May 1974
Superman #278: Clark Kent and several of his co-workers are kidnapped by a mysterious force and wake up in an old west town, where they have been brainwashed into thinking it's the 19th century. Except Clark, of course, because he's Superman. Turns out they were abducted by Terra Man as part of his latest plot to get revenge on Superman. This time he has set up a series of trials; when Superman passes one, one of his friends is saved. When he fails, one of them is killed. Superman is upset - someone is finally using his friends against him! HIs worst nightmare come true! Superman has an ace in the hole though, because Terra Man doesn't know Superman is Clark. Superman can use this against him! How? Well... he doesn't, really. Instead, Superman... uh... somehow alters the structure of the bullets Terra Man is killing them with in order to send them into death-like comas? And then when Superman wakes them up, Terra Man thinks they are all zombies and ghosts, and he panics, allowing Superman to punch him. The end.
My Grade: C-. More on this below.
Action Comics #438: Clark gives Lois and necklace from another galaxy. She's so happy she starts making out with him. Huh. Wasn't expecting that. Also unexpected? The necklace turns her into a giant monster. Superman finally figures out that radiation from the necklace somehow interacted with the common cold Lois had - rude of her to kiss him in that case, huh? - so in order to change her back, he develops a cure for the common cold. The en... wait, what? WTF, Superman! If you can just cure the common cold that easily, why the hell haven't you done it? Why don't you release the cure to the public so humanity can experience healthier lives for the rest of time? You heartless jackass!!!
My Grade: C.
Superman Family #166: Finally, Lois Lane gets the feature spot in Superman Family. Can her new strip live up the craziness of her old title? Well, it starts with Lois going to a botany show where a botanist is being protected by a CIA agent (called "SIA" because we don't want to inject any reality into these stories if we can help it) from assassins. Lois gets in an argument with the agent, as she wants to interview the guy, and while the agent is distracted, the assassin kills the botanist. Good job, Lois! Three pages into your first story in the new format and you're already an accessory to murder. Weirdly, and pretty disturbingly, the guy is murdered with a seed used as a bullet - when the seed hit the guy in the head, it immediately sprouted roots into his brain. Yikes!
Anyway, after some more ham handed pseudo-feminist conversation, a staple of the Bronze Age, Lois meets with the CIA guy in charge of the operation, whose office is inside a moving garbage truck. Um. Lois learns that the doc was set to unveil a "wonder plant," whatever that means. I assume they mean marijuana? Against the agent's wishes, the head honcho agrees to let Lois join the case as an unofficial new CIA agent. She goes through some training, where she shows off her mastery of klurkor, the Kryptonian martial art.
After that, they track down the guy they think is behind the assassination. The CIA agent is all, "watch me, as I shoot this guy with a tracking device!" And while he's doing that, the assassin shows up again, throws Lois off a building and then punches the confused agent in the back of the head. This CIA agent sucks!!
Luckily for Lois, she no longer has to worry about how incompetent that agent is, because he's stone dead. Superman saves Lois, but too late for the agent. Determined to find the agent's killer, Lois goes back to the CIA and gets a new partner. They follow the presumed bad guy, who takes a special subway car to a secret underground garden filled with acres of poppies! Wowee! Man, if we had known Metropolis had a huge untapped reserve of heroin, we never would have needed to invade Afghanistan!
Where was I? Oh yeah, so turns out these are actually Anti-Poppies! They're like flowers made by Darkseid. The so-called "wonder plant" the first victim had been developing, the anti-poppies completely counteract the bad effects of all illegal drugs. One problem: Lois' new CIA agent partner is actually the assassin! And he's been killing people in order to protect his status as the city's main drug supplier! Before he can whack Lois, though, Superman shows up, alerted by a message spelled out in leaves (that... I guess he somehow just happened to notice with his x-ray vision, since it's underground?). In the end, Lois ruminates on events and we discover the person who warned Superman was actually the ghost of the dead CIA agent. So... he was way more effective dead than he ever was alive. THE END!!!
My Grade: B. Lois never disappoints when it comes to inexplicable randomness. The mind boggles at the thought of what might happen if Bob Haney got a hold of the series.
Notes: In the Lois Lane story, we are introduced to a wonder plant that can completely eliminate all side effects from the illegal drug trade, effectively saving untold millions of lives, not to mention impacting the entire world financially and even morally. What happens with this? Nothing, and I doubt it's ever mentioned again.
So, just to reiterate: Over in Action, Superman just decides not to bother mentioning to anyone that he had cured the common cold, while in Superman Family, Lois and Superman fail to mention that they have solved one of the biggest social ills in world history.
What a pair of total a-holes!!! Honestly, do the writers even spend one second thinking about what they are doing when they come up with these stories?
Meanwhile, there's this month's Superman story. Terra Man has proven to be an interesting addition to Superman's roster of villains, and also apparently a popular one given how frequently he has appeared since he debuted in #249. He has far more appearances since that point than Lex Luthor or Brainiac or, really, any other Superman villain. Unfortunately, each appearance has been slightly worse than the previous one, so I have been waiting to reach the point where he is completely transformed into a joke. Given how the character is treated today, I knew it was a matter of time before he became a laughinstock, I just wasn't sure where the tipping point would be.
Now I know: It's in Superman #278. The end of this story, where Terra Man suddenly freaks out because he presumes the victims are zombies, is both idiotic and ludicrous. We have a guy who grew up in outer space among aliens, and who has a wide array of mind boggling technological tricks at his finger tips, but he's still apparently a superstitious yokel whose first assumption is that these guys must be undead? Okay. That's dumb. Like, really dumb. It makes Terra Man look like an idiot.
I'm at the point where every time I start to enjoy a story, I have to remind myself that the ending is almost certainly going to be terrible, so I shouldn't get too excited. It happens pretty much like clockwork. They set up good ideas and then have some terrible cop-out ending that undermines everything and makes you feel like a fool for even reading it. Gah, DC, you're the worst!
Anyway. One of the bonus features in Superman #278 is a series of gag panels. They are of no particular interest except that a couple minor characters make re-appearances, including talk show host Johnny Nevada (From #274) and TV gossip columnist Lola Barnett (#275). Lola also shows up in both the lead story and this month's issue of Action, so apparently she's going to be sticking around. Interestingly, she's kind of sleazy, which is not how she came across in the first story where her twin brother was missing.
Finally, this issue of Superman Family has a lettercolumn where they state they haven't gotten any mail yet from the first issue, so instead they are just going to fill it with some of the reams of praise they got for the last issues of Jimmy Olsen. They then publish a bunch of stuff talking about how popular Jimmy is. Firstly, since this title is bi-monthly, I'm not sure why they don't have any letters yet, as it's been four months since the first issue came out. That should be enough time. Secondly, like, what? If Jimmy Olsen was so darn popular like they say, his title would not have been cancelled. So... yeah.
