff before zooming into the sky and looking down into a token from the House of El with the image of a baby in it. Clark is stunned not only to face another Kryptonian, but one who – unlike him – can FLY. As Chloe tracks down a subplot (I’m gonna skip the non-Kara stuff in my recap or we’ll be here all day), Clark seeks out the flying girl, who is shocked to find that he has powers as well. Together they piece together their combined history: she is Kara, daughter of Zor-El, sent to Earth to protect her baby cousin and, with him, save Krypton from destruction. But when her ship landed on Earth in the same meteor shower that brought Kal-El to the Kents, she was buried and trapped in suspended animation for 18 years until a collapsing dam a few episodes ago set her free. Bigger problems, though – someone has taken her ship, and if they don’t get it back, the humans trying to open it up may well trigger a nuclear explosion.
Unlike the animated Kara, this episode doesn’t actually end the story, but I don’t have time to down an entire season of Smallville, so let me just talk a little about Laura Vandervoot and her version of the character. Despite being the Supergirl actress with, objectively, the name that is most fun to say at parties, her version of the character is a bit angrier than I usually like. She’s got a little bit of a chip on her shoulder, angry at having been sent to a world that she clearly views as being primitive, perhaps even angrier at learning that the baby she was sent to protect is now older than she is. None of this is out of character, mind you, considering the way that the story is shaped in Smallville, and by the end of this episode we come around to the fact that much of her anger is based on grief over the loss of her homeworld. Vandervoot’s Supergirl isn’t my favorite, but it would be hard to argue that it isn’t perfect for this specific series.
TV Episodes: My Adventures With Superman Season 2, Episodes 4-10
THIS Supergirl costume, on the other hand, I could rock.
Notes: I almost forgot that Supergirl made her debut in the second season of My Adventures With Superman – forgot mostly because I never got around to FINISHING that second season. So on a lazy Sunday afternoon with my wife at work, I decided to play a little catch-up. I’m not going to go into a deep recap of an entire half-season of the show, but here’s the quick version: Kara comes to Earth and brings Clark to her “Father,” who turns out to be not Zor-El, but Brainiac. Brainiac tries to use Clark’s body to take over Earth in the name of his “New Kryptonian Empire,” but Lois saves him with the Power of Love, and then all our heroes team up to fight Brainiac.
I don’t mean for that to sound dismissive, because there’s really quite a lot about this show I like. But I’ll get more into that when I do “Pilot Week” or whatever the hell I’m going to wind up calling it. Today, let’s talk about Kara. This version of Kara has been manipulated by Brainiac for an unknown number of years, and she comes to Earth with an anger to her, even more than the Smallville version. As I’ve said before, I don’t like Angry Supergirl, but I did like watching how – over the course of this season – Clark and his friends chipped away and the shell Brainiac built around her and helped guide her to the light. Her interactions with Jimmy Olsen in particular are adorable, with both of them coming across as young people with a crush who don’t really know how to deal with it.
The climactic battle, to be honest, is a little disappointing. What we get in the end is a Kara under Brainiac’s mind-control doing battle with Clark, who tries to turn things around using the standard “I know you’re still in there!” defense that superheroes always use on allies suffering from mind control. I won’t spoil the ending of the fight for you, but if you’re at all familiar with storytelling tropes, I probably don’t have to. That said, the execution of this very familiar trope is pretty good, and ultimately, we end the season with a new version of Supergirl that I hope to see more of in season three.
Mon., May 26
Comics: Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade #1-6
I don’t remember the 8th grade being this much fun.
Notes: In 2008, writer Landry Q. Walker and artist Eric Jones gave us an utterly delightful young readers miniseries, Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade. This series gave us a ground-up reimagining for Supergirl in a format for younger readers. It was one of DC’s early attempts this century to start making headway into the YA market, and when they launched their YA graphic novel program a few years later, the paperback edition of this story was rightfully included.
In this version, Kara’s rocket crashes in Metropolis, where she accidentally thwarts a Lex Luthor plot. She tells Superman her story – she’s from Argo, a moon of Krypton in this continuity, and stowed away on a rocket her father was sending to Earth to contact Superman. Unfortunately, she passed through a dimensional barrier to get to Earth, and Superman has no idea how to send her back. A Supergirl who’s homesick is nothing new, but it’s pretty rare for that home to still exist, giving her a quest to find a way back.
