Superman: The Man of Steel #14 (August 1992)
"Night Moves"
Script: Louise Simonson
Pencils: Jon Bogdanove
Inks: Dennis Janke
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: Bill Oakley
Grade: D
Recently, the Superman titles have been where less lucrative characters (coughcoughAgentLibertycoughDeathstrokecoughcoughAquaman) have come to ride some coattails, but now the tables have turned, with Superman getting an unexpected and wholy unwarranted visit from Robin: DC's #1 seller in 1992. I've argued previously that I think crisis mode set in at the Superman Office when Panic in the Sky failed to move the needle on sales four months back (and that this will ultimately result in the Death of Superman), so here's an almost embarrasingly desperate stopgap move by DC to keep four of their better selling titles from going down the drain as DC continues to lose ground to Marvel, image, and even Valiant Comics.
The opening doesn't do much to dissuade us of the sense that this is desperate and driven more by sales than the need to tell a worthwhile story; a four-panel explanation that explains precious little at all before Robin presumably swings a silk cable from Gotham to Metropolis with absolutely no mention of why Batman isn't involved in this case at all:
Who needs a backstory? We're here to see Superman and Robin hunt vampires, apparently.
Not that it ever happens in this issue. The cover is a blatant lie, as the only team-up that occurs within is between Robin and Jimmy Olsen, which is probably more fitting anyway:
Interestingly enough, this is not the first time that the Post-Crisis Superman Office has looked to Batman for a sales bump while also hunting a vampire, though the events of
Action Comics Annual #1 are never mentioned in this issue. Surprising, as there are so many other really strong and deliberate continuity references made within.
For one thing, we get our first reference to "Golden Throne," which is (presumably) a novel written by Clark that has just gone to paperback.
A previous novel of his, entitled "The Janus Contract", was already being marked down for discount by the time of
Superman #49 twenty months ago in our time, and roughly five months ago in Superman's time (assuming one week in his world still roughly equals one month in ours). Odd to have never seen this new novel mentioned before, though.
Also in terms of continuity, we have the return of Clark's neighbor, Andrea, who was seemingly originally set up to be a love interest way back in
Adventures of Superman #457 (August 1989) and hasn't even been mentioned since
Action Comics #656 (August 1990). Well, she's living with someone now, and it's not going well:
On the one hand, I find it hard to believe that Clark's super hearing never picked up any of this going on in his neighbor's apartment down the hall before. On the other, it stands to reason that most of the time that he's actually home in his apartment, he's probably with Lois and doing his best to tune out that super hearing.
However, the single biggest contribution this issue makes to continuity comes from this extremely minor detail:
Six months earlier, Denny O'Neil (Editor at the Batman Office) established that Gotham City is neighbored by Boston, New York, Metropolis, and the Atlantic Ocean. Right between Boston and New York, and on the Atlantic Ocean is Hartford, Connecticut, presumably the in-universe location of Gotham City:
This reference implied that Metropolis existed in place of Albany NY in the DCU. Albany is even adjacent to the Hudson River, and Metropolis' proximity to a major river is a key detail in several Post-Crisis Superman stories:
but none of this had been confirmed by the Superman Office. However, this highway connecting Baltimore and Metropolis, located 150 miles North of Washington, seems to corroborate the idea that Metropolis is Albany. So, unless we are given evidence to the contrary, Albany NY seems to be the geographic location of the Post-Crisis Metropolis.
As for the story itself, there isn't all that much here. We've got a vampire that enjoys making nods to classic vampire films, including:
Dracula (1931, Bela Lugosi):
Nosferatu (1922, Max Schreck):
and even London After Midnight (1927, Lon Chaney):
suggesting that either Bogdanove or Simonson is a real classic cinemaphile, which was already heavily implied when they did the
Atomic Skull story together back in November.
A little disappointing that they go through all those looks only to pretty much come back to the Max Schreck/Nosferatu visual when finally revealing Ruthven's actual appearance:
...and don't get me started on the absurd technobabble in that panel.
Anyway, even though Robin wasn't knowledgeable enough to be aware of this, your resident Language Arts teacher here knows that Ruthven was the name of literature's very first vampire, written by John William Polidori in 1819, seventy-eight years prior to Bram Stoker publishing
Dracula. Simonson and Bogdanove know their vampires. Too bad they don't seem to know how to tell a good story with one.
Okay, yes, the climax is kind of cool:
but, much like that obnoxious kid on the elementary school playground who ruins every game of make-believe, Ruthven's response to everything done to him in this issue is "Nuh-uh-uhh! I've got...ummm...scientific stuff that makes me immune to that!". Heck, they don't even bother to explain
why the sun doesn't hurt Ruthven. It just...doesn't. And then there's a "to be continued".
Crappy crappy storytelling.
On the art side, Bogdanove continues to improve, and his classic vampires are spot-on, but his need to exaggerate proportions still walks an uneasy balance between stylistic and just plain amateur. Here's an example of the latter:
Minor Details:1. For months, we've been building up clues about this mysterious doctor and an enigmatic disease going around, and the best we ended up getting was a vampire sucking blood? Geez.
2. Lucy's finally home from the hospital...only to be a victim of the vampire. First she's blind. Then she's miraculously cured by bits of Bizarro Superman falling into her eyes (??), then she gets shot f*cking point blank by a giant laser cannon intended to take down Deathstroke, then she's magically all better after a few issues with no real explanation, and now she's a bride to a vampire. It's like Lucy only exists in these comics to get seriously injured and/or to get screwed over by Jimmy Olsen (and dating Jimmy Olsen might be worse than all those other tragedies combined).
3. Nice reference to Bernie Wrightson
but why? Usually, these kinds of nods are made to previous Superman writers and artists. Yes, this is a horror adjacent storyline, so an artist known primarily for horror is a little more appropriate, but is Wrightson famously known for doing any vampire stories? I most closely associate him with Swamp Thing and Frankenstein.
4. So...let's be clear. Jimmy Olsen waited until the next day to tell Lois and her family that Lucy got bitten by a vampire and is under its control?
(nice nod to Ghostbusters with Tobin's Spirit Guide, by the way)Like he even saw Lucy's parents and then just didn't tell them? It's not like they weren't going to believe him either, as they fully take his word on it without a second's hesitation almost immediately after this panel.
Post-Crisis Jimmy really is a d*ck.
5. How is Robin neither stunned nor even bleeding after this?
Did Batman train him how to take a bottle to the face?
6. This seems a little over-the-line for Superman:
"You gave me cancer just to prove a damned point!"
"Well you SAID it wasn't cancerous. Muwahaha!"
). Lobo, after the miniseries that had given him success, was actually quite limited as a character. He was basically a kind of ultraviolent Looney Toones that really doesn't mesh well with the rest of the more (relatively) serious DC universe. So its potential for team-ups and cross-overs was quite limited. Because if Lobo appeared in an issue of another series as a guest (and if you pay attention it didn't happen very often) invariably the story took on that slightly light-hearted (but ultraviolent!) feel.
