You know, this panel made me realizing something.  Much has been said about the decision of depowering Superman after Crisis. But he wasn't the only powerhouse in the DC Universe. The Martian Manhunter was depicted, even in the PreCriris universe, as one of the few beings whose strength level was comparable to Superman. By memory, other ones were:

1. Captain Marvel
2. Daxamites (including Mon-El)
3. Ultra Boy
4. GeoForce
5. Mongul
6. Orion

Two heroes whose adventures were still published at the time were Ultra Boy and Mon-El (both in the Legion). There is some Legion expert who could answer the question...?

ETA: And GeoForce of the Outsiders. I mean, he hit really hard the pre-Crisis Superman! Sups got bruises from the fight!

Action Comics #666 (June 1991)



"Red Glass, Part Three: Picking Up the Pieces"
Script: James D. Hudnall
Pencils: Ed Hannigan
Inks: Will Blyberg
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: Bill Oakley

Grade: C-

In a year in which the Superman Office appears to be prioritizing the fleshing out of Superman's rogues gallery over anything else, it seems a little disappointing to me that they didn't use Action Comics #666 to finally shed some light on the Satan-like villain known as Blaze, who we know so little about:



Just saying.


As for what we do get, I was more right than I could have known last issue when I credited this story as feeling like something written in 2020. The massive amount of decompression, the focus on moments and feelings as opposed to the developing of a plot/story, and ultimately (like most comics written in this style today), it utterly drops off at the end.

"Houston," "trapped on the moon," "red glass"...none of these clues ever could have possibly led us to the utterly unsatisfying conclusion that came out of nowhere:



An object on the moon resembling red glass is trying to communicate with Superman, and that inexplicably causes him to imagine this dystopian future.



It's just so damn lazy.

And, take a look back at the captions on the past three covers: "First Symptoms," "Full Fever," and "Crystalline Cure". Sure seems like the solution to what was causing Superman's "dream" was changed at the last moment. He was not experiencing any kind of infection/disease. I still suspect the original solution involved Red Kryptonite. Perhaps Carlin didn't want two Red Kryptonite stories published less than a year apart?

Finally, even if you can excuse all of the other failings of this story, it holds no real significance. Superman has a paranoid vision while trying to rescue a stranded alien entity. What about that warranted its occupying three entire issues? In the Silver Age, this entire story arc could have been told in eight pages.

Hudnall tries to attribute some significance to all of this by the close:



but I'm not buying it. Inadvertently triggering a nightmare somehow gives Superman the power to overcome his inner demons? Why don't we spend a few panels actually showing that internal transformation instead of tacking it on to the final panels of the story?


To be fair, I did enjoy watching Superman go on a rampage against Captain Atom and Firestorm, and this moment with Wonder Woman was haunting and poignant:



But, like most current mainstream comics, I flew through this thing in roughly eight minutes and felt cheated by the close. Not enough substance.


Minor Details:

- I was starting to think I knew my Post-Crisis DCU pretty well, but I'll admit to not being sure who these characters are:



The new Doom Patrol?


- And I guess this final, random panel of the sun is a hint at an upcoming threat?

It really felt like it warranted a prestige format, or at least higher quality paper. Normally, I don't mind newsprint at all, but this artwork deserves to be experienced without the limitations of the canvas.

I don't know if this ever happened in the Silver Age, imaginary story or what not, but I can not ever see Lois and Jimmy being together, even in a fake alien telepathic vision. It just looks...odd.

Is it just me or does the shot of the crystalline aliens leaving the moon look kinda/sorta like baby Kal-El's crystal ship from the Reeve film?

Superman For Earth (1991)



"To Save A World"
Script: Roger Stern
Pencils: Kerry Gammill
Inks: Dennis Janke
Colors: Tom McCraw
Letters: Bill Oakley

Grade: B

I'm still not sure what the story behind this one-shot was. Brian Cronin did a short piece about this back in April, but he offered more of a synopsis than anything. Obviously, this was timed to coincide with Earth Day, but did DC have Earth Day organizations pre-ordering mass quantities of this book, did they expect it to turn a profit at the LCS (especially when being overshadowed by the release of Superman: The Man of Steel #1 this same month), or did someone at DC feel the company had a moral imperative to do this, regardless of the finances? I just can't imagine too many casual LCS readers were going to spend five bucks on this thing while DC was already beginning to hemorrhage readers to Marvel with the rise of McFarlane, Lee, and Liefeld.

