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Post by dupersuper on Jun 24, 2014 22:13:36 GMT -5
November 1974Superman turns the tables by tricking the robot into thinking he caused a heart attack in a bystander. The robot decides he himself must be evil and so he destroys himself. THE END! Cool: he pulled a Captain Kirk. |
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on Jun 25, 2014 1:19:45 GMT -5
December 1974 Superman #285: For some reason, Superman is trying to find a guy named Roy Raymond, host of a TV show called "Impossible But True." Ryamond disappeared years ago, but now Superman is determined to find him. But since he fails as both Superman and Clark Kent, he goes undercover as... Missouri Mike! Yes, Missouri Mike, a big-hat wearing cowboy pool hustler who "just blew in from the midwest!" Sounds pretty crazy, and it is, for about two panels. Then he goes back to being Superman. C'mon, Maggin, don't throw away your best ideas like that! Anyway, Superman keeps tracking this guy down. Meanwhile, Clark Kent is also doing stuff... at the same time! As part of a subplot about Lola Barnett that goes nowhere, so I'll just tell you that it's actually Bruce Wayne in disguise. Anyway, Superman finally finds this guy who, yeesh. He's been enslaved by some other guy who has somehow unlocked Raymond's metal potential, turning him into a world conquering telepath or something. Superman basically thinks happy thoughts, causing a feedback loop that allows Raymond to break his enslavement and save everyone. Ooookay. Sure. THE END! In the backup story, we get a new episode of The Private Life of Clark kent, so that's something. He and Lola Barnett interview a child actor. Clark makes friends with him, so when the kid runs away, Clark goes looking for him. He finds him inside a museum, hiding because he mussed up his face while playing baseball - potentially ruining his acting career. Just then! Some crooks break into the museum. Clark "hides" inside a suit of armor, then clanks around and trashes all the crooks in a display of convenient "clumsiness." The kid decides helikes being a normal kid more than acting and all is right with the world. My Grade: C+. Some of the silly touches, like Superman's series of pointless disguises during his investigation, were fun. Just fun in service of another nothing story. Action Comics #445: Wow, we get a major continuity flashback here, as Gregory Reed - the actor who was injured playing Superman in Action Comics #414 - returns nearly three years later. He's had plastic surgery to make himself look exactly like Superman and now he goes around in costume giving lectures about what it's like pretending to be Superman. This won't end well. And it doesn't, because one second later, a beam of energy from space blasts the fake Superman in the chest, apparently killing him! No, it's not Dr. Doom using the Beyonder's powers, it's actually a bunch of aliens, who, like all aliens in the DCU, are trying to kill Superman. Realizing they hit the wrong dude (the actor turns out to eb totally fine - the beam doesn't work on normal people), the shoot the real Superman with a beam that makes it so every time he uses his powers, an energy charge will build up inside him so the 10th time he'll explode. So we count down to his death and sure enough, he dies. And all Superman comics cease publication forever. THE END!! No, of course. What actually happens is the aliens - who turn out to be part of the Superman Revenge Squad - leave in triumph. Back on Earth, though, we learn that the Superman who "died" was the actor. he used a special pill Superman gave him to temporarily gain super powers to perform some of the feats. So Superman didn't blow up and the energy buildup inside him just dissipated. Like the climax of this story, actually. THE END!! Meanwhile, in the backup, Green Arrow tracks down the den of iniquity where Dinah is either being held captive or is dead. He enlists the aid of a redhead named Cherry who practically has a sign on her ample chest reading "I'M A BAD GUY!!" She "helps" Ollie by "finding out" where the bad guy's secret office is. He storms it and finds Dinah alive! Hurray! And then Cherry shows up with a gun and reveals she's the crime boss behind everything. Why exactly she helped Ollie free Dinah, only to hold them both at gunpoint anyway, I'm assuming we'll find out next issue. Or never. To Be Continued! My Grade: C+World's Finest #228: The Super-Sons return, with all the craziness that implies. In short: Bruce Wayne is murdered! Batman Jr. decides to become Batman, but he can't because Robin insists he should be the new Batman. They decide to have a contest - whoever solves the murder will be the new Batman. They end up going with the obvious killer up to the Arctic, where a bunch of eskimos are slaughtering seals. A bunch of weird nonsense happens, the upshot of which is that an eskimo tried to murder Bruce Wayne because Bruce's company is involved in the seal massacring business. Bruce faked his own death in order to set up an elaborate ruse to catch his partner in the act of messing up eskimos. When all is said and done, the partner gets eaten by an orca and Robin and Bruce Jr. decide to make friends again. What the hell. My Grade: B. Crazy in a good way, as usual, but usually the plot has at least some sort of internal logic. This one did