Year of Superman Week 38: Electric Boogaloo III-The Giant-Sized Finale

September 24, 2025October 11, 2025 blakemp Year of Superman Action Comics, Aquaman, Challengers of the Unknown, Dan Jurgens, DC Comics, Deadpool/Batman, Dominus, Jeff the Land Shark, Jerry Ordway, Jon Bogdanove, Justice League, Justice League Red, Karl Kesel, Krypto, Louise Simonson, Mark Waid, Ryan North, Steel, Superboy, Supergirl, superman, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum, Teen Titans, Year of Superman

It feels like I just started yesterday, but here we are in the fourth week of my journey through the era of Electric Superman. The Man of Energy has been split into two – a red and a blue version of himself. But time is almost up, because we’re on the cusp of the crossover event that ended this era, the Millennium Giants. Let’s get into it!

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

Wed., Sept. 17

Comics: Superman Vol. 2 #133, Adventures of Superman #556, Action Comics #743, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures #6 (Guest Appearance), Taste of Justice #11 (Supergirl and Krypto)

Notes: Superman #133 starts with Red and Blue bickering over which of them is going to go in to work and write their column, with Red winning the argument and banging out a piece that’s both more pointed and more jovial than his usual style, to the point that Perry asks him to rewrite it. An explosion summons Superman Red to Cadmus, where he finds Guardian beaten to hell and the three deities that Superman fought on Halloween proclaiming “The Time of the Millennium Giants is at hand!” In a backup story, Jimmy and Misa are still on the run from the Black Crucible. When they get pinned down, Misa uses a device to signal for help. Blue Clark, meanwhile, is back at the Planet office where he’s rewritten Red’s column, only to turn in one that’s too bland and analytical. He bolts away and saves Jimmy from the Crucible, whose leader says the Medallion Jimmy is carrying will signal the end of the world. Suddenly, the Medallion AND the members of the Black Crucible just…disappear.

Ominous, no?

Adventures #556 picks up right there with Red facing off against the Millennium Guard. They summon the Medallion to them (explaining where it went in Superman #133) and then take off in three different directions. Blue, meanwhile, is helping Jimmy and Misa fix up their vehicle when the three of them are attacked by a huge monster straight out of a Kirby sci-fi comic. The conclusion of that fight is ALSO the sort of supremely goofy thing that would have happened in a book of this era, but it’s actually pretty charming as well in its silliness. And even though at the end of the book Jimmy is still running for his life from Intergang, his standing up to the monster convinces Misa that maybe he’s not so lame after all – it’s a rare win for Jimmy in this era.

Action Comics #743 has Blue returning to Metropolis, where he encounters detective Slam Bradley, who’s chasing a nasty sort that calls himself the Inkling. Blue stops Inkling, who the reader learns is another product of Hunter Thompson’s experiments at S.T.A.R. Labs (the same ones that gave us the Ripper not long ago). He knows Thompson is bad news, but has no proof, which has gotta be frustrating for a guy as cool and logical as Superman Blue. Also, in space, the Millennium Guard has taken positions in orbit ready to “purge the Earth,” which always sounds like a good time.

In Red’s story, the Guard has bolted away, leaving Superman drained of energy. Jimmy and Misa find him and give him a lift back to Metropolis, where they stumble into the Intergang squad that’s been chasing Jimmy for months. Misa finds a dandy solution, using a device that makes Jimmy completely invisible to them and, in fact, making them forget he ever existed. That’s a quick little solution to that subplot just before things get wild next week.

These three issues all use the same format, with two different stories for the respective Red and Blue, and I have to say, I’m impressed with how well it works. The stories weave in and out of each other, connecting at various points and showing the consequences of one story in the other. It works so well, honestly, that I’m surprised it really only happened for three issues, plus the two issues we read at the tail end of last week, Action #742 and Man of Steel #77, which each devoted an entire issue to one of the Supermen but otherwise worked the same way.

I suppose time has shaped my perspective, but I could have sworn the Red/Blue era lasted longer. As it turned out, only about two or three months pass between the split and the story that’s going to end with the two of them re-forming and Superman’s powers going back to normal. Maybe it was the fact that back then I had to wait a week for each new issue to come out, whereas today I’m simply clicking “next issue” in the DC Universe app and bouncing ahead seven days to get the next installment.

At any rate, I really liked the way these issues were told, and while I don’t want Superman to get split in half again, I’d like to see someone else use this trick. I’m not sure how, exactly – maybe Firestorm, whose whole gimmick is that he’s two people who fuse into one superhero would be a good candidate. Or perhaps a run about a couple of Green Lantern sector partners that used this formula. Or hell, do it with Jonathan and Conner Kent, the two Super-Brothers. That might actually give Jonathan something interesting to do for a change. But somehow, it’s a trick I would like to see done again.

Thurs., Sept. 18

Comics: Superman: The Man of Steel #78, Aquaman Vol. 5 #43, Challengers of the Unknown Vol. 3 #15, Superman Vol. 2 #135, Teen Titans Vol. 2 #19, Supergirl Vol. 4 #20, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #11

Notes: There are different degrees of crossover events. There are the bigs ones, the huge ones that have a main miniseries and spin-offs and chapters appearing in various different comics – from the original Crisis on Infinite Earths down to lesser examples like Genesis. There are the small-scale ones that only involve titles in the same group, like the Superman or Batman titles. Then there’s stuff in the middle like Millennium Giants. This one is clearly a Superman story and it plays out in the four main Superman titles, but it also brings in Steel and Supergirl, as well as a few books with no relation to Superman at all. They also did a neat thing with the covers of the first nine (out of 11) issues: they assemble into a sort of large puzzle featuring the giants and the respective heroes facing them, along with our two Supermen zipping around and appearing on every cover.

The fun starts off in Man of Steel #78. The three members of the Millennium Guard have taken their spots in three places on the globe, including the site of a volcanic eruption where the native religion sees them as a harbinger of the end of the world. Red and Blue, after a brief squabble, agree to split up and each take on one of the Guard. But as it turns out, the Guard are only there to facilitate the release of the Millennium Giants – three enormous deities who burst from the ground.

The story picks up in Aquaman #43. One of the giants is marching through the ocean on a beeline for the Atlantean city of Poseidonis. Aquaman and Tempest try to confront it when he takes out Superman Red, but the creature keeps walking, sending tidal waves towards nearby coastlines. As Tempest protects the shore, Aquaman tries to communicate with the giant telepathically, but he fails and it goes into battle against the heroes and the HEAVILY armed Poseidonis. Man, this really makes me want to go back and read Peter David’s Aquaman all the way through. Maybe next year. Anyway, Superman and Aquaman try their best to hold back the creature but it crushes an underwater city on its march across the ocean.

This is really how a crossover SHOULD work. It’s not a coincidence or shoehorned in – it makes PERFECT sense for Aquaman to get involved when a freaking giant is threatening his kingdom, and it brings him in to make him a player in the rest of the crossover too. Perfectly done.

The next installment brings us to Challengers of the Unknown #15. Classically, the Challengers were a group of daredevils and specialists who each survived a near-death experience and, believing themselves to be “living on borrowed time,” became adventurers. They weren’t QUITE superheroes, but they often ran across them. This series was one of DC’s periodic attempts to update the concept with new characters and a dash of X-Files style paranormal investigation. The Prime Minister of the UK summons the Challs to investigate the giant that erupted from Stonehenge and is marching across the countryside. This issue is more skippable than the Aquaman chapter, seeming to take place BEFORE that one (the English Giant is the one Aquaman and Superman Red fight in the ocean), and Superman doesn’t actually appear. It does end with the Challs uncovering some info that they want to bring to Superman’s attention, though.

In Superman #135, the two Supermen have reconvened in Mexico, where another Giant has climbed out of a volcano. Blue wants to evacuate, but the impetuous Red charges in headfirst, attacking. They manage to barely pull off a save, and Lois (who is there covering the Giants, of course) confronts her two husbands, both of whom now seem to be pretty happy with the ability to be in two places at one and have no intention of trying to fuse together again. The split up yet again, with Blue staying on the giant in Mexico and Red zipping to the Pacific. Back in Metropolis the Teen Titans (whose book, you may recall, was written by Dan Jurgens at the time) decide to head to Egypt to take on the third giant, while the Challengers are on their way to Mexico. Neither of the Supermen are effective in their attacks on the giants, though, with Red failing to save an entire pacific fleet of 200 American ships.

Teen Titans #19 starts with Tempest saving Red after his failure in the Pacific before following the people whose comic it actually is as they attempt to hold off the Giant that’s threatening Egypt. The bulk of the issue is Superman Red and the Titans facing off against the Giant, failing time and again and finally accepting that they need to focus on saving the people in its path rather than fight it directly. That may not sound like the most exciting take for this issue, but Jurgens does a good job of painting it as the sensible route, showcasing his Titans to readers who may not have been exposed to them before and showing some hidden depths to a few of them as well. The issue ends with the Giant marching off to sea and the team planning to head to Markovia, where the third Giant is wreaking havoc.

Supergirl #20 brings back Peter David again, kicking things off with a woman in a mental institution claiming to be Cassandra (the Greek one) and screaming with terror about the encroaching giants. And like Cassandra, her fears are dismissed. Supergirl, meanwhile, has just left her family in the midst of a personal crisis to help deal with the crisis of the Giants. She tries to use her powers as an “Earth Born Angel” (read everything Peter David ever wrote, really) to hold it off, but falls into the ocean where both she and “Cassandra” are saved by Superman Red. It’s kind of a quick chapter, really, but it showcases Supergirl well and it’s always a delight to read David’s stuff again.

Fri. Sept. 19

Comics: Adventures of Superman #557, Steel #50, Action Comics #744, Superman: The Man of Steel #79, Superman Vol. 2 #135, Superman Forever #1

Notes: In Adventures #557, Steel calls in Superboy and the Justice League to join the fight as Blue faces the Mexican Giant Cabraca while Geo-Force and Terra hold the line against Cerne in Markovia. Blue, Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter face Cabraca while the others join the Titans, Supergirl, and Red in Markovia, where Cerne and Ronal are now converging. The giants lift an entire chunk of Markovia into the sky, the heroes only barely managing to evacuate it before it’s gone. And the icing on the cake comes when Cerne crosses the Atlantic to re-emerge in Metropolis harbor.

Steel #50 continues as John Henry – who has recently joined the Justice League and is eager to prove himself – works with J’onn J’onzz to construct a weapon to stop the Giants by disrupting their connection to Earth’s magnetic Ley Lines. The device seems to work, but John shuts it down, fearing that it will cause even greater destruction than the Giants if the field breaks down. He winds up fighting his own teammates over it, destroying the device and finding himself on the opposite side of the rest of the JLA.

In Action #744, while Cerne approaches Metropolis, the Challengers of the Unknown come to Lois Lane in the hopes that she can get their findings to Superman. Their theory is that the Giants – who appear in myths from cultures all over the world – have arisen because of an anomaly in the Earth’s energy field. They believe that the two Supermen, working together, could drain the Giants of their energy and stop the rampage. Red draws all the power from Metropolis to turn himself into a giant, ripping Cabraca into space. The effort is fruitless, however – Cabraca crumbles, falls back to Earth as a meteor shower, and re-forms in Australia. His suit shredded, Red begins to dissipate.

