Post by Crimebuster on May 9, 2014 15:01:31 GMT -5
June 1974
Superman #279: Hey, Batgirl! Thank god. So, Superman disguises himself as Batman to help Bruce out on an evening when Bruce has accidentally double booked himself. Clark screws up, though - Barbara Gordon stumbles onto his dressing room and finds the Batman costume. She heads to Metropolis to ask Clark what the deal is between him and Batman. Just then! A sinister oil baron threatens to destroy Metropolis if they don't give him a bunch of oil. Superman and Batgirl stop him, then engage in some more boring nonsense about secret identities. THE END! The backup is a World of Krypton tale about a fake magician who accidentally gains magic powers. Ho hum. My Grade: C. Even Batgirl has let me down.
Action Comics #439: Captain Strong returns and he needs Superman's help. He was in the process of proposing to his girlfriend, Olivia Tallow, when a giant bearded brute attacked them. I see what you did there, DC. I see what you did there. Superman saves Olivia and discovers that the Brute is trying to get some of Captain Strong's magic underwater wacky weed. After some shenanigans, the Brute gets it and turns back into a... well, into a space midget with a very unlikely back story not worth getting into. Superman helps him get home. THE END! IN the backup story, actually, I realize I forgot to even mention the backup last issue, which is just how good it was. It's actually a two-parter continued in this issue, where a guy fights The Atom in order to steal his size changing abilities. Only, when he does it, he gains the ability to shrink "horizontally," meaning he becomes extremely thin. That's dumb. Turns out he is trying to reverse the effects of a failed experiment that have doomed him to death; he needs to live because he has discovered what might be a cure to leukemia. Atom defeats him, but Jean Loring decides to defend him in court so the world can gain the benefit of his leukemia cure. In other words, the supervillains in the Atom backup story are actually bigger heroes than Superman and Lois Lane, who keep their cures for the common cold and drug addiction a secret. My Grade: B-. The lead feature was pretty good - I do enjoy Captain Strong - but the backup was pretty not.
Supergirl #10: Supergirl is at college, watching Prez on TV... yeah, more on these things later... when she realizes someone is about to assassinate him. She flies over and saves Prez. Then she saves him from another attack. But the third time, she herself is the assassin, as a witch uses voodoo to mind control her. She kills him! Except, it turns out just to be a mannequin, because the "mind control" failed. THE END! Oh, there's a second story. In the second story, a scientist clones Supergirl, only the clone is a dude named Superlad. Superlad follows the scientist's orders and steals a bunch of money, but when the scientist orders him to kill Supergirl, Superlad instead commits suicide. THE END! My Grade: C+. Somehow, even the amazing Prez can't elevate this issue.
Lois Lane #137: Lois and Clark are having breakfast when they are rudely interrupted by an old man dropping dead in their laps. Turns out he's not old at all, though, but a young man somehow aged beyond his time. Back at the Daily Planet, Perry White decides to have a competition to see who can come up with the best scoop. Clark decides to use his Superman powers to cheat and win that way, but Lois investigates the dead kid. This leads to her getting on a subway train that whisks her to another dimension, where telepathic space-faring dinosaurs give her a special message: Stop war, or humanity too will become extinct. Lois takes this all in stride a little better than I would have. THE END! In the second story, Lois covers a story where an old couple refuses to move out of the house they've lived in their whole married life. Gangsters try to kill them and eventually blow up the building. But Superman just rebuilds the entire thing instantaneously, so fast, in fact, that the bad guys somehow don't even notice the building being rebuilt around them. Turns out the gangster had sealed up a dead body in the walls of the building and was trying to cover his tracks. By... killing more people in as public a way as possible? Hm. I sense a flaw in this plan. My Grade: A. Telepathic space dinosaurs from another dimension. Yep.
World's Finest #225: I hope you guys have a sweet tooth, because Bob Haney is back, which means we're about to start saying "what the fudge?" a lot.
