Action Comics #661 (January 1991)



"Stretching A Point"

Script: Roger Stern
Pencils: Bob McLeod
Inks: Brett Breeding
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: Bill Oakley

Grade: C

1991 sure is off to a slow start for the Superman Office. I get the point of giving each creative team a "down" issue or two to write the kind of stories they want to write without worrying about major events and crossover storylines. In fact, almost no continuity transpires across the three January issues and there are very few B plots explored in these issues too. Very out of character for this office.

But...why Plastic Man?

It's been two years since Plastic Man had his own title, so this isn't a cross-promotional arrangement, he certainly wasn't a popular character at the time, and if Stern and McLeod just had a burning desire to write/draw a favorite character of theirs, it really doesn't show here. I mean, it's sort of funny...



but not laugh-out-loud funny, and Plastic Man and Woozy prove less than memorable here. Not really the kind of story that was going to make a whole new generation of Plastic Man fans.

McLeod seems to be having a little fun depicting Plastic Man and Woozy with a more cartoony style when they provide a flashback for Jimmy Olsen:



but McLeod is so inconsistent a penciler that I can't tell if he is intentionally re-invoking this approach during the climactic battle, or if he's just drawing Superman poorly:



Supes looks totally normal in the panels before and after.


Look, I love done-in-one stories that break the tone and monotony of a long run of issues, but it just doesn't work well enough here, for my taste. I've never read Plastic Man. I've often considered checking out the Jack Cole stuff, so this issue could have been a wonderful opportunity to get me further interested in the property. But it wasn't.



Important Details:

- Post-Crisis Superman apparently met Post-Crisis Plastic Man previously. I have no idea where/when this occurred:




- I truly can't tell if the first appearance of Leilani's sister, "Tiny Bubbles" is a significant occurrence or just the punchline to the big mystery of who or what "T.B." was:



Supes, Plastic Man, and Jimmy Olsen had been chasing leads about "T.B."'s arrival throughout the issue.



Minor Details:

- 1st appearance of Time Bomb, a D list villain.

- Jimmy is reminded of his own experience with stretching powers back in Adventures of Superman #458


- Wait....what?



He has super speed, super thought processes, and telescopic vision. I'm lost as to why this is a time-consuming dilemma for the Man of Steel.


- The only real B plot point in this story that's continuing out of another issue/title is that Bibbo has won the lottery and purchased a bar with some of the money:




We saw him find the lottery ticket (initially purchased by Jose Delgado) in this month's issue of Superman






Plot synopsis: Jimmy Olsen randomly wanders into Plastic Man and his partner, deciding to help them follow a lead in exchange for the right to publish an exclusive about their adventure. Superman believes he is following the same lead and teams up with them. The reader discovers at the end that the "T.B." Plastic Man was chasing may well have been Time Bomb, but the "T.B." Superman learned about from Intergang's computers was just the sister of Manheim's girlfriend.

Hoo boy.  About the only thing I liked about this issue was its cover.  Of course, I'd feel ripped off afterwards, but if covers are "what sell comic books" then, I can't really fault it on that account.  It's a cheap gimmick, of course - that's not Batman, Flash, nor Wonder Woman and it's not even really Superman either which is the problem I have with this one.

"Wouldn't Superman notice his heart rate and general discomfort while (badly) lying on the spot?"

Superman would - this guy in his costume however...

Superman is an idiot throughout this story. 

Clark Kent understands the possible ramifications to come of Luthor's death just enough to accept that "Lexcorp is such an essential part of Metropolis' economy that if it should fail thousands would suffer!" but needs Dr Kelley to explain to him that Superman isn't going to be much help once lost jobs lead to desperate citizens which leads to rampant crime which leads to...  She actually has to point out that Superman flying around punching things isn't going to necessarily help the economy of Metropolis.  This sounds like something an exasperated Perry White should be explaining to Jimmy Olsen who should be countering with "Jeepers!  You're right!" but no, no, Clark responds with "Sorry, Dr. Kelley, but I can't accept your pessimistic predictions!".  Look - she just explained things to Kent in a rational way why the death of the man who ran Metropolis could prove disasterous for the city and rather than counter with something rational or factual on his part, he chalks these valid concerns up to pessimism.  He's supposed to be an objective journalist and he sounds like he's from Fox News having global warming explained to him and saying "Sorry, but I'm not so cynical to believe all that stuff!"  No wonder she just walks away from him.

