A few days ago, at WonderCon 2025, prolific comic book writer Mark Waid said something that has DC Comics fans a-buzzin’. According to Waid, DC will be bringing back the Legion of Super-Heroes “soon,” and in a form that he is “confident everyone will embrace.” Those are bold words. If there’s one thing you can be certain about in comic books, it’s that there’s NOTHING that EVERYONE will embrace – there’s always some jackass out there willing to complain about something that everybody else loves. (For example, anyone who says something bad about Krypto in the Superman trailer.) But even if we’re accepting that Waid didn’t mean “everyone” literally, that he just meant it would satisfy the majority of readers, that’s still a pretty tall order. Because the Legion is kind of a tough nugget to crack these days.
Aw c’mon, how hard could it be?
Let’s do a little history lesson, shall we? Who exactly ARE the Legion of Super-Heroes?
The Legion first appeared in Adventure Comics #247 back in 1958, in the time when the headliner for that anthology series was Superboy (Clark Kent as a boy). In their first appearance, Superboy meets three super-powered teenagers like himself: Cosmic Boy, with power over magnetism! Saturn Girl, with telepathic abilities! Lightning Lad, amazing in that he is the only founding member whose name makes his powers obvious! The three of them are from 1000 years in the future. They were inspired by the stories of the legendary Superboy to become heroes in their own time, and they’ve come back to the 20th century to invite him to join their club.
Most kids in Smallville just joined the Mathletes.
The story turned out to be a hit, and Superboy’s time travel adventures with the Legion became a recurring feature. Pretty soon, DC realized that a team with just four members could hardly be called a “Legion,” and they started adding more and more characters: the shapeshifting Chameleon Boy, giant Colossal Boy, teeny-tiny Shrinking Violet, and more! Triplicate Girl, Bouncing Boy, Matter-Eater Lad – no, I am not making up those last two – and then eventually even characters who didn’t feel the need to announce their gender identity as part of their name like Wildfire, Dawnstar, and Blok. Even the descendent of one of Superman’s greatest enemies, Brainiac 5, became a heroic mainstay of the Legion. They spun out into their own feature and were a huge success for DC.
Then came 1986. Comic fans will remember this as the year that DC rebooted Superman entirely, and among the things that they changed was his history in Smallville. In the new continuity, Clark Kent’s powers didn’t fully develop until adulthood, and he had no career as Superboy. How, then, could Superboy have been the inspiration for – let alone a member of – the Legion of Super-Heroes?
And if there IS no Superboy, who keeps tearing up our damned billboards?
The answer came in a story where the Legion learned that the “Superboy” they knew was the inhabitant of a pocket universe created by their old enemy the Time Trapper, who had been playing a long con on them for the entirety of their existence. That Superboy, though, was still a hero through and through, and sacrificed his life to save the Legion from the Trapper. And the Legion continued.
But DC continuity started to get even more muddled, and in 1993 they decided to try to repair the timeline in their Zero Hour crossover, an effort to trim some of the more confusing contradictions in their history and make everything fit together. Although Zero Hour turned out to be a good story, I don’t know if anyone could claim it succeeded in making things easier to understand – Hawkman, for example, became more of a mess than ever. But in the case of the Legion, it was decided that the best way to clean things up was from a page-one reboot. The Legion started over from the beginning, this time without Superboy.
And billboards everywhere breathed a sigh of relief.
The history was wiped out and began anew. The characters – who had by now grown to adulthood – were teenagers again, and some of the names were “modernized.” (Lightning Lad became Live Wire, Colossal Boy became Leviathan, Matter-Eater Lad became…well, the team chef, with no superhero name, and so on.) This Legion again did pretty well for quite some time, and in fact, it’s the version that was dominant during my formative years, so it’s actually the one I remember most fondly. Eventually the current Superboy (Conner Kent, the one who spun out of the Reign of the Supermen storyline) would meet them and become a member.
Then in 2004, for reasons I’ve never quite understood, DC decided to reboot the Legion AGAIN. This “Threeboot” Legion, which was written by the aforementioned Mark Waid, again started from the ground-up. Waid brought back the more old-fashioned names, but this time it was a plot point. In this new continuity, galactic society had become stagnant and isolated. People kept to themselves and communicated mainly through electronics. (Waid was sadly prescient on that fact.)
Turns out Brainiac 5 was a big Beyonce fan.
This Legion was a sort of teenage rebellion story, about young heroes rising up against a culture that tried to keep them apart from one another, using the historical records (aka comic books) of the 20th and 21st century as their inspiration, hence the old-school names. Eventually, through still more timey wimey stuff, Supergirl became a member. While I didn’t WANT a reboot, I thought Waid did a good job, and I enjoyed the new version as long as it lasted…which was right up until 2007, when all of a sudden, the ORIGINAL version of the Legion started popping up again in places like the Superman and Justice League comic books.
I’m not being hyperbolic here — this is one of the greatest Legion stories of all time.