So. Bruce Wayne gets attacked in his house by a weird old man. Turns out this is a guy from Scotland here to tell Bruce that Bruce has just inherited a Scottish castle in a town under a curse of witchcraft affecting the town's children! Hate it when that happens. Anyway, Bruce goes to Scotland. The guy's son then hypnotizes Bruce and commands Bruce to fling himself off the castle wall! Which he does, but being Batmna, he just catches himself. He decides to investigate and follows the kid to a secret conclave of demonic children.
Just then! The beam Batman is crouched on collapses. He falls to the ground... and the children all jump on him and start eating him alive! As Haney so evocatively puts it, "He senses a multitude of tiny mouths fastening on him..." Holy crap!
Luckily, Superman saves him. They decide to investigate more and find the old man being forced to play bagpipes... UNTIL HE DIES! They intervene and rescue him, but he's still on the brink of death. Superman then tracks down the guy's son, who seems to be the ringleader. Only the son also collapses. They summon a doctor, who gives them the incredible news: The boy is suffering from a disease that only infects birds. Batman, the world's greatest detective, comes to the only possible conclusion: The children have all been possessed by malignant bird spirits!!
Superman remembers he saw some bird eggs covered in bizarre runes, so he rushes off to destroy them, sure that they are emanating evil bird radiation. Meanwhile, the children attack the castle. But with his dying breath, the old man gives Batman a key to a special room filled with highly trained hunting hawks! Batman unleashes the killer hawks on the crowd of children, because there's apparently an appropriate time for everything, including that. The hawks drive off the kids, Superman smashes the eggs and everything returns to normal! THE END!!
My Grade: A+. Holy crap, that made no sense.
Notes: Okay, so here we are finally in the month where they randomly published one final new issue of Lois Lane and Supergirl. My assumption all along has been that they must have had inventory stories to burn off. Now that I have read them in the context of the broader Superman experience, I am 100% sure that both of these issues were totally completed the previous year and the decision to cancel the books was so abrupt they just didn't publish them even though they were ready to be sent to the press.
Just looking at the cover design gives away the fact that these issues were completed a year earlier. Both sport the background stripe behind the logo - which you will notice both Action and Superman have dropped - which all the books in the line had at the time the titles were canceled. More tellingly, Supergirl and Lois Lane do not have the "still 20 cents" blurb, but rather have the old 20 cent design, with the month and issue number jammed into the circle as well. These covers were done in 1973.
Then there's the content. Supergirl guest stars Prez of all people. Prez was canceled at the same time as Supetgirl and Lois Lane and I don't think made any other appearances afterwards. This crossover only makes sense if it had been set up to run the previous year. Plus, both Lois and particularly Supergirl have had new status quos, yet Supergirl is back at graduate school studying acting in her story. Finally, the lettercolumns in both issues are for comics that came out 14 months earlier - even the lettercolumns were clearly completed in 1973.
It's obvious the decision to cancel the books was extremely last minute on these two titles. The question I still have is why publish them now? Has the financial situation changed so much that it now makes sense to publish them, where it didn't make sense to publish them several months earlier? Why didn't they just publish them at the time they were intended?
That aside, the real boggler for me is the fact that Prez is apparently the President of the United States in the DCU. It never occurred to me that Prez was taking place in the mainstream DCU, but here he is in Supergirl, as president! Did Prez show up in any other DCU titles as president? It's kind of crazy when you think about it.
Finally, I've been trying to figure out why I enjoy Lois Lane so much and Superman so little. Things that seem annoyingly random in Superman stories seem charmingly goofy in Lois Lane stories. I think it is as simple as Lois not having any powers. That means that at the end of the story, they either have to come up with some exceedingly bizarre explanation - which is entertaining - or they have to just pass everything off with no explanation, which is often even more entertaiing. IN Superman, though, the stories all end the same way: Some complete b.s. glossover that boils down to "because he's Superman and can do anything." Since Lois can't do anything, her stories don't end like that and thus remain hilarious non sequitors rather than feeling like cheap gimmicks. Or, that's my theory at the moment. I probably need to think about this more, as the goofiness in Bob Haney's stories often rises to Lois Lane levels, and Superman is still in those.
