Our descent into darkness continues. Last week, we spent some time in the earliest days of some of Superman’s most dastardly foes, and also the Prankster. This week we’re shifting the focus to Superman himself, looking at Superman’s darkest hours. These are going to be some of the hardest, toughest, most heartbreaking moments the Man of Steel ever went through. Not surprisingly, there aren’t really a lot of early stories here. In the Golden and Silver Ages, the formula of the stories didn’t really allow for the kind of darkness I’m examining. The formula insisted that the heroes always won and the villains got their comeuppance. And to be fair, even in the stories we’re about to talk about, the world didn’t end. Well, except for the one time that it did.
These are all in-continuity stories, by the way. I’m not doing Elseworlds or alternate realities, because that’s a little too easy. There are MUCH darker stories in some of those worlds, because writers sometimes see that Elseworlds label as a license to blow everything up. But I don’t feel bad about excluding them either, because for the most part, I find those ultra-bleak Elseworlds fairly forgettable. And the ones that AREN’T forgettable…well, I’ve either already covered them or I have plans for them somewhere else before the year is out.
And as always, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman Archive!
Wed., Oct. 8
Comics: “The Supergirl Saga,” Superman Vol. 2 #21, Adventures of Superman #444, Superman Vol. 2 #22
Notes: We all know that, after the death of Supergirl in Crisis on Infinite Earths and John Byrne’s Man of Steel reboot, the edict from DC Comics was that there were to be no other Kryptonians – Superman was the only one. They even had to do a whole story with the Legion of Super-Heroes involving a pocket universe to explain how Superboy had been a member of the team when, in the main comics, we were told that Superboy never existed. As he was preparing his departure from the Superman titles in 1988, John Byrne gave us a story that played with these ideas and reverberated with the title – and the character – for a very long time.
In Superman #21, Superman finds himself being trailed in the air by a mysterious pursuer. After some midair showmanship, he manages to catch the person who’s been chasing him, shocked to find a woman wearing a variation of his costume. The girl changes her face and turns into Lana Lang, who tells her her powers are different from his, and that they were given to her by Lex Luthor. When he tells her that Luthor is a criminal, Super-Lana gets confused and attacks him with a telekinetic blast. The battle takes them to Lana’s farm in Smallville, where Superman finds the REAL Lana and his parents tied up in the basement. Superman pieces together that this is the Lana from the pocket dimension he once visited with the Legion, and shows her his Metropolis and its version of Lex Luthor to help clear her mind. Slowly she remembers where she came from, and tells Superman that it’s been ten years since he visited her world, even though for him it’s only been a few months. She brings him back to her universe where he meets their greatest hero, the redheaded super-scientist Lex Luthor, who needs Superman’s help to prevent the end of the world.
Shocking stuff in here for the time, although it’s hard to divorce the story from what we now know about the Matrix Supergirl and what happens in this universe. She – and the reader – truly believe she’s that world’s Lana Lang, which makes the story all the sadder in the telling. This issue is also interesting to me personally, in how it ties in to other comics I’ve read recently. Considering the brutal way Lana was treated in Superman #2, her appearance is a real shock before the truth is revealed. And in a subplot, Jimmy Olsen is keen to go to Ireland to continue investigating the mystery of the Silver Banshee, whom we read about just last week. I like these little unplanned moments of synchronicity in my reading, it helps me feel like the whole life of Superman is more of a rich tapestry rather than a hodgepodge of random pieces being thrown together.
The story continues in Adventures of Superman #444, which is neat because this is technically BEFORE the “Triangle Era” in which all three (and later four, and even five) Superman titles were tied together into a neat little serial, although that concept would come soon and really began here. This issue he’s joined by penciler and co-plotter Jerry Ordway for a story that begins with Lex, Pete Ross, and Super-Lana showing him the graves of the Kents of the parallel reality. That’s only the beginning of how bad things are, though, as we soon learn that in this universe Smallville is encased in a force-field, protecting it from the devastation that has destroyed the rest of Earth.
