Superman #38



"Unnatural Disasters!"

writer/pencils: Jerry Ordway
inks: Dennis Janke
colors: Glenn Whitmore
letters: John Costanza
assoc. editor: Jon Peterson
editor: Mike Carlin
Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

grade: B-

Whereas Adventures of Superman and Action Comics are now finally and clearly headed in new directions, this title is still scurrying around, trying to pick up tons of old continuity, and its attempt to find a new direction with this issue fails as a consequence.

We've got Superman revisiting Milton Fine's old travelling circus, which does nothing to further any plot points. Sure it makes sense that Superman would check this out, but with ALL the plot points still left hanging in the air, did we really need to spend five pages on a fruitless search? Admittedly, the run-in with Milton Fine's replacement was endearing



and there's a conscious effort to address animal rights once again. Last time around, Superman took on illegal whalers, and this time its animal cruelty at circuses, but we also get this little moment that irks me:



Ordway is expecting us to recall a minor exchange with a bit character that occurred over two years ago; that's far too much to ask of any reader. Even Chris Claremont would never try a thing like that (and, if he did, he'd at least give us an issue number to reference!).

But this is the crux of the problem I see with Ordway's work right now -- priorities. We can't move forward when Ordway keeps reopening minor past conflicts that were better left forgotten.

Speaking of which, we've still got this reopened can of worms going on (referencing back to the events of Adventures of Superman #443), and it is progressing at a snail's pace:




I was, however, glad to see the return of Alice, a supporting character who was given a small amount of attention across several issues of the Byrne run (beginning with Superman #7) -- just enough to make us wonder why attention was being called to her. Here she is, resurfacing in this issue:



I've been intrigued all along, and I know something big is coming up for her in next month's Adventures of Superman. I really like the idea of giving importance to characters who aren't super powered and aren't going to end up in a throwdown with Superman or one of Superman's villain. Alice feels very real, and I'm intrigued both by the depth of character I sense she has the potential for and the repercussions her story might hold for Clark and the Daily Planet crew.


But, with all this going on, plus Jimmy Olsen still working out his trust issues with Superman:




This issue takes forever to get where it's actually trying to go and, while powerful, that story comes out of absolutely nowhere:




and gets cut short really abruptly:




And it's weird watching Superman just flying around, catching individual people while a major disaster is threatening the lives of hundreds. Considering both his heightened intelligence and heightened senses, how did he NOT see that tsunami coming until it was too late? Why wasn't this story about him using his brains and powers to try to stop or reroute the tsunami, or even just to evacuate people? And surely he wasn't able to save everyone -- are we going to get the story of the folks he didn't manage to save in time? This could have been a powerful story (and maybe it will still continue into next issue??), but it was a wasted effort here, cut short so that too many other unimportant side plots could be (barely) further developed.


For what it's worth, on the letters page Carlin acknowledges the slowness with which the Superman office has been revisiting these old plot points throughout 1989:



Okay, so maybe I'm reading this wrong, but wouldn't "last summer" mean a year ago and not two months back (this issue was published in October of '89)? If I'm right, why no mention of a Super Summit '90? Perez's ailing health? Clearly, these guys hadn't planned out any of the best stuff coming up in 1990 yet (Day of the Krypton Man, Dark Knight Over Metropolis, Clark and Lois beginning to date, the deaths of Jerry White and Lex Luthor, etc) or Carlin would have been dropping hints about them the way he's been talking about Superman racing the Flash (coming up in two more months) for several issues now.

Clearly though, with The Brainiac Trilogy and The Eradicator, stuff is beginning to happen, but this is not the first time I've noted that Ordway often feels like he's in his own world, not quite onboard with Stern and Jurgens (and sometimes Perez). Maybe it's the fact that he was here first and, for a while, had total creative control over one title, but this is the one place where I still feel the Superman Office is languishing.



Minor Details:

- Did The Eradicator Device (coming back next week in Adventures of Superman) cause the earthquake that caused the tsunami? Superman had noted with concern that its fortress in the Antarctic was burrowed deep into the Earth's surface. The title of this story would suggest that something caused the earthquake.