This eventually led to the Legion of Three Worlds miniseries by Geoff Johns and George Perez (which is technically a spinoff of the Final Crisis event, but can be read entirely independent of that larger story). This story revealed that each of the Legions was from a different world in the Multiverse – the original Legion, of which Clark Kent had been a member, was from the main DCU. Connor’s Reboot Legion was from a world that had been destroyed in one of the many, many crises that happen in DC Comics. Supergirl’s Legion – most interestingly of all – was actually from the distant future of Earth-Prime, ostensibly “our” universe, where all the stories of DC Comics are fictional. It turns out they misunderstood the ancient comic book stories and thought they were “real,” Galaxy Quest-style. I friggin’ love this miniseries. Aside from just being a great story, it also kind of “legitimized” all three Legions, and even when the Legion stories being told went back to focusing on the original, the other two were still “real.”
Then came the New 52 in 2011. :sigh: At this point, DC rebooted their ENTIRE universe, including the Legion. The newest version of the Legion (fourboot?) was pretty close to the original, although still perhaps a bit younger than they had been before their first reboot, and they were okay, but didn’t light the world on fire sales-wise. So in 2019 they decided to – you guessed it – reboot AGAIN.
In an effort to keep this blog as positive as possible, I shall simply confirm that this is in fact a comic book which was published, printed on paper made from trees, and then distributed to comic book stores for purchase by the general public.
This time Brian Michael Bendis took over, bringing in Superman’s son Jon Kent as a member. His was the wildest take on the Legion yet, making drastic changes and adding new characters alien to every previous version, such as a “Gold Lantern” and a future incarnation of Dr. Fate. Bendis’s Legion was…controversial. Many beloved characters were virtually unrecognizable, there was an uncomfortable emphasis on how everyone kept declaring that history would account Jon as the REAL Superman over his father. Perhaps most concerning of all, they turned popular member Mon-El into a Kryptonian descendant of Superman, which had never been the case in any previous continuity and didn’t really sit well with a lot of people.
Bendis’s Legion lasted only 12 issues, then a six-issue miniseries where they crossed over with the Justice League, and then they vanished. Since then, the Legion and its members have made only sporadic appearances, and there hasn’t really been a consistent version of “which” Legion showed up at any given time. But the fans, among whose number I enthusiastically include myself, want them back. The Legion may not have the largest fan base in comics, but I challenge you to find a more DEDICATED fan base. On average, I can’t think of a single character or IP in all of American comic books whose fans are more devoted than those of the Legion of Super-Heroes, so the fact that they’ve been sidelined for so long is really upsetting.
So how DO you bring the Legion back? What makes it work, as a property? What’s the core of the franchise that brings back the fans who are so, so dedicated? To a degree, I think the appeal of the Legion is similar to the appeal of Star Trek — it’s the promise of a better future, a hope that no matter how bad the world may seem at times, there will be days ahead where things aren’t quite so dark. What’s more, despite the fact that my formative era of the Legion is the Reboot era, which is the time that is least-connected to the Superman line, I still feel that the Legion is at its strongest with Superman at its core. It’s like the difference between your adult friends and the friends you grew up with. The Justice League are the friends Superman has as an adult, and you love those friends, but the Legion are the friends of his childhood, the ones who helped him become the man he would be. And that bond is unique, and irreproducible as an adult. One thing the 2006 animated Legion of Super-Heroes cartoon really got right was the notion that, although the Legion was inspired by the stories of Superman, it was joining them in their future that taught Clark Kent how to be a hero.
Whenever I see the Legion, that’s the dynamic that means the most to me.
Sometimes the adaptation just…GETS it, y’know?
Waid’s statement is particularly interesting in light of his own recently-announced project, a miniseries called The New History of the DCU. There was a History of the DC Universe miniseries back in the 80s, explaining how the timeline was changed in the wake of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, but there have been so many reboots and changes since then that a new history is probably well overdue. I can’t think of anybody better to write it than Mark Waid. He’s not only one of the best superhero writers of all time, but he’s a walking encyclopedia of comic book history. He knows everything about everything, and if there’s ANYONE who can make sense of it all, it’s gotta be him. In fact, it was only in 2019 that he wrote the six-issue History of the Marvel Universe, doing the same job for DC’s favorite rival. He streamlined that universe and showed how everything fit in, including the future.
Presumably, this new series will do the same thing for DC. And if he goes so far as to show us the future, that means Waid knows what the new status quo is going to be for the Legion of Super-Heroes. As far as what exactly that means and how exactly that will take a form “embraced by everyone”… well, I have no idea. But I do have high hopes. Since DC’s “All In” initiative last year, I’ve been really happy with most of the stories in the DCU, and Waid has written some of the best, including Batman/Superman: World’s Finest and Justice League Unlimited, and he’s about to take over Action Comics full-time, something that has me thrilled.
No one is suggesting that Waid will be writing a new Legion series himself – in fact there are comments that suggest that he only KNOWS what the plan is, not that he’s directly involved. But if it has his approval, that gives me hope. Like I said, the Legion fans are the most dedicated in comics, and I believe that Waid is truly one of us. Whatever is coming down the pipe, if it’s good enough for him, I have every reason to believe it will be good enough for me.
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He’s got his own idea for how to fix the Legion, but as usual, nobody asked him.