When next we see Kent, he's walking down an alley thinking "Kelley gave me a lot to consider" like he's in the final panel of one of those old Silver Age DC public service ads where Bob Hope would tell a bunch of kids not to be mean to Norwegians and hey, maybe Superman was playing the dumb guy just so Jurgens could indulge in a bit of exposition with the reader and we can move on, but...

Kent overhears that "some anxious parents are reporting some missing children at Happyland.  Better check it out!" on a police officer's walkie-talkie.  He decides to check it out but can't do so without adding "probably nothing".  I get that parents must do this a lot - big amusement park, huge crowds, hyperactive kids, already stressed out parents - but once we find out that this isn't a false alarm, it just underscores the point established two pages earlier that Clark Kent relies on his gut a lot and his gut is often wrong.  It might still be considered a minor point, but I think it would have been better if Jurgens had Superman think "may be nothing, but I better check it out" rather than "probably nothing".

So Superman gets to Happyland and sees the giant robots attacking people.  Who is his first guess when it comes to figuring out the mastermind behind all of this?  "Luthor is dead..."  Why is Luthor suspect number one?  Does this sound like something Luthor would be doing if he were alive?  OK, his second choice is Mxyzptlk and you know what?  Not a bad guess actually.  It does sound like something Mxyzptlk would do except wouldn't the fact that these are robots (which Mxyzptlk wouldn't have to build) suggest otherwise?  It would be like Batman being attacked by a flock of monocle-wearing penguins inside an umbrella factory and thinking "when did Two-Face get out of jail?"

He does figure out that Toyman is involved on his third guess and really that's two guesses too many.

These last two complaints of mine are my reactions to off-hand remarks Superman makes and if you want to say, "Boy, Chad, he used the word 'probably' isn't of 'maybe' and didn't know who was behind things right away.  Sheesh!  Give the guy a break!" I'll just point out that there's no getting away from Superman's simple-mindedness in this story since it keeps coming at you in different ways.

He starts battling these robots and we're treated to dialogue (all from Superman) such as "BURN, TIN MAN!", "And as for you, Kong, it's two thumbs down, and out for you!  [rips off its mechanical arms] Let's see you climb the Empire State Building now!", and "Cowboys and pirates I can understand, but teddy bears?  Give me a break!"  He sounds like a 12 year old kid.  Even his "There, there, sweetie!  These nasty old monsters won't bother you again!"  "Promise?"  "Cross my heart and hope to die!" sounds more patronising than comforting even if he was talking to a child.  He might as well add "Would your widdle tweddy bear like a wolly pop?"

And as you noted, yes, he lets the owner of Happyland (and Toyman and Killgrave partner) walk away simply because he said he had no idea he was working with The Toyman.  The guy is obviously tense and sweating and wouldn't even fool the reader even if he hadn't read any of the story up to that point, so how does he beat Superman's senses?  Because Superman's too dumb to pay any attention to them.

This lack of intellectual curiosity on Superman's part wasn't something which Jurgens introduced to the character but inherited from Byrne who likely dumbed his Superman down to compensate for the fact that he wanted his interpretation to be inexperienced at the start of his run.  DC didn't allow this and so I think that's why Byrne's Superman never seemed as bright as he should have been - he just used his inexperienced Superman as his baseline throughout his tenure.  It's one of the many things about the post-Crisis Superman which prevents me from thinking of him as the real thing and if there were one thing I wish this issue didn't feature it would be that aspect of the character rather than the character of Sleez.  Not that I like Sleez any more than anybody else, but man, Superman just got lumbered with this 'I'm super strong and can fly so why do I need to know things?' personality which really irritated me.  