Blue zips into space to save Red in Man of Steel #79, but Red refuses his help, fearing that weaving the circuitry of their respective suits will cause them to re-merge. Blue saves him anyway, and although they don’t merge, the two Supermen are now tethered together. Steel has modified his device and gives it to the Supermen to try to trigger it in Cabraca’s heart – which they do but find themselves transported to the “Heart of the World,” where a strange being calling himself the Keeper of the Flame says that their alien energies awakened the giants. He can help them, but only at the cost of their lives. The Supermen trigger a chain reaction that topples the Giants, but their victory is short-lived. It turns out that stopping the Giants has also stopped the flow of the energy that binds Earth together, and it’s on the verge of a massive eruption that would duplicate the fate of a little world called Krypton.

It all comes to a head in Superman #135! An old Aboriginal man tells the Supermen that salvation can be found with the Medallion of the Damned, which is deep inside Cerne’s body. The three of them dive into the Giant’s form, where they find the Medallion on the body of an insectoid creature. Here they learn that the only way to restore Earth’s magnetic lines is for each of them to expel their energy, one at the center of the Earth and one from orbit. And although they have spent this entire time fighting and bickering one another, the two Supermen do it – because at the core, they’re still both Superman. The skies turn red, the ground turns blue, and Earth is saved…but when it’s over, J’onn J’onzz casts out a telepathic web to search for the men of energy…and finds nothing.

Are they gone? Are they dead?

Of course not. They’re in Superman Forever, a giant-sized one-shot with a fancy lenticular cover by Alex Ross to tie the whole thing up. The Kents are driving through their fields at night, worried about their missing son, when they see a meteor streak across the sky. It’s not the first time this has happened, and they rush to the site to see Clark lying in a crater: unconscious, naked, and burning with fever. They bring him back to their farmhouse where he sleeps for over 24 hours before waking up and realizing he can hear them speaking outside. Somehow, the expenditure of his energy powers made him fuse back into a single being with his original powers again. How? Clark himself theorizes that it was some kind of “reward.”

Who am I to argue?

Martha being Martha, she just happens to have one of his original costumes handy for him to put on,and he takes off to let the world know that Superman is back!

Of course, it’s only page 14, and there’s a lot left to go. Turns out Superman is being watched by Kismet, a cosmic entity he’s encountered a few times before, who sees (YET ANOTHER) threat on the horizon. Superman returns to Metropolis where he joins in with Supergirl, Superboy, and Steel saving an airplane from a crash… a plane that just happens to have Lois on it. The woman has the WORST luck when it comes to air travel, I tell you.

Also in this special, Jimmy Olsen returns to the Planet with his tail between his legs to beg for his job back, only for Perry to give it to him without hesitation. While they’re celebrating, though, Lex Luthor barges into the office, furious that the Planet published a photo of his daughter. While he’s railing against Perry, he gets call that Lena has been kidnapped.

The creative team on this book (like the Wedding Special and the Red/Blue special, it’s a mashup of the creators of the regular books with a few guests) took an interesting approach. There are really three different, almost totally unconnected sections of the book. The first act, where the Kents find Clark and he returns to Metropolis, is part one. Act two is the kidnapping storyline, with Superman doing everything he can to find the missing daughter of his worst enemy, because that’s the kind of man he is. This has virtually nothing to do with what happened before, except for the fact that every person who encounters him makes a comment about the fact that he’s gone back to his original powers and costume, then goes on with their day because they all live in Metropolis and they see more inexplicable stuff than that before their Pop-Tarts come out of the toaster in the morning. Then, after that story is resolved, we get four separate epilogues, each of them showing Superman in different eras that seem to roughly correspond to the Golden, Silver, and Bronze ages, and a third that is set 1000 years in the future. It’s a setup for the Dominus story that would consume the books for the next several months – which is totally fair, except for the fact that, again, it seems to have nothing to do with anything that’s come before it. In fact, I almost feel like I don’t need to read these books again , but it’s been a long time and I enjoy a good timey wimey story.

Besides, if I don’t read them, I’ll just be cliffhangering myself. And I promised me that I would treat me more nicely.

Sat., Sept. 20

Comics: Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1, Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #2, Action Comics #1090, Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #4

Notes: I’m not going to get to Dominus just yet, though. After a couple weeks, I’ve once again liberated my new comics from my local shop and I’m going to spend today (and maybe tomorrow too) reading the new Superman-related books. And although only one of the back-up stories is Superman-related, I’ll start with the painfully-titled Marvel/DC: Deadpool/Batman #1.

The main story and most of the back-ups are really quite good. Zeb Wells, who writes the Deadpool/Batman tale, finds a new spin on combining the universes that’s really quite suitable for Deadpool. Most of the others simply take the old-fashioned tactic of assuming the characters inhabit the same world. The Captain America/Wonder Woman story by Chip Zdarsky goes so far as to showing a whole history between the two characters that goes all the way back to World War II. There are also two pages by Frank Miller, the less is said about which, the better.

But mostly, I’m here to talk about the Krypto/Jeff the Land Shark story by Jeff’s usual creative team of Kelly Thompson and Gurihiru. This mostly-wordless story is set in the Arctic, as Krypto and Jeff romp and play games with one another outside the Fortress of Solitude. That’s it. That’s the whole story. And it’s really adorable. It fits perfectly in with the usual Jeff stories, and were it not for the fact that his co-star is an inhabitant of the DC Universe, it could easily be an issue of his own comic.

Now I have to say, were you only buying this book for a Superman story, dropping $6.99 for a story co-starring Krypto is probably too much. But if you’re a fan of comics and crossovers in general, this really is a great package.

The second issue of Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum is next. Continuing from issue one, Superman and Batman are still experimenting with the new types of Kryptonite when one of them turns the man of steel into a giant. Batman thinks he can concoct a fix, but before it’s ready, Lex Luthor ups the ante by exposing the Kaiju-sized Superman to a dose of RED Kryptonite, sending him on a rampage that the Justice League has to come in and try to stop. Like the first issue, I’m tremendously impressed at how W. Maxwell Prince and Martin Morazzo are applying their signature style to the DC Universe. There’s still very much the same flavor of weirdness we get from Ice Cream Man, but the horror elements are replaced with a take on silver age-style superheroism that feels more like a loving parody than an attack. It’s a glorious little story with a climax and cliffhanger that literally made me laugh out loud. That doesn’t happen often, even with comics that are intended as straight-up comedies. This is rapidly climbing my list of best comics of the year.

In Action #1090 Mark Waid and Skylar Partridge continue the story that – no matter what the eventual trade paperback is gonna be called – is essentially “Superboy: Year One.” Clark finally gets a date with Lana, only for two disasters to happen. First, she tells him how she REALLY feels, and second, Captain Comet summons him to a battle scene. Raze, the villain Superboy caught a few issues ago, has come back with some friends and he’s attacking the lab of noted AI specialist and metallurgist Will Magnus, and Superboy is needed to save the day. Turns out that Comet had a little surprise of his own, though.

Waid is taking classic tropes of the Pre-Crisis Superboy and putting a modern spin on them, particularly in the context of Clark and Lana’s relationship. Although the writing is modern, the themes and tone could fit in just as well in the 1950s, and that’s really perfect. On the other hand, the more sinister Captain Comet is an interesting choice, although I imagine we’ll get some sort of revelation on his part before this story ends to keep from casting him as an outright villain.

Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #4 starts with a content warning. It says “This is a sad one. Read it with someone to hug nearby.”

THIS is a sad one.

AS IF THE LAST THREE ISSUES DIDN’T ALL REDUCE ME TO A GIBBERING MESS.

Anyway, in this one the still-wandering Krypto befriends another stray dog, and together the two of them befriend a group of children, and together the kids and the dogs activate an alien intelligence that threatens all life on Earth. And Krypto is a very good boy. And so is his friend. And eventually, after I soak through a couple of Kleenex, we get to a last page that promises – FINALLY – a glimmer of hope in this terrible, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, magnificent, beautiful series.

Sun., Sept. 21

Comics: Supergirl Vol. 8 #5, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #43, Justice League Red #2 (Team Member Power Girl)

Notes: Supergirl #5 is a largely one-off issue that focuses on the Super Pets. Supergirl and Lesla leave their respective superpowered animal pals with Lena, who loses them almost immediately, leading to two separate adventures. Krypto and Kandy the Super-Rabbit wind up in battle with Princess Shark, who has come to Midvale to get her revenge on Supergirl, while Streaky and the miniature Super-Ape Tinytano stumble across a litter of kittens who have inadvertently gained super powers. The story is light, airy, ridiculous, and charming.

Sophie Campbell takes this issue off from the art chores, but she still writes the issue. Pencils instead are handed over to Paulina Ganucheau for the Krypto half of the issue and Rosi Kampe on the Streaky half. Both of their respective styles are fine, but they’re very different from one another. Ganucheau’s art is a little looser and cartoony, more in line with Campbell’s usual style. Kampe’s art is tighter and looks like a more traditional superhero comic. Again, neither of them are bad, but the switch halfway through the book is somewhat jarring.

In World’s Finest #43, the Bizarro World storyline comes to a close. As we learned, the alien who infected the Bizarros with a pandemic that “fixed” their brains did so in the hopes that they would realize their planet was about to be destroyed by the physical laws that say a square planet can’t exist. This issue, our heroes struggle against the twin problems of the planet’s collapse and the pandemic, and in each case, a solution is found by a most unexpected mind. I really love the way Mark Waid plays these characters here, showing an intelligence in one of our heroes that he isn’t usually credited with having, and pulling a rabbit out of his hat with a new Bizarro that is hilarious and brilliant. This arc was an awful lot of fun, and that’s all we really want out of World’s Finest, isn’t it?

The new Super-titles wrap up with Power Girl in Justice League Red #2. Power Girl, Green Lantern, and Cyborg are comparing notes, all of them realizing that the missions Red Tornado has been sending them on are less than savory, and they demand answers from their teammate. Red Tornado reveals that his actions are linked to another Leaguer in jeopardy, but none of that quite explains just how underhanded he’s been acting. The heroes don’t know what to make of it but, at the same time, they’re not going to abandon one of their own. I’m still not quite sure what to make of this title. I’ve enjoyed the first two issues, but I can’t tell where they’re going with Red Tornado here. If the miniseries ends with him becoming a villain I’m going to be pretty disappointed, but as I said after issue one, I think it’s going to turn out to be more nuanced than that when all is said and done. All that said, the cliffhanger at the end of this issue is just dandy.

Mon, Sept. 22

Comics: Adventures of Superman #558, Action Comics #745, Superman: The Man of Steel #80, Superman Vol. 2 #136, Adventures of Superman #559, Action Comics #746, Superman: The Man of Steel #81, Superman Vol. 2 #137

Notes: Welp, Superman is one person again and his powers are back to normal. You’d think his troubles are over, right? No, you silly person. Now it’s weirder than ever, because it seems as though there are FOUR Supermen (again), except this time, each of them is in a different era. In Adventures of Superman #558, we’re in a world that seems highly reminiscent of the Silver Age, with Superman and his family having a friendly game of baseball that spans the globe using a mine launched by an enemy submarine as the ball. We’ve got Steel on the top of Mt. Everest, Superboy (wearing an old-school costume) in France, and most surprising, a Kara Zor-El Supergirl in outer space. And the game stops when Krypto fetches the ”ball!” (I feel like we should remember that, at this point, the “Superman is the only Kryptonian survivor” edict was still in place – neither Kara nor Krypto existed in this continuity.) Jimmy Olsen, meanwhile, has stumbled into yet another of one of those transformations that seemed to happen to him so frequently in this era, this time drinking an alien isotope that turns him into a green-skinned spaceman. When word gets out that Alien Jimmy has been blessed – or cursed – with a Midas Touch, turning anything he touches into gold, he’s kidnapped by the world’s most ingenious criminal scientist, Lex Luthor.