- Despite everything I don't like about what Ordway's doing in this issue, I loved his characterization of Professor Hamilton:



Characterization and art are the two things he's getting right in a big way; we just need him to get better at plotting -- and soon!


plot synopsis: Superman tracks down Milton Fine's old traveling circus in search of him and ends up rescuing abused circus animals in the wake of an earthquake, Jimmy Olsen is suffering symptoms from his treatment at Project Cadmus and has Professor Hamilton run some tests on him, he ends up merging with a character he last saw in Adventures of Superman #443, Professor Hamilton doesn't know what happened to Jimmy and tries repeatedly to contact Superman, torrential rain hits Metropolis, Superman ends up rescuing some boaters and completely misses a Tsunami heading for Metropolis until it's already too late, and so he saves a bunch of people but has to brush off Professor Hamilton while he is doing so.

Superman #39



"Jimmy Olsen's Excellent Adventure"

writer: Jerry Ordway
pencils: Kerry Gammill
inks: Bob McLeod
letters: John Costanza
colors: Glenn Whitmore
assoc. editor: Jon Peterson
editor: Mike Carlin

grade: B-

Ordway appears to be taking a break from penciling for the moment, and maybe that's why he plots and writes this issue so much better than the last one. Sure, the only plot point he managed to get around to in the last confused issue ends up totally forgotten now (and seriously, couldn't the construction crew Superman rescued have been a repair or demolition crew instead? How easy would it have been to drop some reference to the devastating tidal wave that blew through Metropolis just last issue??), but he offers us a lot of new instead, suggesting no less than four new potential story arcs in this issue.

Plot point 1: Jimmy's mom and the extraordinary backstory with his father is FINALLY (slowly) getting addressed.



(no, that's not Nathan Summers).


Plot point 2: Going along with this, Jimmy's father worked for Project Cadmus, and there is apparently a mad scientist and two escapees from The Project that we now need to be concerned about:




Plot point 3: Professor Hamilton vows to help out Tehra (the girl who keeps getting referenced from waaay back in Adventures of Superman #443).


Plot point 4: Something's wrong with Superman's noggin (again).








Considering how long it's taken us even to get to the plot about Jimmy's father, I worry that Ordway has bitten off more than he can chew here.



That being said, this issue felt more like a series of loosely connected ideas and teasers than an actual story, but I did enjoy the visual look of that weird dimension Jimmy gets teleported to:



So, within a span of two months, we've had two weird new dimensions that follow their own laws of physics introduced in the Superman books.



Important Details:

- Jimmy Olsen's father was involved in the creation of Project Cadmus.

- Clark Kent accepts the job at Collin Thornton's rival publication.



Minor Details:

- Morgan Edge is out of the hospital and about to stand trial. In the last issue of Action Comics, Superman wrongly suspected that Intergang was back in action. Seems like something big is being planned for Edge's return.

- What's up with Lois drastically changing her look over the past two issues, once to look like Perry, and once to look like Clark? Ordway is calling a lot of attention to it and specifically noted last issue that this was beyond the normal extent of fashion shake-ups Lois usually employs.

- We get a sixteen page comic insert promoting "Lightning Racers". Clearly, expensive advertising in comic books did not correlate with massive market success.

- The title of this story is a bad reference to the 1989 film "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure"

- Ordway's "syms"



seems a lot like Claremont and Buscema's "S'ym"



Similar looking, similar named creatures in similarly alternate dimensions. Just sayin'.



Plot synopsis: Superman rescues a man from a transforming construction vehicle only to recognize the brother from Adventures of Superman #443 as the cause (and again, I marvel at how we are continually expected to recall the events of this old and forgettable storyline). He takes him to Professor Hamilton but then runs off quickly to deal with the pre-trial of Morgan Edge, Jimmy is stuck in some other dimension where he meets some kind of echo of his father who explains how his father was involved in Project Cadmus, how his mother is in danger, and how there are escaped creations from Project Cadmus to watch out for, but Superman and Professor Hamilton are able to rescue Jimmy from the dimension before he can learn everything, and we cut back to The Daily Planet, where Clark announces that he's taking Thornton's job offer and leaving The Daily Planet.

Adventures of Superman #463



"Speed Kills!"

writer/pencils: Dan Jurgens
imks: Art Thibert
letters: Albert Deguzman
colors: Glenn Whitmore
assoc. editor: Jon Peterson
editor: Mike Carlin

grade: A-


When I was an adolescent, first getting into comics in 1989, Superman wasn't on my radar. Batman was hot at the time and, while I'd grown up adoring Superman from the movies, I think DKR had done too good a job of both persuading the masses that Batman was cool/edgy and that Superman was the total opposite to a fault. I mention all of this because, as a kid growing up in this time period, I distinctly recall that this was the first Superman comic to ever make it on to my radar. I remember kids in my Sunday school class discussing the race with tremendous anticipation, but (to my frustration) they would not reveal who won! They knew a lot for ten year olds. They were aware, for example, that this was the second time Superman and The Flash had raced, though I doubt they understood that this cover and issue were an homage to that one:



(and, to be honest, I still don't know who won that first time!)

but I don't think any of us understood the idea that Superman had been "rebooted" at this point. I recently wrote about how the Superman franchise I started reading a few months after this felt like a continuation of the classic/iconic Superman I'd grown up with, and I believe there was an explicit effort on the parts of Carlin, Perez, Stern, Jurgens, and Ordway to get it back to that place. In fact, that's what much of this issue is about, with the homage cover and concept, and even with Jurgens finding a way to reintroduce Red Kryptonite to the Post Crisis Superman continuity in this story:




But there is one circumstance in this story where I feel that push to reintegrate the current character/continuity with the more Iconic Pre-Crisis version goes too far:



One area of Post-Crisis continuity that remains incredibly hazy is the Crisis itself -- it clearly still happened. Clark recalls Lori Lemaris dying during the Crisis in Superman #12, and Barry Allen clearly still died in it even if there never was a Supergirl now, but would Clark have gotten to know Barry well enough during the Crisis to be able to speak this way about him (or even to know his name)? According to the Post Crisis Superman Timeline I've established based upon timeline references made in the comics I've read here, Clark became Superman sometime in 1984, and the Crisis occurred sometime in 1985, so that didn't leave Clark and Barry many other opportunities to get to know each other on so deep a level.

And recall that DC killed Neil Gaiman's story for Action Comics Weekly because they felt too many heroes already knew Clark's secret identity (even though it had already been established in the Post-Crisis that Hal did too), so it's odd to retroactively apply this kind of closeness between Clark and Barry.


Now, as fun as this story was, generally speaking, when one character crosses over into another's book, one of them is trying to help boost sales for the other. I'd therefore always assumed that The Flash was being brought in to help ailing Superman sales. All this time, I've been working under the assumption that the Superman books were not selling well at this point. After all, Byrne was brought in to help boost sales for the franchise, but many fans left during his controversial run, and the franchise hadn't really found its direction until recently -- nearly four years since the reboot first occurred. That plus the "still only 75 cents!" advertisements we'll start to see on the books in a few more months while every other title is selling for $1 right now had me convinced Superman book sales were low, but I actually checked the numbers tonight.

Action Comics #649 just did its most recent Statement of Ownership and Circulation. The numbers were as follows.

Average no. copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 79,215
Actual no. copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 216,875

I decided the fairest basis of comparison to see if sales were ailing was to go back to the Statement of Ownership and Circulation for Action Comics #587. It's the same title, it's only five months into Byrne's run when expectations were still high and he hadn't turned many folks away yet, and that 12 month average included low selling issues from before the reboot, just as the Action #649 12 month average includes issues from the poorly selling Action Comics Weekly.

Anyway, here's the Statement of Ownership and Circulation for Action Comics #587 (three years earlier).

Average no. copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 187,509
Actual no. copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 99,554

That's right. The most recent issue of Action Comics outsold an issue from the prime of Byrne's run by more than 200%.

Meanwhile, The Flash's hit television series was still nine months away, so I guess Wally is the one who needed the cross promotion.



Okay, we're this far into the review and I haven't even discussed the story yet. Let me correct that by saying that, of the three creative teams right now, Jurgens is clearly taking the lead. His work as writer/penciler on this title has been thoroughly engaging, and this has to be his best output yet. I truly didn't expect to care about this race, but Jurgens changed my mind with panels like these:






Plus you've got Lois finally starting to fall for Clark in a major way:



I've got to wonder, though -- if his leaving is what made her realize how much she appreciates him, how the heck did she not arrive at this realization when he was supposed to have been murdered (as repercussion for gutsy journalism, nonetheless!)?

And, actually, when has Clark been there for Lois? We rarely ever even see him at The Planet, we know he was recently absent for an entire week with no questions asked, and let's not forget that when Lois' mother was in the hospital dying, that's when Clark was at The Planet, flirting with Cat Grant.

But ultimately, let's be honest -- this is nothing more than fan service to all those awkward male readers permanently stuck in "The Friend Zone." I'm going to need a more convincing sell in order to buy Lois' new feelings for Clark. She's always been flirty with him, but what's pushing her over the edge for him now beyond the absurd explanations offered here that he was always there for her (wrong) and that absence has made the heart grow fonder (he's been dead before -- he's just down the street now. REALLY. A panel in Superman #40 that I didn't bother to scan shows just how close the Newstime building is to The Daily Planet).