This week, friends, I have gone out of my way to prove myself even nerdier than I already was. I’ve started a Facebook group dedicated specifically to this little Year of Superman project. These weekly blog posts aren’t going anywhere, but in the Facebook group I’m going to do a daily post (unless I forget), as well as talk about any Superman news that comes out, such as the recent announcement of the new Superman Unlimited comic book series by Dan Slott and Rafael Albuquerque. I’ll also be using the group to crowdsource ideas for upcoming theme weeks, so if you want to be part of the conversation, please join us there at the Year of Superman Facebook Group.
Wed., Jan. 15
Funko Pop: Joey Tribbiani (from Friends) as Superman
It looks great, but I keep hearing this voice behind me saying, “Hey, Lois, how YOU doiiiiiin’…?”
Notes: In my classroom, behind my desk, I have a bit of a Superman shrine. A few shelves of the bookcase immediately behind where I sit are devoted to assorted Superman toys and knick knacks, including a good collection of Funko Pops. In fact, tracking down the assorted Superman-related Funkos is a nice little side hobby. Today I’ve got a new one, a late Christmas present from my wife Erin, because it was a pre-order that didn’t come in until this week. It’s Joey from Friends wearing a Superman costume (like he did in that one episode). I’m excited to put him on the shelf next to Phoebe from Friends wearing a Supergirl costume (like she did in that one episode). I’m also slightly nervous because they’ve announced a new wave of Smallville Pops including Clark in his “Blur” jacket and Kara in the Supergirl colors, plus I have no doubt whatsoever that the James Gunn movie later this year will have a wave of Funkos to accompany it. I need to add more shelves to my classroom, is what I’m saying.
Comics: Time and Time Again, originally printed in Adventures of Superman #467, Action Comics #663, Superman Vol. 2 #54, Adventures of Superman #468, Action Comics #664, Superman Vol. 2 #55, Adventures of Superman #469, Action Comics #665; Challengers of the Unknown Vol. 5 #1 (Superman as temporary member)
Whereas if I could time travel, I’d just go to July 11th so I could watch the movie.
Notes: I decided to try to only do one 90s storyline per week, so as to avoid overload, but it’s interesting how closely grouped together they’ve all been so far. This story, which takes place only a few months after the Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite I read last week, picks up on many of those same threads, particularly Lois and Clark’s engagement. In the books I skipped over to get to this storyline there were a couple I maybe should have read: the issues where Clark reveals his identity to Lois. This story begins with the two of them having a frank and – refreshingly mature and adult – conversation about that revelation. Lois was planning to marry Clark Kent, and the knowledge that she’s also marrying Superman has her worried about the implications behind that. (Can you IMAGINE the Lois of the 1950s having this reaction? It’s so great.) Their conversation, though, is interrupted when a time traveler calling himself the Linear Man attacks Booster Gold in the skies above Metropolis, planning to take Booster back to his original time period in the 25th century. Superman sees the fight and jumps in to help, but damages the Linear Man’s equipment and winds up getting lost in the timestream, bouncing between the past and the future for, oh, about seven issues or so.
I do like a time travel story, and this is a fun one, with Superman bouncing back and forth through time, encountering the Justice Society and Etrigan the Demon in the past, and the Legion of Super-Heroes at three different points in their own history. The story does sharply remind me, though, that this particular incarnation of Superman (thanks to the 1986 John Byrne reboot) was never a member of the Legion. The Legion is another of my favorite DC properties, although it’s been terribly mishandled in recent years, but I’ve always felt it works best if you keep the anchor to Superman – he’s the inspiration for the group, and what’s more, I like seeing him as a member. Seeing these brief interactions with them in their early years, again in their heyday, and once more in the “Five Years Later” era just makes me want to read more Legion stories. But this is the year of SUPERMAN…I’ll just have to give them their own theme week.
Each chapter of this story, after the first one, goes back to the “present” in Metropolis, showing various members of Superman’s supporting cast for one or two panels. We see Jimmy Olsen’s mom interrupt his date with Lucy Lane, Perry and Alice White coming together over the grief of the death of their son, LexCorp struggling with what to do in the wake of Lex Luthor’s (seeming) death, and Bibbo being Bibbo. Most of these are setting up things that will come to fruition in later issues, but all of them end up unresolved in the final chapter, where Superman bounces back to the present day, lands on the moon, and heads for home. I actually went on and read the next issue – Action Comics #665 – to see if any of this was addressed. What we got was a good scene with Lois and Clark reuniting, he having been lost in time for several months, but her only having experienced a few hours since he left her. I really like this scene – it’s a good bookend for the beginning of the story, where they were talking about their relationship. They didn’t make it explicit, but I feel like this experience of “losing” Clark for a few hours is what helped Lois come to terms with what being married to Superman would be like. And the last 34 years have pretty much proven that to be correct.
Thur., Jan. 16
Podcast: It All Comes Back to Superman Series 2, Episode 6
Podcasting’s Michael Bailey is – to use the vernacular of my generation – a buddy of mine. Although I have not yet been fortunate enough to meet him in person, we’ve had a long and friendly association over the years as colleagues – as podcasters (before my unfortunate retirement from that arena), as columnists, as bloggers, and most importantly, as Superman fans. Whenever there’s any new Superman news coming down the pipe, I’m always interested to hear Michael’s take on it. He is one of the very few people I know who, were they to tell me to my face they were a bigger Superman fan than I am, I would not attempt to argue the point.