not. Notes: This month's Superman cover is interesting, as it's an homage to Flash #123, one of the most famous covers of the Silver Age. These days it seems like just about every cover that comes out is an homage to something, but it was a lot less common (although not unheard of) back when this issue came out. It's pretty cool. Plus, Lois looks very "modern" on this cover, which is always nice. This issue of World's Finest is the final "100 Pages for 60 Cents" issue in the Superman family line. Even Superman Family itself will be slimming down starting next issue. Another classic era gone by the boards. In this issue of World's Finest, everybody seems to know Batman's secret identity at some point. Bruce Jr. and Dick Grayson argue right in front of the lawyers over the fact that Bruce's will doesn't name either of them as his Batman successor. Then at the end, when Batman is explaining that this eskimo guy tried to murder him - as Bruce - the eskimo guy is right there, smiling and nodding along. "Yep, I tried to kill him, but since he's actually Batman, we teamed up instead." The clues leading them to the Arctic to find the killer were also not exactly the most subtle. Next to Bruce's body, they find... a dried, severed seal paw. You know, the kind any old killer might just accidentally leave. Whoops, looks like the dried seal paw fell out of my pocket! When it comes to degree of difficulty, this isn't exactly Riddler territory.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jun 25, 2014 7:02:04 GMT -5
It is so much more fun to read these synopses than it must be to read these actual stories. Thanks for doing it for us  |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 25, 2014 10:20:24 GMT -5
I didn't know the Superman Revenge Squad appeared so late in Superman stories. They were hysterical in the Silver Age! I'm trying to figure out what a 1970s Superman Revenge Squad story would be like. Yuk. This can't end well.
I don't have World's Finest #228, but my brother had it (along with Iron Man #73) in his tiny comic book collection. I remember being kind of fascinated with it because it had so many characters I'd never seen before, notably Metamorpho and Eclipso. (It's probably the first time I saw Vigilante as well.)
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Post by MDG on Jun 25, 2014 14:17:53 GMT -5
Superman #285: For some reason, Superman is trying to find a guy named Roy Raymond, host of a TV show called "Impossible But True." Roy Raymond ran as a backup in Detective for much of the 50s. The reason he was trying to find him was that bronze age writers loved reviving forgotten characters. |
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Post by Action Ace on Jun 25, 2014 17:13:24 GMT -5
It is so much more fun to read these synopses than it must be to read these actual stories. Thanks for doing it for us 1974 Superman comics are certainly better than the set from 1988 you're reviewing. |
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Post by dupersuper on Jun 25, 2014 22:55:54 GMT -5
It is so much more fun to read these synopses than it must be to read these actual stories. Thanks for doing it for us 1974 Superman comics are certainly better than the set from 1988 you're reviewing. I love triangle era Superman... |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Jun 25, 2014 23:38:21 GMT -5
1974 Superman comics are certainly better than the set from 1988 you're reviewing. I love triangle era Superman... I'll second that.I quit buying Supes in 1974. The triangle era (or actually shortly before) reeled me back in |
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on Jun 26, 2014 0:26:28 GMT -5
January 1975 Superman #286: Lex Luthor escapes from prison, but before he can launch his latest scheme, the Parasite steals his voice pattern (which, news to me. I did not know that's how Parasite's powers worked back then) and uses it to take control of Luthor's empire. He then steals most of Superman's energy and becomes an unstoppable force, conquering Metropolis. Luthor and Superman team up to stop him. They manage to transfer Superman's remaining powers into a statue of Superman, which Superman uses by remote to attack Parasite. When Parasite tries to drain the statue, it backfires, shorting out Parasite's powers entirely. Before Superman can recover from the effects, Luthor sneaks off. But hey, the city is saved anyway. THE END! In the backup, we get a tale of Krypton which explains why the Phantom Zone was used for criminals. A bad guy is placed in suspended animation but he somehow uses his mind to possess baby Kal, turning him into a raving Exorcist-style monster baby. Jor-El fixes it. THE END! My Grade: C+Action Comics #446: Clark and Lois are on a helicopter ride. The pilot asks if Clark really does know how to contact Superman like everyone says. When Clark admits this is true, the pilot bails out! It's a trap! Clark manages to save them without turning into Superman, but Lois decides she wants to know just how Clark contacts Superman. Meanwhile, it turns out the copter trap was laid by agents from an enemy government trying to find a way to enslave Superman. Okay, good luck with that plan, guys. So, Lois almost catches Clark turning into Superman thanks to some special x-ray vision binoculars Lola Barnett has laying around. He pulls off an elaborate