ugh!  I never liked how Lexor was destroyed.  Luthor - whose innermost thoughts regarding his home, his family, his people on Lexor were made transparent to the readers on numerous occasions - decides to simply go on a murderous rampage.  At no point is this ever explained.  We know he genuinely loves these people, his wife, and his son who I believe he meets only days before this rampage takes place.  Where did "maimed lives", a "terrible tragedy", and "I must discipline the little maggots" come from?  






Hoosier X   I hope you eventually check out Superman #401.  It might be the next appearance of Luthor in his battle armour (I can't swear to it) and is, in my opinion, a highlight of the Bronze Era for reasons I can't get too into without spoiling things. I will reveal this much though - Luthor arranges to trap Superman in his battle armour so that he can analyze his powers, physiognomy, and whatever else secrets he might be hiding.  Superman can't destroy the armour without destroying himself.  To make things even more complicated for the Man of Might, Luthor ensures that it is Luthor's face and voice that people see and see when Superman appeals to others for help.  Superman's solution is simple, brilliant, realistic, and yet absolutely hilarious.  

Neal Adams proposed designs for a Superman Museum which, sadly, never came to pass.





I share this because I'd like to think that what we see here isn't entirely dissimilar from The Superman Museum in Metropolis.

I hate to say it, but frankly, it doesn't seem as exciting.  Of course, when you consider the fact that some of the displays are so lifelike that they actually imparted powers unto Joe Meach thus birthing The Composite Superman...





or became a constant battleground for Supes and so many of his foes






you can't really blame Superman if eventually he just decided "Screw this noise!  From now on The Superman Museum's going to have a couple of Perry White's cigars and this jar of Superman peanut butter and THAT's IT!  I'm not fixing this place every weekend anymore."

I’m reading the Rose and the Thorn issues of Lois Lane. That’s #105 to #130. Since the Lois stories and the Thorn back-ups are set in Metropolis, I thought it was a good idea to revive the Metropolis Bistro Express!

I also added #103 to the stack because LOIS BECOMES A DEMON AND MARRIES THE DEVIL!! And it seems dumb to skip it just because the Thorn wasn’t introduced until #105.

I was skimming the first few issues ... I’d forgotten just how serious the 100 was. That’s the criminal organization that killed Rose Forrest’s father. And now she’s getting her revenge at night, dressing up as the Thorn and wreaking havoc among the criminals of Metropolis. And then waking up the next morning with no clue that she’s the Thorn.

But in #106, the Thorn’s second appearance, they try to kill Danny Stone - Rose’s boyfriend - with poisoned roses .., and her poodle Marie gets to them first and dies.

The 100 ... they are bad people.

I got Action Comics #460 to #462 in the mail today. I read #460 already.

There’s this alien named Karb-Brak and he has a weird medical condition where he’s allergic to super-powered beings. He’s from a race of super-powered beings so he has to leave his planet. The doctors think Earth has the right atmosphere for his recovery, so he goes to Earth, changes his appearance to look human and gets a job as a construction worker.

One day he gets on the same bus as Clark Kent. Steve Lombard is on the same bus because his Jaguar is in the shop. The alien reacts badly to such close proximity with Superman. He can’t maintain his human appearance, he gives off great heat and he goes on a rampage.

There’s a short fight but they have a weird effect on each other and both end up unconscious. Karb-Brak wakes up in a dump truck. He figures out that Superman might have such an effect on him and assumes that Superman was on the bus. He has a photographic memory and is tracking down all the people he remembers on the bus. He decides he must find Superman and kill him because the presence of Superman is killing him.

He figures out that Steve Lombard must be Superman and is about to kill him in the gym at The Daily Planet.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

YES! He’s about to kill Steve Lombard! I am fully in support with that goal!

And there’s a pretty good Mxyzptlk story (with art by Kurt Scaffenbarger) as a back-up.

I've finally found some time to write a few paragraphs about Superman #301!

I had been collecting comics for about a year when I picked up Superman #301 brand new at the newsstand in early 1976. It was my first issue of Superman! And I wouldn't pick up another issue until the early 1980s when I read Action and Superman pretty regularly for a while.