It’s like “Six Degress of Kevin Bacon,” but with a spit curl.
Today (and a bit of yesterday) I fired up his podcast It All Comes Back to Supermanon my drive to and from work to listen to his take on the trailer for the James Gunn Superman, the same trailer that started me on this whole journey. For over an hour, Michael breaks down the trailer and talks about it, comparing the way it is made to those of the previous two theatrical Superman attempts and placing it in a bit of historical context, in addition to giving his personal feelings on it. I’m happy – but not surprised – to hear that his feelings are a virtual mirror of my own. He sounds excited, enthusiastic, and energized, not just by the trailer itself, but by the specific elements of the trailer that touched me the most (things like the use of the John Williams score, the boy raising the Superman flag, and of course, Krypto).
There are a lot of people out there podcasting about this kind of stuff. If you’re a Superman fan and want the thoughts of a fellow Superman fan, this is really the podcast to check out.
Comics: Wonder Woman Vol. 6 #16 (Clark Kent cameo, Jimmy Olsen appearance), Plastic Man No More! #4 (Superman appearance), Jenny Sparks #5 (Superman Appearance), Justice League of America #14 (Team Member)
Fri., Jan 17
Say what you will, but Washington has always been a weird town.
Notes: By the 60s, a lot of the silliness of the Silver Age had begun to die down, but that didn’t stop this 1969 issue of Action Comics from bringing in just a hint of it for good measure. In this story, Superman gets partial amnesia from a space mission – he remembers that he’s Superman, but somehow completely loses the memory of being Clark Kent. As he sets out to discover who he really is, he decides to ask the one person he suspects he may have shared his secret with: Batman!
Ha ha! Just kidding. No, that would make sense. No, instead Superman deduces that he may have told his secret to the President of the United States. And if that assumption seems absurd, this next one is gonna knock you for a loop. When he arrives in Washington he learns that the President is missing, and obviously concludes that he IS the President. So with a little prosthetic makeup, he settles back into his presidential role of meeting dignitaries and dancing with the visiting Lois Lane from the Daily Planet. An assassin makes an attempt on his life, only for him to be saved by Lois’s fellow Planet reporter, Clark Kent. Or, actually, a spy disguising himself as Clark in an effort to get close to the president. They say that in real life we expect coincidence but in fiction we don’t stand for it. Stories like this are the reason why.
Anyway, this goofy story ends with the real President returning but Superman not getting his memory back. It’s going to be continued next issue, where we’re promised that Superman is going to think he’s a professional wrestler. I’m gonna have to read that one, but first, this story makes me think of a different story in which Superman becomes President.
Action Comics Annual #3 was part of the Armageddon 2001 storyline, in which a time-traveler named Waverider comes back in time because, in his future, one of Earth’s superheroes has become a tyrant that has taken over the world. Waverider is trying to find the person who will one day become Monarch by using his powers to view their futures. It’s a great concept for a crossover event because it allows all of the annuals to be self-contained “Elseworlds”-type stories about possible futures for the DC heroes, such as this one, in which Superman is elected President of the United States. I remember being really excited for this series when it came out and I sought out and devoured every installment, even those for titles I didn’t usually read. This was one of the best. In this possible future, Clark’s old friend Pete Ross is running for president when Clark has to save him from an assassination attempt that winds up revealing his identity to the world. With Pete alive but injured, he implores Clark to take over and run for office himself.
What I’ve always enjoyed about this issue is how overwhelmingly positive it is. Although there is conflict, we watch as Superman uses his power, his wisdom, and his connections with the greater superhero community to bring peace to the world. In the last few years it’s become increasingly popular to tell stories of a “Superman gone bad,” losing his mind and taking over the world. And yeah, some of those stories have been pretty good. (The comic adaptation of the video game Injustice: Gods Among Us stands out to me as being one of the better-made examples of this trope.) But it’s a trope that has become majorly overdone. This issue, published over 30 years ago, is the antidote to that. Although I doubt that the mainstream comics would never go down the route of making Superman an overtly political figure (in fact, I sincerely hope they never do), showing a world under his control that changes for the better instead of the worse feels far more in keeping with who and what Superman is.
Other Comics:Superman #6, Action Comics #556
Notes on Superman #6: There isn’t much to say about this issue until the last page. Lois, injured, is in need of a blood transfusion, and Clark “tears open his skin” so that he can donate to her. In modern comics, this would probably result in her getting super powers and becoming Superwoman (as she currently is, as I’m writing this), but back in 1940 the only effect was her making a startlingly rapid recovery and feeling just great afterwards. The last panel is what stays with me, though, where we see Clark thinking about how he’s feeling an inclination to tell Lois the secret of his double identity. I’ve heard from different sources over the years that Siegel and Shuster had planned to have Superman reveal his identity to Lois and for the two of them to get married way back in the 1940s, but the editors wouldn’t allow them to do it. It took over 50 years before they finally got the two of them down the aisle, and I can’t help but wonder what the history of Superman would have looked like had they been allowed to get them together way back when.
