Neal Adams

Superman Stuff #32: 1971 All Over Again

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This weekend was the annual Nola Comic-Con, a small, local show that I enjoy going to whenever I can. It doesn’t always land at the right time in the schedule, but this year my wife happened to have the day off, so we headed out together. And naturally, I grabbed a few Superman family books from the bargain bins. Coincidentally, these two are both from 1971. It’s like it was fate or something. 

Superboy #173
Title: The Super-Clark of Smallville
Writer: Leo Dorfman
Art: Bob Brown & Dick Giordano
Cover: Neal Adams

The story begins with Clark helping Lana Lang and her archaeologist father open up an ancient jar that is rumored to constrain a small amount of ambrosia, the food of the gods of ancient Greece. Professor Lang’s experiments somehow cause an explosion, knocking him out. Clark leaps to save him, but in his haste, neglects to switch to his Superboy costume. When Lana sees him using his powers with her own eyes, she immediately realizes she’s been right all this time – Clark IS Superboy!

Then, even FASTER, she jumps to a totally DIFFERENT conclusion: that Clark ate some of the ambrosia, and it gave him the powers of the gods!

Lana, I love you, but come on.

Clark plays along with Lana’s absurd assumption in order to protect his secret, so she whips up the ugliest costume in superhero history and starts parading him around Smallville. Within seconds, the citizenry have embraced Clark as their new hero, having him do any menial task they can find for him and trash-talking Superboy. When an actual emergency happens, Clark relishes the chance to slip away and do some REAL Superboy stuff, but as he’s out of town, Lex Luthor comes striding back in. Lex shows up just in time to see the Smallvillians tear down their statue of Superboy and replace it with one of Super-Clark (this is the most fickle town in the history of history), and Lex vows to vanquish Clark as well…but Superboy first. 

As Superboy returns to town he confronts Luthor, who hits him with a ray that steals his powers! It’s all over, right? Nah, because as luck would have it, Superboy happens to stumble upon a bit of REAL Greek ambrosia! He eats it and uses his new godlike powers to beat Lex. Then, once his magic powers are gone and his Kryptonian might restored, Clark tells the townspeople the ambrosia wore off and Lana goes right back to telling him how lame he is.

There are a lot of screwy Superman stories from this time period, but I gotta tell ya, this one is next-level. That the people of Smallville with toss Superboy out so quickly feels utterly ridiculous and frankly makes the entire town look bad. Lana comes across even worse. She plants a big kiss on Super-Clark, leads the whole “Who needs Superboy?” movement, but she’s STILL the first to say “Thank Heavens we still have Superboy” when “Clark’s powers” go away. What did she expect, he could just keep magic ambrosia powers through sheer force of manliness? 

The only person in this story who’s even remotely effective is Lex Luthor, who does in fact invent a device that takes Superboy’s powers, but doesn’t even realize it – in fact, when Superboy starts doing things like throwing around the lightning of Zeus, Lex thinks he somehow gave Superboy EXTRA powers. 

Everybody in this story is the stupidest person in Smallville, is my point.

Superboy comes across looking a lot better in this issue’s back-up story, “Trust Me Or Kill Me” by Cary Bates, with art by George Tuska. In this Legion of Super-Heroes story, most of the Legion is on their way to a medico-asteroid (that’s a thing, kids) to get vaccinated against a virus that’s contaminating Earth. Cosmic Boy, having had the disease as a child, is the only immune Legionnaire and is left holding down the fort alone, until a mirror duplicate of himself pops out and starts a fight. Cos summons Superboy from the past, hoping that he can determine which of the two is the real Cosmic Boy, and they learn the whole thing is a scheme from the Legion’s old foe, the sorcerer Mordru. Superboy has only until the rest of the Legion returns to determine which of the two is the real Cosmic Boy, or the fake will destroy the Legion.

That Mordru is pretty confident, isn’t he? In fact, he’s SO confident that he promises to leave (for now) is Superboy can figure out which one is the bona fide Legionnaire. Fortunately for the people of the 30th Century, Cary Bates writes Superboy as much more intelligent than Leo Dorfman: after a few tests fail to prove which of them is the genuine article, Superboy comes up with a quick test, hurling iron boulders at them to see who has the magnetic powers to repel them. When one of them fails, Superboy declares HIM the true Cosmic Boy, as the “iron” boulders are really plastic, unaffected by the real hero, but repelled by the fake’s magic powers.