Really, my only significant problem with the story, though, is what poor use it makes of Myxlplyx's previous visit and the anxiety we were left with at the end as Luthor's assistant warned:



Luthor had figured out that Myxlplyx always kept his word (his one weakness) because he didn't understand the concept of lying; so, when Luthor lies in order to beat Myxlplyx, wouldn't that undo Superman's only means of getting him to go away?

Jurgens works the lying into the story, but largely as an afterthought, lacking any actual consequences:





Important Details:

- Wally West is faster than the Post-Crisis Superman, but only barely, and only while constantly being offered food and through overwhelming will power.

- It has been 90 days since Superman #31 (nine months ago).



Before that, Mxyzptlk appeared 13 months earlier in Adventures of Superman #441, and then seven months before that in Superman #11. So, if Mxyzptlk visits every 90 days, then the timeline has been anything but consistent. Let's just go simpler and say that his first visit was in 1987, and he's visited four more times since then, so 320 days have passed, meaning we're still in 1988. Yeah, comic book timelines are a messy business.



Minor Details:

- Hearing that Mxyzptlk will leave if Superman wins, and that Flash will just get "a very special prize" if he wins, shouldn't Wally have instantly decided to throw the race??? Sure, Mxyzptlk might have ended up calling him out on this, but the thought never even crosses Wally's mind.


- Okay, so every 90 days, Superman is going to drop everything to humor Mxyzptlk because



How is this a sustainable solution? Why isn't Supes out looking for solutions in between these intervals? Doesn't Prof. Hamilton or Star Labs have any ideas on how to stop someone who might conceivably scorch the planet to a cinder with no real concern for the consequences any given time he returns? Millions of people across the Earth appear to be watching Superman cater to this inter-dimensional menace too. What sort of message is that sending them?


- Problems with Clark's new job.



I'm sure Clark will end up producing a brilliant piece about the race, but he's not a reporter anymore; he's a managing editor. Perhaps he's finally going to learn that he can't make being Superman his first priority while also being a manager. It still blows my mind that Clark thought this was a good/workable idea. And, speaking of which, are we ever getting back to his suspicious behavior leading up to this big decision in Superman #39, where he kept referring to his decisions as being "logical"?


- This is our first glimpse of Lucy Lane since waaaay back in World of Metropolis #2:



I still want to know if she and Jimmy are still dating (as seen waaaay back in Superman #4).


- Why did Mxyzptlk begin this issue by defacing Mount Rushmore (and, by the way, was that undone when he departed at the end??). He doesn't seem like he was specifically trying to attract Superman or Luthor's attention, and he certainly doesn't seem as though he was looking for/waiting for The Flash.



GREAT story with only a few nagging problems to detract from all the fun. If the goal was to attract more readers to The Flash, I'm not sure Supes telling him Barry would be proud of him and having Wally win the race were enough to accomplish that -- the fun of this story was the struggle between the two, not Wally himself -- but it succeeded as a fantastic Superman story all the same.



plot synopsis: Wally responds to a report of terrorists at Mount Rushmore only to meet Mxyzptlk there instead, adding his own face to the monument. He then gets the idea to have The Flash race Superman, promising that he'll go away if Superman wins. Both heroes end up feeling like their egos are on the line, and Mxyzptlk continuously adds new challenges to the course as the entire world watches. Meanwhile, Thornton begins to grow concern with Clark's absence during such a story, and Mxyzptlk makes a detour to hassle Luthor and inadvertently(?) creates and abandons a chunk of Red Kryptonite in the process. Ultimately, Flash barely manages to win, and Mxyzptlk reveals that, inspired by his last encounter with Luthor, he lied; he was only going to leave if Superman lost, and so now he has to.

Lois & Clark?



Man of Steel?




Marriage?

Adventures of Superman #464



The Day of The Krypton Man, Part II: "Blood Brawl"

writer/pencils: Dan Jurgens
finished inks: Art Thibert
letters: Albert DeGuzman
colors: Glenn Whitmore
assoc. editor: Jon Peterson
editor: Mike Carlin
Superman created by: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster

grade: C


It would appear that, much like "The Brainiac Trilogy" before it, this is a multi-part story arc that has no real center. One third into the arc and we still have no idea what the title is referring to, plus Lobo (taking up the majority of the story up until now) is all too easily removed by the end of this issue with a series of conveniences that's almost insulting to the reader:



So his presence was nothing more than a cash-in -- Superman fights DC's hottest new antihero in a relatively uninteresting throwdown that took an entire issue to get to and then gets easily wrapped up/forgotten. That's it. All done. None of this had anything at all to do with wherever this storyline is supposed to be going.