I can only imagine co-writers Karl Kesel and Jerry Ordway putting this one together, an issue that’s a wild and charming mashup of the modern Superman (with elements like Steel and Dabney Donovan) with a story that could very easily have been a lost plot from an issue published in 1955. Jimmy’s wild transformations were a staple of the time, and we see the old (and often frustrating) trope of Lois being desperate to marry a Superman who keeps resisting her advances. By the end of the issue, nothing has really been resolved – it comes across as an entertaining oddity, but as of yet there’s no clue as to what’s actually happening.

Action Comics #745 takes a similar approach to what the writers call the “Polyester Age” in a story that roughly approximates the Superman comics of the late 70s. Superman comes in to save an unruly mob that has gathered on the collapsing Queensland Bridge, each of whom is carrying a bogus deed indicating they own it. Superman plans to investigate, but first he has to head to his job at WGBS to report the news with his co-anchor, Lana Lang. The story spins out into a fairly standard Prankster story, in which he takes over a cruise ship, kidnaps Lana Lang, places her in a trap that Superman can’t spring without exposing her to a deadly toxin, and in a script-flipping cliffhanger, asking Superman to officiate his and Lana’s MARRIAGE.

We journey back to the Golden Age with Man of Steel #80, and in the most literal way possible. The story begins reenacting a scene from Action Comics #1, with Superman barging into the governor’s mansion to demand a stay of execution for a woman he’s proven to be innocent of the crime for which she’s about to be electrocuted, then immediately bounding in to stop a man from beating his wife. It’s here, for the first time, that we really get a glimpse of what’s actually happening – a little girl with white hair appears briefly as Superman stops the wife-beater proclaiming “It’s all wrong! Everything’s wrong!” When Superman looks out the window to see that the police has arrived, the child vanishes. Superman doesn’t have time to solve the mystery, though – he’s expected by his editor, George Taylor, at the Daily Star. Lois and Clark are sent to cover an American Nazi rally that is eventually broken up by Superman, making Lois swoon.

Louise Simonson’s writing on this issue evokes the tone of the Golden Age, especially with a cold, aloof Lois that doesn’t give Clark the time of day, while he is utterly smitten with her. On the other hand, she manages to avoid some of the more problematic tropes of the original stories – she recreates the wife-beater scene almost perfectly, but omits the infamous “You’re not dealing with a woman now!” line. Jon Bogdanove, for his part, is perhaps more in his element than ever before. He adjusts his art style just SLIGHTLY, and it becomes a perfect update of a Golden Age Superman. He even gives us a panel emulating the legendary cover to Action #1. Reading this issue makes me ache for a full Elseworlds-style series set in this time period with Bogs handling the pencils.

Superman #136 takes us to the year 2999 (with yet another Action #1 homage cover, by Dan Jurgens this time). Years after the death of the last great champion, Superman XVIII, a new Superman appears saving a spaceship from disaster…or at least, he tries, but the rookie Superman winds up ripping off one of the ship’s stabilizers. Another craft manages to save the ship in a stasis field, including Lena Luthor, who gives us the infodump that Superman’s father died bringing Lena’s father to justice. We explore this future world, meeting “Klar Ken’s” coworkers, his younger sister Kara, and get information about the Superman legacy that has lasted a millennium. This one, too, ends with a cliffhanger, as Superman 2999 faces against a futuristic menace called Muto, and we get another glimpse of the girl with the white hair.

Back to the Silver Age for Adventures of Superman #559, which kicks off with Superman busting Brainiac and his shrinking ray. The next morning, though, things get really bizarre as some mysterious force gives everyone in Metropolis super powers. And I do mean everyone – Perry, Lois, Jimmy, Maggie Sawyer, the Newsboy Legion – it’s an epidemic. Everyone, it seems, except for MCU Officer Dan Turpin. It comes in handy when Metallo attacks and his Kryptonite heart affects EVERYONE except for Dan and his bazooka. The reveal about where the powers came from is fantastic, perfectly in keeping with a Silver Age story, and it’s really nice to see Turpin get hailed as the hero for once…until the girl with the white hair shows up again on the last page repeating her warning: “Can’t you feel it? It is ALL WRONG!” And then poof – she’s gone.

Things aren’t going great in Action Comics #746. Superman manages to save Lana from the Prankster, but she’s so angry that Clark bailed out on the situation (so he could be Superman) that she gets him fired from his job at WGBS. He’s doing the cardboard box walk of shame when the White Haired Girl AGAIN shows up and vanishes. They gotta start going somewhere with this soon, right?

And they do! Man of Steel #81 begins immediately with the White Haired Girl stuck on a railroad track as a train speeds towards her. Fortunately, ol’ “More Powerful Than a Locomotive” gets her away even as she keeps pleading “Everything is wrong.” She vanishes as soon as she appears, though, and we get to the main plot – Superman and Lois each stow away on a ship to Nazi Germany. The issue really does showcase the vast changes Superman underwent after the Golden Age. While for most of his history, Superman has been reluctant to involve himself in political situations (in fact, in the 1978 movie Jor-El specifically forbid that), here he actually thinks “Someone has got to settle these world affairs once and for all – and who else can do it but me?”

This issue gets pretty bleak, as Superman and Lois each independently delve into the Nazi concentration camps. Simonson doesn’t hold back from showing the horrors of the era, and in the end we’re just left more unsettled as we end on a cliffhanger, with Lois in dire straights that make being caught by the Prankster seem like a tropical vacation.

I’ll end today with Superman #137, in which the man of tomorrow (that being 2999) faces Muto – a fight that’s going poorly before he’s rescued by some of the other heroes of the era: 2999’s Green Lantern, the future Aquaman, and from Gotham City, “The Bat.” Superman and the other heroes face Muto at his orbital Fortress of Solitude, and Dan Jurgens plays off of Despero’s chess set from Justice League of America #1 for the second time this year (the first being when we read Superman’s adventures with the JLA in the era just before Doomsday).

Tues., Sept. 23

Comics: Adventures of Superman #560, Action Comics #747, Superman: The Man of Steel #82, Superman Vol. 2 #138, Adventures of Superman #561, Action Comics #748, Superman: The Man of Steel #83, Superman Vol. 2 #139

Notes: Today I’m getting into the finale of the Dominus storyline (at least this one), starting with Adventures #560. Silver Age Superman is stunned to find out that Lois Lane – the girl he loves but keeps at arm’s length – has a date with his pal Batman. The story seems to be going in the same direction as the previous two issues – a kind of standard Silver Age type story involving Lois’s feelings, Batman, and a sliver of Red Kryptonite. Halfway through, though, there’s a turn, as Batman reveals – even to Superman – that the two of them were BOTH adopted by the Kents after their respective origin tragedies and grew up as brothers. From there we get a quick chain reaction as all of Superman’s dreams seem to be coming true: Emil Hamilton shows up with a cure for Red Kryptonite, Jor-El and Lara appear alive, promising to take him back to Krypton’s Hypersector with them, Lois professes her love and vows to go with him…but Batman transforms into the White Haired girl, who reveals herself to be Kismet. The universe fades as Superman and Lois embrace one another.

Action #747 goes in a very different direction. The story, free of dialogue, unfolds as we watch Clark return to the Daily Planet, Lois kidnapped by the Prankster, and Superman come to the rescue. Throughout, although there are no speech bubbles or conversations among the characters, an unseen narrator gives us a monologue about godhood, divinity, chaos, and order. The narrator is manipulating Lois, trying to bring her into a position where she kills Superman, but in the end she can’t do it. The dialogue finally comes back in the last few pages, when the White Haired girl again reveals herself as Kismet and the narrator redoubles on his plan to control the universe, revealing himself as an entity called Dominus. This issue is really jarring, being SO different from the previous two (and, in fact, from the rest of this storyline altogether). I’m not sure if it entirely works, to be honest, especially since the girl’s reveal at the end was done in the previous week’s issue, and now I’m sure we’ll see it again two more times.

Man of Steel #82 picks up with Golden Age Superman determined to halt a train laden with prisoners bound for the concentration camps, unaware that one of the prisoners is the captive Lois. Saving her from the train he kisses her and – just for a second – glimpses the real, modern world. Kismet (still as the White Haired Girl) hopes that putting the two of them together again will help them to break whatever Dominus has been doing, but Superman’s attention is focused on liberating the Nazi’s prisoners (because, you know, he’s Superman). Kismet tells Lois and Superman that their bond is the one thing Dominus can’t break, and when she brings them together again, the three of them find themselves back in Metropolis in the modern day. But the Nazi Commandant has come with them, revealing himself to be Dominus. Superman again recognizes the girl as Kismet, who helped lead him back to life back in Adventures of Superman #500, but Dominus attacks the girl and Superman is swallowed by nothingness.

The future ain’t what it used to be in Superman #138. Superman returns to Metropolis with his allies – and several new ones – announcing the formation of a Justice Alliance (with a logo that looks like an odd mashup of the Justice League and Legion of Super-Heroes emblems). But the ceremony is disrupted by the White Haired Girl, and we begin flashing between the four timelines we’ve been following. Kismet reveals that Dominus has trapped Superman in a sort of “reality prison” and split his consciousness into four separate simulated realities. As he breaks free from Dominus’s will, he returns to the real, modern Metropolis with Kismet. We discover that, in the last moments of Superman Forever, Dominus placed him in this “reality prison,” and Superman has been tearing through Metropolis ever since, acting out the scenarios we’ve been reading across the four titles. (It really makes you wonder what people were watching him do when he was carrying around his sad little box after being fired from WGBS.) Kismet brings Superman to a secluded place where she tells us that she thought Dominus was trying to control him, but it turns out that she’s his REAL target, and Dominus was using the false scenarios to draw her out of Superman so he can usurp her power. Dominus appears and attacks, hurling Superman away as Kismet flees.

In Adventures #561 Waverider appears and implores Superman to help find Kismet, as if he needed to ask. The White Haired Girl reappears as Clark is having lunch with Jimmy and Lois, and he takes off after her. It turns out NOT to be Kismet, though, but rather the girl whose appearance Kismet adopted. And as Superman takes her home, Waverider reveals himself to be Dominus in disguise, using Superman to find the REAL Kismet.

Incidentally, this issue also sets up the NEXT big story arc for the Superman titles, in which the Daily Planet is put up for sale. That’s an interesting arc in its own right, but I’m not going to get into the whole thing because…well geez, I gotta draw the line SOMEWHERE.