We get a more detailed retelling of how the Time Trapper created the Pocket Universe here, all as part of his trap for the Legion, and clipping out every planet that had intelligent life except for the two he needed: Earth and Krypton. This means that there were no extraterrestrial heroes – no Green Lanterns, no Hawkman, and so forth – nor did the Trapper allow for the origins that created the rest of Earth’s protectors. In this world, the late Superboy was the ONLY superhero. Lex came to Smallville believing he’d found a cure for Kryptonite poisoning, only to learn that Superboy was gone. Pete and Lana took Lex to Superboy’s lab, where he discovered a device that allowed him to communicate with a trio of Kryptonians trapped in what one of them calls the “Survival Zone.” Believing he’s found heroes to replace Superboy, Luthor frees them only to learn that General Zod, Quex-Ul, and Zaora were no heroes at all. Zod declared himself King of the World and, for the next ten years, the Kryptonians brought death and devastation to anyone who opposed them.
Luthor built a resistance base in Smallville and found a way to give Lana powers, but despite that, it wasn’t enough. Hope seemed lost until he found a way to our dimension and our Superman, sending Lana to him for help. At the same time, though, the Kryptonians tired of individual battles and bored straight to the core of the Earth, blasting the atmosphere off the planet. The only life left is the Kryptonians themselves and those under Luthor’s Smallville dome. At the end of the issue, Superman stands with the battered resistance, ready to do anything to stop the terror of Zod.
This is, in essence, an issue-long infodump. It works, it tells us everything we need to know, and it gives us a bit more of this world (including a trio of would-be freedom fighters named Bruce Wayne, Hal Jordan, and Oliver Queen). The plot doesn’t really advance much, though, which makes this feel like kind of an anomaly in this quick three-part story. This is definitely the kind of story that, were it being told today, would take up at least a six-issue miniseries and a dozen spin-off one-shots showing what the other denizens of Earth-Pocket were up to during the Great Zod War. These little time capsules fascinate me.
John Byrne’s Superman run ends with issue #22 and one of the most shocking covers you could hope to see: Superman wearing an executioner’s mask and opening up a box of Kryptonite. The story starts after a time skip, where Superman is standing in the ruins of Smallville on a planet with almost life. A flashback shows us the final, pitched battle between the resistance and the Kryptonians, who made quick work of most of them and destroy Smallville station. They roast Supergirl into a blob of protomatter, and Lex sends Superman on a desperate quest to the ruins of Superboy’s lab in Smallville. Quex-Ul attacks and Superman is reminded that the Trapper made these other Kryptonians more powerful than he is. But he finds his goal in the rubble – a canister of Gold Kryptonite that takes away Quex-Ul’s powers, then he does the same to Zod and Zaora. He finds Luthor dying in the rubble, where he explains that Supergirl isn’t really Lana Lang, but a protoplasmic Matrix that he programmed in the hopes of luring her to this universe. He dies expressing his regret that he didn’t use the Kryptonite sooner.
Then we get one of the most controversial scenes in Superman history. He returns to the powerless villains, but Zod is still defiant, boasting that he will find a way to restore their powers and make their way to Superman’s world and repeat their holocaust. And so, to prevent such a thing, Superman opens a canister of Green Kryptonite and kills them. He finds the burned Matrix being in the rubble and brings her to his universe, to his Smallville, hoping that once again his parents can save the last survivor of a dead world.
This book was shocking as hell when it was published, and it’s a hot button topic even now. Superman killed three people, and not in self-defense. I am firmly, steadfastly in the camp of believing that Superman does not kill. However, I also believe that this story is exactly WHY he should not kill. He doesn’t do it out of anger or malice, but because he sees no other option. And doing so tortures him. Byrne draws so much pain in a panel with a single tear, and at the end of the issue you’re left with the feeling that Superman would never be the same. In fact, he wasn’t for some time. The trauma of what he experienced would lead him to develop a split personality and eventually exile himself from Earth for a time, in one of the first truly protracted storylines of the proto-Triangle Era.
What’s more, and I KNOW I’m gonna piss off some people when I say this, I think this issue justifies the Man of Steel movie. In that film (in case you hadn’t heard) Superman kills Zod in combat. A lot of people were upset about that, and rightly so. But just because a story choice upsets you doesn’t make it the wrong choice. Superman is not a killer, but I think that by doing it ONCE, you SOLIDIFY the fact that it’s wrong for him. It is a pain that nearly destroyed him in the comics, and a pain he can never bring himself to repeat. The films tried to play it the same way. While there are other things about the Snyder movies that I’m willing to debate, I never had an objection to that particular story choice. And the REASON I never objected to that moment of darkness is because I already knew about the darkness from “The Supergirl Saga.”