And yet, I have to give respect to DC for how they handled this book. Not only is it printed on carefully sourced 50% recycled paper, but instead of handing this thing off to a second rate creative team, we've got Roger Stern writing, and (be still, my beating heart) Kerry Gammill doing 49 pages of interior art:



Yes, it's 49 pages of mostly preaching (even I got bored around ten pages from the end, and I'm passionate about this stuff!), but it does take an intelligent, relatively unsimplified look at many of the challenges our environment faced in 1991 (and still does today):




Yet the one aspect of this one-shot that I struggle with is the idea of Superman fighting for the environment. He has never given it much thought prior to this, but Lois mentions her concern, and suddenly he's ready to devote his full energies to this thing:



only to decide he can't do much on his own, so he makes a rousing speech at the end, and that's how he helps.

Sorry, but I don't accept that.

Look, his super powers would enable him to do A LOT to combat environmental issues, and more productively than by cleaning a river bed, one piece of debris at a time:



BTW, where's all that garbage getting dumped, Superman?


I'm sure Superman could consult with NASA and work out a way to use his powers to repair the Ozone Layer and thwart global warming, rather than spending his time studying river samples with Professor Hamilton; he could use his freeze breath to save the melting polar ice caps; he could use his super breath and ability to filter air on a massive scale, maybe even pressure politicians to take a firmer stance against corporate pollution.

Come to think of it, while the story is expansive in its exploration of environmental issues in the world, it NEVER touches upon lobbyists and anti-environment politicians. Too bold a stance for DC, perhaps? Too bad, as I'd love to see Superman channel his 1938 counterpart and bust down some senator's door at 4 in the morning to demand he steer a clean air bill to the senate floor.

Ah well.


In the end, I respect the effort, as well as the product, but I don't really buy an environmentally aware Superman that claims the environment is the single biggest threat to Earth that he can help battle. There's a lot more an environmentally conscious super-being can do than this.



Of course, if Superman could stop these issues on his own, the call to action at the end of this issue wouldn't make very much sense, would it?


Important Details:

- Stern gives us Clark's street address:



Thanks to MDG for pointing out that this was also Clark's Pre-Crisis address.


- Clark and Lois have the all important conversation about whether or not to have children:




- If the general population didn't already know Superman was an alien, they do now:




- Once again, we see Superman making efforts to be a protector to the entire world, having learned other languages but admittedly not being fully fluent in them. In Superman #53, we saw that he could speak some Russian. Here, he also seems pretty strong in Portugese:




- Stern reminds us of a few old Superman concepts we haven't seen since Byrne was on the books. The Aura of Invulnerability hasn't been mentioned in ages:



and apparently we are still holding to the idea that Superman vibrates his head at super speeds in order to prevent his face from being photographed or recorded:



chadwilliam and I have ripped apart this silly concept before.




Minor Details:

- I LOVE when we get panels of Clark and Lois just being a couple. It took entirely too long for us to get invested in this relationship, but now it works quite well:




- Stern hits upon what I believe is the most important clarification for those who claim we are damaging "The Earth" and need to save "The Earth":



It's not the Earth that's in danger; it's us.


- Another excellent point for those that preach about preserving the Rain Forest:



Of course, I'm not sure your run of the mill Brazilian thug has any idea what a "Yankee" is.


- A nice way of tackling the need to save the Earth in a comic universe in which other populated planets are known to exist:



Though I have to wonder why that class was watching this speech on TV. Superman showed up unannounced to interrupt a totally nonconstructive session in which people were shouting over each other, still discussing procedural rules. You're telling me the teacher had this on for the class the entire time? She must really hate lesson planning.

Thanks for this. It hadn't been previously mentioned Post-Crisis.