Sat., Jan. 18
TV Episodes: Superman and Lois, Season One, Ep. 13, “Fail Safe”; Ep. 14, “The Eradicator”; Ep. 15 (Season Finale), “The Last Sons of Krypton”.
TV’s second-best dad after Bandit Heeler.
Notes: In “Fail Safe,” the title comes from a conversation Superman has with Lois’s dad, General Sam Lane, who is promising to dismantle the weapons systems his people had prepared to deal with him should Superman ever go bad. Clark tells him not to, however, recognizing the possibility of him being taken over again, and knowing that a “fail safe” is a good idea. The scene has some slight echoes of Dark Knight Over Metropolis, where he gives a similar speech to Batman, but it’s really interesting to see him say it to Sam. In the comics, Sam Lane usually has a far more antagonistic relationship with Superman. This version has shades of that, but on the whole is much more level-headed and reasonable, perhaps because this is one of the few continuities in which he knows Clark’s dual identity. He’s so reasonable, in fact, that he contacts Lois and tells her about Clark’s request. The resulting conversation leads to the fail safe being taken out of Lane’s hands and given to the one other person Clark trusts with it: John Henry Irons. Much like in the comics, John Henry is quickly becoming one of my favorite side-characters on this show.
We also see Jonathan, in a low moment, hanging out with John Henry. I don’t know where this particular storyline is going, but I can see a version of this where the non-powered Jonathan, in an effort to keep up with his superpowered family, might become a sort of apprentice to Steel. I like this idea, as a concept – Jonathan feeling inferior to his dad and twin brother is a nice impetus to push him in this direction and make him a distinct, unique version of the character.
“The Eradicator” is your standard penultimate episode of the season. There’s a lot of setup and a cliffhanger. Among other things, we see Jonathan pushing harder to become part of John Henry’s weapon-building projects, Lana’s family deciding to leave Smallville, Jordan getting upset over this because he only started dating Lana’s daughter Sarah about 20 minutes ago, and the people of Smallville getting increasingly angry over the presence of Sam Lane’s DOD troops are they try to clean the caverns near the town of X-Kryptonite and hunt down Morgan Edge, who has managed to merge himself with the deadly Kryptonian artifact called the Eradicator. If you’re not familiar with the term from the comic books, take it from me when I tell you that the Eradicator is about as friendly as the name would imply. The episode, of course, ends with a cliffhanger – the uber-powered Edge attacking Sam, Sarah, and the twins on the road and taking Jordan captive, then Jordan being taken over by the conscious of an evil Kryptonian. I hate when that happens.
“The Last Sons of Krypton,” the season finale, starts off with Clark being forced to fight his own son. The old trope of Jordan moving his mouth with an old man’s voice coming out of it is…cheesy. But at the same time, the scene hits me in my Dad bone. The idea of your child turning against you, against their will, placing you in a position where you may have to hurt them to save the world…it’s hard to imagine a more nightmarish position for a parent to be in. The scene later in the episode, where Jonathan helps his brother break free, really takes it out of me. It’s corny as hell. It’s overdone and overused and overwritten, and somehow it’s making my eyes a little blurry, because there’s something about that familial love that cuts right into me no matter how corny and overdone and overwritten the scene may be.
At the end of this first season of the show, I think I need to look back and see how they’re doing so far. It’s a CW show, and it has a lot of the same flavor that we go with shows like Smallville, The Flash, and of course, Supergirl. At the same time, this is a different angle than those other shows. I hesitate to use the term more “mature,” because that makes it seem like it’s intended for older viewers, and I think this may be the most family-accessible out of all of them. But it’s not told from the point of view of a teenager or a young twentysomething like most of the other shows that network produced. That teen angle is still there, through the twins, but the title characters are older, are parents, and the show is reflective of this different perspective. For a superhero show, that’s really refreshing. For a Superman show, it’s practically a necessity. Overall, I would give this first season a B+.
Sun., Jan. 19
I’ve always been fascinated at how the Kryptonian justice system was based on album covers.
Comics: Action Comics #1091, #1092
Notes: Action Comics #1091finishes off the 12-issue “Phantoms” storyline written by Mark Waid. Waid was ascendant during my fundamental 90s reading years, with a dominant run on Flash and going on to do memorable work with the JLA, Captain America, and plenty of others. One of the greatest Superman stories of all time, Kingdom Come, was written by him. And yet he’s never had an extended run on the character. The closest he’s come is his three years (and counting) on Batman/Superman: World’s Finest, which is only half a Superman book and is set in the past. I would love to see him take over one of the regular, modern continuity Superman comics full time one of these days, but stories like “Phantoms” make for good reading until that happens. This Waid doing what Waid is good at – taking old-school concepts (in this case, the Phantom Zone) and using them as the focal point for a story with modern sensibilities. Best of all, he rescues Mon-El of the Legion of Super-Heroes from the… (oh man, how do I be kind here?) …from the controversial interpretation of the most recent Brian Michael Bendis run on the title. Actually, if there’s no space for Waid on a Superman book at the moment, how about we let him fix the Legion? They need it.
