Big thank you for this information and I will contact my Comic Book Store and see if they have a copy and send it to my home this is great!

Mech I'm curious to see what you think about it. I hope to get back to my reviews tomorrow. Had to work 2 12 hour shifts this weekend...

Cry Not For My Forsaken Son.

The story starts with the mother's telling their sons they can't keep being super-heroes. The mother's faces are never seen in any stories but Superman's wife has black hair & Batman's wife has brown hair. Of course the dads agree. And right away this story starts off on the wrong foot. Besides Haney's contrived situations & horrible comic book science the worst part of these stories was how unlikable the characters were. All of them (dads, moms & sons) acted like complete jerks. Haney did surprise me with two panels that summarize the previous two Super-Sons stories.

The sons storm off & meet up to complain about their parents. They see the police chasing a car & intervene. The car was stolen by a Danny Orr & it belongs to Commissioner Gordon. He releases Orr to the sons custody. Orr then complains about his dad being a doorman & worse yet he finds out he is adopted. He tells off his father to go find his "real" dad which pisses off the sons. Superman Jr follows Danny while Batman Jr does some detective work.

Orr's biological dad Mark King turns out to be wealthy. But Batman Jr finds out Jack Orr & Mark King were friends that were both in love with the same girl Anne. Mark marries her & she dies giving birth. Jack & Mark are in Central America looking for treasure. Mark stays to keep looking while Jack returns to take care of Danny (because he still loved Anne). The sons are horrified with this info. Danny is happy with his new life & agrees to go to his dad's mines in Central America. The sons follow him & find the workers are treated like slaves.

The sons confront Danny & tunnel into the worker's living quarters where Danny finds Jack Orr? The head of the mines comes in & Superman Jr lets one of the workers get killed before he intervenes? Then a fight breaks out & during the confusion Jack is kidnapped. Batman Jr goes after him to save him before he is killed.

Superman Jr rescues Batman Jr, Danny & Jack from sharks after the chase causes them to be swept out to sea. It is revealed that Jack was working for the government to infiltrate the mining operation to get proof of the conditions. Huh? Danny goes back to the USA & confronts Mark about the illegal operations & when Mark threatens Danny the sons rush in. Mark is never shown being arrested & Danny reunites with his dad Jack who forgives him & takes him back. The sons are pleased that everything turned out OK.

Here's what I had to say about this issue, which I had blissfully expunged from my memory until you dredged it back up:

World's Finest #215: I'm going to say right up front that I have an instinctive dislike of the entire concept of the Super-Sons. I hate this kind of gimmicky, pandery stuff - it's like the X-babies, you know? Ugh. Blah. However, I am going to try my darndest to just grade these on story merits alone. We'll see if I can.

And actually, given the premise, this isn't bad. I actually found myself liking Clark Jr. and to a lesser extent Bruce Jr. as they clashed with their overprotective super-dads. Superman comes up with a completely ridiculous plan to test the boys to see if they are ready to become heroes in their own right. It's not only underhanded and manipulative, it's flat out stupid, which we can thank or blame Bob Haney for. In a bit of physics right out of Superman flying around the sun fast enough to reverse time, he pruposesly causes a giant earthquake on the San Andreas fault, because this somehow causes a city on the fault to create a duplicate version of itself shifted out of time. He then shunts the Super-Sons into this fake alternate world so they can fight the crime boss there. The boss then whups them and kills them. Superman feels bad, as he should, but it turns out the Super-Sons did some super-trickery and faked their own deaths. They win, the end.

Parts of this story weren't bad. But man, Superman's plan was asinine. And he and Batman acted like total tools to their kids. Plus, Haney writes this headscratcher of an essay claiming that these are not imaginary stories, just aspects of Superman and Batman's life they haven't mentioned before. So.. firstly, they are both apparently in their 40's at least since they have grown children. Plus, they are both married, which would probably come as a big surprise to Lois and robot Lois both. Thirdly, this is stupid. So fourthly, My Grade: C-. I don't mind Bob Haney playing fast and loose in his stories, but I'm not so keen on him playing fast and loose with the readers.

I didn't have much to say about this one:

World's Finest #221: Hey, look! The Super-Sons are back! This time around, they meet a real jerk of a kid who recently discovered he was adopted. So he craps all over his adopted father (metaphorically) and instead teams up with his rich, a-hole biological dad. Turns out his rich dad got rich by swindling his adopted dad out of a fair share of their mining business. Plus, he has labor camps full of slaves working in his mines. Batman Jr. and Superman Jr. help the kid realize what a total tool he has been. They also save, well, some of the slaves anyway, then escort the biological dad off to jail. That counts as a win I guess? My Grade: B-. Bob Haney has a way of putting interesting real world problems into his stories without getting preachy or being to "relevant." The stories just don't always make sense. But I appreciate it anyway. Best of all, this issue has no Metamorpho! I should give it an A+ just for that.



Bad as these stories are, they seem to much better when you've just read a Metamorpho appearance instead.

I was more of a Marvel fan anyway, but I did read some DC. However, whenever I saw these Super-Son covers, I literally didn't even look inside the books. When I first started reading comics, I read what I found out was an "imaginary story" and I felt cheated because I didn't see the point. So I definitely wasn't going to read Super-Sons. Sorry I missed the Dick Dillin art though.