Action Comics #747 brings Dominus – disguised as Superman – to Smallville to talk about Kismet with Jonathan Kent, who also met her back in Adventures #500. He fails to draw her out, though and leaves. Dominus makes his next play against Superman, but his constant manipulation of reality leads the two of them into a conflict that spirals into some really cool page design by Stuart Immonen before finally – hopefully – bringing the REAL Waverider into the conflict. In Man of Steel #83, Waverider and the Linear Men try to break Superman from all the reality warping that Dominus has been putting Superman through, but by now he doesn’t trust his old allies, believing them all to be Dominus. Finally, in Superman #138, as Superman holds Dominus off Waverider – the real one – takes Kismet back in time and hides her inside a young girl from Smallville, Kansas. Dominus leaves, swearing his revenge, and the story finally ends…

For now, at least. Both Dominus and Kismet would return in later story arcs, but this is as good a place as any to draw the line and end the saga of Electric Superman, plus the Dominus epilogue. So let’s do a post-mortum of the era, shall we? When this saga was originally being published, back in 1996 and 1997, I remember having some rather uncharitable feelings about it. I knew even then that it was a temporary change, and I felt like it was disingenuous of DC to try to paint this as a new status quo for Superman. With age, I’m definitely wiser in that respect. I realize now that DC was never really trying to pretend this would be Superman “Forever,” and any comments to the contrary were nothing more than kayfabe. I think that accepting that sort of thing has made me more accepting of other, later long-form stories, like when Dr. Octopus took over Peter Parker’s body for a year or two, or when Captain America was revealed to be a Hydra Agent. I’ve gotten better about judging stories like these on their own merits, rather than having a knee-jerk reaction to any sort of change, and I think I enjoy comics better because of it.

As for the Electric Saga as a whole…I’m actually struck by how much I enjoyed reading these comics again. This time around I’ve really gained an appreciation for how intricately the stories of the Triangle Era were woven together. Even when I read the whole Death and Return of Superman earlier this year, it wasn’t as clear because EVERY storyline was put on hold at the time to serve the larger one. This time around, between the time Clark’s power changed and the time he split into two, the power thing was almost incidental. We were still getting Superman stories with the ongoing plots and subplots, with things being set up far in advance that would pay off much further down the line. It’s really impressive to me just how well these things were plotted, and frankly, I miss the days when a comic book like this could put out a new installment each and every week. These days, likely, will not come again.

Next, I think I’ll take a week to be random before I get back to themes. I’ve only got 14 weeks left, and I definitely have several categories that I intend to dig into before it’s all over…but for now, I’m going to give myself a teeny break and just spend a week with whatever Superman Stuff suits my fancy.

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 14: Krypto the Superdog Week!

April 9, 2025April 8, 2025 blakemp Year of Superman DC Comics, DC League of Super Pets, Krypto, Krypto the Superdog, Kurt Busiek, Legion of Super-Heroes, Legion of Super-Pets, Scooby-Doo, Streaky, Super Sons, Superboy, Supergirl, superman, Teen Titans, Year of Superman

It’s time for another theme week here in the ol’ Year of Superman blog, and once again, I’ve decided to spend seven days with one of the greatest characters in the Superman mythos. A trusted friend, a stalwart companion, a fearless champion of justice, and the goodest boy in the entire multiverse. That’s right – this week we’re going to focus on Krypto the Superdog!

Krypto is one of those concepts that, on the face of it, is kind of ridiculous. You mean to tell me that Krypton not only evolved a race of sentient inhabitants that are identical to Earth humans (a common enough trope in science fiction but highly improbable in real life), but also evolved a species of animals who, upon being domesticated, are indistinguishable from Earth DOGS? Not only that, but they also gain the same powers as the human Kryptonians when they get under a yellow sun? Utterly preposterous.

But I do not care in the slightest how unlikely it is. I love Krypto with every fiber of my being. No matter how silly the notion is, the inherent wholesomeness in his character, the way a Krypto story inevitably becomes one of those stories of a boy and his dog, elevates him to a point of true celebration. Krypto is one of the brightest spots in Superman’s galaxy. I think it’s telling that, no matter how many times various writers have tried a “Superman gone bad” story, I don’t think we’ve EVER seen a serious attempt at a grim, gritty Krypto. It’s not because it would be silly – it’s because he is simply too pure for such a thing. There’s a reason that the first trailer to James Gunn’s Superman featured Krypto so prominently, a clear message that he was sending to the fans: this is about someone GOOD.

Krypto stands for that.

Let’s check out some of his greatest hits, shall we?

Wed., April 1

Comics: Adventure Comics #210, Adventure Comics #293, Secret Six (2025) #1, Justice League of America #18

And all Superboy threw was a tennis ball.

Notes: We begin our journey through the life of Krypto the Superdog, appropriately enough, with his first appearance in Adventure Comics #210. We’re in Smallville, Kansas, in the era where Clark Kent is Superboy, and he is called upon to help deal with the most dangerous of crises – a dog catcher whose lot got loose. Superboy quickly rounds all the mutts up, with one exception – a white dog that apparently ripped a hole in the side of the truck. Later, a group of crooks (incredibly well-dressed crooks, in suits and ties) try to rob Kent’s General Store, only to be thwarted by the same dog. Clark later finds the pup chewing on one of the guns left behind by the robbers, and he takes off flying, with Superboy giving chase. The dog leads Superboy to a rocketship, where he discovers that Krypto (for that, of course, is his name) was sent into space in an experimental rocket by Superboy’s own father, Jor-El, and that the two of them are being reunited. The happy reunion is short, though, as Clark soon learns that even a super-dog is still a dog, and his antics (such as chasing an airplane or trying to play fetch with a steel girder) are apt to cause some problems. In the end, Krypto decides to roam his “backyard” – the galaxy. But Superboy hopes wistfully that he’ll come back to visit. Spoiler alert: he does.

Krypto becomes a semi-regular after this point, showing up whenever convenient for the story and eventually showing much more personality. In most of the Silver Age stories, in fact, he had thought balloons demonstrating full human-level intelligence, like Snoopy, only with a cape. That’s one aspect of Krypto I’m kind of glad hasn’t come back. I find that I have a greater appreciation for the character when he’s “just” a superpowered dog. Although to be fair, some of the stories I plan to visit before this week is over will very much go against that grain.

Krypto also became something of a trendsetter. After all, when something works once, why not try it again? So in his wake came a bevy of other superpowered animals, including Streaky the Supercat, Beppo the Supermonkey, and Comet the Superhorse. And they all converged in Adventure Comics #293, the first appearance of the Legion of Super-Pets!

The Legion’s hazing policy was still nebulous at this point.

Sometimes I wonder about the life choices that have led me writing things like the preceding paragraph. And then I realize that this is the result of choices that have gone RIGHT.

The story begins, again, in Smallville, when Superboy is summoned to rescue an airplane in trouble. But a strange urge overtakes him and, instead of rescuing the plane, he destroys one of its propellers. Fortunately, Krypto (by now sporting a cape and thought balloons) happens to be swooping in for a visit just as this happens, and he saves the plane himself. Superboy starts going through wild mood swings, briefly attempting to kill Krypto before regaining his senses. It gets worse when he’s suddenly attacked by his friends in the Legion of Super-Heroes, who attempt to kill him with Kryptonite. Turns out the whole thing is the scheme of the Brain-Globes of Rambat (there’s another sentence that could only come from the Silver Age), who are using their incredible mental powers to destroy the heroes so they can move Earth to a purple sun, allowing them to survive. But as it turns out, the Brain Balls can’t affect the minds of ANIMALS, and Krypto goes on the offensive…only to learn that if he goes after just ONE of the four Brains, the other three will destroy the Earth. The Legion uses their time machine to collect Streaky, Beppo, and Comet from Superboy’s future, and there’s some fun here in that this is actually Comet’s FIRST appearance, with the promise that “this is a preview glimpse of a super-pet Supergirl will own some day in the future!” It’s more complicated than that, but this ain’t “Comet Week.”

With Superboy out of commission, the Legionnaires team up with the super-pets to drive off the aliens, and make the animals an official branch of the Legion, then bring the other animals back home before Superboy can wake up and learn about the super-animals of the future. I suppose it’s okay for Krypto to know the future because he can’t talk, but the story isn’t really clear on that.

If Krypto was a silly concept, the Super-Pets take it to the extreme, but it’s so much fun. A cat, a dog, a horse, a monkey, all with super powers, all fighting the forces of evil. Nobody would EVER introduce such a thing in a serious comic book in 2025, and more’s the pity. It’s like somewhere along the line people forgot that comic books can be FUN. I really hope that the Krypto Renaissance we are currently experiencing helps people remember what it’s really about.

Thur., April 3

Comics: Action Comics #266, Action Comics #277, Adventure Comics #310, Adventure Comics #364, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #136, Supergirl Vol. 2 #22, Action Comics #557

Notes: When I announced this as Krypto Week, I asked (as usual) for suggestions about the best Krypto stories out there. I was not surprised that my pal Lew Beitz stepped up. Lew is a good guy, a great beta reader, and the most effusive dog-lover I know, and his love extends to pooches both fictional and non. He pointed me towards some classic Krypto stories, and I’m checking a few of those out today.

In Metropolis, it really CAN rain cats and dogs! Ah? AAAAAH? I’ll see myself out.

Action Comics #266 kicks off with “The Captive of the Amazons,” a story about an alien princess who tries to force Superman into marrying her, and honestly, sometimes I wonder just where they got off putting stories like this into a magazine called “ACTION” Comics. No, I’m here for story number two, “The World’s Mightiest Cat.” This features the return of Supergirl’s cat, Streaky, an Earth cat with a lightning bolt-shaped patch of fur. Supergirl invented an isotope called X-Kryptonite in the hopes that it would act as a cure for Kryptonite poisoning. It didn’t, but when exposed to it, Streaky temporarily gains super powers. One of the other orphans in Midvale with Supergirl sees him performing super-feats, but is humiliated time and again when he brings other people in to witness them, only to find that Streaky’s powers have worn off in the interim. After several pages of the cat treating this poor kid like Michigan J. Frog, Supergirl figures out what’s going on and has Krypto come in to “help” Streaky with his super-feats, telling the boy that what he saw was Krypto playing pranks on the cat. It sounds kind of cruel to gaslight the kid, but everybody was starting to think he was a liar, so I guess it’s a bit more kind. Regardless, this is more of a Streaky story than a Krypto one, but it’s fun to watch the two of them involved in hijinks together.

It was this or get a couple of super-chickens to fight and…there were issues.

There were more Krypto and Streaky shenanigans 11 issues later in Action #277: “The Battle of the Super-Pets.” But first was “The Conquest of Superman,” in which Lex Luthor goes after the gold in Fort Knox, holding off Superman with a weapon that can synthesize different types of Kryptonite. As far as action stories go, it’s way better than Superman trying to avoid marrying a gorgeous alien Amazon princess. But that’s not why we’re here, is it? In the second story, Streaky gets jealous of Krypto when Supergirl praises him for helping her out of a jam that’s so preposterous it only could have happened in a Silver Age comic. But after Streaky gets his powers back from the X-Kryptonite in his ball of twine, he goes after Krypto with a vengeance. Superman decides to settle the dispute between the super-pets with a “contest of skills.” Supergirl takes the two of them to a planetoid where they can battle it out without causing any damage, but the planet…is not what it seems. This story is pure absurdity, and that’s really what I like about it. The stuff that happens on the planet is wild and goofy, and makes no sense until the reveal at the end, which in and of itself is even wilder and goofier. I find that DC stories of the Silver Age often fall into two categories – a kind of ridiculous that makes the characters look mean or stupid (sadly, most Lois Lane stories from the era kind of fall into this category) and those that are just absurdly delightful. This one most certainly falls into that latter category.

And “furry” culture immediately claimed him as their own.