Thur., Oct. 9
Comic: Adventures of Superman #474, Jon Kent: This Internship is My Kryptonite #14, Batman: Gotham By Gaslight-A League For Justice #3 (Team Member)
Notes: Our tour through the most painful parts of Superman’s past continues with Adventures of Superman #474, a Dan Jurgens story called “Face to Face With Yesterday.” It’s a story that shows us one of the worst moments of Clark Kent’s young life and, paradoxically, it’s also one of my favorite Superman stories of them all.
The story begins on a snow-blanketed New Year’s Eve as Superman returns to Smallville, not to visit his parents, but so that Clark Kent can be at Lowell County Hospital for a bleak, tragic evening. Clark is there to visit a patient named Scott Brubaker, but the head nurse at the desk isn’t happy to see him at all. In fact, as she tells a younger colleague, Clark Kent is one of the people who was involved with the tragedy that caused Scott’s condition in the first place. He enters the hospital room where Scott’s parents are keeping a lonely vigil. They’re upset at first, believing that Clark is there for a story, but Clark assures them that he’s only there to say goodbye.
In flashback, we see ten years in the past, when Clark and Scott – both members of the Smallville High football team – begin to forge a friendship that was bridging the divide between the kids who live in town and farm kids like Clark and Pete Ross. Scott join Clark, Pete, and Lana Lang for a New Year’s Eve party where alcohol is flowing freely. Although reluctant to do so, Clark and his friends join in the drinking. At the end of the night, Scott volunteers to drive the farm kids home, despite having more booze in him than anyone else. The inevitable happens – Scott veers in front of an 18-wheeler and his car smashes into a tree. Clark, naturally unhurt, pulls Lana and Pete from the wreckage, but Scott is too far gone, and has been in a coma ever since.
Back in the present, Scott’s parents have convinced the courts to allow them to pull the plug on their son, having spent a decade in a vegetative state. Clark tells Scott’s parents that he blames himself, that he should have taken the wheel instead, and the Brubakers try to assuage his guilt. After all, Scott’s dad says, Clark had been drinking that night too.
This is what we call dramatic irony, folks. You see, even though Clark’s powers hadn’t kicked in yet, the reader knows fully well that even at 18 he was immune to the effects of alcohol and he was stone-cold sober. And Clark knows it too. As he talks to Scott’s parents, he realizes just how profound that night was on the rest of his life, setting him on a course to always – ALWAYS – do the right thing. He says goodbye and leaves. On the way out of the hospital, he overhears a couple planning to get into their car, a wine bottle in their hands, clearly drunk. But before they can drive away, they realize that somehow, in the midst of a blizzard, their tires have melted into the pavement.
On TV, a story like this would be what they call a “very special episode.” It’s when a character – usually, but not exclusively teenager – is faced with a moral dilemma and the viewer is supposed to infer the correct behavior. And these stories are often pretty schmaltzy. But this comic never felt that way to me. It wasn’t preachy, it wasn’t like some sort of stale Public Service Announcement, despite its very clear statement about drunk driving. Instead, it felt like it was giving us a missing piece of Superman’s life.
Allow me to explain. Unlike most superheroes – Batman, Spider-Man, the Punisher – Superman has no tragic inciting incident in his past. Oh sure, there’s the whole “my planet exploded” thing, but that happened in his infancy. It’s not an event that he remembers, not the thing that compels him to do good. Even in continuities where the Kents are dead before he becomes Superman, those deaths are almost always natural and don’t have a direct relationship to the moral core of the Man of Steel. (Their parenting sure does, but not their deaths.) And to be fair, Superman doesn’t exactly need a tragic backstory either. It is enough – certainly SHOULD be enough – to have a hero who does the right thing simply because it’s the right thing to do.
That said, while I don’t think this story is necessary, and it hasn’t become an ingrained part of the character’s backstory like the deaths of the Waynes or Ben Parker, it does help very much to humanize Clark Kent. He’s Superman, yeah, but before that he was a kid. Before that he made a stupid decision that thousands of other kids have made, and like far too many of them, a price was paid for that decision.
I dunno, maybe part of the reason I still think this story is so profound is because I’m a high school teacher. I spend my entire day around other people the same age that Clark Kent was in this story, and I have known more than one in my years who was the victim of a stupid choice like the ones Clark and Scott made. So it’s important to me. It matters to me. And in an odd way, it also does something for the character that we saw in the “Supergirl Saga.” It shows us the consequences of a choice, and how it indelibly etches into the soul of a man determined to never let it happen again.