I wasn't a big fan of Superman back then.

But #301 has Solomon Grundy on the cover! I love Solomon Grundy. The big, dumb animated swamp-corpse from Slaughter Swamp. He's just misunderstood! All he wants is a friend!

Even though I didn't much like Superman, I liked the Justice Society. I remember being at a party and reading the giant-sized reprint of All-Star Comics #3 and thinking it was ONE OF THE GREATEST COMICS EVER! Especially the Spectre vs. Oom! If I was the kind to have nightmares, I would have had nightmares about Oom.

And so when I saw Giant-Size Super-Team Family #4 with a Justice Society story from the 1940s, I picked it up right away and read it over and over on a weekend in the winter in my great-grandmother's apartment! The bad guy was Solomon Grundy. All these years later, it's still one of my favorite comic-book stories and still definitely my favorite JSA story.

That chump Superman must have been very excited to arrange a bout with Solomon Grundy in his own book in 1976!

It starts with a side-by-side narrative: Superman in Metropolis on Earth-1 and Solomon Grundy stuck in Slaughter Swamp on Earth-2. Superman is rounding up some uniformed crooks while Solomon Grundy is trapped in a green energy bubble created by the Green Lanterns of two Earths to keep him from wreaking further havoc. (I think this probably refers to a JSA/JLA team-up from the late 1960s.)

The bad guys that Superman is fighting are members of a new crime cartel called Skull that seems to be picking up the pieces after the demise of Inter-Gang. They are wearing green costumes with orange goggles and they are attacking a guy named Samuel Simeon. Superman calls Simeon a "small-time hood" when he drops off the Skull goons at the police station. Simeon objects to being called a hood and denies any involvement with Skull or Inter-Gang. Superman tells Simeon to cool it; he'll be brought down soon enough. And then he flies away because it's time for Clark Kent to show up the Galaxy Building to get ready for a news broadcast. (Yeah, this is when Clark Kent was a TV news anchor for the Metropolis 6:00 news.)

Meanwhile, Solomon Grundy is beating on the green energy barrier that keeps him in the swamp. He stops for a minute and thinks about it a little. There's two Green Lanterns, there's two Flashes, there's two Earths ... maybe there's two Solomon Grundys! And so he goes to the middle of the swamp and wishes himself on Earth-1 so he can find the other Solomon Grundy ... and he is surrounded by magic bubbles ... and somehow he transports himself to Earth-1 Metropolis ... BECAUSE REASONS!

Let's talk about these opening pages for a few minutes before moving on. I am seeing so much in this story that I didn't notice when I read it as a kid. My original copy of Superman #301 is long gone and I hadn't read it for thirty years or more when I got another copy a few months ago. It was among the first 10 or 12 DC comics I ever read, and just about the first Superman story I ever read.

So now it's 2023 and I've read hundreds of thousands of comic books and I've even created a thread specifically about Metropolis! So it's bound to look a lot different to me now!

Let's start with Skull! I don't remember Skull at all. It looks like the editors are planning on making Skull into a major plotline in the future, but I don't think I've ever read any other comic with Skull in it. And I find it very interesting that Inter-Gang is gone! Inter-Gang is the international crime cartel that was menacing Superman, Metropolis and the world in the early 1970s, and they were mentioned a lot in Kirby's Jimmy Olsen storylines. (You may remember that the leader of Inter-Gang was the Morgan Edge look-a-like that was secretly the pawn of Darkseid!) I guess they must have eventually resolved the whole Inter-Gang subplot, but It's not something I've ever read. It makes sense that another group might try to muscle in and pick up the slack.

The 100 isn't mentioned. The 100 was another large criminal operation in the Superman books, but they were mostly featured in the Rose and the Thorn stories in the back of Lois Lane. I don't know what happened to them either.

I should also mention that the attempted shakedown of Samuel Simeon takes place on Metropolis's Garden Avenue. If we're keeping track of Metropolis geography.

Speaking of geography, I was wondering where Slaughter Swamp is. I always assumed it was the Everglades. I don't know why I thought that. But a few weeks ago, I glanced over the first appearance of Solomon Grundy from the 1940s and it's pretty clear that Slaughter Swamp is pretty close to Gotham City. So maybe it's between Gotham and Metropolis? And maybe that's why Solomon Grundy ends up in Metropolis when he makes the transition from Earth-2 to Earth-1?

