Year of Superman Week 33: Crossover Chaos Part II

August 20, 2025August 20, 2025 blakemp Year of Superman Captain America, DC Comics, DC Vs. Marvel, General Zod, Hulk, José Andrés, Krypto, Marvel Comics, Peter David, Ron Marz, Spider-Man, superman, Taste of Justice, Terence Stamp, Year of Superman

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.

It’s like starting a whole new countdown.

As always, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman Archive!

Wed., Aug 13

Comics: DC’s Kal-El-Fornia Love #1

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

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.

Fri., Aug 15

Comic Books: Marvel Vs. DC #3, Super-Soldier #1

“CORENSWET!”
“CAVILL!”
“CORENSWET!”
“CAVILL!”
“DUCK SEASON!”

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.

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

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 chef José 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.

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. You can join in the Kryptonian Konversation every day in the Year of Superman Facebook Group!

Year of Superman Week 30: A Little of This, a Little of That

July 30, 2025July 29, 2025 blakemp Year of Superman Ambush Bug, DC Comics, Fantastic Four, John Byrne, John F. Kennedy, Justice League Unlimited, Keith Giffen, Krypton Companion, Mark Waid, New History of the DC Universe, superman, Taste of Justice, Year of Superman

As I sit down to write this, a little after 7 pm on the evening of July 23rd, I’m exhausted. My wife got three days off work in a row and so we decided to take a quick trip to Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi. We visited the beach, took in a Biloxi Shuckers baseball game, visited the excellent Mississippi Aquarium, and I even managed to squeeze in a visit to 3 Alarm Comics, one of the shops in the area. Now, Wednesday evening, I haven’t read anything Superman-related yet today, so I’m going to dig into the pile and pick something pretty much at random to pontificate about. I suspect the rest of this week will be kind of random too. Hope that’s okay with everybody out there.

And as always, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman Archive!

Wed., July 23

Comics: Action Comics #560

I hate when somebody knocks my logo down.

Notes: Off the top of my head, I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned Ambush Bug here in the Year of Superman before. I know I wrote about him a couple of months ago, when I suggested that DC collect his early appearances in their new Compact Comics line, but that’s a whole different animal, even if it is on the same website. Ambush Bug was a co-creation of Paul Kupperberg and Keith Giffen. Originally a villain, he was really more of an annoyance than a threat to Superman, and he got even MORE annoying when he decided to go straight and become a hero. Ambush Bug also beat Deadpool to the fourth wall breaking schtick by well over a decade (maybe more – I don’t know exactly when Deadpool started doing that bit). He’s fully aware that he’s a comic book character and had frequent conversations with his creators in the later issues in which he appeared.

Although he gets the cover of this issue of Action, Ambugh Bug doesn’t actually show up until the second story. The first one, “Meet John Doe” by Kupperberg and artist Alex Saviuk, features Superman facing off a villain calling himself…well…John Doe. The story kicks off with Doe escaping prison, then deciding to take out his frustration on the various institutions that kept him incarcerated for over two decades. When Superman encounters him he starts suffering from bizarre bouts of amnesia, temporarily forgetting things like his dual identity or some of his powers, and Doe gleefully takes credit for his sudden selective memory loss.

It’s a pretty standard early-80s Superman story, taking down a villain with a little bit of misdirection. Doe also isn’t even a memorable villain (although I suppose that’s appropriate enough), and I don’t believe he ever showed up again. The most interesting thing about this story is that Doe appears to be sponsored by a mysterious figure in a satellite calling himself the Monitor. The DC Universe, at this point in 1984, was already trying to put together the pieces for what would eventually be Crisis on Infinite Earths, but some of these early Monitor appearances really don’t make much sense in the context of who the character would eventually become.

Giffen flies solo on the Ambush Bug back-up story. In “Police Blotter,” the recently “reformed” Ambush Bug has moved to Metropolis and set up a private detective agency. Getting word of this, Clark Kent decides to investigate the investigator, only for Ambush Bug to suss out his secret identity before they even reach the bottom of the second page. From there, the rest of the pages are less of a cohesive story and more like assorted glimpses of Ambush Bug making his way through Metropolis by doing things like arresting a car with an expired parking meter and dragging it to the steps of the police station, then popping into the Daily Planet offices to pay his best pal Superman a visit.

I’ve read this story before. It was one of the earliest Superman stories I read as a child (I would have been six or seven when it was published and, while I don’t think I read it quite that young, I don’t think I was much older than that), and it was certainly my first exposure to what we now call meta humor. (Yes, meta humor was a thing back then. Meta humor has been a thing for hundreds — maybe thousands — of years, it’s only recently that we started to CLASSIFY it.) I know I didn’t get the joke about Ambush Bug not doing something particularly gruesome because Giffen had drawn him behind an office door – I don’t think I even knew who Giffen was at the time. I knew, vaguely, that somebody had to write and draw comic books, but I wasn’t particularly paying attention to the credits yet to see who those people were. Now, as an adult, I love this kind of stuff, and Giffen was one of the greats. The story is really funny, highly bizarre, and just the kind of thing that makes me want to read more Ambush Bug. The character still pops up from time to time, but nobody has really had a great handle on him since Giffen’s last go-round. I know that the way comics work he won’t remain in limbo forever, but I hope that someone who’s half as good as Giffen was gets their hands on Irwin Schwab someday.

Thur., June 24

Comics: Superman #327

And you thought *your* family reunion was rough.

Notes: You know how you can get home from a trip and then the next day you feel like you’re in over your head? Even though our Mississippi sojourn was only three days, that’s what today has been like for me, catching up on a dozen different things and not realizing I still had to clock in the Year of Superman entry for today until late afternoon. But it’s been 205 days since I started this whole thing, and I haven’t missed a day yet. Being busy sure as hell isn’t going to do it to me. So I did the same thing I did yesterday, digging into my unread pile and choosing a fairly random book, in this case, Superman #327 from 1978. I picked this one, I don’t mind admitting, based on the cover. Kobra has captured Jonathan and Martha Kent! Superman has to do his bidding or they’re doomed! I was so surprised to see this cover, in which Kobra has clearly learned Superman’s secret identity, that I totally forgot that the pre-Crisis Ma and Pa Kent were actually already dead by the time Clark became Superman.

Anyway, the story begins with Clark Kent returning home to his apartment only to be attacked by Kobra and some of his stooges. Superman has never faced Kobra before (although some of his fellow Justice Leaguers have), but he has in his possession one of Kobra’s weapons, a teleportation gun, with a homing beacon that Kobra followed to Clark’s apartment, revealing his secret identity, which actually automatically puts him in the top 0.3 percent of every villain Superman had ever battled in terms of awareness. Kobra escapes, but later kicks up a sandstorm to draw Superman out. There he reveals that he’s plucked the late Jonathan and Martha Kent from the timestream about a week before their deaths, and if Superman doesn’t obey his every whim, he’ll…kill them!

It’s kind of a strange plan, isn’t it? Superman’s reaction is that he has to save the Kents because if they were to die it would change his personal history. And…I mean…it WOULD, but would having them die one week sooner really made that much of a difference? Don’t get me wrong, Superman should save them regardless, but the logic doesn’t necessarily track. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Kobra, since he apparently can do this sort of thing, to pull the Kents out of time when Clark was a baby? Or when THEY were babies? The consequences would be much more profound, I think.

Anyway, Superman beats Kobra because Superman beats Kobra, but Kobra gets away and, at the end of the story, still knows Superman is Clark Kent. I really wonder where I have to follow this story to see how the cat got back in the bag.

The back-up story in this issue is a tale of “Mr. and Mrs. Superman,” the Lois and Clark of Earth-2, who periodically showed up in tales of their life as a married couple at this time. The newlyweds are moving into a new apartment when they’re nearly crushed by their own couch. Clark, naturally, saves the day, but it soon becomes apparent that their brush with death was no accident – Clark is being targeted by members of a criminal organization called the Colonel Future Gang for a series of expose’s he’s been writing, and they’re trying to take him out for good.

I’m gonna keep my lips shut on how this one ends because it’s actually really good. But what I WILL say is that it’s actually Lois and her razor-sharp brain that solves the problem this time around, and you guys all know how much I love it when Lois is played to the top of her intelligence. It wasn’t always the default back in the era when this story was written, and it was even rarer for the Golden Age Lois, who this story stars. It’s great to see her outsmarting the bad guys here, and I’m really pleased with this story. I don’t think these “Mr. and Mrs. Superman” stories have ever been collected anywhere, and DC should do something about that.