Fri., Oct. 10
Comic: Superman Vol. 2 #84, 85
Notes: During Villain Debut Week I wrote about the Toyman, and how he was always a relatively minor villain – annoying, but not particularly violent or dangerous. That changed in Superman #84 from 1993, in what was one of the darkest Superman stories I’d ever read. The Toyman has established a lair beneath the streets of Metropolis and he’s begun kidnapping children whose parents he believes are “bad.” His mind has completely snapped, and he believes that by imprisoning these children in his subterranean dungeon he is somehow protecting them from a harsh, cruel world. At the same time Clark – still fresh from his recent resurrection in the “Reign of the Supermen,” – is enjoying life by taking Lois off to Paris for an evening. As the two of them are in Europe, Cat Grant takes her son Adam to a Halloween party where he’s lured away by a promise of a room full of video games. The Toyman brings Adam to his lair, “rescuing” him from his “sick, embarrassing lush of a mother.” But Adam proves to be more willful and defiant than his other captives, and when tries to free the other children, the Toyman decides that he can’t risk Adam telling people about his lair. When Lois and Clark return the next morning, they are horrified at the news that Adam’s body has been identified.
The next three weekly issues of the Superman titles were a short storyline called “Spilled Blood,” in which Superman battled a new version of Bloodsport, among others. Although the Adam story remained an undercurrent, it wasn’t resolved until Superman #85 the following month. Cat approaches Superman in the street, outraged that he hasn’t caught the Toyman yet (the whole “Spilled Blood” thing kept him busy), and he begs her to find help for herself while he seeks the killer. More bodies have been found, and Superman manages to trace the Toyman to the harbor. The once-whimsical villain has gone completely off the deep end, wallowing in an oversized crib and having conversations with his invisible “Mommy,” Norman Bates-style. Superman bursts into the lair in anger, but when he sees how pathetic the Toyman has become, he takes pity on him, capturing him even as the Toyman destroys his own lair.
The story of his capture is told in flashback, though, cutting back to the present, where we see Cat sneaking a gun into the police station where Toyman is being held. Throughout the story, Cat’s running narration shows us the pain, grief, and rage she’s caged up, ready to unleash on her son’s murderer. As the Toyman rebukes Cat, calling her a bad mother and saying she raised a bad boy, she pulls her gun on him. He is defiant at first, until “Mommy” tells him that she really means it, and he’s reduced to pathetic groveling. When Cat pulls the trigger, though, a flag with the word “bang” on it pops out. Superman shows up, telling her she could be in a lot of trouble if he were to tell the police what she did, but Cat walks off, trying to find a way to live her life alone.
Even in 1993, when this story came out, I recognized it as being one of the darkest, bleakest Superman stories I’d ever read. I’m not sure who had the idea of turning the Toyman into a child-murderer or what the hopes of editorial were…was it an attempt to make a “darker,” “grittier” villain out of somebody who had long been a joke? Was it done in the hopes of giving Superman a more grounded, realistic foe than the likes of Doomsday or Brainiac? Or was it just Dan Jurgens feeling a compulsion to show a story where Superman’s power wasn’t enough? Regardless of the impetus behind it, the story that disturbed me when I was young absolutely slices through my guts when I read it now as a parent, with my own son about the same age as Adam Grant. I don’t want to, but I can’t help but think about how I would feel in Cat’s position, what I would do…and the truth is I don’t know. I don’t WANT to know. It’s a nightmare the likes of which I can’t even imagine.
Compared to THIS Toyman…give me Doomsday. Give me the Cyborg. Give me Darkseid. But don’t ever give me what happened to Cat Grant.
Sat., Oct. 11
Graphic Novel: Superman: Sacrifice, collecting Superman Vol. 2 #218-220, Adventures of Superman #642-643, Action Comics #829, Wonder Woman Vol. 2 #219-220
Notes: By 2005, the DC Universe was gearing up for a change. A lot of storylines that had been running in assorted titles turned out to be setting pieces in place for the upcoming Infinite Crisis event: the Rock of Eternity was destroyed, sending magic into disarray; Batman’s paranoia led him to create a satellite monitoring system called Brother Eye; and Maxwell Lord had been revealed as the leader of Checkmate, a spy agency that he’d turned into an anti-metahuman organization. His machinations when Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle, discovered that Max had stolen Brother Eye, so Max killed him. In the Superman titles, things had been growing appreciably darker for some time, and the four-part “Sacrifice” storyline was the point that led him into the crossover event.