I've read Byrne's run (at least his Man of Steel, Superman, and Action stuff) and I kept wondering things like "How can Superman not possibly know that this scrapbook he got in the mail came from Ma Kent?  Wouldn't he detect her scent or fingerprints at least?", "How can Batman hide from Superman just by letting go of his Bat-Rope and standing behind a sheet of lead?", or "Why does Superman tell Wonder Woman he's nothing but a farm boy from Kansas when someone with the ability to literally see and hear any part of the world from his office should be so much more worldly?" and the conclusion I came to is that Byrne and later writers adopted a sort of "Well, since I wouldn't be curious enough as a child to experiment with my microscopic vision to see what my parents fingerprints look like or would be interested in using my powers of super-sight/hearing/speed/etc to travel the world, then neither would Superman" and I think it does a tremendous disservice to the character to reduce him to "Joe Schmo but he can fly and smash things".


So that's my read on the story.  You do make some good points about the three villains but even here, Toyman's "Won't somebody think of the children?" got tired after the first few variations of this line and Killgrave just seemed a little too Dr Sivana for my tastes.  I'm wondering if the writers are thinking that with Luthor out of the picture, they need to beef up Superman's Rogues Gallery which is pretty sparse given the fact that so far, Brainiac (his number two baddie) hasn't really been figured out yet post-Crisis leaving, I guess, Mxyzptlk as his biggest enemy by default at this point.  Mr. Z (who I think in fairness shouldn't be judged until his next appearance since that one will shed light on who he was in Superman 51) seems to have been introduced for this reason and I suspect Baron Sunday from the upcoming issue 665 of Action Comics was also meant to do the same.  Perhaps the whole three villains in one approach here was a sort of attempt to put a bunch of old Super foes back into circulation to fill that Luthor void.  I mean, if they're bringing back Terra-Man, it does seem like there is some desperation at play here.    

Superman #55 (May 1991)



"Time & Time Again Phase Six: Camelot"

Script: Jerry Ordway
Pencils: Jerry Ordway
Inks: Jerry Ordway
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: C-

One issue left in Superman's major crossover event for 1991, and I'm still lost as to what the point was. Clearly, all the usual character arcs are on hold during this "event", our only getting one or two pages each issue to follow the supporting cast in real-time, accomplishing nothing of particular interest:



(Note: there is some major inconsistency in all this. Last issue, Lois walked back to her apartment building. If the point of these pages is that time is progressing only a few seconds each issue while Clark is living entire weeks in other time periods, then Lois got to her building and then got to her actual apartment with disturbing speed! Granted, her building was only a block or two from where this whole storyline began, but that's still too fast.)

Anyway, in addition to no character arcs nor B stories progressing, there is no plot to speak of. Superman goes to different time periods and encounters threats. That's really the entire thing, even after last issue gave us hope that Supes had a goal and a conflict now -- He finally knows why he is jumping through time and how to keep jumping towards home! Of course, that gets completely forgotten this time around. Supes is just wandering around in Camelot this issue, getting used by both Merlin and Morgan Le Faye.

My assumption had thus been that the point of this story arc was to offer potential new readers a very simple, easy to grasp story, free of confusing continuity references, from which they might choose to continue following the Superman titles.

But then there's this issue, which is utterly confusing and essentially inaccessible if you're not already a fan of The Demon. Sure, it's exciting to see Merlin and Le Faye battling it out in Camelot prior to the Demon being sent to the future (Kirby jumped past this point pretty quickly in the original series, and I don't know if Alan Grant ever returned to it), but someone unfamiliar with the franchise won't understand much of this, and certainly won't understand the twist ending of the story:



Jason who? Isn't he Ghost Rider or something?