Issue #1092 continues with the “Superman Superstars” initiative (rather than having a single creative team for Action Comics these days, they’re bringing on big-name creators for short-term arcs). In this story, part one of John Ridley’s “Force Majeure,” we saw Clark confronting Major Disaster. Disaster is an old-school villain who has tried to go straight in the past, but in this issue we see him backslide, leading to a Superman who is uncharacteristically angry and disappointed. I’m not sure how I feel about this story, frankly. Superman being disappointed by an enemy he thought had reformed is reasonable, but the anger he displays seems almost out of character. I’m also not wild about Major Disaster going bad again. It’s not unusual to see a comic book story where a villain goes straight, but those are almost always “overturned” by later writers who make them villains again. I’m never a fan of that trope. It feels like it undermines the story from the writer who reformed them in the first place (although I suppose the same argument could be made for a writer who turns a bad guy good). Moreover, it also speaks to a kind of cynicism, as though redemption is not possible. That’s not a theme that I buy into, and frankly, I don’t think Superman would buy it either. But it’s just the first part of the story. Let’s wait and see where it goes.
Mon. Jan. 20
Short: “The Arctic Giant”
Here in southern Louisiana, we’re prepping for a winter storm the likes of which we almost never see. Seriously, they’re calling for the heaviest snowfall we’ve seen in these parts in 130 years. So when I saw that the next Fleischer short to watch was “The Arctic Giant…” well, I simply couldn’t resist.
In this cartoon, arctic scientists find a tyrannosaurus frozen in ice, with the added discovery that the creature may still be alive, should it happen to thaw out. I don’t know why anybody would say such a thing out loud, because that pretty much guarantees that’s exactly what will happen – especially when Lois Lane is in the building.
Pictured: Arctic
I know that I shouldn’t exactly expect scientific accuracy from these shorts, but this “tyrannosaurus” looks like Dino from the Flintstones with green skin and pointy teeth. Still, I have never and will never mind a little silliness in these cartoons. There’s a weird delight in watching this impossible creature stomp around Metropolis like a proto-Godzilla, stomping on bridges and wapping buildings with his gorgeously-animated tail. The scene where it destroys a bridge, similarly, is a sight to behold. It sounds odd to call such a thing “beautiful,” but the animation of its devastation is so well done that I can’t think of a better word to use.
We also get one of my favorite bits of characterization from any of these shorts. After Superman saves Lois from the dinosaur he tells her to stay put, to which she bows and replies in a deliciously snarky, “Yes, m’lord.” Joan Alexander nails this line with just the perfect level of sarcasm.
I don’t know if this is the BEST of the four Superman shorts so far, but I think it’s my favorite.
Comic: DC Vs. Vampires: World War V #6 (Lois Lane, Supergirl appearances)
Tues. Jan. 21
Comic Read: Superman #266
Notes: Today is, to put it simply, a very unusual day here in Louisiana. I mentioned in yesterday’s entry that we were gearing up for a winter storm like we rarely see here. It’s turned out to be far beyond anyone’s expectations – higher snowfall than we’ve seen in the past 130 years has buried the region. Schools are closed, businesses are closed, ROADS are closed, and I’m cuddled with my family, nice and warm. We took Eddie out to play in the snow a little bit, but he made it quite clear that he prefers the warmth, so it didn’t last long. I did, I should note, wear my Superman beanie when I went outside – bought it a few years ago before a particularly cold Mardi Gras parade and it’s stayed in my jacket pocket ever since for just such an occasion.
This is NOT a normal Tuesday down here.
Back inside, I decided for my Superman reading today I should find something appropriately arctic. My first thought was to find a comic centering on the Fortress of Solitude, but that turned out to be harder than I thought. You see, I do love the DC Universe Infinite app, I use it every day, but there are some egregious holes in the catalog. For example, the first run of Action Comics – the one that lasted until the New 52 reboot – lasted for 904 issues. The app, as of this writing, includes 480 of them. That’s a pretty substantial lapse, and it includes issues like the classic Fortress story from issue #241, “The Super-Key to Fort Superman.” The other assorted long-running Superman titles have similar gaps, and other relevant issues like DC Special Series #26 (the Fortress of Solitude treasury edition special) are all missing. To be fair, it’s not only Superman that has this problem. If you look at most of the long runners – Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. – you’ll see similar holes in the run. So DC, if you’re reading this – and I know you are – consider this my plea to start filling in these gaps. We would greatly appreciate it.
“It was more impressive when Neal Adams did this bit with the sand guy.”
Anyway, with the Fortress idea shot down, I continued to look for something cold-themed, finally settling on Superman #266, “The Nightmare Maker.” In this issue from 1973, Superman faces off against a villain who claims to be THE Abominable Snowman, although he doesn’t look anything like that guy from the Rudolph cartoon. It’s an okay story, but it sort of falls into an early Bronze-age miasma that a lot of the Superman comics lapsed into. They had mostly outgrown the Silver Age silliness, but the character and the world was still struggling to find an identity, so there are a lot of issues like this one, the sort of thing Smallville fans would eventually dub “freak of the week” stories. Eventually, I know, the characters got richer and the world grew more complex. But this is just from an era of Superman that I don’t vibe with as well.