The graphic novel picks up before the events of the crossover proper, with Superman #218. Superman’s old foe Blackrock is murdered by a new villain who wants to steal the rock that gives him his power. Blackrock 2.0 turns out to be more dangerous, laying waste to a large section of Metropolis before Superman is able to take him out with a heavy application of heat vision. The public sentiment, however, has been turning against superheroes for some time, and the sheer display of power necessary for Superman to take Blackrock down leaves people terrified of him, fleeing from what they perceive as his ferocity.
It gets worse in Part 1 of “Sacrifice” proper, from Superman #219. Following the destruction of the Fortress of Solitude (which happened back in “For Tomorrow”) Superman built a new Fortress in South America. “Sacrifice” begins with him waking up in the new Fortress with blood on his hands. In flashback, he remembers Brainiac in the Daily Planet office with Lois. Clark barges in, but the alien is gone. He tracks down Brainiac, but finds that he’s captured Perry, Lana, Jimmy, and Lois. Superman is forced to watch as Brainiac murders those closest to him and, in a rage, he decides to break his most sacred vow and kill his foe. The flashback ends as he looks at the blood on his hands and realizes it’s human – it can’t be Brainiac’s.
And that’s when the Justice League arrives, demanding answers.
In Action #829, J’onn J’onzz visits Lois – who is very much not dead – to ask for her help, given Superman’s recent “erratic” behavior. At the Fortress, meanwhile, the Flash, Green Lantern, and Black Canary are seeking answers. Superman again remembers the encounter at the Planet office, but this time it isn’t Brainiac with Lois – it’s Darkseid. Again, his enemy has Lois captive, and he forces Superman into personal combat…combat that ends with Lois’s death. Back in the Fortress, Black Canary tells Superman to examine the blood on his hands to see who it REALLY belongs to. In horror, they go to the Justice League Watchtower to see his true victim – Batman, who has been beaten within an inch of his life.
In Adventures #642, as Batman fights for his life, the League shows Superman surveillance footage of how he nearly killed Batman, stopped only at the last second by Wonder Woman. Superman’s memories have changed again – he remembers the fight, but this time it was Ruin he battled. J’onn theorizes that someone has planted some sort of psychotic episode into Superman’s mind. Bringing Wonder Woman with him, the two of them delve into Superman’s psyche and find evidence that Superman is being manipulated by Maxwell Lord. Max has damaged Superman’s mind, using the very mental barriers Superman placed in his own mind after he killed the Phantom Zone criminals. As they plan how to contain him, Max’s conditioning kicks in again: Superman suddenly turns paranoid and attacks the League, fighting through them while believing he’s searching for Max. Diana goes after him, finding Max in his hideaway and learning that his control over Superman appears to be complete.
“Sacrifice” ends in Wonder Woman #219, one of the most controversial comics of the era. Max uses his mind control powers to make Superman believe he’s watching Doomsday kill Lois, revealing he’s spent years subtly manipulating Superman, implanting tendrils of paranoia and terror. He has Superman attack Diana, believing her to be Doomsday. The battle is fierce and global, but she manages to distract him and get back to Max, tying him in her lasso and forcing him to release Superman. Max taunts her, saying that she can’t keep him in her lasso forever, and eventually he’ll set Superman loose again. Diana tells Max – under the power of the Lasso of Truth – to tell her how to free Superman from his control. Max’s answer is simple: “Kill me.”
And she does.
Although that was the end of the issues branded “Sacrifice,” the story wasn’t over. It continues a second later in Wonder Woman #220. Superman is horrified when he realizes what Diana has done, but before he can say anything a pair of disasters in different parts of the world call the two of them apart. As if that weren’t bad enough, when she goes to see Batman and he discovers what she’s done, he tells her to “Get out.” The fallout continued in Adventures of Superman #643 – we see the two issues of Wonder Woman from Clark’s perspective: his imagined fight with Doomsday, watching him kill Lois and countless others, then waking up from a nightmare just in time to watch Diana, his best friend, snap Max’s neck without a hint of remorse. Like Diana, he’s called away, and like Diana, he checks on Bruce. And while he doesn’t tell Superman to go away, his reception is almost as cold. Superman returns to Lois, broken, unsure what to do.