Superman #279: Hey, Batgirl! Thank god. So, Superman disguises himself as Batman to help Bruce out on an evening when Bruce has accidentally double booked himself. Clark screws up, though - Barbara Gordon stumbles onto his dressing room and finds the Batman costume. She heads to Metropolis to ask Clark what the deal is between him and Batman. Just then! A sinister oil baron threatens to destroy Metropolis if they don't give him a bunch of oil. Superman and Batgirl stop him, then engage in some more boring nonsense about secret identities. THE END! The backup is a World of Krypton tale about a fake magician who accidentally gains magic powers. Ho hum. My Grade: C. Even Batgirl has let me down.
Action Comics #439: Captain Strong returns and he needs Superman's help. He was in the process of proposing to his girlfriend, Olivia Tallow, when a giant bearded brute attacked them. I see what you did there, DC. I see what you did there. Superman saves Olivia and discovers that the Brute is trying to get some of Captain Strong's magic underwater wacky weed. After some shenanigans, the Brute gets it and turns back into a... well, into a space midget with a very unlikely back story not worth getting into. Superman helps him get home. THE END! IN the backup story, actually, I realize I forgot to even mention the backup last issue, which is just how good it was. It's actually a two-parter continued in this issue, where a guy fights The Atom in order to steal his size changing abilities. Only, when he does it, he gains the ability to shrink "horizontally," meaning he becomes extremely thin. That's dumb. Turns out he is trying to reverse the effects of a failed experiment that have doomed him to death; he needs to live because he has discovered what might be a cure to leukemia. Atom defeats him, but Jean Loring decides to defend him in court so the world can gain the benefit of his leukemia cure. In other words, the supervillains in the Atom backup story are actually bigger heroes than Superman and Lois Lane, who keep their cures for the common cold and drug addiction a secret. My Grade: B-. The lead feature was pretty good - I do enjoy Captain Strong - but the backup was pretty not.
Supergirl #10: Supergirl is at college, watching Prez on TV... yeah, more on these things later... when she realizes someone is about to assassinate him. She flies over and saves Prez. Then she saves him from another attack. But the third time, she herself is the assassin, as a witch uses voodoo to mind control her. She kills him! Except, it turns out just to be a mannequin, because the "mind control" failed. THE END! Oh, there's a second story. In the second story, a scientist clones Supergirl, only the clone is a dude named Superlad. Superlad follows the scientist's orders and steals a bunch of money, but when the scientist orders him to kill Supergirl, Superlad instead commits suicide. THE END! My Grade: C+. Somehow, even the amazing Prez can't elevate this issue.
Lois Lane #137: Lois and Clark are having breakfast when they are rudely interrupted by an old man dropping dead in their laps. Turns out he's not old at all, though, but a young man somehow aged beyond his time. Back at the Daily Planet, Perry White decides to have a competition to see who can come up with the best scoop. Clark decides to use his Superman powers to cheat and win that way, but Lois investigates the dead kid. This leads to her getting on a subway train that whisks her to another dimension, where telepathic space-faring dinosaurs give her a special message: Stop war, or humanity too will become extinct. Lois takes this all in stride a little better than I would have. THE END! In the second story, Lois covers a story where an old couple refuses to move out of the house they've lived in their whole married life. Gangsters try to kill them and eventually blow up the building. But Superman just rebuilds the entire thing instantaneously, so fast, in fact, that the bad guys somehow don't even notice the building being rebuilt around them. Turns out the gangster had sealed up a dead body in the walls of the building and was trying to cover his tracks. By... killing more people in as public a way as possible? Hm. I sense a flaw in this plan. My Grade: A. Telepathic space dinosaurs from another dimension. Yep.
World's Finest #225: I hope you guys have a sweet tooth, because Bob Haney is back, which means we're about to start saying "what the fudge?" a lot.