Stuck on Earth, Superman supplies her with a secret identity and enrolls her in Stanhope Boarding School, where she struggles to fit in to this new Earth culture. She has difficulty controlling her powers and accidentally creates an evil duplicate of herself – Belinda Zee (who is not QUITE a Bizarro, but kind of like the Mean Girls version of that) who begins making her life a living hell. Things start to pick up when she finally makes a friend, an incredibly smart young woman named Lena Thorul. Things are starting to look better…but may get worse when Kara finds out her only friend is the sister of Lex Luthor.
Over the course of six issues, we’re treated to new versions of Comet and Streaky, we get teases about the Legion of Super-Heroes, and the revelation of the real villain of the piece still cracks me up all these years later. It was a truly magnificent series, one that I passed along to my nieces once they were old enough to start reading comics. The tragedy is that the book ends with multiple sequel hooks, and Walker and Jones tried for years to get the promised Cosmic Adventures in the 9th Grade underway. For some reason or another, though, it just never happened, and after the untimely passing of Eric Jones in 2022, it seems unlikely that it ever will. But this is without a doubt one of my favorite interpretations of Supergirl, one that even an old man like me enjoys coming back and revisiting every so often. The book has been reprinted several times, with a new edition scheduled for release in August (no doubt as part of the whole “Summer of Superman” foofarah). And if you’ve got kids around that middle school age, it’s a perfect book for them.
Tues., May 27
Movie: Supergirl (1984)
Novel: Supergirl by Norma Fox Mazer
Comic: Supergirl: The Official Adaptation of the Movie #1
Notes: In 1984, the Salkinds decided to expand their Superman movie franchise with a spinoff featuring his cousin. And as luck would have it, I own not only the DVD, but also the novelization of the film AND the comic book adaptation of the same. So I thought it would be pretty fitting to close off Supergirl Week by taking a look at all three versions of this story.
“You will believe a franchise can spin-off.”
In the movie, we find ourselves on Argo City, last remnant of the planet Krypton, where young Kara (Helen Slater) is shown a powerful device called the Omegahedron by her teacher, Zaltar (Peter O’Toole). But Zaltar wasn’t supposed to have the Omegahedron, and an accident sends it beyond the shield that protects Argo from space. Turns out that the Omegahedron was the city’s power source, and without it, they have only days to live. Kara takes a ship to follow the Omegahedron to Earth, where it has fallen into the hands of a would-be witch named Selena (Faye Dunaway). The Omegahedron enhances Selena’s power’s greatly, taking her from the level of parlor tricks to being a potential world-conquering threat. Unfortunately for the world, Superman is on a mission in outer space.
In her search for the Omegahedron, Kara takes on the human identity of Linda Lee and enrolls in a local boarding school, where she forges a letter from her famous cousin, Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent, to vouch for her. She’s assigned a dorm room with Lucy Lane (Maureen Teefy), sister of Lois, who she quickly befriends and introduces her to her kinda-boyfriend Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure, reprising his role from the Reeve movies). With the threat of utter destruction looming for Argo City, Linda proceeds to…take classes and play field hockey. Seriously, she spends a large chunk of this film acting like a normal Earth girl trying to hide her powers with absolutely no sense of urgency to save her family, friends, and entire civilization, for whom she is their only hope of survival. Selena, meanwhile, is practicing her magic, casting a spell that she intends to use to get the hunky handyman Ethan (Hart Bochner, whom you may remember as being the asshole John McClane doesn’t know in Die Hard) to fall in love with her. Instead, it accidentally makes him head-over-heels for Linda. For some reason, this also has the side-effect of making him talk the way that people who don’t understand Shakespeare think characters in Shakespeare plays talk.
Selena somehow manages to send Supergirl to the Phantom Zone, where she finds Zaltar has been exiled for his role in the loss of the Omegahedron. As Selena creates a mountain in the middle of Midvale to serve as her new fortress, Supergirl struggles to escape the Zone. Zaltar, who has fallen into despair in the Zone, leads her to the one way to escape, which makes you wonder why Zod and company never gave that one a shot. Zaltar perishes in the escape attempt, but Kara makes it through, returns to Earth, and defeats Selena, bringing the Omegahedron back to Argo City. And in the end, I’m just left wondering what the hell Clark Kent is gonna thnk when Jimmy gets back to Metropolis and says, “Hey, I met your cousin. Also I was briefly captured by a witch until a girl wearing a Superman costume beat her up.”
