That's very kind of you.

Considering that this thread has been running since (I think) 2012 (it was begun over at the old CBR), I'm sure I can push on to Flashpoint if that's where this project feels like it needs to go. However, if I do stop before that, it will allow me to divert more time and energy to other review threads, so hopefully you'd end up enjoying one of those, too!

I sure do. I returned to DC specifically because I hoped OYL would be a strong jumping-back-on point. It wasn't.

This is a quite extreme view. DC universe was really rebooted only two times, Post COIE and Nu52. The rest were just "adjustments" to his continuity caused by various events. In Infinite Crisis they explicitly stated that Birthright Superman was the same of Post Coie. Some events in his past were retroactively changed by Superboy-prime intervations

I disagree!

Zero Hour was absolutely a reboot... the story line was literally that the universe was erased and remade, and every series had a 0 issue to explain what was different.   That's just as big a change as Crisis IMO.

FLashpoint is arguable, and since I didn't read it I'm not the one to make that argument, but it SEEMS like it was similar based on the stories before and after... but maybe post Flashpoint/pre-new 52 is really all the just the event.

You're also leaving off Convergence, which ended New 52 and returned the DCU to the current mash up of the past that has never really been defined (no ever will, most likely)


I haven't read enough post zero hour Superman to really speak to that specifically, but these days a character is whoever the current writer wants him to be without any particular reason to adhere to the past... bits the writer likes get used, and others either forgotten or contradicted.  That's what happens when you try to have 80 years of continuity I think.

 

Superman #71 (September 1992)



"Evil's Pawn"

Script: Dan Jurgens
Pencils: Dan Jurgens (layouts); Brett Breeding (finishes)
Inks: Brett Breeding
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: D


So much of the beauty of the 1990 Superman Office was the thrill of their discovering that, with three monthly titles, they could churn out major, multi-part events practically every month and, with a supportive editor looking to generate sales in their corner, they could shake things up within those storylines as much as they pleased.

Now, two years later, we're feeling the inevitable backlash from this: four issues of content (six if you want to count the loosely related and equally worthless vampire storyline before this) that are forgettable, incomprehensible, and largely inconsequential. Every comic book line has its filler issues that aren't up to snuff, but when this office falters, its a major multi-issue disappointment.

The story itself feels...arbitrary. They just seem to be making things up as they go. Here, Satannus is suddenly evil, and I'm not sure why nor when Superman decided this:



He and Blaze are fighting for control of a dimension and all the souls in it, I guess, except Blaze also wants the Newstime Staff, except hadn't we established repeatedly in the previous issue that she was just using them to get Superman's soul (which doesn't seem to interest her at all here)?

Once again, we're shown that Superman's powers don't work in this dimension...



...except that all of his powers other than flight apparently do?

And don't get me started with why the hell this is the climax of the storyline:



nor why it causes this to happen:



nor why Blaze WANTS to go through the portal Satannus created to the ordinary world.



Weren't they both trying to claim the dimension they're now trying to leave up to this point?

This is some serious "winging-it" nonsense that might get a pass in a single, stand-alone story, but when you've taken eighty eight pages and $5 of an adolescent's spending money (A LOT in 1992!), you owe them a little more than this.


The few positives from this story include being reassured that Jerry White is definitely and truly gone, beyond even the reach of Hellish demons:


Jerry's "appearances" were just illusions concocted by Blaze.

this damn impressive moment for Perry White:



After all, we've just been reminded that this office unceremoniously killed of Jerry White two years back. While Supes, Lois, and Jimmy weren't going anywhere (just yet) who's to say that this wasn't going to be the true and final death of Perry White? For half a second, I was ready to believe it.

and (of course) the coining of the term "Fosgoyle":




I guess it's a big deal that Colin Thornton finally has a purpose in this franchise;



but I call foul on the implication that he was Satannus all along. After all, why would the guy looking to either steal Superman's soul or at least keep it from Blaze (I'm still confused on this matter) fire Clark Kent way back in Adventures of Superman #464, and why would an otherworldly demon who can posses people and seemingly amass limitless material gain for himself in such a way be distraught that his empire is crumbling due to lack of capital only four months back in Adventures of Superman #490?


from Adventurs of Superman #490

Sure seems like such a being wouldn't need to sell out to Lex Luthor. So either we're later going to be shown that Satannus only recently took over Thornton's life, or the Superman Office is just making up even more stuff as they go.


Important Details:

1. Confimed by Satannus that Jerry White is really, truly dead and in some sort of Heaven where he cannot be touched.

2. Collin Thornton IS Satannus.

3. Sam Fosworth's soul now belongs to Satannus (though I missed how/when that happened too!)





Minor Details:

1. Gotta love how, in a chapel full of Newstime employees AND Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Perry and Alice White, they're the only ones shown in most panels, the only ones who ever seem to talk or do anything, and, at the end, absolutely none of those faceless people in the background died or were even seriously injured when the chapel they were in was collapsing because a giant demon was wailing on it. Lazy.







2. Supergirl goes for a classic Kirby pose and ends up somehow turning her hand into a disjoined mound of mush.



Not sure whether that fleshy lack of linework is on Jurgens or on Breeding, but...eww.

Excellent point. Clearly, Blaze and Satanna were intended to elicit classic depictions of the Judeo-Christian Satan, but the minions could have looked like anything.

It was 38 years ago today (July 10, 1986) that John Byrne's Man of Steel #1 dropped in comics shops in the US.

-M