Adventure Comics #310 takes us back to the Superboy days, following a dandy Legion of Super-Heroes story. By the way, have you noticed how often in these days it was the second – or even third – story that got the cover treatment? That wouldn’t happen today. The second story brings us “When Krypto Was Superboy’s Master.” Lana Lang’s father, a university professor, has a promotion jeopardized when he is accused of falsifying the translation of some ancient runes. When Superboy is called in to help verify the translation, the runes somehow swap his personality with Krypto’s, causing the dog to become the master and Superboy the pet. This is another of those silly stories that I enjoy, although it’s one where the ending turns out to be unnecessarily convoluted. I’ve mentioned in this blog before just how many of DC’s Silver Age stories were built on the backs of ridiculous misunderstandings or outright trickery that serves no logical purpose, and this turns out to be one of those.

Superboy gets the kick to the gut while Cosmic Boy just has to duplicate a Coppertone ad. Seems kinda lopsided.

The last classic story I’m going to dip into today comes from Adventure Comics #364, “The Revolt of the Super-Pets!” Yes, we’ve got Streaky, Beppo, and Comet back for this one. The pets are frolicking in space and then, for reasons, decide to recap their respective origins, including that of Chameleon Boy’s shapeshifting pet Proty II, who has joined them. As they talk about how great they respectively are, Beppo and Comet in particular start to resent being treated as pets (Comet, to be fair, was a Centaur in ancient Greece who is now trapped in the form of a horse – it’s a whole thing) and decide to abandon their masters. This is followed by some various betrayals and misunderstandings before they come back together to fight the issue’s bad guys. I like this story, but it actually does raise a good point – if the Super-Pets are, in fact, as intelligent as their humanoid masters, it seems pretty disrespectful to continue to treat them as pets. Modern stories usually avoid this – Krypto and Streaky don’t display human-level intelligence anymore, and Comet and Beppo are rarely, if ever seen these days. It’s another reason I like that iteration a little bit more. The “hero and pet” dynamic is more appealing to me than a “hero and another hero that they treat as a lesser being because they happen to be in the shape of an animal” dynamic.

Fri., April 4

Comics: Superman: The Man of Steel #112, Superman Vol. 2 #170, Action Comics #373

By this logic, shouldn’t Supergirl’s best friend by a super-diamond?

Notes: After the Man of Steel reboot in 1986, the decision was made that Superman would be the ONLY surviving Kryptonian – no more Supergirl, Phantom Zone criminals…and no more Krypto. Obviously, this edict was eventually relaxed, but even as Supergirl and Zod and the like came back, it took some time before Krypto made his triumphant return. By the early 2000s, though, he was making appearances again, such as this one in Man of Steel #112. In this story, Krypto has recently arrived on Earth, where the yellow sun is slowly ramping up his powers and causing a good bit of destruction in Lois and Clark’s apartment. Superman decides to take him out for a spin to burn off some steam, leading to a nice sequence in which he contemplates his new pal. This version of Krypto came to Earth via the Phantom Zone, after a story which cast a little bit of doubt as to the true nature of Krypton. It was from a period in which Superman’s history was kind of in flux, as though DC was attempting to determine which of the many, many iterations of Superman’s origin was the “real” one, and bringing Krypto back was emblematic of that. None of that is what I like about this issue, though. I like that short sequence, just a few pages, where Superman flies around Metropolis with his pal, thinking about how awesome it is to have a super-powered dog to romp with. Seriously, more stories should be like that.

He’s a good boy until you give him a reason not to be.

Krypto became kind of a B-plot in the Superman titles for a few months, a story that bubbled over in Superman #170. Mongul – you guys remember him, right? – comes back to Earth. (It’s actually not the Mongul we read about before, he’s dead. This time it’s his identical son, Mongul. But that’s not important.) He’s here to take out Superman, and he’s got help! His sister, Mongal! No, really! That is her given, Christian name! As Superman battles the Mongul siblings, the story has a runner of a “children’s book” about Krypto, a “good dog,” written by Clark Kent with art by Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern). The fight is going the way Superman fights usually do, until Mongul makes the mistake of threatening Lois Lane. Krypto leaps to her defense, and…well…he acts like a dog. He goes straight for Mongul’s throat, ripping it open and leaving the alien conqueror on the brink of death. Superman realizes just how dangerous it can be to have a dog with that kind of power, and makes the hard choice to bring him to the Fortress of Solitude and leave him in the care of his robots.

This is such a bittersweet story, and I give a ton of credit to writer Jeph Loeb for making it work. This is the Krypto I prefer – the one who acts like a super-powered dog as opposed to a super-human in dog shape. But that said, it DOES bring up the issue of how potentially dangerous it would be. Sure, not many people would mourn if he had actually succeeded in murdering a member of the Yellow Outer Space Genocide Family, but Superman has that whole no-kill thing, and he’s pretty strict about it. What’s more, just like if a dog in real life attacks someone, it immediately raises the question of who else could potentially be in danger. And at no point does the story imply that Krypto is anything less than a good boy – but he’s still a good boy who “did a bad thing.” It’s heartbreaking, and I mean that as a compliment. Krypto’s exile would eventually end, of course, and these days when he shows up it seems taken as a given that he’s been better trained and won’t pose that kind of danger anymore, but I’m actually really glad that they told this story the way they did back in 2002.

Sat., April 5

TV Episode: Krypto the Superdog, Season 1, Episodes 1-2, “Krypto’s Scrypto Parts 1 & 2”

This show is almost old enough to drink and I’m not okay with that.

Notes: I didn’t realize until I sat down to watch this cartoon that the Krypto the Superdog show on Cartoon Network debuted in 2005, a full twenty years ago. That is both absurd and wrong. But the show, aimed at a younger audience than the likes of Justice League Unlimited, was delightful then and it’s delightful now. In this pilot episode, Krypto recounts his origin – how he accidentally got sent to Earth in a rocket built by Jor-El, sadly leaving behind the child he loved. He lands on Earth and makes his way to the city of Metropolis, where he encounters a boy named Kevin. Kevin is new in town, struggling to make friends, and Krypto quickly befriends him. Kevin is startled to learn that the dog has powers just like Superman, that he’s even wearing a dog tag in the shape of Superman’s shield (that of the House of El, of course), and he’s carrying a device from his rocket that allows Kevin and Krypto to speak the same language. Kevin figures out that Krypto is from the same planet as Superman, telling him about their hero, and brings him home to live with his family. Things are going great until the news reports a cargo ship full of zoo animals is sinking, and Superman is off-planet on a mission. With no one else to rescue them (apparently there’s no Justice League in this universe), Krypto rushes off to save the day. Krypto’s rescue makes the news, and Superman soon tracks him down. The last sons of Krypton have a happy reunion, but Superman decides to allow Krypto to stay with Kevin. And thus, like any good pilot episode, the status quo is established.

While I would have preferred a cartoon about Krypto and Clark, I get why the producers did this. They wanted Krypto to be the star, and if he was actually living with Superman, it would have turned into a Superman show WAY too frequently. Krypto was a show for kids, and it hits those beats as expected. Krypto can talk, sure, but so can the Earth animals he encounters (at least to other animals), such as the squirrel who has a panic attack upon seeing his spaceship land. It’s a pretty standard pilot episode as well – seriously, how many cartoons have begun with a dog/cat/platypus/alien being taken in by a normal human family?

While the show isn’t a straight-up comedy, there are also a few good gags, too, such as when Krypto arrives on Earth and begins both exploring the world and discovering his powers simultaneously: “It’s so beautiful! So green! And the sun is so yellow! (GASP!) I can see in color!”

That’s an A-plus dog joke, friends.

This isn’t in the upper echelon of DC cartoons, but in terms of an entry-level show for younger viewers, it’s pretty good. Now if I can only convince my son to turn off YouTube long enough to watch a few more episodes with me.

Comic: Absolute Superman #6, Green Lantern Vol. 8 #19

Notes: Doesn’t matter what universe you’re in, Jonathan and Martha Kent are the best people in it.

Sun., April 6

Comics: Teen Titans Vol. 3 #7, Superman #712, Super Sons Annual #1

Notes: Today I decided to get back to the classic stories of a boy and his dog – specifically a Superboy. Not Clark, though, but the other people who have used that name, Conner Kent and Jon Kent. Both of them have had a history with the Dog of Steel, although in the case of Conner, it wasn’t exactly smooth at first.

Conner, it should be noted, had previously owned a different Krypto, an Earth dog that was taken in by our old buddy Bibbo when Superman was “dead.” The dog wound up in Superboy’s possession for most of his original series, although he and the pooch often didn’t get along. But by 2003, the original Krypto from Krypton was back. In this era, the Teen Titans gathered on the weekends, spending their weeks at home, and Teen Titans #7 shows each of them wrestling with various struggles during a week apart from one another. We’re going to focus on the Superboy storyline. At this point, he was living with the Kents in Kansas and struggling with his recent discovery that half of his DNA comes from Lex Luthor. Superman takes him out for a talk and a surprise: the kid needs a friend, and Krypto (as we saw when he nearly killed Mongul) needs the grounding of a real home.

Superboy didn’t have his own series at the time, so the Teen Titans comic was his primary home and actually gave the character a lot of development, moving him away from the devil-may-care leather wearing Metropolis Kid we first encountered and into a young man with an identity crisis that, in some ways, he’s still wrestling with today. But having Krypto along in the mix was a good look for him. It ended too abruptly, when Superboy died in the Infinite Crisis crossover (he got better). However, some time after his death – even after his resurrection – Kurt Busiek and Rick Leonardi brought us the excellent “lost story’ of Superman #712. Superboy was dead and Superman, at the time, was missing. With his super sense of smell, Krypto sets out to find them.

Honestly, you might not be ready for this one.

Busiek is one of the greatest writers in comics, and if you don’t believe that, wait until we get to the week where I focus on “other” Supermen – the first issue of his Astro City series is a straight-up masterpiece. This issue hits some of the same notes in terms of melancholy. Krypto tracks down Conner’s scent and, in so doing, retraces the last few days before his death – getting wounded in battle, being saved by the Titans, sharing a tender moment with Wonder Girl, suffering a brutal thrashing at the hands of the maniacal Superboy-Prime. Krypto senses all of it, and the reader retraces those steps with him. When originally presented, these stories played out over several months (real time) and several different series, so seeing them all stacked together in this way paints a different picture of Conner’s final days than you would have had reading those books in context. “Lost Boy” has the same sort of bitter sadness as Futurama’s “Jurassic Bark,” the same sort of agonizing pain of watching a faithful dog waiting for a master who is not returning home. Fortunately, the Kent boys eventually had a happy ending.

The premature ending of this series was a crime.

Our last stop today comes from 2017 and Super Sons Annual #1. This is the era when Jonathan Kent was Superboy, he was ten years old, he was being written by Peter J. Tomasi, and basically, everything was right with the world. Little did we know how short that golden age would last. My love for Jon as a kid is matched only by my utter disinterest in him as a teenager…or young adult, or…I don’t even know how the hell old he’s supposed to be right now, and that’s only PART of the problem of his complete lack of identity ever since…

Sorry, sorry, this is supposed to be about Krypto.

Even though this title starred Jonathan and Damian Wayne, this issue is all super-pets. After Jon goes to bed, Krypto finds himself pondering a recent spate of missing animal reports across Metropolis. He sets out to round up his old teammates in the Super Pets – including Streaky, Titus and Ace the Bat-Hounds, Bat-Cow, Flexi (Plastic Man’s parrot), and a little nugget of Clayface. Together with an assist by Detective Chimp, the animal heroes are determined to find justice for their four-legged brethren. The issue is largely free of dialogue, save for the assorted grunts, growls, and tweets of the pets, but at no point is there any difficulty following the plot. Tomasi and artist Paul Pelletier perfectly create a charming story about animal heroes saving the day, but without going so far as to hit the “talking animal” trope of the silver age, or even of the cartoons. This, to me, is peak Super Pets, and if DC ever saw their way clear to bringing back this particular team, I would be the first to trample a path to the comic shop.