The graphic novel wraps up with Superman #220, in which Superman and Superboy team up to take on the Eradicator, but that issue really has very little to do with the rest of the story and I suspect it was only included because they weren’t sure where else to put it in the assorted paperbacks collecting the stories running up to Infinite Crisis. That’s what this is really about, after all. The conceit behind Infinite Crisis would eventually turn out to be that Alex Luthor of Earth-3, Superman of Earth-2, and Superboy of Earth-Prime had been watching the prime DC Universe ever since the end of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, and seeing how dark the world had become, Luthor decided to rewrite it. As such the stories before that were intended to amplify that darkness. Batman’s creation of a global spy satellite was enough to put him on everyone’s naughty list, but “Sacrifice” served to shove a wedge between all three members of DC’s Trinity, with Diana’s actions being condemned by both Bruce and Clark, Clark refusing to trust Bruce because of the aforementioned Brother Eye, and Bruce deciding that neither of the other two had gone far enough. Taken in and of themselves, these stories are all hard and bleak. As part of the larger tapestry, though, it really works well. I liked Infinite Crisis at the time and I still enjoy it. And I agreed with the main thesis – the DC universe HAD gotten too dark, and I was happy that the story ended with rays of hope, a promise that the universe would grow better again. The sad thing is that the DC creators themselves seemed to forget that. After a promising start, the stories again took a turn for the darker, and brightness didn’t really start to return until DC Rebirth in 2016. Even then it’s had its ups and downs since then. I’m glad to say that, at the moment, it feels like we’re in an upswing.
Sun., Oct. 12
Comics: Superman: The Man of Steel #16, Superman Vol. 2 #72
Notes: I’ve got a quickie today, the two-part “Crisis at Hand” from 1992 (which may well be the shortest “Crisis” DC ever published). This story hearkens back to some of Superman’s earliest Golden Age stories when Clark’s superhearing picks up the sounds of a man beating a woman. He’s shocked to realize that the assault is happening in his own apartment building – his neighbors Gary and Andrea Johnson. He bursts into the apartment and stops Gary from whipping his wife with a belt, but when the police arrive, Andrea defends her husband and asks the police to throw Superman out. The next morning Clark relates to Lois a story from early in his career, a nice recreation of the infamous “wife-beater” scene from Action Comics #1, when he stopped a similar crime. Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove extend the scene, though, showing Clark talking to his father later and questioning if he did the right thing. With the police unable to intervene unless Andrea is willing to press charges, part one of the story ends with Clark clutching his hands over his ears, helpless as he listens to Gary battering his wife yet again.
Part two came in Superman #72 by Dan Jurgens and Brad Vancata. Clark turns to Jonathan for counsel once again, then Lois, telling her the story of how the “wife-beater” episode ENDED all those years ago. Not long after Superman stopped the man from hitting his wife, Clark Kent got sent to cover his first murder case for the Planet only to find that the victim was the woman he’d just saved. When an enraged Superman tracked down the husband, he blamed Superman for not killing him when he stopped him the first time. The absurdity of the situation has resonated with Clark ever since, and he knows that this isn’t a situation Superman can solve. When he and Lois get back to his apartment, though, they hear crashes in the Johnson apartment. Although Clark tries to stay out of it, Lois refuses to do so. They burst in and Andrea tells Gary to leave. Lois stays with Andrea, giving her the number of a woman’s shelter and urging her to seek help (which she does), while Superman winds up finding Gary on a bridge and talks him out of committing suicide, taking him to get the help HE needs as well.
Like “Face to Face With Yesterday,” this story has the earmarks of the “very special episode,” although here it has the added element of it being a story about Superman having to face the fact that there are some problems he can’t solve. In the end, though, it’s a very human story, and as harsh as it is (especially the scene at the murder victim’s funeral, when the killer’s mother begs Superman to spare her son) it ends with an element of hope. As the best Superman stories always should.