I’ll cut to the chase: this is not a good movie. The villain performances are hammy and overacted, the love potion subplot is just plain creepy (Selena’s fixation on the much younger Ethan has a nonconsensual “Mrs. Robinson” vibe, and even once it rebounds and he falls for Linda one should remember that he’s an adult and she’s a high school student), and there’s a lot of little nonsensical stuff that was probably necessitated by the low budget, such as Kara popping out of her spacecraft in a Supergirl costume with no explanation. And the abundance of cheese in this film just makes the stuff that IS good even more tragic, because so much of this movie deserved better than it got.
Helen Slater, first of all. She is perfectly cast – quiet and lovely, with an otherworldly charm that is entirely appropriate for the character. She pulls off the “stranger in a strange land” routine flawlessly, and she alone would make this movie worth watching. In the modern movie climate, they’d have had her make a cameo in Superman III or something before spinning her off into her own film, and this is one of the few times where I wish they HAD used modern techniques in the 80s, just because I wish we could have seen her play Supergirl more than once. (I’m not counting that scene in Flash.) As it is, the only real ties to the Christopher Reeve films are a poster of Superman in Lucy’s dorm and a totally superfluous appearance by Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen, adding nothing to the plot. I would like to give them credit for adhering to canon by having him date Lucy Lane, but as with Ethan, in this continuity he’s way too old to be hooking up with a high school student.
The score, by Jerry Goldsmith, also top-notch. Not John Williams good, of course, but it’s got a nice ethereal quality to it, less like a science fiction score and more like a fantasy film, which is appropriate for the tone of this movie. You could drop this score into something like Willow and it wouldn’t feel out of place at all.
Even the special effects, considering the time period, are pretty good. And I love the design of Argo City, even if it doesn’t really match what Richard Donner’s version of Krypton looked like in the first Superman movie, but I can chalk that up to different cities having different styles. I mean, it’s not like New Orleans looks like San Francisco, right?
“Are You There, Rao? It’s Me, Kara.”
As was often the case in the 80s, Supergirl got a novelization as well. I happened to pick it up on eBay some time back, in one of those moments where I snag weird stuff that I like. (By the way, if anyone wants to get me something for my birthday, just find a box of old movie and TV novelizations from the 80s on eBay. I have a strange fascination with those.) The novelization is by Norma Fox Mazer, whose body of work outside of this adaptation seems to be largely in the category of novels for children and teenage girls, which is pretty appropriate for adapting Supergirl. Her pedigree absolutely shows, too, filling the book with odd diversions and tangents that feel like the could have spilled from a Judy Blume novel, things like Kara feeling intimidated by her mother’s beauty, or interjections from Lucy’s point of view that work in the sort of slang that an adult novelist in the 80s probably thought that teenagers used, although as a child of the 80s myself I’m somewhat skeptical of their authenticity.
The strangest thing about the book, though, is the timeline. The film makes it quite clear that Kara has only days to recover the Omegahedron before Argo is doomed, but the novel makes it seem as though Linda is enrolled at Stanhope for months before she recovers it and makes it home. It seems as though she’d return to a dead planet as far as the novel goes. But like I said, I have a weird fascination with these kinds of novelizations, especially since many of them were written before the film itself was finished, and I find the differences intriguing. This isn’t a great novel in the same way that the film isn’t a great movie, but like the movie, I still had fun reading it.
I need you people to know that I exposed myself to three different versions of this story. THREE. Because I love you.
The comic book adaptation does a better job, I think. Written by Joey Cavlieri with art by Gray Morrow, it tells the story in a much more abbreviated way. This mostly eliminates the problem of making it seem like Kara is spending too much time on Earth while Argo is dying, and the art by Morrow is really lovely. He even does a good job of making the characters look like the actors, which isn’t easy. And even artists who do that well often do so at the expense of a certain liveliness, with art that looks like a static photographic rather than a dynamic comic book page. Morrow conquers that challenge. With the material they were given to work with, I think the comic did a superior job of adapting what was a weak screenplay.
Originally I planned for Supergirl Week to include the pilot episode of Melissa Benoist’s TV series from 2015 as well, but fate had other plans, in the form of a power outage followed by an internet outage yesterday and into this morning that cut into the time that I planned to devote to the show. But you know, I’m pretty sure this is already the longest installment of the Year of Superman blog to date, so maybe it’s okay if I leave one thing for later. Besides, I’ve long planned a week where I watch the pilot episodes of all the assorted Superman TV shows, and I think I’ll have time to sneak in Melissa then. And if not, who knows? There may be time yet for Supergirl Week Part II.
Blake M. Petit 