Damn.

That's an excellent point.

And I hated those characters and franchises. In contrast, Byrne's characterization of Superman seems downright likeable. At least he soul-searched and had some morality.

Well, the scenarios that tested his beliefs and character were generally written by Wolfman. Byrne was more into having Superman sermonize, perhaps most infamously in Action #584.

I wonder if the problems here have something to do with the titles suddenly being linked. Sure, the triangle numbers are in place and obviously Time and Time Again is an obvious opportunity to make the most of this system, but it seems as though the team here haven't quite prepared themselves as far in advance as cohesive, seamless storytelling requires. As mentioned previously, Lois' decision to accept Clark's proposal in Superman #50 was a spur of the moment whim on the writer's part and went against the original agreement that she would say 'no'. As a result, the acceptance seemed rushed and following issues seem a little lacklustre as writers scramble to work with new ideas suddenly being thrown at them.

I wonder if it's as simple as there being no real communication between the various titles beyond 'this issue Superman's in America 1943, next issue - Germany 1943, the issue after that dinosaurs, and... go!'. Could Stern be thinking "Well, if Superman's going to be fighting Nazis in Jerry Ordway's installment, I should do a low key story for mine since surely the slam bang stuff's going to happen when he gets to Germany" while Ordway's thinking "Since Stern is going to likely have a whole issue of Superman in the 40's to himself and I have to figure out how to get him to his next point in time, I'll wind down the excitement he's sure to build up over in Action to get him ready for what follows next"?

It's a shame that Time and Time Again was an early test run for the triangle era since Superman bouncing around through time is always a perfect way to recapture the best elements of his essence. I mean, as cool as it was seeing 'Samson' use the Golden Age Superman emblem on his strong man outfit, I would have preferred at least a few panels of Superman tossing around a wife beater or going after a lynch mob a la Action Comics #1 (an omission which will be made up for within the next year and a half I believe, though that story will have to wait). Instead, this so far just screams 'filler' to me.

The three titles have been running seamless continuity pretty much since Byrne left, and they've been really ambitious about this intertitle continuity since at least Action Comics #650, where Day of the Krypton Man ran across all three titles, and characterizations and B-plots actually outshone the central conflict. If there's ever been an office that knows how to talk to each other and maintain continuity, it's this one, and long before the triangles.

Even the single page each issue with all the B plots progressing literally one panel per issue is a means of them showing off.



They can play five parallel unrelated scenes across three titles/creative teams at the speed of one panel per issue and make it look and feel continuous.

They just don't seem invested in this story. I think they are pandering to the larger comic buying audience that hasn't taken note of their brilliant character arcs, B plots, and continuity, and offering them a multi-title crossover that requires no intellect to follow. A year ago, they were trying to make Superman as popular as Batman again. Now they have to compete with Spider-Man and X-Force. The zeitgeist is moving further and further away from Superman, and they know that providing quality storytelling, issue after issue, isn't going to be what brings the attention back. So they created something substanceless and colorful.




Absolutely, but they're not trying to court loyal Superman fans at this point. Just the opposite, sad as it is.

Adventures of Superman #477 (April 1991)



"Time & Time Again Phase Four: Death Rekindled"

Script: Dan Jurgens
Pencils: Dan Jurgens
Inks: Brett Breeding
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: Albert DeGuzman

Grade: C-


For three issues now, we've slumped along with this storyline without having any real sense of what the overarching plot was. Finally, we have an answer:



So The Linear Man is trying to get Superman back to his rightful time, but with imprecise technology, the best he can do is direct Superman to massive explosions that will hopefully send him back to the right place.

Let's absorb this, shall we?

First off, let's talk about conflict. Every story needs a conflict, and a conflict happens when a central character has a goal they have to struggle to achieve. Every great fictional work ever written is, in some sense, about a character or group of characters struggling to do something.

So what is the conflict in this story? Superman has no idea The Linear Man is doing this, and he seems neither overly concerned with what is happening to him nor seems particularly interested in finding out why. He's disturbingly relaxed about the whole thing.