Mon., Oct. 13
Graphic Novel: Superman: Brainiac (Collects Action Comics #866-870)
Notes: The Geoff Johns/Gary Frank era of Action Comics wasn’t a particularly bleak one, although it did bring us to a heartbreaking conclusion at the end of the five-part Brainiac story, which begins with a flashback to Krypton. Before the destruction of the planet, we see General Zod and his army battling against an invading Skull-shaped spacecraft that seals the city of Kandor in a bottle and miniaturizes it. From there, we shift to the present day Daily Planet, where a few familiar faces are returning to the fold: boorish sports editor Steve Lombard and Cat Grant, who seems to have got down a rabbit hole of reinventing herself for the worse since the death of her son (even reaching the point of throwing herself at the now-married Clark Kent as she used to in the days before he and Lois got together). The conversation is interrupted by the incursion of a Brainiac drone into Metropolis. Superman fights it off with relative ease, but a message is sent to the Skullship in space, where we learn that Brainiac is seeking Kryptonians.
In part two, Johns does a little bit of continuity welding. Y’see, over the years Brainiac had taken on a LOT of forms – alien invader, human possessed by an outside force, robot, etc. Supergirl (who remembers pre-destruction Krypton) tells us that all of these versions are different “probes” created by the REAL Brainiac, and that no one has ever encountered his true form before. On Krypton Brainiac basically became a planetwide boogeyman after Kandor’s abduction, terrifying everyone. After a conversation with the world’s greatest dad, Clark takes a ship into space, planning to bring the fight to Brainiac for once. He finds him attacking yet another world, but is unable to stop him from destroying the sun of an inhabited planet, killing everyone there, and taking Superman captive.
Superman wakes up in Part Three, in the midst of the Skullship surrounded by other aliens in suspended animation, as well as shrunken cities…including Kandor. That’s when Brainiac attacks, of course. And he’s set his sights on Earth. Supergirl shows up at the Planet office, looking for Clark, and is with Lois when the shadow of Brainiac’s ship appears in the sky over Metropolis. In Part Four, Supergirl tries to fight the drones on Earth as Superman battles Brainiac in his ship. Superman manages to make contact with Kandor, including Supergirl’s parents, Zor-El and Allura, but Brainiac has the upper hand. He manages to reduce Metropolis to one of his bottle cities and fires a probe into the sky. On Earth, Jonathan and Martha Kent watch as the probe arcs towards the sun, ready to destroy it just like Brainiac did to the sun of Krypton.
In the final chapter, Superman faces Brainiac as Supergirl races through space to stop the probe. The battle falls to Earth, where Superman manages to disable Brainiac. But as he sets out to restore Kandor to full size, Brainiac sends a probe to strike at Superman’s heart: Smallville. The probe attacks the Kent farm, and Jonathan just barely manages to pull Martha away before the barn is destroyed. Their joy is short-lived, though, as the exertion triggers a heart attack. Superman hears his mother screaming from the other side of the world and races to Smallville just as Jonathan Kent dies.
Generally speaking, I prefer the continuities in which Jonathan and Martha Kent are alive for our adult Superman. There are too few positive portrayals of parents in superhero fiction (or fiction in general, for that matter), and having arguably the two greatest parents in history alive and available gave an added dimension to Superman. It’s probably my favorite single element that John Byrne brought to the table in 1986, and I was elated when Doomsday Clock finally made it clear that, in the DC Rebirth continuity, both Kent parents were alive again (they were both dead in the New 52 era).
All that said, none of those personal feelings of mine take away from the gut punch that Johns delivers at the end of this storyline. The death of a parent is one of the most horrible and most inevitable parts of life (I speak from experience here, friends), and it’s something we’d never really watched Clark Kent deal with before. In Action Comics #1, the Kents were already dead before Clark went to Metropolis, his mourning done away with in a single panel. Although they were considerably fleshed out in the years following via the Superboy comics, there’d never really been a story where we saw Clark Kent grapple with the loss. I also appreciate how Johns accomplished it. Having Jonathan’s death be natural – a heart attack, in most of the continuities where his death is explicitly portrayed – is a good reminder for the character that for all his power, there are some things that even a Superman cannot fight. On the other hand, having that heart attack brought on by an act of heroism is beautifully fitting for the man who raised Superman, and makes his loss all the more tragic.
Up until those last few pages, this story wouldn’t have made the cut for “Superman’s Darkest Hours” week. Most of it is good, but standard for the time. In fact, there are even several bits of light – a lot of humor surrounding Cat Grant and Steve Lombard, Johns and Gary Frank really hammering home their love and inspiration from the Christopher Reeve films, and a particularly inspiring bit with Supergirl where her cousin tells her that it’s okay to be afraid, and that reminder giving her the courage to overcome that same fear and save her adopted world. But no matter how great the victory, how incredible the triumph, the loss at the end makes for a moment that deserves a place in the worst moments of anybody’s life.