And, of course, where it's going is The Eradicator Device. After nine months of this thing utterly screwing with Clark's life, we're finally going to get rid of it by the close of this storyline (we hope!). In the meantime, it's still screwing with Clark's life as Lois asks him out for the first time



and Clark's brainwashing conveniently blows the moment, Clark explaining that it isn't logical for them to maintain a friendship now that they no longer work together.

We saw the exact same kind of thing happen when Matrix was impersonating Clark. Between that and nine months of The Eradicator Device screwing things up, this just feels very "been there, done that" by this point. This storyline really needs to start speeding things up.

Fortunately, we at least get our first full look at the ultra-cool Kryptonian costume for Clark (designed by Perez?) which I've adored since I first saw it at the age of ten.



I bought my first Superman comic (Superman #42 -- coming up in three weeks) because of that costume and hoped against hope that Supes would keep it. I still like it better; it just needs a cape.


So beyond a sluggish multi-part storyline that's all detour and no development, this is really the first time since he took over writing that Jurgens has disappointed me with his writing, itself. I suspect the problem is that he's now writing for a storyline envisioned by others (remember that he's the low man on the totem pole at the Superman Office at this point) that forces him out of his comfort zone.

For example, he absolutely cannot mimic the kind of success Ordway found with playing the story for laughs last issue. Whereas Ordway was a master of understatement, Jurgens labors far too hard to get the gags across, and most of them are just "look how drunk these guys are," which gets old fast:




Additionally, when he randomly has Draaga stumble across the monument Superman erected for Cleric,



I can't tell if he's going for humor (probably in bad taste to make a joke out of a character's burial site) or foreshadowing something coming later in this storyline. It's an awkward moment, though certainly not the only one in the issue.


Finally, I was sick of Lana Lang being this franchise's resident sad sack as early as Man of Steel #6. I get it; she's supposed to be the Betty to Lois Lane's Veronica, but, in three years worth of stories by this point, all she's come across as is pathetic to the point of being outright unlikable. We really don't need more of her laying on the pity syrup here:



Reveal the damage Clark is causing to those who care about him through other characters; it's time to take Lana out back and put her down.



Important Details:

- Lois asks Clark out; he rejects her while under the spell of The Eradicator

- First meeting of/battle between Lobo and Superman. Lobo's memory of this event is erased by having drank too much Okarran Berry Juice (DC's convenient new means of getting aliens drunk without portraying alcohol).

- Lobo may still be in possession of the five shards of Kryptonite he stole from The Fortress of Solitude (unclear)



Minor Details:

- Bibbo is now the #1 fan of Lobo after believing he has seen Lobo defeat Superman. Unclear if Bibbo will remember any of this later (Okarran Berry Juice again)

- Thornton has had it with Clark's frequent absences at Newstime and is ready to fire him.

- Love the little nods to continuity throughout this issue, especially as Superman ends up fighting Lobo in one of the Kryptonian mecha suits from World of Krypton #2.


- Seriously, with all the detailed explanations we've been given for how Superman does so much of what he does, can't Jurgens teach me how he manages to pull this off without wrinkling his work clothes???






Plot synopsis: Clark is not himself, brushing off Lois as she asks him out on a date for the first time. We're given increasing signs that The Eradicator device is messing with his mind as Maxima's ship overruns Draaga's on its way to Earth (also) in search of Superman. Meanwhile, Clark is telepathically made aware that Lobo and friends have invaded his Fortress of Solitude and feels an intense desire to stop them. He and Lobo end up fighting, Lobo discovers the five shard of Kryptonite hidden there and uses them against Superman, and he determines that the only way to get rid of Lobo is to use a holographic projector in the Fortress to make Lobo believe he has killed Superman. Meanwhile, Lana Lang is feeling sorry for herself on her birthday because Clark doesn't care, Thornton over at Newstime is ready to fire Clark over his frequent absences, and Lobo returns to the guys who hired him to kill Superman, his mind wiped from excessive drinking of Okarran Berry Juice, and his video of the encounter screwed up by Bibbo.