What I remember best about this issue is Luthor's dream sequence at the start.  In re-reading it now, I can't help but notice that when Luthor thinks he's up against Death itself (personified as The Grim Reaper, scythe and all) he puts up a fight.  Admittedly, it isn't much of one consisting as it does of his hiding behind Happersen/throwing Happersen at and through Death, but he does nevertheless seem willing to go down fighting even in the face of impossible odds.

Luthor:  If you think I'll go without putting up a fight, you're...

Luthor rips hood off of Death.  Sees the face of...

Superman:  Don't tell me that you're surprised, Lex.  Hasn't Superman always been your greatest foe?

And suddenly, it's game over in Luthor's eyes.  He can shake his fist in the hand of Death itself but Superman?  With him he can only whimper and give up.

Luthor:  No!  No!

Superman:  Struggle is useless, Luthor.  My powers are beyond those of mortal men!

One of the things I liked about the Silver Age Luthor is that he started off as Superman's greatest fan and the two were friends.  As historically contrived as this may seem, it nevertheless makes a lot of sense to me - Luthor is a brilliant scientist whose only limits are what the laws of science forces upon him.  Presumably, the world he lived in wasn't too dissimilar from our own and therefore I think it's fair to guess that the laws which governed our world also governed his - ie. nothing can exceed the speed of light, it would be impossible for a man to fly under his own power, etc.  All of a sudden, this kid from Krypton shows up and he's breaking the laws of physics left and right - of course Luthor is going to love this guy whose very existence means there may very well be no laws in the universe which he can't break or rules he can't disprove - Superboy should be to a kid scientist like Luthor what Elvis was to every kid in the 1950's.

As for The Post-Crisis Luthor?  Superman's existence is the opposite - a Metropolis with someone like Superman in it, isn't going to worship someone like Luthor and Luthor knows it - he's obsolete.  

I don't know how Luthor developed from Man of Steel #5 up until now so I don't know if the Superman office was still clinging to "You wouldn't go on my payroll and you threw me in jail for a night" as his reason for being, but I do recall this exchange from the recent Superman #50:

Clark Kent:  Tell me a story, Luthor.  Off the record.  Why does one of the world's richest men fear Superman so much...

Luthor:  I fear no man!  I merely wish the world to know what a phony he is... that his 'Mother Theresa' act is a sham!

Clark:  The people need him, and you took him away, Lex.  If Lexcorp is as squeaky-clean as your flacks claim, you'd have no reason to fear him.

Luthor:  There's that word again - "fear".  Are you trying to provoke me, Kent?

Now, I don't know if Luthor fearing Superman was something regularly touched upon by this point or if it were a recent development (as early as Superman #50, perhaps) but I find "Superman" slicing pieces of LexCorp off with his scythe at the start of Action #660 a nice, elegant way of tapping into this notion.  LexCorp will soon be gone and forgotten and this is what terrifies Luthor - not so much his own mortality, but his memory of his achievements being replaced by Superman.  He's like The Silent Film knowing that he's about to be replaced by The Talkies and in this way, he's been dying since Superman first appeared in Metropolis.  Maybe that's why he uses the LexWing in this issue - going out towards the sun in a defiant obsolete (well, maybe not for you or me, but compared to the flying abilities of Superman?) vessel instead of in the shadow of the latest big thing.    

Luthor's motivations for hating Superman under Byrne has gotten a lot of criticism - would he really hate him as much as he does if it weren't for Superman taking him to jail?  Even then, it was Mayor Berkowitz who gave the order.  With Ordway's story in Superman #50 and Stern's in Action #660 however, something new takes shape - Superman makes Luthor obsolete.  Nice that two separate authors were able to work in tandem like this - another example of the Super office working hard on the little details?

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.

You have to check out the Jack Cole stuff.  Building your opinion on Plastic Man with the dreck DC has put out is like forming an opinion on The Beatles based upon William Shatner's rendition of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.  You not only have to get rid of the foul taste that stuff like Grant Morrison's/Mark Waid's JLA should have left you with, but it should be a crime that you've read complete runs of some pretty lousy comics but have never experienced some of the finest.  I mean, do you think it makes sense that you can say "I've never read a single Jack Cole Plastic Man comic, but I have read every Batman story David Reed wrote during the 70's"?  "Jack Cole on Plastic Man, you say?  No, can't say it rings a bell.  Now, if you had asked me about that time Superman made a porno with Big Barda, here's an essay I wrote on it - does that count?" 