Next week, guys, I’m going to do the first of what I imagine will be fairly regular “theme weeks” here. I’ve got several ideas for different characters or tropes to focus on this year, and while I won’t make EVERYTHING that week about the theme (still got a lot of episodes of Superman and Lois to catch up on), on those weeks I’ll have a specific focus. For my first theme week, I’m going to turn my attention to the most important character in the entire mythos other than Superman himself: Lois Lane. If you have suggestions for specific comic book stories or TV episodes that you think are the Best of Lois – either on her own or focusing on her relationship with Clark Kent – let me know in the comments, or at the new Year of Superman Facebook Group!
Hello, everybody, and welcome to This is How We Do It, the latest Geek Punditry feature-within-a-feature. In This is How We Do It, which I intend to be a recurring segment here, I’m just going to showcase a piece of storytelling that I think is being done exceptionally well and talk about why I think it’s so great. It is the antidote to Internet negativity. And the subject of the inaugural This is How We Do It is going to be the currently-ongoing DC Comics crossover event, Absolute Power. Fair warning, it’s not going to be possible to talk about why this is so great without spoiling some things, so this will be a spoilerful discussion. If you’re not up to date on reading this fantastic series, you may want to hold off on reading this at least until you get to issue #2 of the main title, because that’s the most recent issue as I write this.
Get ready, because this one ROCKS.
Comic crossovers are by no means a new thing, and I’ve talked before at length about them but I feel like I need to give a brief overview of what I mean here. In these “event” storylines, there is usually a main narrative that brings together the various characters of a publisher’s shared universe (in this case, DC Comics), while assorted spin-offs and special issues of the series that star the individual characters tell other angles of the story. The earliest such event I can find that followed this format is DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths from 1985-86. (It’s true that Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars came out first, guys, but there were no spin-offs of that book, which to me makes it more of an embryonic version of the crossover as it exists today.) DC has done dozens of them, as has Marvel. In fact, pretty much every publisher that has a shared universe (or even Multiverse) has dipped their toes in the format at one time or another – Image Comics, Valiant Comics, IDW, Dynamite, even Archie Comics has had crossover events.
So what makes Absolute Power so good? In a word: construction. Some events seem to come out of nowhere and have little ongoing impact – last year’s DC summer event Knight Terrors, for instance, has made relatively few ripples after it was over. Others will sometimes take existing heroes and force them to behave wildly out of character for the purposes of the narrative (lookin’ at YOU, Marvel’s Civil War). And sometimes, they’re just so overblown and complicated that it’s impossible to keep track of what’s actually going on. Absolute Power suffers from exactly zero percent of these problems.
Mark Millar knows what he did.
A good crossover really needs to start with a good antagonist, and this story has one of the best: Amanda Waller, who has decided that superheroes are the biggest threat to the planet. Waller is an established character, best known for her role as being in charge of the various incarnations of the Suicide Squad (a group of supervillains that she forces to do jobs for the government in exchange for reduced sentences – with the caveat that if they step out of line she’ll set off an explosive device she had implanted in their NECK). Waller has always tread the line of what makes an anti-hero, usually using underhanded methods to accomplish goals that are more or less positive…ish. However, that placed her perfectly for her role of the villain in this story, being a natural extrapolation of who she has always been as a character. In fact, Waller is the BEST kind of villain – the sort that, in her own mind, is 100 percent justified in her actions. Waller COMPLETELY believes that what she’s doing is the right, moral, ethical thing to do, and that makes her both more interesting and more dangerous than any bad guy who’s just in it for the Evulz.
What do you MEAN, she doesn’t look like a good guy?
The next thing that makes a crossover work, in my opinion, is setup. Before the original Crisis on Infinite Earths happened, there were months of stories from DC where a mysterious, shadowy figure was shown to be monitoring the heroes of Earth. (As it turned out, he wasn’t the bad guy, but you could certainly be forgiven for thinking he was.) Absolute Power has a more obvious setup, but a very effective one. Waller has taken the villains from two recent storylines – Queen Braniac from the House of Brainiac Superman story, and Failsafe, a robotic duplicate of Batman with all of his tactical genius and none of his morals and ethics. She has combined their respective tech with the work of the old Justice League villain Professor Ivo to create a set of androids who can steal superpowers, and sent them out to attack, depower, and capture both superheroes and villains alike. In the first issue of Absolute Power, dozens of heroes have their powers stolen and most of them are taken prisoner by Waller. By the time the second issue rolls around, those heroes who remain at large have begun assembling at Superman’s Fortress of Solitude to plan a counter-offensive.
Imagine how nasty a character Amanda has to be that THESE two are her MINIONS.
Another important element is that the characters be true to themselves, and here I’ve got to give it up to writer Mark Waid. Waid was a mainstay of DC Comics in the 90s and early 00s, with a legendary run on The Flash and turning out the best of DC’s Elseworlds line with Kingdom Come. After a long exile, he’s returned to DC and is crushing it with books like Batman/Superman: World’s Finest. In short, there are few people in comics who know the characters as well as Mark Waid, and he’s proving it again here. Aside from using Waller to her logical extreme, he’s showing perfectly who the various DC heroes are, such as a depowered but still dauntless Superman. When Batman and Mr. Terrific get into a squabble over who should be the leader of this little resistance group, it’s Nightwing who steps up, gives a rousing speech that would make Jean-Luc Picard stand and applaud, and takes command. The best part, though, is Batman’s reaction: watching Dick Grayson, the original Robin, take his place as the natural rallying point for a group of shattered, broken, and frightened heroes, Batman simply gives us a sly smile and says, “That’s my boy.”