So. Bruce Wayne gets attacked in his house by a weird old man. Turns out this is a guy from Scotland here to tell Bruce that Bruce has just inherited a Scottish castle in a town under a curse of witchcraft affecting the town's children! Hate it when that happens. Anyway, Bruce goes to Scotland. The guy's son then hypnotizes Bruce and commands Bruce to fling himself off the castle wall! Which he does, but being Batmna, he just catches himself. He decides to investigate and follows the kid to a secret conclave of demonic children.
Just then! The beam Batman is crouched on collapses. He falls to the ground... and the children all jump on him and start eating him alive! As Haney so evocatively puts it, "He senses a multitude of tiny mouths fastening on him..." Holy crap!
Luckily, Superman saves him. They decide to investigate more and find the old man being forced to play bagpipes... UNTIL HE DIES! They intervene and rescue him, but he's still on the brink of death. Superman then tracks down the guy's son, who seems to be the ringleader. Only the son also collapses. They summon a doctor, who gives them the incredible news: The boy is suffering from a disease that only infects birds. Batman, the world's greatest detective, comes to the only possible conclusion: The children have all been possessed by malignant bird spirits!!
Superman remembers he saw some bird eggs covered in bizarre runes, so he rushes off to destroy them, sure that they are emanating evil bird radiation. Meanwhile, the children attack the castle. But with his dying breath, the old man gives Batman a key to a special room filled with highly trained hunting hawks! Batman unleashes the killer hawks on the crowd of children, because there's apparently an appropriate time for everything, including that. The hawks drive off the kids, Superman smashes the eggs and everything returns to normal! THE END!!
My Grade: A+. Holy crap, that made no sense.
Notes: Okay, so here we are finally in the month where they randomly published one final new issue of Lois Lane and Supergirl. My assumption all along has been that they must have had inventory stories to burn off. Now that I have read them in the context of the broader Superman experience, I am 100% sure that both of these issues were totally completed the previous year and the decision to cancel the books was so abrupt they just didn't publish them even though they were ready to be sent to the press.
Just looking at the cover design gives away the fact that these issues were completed a year earlier. Both sport the background stripe behind the logo - which you will notice both Action and Superman have dropped - which all the books in the line had at the time the titles were canceled. More tellingly, Supergirl and Lois Lane do not have the "still 20 cents" blurb, but rather have the old 20 cent design, with the month and issue number jammed into the circle as well. These covers were done in 1973.
Then there's the content. Supergirl guest stars Prez of all people. Prez was canceled at the same time as Supetgirl and Lois Lane and I don't think made any other appearances afterwards. This crossover only makes sense if it had been set up to run the previous year. Plus, both Lois and particularly Supergirl have had new status quos, yet Supergirl is back at graduate school studying acting in her story. Finally, the lettercolumns in both issues are for comics that came out 14 months earlier - even the lettercolumns were clearly completed in 1973.
It's obvious the decision to cancel the books was extremely last minute on these two titles. The question I still have is why publish them now? Has the financial situation changed so much that it now makes sense to publish them, where it didn't make sense to publish them several months earlier? Why didn't they just publish them at the time they were intended?
That aside, the real boggler for me is the fact that Prez is apparently the President of the United States in the DCU. It never occurred to me that Prez was taking place in the mainstream DCU, but here he is in Supergirl, as president! Did Prez show up in any other DCU titles as president? It's kind of crazy when you think about it.
Finally, I've been trying to figure out why I enjoy Lois Lane so much and Superman so little. Things that seem annoyingly random in Superman stories seem charmingly goofy in Lois Lane stories. I think it is as simple as Lois not having any powers. That means that at the end of the story, they either have to come up with some exceedingly bizarre explanation - which is entertaining - or they have to just pass everything off with no explanation, which is often even more entertaiing. IN Superman, though, the stories all end the same way: Some complete b.s. glossover that boils down to "because he's Superman and can do anything." Since Lois can't do anything, her stories don't end like that and thus remain hilarious non sequitors rather than feeling like cheap gimmicks. Or, that's my theory at the moment. I probably need to think about this more, as the goofiness in Bob Haney's stories often rises to Lois Lane levels, and Superman is still in those.