ruse to trick her into thinking he signals Superman via a tug on his hair. I am not making this up. And those enemy agents, one of whom is inside Galaxy Broadcasting? To be continued. THE END! In the backup, Green Arrow and Black Canary escape certain death by simple means of Canary using her super powers. Well, yeah. Again, not sure the bad guys thought this one through when they let green Arrow rescue her, given those super powers. Ollie and Dinah then run away in order to follow the bad guys to their stash of drugs. They find the drugs and toss them all into the harbor, like the Boston tea Party, only with smack. THE END! My Grade: C-. I swear I've read this same Superman story like 20 times now. They have gone so far up their own butt with this "Lois trying to discover Superman's secret" thing that there's apparently no way back out. Superman Family #170: Okay, pet peeve right from the first line of dialogue: Writers who have children say "me" instead of "I." As in, "Me afraid, Uncle Jimmy!" Arrrgh, I hate that. HATE! I've known a few kids in my day, and none of them ever talked like that, ever. It's so damn obnoxious I can't even put in words how much it irritates me. What utter crap. Okay. Whew. Sorry. Let's try this again. Some weird kid keeps named Val showing up, trying to get Jimmy to take care of him for reasons unknown. Jimmy fobs him off - first on a cop, then on an orphanage - because he's busy trying to crack a story about a mob theft ring. Little does he know that the kid is the descendant of witches and warlocks! Yes, it's true. And now a group of evil magicians called The Black Coven are trying to find him to train him to be their new leader. Jimmy, with Val in tow, finds the mob's headquarters and smashes into it using amazing superpowers that appear out of nowhere! Turns out the mob is actually the Black Coven, and the powers are Val using his magic gifts. The Black Coven is defeated and Val's parents show up and take him away to safety. And the readers just wonder why the heck Jimmy Olsen was involved in any of this foolishness. THE END!!!
But wait. Holy schnikes, there's a second story! Jimmy gets captured by an old school gangster who decides to give him cement shoes and dump him in the lake. It backfires, though, because Jimmy manages to hop around so erratically that the mob goons can't shoot him. Yes, with his feet encased in cement, he manages to dodge bullets by hopping. Then he drops down and rolls around like a huge human rolling pin and knocks everyone over. THE END!!! My Grade: B-, but only because both these stories were so ridiculously dumb. World's Finest #229: Oh my gravy, you guys. This title finally gets bumped up from bi-monthly to 8 times a year, and what do they do with the first issue to celebrate? The Superman/Batman story is a filthy reprint. What's worse is, the backup is a new Metamorpho story. So, again: The characters we care about, reprint. But the ones nobody other than Bob Haney gives a flying crap about, they get a big new story. If I had bought this off the stands I would have been absolutely livid. My Grade: F-. What a dirty trick. I'm not reading this nonsense. Notes: It's now 1975, and as you may have noticed from the fact that there are four titles this month, DC has turned a corner into a new publishing era. After an extended period of downsizing due to the sales fiasco of the premature jump to 25 cents combined with the paper shortages of 1973, DC has now apparently finally recovered enough to re-expand their line. Last month DC only published 23 titles, which is about how they have been going since the massive downsizing that led to the cancellation of Supergirl and Lois Lane and also led to Superman Family and World's Finest being bi-monthly. This month, however, DC is suddenly back up to 36 titles. Some of these titles are bi-monthly books that have been made "monthly", including World's Finest (which is actually now on a 8 times a year schedule). Others are part of a wave of new titles. #1 issues this month include Beowulf, Richard Dragon Kung-Fu Fighter, Secrets of Haunted House, and 1st Issue Special. The expansion will continue next month as well, with #1 issues for Claw the Unconquered, Joker, Justice Inc., and Tor. None of these 8 titles will last or have any lasting impact, other than the introduction of Warlord in 1st Issue Special. I also don't think it's a co-incidence that last month saw the final 100 page specials released and this month saw the expansion of the publishing line. I'm not quite sure what the correlation is, but the ending of the giant size titles in favor of more books is clearly part of a bigger shift in strategy. As is the fact that all 8 of the new titles are genre books (with the exception of Joker, but that's not quite a superhero title exactly. given that the main character is a bad guy). Actually there are three other new books as part of this expansion - Sandman debuted last month and both Kong and Stalker will debut in two months time. 11 new titles, 1 superhero book among them, and all 11 will fail very quickly. Anyway. In this month's issue of Superman, we see that their pro football team is the Metropolis Meteors. They play in Stengel Stadium, which seems to be named after legendary baseball player Casey Stengel. What he has to do with football, I don't know. Maybe the Metropolis baseball team