Mon., April 7

Comics: Superman #677-680, Justice League of America #19, Infinity, Inc. #4, Superman #8

Notes: “The Coming of Atlas,” by James Robinson and Renato Guedes, isn’t completely a Krypto storyline, but it does lead to one of the most famous Krypto moments in modern history, so I thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at it. Plus, it’s just a good story and worth reading. It does START with Krypto, though – specifically, with Superman and Green Lantern in space, playing fetch with the Superdog, while discussing the things life does to people with super powers. The problem is, they’re out in space when a kaiju attacks Metropolis. The monster is quickly dispatched, not by Superman, but by an old and somewhat forgotten Jack Kirby character, Atlas. He’s back, he’s in Metropolis, and he’s calling out Superman – and soon, the Man of Steel answers at the end of part one. Parts two and three are a fight, and one the likes of which Superman hasn’t seen since the battle with Doomsday. Atlas has been sent and is being manipulated by an outside force, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less as he pounds into Superman. Others come to his aid, but Supergirl, Steel, and even Bibbo are quickly dispatched. Then, at the end of part three, the REAL hero makes his debut, and the Dog of Steel is ready to defend his master.

“Regal” is the word for this dog. Just plain “regal.”

Superman #680 is, really, the reason I chose to read this story this week. Over the previous two issues, we were given a flashback to Superman and Lois debating the wisdom of keeping Krypto (remember, this is the Krypto who destroyed the Kent apartment, nearly killed Mongul, and so forth). But in issue #680, that debate is well and truly put to rest. As Krypto toes the line and holds off Atlas, Superman deduces that his foe is being enhanced by magic (which, you may recall, he has a little trouble with). After picking up a magical solar boost from Zatanna’s cousin Zachary, Superman finishes the fight, then declares to Metropolis that Krypto, his dog, is a hero, and “now he’s your dog too!”

And Metropolis cheers.

Because c’mon, Krypto is a good boy.

This was a complicated time in the history of DC Comics. That era between Infinite Crisis and the New 52 reboot was, for many titles (including the Superman books) a constant period of reintroduction and reinvention. Old concepts would be brought back, new concepts would be pushed aside, things were in a constant state of flux, and this story reflects that. Just the next month the Superman titles would become embroiled in the “New Krypton” storyline that would guide them for the better part of the next two years. But here, right now, we got a spotlight on Krypto, and it couldn’t have been a better one.

“CAN YOU SMELLLLL WHAT THE ROCK–“
“We’re dogs, Krypto. We can smell everything.”

Animated Feature: DC League of Super-Pets (2022)

Notes: There was a time when I hoped this movie, an animated feature starring Dwayne Johnson as Krypto and Kevin Hart as Ace, would be the first movie I took my son to a movie theater to watch. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out, but we’ve watched it at home since then, and we enjoy it. In this version, Krypto made it into baby Kal-El’s rocket as Krypton exploded, and the two of them have spent their lives together. Now, as Clark Kent is an adult on the verge of asking Lois Lane to marry him, Krypto is starting to feel some pangs of jealousy. A battle with Lex Luthor brings a chunk of orange Kryptonite to Earth, an isotope that Lex believes will give him super powers, but instead only works on animals. An evil Guinea Pig uses the Kryptonite to give herself and her minions incredible abilities, then goes on to capture the entire Justice League. Krypto and a group of rescue animals similarly dosed by the Kryptonite are all that’s left to save the world.

As far as kids’ entertainment goes, I really enjoy this movie. It’s similar, tonally, to other recent movies like Secret Life of Pets, with kid-friendly characters but plenty of jokes for the adults, such as when P.B. the pig discovers her powers and declares, “This is my origin story! And my uncle didn’t even have to die!” The Lois and Clark relationship is solid as well – they’re a young, loving couple, and the idea of the dog getting green eyes (metaphorically speaking) when he realizes his person now has a new person is actually a pretty realistic issue to throw in and complicate the Superman/Krypto relationship.

The voice cast is also really impressive. Dwayne Johnson puts just the right amount of naive energy into Krypto to suit his characterization as a good – but slightly simpleminded – dog. John Kracznyski’s Superman is solid as well, and if you’re not going to get Will Arnett (LEGO Batman) back, having Keanu Reeves deadpan the character is about the best way to make that character funnier. But Natasha Lyonne as Merton, the super-speedster turtle, absolutely steals the show. I’d watch a whole movie starring her.

My biggest beef with this movie is that it mostly uses brand-new characters rather than bringing in more of the actual super pets from DC canon. I get that they wanted them to all share the orange Kryptonite origin, but how great would it have been to see Wonder Woman’s Jumpa on the screen or something like that? Ah well – James Gunn clearly isn’t shying away from super pets on the screen. Maybe the day will come.

Tues., April 8

Comics: Scooby-Doo Team-Up #9, #18

I need to know where Shaggy found that shirt in green.

Notes: I thought I would end Krypto week with a few encounters between the pup of tomorrow and the world’s foremost Great Dane Detective, Scooby-Doo. There’s nothing like a good team-up, and I’ve been a real fan of how closely DC has tied Scooby to the DC characters in comics over the last few years. He’s most frequently associated with Batman and Robin, of course, owing to that whole “detective” thing, but he’s partnered up with Krypto on more than one occasion.

Scooby-Doo Team-Up #9 (or issues #17 and 18 of the digital version) brings the gang from the Mystery Machine to Metropolis. When Perry White encounters the actual Great Caesar’s Ghost in the office of the Daily Planet, Superman decides to call in some experts at busting ghosts – Mystery, Inc. The ghost turns out to be a gag by Superman’s old foe the Prankster, who doses him with Red Kryptonite, transforming him into a super-monster who goes on a rampage. Krypto rushes to the scene, along with the super-serums that have given Lois and Jimmy powers in the past, but the voracious Scooby and Shaggy drink them down instead, giving Shaggy the power of Elastic Lad and Scooby the power of Superwoman. Scooby and Shaggy have to team up with Krypto to bring Superman’s uncontrollable rampage to an end. There’s not too much “detecting” in this story, to be honest, but there’s fun to be had in seeing Scooby-Doo trying to fly or Shaggy freaking out about his limbs suddenly turning to rubber. Perhaps the best bit is when Krypto refers to Shaggy as Scooby’s “sidekick,” a label the dogs embrace with great glee.

I’m not saying that the writer of this book looked in my dream journal, but I’m not NOT saying it either.

Krypto made a return appearance in Scooby-Doo Team-Up # 18 (#35 and #36 of the digital version). The story begins with the Scooby gang wrapping up a case where they teamed up with Wonder Dog. Before they can part ways, though, they’re approached by Krypto, Ace the Bat-Hound, and the canine Green Lantern G’Nort. Gnort scoops up Scooby and the other Super-Dogs, taking them into space for help with a case on an entire planet of dogs, where their local superhero team is being haunted by the ghosts of the first dog superheroes, the Canine Commandos.

If I’m being honest, the main draw here is just the team-up aspect. Krypto is great and all, but having a story with him, and G’nort and Yankee Poodle and Rex the Wonder Dog…it’s like a smorgasbord of the sort of goofy characters I love so much. There’s even a neat little homage to the first JLA/JSA crossover in there. Writer Sholly Fisch and artist Dario Brizuela must have had the time of their lives putting this one together…or at least, I know I would have.

Krypto’s greatest super-feat? Saving this movie from the WB accounting department.

Animated Feature: Scooby-Doo! And Krypto, Too! (2023)

Notes: The Justice League is missing, and if that’s not bad enough, there’s a ghost haunting the Hall of Justice. Without her usual hero to save the day, Lois Lane calls in Mystery, Inc. to break the case. When they arrive in Metropolis, they find the entire city besieged by supervillains taking advantage of the heroes’ absence, but that’s a bit above their pay grade. Nobody is expecting them to thwart Brainiac, Giganta, or General Zod – Lois and Jimmy send them to the Hall of Justice to try to solve the mystery of what happened to the Justice League. When they find themselves targeted by a fiery phantasm in the Hall of Justice, Krypto arrives to defend the detectives and lock the building down. Now it’s up to Krypto and the Scooby gang to find the phantom hiding somewhere in the building.

There’s an unusual pedigree behind this film. For a hot minute, it looked it like it was going to be a victim of Warner Bros’s stupid rash of finished or nearly-complete products getting shelved as a tax break. Then something miraculous happened – SOMEBODY leaked the movie to the internet (nobody seems to know who, but I’m betting it was Scooby-Dum) and, lo and behold, it got a great response. Warner Bros somewhat reluctantly gave it the streaming and physical media release it deserved, and thank goodness, because it actually turned out to be good. I mean, it’s got the right kind of humor for a solid Scooby-Doo movie, first of all, but there are also of plenty of gags and in-jokes for the DC Comics fans as well, such as Lois and Jimmy being unable to recognize Velma when she takes off her glasses or Fred having an obvious crush on Harley Quinn. But perhaps the stupidest joke that made me laugh was Shaggy mistaking “Great Caesar’s Ghost” for a spectral salad.

For a comic fan, though, the prize of this movie is the tour of the Justice League’s trophy room, which is loaded with wall-to-wall comic book and cartoon Easter Eggs that will have fans hitting the “pause” button trying to identify them all. Even the audio is full of Easter Eggs – most of the sound effects seem to have been clipped straight from the old Super Friends cartoon.

It’s a Scooby-Doo mystery, so as required we get the usual slate of suspects, including a disgruntled French Fry vendor who wasn’t allowed to park her truck outside the Hall of Justice, the Justice League’s valet who resents them for their fancy and dangerous vehicles, and Lex Luthor himself. (The funny thing is that, since this movie operates on Scooby-Doo rules, you can rule out Lex as a suspect immediately because he’s far too obvious.) Despite working on Scooby logic, though, we get the kind of Krypto I prefer – the one who is intelligent and heroic, but non-communicative and still behaves (mostly) like a dog rather than a human intellect in dog form.

League of Super Pets was a good movie, but if I’m being honest, I like this one better. It’s funnier, first of all, and it’s got more going on in it for the fans of both the comic books and of the Scooby-Doo and Super Friends cartoons, and between the two of them that makes up roughly 20 percent of my childhood. If you haven’t checked this one out yet, track it down – the DVDs are already (absurdly) out of print, and it’s not streaming on MAX (even more absurdly), but you can still rent or buy the film digitally from all the usual retailers. With Krypto’s star rising thanks to the new movie, I really hope that they push this film a bit more as summer approaches.

That’s it for Krypto Week, guys, although it’s by no means the end for Krypto. We know he’s going to be in the movie this July, and DC has also announced a miniseries, Krypto: Last Dog of Krypton, launching in June. If I wasn’t excited enough, the miniseries is going to be by the team of Ryan North and Mike Norton. The latter is a great artist with a pedigree of doing swell comics about dogs (check out his Battlepug some time), but writer Ryan North has been absolutely CRUSHING Fantastic Four and Star Trek: Lower Decks for some time now. To have him joining the Superman family as well – well, it’s like he’s getting a chance to direct the fates of everything I love. And I couldn’t be happier about that.