For Batman, this is an almost shamefully embarrassing display of pride.
And I haven’t even talked about the artwork by Dan Mora, who is probably my favorite artist working at DC right now. It’s phenomenal, with real emotion and characterization displayed on the characters’ faces and mannerisms. A good artist can always make or break a book, and Mora – as he’s done with Waid on Batman/Superman – is doing an incredible job.
The next aspect that makes a crossover work is what happens in the spin-off books. In the original Crisis, the main story was supplemented by chapters in the various ongoing comics showing what was happening to those heroes during the Crisis itself, and that was the template for crossovers for a long time. Somewhere along the line, though, it became less likely for an individual series to be interrupted by a crossover and we’d get several – sometimes DOZENS – of spin-off one-shots and miniseries doing the job instead. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this shift in how crossovers were told corresponded with the point where the comic book WRITERS became the stars of the show, their prominence somewhat overtaking the artists. If the guy writing, for example, Uncanny X-Men at the time didn’t want his X-Men storyline interrupted because of World War Hulk, then the main title would remain unmolested and a World War Hulk: X-Men miniseries would take its place. The far extreme of this policy was what DC did last year with Knight Terrors, where EVERY ongoing DC comic was replaced for two months with a two-part miniseries showing that character’s interaction with the event, and many of them were never touched upon again.
For the most part, I’m in favor of a writer getting to tell the story the way they want, but speaking as a READER, I prefer when the crossovers touch the regular title. To me, that gives them greater weight, makes them feel more “important” than putting them into a spin-off miniseries. Absolute Power has returned to form on this. The ongoing titles are picking up the story threads started in the main series and running with them. After Nightwing gives the heroes various assignments in Absolute Power #2, we see them start to carry out their missions in the pages of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and other titles. In other books, like Green Lantern, we get side stories of some of the heroes who have been captured or are still on the run. And then there’s Green Arrow, which deals with the most shocking development of the story to date: longtime Justice League member Green Arrow has inexplicably turned tables and joined Amanda Waller, fighting his friends! Obviously, anything this incredible has to be covered in the main Absolute Power title, so what’s going on in his book right now? We see how his supporting cast – his son Connor, various former sidekicks and so on – are reacting to the fact that their patriarch seems to have broken bad.
Crossover chapters that are actually RELEVANT? Is that ALLOWED?
There are, I should concede, two spin-off miniseries for Absolute Power, but both are a bit more justified. Absolute Power: Origins is a deep dive into Amanda Waller’s backstory, showing how she went from a grieving mother who lost family members to violence (and how many heroes have had that same motivation?) to the magnificent bastard she is today. Absolute Power: Task Force VII, on the other hand, tells stories focusing on Waller’s seven power-stealing androids and their interactions with the heroes. Neither may be absolutely NECESSARY to the story, but I feel as though they both add something that otherwise we wouldn’t have, which is what a good spin-off should do.
The last thing that I think makes for a solid crossover is the impact of the story after it ends. I hate to keep picking on Knight Terrors, because I don’t really think it was a bad story, but the overall impact on the DC Universe since then has been negligible. The only significant thread I can think of was increasing Waller’s paranoia, but she already had that in spades and, what’s more, the Beast World event that FOLLOWED Knight Terrors did that same job, but better. Obviously, it’s impossible to tell right now just how Absolute Power will shape the DCU going forward, but there are hints in the solicitations for upcoming comics. After the series ends we’re going to be treated to a new initiative called “DC All-In,” which will start with a one-shot before branching out. This isn’t going to be a continuity reboot as DC has done in the past, but it will launch several new titles and some of the existing books will get new creative teams and new directions. The one that I’m most excited for will be the newly-announced Justice League Unlimited, done by the Absolute Power team of Waid and Mora. Although they’re playing details close to the vest until the end of Absolute Power, preliminary artwork and buzz indicate that this comic will be taking its cue from the cartoon series of the same name, in which the League expanded to include virtually every hero in the DC Universe, with different ones called up as needed. This is honestly the way I’ve thought they should have run the League for the past twenty years, since the cartoon was launched, and the fact that it’s finally happening makes me giddy. The fact that it’s Waid and Mora taking the reigns makes me ECSTATIC.
Holy crap, guys, Santa got my letter.
So even now, only halfway through the event, I feel as though Absolute Power has all the earmarks of one of the DC Universe’s classic storylines. All the pieces are in place and the right creative team is there. I haven’t enjoyed a book of this nature this much in years, and the fact that I’m equally excited for the stuff promised to come next makes it even better. So for the next creative team – from any publisher – who’s looking to do a multi-character, multi-title crossover epic event series, I can offer no better advice than to look to Mark Waid, Dan Mora, and Absolute Power.
Because THIS is how we do it.
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. Now if only the next event series were to bring back Captain Carrot to his deserved place of prominence in the DC Universe.
Blake M. Petit 