If only Superboy was always the smart one, huh?

Adventure Comics #408
Title: The Face at the Window
Writer, Pencils, and Cover: Mike Sekowsky
Inks: Henry Scarpelli

In the 70s, Linda Danvers bounced from city and city and job to job pretty frequently, as the writers didn’t seem to really know what to do with her. This issue is set during a brief time when she was working as a journalist. As she and her team film some old homes for a documentary, they wind up being run off a spooky old property by an old man with a shotgun. Before they flee, though, Linda spies a little girl in the window of the house. That night Supergirl returns – as does her rival reporter Nasthalthia Luthor. That’s right, Lex’s niece, who they actually called “Nasty.” The little girl appears to Supergirl, telling her that her parents are inside the house as well.

If you’ve ever told stories around a campfire you can probably figure out where this is going. Supergirl uncovers the old man’s dark secret and the literal skeletons in his closet, and in the end, finds that the girl who summoned her in the first place isn’t with us anymore either.

It’s spoooooky.

Supergirl gets a second story in this issue, “Invasion of the Mer-Men.” Linda and her co-worker, Johnny, are enjoying a day at the beach when they’re suddenly attacked by aliens wearing bubble helmets full of water. Linda dashes off to change into Supergirl (she couldn’t very well wear her costume under her bikini), but when she returns she finds that Johnny has been taken by the aliens. What’s worse, for a few issues now her powers had been cutting out at inopportune times, and when she tries to make chase, they die on her again. As her co-workers begin diving in a search for Johnny (feels like this should be a job for the Coast Guard, but whatever), Supergirl goes to Kandor to get some implants to allow her to breathe underwater. The aliens, meanwhile, show up at a conclave of scientists and announce that they’re stealing Earth’s water, because they need it more than we do. And with that announcement from what I assume are primitive AI bros, the story ends on a cliffhanger.

It was a glorious time, the 70s.

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!

Superman Stuff #29: Incomplete Classics II

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Once again, today we’re going to look at a few of the older Superman comics I rescued on a trip to an antique mall a few weeks ago. Let’s start with a trip back to 1977, then bounce forward a couple of years. 

Superman #314
Title: Before This Night is Over, Superman Will Kill!
Writer: Martin Pasko
Pencils: Curt Swan
Inker: Dan Adkins
Cover: Neal Adams & Curt Swan

As I mentioned last week, picking up comics from bargain bins is a gamble, because you often will get an incomplete story without knowing it until you sit down to read. Such is the case here – the story starts right off with a child begging Superman not to kill his “dog,” only for next page to reveal that the boy is suffering from an alien germ called “Journalist’s Disease” which has apparently been plaguing Metropolis at least since Lois Lane caught it back in issue #311. (A four-issue arc? Rare at this time.) The “dog” is, in fact, an alien creature called Jevik that Superman believes is responsible for the disease. Jevik was sent by another alien – a pirate named Amalak – whose attack is intended as some sort of revenge against Superman as the last son of Krypton.

There were a LOT of aliens who hated Krypton back in the day. I wonder if James Gunn’s movie was on to something.

Anyway, Superman has a way to cure the disease, but needs equipment from the Justice League satellite. Arriving there, he finds Amalak, who claims to have killed Flash, Green Lantern, and Supergirl, and engages our hero in a final battle. 

The story as a whole is interesting for two reasons. First, there’s the alien Jevik. Aliens in comics past often fell into one of two categories: either they were basically human, save for skin color or an odd extra growth and maybe some sort of racial superpower, or they were so bizarre that one can’t even fathom how such a thing could have evolved. Jevik falls into the latter category. Superman’s description of his life cycle is so strange that it makes almost no sense. Fortunately, making sense is by no means a requirement to enjoy a story of this nature.

