Superman #50
Script: Jerry Ordway
Pencils: Dan Jurgens (layouts pages 1-3, 21-23, 30-33); Brett Breeding (finishes pages 1-3, 21-23, 30-33); Kerry Gammill (pages 4-6, 24-28, 34); Curt Swan (pages 7-8, 11-12, 17-19); Jerry Ordway (pages 9-10, 13-16, 35-38); John Byrne (pages 20, 29)
Inks: Brett Breeding (pages 1-3, 21-23, 30-33); Dennis Janke (pages 4-6, 9-10, 13-16, 24-28, 34-38); John Byrne (pages 7-8, 11-12, 17-19); Jerry Ordway (pages 20, 29)
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: John Costanza
Grade: B-
Superman's big 50th issue, kind of.
...After all, this is volume 2.
...And there's a constant narrative weaving across three titles, making this more like Superman #150.
...And we had six issues of Man of Steel before any of that, as well as three "World of" limited series.
But hey, the Superman titles need more sales at this point, losing ground both to Batmania and to all the polybags, foils, and new #1s coming out of Marvel right now. So why not create this fancy looking crossover event and have it culminate in a double-sized anniversary issue?
Perhaps the most exciting part is who is involved. Curt Swan gets some work (no surprise), but who would have expected to see John Byrne contributing? This is his first work for the Superman office since his abrupt departure
28 months earlier. What a different Superman office he's returned to!
And Ordway works to prove that, using this anniversary issue less to further a plot (which wraps up pretty unimpressively as soon as Luthor tells Clark Kent who gave him the "Red Kryptonite") and more to celebrate the many many character arcs still progressing in this office, from Alice still living with the Whites, to Jose Delgado finding love and seeking a greater reputation for Gangbuster, to Cat Grant still working for Morgan Edge's company, to Luthor's personal doctor being in love with him and attempting to defend Luthor's character as being the cost of rising to the top, to Lois' family continuing to rally around her ailing mother, to the Whites and Lex Luthor both continuing to move through their own personal crises in the wake of
Soul Search, the soap opera aspect of this office has risen to new heights that are truly worth celebrating in these pages, even while Ordway remains my least favorite of the three Superman writers at this point because he's seldom overly concerned with the A plots.
But, of course, the biggest piece of character drama in this issue is the story of Clark and Lois, which went from practically forgotten to full speed ahead only four months ago in
Superman #46. And now Clark is somehow ready to propose:
For the sake of dramatic effect, Lois needs time to think, but by the end of the issue, she's all in.
It's a magical anniversary issue moment, but even as an adolescent I understood that this had come out of nowhere, neither earned by any kind of growing relationship we'd seen take hold in the comic nor by anything especially important that happened with the A plot. Clark and Lois are now engaged because someone in the Superman office decided they should be, nothing more.
In short, there's a lot building in the Superman office right now, and this issue celebrates that appropriately, but I care neither for the abrupt culmination of Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite nor for the forced engagement of Clark and Lois.
Important Details:- Clark proposes. Lois says yes.
- Clark first learns that Lex Luthor is dying. It becomes public knowledge (or at least gossip) almost immediately after.
- Lex Luthor's personal doctor appears to be in love/obsessed with him
- Jimmy Olsen's mom is finally out of the coma she has been in since
Superman #45
Minor Details:- This is the first we've seen of Cat Grant in ages.
Jose Delgado had similarly been out of the picture for a long time before reappearing in this storyline
- Confirmed that Alice White never told Perry that Jerry might have been Lex Luthor's biological son.
- The Superman office still isn't done making this joke a full ten months after they started it in
Action Comics #650.
This time though, there's an added send-up of the Superman Office raising the price of its books beginning next issue.
- Lately, I'd been seriously considering not counting
Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography as canon, as some of the info provided there created massive contradictions for
The Post-Crisis Superman Timeline, and it also wasn't written by the core Superman creative teams, but Ordway doesn't want us to forget it:
- Welcome to Dooley's, the unofficial hangout of the Daily Planet, first introduced in this issue:
Kevin Dooly is the owner and treats Clark and Lois as regulars.
- I'm not sure we've ever seen the lobby of the Post-Crisis Daily Planet prior to now:
It's straight out of the Christopher Reeve Superman films:
- Are we supposed to know something about the history of the Clark Family ring? I don't recall it coming up in
World of Smallville:
- Nice little dig at DC for its Jason Todd stunt:
- Definitely the most fun aspect of this issue seems to be the product of Byrne, as he is the one drawing, and it concerns two properties he's famous for writing. Surprise: Mxyzptlk is also Marvel's Impossible Man:
