Elliot Maggin also wrote a Superman novel, Miracle Monday, which featured a woman from the future witnessing Superman's involvement in the origin of a holiday.  That time traveler, Kristin Wells, later became Superwoman in the comic.  I thought the time traveler in 'Thirsty Thursday' was the same character, but a quick google check says no.  

I have never heard of this. But aside from a handful of issues of World's Finest and Superman Family and Lois Lane, I haven't read much early 1970s Superman.

Six is lower than I would have guessed. You're going soft on me Scott!

September 1975



Superman #294: A guy named Brain-Storm, who apparently is a JLA villain, uses his super helmet to wish away all the inhabitants on Earth. Only Superman and Clark Kent are left. Brain-Storm seemingly murders Clark, then explains to Superman quite helpfully, and in some detail, that he needed everyone gone so he could absorb the power of a quasar without everyone else interfering. It actually does make slilghtly more sense when he explains it. Anyway, he's about to do just that when he sees Clark, alive and well! Since that will mess up his plan, he attacks Clark, but can't seem to kill him! Because he's Superman. Caught off guard, Brain-Storm is defeated and Superman forces him to return everyone to Earth. THE END! In the Private Life of Clark Kent, Clark is kidnapped by a crook who switches clothes with him to pose as Clark Kent. Clark does some super speed stuff and swallows his costume! Clark then manages to fake out the crook's assistant by pretending to be the crook. He stalls long enough for the cops to show up and arrest the real crook. As for the swallowed costume, Clark assures us that "everything will come out all right." My Grade: C+. That is a mental image I did not need to have. As Michael Kors would say:



Action Comics #454: The new Toyman returns (last seen in Action #432). He defeats Superman, in part because Supes gets wicked tired. Superman tries to figure out what Toyman did to him. During their next fight, Toyman again seems to win, but launching Superman into space. Once there, though, Superman regains his powers. He defeats Toyman, realizing Toyman had nothing to do with his problems. Instead, a weird rock near the Earth's core is draining solar energy. Superman burrows on down there and neutralizes the rock. THE END! In the backup, the actualizer strikes again, causing the ivy at Ivy University to start destroying the campus. Jean Loring talks the plants out of it, which actually works thanks to, you guess it, the actualizer. Ray then smashes the stupid machine because really, it's a very bad idea. THE END! My Grade: C+.

Superman Family #174: Now, this I did not expect at all! Remember "Davy," the immortal teenage balladeer who is obviously the Biblical King David? Well, turns out he's not just a dopey one-off character - he's a dopey recurring character! Yes, he shows up at Linda's school in Florida, just as an alien lizard man is trying to use mind control to force Linda to become his catspaw. it doesn't work at first, but the lizard guy summons a dragon. As one does. Supergirl defeats the dragon, but the battle weakens her and she falls under the lizard man's power. Or does she? Turns out she was faking to learn about his plan for world domination. The two battle. The lizard guy tries to use his mental powers, but they don't work, because the music Davy is playing on his lyre blocks the powers. Supergirl wins and Davy leaves, as mysteriously as he appeared. THE END! My Grade: C+. Lots of that going around this month. Can Bob Haney make it 4 for 4?!

World's Finest #234: NASA launches an experimental habitat into space, only to find it's been hijacked by people intent on leaving Earth's troubles behind. Superman and Batman fly up to the satellite, but decide to leave the people alone. Which is fine until a psychotic Asian guy somehow floats through space, gets on board and starts smacking people around. Luckily, Batman got left behind just in case this sort of thing happened, and he takes out the bad guy - literally, as the dude gets launched back into space thanks to an unexpected hole in the hull. Superman fixes it up, but they have bigger problems: Earth is about to explode. Man, ever have one of those days? The pilot who hijacked the ship figures out that the planet's only hope is if he crashes the ship into the ocean at exactly the right spot. He talks everyone else into leaving. Superman follows a hunch, though - and it leads him to another planet, where some a-holes have been mucking around with Earth, causing all these problems. Superman kicks the crap out them, then rushes back and saves the "pilot," who was actually Batman in disguise. THE END! My Grade: B-. Not Haney-fied enough to get the full Haney grade, but just enough to elevate it from another mediocre C+.


Notes: As a follow up to my design rant earlier, here's the issue where mistake gets compounded with mistake, as they add yet another logo to the cover of Action Comics. Now it reads "Superman's Action Comics," with a little and very awkwardly placed Superman logo stuck in the corner. The Superman logo and the Action logo don't work together, they have completely different aesthetics, yet now they get ramrodded together on every cover in the most awkward, shoehorned way possible. Desperately hideous, and one of the absolute design nadirs of 70's comics. Plus, we get another free-floating logo even though you can tell even from this tiny thumbnail that it's wasted, as the top half of the image is just blank white space anyway.

Okay, so a question on this month's issue of Superman (I know, I kow - why bother?). Brain-Storm uses his helmet to wish away everyone on Earth. Why? So he can power up his helmet in order to gain mental command over everyone on Earth. But if he's powerful enough to wish the entire population out of existence - and then back into existence at the end of the story - surely he's powerful enough to control people's minds as well? Why didn't he just wish himself into having mental control over everyone instead?

Meanwhile, in the Action lettercolumn, E. Nelson Bridwell states that Ollie and Dinah being so terrible at keeping the secret identities secret is an intentional bit of character development. To which I say, hurray. Now if only they would apply this to the lead feature and stop having every other issue be about Superman trying to protect his secret identity. My god, you guys, it's been almost 40 years at this point. Can't you think of anything else to do with Superman? (I'm being rhetorical, of course, since I know the answer is "no.")