There’s actually a lot of stuff from this era that has been kind of lost. I suppose it’s a consequence of the fact that DC’s stories weren’t always on fire then. This was the period when Marvel was making moves with new characters that pushed the limits like Ghost Rider, Dracula, Power Man and Iron Fist, and the like. DC, on the other hand, was kind of coasting on the same characters they’d brought in during the Silver Age, with only Firestorm being notable as a new addition to the lineup in this period. And except for some of the Batman stories of the age, a lot of it has been forgotten. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t stories from the 70s and 80s worth reading.

Fri., July 25

Comics: Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #1, Green Lantern Vol. 8 #24

Notes: Late last year, DC Comics kicked off their “DC Go!” program on the app. It’s basically the same thing as the Infinity Comics Marvel has been publishing online for some years now. The idea here is that rather than breaking the comic book story into traditional panels, the story flows straight down from one panel to another in an “infinite” scroll. It’s something that’s been tossed around and done for years, but the Big Two are fairly new in the game. I’m lukewarm on the format, if I’m being honest. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s rare that the creators actually use it to its utmost potential. Every so often you have an artist do something interesting or innovative with the format, or at the very least use it to do an extended panel (most often somebody falling or climbing down a great distance). For the most part, though, it’s just a less-convenient way to read a story. The worst is when they take a comic that was traditionally published and chop it up to rearrange it in the Infinity format. It’s like colorizing a movie – you take something that was perfectly good in the first place and make it worse.

That said, even when they don’t use the format to its greatest potential, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some really good stories told in the format.

However, This Internship is My Kryptonite is not one of them. The story here is that Jon Kent is getting an internship at the Daily Planet, and in this first issue, he meets his coworkers.

That’s…that’s it. That’s pretty much all that happens. And the thing is that those coworkers, and pretty much everybody else in the comic for that matter, are all the most annoying human beings ever put on a comic book page. Seriously, there is nobody likable in this comic book. Even Clark Kent, showing up briefly in a cameo, is just there for an “embarassing dad” joke.

Look, I give them credit for at least TRYING to do something with Jon. The character has been aimless for too long. But this is a poor fit. What they’re doing here is conceptually no different than a dozen other “young Superman” stories that were done with Clark. Furthermore, it doesn’t even appear to be canon, as in this story Lois Lane is NOT in charge of the Planet, as she is in the comics these days. So even if this WERE a good story (which, I must reiterate, it is not), it wouldn’t actually fix any of the problems we’re having with mainstream Jon Kent.

I don’t mind a little experimentation with comic book formats, but this particular experiment didn’t even make me want to read the second issue.

Sat. July 26

I just got back from taking my family to see Fantastic Four: First Steps. As I’ve made abundantly clear, my love for the Fantastic Four is second only to my devotion to Superman, and I’ve been waiting even longer for a good FF movie than I have for the rebirth of the Man of Steel. I also think it’s profoundly stupid, the way some people want to pit these movies against one another. There is room for both and I think that the success of one will only feed the other.

I don’t want to spend too much time talking about First Steps, as this isn’t the “Year of the Fantastic Four.” But I’ll definitely say this much: it is currently possible to go down to your local cinema and treat yourself to a double-feature of a great Superman movie followed by a great Fantastic Four movie. I never thought I’d see the day.

Comic Books: Superman Vol. 6 #28, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2 #9, New History of the DC Universe #2.

Notes: After the movie, we rolled by the comic shop to pick up this week’s Superman-related titles. First up is Superman #28, the beginning of the “Darkseid’s Legion” story arc. Last year, in the DC All-In Special, we got a glimpse of a universe corrupted by Darkseid’s energy (the universe we’re seeing in the “Absolute” comics) and populated by a horrifying Legion of Super-Heroes. This issue promises to begin unravelling the mystery.

You know when you meet up with old friends that you haven’t seen in a while and they’ve all been transformed into acolytes of Darkseid?

The story, by Joshua Williamson and Dan Mora, picks up after the Validus attack from the Summer of Superman special. Worried about his friends in the future, Superman returns to Smallville to retrieve his Legion flight ring before he sets out to visit them. Before he can depart from Smallville, though, he finds himself face-to-face with a Saturn Girl who – much like the Absolute Universe – has been inspired not by Superman, but by Darkseid himself.