also plays in the stadium? Multi-function stadiums were big at the time. This month's Action cover is nice, it's both an "around the corner" cover as well as a"Lois learns Superman's secret identity" cover. It's well executed, if maybe a little static. Seeing it did make me despair, though, at the tought of another 50's style secret identity story. If I saw this on the stands, that would likely have kept me from buying it. And I would have been justified in that, because this story is just, yeesh. it's straight up sub-Silver Age cheese. And it makes no sense either. At one point, the enemy agents are examining film from the helicopter, taken with a secret camera inside the cockpit. They look it over and despite the pictures of Clark Kent being "excellent" and "superb," they somehow also "don't show Kent doing anything inside the copter." Which is strange given that he literally kicks his foot right through the copter's metal frame in order to save it from crashing. Not sure how those superb pictures missed that detail.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jun 26, 2014 9:00:39 GMT -5
I read World's Finest #229 as a kid and loved it, largely because I couldn't guess the surprise ending. In hindsight, though, that's because the surprise ending was idiotic  Didn't realize it was a reprint until now, but that totally makes sense. It's such a Weisinger Era story. |
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Post by misterintensity on Jun 26, 2014 13:42:07 GMT -5
I get the sense the stories get better as we move along through the seventies once more Marvel influenced writers start writing for Superman and Action.
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Post by Action Ace on Jun 26, 2014 20:27:54 GMT -5
1974 Superman comics are certainly better than the set from 1988 you're reviewing. I love triangle era Superman... I like the 1990-1993 part, but in 1988 the superpot needed to be on simmer a while longer after Byrne left. |
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Post by Action Ace on Jun 26, 2014 20:33:57 GMT -5
I read World's Finest #229 as a kid and loved it, largely because I couldn't guess the surprise ending. In hindsight, though, that's because the surprise ending was idiotic Didn't realize it was a reprint until now, but that totally makes sense. It's such a Weisinger Era story. It's World's Finest, send the letter to Jack Schiff. I looked at the GCDB and it says this story has been reprinted eight times in the USA. I just wish they held off a few months more so I could have bought it as a kid. |
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on Jun 27, 2014 1:10:38 GMT -5
February 1975
Superman #287: Krypto returns. We learn that he's had amnesia since fighting a space dragon. Hey, it happens. Now, having wandered back to Earth, he becomes romantically involved with a high class dog. Before they can get it on, though, Krypto sees Superman flying overhead. His memories return and he flies off to help Superman stop some crooks who are menacing Metropolis with weird ozone bombs. That accomplished, Krypto goes back to his lady love, only to find she is afraid of him. He's too different from other dogs. Krypto may be a superhero, but he's still unlucky in love. THE END!! The backup is a Private Life of Clark Kent . Clark leaves his apartment only to find Batman standing outside. That would scare about ten years off my life. Clark knows this isn't the real Batman, but he plays along. Eventually he figures out that this is a crook using Clark's interview with "Batman" as a way to sneak into prison and kill an inmate. Clark foils the plan and has a fun new story to tell Batman at the next JLA mixer. THE END!! My Grade: B. Not only is Clark Kent more interesting than Superman, but it turns out Krypto is too.
Action Comics #447: This one is kind of hard to explain. But, in short: There's a guy trapped on a deserted island. To pass the time, he tells stories to the animals. And the story he's telling happens to be... the story in this issue of Action Comics. It's about Superman trying to stop the detonation of an experimental Solar Bomb. Superman realizes the bomb is dangerous and will devastate the planet, starting, as it happens, with the deserted island the storyteller is on. He goes there and has the storyteller narrate a solution to the problem. The storyteller does, and the world is saved. THE END! In the backup story, the Atom returns. Usually that is immediately followed by my head striking my desk at a high rate of speed, but this time the story is just bizarre enough to be passingly entertaining. Basically, Ray's entire lab turns to solid gold. The reason is nutso: His lab assistant has apparently developed a super power where anything she dreams of turns to solid gold. Since she had a dream about her fiance last night, now she's terrified she's killed him. Ray goes on the hunt, but somehow some crooks have learned about the girl's power - don't ask how they could have found out, I don't know - and they knock her out and kidnap her. Worse, she then apparently starts dreaming about Ray, because he begins turning to solid gold!! Now there's a cliffhanger for you. To Be Continued! My Grade: B+. The Superman story was surprisingly good this time. Of course, at this point, any time I use the word god in one of these reviews, it's surprising.