Finally, Supergirl takes her plan to pretend to be the lizard man's catspaw a little too far in my opinion, as, in order to prove she's under his command, she defaces several wonders of the world, including carving a giant lizard face on Mount Rushmore. Maybe rethink that plan next time, hey?

October 1975



Superman #295: I hate to say this, because it sounds completely absurd, but... this issue was actually interesting. A guy calling himself "Father Time" attacks Superman. But what he really wants is... superman's costume! He manages to get it. Superman then tracks the costume, only to find that it's somehow in the 30th century! And it isn't the 30th century he knows, with the Legion of Super-Heroes and everything, but rather a desolate, ruined Earth. Superman travels there and discovers a guy named Jaxon wearing his stolen costume. They fight each other, and we realize that Jaxon a) has most of Superman's powers and b) didn't get the costume from Father Time, but rather from... the animal people who previously ruled the world! Yes, Superman is in Kamandi's timeline! Only, he's in Kamandi's future, a future where humanity has risen again thanks to Jaxon. The two of them keep fighting, but as they do, the barriers of time break down. Jaxon and the others disappear and Father Time shows up again. He explains that he's actually the Green Lantern of Sector 2814 - from the 30th century. And he's set this up in order to escape a plot by the LSH villain Time Trapper, who was trying to erase the LSH by shifting Earth to Kamandi's timeline instead, where the LSH doesn't exist. THE END! My Grade: B+. The continuity juggling in this issue is impressive, picking up the "Superman's costume" thread from Kamandi #29 and interweaving it with LSH stuff. Very interesting!

Action Comics #455: This one is even more convoluted than Superman #295, but I'll try to explain it. Superman drops The Atom off in Kandor, then flies off to help Ollie do a publicity thing as Clark Kent. The publicity thing involves a movie producer debuting a robot made of recycled junk. The Atom and the Kandorans watch this on some weird device, but it shorts out, releasing Kryptonian energy into the world and accidentally causing the robot to come to life. Superman and Green Arrow battle it a couple times, but the robot lose sinterest and heads to the Fortress of Solitude to find the source of the Kryptonia energy. It is about the smash the bottle when Green Arrow activates the Kandoran shrink ray Supes uses to visit the city and shrinks the robot down. And thus, the crossover between the three Action features in complete, and thankfully, with as little Atom in it as possible. THE END! My Grade: B-. Nice to see Ollie and Clark together. And there were even several footnotes!

World's Finest #235: Bruce is planning to build a "New Metropolis" next to the old one, but someone keeps buying up the land he wants. Meanwhile, Clark is also investigating a blackmailer called "Cyclops" (no relation). They figure out that the culprit in both cases is a mind-reader called Sagittarius. But not before Sagittarius uses his powers to discover Superman's secret identity. He tries to blackmail Superman, which seems like a bad idea. When Superman refuses to cooperate, Sagittarius sets up a media event in Smallville to reveal Superman's identity. However, while confronting Superman and Batman at the grave of the Kents, Sagittarius is accosted by the ghost of his own dead son. Sagittarius stumbles and falls into an open grave and dies. THE END!! My Grade: H.


Notes: I couldn't help but note the similarities between this issue of World's Finest and World's Finest #218. In that issue, also by Haney, we got a villain called Capricorn who discovered Batman's secret identity, only to die randomly. Now we get Sagittarius learning Superman's secret identity, only to also die randomly. Coincidence? Or is Haney slowly building a zodiac of extremely unlucky supervillains? My guess is that he simply forgot he already wrote a version of this story. Something for the editors to probably point out somewhere along the way.

Pop culture notes for the month: The producer in Action Comics gets his idea for the junk robot while watching "Let's Make a Deal," while in World's Finest, Superman makes a Walter Cronkite joke.

In other actual comics news, DC continues their experimentation, debuting three "new" titles this month: Warlord #1, Blitzkrieg #1, and All-Star Comics #58. Considering just about all of DC's 70's launches were abject failures, Warlord and All-Star count as a pretty successful month.

Finally, this issue of World's Finest is another that I had as a kid and have forgotten everything about. The only thing that made an impression on me, apparently, were the boring covers. Speaking of which, look at those three thumbnails up there. So much empty pastel space. Even Rob Liefeld drew more comprehensive backgrounds than this. Hard to believe the publisher at this time was Carmine Infantino, who was responsible for such innovate and fantastic cover design at DC in the late 60's. What come down.

In fact, take a second look at the cover for Action #455. They had to shove the logo down so far in order to fit in the "Superman's" secondary logo that the "COMICS" bit is obscured by the robot. Yet above the word "Action," there's over an inch of completely empty space! God, these covers are just abysmal.

Beyond the comics, there was a major development in the history of Superman in October, 1975. With the Superman movie moving along, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had been hoping to finally get some real compensation from DC for creating Superman. In April, they had agreed not to bring their case to the Supreme Court in favor of reaching a settlement instead. However, DC didn't offer them a settlement after all, leaving Siegel and Shuster once again high and dry.

So Siegel, with the help of people like Neal Adams, went on a major media offensive. If they couldn't get redress through legal means, they would get it through public shaming.

In October, 1975, Siegel put out a massive press release, detailing all the ways they had been screwed over by DC through the decades. It got major media play, causing a black eye for DC right when they needed to be getting good publicity for Superman: The Movie. As a result, by the end of the year, Siegle and Shuster had signed a new deal with DC whereby the two of them received medical benefits, $20,000 each per year for life, and "created by" credits in the comics and films.

The press release is way too big for me to print here, but luckily, someone else has already done it. If you want to read the whole thing - and it's pretty interesting - you can check it out at 20th Century Danny Boy.