The other thing that is noteworthy is how infuriating the last page of this issue is. I’m gonna spoil it for you here, because I want to talk about how mad it made me and I can’t do that without telling you what happens, so if you’re trying to remain pristine on a 49-year-old comic book, skip this. After Superman has engaged the cure to Journalist’s Disease and its many victims are on the mend, Clark Kent visits the recovering Lois Lane in the hospital. Shattered at the fact that he almost lost her, Clark asks Lois to marry him. She says she will – IF he will confess to her, right then and there, that he is Superman. And he says he can’t do that and walks away, leaving them both heartbroken.

It was the 70s, I get it. At this time period, the status quo was God and nothing could change. But Mr. Pasko – you expect me to buy that Clark Kent was willing to marry Lois Lane, but was not willing to tell her his identity? 

And look, I know that 15 years later Clark would propose to Lois before she knew he was Superman, but the idea there was that he wanted her to love CLARK, and he would tell her the truth after they were engaged. There was never any doubt that he WOULD tell her. You can say that it may still have been problematic, but this? This is just absurd.

Loved it. Five-star issue.

Superman #366
Title: Revenge, Superman-Style (Story 1), Perry White’s Superboy Scoop (Story 2)
Writer: Cary Bates (1), Bob Rozakis (2)
Pencils: Curt Swan (1), Kurt Schaffenberger (2)
Inker: Frank Chiaramonte (Both)
Cover: Ross Andru & Dick Giordano

An amazing thing about comics of this era is just how much time they spent recapping the story so far. This issue gives us no fewer than four pages to set up the story and recap what happened in the previous issue: Clark Kent is taking another week off work at WGBS-TV because Superman is needed on a mission in space that he fears he may not return from. Supergirl, meanwhile, is worried about him because last issue she was manipulated into attacking him as a plot by what they assume is the Superman Revenge Squad, and he’s off to fight them on his own. He disguises himself as an alien and allows himself to be “discovered” by the Revenge Squad, claiming that Superman recently thwarted him as well. 

I love seeing the home of the Revenge Squad here. This isn’t a group of five or six bank robbers from Metropolis, friends, it’s a legion of evil aliens that Superman has thwarted time and again. They’ve got their own whole alien base. They even make a giant statue of Superman that they daily force to melt by shouting how much they HATE it. George Orwell would approve.

The aliens show off their various techniques to train while one of them secretly scans the newcomers brainwaves to make sure it’s not a trick…and he passes. What? How can this BE? The narrator even asks the same question. Unfortunately, the answer to that seems to come in issue #367, which I don’t have.

There’s a back-up story, though! A tale of “Superman: The In-Between Years,” which was a serial from that era that told stories of Superboy after the death of Jonathan and Martha Kent but before he began his career as Superman in Metropolis. In “Perry White’s Superboy Scoop,” the boy of steel has gone AWOL. Cities all over the country are claiming that he’s moved into town as various disasters are averted and crimes are thwarted anonymously. As people wonder where he’s gone now that he’s left Smallville, Daily Planet reporter Perry White is determined to prove that the kid has taken up residence in Metropolis. Clark Kent, of course, IS in Metropolis, attending college and carrying out good deeds in secret – deeds like saving Perry White from a mob boss. 

Both Clark and Perry catch wind of the fact that some mobsters Perry recently reported on are meeting a rival gang from Gotham City in a baseball stadium, and both seek it out. Superman stops the gangland shooting and Perry White realizes that, despite the hail of bullets the two gangs unleashed upon one another, they were all knocked UNCONSCIOUS rather than killed. He demands Superboy show himself, and…well…he does. Pretty soon the Planet is formally announcing that Metropolis is the new home of Superboy.

Huh?

Okay, I can SORT OF buy that Superboy wanted to play his location close to the vest after leaving Smallville. Maybe he hadn’t totally settled on Metropolis as his new home yet. But first of all, these are the stupidest gangsters in history, so intent on shooting each other that none of them noticed the teenager in blue tights or the reporter with a camera taking pictures of them while they were standing on the baseball diamond of an otherwise empty stadium. And worse than that is Superboy just basically shrugging and giving Perry the scoop. There’s no change of heart, nothing that makes him sure that Metropolis will be his home, he just throws his hands up in the air and announces he’s in Metropolis now. Perry had no proof, just another freak occurrence such as those that had been happening since Superboy went into hiding. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Another timeless masterpiece.

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!