World's Finest #230: Batman Jr. and Superman Jr. are bored with the typical teenage scene, man, because they've become action addicts thanks to their shenanigans as part time superheroes. So their dads send them on a nice relaxing trip to discover a hidden Mayan city. On the way, though, a mysterious woman with a pet leopard uses magic to sink their boat. Doh! She then blasts their helicopter out of the air, capturing a dude named Lance in the process. Clark and Bruce suit up to do some heroing, leaving Lance's distraught dad behind - and he's immediately captured by the Mayan king, who, along with his daughter, are the last people in the city. The Mayan king plans to execute Lance and his Dad, but the Super-Sons show up. They've done some snooping and it turns out the king isn't Mayan at all - he's the ex-partner of Lance's dad. Long story short, Lance's dad sabotaged their last expedition and left the guy and his daughter for dead. But they survived and now he wants vengeance. Instead, he has to settle for justice as Lance's dad admits everything and turns himself in. THE END! My Grade: B. A good twist ending to a typically oddball Haney adventure.
Notes: Holy smokes, a month where I actually enjoyed all three issues. Someone pinch me, I must be dreaming! Everything's going to turn to solid gold now! The storyteller in this month's Action Comics is named Joey Jerome. It's pretty obviously meant as a tribute to the original Superman storytellers, Joe (Shuster) and Jerry (Siegel). Nice touch. The title of the story makes this more obvious, as it's called "The Man Who Created Superman." The whole thing seems to be a nice tribute to the pair, which is interesting because this came out right as Siegel and Shuster's battle with DC over the rights to Superman was really coming to a head. Superman's film rights were optioned at the end of 1974. In 1975, Siegel and Shuster - aided by Neal Adams - launched a media campaign bashing DC over DC's treatment of Siegel and Shuster through the years. Faced with a storm of negative publicity, the two sides agreed to a deal at the end of the year. This story coming out right at the start of all that can't be a coincidence. I have to read it as Elliott S! Maggin's way of showing support for the pair. Okay. Now we get to the real meat of the month: Sales figures. Seems like I missed the last batch. So we'll compare here. And the news continues to be a disaster for DC. Superman #274 - 357,288 per issue Superman #287 - 285,684 per issue Ouch. Man. Superman lost 20% of it's readers in just one year. Back when Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane suffered similar catastrophic drops, Superman and Action only slid by about 5%. But it seems pretty obvious now just how out of step the Superman line of books is with modern readership. Why they continued to shovel the same old fashioned stuff even with these sales figures staring them in the face is beyond me. Meanwhile, Action Comics "only" lost about 15% of its readership: Action Comics #434 - 288,783 per issue Action Comics #447 - 237,166 per issue The good news? Well, there is some. Check out the figures for World's Finest: World's Finest #223 - 243,098 World's Finest #230- 242,726 Holding steady, which is no doubt what got World's Finest promoted from bi-monthly to 8 times a year. Just on the strength of not losing sales, World's Finest is now outselling Action Comics, DC's flasghip title. I have to assume this is because of the Super Sons, as it certainly couldn't be due to the presence of Metamorpho. Either way, though, it's a big win for Bob Haney. As it should be, since his stuff, while usually completely out there, is a lot more entertaining than what Superman and Action are offering up every month. And we also get our first look at sales on the combined Superman Family. The last statement of ownership only had figures for Jimmy Olsen, the precursor title. Here's how it looks after a year of Supergirl, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen rotating bi-monthly: Superman Family #164- 234,968 Superman Family #171 - 221,429 That looks like an absolute epic fail from where I am sitting. They go from a monthly title down to bi-monthly, cancelling two other titles in the process. And even then, even given the fact that readers from all three titles should be buying this, sales still dropped compared to Jimmy Olsen by itself! Obviously, the same people were reading all three titles - which make sense - so you've basically just thrown away a bunch of sales, as those people are now buying one title instead of three. Of course, this is giant sized, so the price point is now twice as high. But that doesn't make up for one third the readers, not to mention lost ad revenue. Maybe I am missing something, but this decision now seems like a real mistake on DC's part to me.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jun 27, 2014 8:37:30 GMT -5
I don't know about that... They cut down their costs by 1/3 (perhaps a bit more.. I have no idea if a single double sized issue cost more or less to produce that 2 regular ones... I suspect less) for about 1/3 less revenue.
Considering the 2 main books lost 15% of their sales, and this one only lost 10, that's not THAT bad. You don't think the 3 solo 'family' titles would have done worse?
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