Geek Punditry #59: The Crossover Question

February 16, 2024February 16, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry Amalgam Comics, Avengers, Batman, comic books, comics, crossovers, dc, DC Comics, DC Vs. Marvel, George Perez, Graphic Novels, Hulk, Justice League, marvel, Marvel Comics, Spider-Man, superman, Teen Titans, X-Men

It was the kind of news that grinds the internet to a halt, sometimes for upwards of 17 seconds. After years, decades even, where some of the most sought-after comic books of all time were out of print and unavailable unless you wanted to pay crazy eBay prices, this week DC and Marvel Comics announced a pair of omnibus editions collecting most of the crossover comics that have been produced over the years featuring meetings between the two most famous superhero pantheons in the world.

I’m not sure if younger fans will realize exactly how big a deal this sort of thing is. From the moment that the two respective worlds solidified, there were fans who were anxious to see the Justice League meet the Avengers, the X-Men meet the Teen Titans, Brother Voodoo meet Brother Power: The Geek. It’s like when you have toys from multiple toy lines and try to play with them all together. I know that every kid my age, at some point, had their G.I. Joes face off against Darth Vader, the TransFormers clash with He-Man, and the Thundercats and Silverhawks grab a drink down at the bar. Those were the stories that spilled out of our imagination. But the idea of a “real,” “official” story in which such a thing happened was the stuff of dreams. So in 1975, when the two publishers announced their first joint venture, it was like a dream come true!

For Wizard of Oz fans, that is. Yes, because of some weird things like licensing agreements with MGM and the public domain status of the original novel, the first comic co-produced by Marvel and DC Comics was an adaptation of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz, hitting the stands a scant 36 years after the film’s debut. I was only around for the last few years of it, guys, but it really seems like the 70s were a bizarre time.

The part where Wolverine rips out the Cowardly Lion’s entrails, in retrospect, may have been a tad overboard.

But that collaboration seemed to grease the wheels between the two publishers and, in 1976, fans got Superman Vs. the Amazing Spider-Man. Like the Oz book, this was an oversized treasury edition featuring the clash of the respective publisher’s two most popular characters, and it was a hit. In 1981 there was a second Superman/Spider-Man meeting, followed by Batman Vs. the Incredible Hulk (or, as I like to call it, “Battle of the Bruces”), and in 1982 we got The Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans. Then work began on an Avengers/Justice League crossover, a story that would surely be the crown jewel for the two publishers, but things kind of fell apart. Not only did that planned crossover never happen, but all crossovers between the two dried up for over a decade.

That changed in 1994, when the era of comic book excess was in full swing, and the two collaborated again with what would be the first of two Batman/Punisher crossovers. It wasn’t Bruce Wayne, though – this story took place during the Knightfall era, and the Punisher ran across the Jean-Paul Valley version of Batman. By the time the sequel rolled around, Bruce was back and Frank Castle learned what the real Batman is like. This pair kicked off a new wave of Marvel/DC crossovers including Batman/Spider-Man, Batman/Daredevil, Batman/Captain America – look, by the 90s it was clear who DC’s top seller was. But Superman got in on the fun too, meeting both the Hulk and the Fantastic Four. Green Lantern met up with the Silver Surfer, and then there was the villain-centric Darkseid Vs. Galactus: The Hunger by John Byrne.

College years, on the other hand, were defined by THESE books.

The creme de la creme, of course, was 1996’s mega-event DC Vs. Marvel, where the two universes collided in a four-issue slugfest where the fans voted for the winners of the five top battles. This was a great gimmick from a sales standpoint but posed something of a creative challenge, as writers Peter David and Ron Marz had to figure out some way to have Lobo (an indestructible alien with Superman-level strength) lose a fight to Wolverine (a character who is considerably less powerful unless you count his mutant ability to sell a trillion copies and, in this case, garner a trillion extra votes). Their solution, hilariously, was to have the two of them duck behind a counter and only have Wolverine pop up, thereby avoiding the need to actually explain how he could possibly have won.

Nerds argued over this for almost 60 years before Marvel and DC decided to settle things. It didn’t stop nerds from arguing.

Specious battles aside (I also take issue with Storm of the X-Men beating Wonder Woman with a bolt of lightning and Batman beating Captain America because the latter got hit by a wave of water from a flooding sewer which threw off his aim), the book was a smash hit. It spawned two sequel miniseries, but the thing that fans remember most were the series of one-shots that came in-between issues three and four of the main storyline, the Amalgam Universe. Basically, the Marvel and DC Universes were merged, and we got 12 one-shots starring character mashups like Super Soldier (Superman fused with Captain America), Dark Claw (Batman and Wolverine), Speed Demon (Flash and Ghost Rider) and so forth. A year later there were another series of 12 one-shots, half of which were follow-ups to the original dozen and the other six introducing new mashups like the Lobo the Duck (Lobo and Howard the Duck) and Iron Lantern (Iron Man and Green La– look, do I have to spell out EVERYTHING?).

The next time someone tells you that drawing doofy fan mashups won’t get you anywhere, show them this.

The Marvel/DC crossover craze ended in 2003 with the long-awaited JLA/Avengers crossover, and it came about in a sort of odd way. The legendary George Perez, whom everyone agreed was the only man alive who should draw this book, joined upstart publisher CrossGen Comics, and CrossGen made all of its talent sign exclusive contracts for the term of their employment. The only loophole allowed was in Perez’s contract, which stated he would be allowed to do JLA/Avengers if it ever happened. That seemed to be enough to get Marvel and DC to figure things out, and the four-issue miniseries finally came about. But that’s the last time any Marvel or DC characters met one another.

There were other crossovers in that era, of course. Marvel’s Iron Man met Valiant’s X-O Manowar, and Daredevil encountered Shi from Crusade Comics. DC and Dark Horse comics became besties: Superman crossed over with Michael Allred’s Madman, the Joker fought the Mask, and Batman met both Grendel and Hellboy (the latter with Starman in tow). But the two biggest games in comics stopped playing together at that point, possibly because of corporate chicanery and possibly because the always friendly rivalry between the two publishers became somewhat less friendly for a while.

Marvel, in fact, seems to have quit crossovers altogether. A search on the Internet (which, as we all know, has never been wrong about anything) seems to indicate the last time Marvel characters crossed over with any other publisher was back in 2009, when the Avengers and Thunderbolts were featured with Top Cow Comics characters in a miniseries called Fusion. We’ve recently got a new crossover, though, with Wolverine fighting the Predator, but as both characters are now owned by the Walt Disney Corporation and IP Farm and Macaroni Grill, and therefore both published by Marvel, I don’t know that it technically counts.

And it’s not like other publishers haven’t gotten into the game as well. Before Disney bought Fox, Dark Horse Comics held the rights to Aliens and Predator, and they fought EVERYBODY. Superman Vs. Aliens, Batman Vs. Predator, Green Lantern Vs. Aliens, Magnus: Robot Fighter Vs. Predator, WildC.A.T.S. Vs. Aliens, Archie Vs. Predator (no, I’m not kidding), Batman and Superman Vs. Aliens and Predator…it was a cottage industry.

Fellas, when THIS many people have trouble getting along with you, maybe it’s time to admit that the problem is YOU.

And their sparring partners often met other publishers’ characters as well. Archie Comics has crossed over with – among others – the Punisher, Batman ‘66, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, Vampirella and Red Sonja, and the Tiny Titans. They also crossed over with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when Archie was publishing THAT book, but since the Turtles have moved to IDW Publishing they’ve encountered the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (twice), Batman (four times), and the characters from Stranger Things, which has also crossed over with Dungeons and Dragons, which has also crossed over with Rick and Morty. The Power Rangers have also met both the Justice League and Godzilla, and the Justice League and Godzilla are currently meeting each other – along with King Kong – in a crossover with the Legendary Monsterverse.

While Marvel has pulled out of the crossover game (which is something I largely suspect is an edict from Disney, although I have nothing to back that up, it’s just a gut feeling), DC has kept it up. Besides the aforementioned TMNT, Power Rangers, and Godzilla/Kong crossovers, the Justice League has met the characters from Jeff Lemire’s Black Hammer, and enjoyed crossovers with corporate siblings the Looney Tunes and the Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters. Batman and Scooby-Doo, who have met in cartoons many times, now share an ongoing children’s comic. DC has also partnered with IDW for Star Trek/Green Lantern, Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes, and an inventive crossover between DC’s Sandman Universe and Joe Hill’s Locke and Key. IDW seems to love crossovers, even with different licensed properties in their own stable. While they owned the licenses to these assorted properties, they crossed over TransFormers with Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and Star Trek: The Animated Series (making new Autobots out of the Ecto-1, the Delorean, and the Enterprise, respectively). Star Trek, by the way, also crossed over with the X-Men when Marvel owned that license, in two one-shot comics and a prose novel titled Planet X. And Valiant and Image Comics did the “universes merge” story three whole years before Amalgam Comics in a series called Deathmate, which is largely remembered today for the fact that Rob Liefeld’s issue of the series was hilariously late.

IDW is the Nick Cannon of comic book crossover events. No, not musically.

In fact, there’s only one really major franchise that has significant comic book presence that – as far as I know – has never done an official crossover, and that’s Star Wars. Even before the Disney buyout and the comics moved to Marvel, Dark Horse never made an effort to have Luke Skywalker meet Barb Wire or something. The closest they’ve come was in an out-of-continuity story in the Star Wars Tales anthology comic from 2004, in which the Millennium Falcon gets lost in a galaxy far, far away and crash-lands on a primitive planet, only for the remains to be discovered centuries later by an archeologist strongly implied to be Indiana Jones.

I know it can seem overwhelming if you’re a casual fan, trying to make all of these things work out. The good news is, you don’t have to. The vast majority of these crossovers are either considered non-canonical to the main properties or are of such little consequence to the ongoing story that they may as well be. There are rare exceptions (the WildC.A.T.S./Aliens crossover killed off several members of Wildstorm Comics’ Stormwatch team, for example), but for the most part, they can be read on their own, self-contained, without impacting the ongoing comics in any significant way.

So why do them at all?

Because they’re fun. They’re fun for the readers, who like seeing beloved characters interact, and they’re fun for the creators, who enjoy making them just as much. It’s true that there was a saturation point of crossovers in the early 2000s, but the solution to saturation is to slow down the flow, not cut it off entirely.

So the announcement of the two DC/Marvel omnibus editions is welcome. The DC Versus Marvel: The Amalgam Age omnibus will collect the DC Vs. Marvel miniseries, its two sequels, and 13 of the 24 Amalgam books. The DC Versus Marvel omnibus will collect most of their other crossovers. But the exclusion of the remaining 11 Amalgam books is surprising and a little frustrating, and the DC Versus Marvel omnibus will exclude JLA/Avengers, which was reprinted in a very limited charity run two years ago after George Perez announced that he was suffering from terminal cancer. The fact that it was once again Perez being on a deadline that got that book off to the printer is a sad sort of cosmic convergence.

No joke here. George Perez was one of the greatest comic book artists ever to pick up a pencil, and he deserves all the love and respect he gets.

I hope that there are plans to reprint the rest of the Amalgam books at some point, but even if there aren’t, the fact that they’re doing the omnibus editions at all is encouraging. It’s something fans have wanted for a very long time and we didn’t really think would ever happen. It also, of course, has everybody asking a couple of pertinent questions. First, why now? What has changed in the Marvel/DC relations that allows these books to finally see print again? A lot of the people responsible for the bad blood between the publishers are gone now, and that may indeed play a significant role. And if THAT has changed, let’s just ask the most obvious question of them all:

Could this be a precursor to more?

As I said, it’s been over 20 years since the Marvel and DC Universes connected in any official capacity and a lot has changed. I think there are a lot of fans who would be interested to see Miles Morales meet Damian Wayne or have Kamala Khan interact with Jon Kent. How would the Titans of today – now DC’s premiere super-team – react to the X-Men in the age of Krakoa? And come on, fans have been pining for a Deadpool/Harley Quinn crossover for ages. Such a book would be as good a license to print money as Wolverine was in the 90s.

I’m not saying it will happen. I’m just saying that if it DID, it would be cool.

I’m also saying that the two omnibus books are coming out in August, which also happens to be my birthday month. I’m just. Sayin’.

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, now complete on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He’s always wanted to write the Captain Carrot/Spider-Ham crossover that America deserves.

Geek Punditry #26: Bargain Bin Gold

June 30, 2023June 30, 2023 blakemp Geek Punditry comic books, Flintstones, i love lucy, Religious Comics, Star Comics, Teen Titans, Wally the Wizard

Last weekend I got to do one of my favorite things, and something I rarely get to indulge in anymore: comic book bargain bin diving. I’m a comic nerd, of course, and like any nerd I’ve got my favorites, both when it comes to modern comics and to the classics. I’m trying to fill a run of DC’s Star Trek comics (try to act surprised) and I’ll never turn up my nose at a Disney Duck comic or anything from Archie, pre-2010 or so. But in addition to those special things I’m searching for, I also like…weird stuff. I mean obscure comics, books that most people have probably never heard of before, things that remind me of my childhood, things that have a crazy title, movie adaptations for movies that you wouldn’t believe had ever been adapted, or even just anything that’s got a bizarre cover. If I can find it for under a buck, I’ll throw it into the cart.

This kind of bargain bin excavation is something I love, but it’s not something I get to do all the time, with a five-year-old son for whom “patience” is a foreign concept and a wife with a busy work schedule. But last weekend, with Erin’s blessing, I headed to a small local show in Slidell, Louisiana, where I spent a couple of hours bouncing from vendor to vendor, most of that time sifting through the dollar bins for some of this unexpected, bizarre gold. This week, I’ve decided to share with you some of the crazier finds that I made in this most recent hunt.

“But Freeeeed, I wanna be in the shooooooow!”

First off I’d like to turn your attention to Flintstones #5, published by Dell Comics way back in 1962. Comics based on cartoons are one of my go-to grabs in these bargain bin digs. I’ve always been a fan of the Flintstones, and these Dell comics were great – five full stories and a couple of one-pagers for twelve cents? Sign me up. Story #3 in this issue introduced me to “Perry Gunnite,” an old-fashioned detective comic strip set in the world of Bedrock. Perry appeared in a single episode of the cartoon but, evidently, spun off into his own series in the comics. That find enough would have made this book worth buying, but it was what I found in the fourth story that made this a comic I’ll never forget.

In “The Champ Chowhound” we are introduced to Wilma Flintstone’s cousin Muncher, visiting from out of town and eating Fred and Wilma out of house and home. They want to get rid of him, but he can’t afford to go home and will not accept Fred’s “charity” offer to buy him a bus ticket. So the Flintstones embark upon a set of increasingly elaborate ruses to send him packing. First, Fred claims to have “found” a bus ticket back to Muncher’s home town, but rather than hopping on the bus Muncher sets out to find its rightful owner, turning it over to the first person to claim it. Next they try to guilt him into leaving, pretending that Fred has lost his job and they can’t afford to feed him, but Muncher’s general good nature won’t allow him to abandon them in their time of need. Finally, Muncher signs up for a hog-calling contest in the hopes of winning the money to get Fred back on his car-stopping feet and getting himself the cash to go home.

On the surface, admittedly, this doesn’t seem to be a particularly mind-blowing story…and it’s not. Except for one thing. Regular readers of Geek Punditry will recall a couple of months ago when I mentioned that my wife and I have been binging I Love Lucy on Pluto TV. Pluto shows the entire series in order over and over again, and with 180 half-hour episodes that means if you watch it a lot, there’s a good chance you’ll catch the same episodes every four days or so. Were it not for the fact that I’ve seen these episodes repeatedly and recently, this Flintstones comic would not stand out for me. But it does. Because I recognized that whoever wrote this comic completely ripped off a season three episode of I Love Lucy almost BEAT FOR BEAT. In the previous episode, “Tennessee” Ernie Ford came to visit the Ricardos. As this episode began, he was still crashing on their couch and tearing at their every last nerve.

And from there, it is exactly the same story as the Flintstones comic. Ernie won’t take a bus ticket, so Ricky pretends to find one, but Ernie returns it to the “rightful” owner. Ricky pretends to be out of work, even going so far as to have the Mertzes pretend to be evicting them. (It’s a wonder that the writer of the comic book resisted the urge to have Barney and Betty fill this role, but as the comic was only five pages long I guess they couldn’t squeeze it in.) The biggest deviation is that, rather than have a contest to end the story, Ernie arranges for the crew to appear on the TV show Millikan’s Chicken-Mash Hour doing a hootenanny to get them out of the red.

The Lucy episode is credited to the series’ prolific writing team of Bob Carroll Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and Jess Oppenheimer. Most Dell comics at the time had no credits given, although the Grand Comic Book Database credits the artwork to Kay Wright. The writer may have been lost to history, but I wish I knew the name of the person who had the audacity to steal a plot wholesale from an 8-year-old TV show for a comic book based on a cartoon, which makes me wonder if anybody overseeing the current IDW My Little Pony comics has double-checked to make sure nobody is knocking off the final season of Parks and Recreation.

My favorite part is the end, where Moses shows up to talk to him about the Testament Initiative.

The next bizarre book I pulled from a bargain bin last weekend was an oddity called Jesus, the Man With the Miracle Touch. I’d never heard of this book before, nor its publisher (“Cosmics”), although a little time on Google indicated this publisher released just four comics, all religious-themed one-shots in the late 80s. The story is a fairly straightforward retelling of the Biblical life of Jesus, albeit highly condensed into 32 comic book pages. The book also doesn’t have any credits, which is a shame, because I really quite like the art style. Whoever did this book easily could have been working on Harvey or Archie Comics, or maybe something from Marvel’s Star line of young readers comics at the time. (More about that later.) Mostly, though, I bring this up because when I was at the convention and handed the stack of books to the guy at the booth, as he counted them, he looked over at his co-worker and yelled, “Hey! Somebody is buying the Jesus book!”

“Thanks, Blue Robin!”
“I’m not Robin.”
“How’s Alfred?”
“I’m not–fine. He’s fine.”

At one time, especially when I was a kid in the 80s, “public service announcement” comics were a fairly big thing. There’s an infamous Marvel comic where Spider-Man and Power Pack taught you about the dangers of child abuse and another where Spidey teamed up with Storm and Luke Cage because that’s the natural trio to warn you about ill effects of smoking. I, of course, have both of these in my collection. Meanwhile, DC farmed out the Teen Titans for three anti-drug specials. This weekend I picked up the second of the three, in which the Teen Titans and their pal “Protector” try to help Protector’s cousin, who has moved to Blue Valley, developed a crush on a friend of Wally West, and (gasp!) has fallen into the world of drugs. The Titans, of course, have to help get him out of it.

When I was a kid, I remember getting what turned out to be the third of the Teen Titans specials (although I didn’t know it at the time, as these books didn’t have traditional comic book numbering or anything), and I remember being baffled by it. I knew who the Teen Titans were, of course, but who was this guy in the blue costume and cape with no powers? He was…kinda like Robin, but he wasn’t. That same “Protector” is in this book, although here we find out he’s got an actual secret identity, Jason Hart…so my fifth-grade headcanon of Dick Grayson wearing a brown wig and using a different name for…reasons…I suppose has turned out to be inaccurate. Looking back as an adult, I wonder if Dick Grayson was tied up in some sort of licensing rights surrounding the Batman due to the movies or something. It might not be the case – after all, the first of these comics came out in 1983 and the first Tim Burton Batman movie wasn’t until 1989. Then again, some of these things have a long timeline. If there’s anyone with more information on this, I would be very anxious to hear it.

(UPDATE: Reader Trey Ball has informed me that the licensing deal that prevented Robin being from used in the comics was actually due to the Superfriends, TV show, which for 1983 definitely makes more sense than the Batman movie. The anti-drug comic was produced in association with Keebler, but Nabisco had a licensing agreement with the Superfriends characters. Thanks, Trey!)

The last book I’m going to discuss today comes from Marvel Comics, specifically their Star Comics line from the 80s. (Have you ever noticed how many weird comic books have their roots in the 80s? Something in the air back then, I swear.) Star Comics was Marvel’s attempt to crack into comics specifically for young readers. The most famous alumnus of the line these days is Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham, star of big screen movies, animated shorts, and my heart. But the line also included lots of licensed comics such as Heathcliff, Care Bears, Madballs, and ALF, as well as several original characters that were created and produced by writers and artists Marvel poached away from the likes of Harvey and Archie Comics. Royal Roy was a kind of Richie Rich knock-off, Top Dog was about a kid who found a talking dog who also happened to be a spy, and Planet Terry was an elementary school Flash Gordon with a clever pun in the title that I didn’t catch until some 20 years later.

I love finding obscure, weird comics, and bargain bins are my favorite place to do it. This week I'm here to share some recent finds as Geek Punditry presents "Bargain Bin Gold!" — This is what happens when you pee swimming in the ocean one too many times.

But the book I got this week was Wally the Wizard #3, written and drawn by Archie Comics superstar Bob Bolling. In this issue Wally, apprentice to the Wizard Marlin (Merlin had the power to know the future and thus trademarked his name in the 8th century specifically to avoid being portrayed in Star Comics), discovers that his parents are in the company of a pack of Vikings. He rounds up his buddy, the Viking orphan Vikk, and sets out to find them. Bolling did countless wonderful comics for Archie, especially lots of the Little Archie series, which is no doubt what Marvel had in mind when they picked him up to work on the Star line. This issue, though, makes it seem like he needed a nap.

The truth is, none of the Star-original comics were all that great, although I do have a fondness for Top Dog. None of them lasted more than a couple of years, but some of the licensed books (Heathcliff and ALF, specifically) had long runs. But you know, that’s okay. In this day and age, when comic book publishers seem to think the solution to a dwindling readership is to publish 75 different covers of the same book to sell to the same readers they’ve had for decades, it’s nice to remember that there was at least a time when one of the major publishers was trying something to get kids reading comics again.

Some comic collectors are in it for investments. They spend all their time looking for flawless copies to slab and flip, speculating that a book is going to go up in price because someone announced a movie deal, treating it like a business. I do not understand these people. But I know I’m never going to encounter them sifting through a dollar bin, because the books in those boxes aren’t for them. They’re for people like me – people who see comics as fun, as a little escapist entertainment. And especially, people who like to uncover stuff that others have probably forgotten about. I may not get there often anymore, but the next time I get around to a convention or a used bookstore or anywhere I can sift for cheap, weird comics, I’ll come back with another installment of Bargain Bin Gold.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. To date, the greatest thing he’s ever pulled from a bargain bin was the four issue run of Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego, a great comic from the 80s (of course) that you should totally hunt down if you can.