So is the Linear Man the protagonist? He's the one struggling to do something, and yet he's been absent for two of the four parts of this story thus far, barely even appearing in this one.

Essentially, this major event has no central conflict whatsoever. There is no central conflict coming -- just Superman leaping through time a whole lot.


Okay, now let's apply some logic to the paltry plot that we've been given. The Linear Man does not have the technology to send Superman to the precise year in which he belongs, but he DOES have the power to send him to the precise moments in which major explosions will occur? Heck, why can't he travel to the future to get some time technology that actually works, or send Superman to someone who does have better control over time, like Brainiac 5 or Rip Hunter? Nah, let's get him blown up issue after issue instead. That makes so much more sense.


Really, I continue to maintain that the Superman Office just isn't taking this one seriously. The level of care they've put into pretty much every story over the past two years just isn't showing here. I think this detail bothered me the most:



Page after page of Clark worrying about running out of oxygen in a few hours, just after acknowledging there is no sun nearby. Shouldn't he be worried about exhausting his Post-Crisis powers then, which are fueled by a yellow sun? Instead, he blasts away with his eye beams, flies through space, and even follows the Legion of Superheroes into the heart of a Sun Eater, using all of his powers to their maximum limits, with no concern that his powers come from his cells functioning as "living solar batteries" when absorbing the radiation of a yellow star (first clearly established in Man of Steel #1). These guys are NEVER this careless.

And yet this issue continues to be full of lazy, half-considered ideas. Just to name a few...




"Right now"? How is there a "right now" when discussing time travel? I get that the concept is complex and, therefore, pretty much all time travel stories have to take some liberties, but at least give us some rules for how time travel works in this instance. Stern, Ordway, and Jurgens just seem to be making it up as they go.




Constructing a space telescope outside of Earth's atmosphere in order to get a clearer view of the cosmos? What a brilliant far-out idea for the 30th Century, except this is 1991, and the Hubble Telescope was launched in 1990.




So Superman's plan is to distract the Sun-Eater while Wildfire infiltrates from another location. Superman himself acknowledges that the Sun-Eater does not have an intelligence. Its defenses are effectively instinctual, perhaps functioning like antibodies. So you're telling me an organism larger than a sun with a permeable cloud-like exterior can only fend off one infection at a time?? Asteroids fly through this thing left and right, repeatedly pummeling its core while it blasts a stray pebble that entered it? Even if it does work that way, Superman took one hell of a wild risk assuming it would!




Superman's plan also depends upon him somehow finding Shrinking Violet on a moment's notice within a hostile being larger than a sun while it is being torn apart?


Just a really really carelessly written installment in a really really carelessly written event that is beneath the quality I've come to expect from this office.


Important Details:

- While the Legion's Post-Crisis history has inevitably been severely altered now that this Superman was never Superboy, apparently some key aspects of Legion history remain more or less the same:




- Superman has a limited ability to tolerate and/or filter "bad air".



This may suggest that Earth's atmosphere is not the same as Krypton's.



Minor Details:

- These one-panel-per-issue story arcs remain the one saving grace of this storyline. The effort involved in making these stories progress one panel per issue across three creative teams, contrasted against the slowness/seeming pointlessness of them makes me chuckle, especially as even the Lexcorp guy observes that the story arc he is in "is going nowhere":




- I generally really LIKE Jurgens' artwork, but it also feels more lazy here. Supes looks terrible on that cover, and this panel utterly disturbs me:



Brett Breeding just took over on inks from Art Thibert. Maybe some of this is on him?

Speaking of taking liberties, is Chronos supposed to look this much like Richard Nixon or did Stern decide to make the slight similarity they shared in features (at least based upon how David Clinton looked in his debut in The Atom #3) that much more obvious by adding more hair and jowls to the guy?  I say Stern and not McLeod based on my suspicion that Chronos' line when he's asked by Superman what he's doing here is "I can imagine what you're thinking, but I'm not a crook..."

I'm surprised that Superman didn't exclaim "Richard Nixon?!?  What are you doing here?" 

Unused cover by Billy Graham.


Published cover by Gil Kane.