The issue is a hell of a start to this storyline, with an insidious version of the Legion acting as the bad guys even as Clark reflects on the REAL Legion, what it means to him, and how it pains him that the future is always somehow in flux. Perhaps DC is finally planning to address the ways they keep warping this history of the Legion? It would be nice to settle it once and for all.

Justice League Unlimited continues with its ninth issue, an epilogue to the recent “We Are Yesterday” storyline. The League is trying to cope with the dual problems of restoring the time-lost heroes to their respective proper eras and, in a storyline that mostly follows Mr. Terrific, trying to find and rescue the lost and duped Air Wave, who the heroes now know was conned into turning against them in the battle with Grodd. It’s more Mark Waid goodness, with the League finding mistakes it’s made and the heroes trying to compensate. We’re also starting to draw together a few different threads here, with the appearance of the Doomsday/Time Trapper hybrid that’s been popping up in Superman and the return of the World Forger, a Justice League frenemy from a couple of relaunches back who is responsible for the creation of our specific world in the multiverse.

Waid has so much on his plate right now – this title, World’s Finest, Action Comics, Batman and Robin: Year One, and the miniseries I’m going to talk about next. With all of these pieces combined it really feels as though he has become the primary architect of the modern DCU. At the very least, it seems that everybody else has to run their respective pieces by him to make sure they all fit.

MY history textbook had a picture of a bunch of bison on it. What a rip-off.

That other Waid project is New History of the DC Universe, the second issue of which hit this week. This issue starts with Kal-El’s spacecraft landing in Smallville and goes straight through to the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. Without spending hours recapping the specifics, it’s really impressive how Waid has managed to piece together the different continuities in ways that make sense. For example, he establishes that Victor Stone (aka Cyborg) WAS part of the team that fought back Darkseid and eventually became the Justice League, as seen in the New 52 version of the Justice League’s origin, but his injuries were so great that he had to be placed in suspended animation to heal. When he awoke years later, he joined the Teen Titans, as in his original origin. It’s a neat little workaround that manages to keep both of Cyborg’s “origins” mostly intact. The real test is going to come next issue, though. At the end of this one, Waid gives us the Great Crisis, including the death of both Barry Allen (who is narrating the series) and Supergirl. Explaining Barry will be simple enough – his resurrection story was part of the terribly inaccurately-named Final Crisis, but Supergirl? She never GOT a resurrection story. She died in Crisis, then the Man of Steel reboot happened and she never existed at all, then she came back in an updated version of her original origin. So I’m very eager to see what kind of slight-of-hand Waid intends to use to bring her back from the dead.

Sun. July 27

Essays: “The Kryptonian Alphabet: A Real-World Historical Tale” (2006) by Al Turniansky, “Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes” (2006) by Mark Waid, “The Superman Mythology: Animal Planet-Legion of Super-Pets” (2006), “Al Plastino Interview” (2003) by Glen Cadigan, “The Superman Mythology: Krypton Meets Camelot” (2006), all from The Krypton Companion.

Notes: It is a busy and scorching Sunday here in southern Louisiana. Early this afternoon, my family and I went to see a performance of Willy Wonka Kids, a half-hour reduction of the stage play that happened to star my niece, Maggie, in her stage debut (as Grandma Josephina, an Oompa Loompa, and the best squirrel I’ve seen since the Superman movie). Afterwords, we went out for lunch and did some grocery shopping before we came home and I filmed my LitReel for the week. I then took my usual hour to edit all the takes down to a tight three and a half minutes and set it to upload. FINALLY, I had time to sit back and pull out the DC Universe app to look for a Superman comic to read today.

Naturally, that’s when the internet went out.

It’s still out as I write this. My reel still hasn’t uploaded. It’s irritating as hell.

So I had a few options here. I could wait for the internet to come back – which isn’t really an option, as when this happens (and it happens far too often) there’s really no way of telling how long it will take to come back on. Could be 30 seconds, could be Tuesday. I could try to read a comic on my phone, but I hate reading comics on my phone. The screen is too small. I could dip into my stack of unread comics, as I’ve already done twice in this pretty random week in the Year of Superman, but like I said, I already did that twice this week and I didn’t really want to do it again.