It's obvious that Ordway is a big Kirby fan and loves returning to his work at DC whenever possible, but this comes as a major disruption to the storyline. It also has me wondering how the hell this reconciles with DC's own Camelot 3000, grounded in a very different Arthurian Camelot.

I do appreciate the Shining Knight reference, though:



Was this the character's first Post-Crisis reference?


I happen to like Etrigan a lot and Kirby even more, but this episode did not belong here. Give Etrigan his own multi-part story in this title where these ideas and references can be better introduced to the casual reader. It does, however, make me lament all that this crossover event could have been. Why not use it to explore the chronology of the Post-Crisis DCU? Give us Anthro, Kamandi, the Frankenstein monster, and every other relevant franchise as a means of exploring and establishing the chronology of the rebooted DCU outside of the current day.


Minor Details:

- While we've seen some inconsistent handling of Superman's powers in recent issues, it's confirmed once again that he is highly vulnerable to magic:





"Blaze of Glory!"

Script: Karl Kesel
Pencils: Karl Kesel
Inks: Karl Kesel
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: Bill Oakley

Grade: D

No, Blaze is not back and causing more havoc. Unfortunate choice of title, I suppose. Really, this B story continues so much of what I noted above. Even though it isn't Ordway this time, we see the same affection for Kirby's '70s DC properties with the return of Cadmus and the Newsboy Legion, and (once again) many of the references are inaccessible to a new reader. Some were even inaccessible to me. I had to look up who Dabney Donovan was. It turns out that he was mentioned previously in this franchise, but I'm not sure he was mentioned by name.



Anyway, he refers to having made a trade with Lexcorp. We won't realize how significant that trade was for some time to come. It's the single most important detail to surface throughout these Time and Time Again issues.


I got these references and found them amusing:



but what's up with the wolverine?



Is this a playful nod to the Marvel character who (as originally envisioned) would have been an actual wolverine, scientifically mutated by the High Evolutionary? Is it a reference to a Jimmy Olsen story I don't know? Or is it a mystery that's supposed to leave us in suspense until it is resolved in an upcoming story arc? I honestly can't tell.

I normally love Project Cadmus (not always the Newsboy Legion...), but this story confused and alienated me more than enticed me this time along.

Not really any different than the title logo changing on any given issue of a comic, I figure.



Dubbilex has been around since Kirby's run on Jimmy Olsen.

Remember all those interlude scenes in Time and Time Again?

Obviously, we've moved on with Lois and Clark.

Bibbo is Bibbo. 'Nuff said.

Olsen had his date ruined, moved out on his own finally, got fired and is looking for a new job.

Perry and his wife have left on a cruise in hopes of helping repair their strained marriage. (And yes, it does kinda-sorta-maybe make sense that their pairing with the Kents on the same cruise was prearranged but reading over that dialogue, it sounds more like that was all Lois' idea and not necessarily Clark's).

However, what about LexCorp? All those scenes about the board trying to figure out what to do in lieu of Luthor's demise. Has any of that been addressed in some way in these later issues? Yes, they keep stressing how Metropolis has suffered from Luthor's passing. However I would think someone as meticulous as Luthor would've had some contingencies planned for just such an emergency as his dying.

I mean, wouldn't that be a big point for Luthor? He wanted to be the major player and Big Man of Metropolis and from all these accounts, it certainly seemed like he was. And that was before Superman even showed up so then Luthor doubled down on that motivation as being more supreme and more 'heroic' to the public than Superman.

Yet he dies and it all collapses? That's Luthor's legacy? I'm not so sure. Yeah, it'd be one way to show his importance (without me, you're nothing!) but on the other hand, building something that would last, outlast Superman, that could also be a driving force I think for Luthor.

But it doesn't seem like the board has decided on anything. Unless I've missed something, at the moment, I've yet to read these more recent issues you've reviewed, so please, let me know if I have overlooked something. 


 

Hey, he may have gone on a few booty calls inside the bottle city of Kandor.  Probably one of the ones where he left Jimmy Olsen behind.