Tues., Oct. 14
Comics: Superman/Batman #26
Notes: The last stop on our tour of Superman’s darkest hours comics not from the dark moment itself, but more from its aftermath. Every comic book fan knows that a crisis-level event will, of course, include casualties. And we also know that these casualties, more often than not, turn out to be temporary. Still, if written well, even a comic book death can have an emotional impact. Such was the case with the death of Conner Kent, Superboy, in Infinite Crisis. But that’s not the moment I want to look at today – I want to delve into the aftermath, from Superman/Batman #26. This, frankly, is a comic book with a backstory even more heartbreaking than what’s on the page. Jeph Loeb, who had been the writer of this title since its inception, lost his son Sam to cancer. This book was made in his honor, packaging a plot that Sam himself had written with pages scripted and drawn by 26 of the biggest names in comics – Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, Tim Sale, Brad Meltzer, Mike Kunkel, and several others. It’s an all-star lineup that came together for the sake of a young man who left the world entirely too soon.
The story is packaged as Robin (Tim Drake) telling a story of one grand adventure he had with his best friend, who has recently died. Superboy and Robin are tasked with finding the missing Toyman – not Winslow Schott, but the 13-year-old whiz kid named Hiro Okumura who had straddled the line between villain and hero and, at this time, was making gadgets and vehicles for Batman. Superman and Batman know that Hiro is on the edge, and they hope the influence of Robin and Superboy will help keep him on the side of the angels. They arrive at his lair, which seems to have been broken into, and are immediately confronted by the original Toyman, claiming he’s taken care of the pretender. Robin quickly figures out, though, that the Winslow they’re talking to is a robot. The pair battle their way through a series of environments with robot duplicates of their friends and foes, the whole thing feeling like a real-life video game, until they finally find Hiro himself at the heart of it, manipulating the whole thing. When confronted about why he would do such a thing, Robin proves his detective prowess by intuiting that Hiro, simply, is lonely, and he wanted to have fun with some friends. The two of them invite Hiro to hang out with them sometime.
It’s a simple story, really. In any other context, it would be a one-off throwaway – fun, but not particularly memorable. But the circumstances behind its creation and framing story of Robin, in tears, remembering his friend make the entire thing heart-wrenching.
Jeph Loeb takes things one step further, though, with a back-up in which he reteams with his Superman For All Seasons partner Tim Sale to tell “Sam’s Story.” This one, narrated by Jonathan Kent, takes us back to Clark Kent’s school days in Smallville, hanging out with his friends Lana and Pete. But the focus is on neither of them, but on a heretofore unmentioned classmate of Clark’s called – of course – Sam. Sam was the the kid who could make Clark Kent laugh, made him happy in a way that was enough to sometimes even make him forget just how different he was from everybody else. But when Sam starts showing up to school sick – on crutches, losing his hair – and joking it off, Clark’s X-Ray vision immediately spots the culprit: a horrific dark spot in Sam’s bones. When Clark asks Sam what he can do, Sam’s reply is “Be my pal.”
On the day that Sam dies, Clark runs. He runs halfway through the night, finally coming home at 3 am and sitting on the porch with his father, asking “Why?” The story ends with a note written by Sam (Loeb) that feels like the kind of creed a Superman should live by.
When I read this story now, I imagine myself in Jonathan’s role, holding my own son and trying to help him work through his own grief. It hasn’t happened yet, thankfully, but it’s one of those inevitabilities of life. We all know it happens eventually. The one thing I can’t image, though, is being in the place of Jeph Loeb, writing this story as a eulogy for his own son. I can’t imagine it, but I admire him, for taking what must have been his worst nightmare and turning it into something sad and sweet and lovely.
Whoo. Despite the theme I went with this week, I didn’t really expect to finish off the blog with tears in my eyes, but that just goes to show you how powerful this issue actually was. Next week, paradoxically, will be a little less sad, although probably even darker. For the last few years there’s been a real push in the media to tell stories of a “bad” Superman, whether that’s in an Elseworlds-type story featuring Clark Kent or in other universes with a character that the writer is using as a Superman stand-in. Next week we’re gonna look at some of THOSE, examining their characters and what makes them so dark, and compare them to the real Man of Steel. See you in seven days for “Superman Gone Wrong!”
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!
Blake M. Petit 