Reading ONLY later versions of PLASTIC MAN or FANTASTIC FOUR but never reading Cole Or Kirby is like watching "HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN" and "HOUSE OF DRACULA" but avoiding the James Whale films.

I don't want to get too off topic, but since Shaxper is getting into The House of Frankenstein too, I just want to second his "you get a sense of the appeal of the Universal Horror films" observation.  I can't think of any other horror film which boasts such a stunning cast (perhaps the Basil Rathbone led Black Sleep comes closest though Lugosi and Chaney, Jr are wasted there).  Karloff, Chaney, Jr., George Zucco, John Carradine, Lionel Atwill, J Carroll Naish, even Glenn Strange as The Monster are all quality actors who individually carried some pretty great films on their own.

Plastic Man and Woozy would return to the Super-titles in Superman 110 (1996) and the whole 'Jimmy Once Got Turned into Elastic Lad by the Eradicator' story got a brief mention there as he relates the story to Plas.

Superman #52 (February 1991)



"The Name, Pardners, Is Terra-Man..."

Script: Jerry Ordway
Pencils: Kerry Gammill
Inks: Dennis Janke
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: A-

After taking a month to tell some simpler stories, the Superman Office is back at full strength, even if the cover of this issue doesn't really suggest as much. Terr-Man was a forgettable villain introduced in a largely forgettable (and somewhat inaccessible) Infinity Inc. story that occupied Superman #46. Here, Ordway finally fleshes out the character, and boy does it work. Tobias Manning is clearly fueled by noble environmental ambitions:



generated by guilt over his own actions as a wealthy industrialist. And he's even willing to answer to the law when he crosses the line:



All that makes him a villain is his sense of urgency. He won't wait to protect lives, and he definitely won't wait for government approval. The Earth is out of time.

It's not the first time DC has given us environmental warriors, both heroic and villainous, but there's something more accessible and likable about Manning, here. I love Ras Al Ghul, but his environmental mission isn't much of the selling point for me. With Manning, it's central to all that he is, and the guilt fueling it all is compelling as well. The Superman Office hasn't had all that much success (or, for that matter, interest) in creating fresh villains in the Post-Crisis. We all love the new approach with Luthor, and I enjoyed the new approach to Toyman, as well as the introduction of Matrix, but generally good villains have been few and far between in these pages. Manning/Terra-Man stands out.



And I enjoy this specific story, too. It's a great balance of sympathetic super-villain, eerie sci-fi setting that is disturbingly real/believable (a ghost town shut-down by the EPA for environmental contamination):



and a plot that is equal parts action, real-world intrigue, and compelling social action message, all in one:



Even the talking heads moments are handled well and paced appropriately.


And wow do Ordway and Gammill take a new approach to the underground scene. Whereas most artists would just draw and ink as if underground was illuminated, these guys emphasize the dark artistically:





It's stylistic, beautiful, and an acknowledgment of the dark all around that would be impossible to depict accurately on panel.




In terms of B plots and universe-building, we are getting plenty of reminders that Lexcorp is already crumbling without Luthor:







And, as time in Post-Crisis Superman comics passes slower than it does for us, Luthor can't be dead more than a week or two at this point.


Meanwhile, Acting Editor Sam Foswell is already causing the expected trouble at the Daily Planet:




Clark is struggling with his dual relationships with Lois:






And (really the only failing of this issue) Jose Delgado is doing...something. He knows Bibbo found his winning lottery ticket and seems resigned to let it go, and he is worried that Cat Grant doesn't really love him:



These characters are so far out of the main action of the Superman Office that we hadn't even seen them for months before they reappeared in the last few issues. So I guess I'm stuck on why we should care about their personal relationships? Neither character was ever particularly likable/compelling, as far as I was concerned, and no time has been spent convincing us that they make any kind of sense for one another beyond being the love interests that Lois and Clark both rejected.


Minor Details:

Lois has made a new ally at Lexcorp, "Ray".



She did this a lot in the early days of the Byrne Post-Crisis, befriending folks who had access, information, and resources she needed, and it's nice to see that come back. No idea if Ray will specifically play any kind of role in the future of this franchise.




Plot synopsis: Terra-Man returns, attacking a landfill owned by Lexcorp in order to eliminate its toxicity, but killing one employee in the process. Lois pursues him to his hideout at the site of an abandoned town his company polluted, and there Superman intervenes. Terra-Man is conducting an experiment to remove all pollution from the town, and Superman agrees to help if Manning will turn himself in. The experiment concluded, Manning keeps his word, and Superman does not yet if his experiment succeeded.

Ah, but at least you remember her.