So I went with option four and I pulled out The Krypton Companion again, the excellent book of essays and interviews about the history of the Superman mythology. I’ve read essays from this book before this year but it’s been a few months, so let’s dig in again.

Al Turniansky gives us “The Kryptonian Alphabet,” an interesting little story about the creation of…well, it’s right there in the title. Back in the 50s, he said, they would frequently receive letters from readers (kids, usually) trying to submit their own Kryptonian alphabet, which usually just consisted of 26 different “squiggles” that corresponded exactly to the standard English alphabet, much like modern Interlac as has been used in DC Comics for quite some time. In an effort to put a rest to that practice, editor E. Nelson Bridwell replied in a letter column that the Kryptonian alphabet actually had 118 characters, thinking that this would stop the kids from trying to come up with them. E. Nelson Bridwell clearly did not understand the fanaticism of the average comic book fan.

Mark Waid himself chimes in with an essay regarding Superman’s history with the Legion of Super-Heroes. There’s nothing particularly revelatory in this piece, it’s mostly just a discussion of how the Legion contributes to the Superman mythos itself, but it’s nice to hear some of the details from such an expert. This essay, in fact, was actually originally published in 2006, when Waid was the writer of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes, so he’s pretty much THE expert.

I also read through a nice short piece on the Legion of Super-Pets and an interview with classic artist Al Plastino, but the best thing I read today was “Krypton Meets Camelot,” a discussion of the famous story in which Superman works with President John F. Kennedy to promote his physical fitness program. Although it was written while Kennedy was still alive and scheduled for publication for Superman #168, it was promptly shelved upon Kennedy’s assassination. It didn’t actually see print until #170, at the request of the Johnson administration. The essay also briefly discusses some of the other appearances of Kennedy and other presidents (especially Abraham Lincoln) in comics. This reminds me that I haven’t actually re-read that Kennedy story for the Year of Superman, and I probably should.

I would check right now to see if it’s available on the DC Universe Infinite App but…well, you know. No internet.

But with summer coming to an end entirely too soon – I return to work to begin preparing for this new school year on Friday, August 1 – I suspect I may be turning to the Kryptonian Companion a bit more often when I’ve got a day where I’m short on time and I need a quick dose of Superman to keep my streak alive.

Mon. July 28

Friday is getting closer whether I like it or not. Today, the last Monday of my summer, my wife and I took Eddie down to the school where they helped me start putting my classroom together for the new school year. Rearranging furniture, unpacking and re-shelving books, putting up decorations, and most of all, getting together my Geek Corner. I think everybody needs something like my Geek Corner. It’s the little section of my classroom by my desk where I surround myself by my own nerdy stuff. Erin always puts together a collage of pictures – mostly comic book characters – that I’ve clipped out of Previews and other assorted catalogs and magazines over the past year. Then, on the bookshelf behind my desk, I put up a worthy collection of Superman stuff.

A collection so worthy it could lift Mjolnir.

There are, it’s safe to say, a couple of dozen Funko Pops of various sizes, other figures, figurines, and statues, a plush doll, some Hot Wheels and Corgi Cars, and probably other things that I’ve forgotten about but that you can enjoy in the pictures I’m sharing here. The prize addition to the collection this year, though, is the Daily Planet popcorn “bucket” I picked up the day we saw Superman in theaters. I’d hoped to squeeze in a second viewing of the film before school starts up, but it seems pretty unlikely that will happen, with our schedule for the next few days being what it is. But I hope the rest of you guys keep seeing it again and again, and you can be assured I’ll be preordering the Blu-Ray as soon as it’s available.

Getting home from school in the mid-afternoon, it’s time to find some Superman stuff to read today.

Comic Book: Superman #170

And you thought *your* family reunion was — wait, I already did that joke this week?

Notes: Still thinking about the essay I read yesterday regarding the Superman/Kennedy comic, I thought it would be interesting to go back and read that one again. The story, frankly, is kind of dull. Superman saves a group of international hikers trapped by an avalanche, upon which Lana Lang realizes the European survivors are peppy and ready to move, whereas the Americans are slow and sluggish. Superman meets with Kennedy about helping to promote the President’s physical fitness program, which turns into Perry White forcing the staff of the Daily Planet to join him in assorted exercise activities, which causes Clark to constantly have to find ways to fake feeling more exhausted than he actually does. The ultimate comes when the crew is caught by a cave-in. When Perry, Lois, and Jimmy see Clark lifting the boulder effortlessly, they realize he’s been fooling them for years and is, of course, secretly Superman.

Haha! Just kidding. No, Perry immediately assumes that his noodle-armed schlep of an employee has been so beefed up by the new Daily Planet fitness regimen that he has – in just a few days of exercise – gained the ability to heft an enormous chunk of rock. That is one hell of a program, Perry. Just…astonishing.

The story is of greater interest as a historical footnote than as an actual story, to be honest. The back-up story is a bit more entertaining: “If Lex Luthor Were Superman’s Father.” In this story Luthor comes up with what I think we can all agree is the greatest evil scheme in the history of evil schemes. Settle down, this one is a doozy:

Step One: Escape from jail.

Step Two: Travel back in time and journey to the planet Krypton BEFORE Jor-El and Lara get married.

Step Three: Pretend to be a hero, “Luthor the Noble.”

Step Four: Make Jor-El look bad and make Lara fall in love with and marry HIM instead.

Step Five: Sire Kal-El (why he would be named -El if Jor-El isn’t his father is beyond me) and then wait a few years for Krypton to blow up.

Step Six: Return to his own time where Superman, being a dutiful son, cannot arrest his own father, allowing Luthor free reign to commit crimes.

The wildest thing is that this plan almost WORKS. He makes it all the way up to Step Five and has Lara on the altar (which apparently was a giant wedding jewel on Krypton) before a special device he’s wearing to protect him from Krypton’s greater gravity suddenly runs out of power, pinning him to the floor. Before he can be rescued, he confesses that he’s actually from Earth. He manages to hop into his time machine and escape back to Earth before he can be thrown into the Phantom Zone, only to immediately be picked up by Superman and returned to jail.

This is a truly insane plan, even by Silver Age standards. And despite the fact that the cover calls it an “imaginary story,” the way it ends (with Jor-El and Lara reconciling) it still quite easily fits into the actual canon of the Silver Age comics. And if I may be a little crude, it’s ridiculous how funny it is that Luthor’s ultimate plot to render Superman ineffective forever boils down to being able to say “Hey, Kal-El, I banged your mom!”

Tues., July 29

It is a million and twelve degrees outside and I’ve got two days left before I go back to school. My drive, if I’m being perfectly honest, is absolutely drained. I want to read Superman, but I don’t want to dig into anything that’s going to take me all day either, because I’ve got to bring my son to the library and to a therapy appointment and then, right after that, I’m taking my wife out for one last dose of summer fun – a Weird Al Yankovic concert that we bought tickets to nearly a year ago. So I’m going to find something quick today. Ah – here we go!

Comic Book: Superman Vol. 2 #1

The first day is always rough, isn’t it Clark?

Notes: I, of course, wrote about John Byrne’s Man of Steel reboot back during “Origins Week,” and some of his other Superman stories have peppered the blog, but I have not, previously, taken the time to look at his first issue as the regular, ongoing Superman writer and artist. And as it’s a mostly self-contained story, and the fact that it’s got “First Issue” stamped on the cover in big, red letters, it feels like this would be a good quickie to dig into today.

Whereas Man of Steel took long gaps in-between issues, skipping years to get to the “present day” of the DC Universe, Byrne’s first issue of Superman picked up only weeks after the final issue of his miniseries. Superman has only recently discovered the truth of his Kryptonian heritage, and now he’s seeking the rocket that brought him to Earth, which was stolen from the Kent farm. He eventually tracks it down to an empty warehouse, where its sole inhabitant has been dead for weeks.

Later, as Clark meets Lois for a jogging date, they literally run into a bank robbery being committed by a towering bull of a man who introduces himself as Metallo, the man who will kill Superman thanks to his Kryptonite heart. Metallo, it turns out, was built by the dead man Superman had tracked down earlier and was powered by a chunk of Kryptonite that had hitched a ride on Kal-El’s rocket (which you can see strike the rocket on–panel in Man of Steel #1 – give Byrne credit for planning ahead). Metallo has Superman on the ropes before he’s picked up by a strange craft. Superman survives the encounter but is more nervous than ever about his unknown rescuer…as well he should be, as the readers are aware that Metallo has been taken by Lex Luthor, who has the attitude that nobody is allowed to kill Superman but him.