Getting back to the story, there's a groupie who wants to meet Clark Kent, and Steve Lombard is hassling her and wondering why she wants to meet a zero like Kent. Ugh. Steve Lombard. I hate him so much. Not just because he's awful but also because the writers did so little with him. It was so boring. And they did that Steve Lombard thing for YEARS!

Anyway, Solomon Grundy shows up on the streets of Metropolis and starts harassing people because he's looking for that other Solomon Grundy. And he's somehow dragging the swamp along with him! The streets are filling up with slimy green water and fast growing vines!

I really love the street scenes in this comic. This is how Metropolis should look. I guess I should mention the creative team. It was written by Gerry Conway and edited by Julius Schwartz. And Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Bob Oskner did a bang-up job on the art.

Superman swoops in and they start fighting. Solomon Grundy is really strong! Superman is kind of surprised at how strong Grundy is. As a matter of fact, Solomon Grundy appears to be so heavy that Superman can't lift him!

But wait! Clark Kent was on air broadcasting the news just a moment ago! How can Superman be figthing Solomon Grundy if Clark Kent is reading the news?

Well, it seems that, in order to protect his identity, Superman hypnotized Steve Lombard and dressed him as Clark Kent (at super-speed) and put him in the anchorman's chair so that Steve (who thinks he's Clarkie) is now reading the news!

(As much as I love this story, there's several things in it that remind me why I almost never read Superman in the 1970s.)

Superman manages to pick up Grundy by knocking him over. I think Grundy has some mystical relationship to the ground or the swamp water whereby he can't be lifted if he's in contact with it. It's not really spelled out. 

After a few pages of futilely and destructively mixing it up with Grundy, Superman realizes that he's not accomplishing anything. Solomon Grundy is still stomping around and menacing Metropolis, and the city streets are still turning into a swamp.

However, Grundy tells Superman that he's looking for "the other one," and so Superman figures out that he's looking for a buddy. He comes up with a plan that's kind of mean but he doesn't really have any choice at this point. Superman dresses up as Solomon Grundy, convinces him that he's his friend, then grabs him and flies away and abandons him on the moon.

Superman feels kind of bad about it. Poor Solomon Grundy! No wonder he hates everybody!

That segment really got me when I was 11! I thought about it a lot over the years, even when I hadn't read the story in decades. Solomon Grundy is abandoned on the moon! Does anybody ever go and check on him? Would it kill any of these super-heroes to go to the moon and be nice to Solomon Grundy? He managed to travel from Earth-2 to Earth-1 on his own ... what makes you think he can't come back from the moon? And if he does, he's going to be mad! 

The ending shows Clark looking out the window and watching the Metropolis Sanitation Department as they clean up the swampy streets below. He mentions that he got Steve Lombard back to normal. And then he wonders ... what would have happened if there was an Earth-1 Solomon Grundy counterpart, and Earth-2 Grundy had found him?

The story ends with this thought: "Perhaps someday we'll know, Clark! Perhaps Solomon Grundy simply arrived too early!"

That's a good point! Why wouldn't there be an Earth-1 Solomon Grundy?

Julius Schwartz' interference with Eliot Maggin's back-up in Action Comics #461 led to Maggin quitting the Superman series for a while as per this interview from the Superman Through the Ages website.

"All the changes were dictated by Julie Schwartz. The most significant one was the one I quit over. At some point, I did a story involving Perry White and the idea that as a young reporter he had uncovered the story of the Manhattan Project. Julie changed the ending not for any artistic or narrative reason, but because he wanted to use the story to make a point to me about editorial supremacy. I told him to take my name off the story and he didn't, so I went into the production room and brushed out my name with black ink, and that's how the story was printed. It was a backup story of some sort (maybe a Private Life story) and was attributed to no writer. I'm sure it must not be on your list because it never had my name on it, but it came out toward the end of my first run on the character."

Thought Maggin doesn't remember the story title or issue in the interview, it is "The Amazing Exploits of Perry White!" here.