I’m reminding myself, as I read this, that this was the first issue of Superman following the relaunch, and there’s a fair possibility that a lot of people who picked it up hadn’t read the miniseries. So what if this was somebody’s first exposure to Superman? If that’s the case, there are some VERY interesting choices in here. First of all, let’s talk about Lois and Clark’s relationship. Lois is still bitter about Clark scooping her on the day Superman first arrived in Metropolis, but his persistence seems to have worn her down. She as much as admits she finds him attractive, but pushes back against his advances. Clark, to his credit, is adamant that he wants to win Lois’s heart, but he wants to do it as HIMSELF, not as Superman. If all you knew about Superman before reading this was Silver Age stories or the dynamic from the Christopher Reeve movies, you get a sharp change in what is expected. This is a dynamic that I greatly prefer, and Byrne is building up these two characters really nicely.

Metallo’s re-imagining is handled well. He’s constructed specifically to take out Superman, built by a man who has convinced himself that Superman is an alien invader. It’s the standard excuse for anti-Superman villains, of course, but I don’t think it was quite as overused in 1987 when this was published, so I won’t take points off for that. Even if it were cliched, it’s still a huge step up from Metallo’s original Silver Age origin, in which he was made into a cyborg by a well-meaning scientist who just happened to let it slip that Kryptonite was an element that could power his heart. Oh, and that Metallo himself was one of those ridiculously convenient dopplegangers of the era, somebody who just HAPPENED to look almost exactly like Superman. That happened inexcusably often in that period, and it frankly irritates the hell out of me every time I see that trope turn up.

The fight scene is really unexpected, if you think of it from a historical perspective. Once Metallo turns up the juice on his Kryptonite, it’s a curb-stomp battle, and it doesn’t look like Superman stands a chance. Byrne! What were you doing? It was Superman’s first issue and you had him get his ass handed to him by Metallo, only to be saved by LEX LUTHOR! It’s ridiculous! And impossible! Isn’t Superman ALWAYS supposed to be completely infallible and indestructible? He’s NEVER been hurt in nearly 90 years of his recorded history! He has absolutely NO vulnerabilities!

At least, that’s what those three guys still whining about the James Gunn movie would lead me to believe.

No, it IS surprising that Byrne starts off his series with an inarguable loss, but it fits into the arc he’s telling, which began in Man of Steel and continues on into the next issue. I considered reading issue #2 today as well, but I’m actually planning a Lex Luthor week at some point, and it’s just too good an issue not to include when that happens.

“Singin’ byyyye, byyyye Miss Kryptonian pie…”

I also returned to the DC app this week to read the first issue of another of the DC Go! comics, Taste of Justice. In this one, set in the early days of Lois and Clark’s relationship, it’s Clark Kent’s birthday (and they’re sticking with the Feb. 29 date, as in Alan Moore’s work), so Lois Lane decides she wants to do something special and cook his favorite meal, Beef Bourguignon. The only problem is, for all the things she’s great at, Lois Lane can’t cook, so she calls in Perry White to help her out.

This is a cute story. In large part, it’s about how to cook the specific dish, and I assume that’s going to be the format of this series: each issue showcasing a DC character cooking something for some reason. It’s a weird format, but it makes as much sense as the Superman Vs. Meshi manga series where he literally spends every issue talking about his favorite food at different Japanese chain restaurants. Anyway, while I wouldn’t necessarily try to cook the dish based on the instructions in this comic (Perry frequently neglects to mention things like the quantity of ingredients or cook times), I can definitely see myself looking up real recipes for foods I read about here. The story itself has a sweetness to it, with Lois trying to do something nice for the guy she’s falling in love with and being willing to reach out for help from someone she trusts when she needs help. There’s a vulnerability there that she doesn’t usually show, and it makes sense that Perry White is the one who would get to see it.

It was a low-key week, guys, but honestly, I kind of feel like that’s what I needed. I hope you enjoyed it anyway, and here’s hoping I’ve got something more exciting next Wednesday.