LOOK! UP IN THIS THREAD! Let’s Read… Superman!

[Octopus Prime]

Well I’ve mainly been sticking with the silver age, so what better time than this to add some gold.

I didn’t make note of the credit page but since Supermans Christmas Adventure is from the 40s, I’ll go ahead and assume that at least Frank Siegel worked on it. The arts a lot better than what Joe Shuster usually brought to the table so I’ll assume either he didn’t, or his style improved a lot in the preceding decade.

Anyway, it’s Christmas in Metropolis, and that means that nothing news worthy is happening so Perry White assigns his top reporters to cover the breaking story that department stores are presently crowded.

The News never stops but that’s because in Metropolis is never really gets started.

Anyway, at the mall Lois Lane and Clark Kent encounter the first actual poor child either of them have ever seen and are utterly shocked by the concept of poverty, and they both decide to immediately abandon the non-story that their boss assigned them and decide to start a toy drive to help the cities underprivileged kids.

A plan which winds up getting the full approval of Santa Claus himself. He… uh… he could have solved this problem as well, you know? Giving toys to children is within his particular bailiwick, as it were.

Anyway, there’s a brief side-quest where Superman also sees a spoiled child and introduces him to the concept of a lack of hyper wealth which instantly reforms him. And then we’re on to the part of the story which constitutes a “Christmas Adventure” as promised by the cover.

An airship descends on Santa’s workshop, piloted by sinister industrialist and second place finisher in a Mr. Burns lookalike contest; Dr. Grouch and his business partner Mr. Meaney. They’re both “gloomy killjoys” as per the narration boxes and I’m not sure if that’s because of their names or they changed their names to fit their personalities. Either way they’ve got a proposition for Ol’ Saint Nick; “Immediately stop producing toys and turn your workshop over to the task of building things you can sell”.

Santa says “Nah, son” and sics his War Elves after them.

The pop gun kind of fits with the whole “toy making elf” vibe, the cattle prods, less so. I feel like Santa’s workshop isn’t unionized.

Anyway, Grouch and Meaneys attempts to sabotage Santa’s workshop don’t work as well as hoped, so they decide to go for the next best thing and attack someplace that’s certainly not personally protected by a supernaturally empowered force for goodness; the Daily Planet building, where they break in, blast everyone inside with sleeping gas and then torch the toy drive.

Clark’s on the clock at the time so naturally that doesn’t work but… that’s *definitely* an escalation from “stealing Christmas” to “multiple counts of attempted murder”. And this actually *is* a dangerous news story and Lois Lane is nearby so of course she immediately gets involved, and sneaks on board the attack blimp to get a big scoop on them.

…only to be immediately discovered, tied to a giant firework and blown into the sky.

I want to state that this whole story is about half the length of a normal comic and we’re not even midway through it yet.

Anyway, there’s no safer place for Lois to be than “in deadly peril, miles above the earth” but it takes Superman a minute to realize that’s where she is and while he’s busy rescuing her, Grouch and Meaney break back into Santa’s Workshop, start gleefully busting it up with hatchets, and knock out his Reindeer.

…I know how it looks but the reindeer was blasted with sleeping gas, not shot. And either way, kind of a stretch to say this will cause Gloom to prevade the universe.

Anyway, this is understandably a real setback to Santa’s operation so he calls in the big guns;

Clark hears this, and Superman arrives at the North Pole immediately (it makes much more sense for Superman to be able to do this than for Grouch and Meaney to be able to make a trip from Metropolis to the North Pole in under a minute) and immediately lends a hand; fixing all the toys Grouch and Meaney destroyed and starts hauling around Santa’s Sleigh by hand in order to help with deliveries.

While she’s doing so he sees that kid from the brief sidequest earlier in the comic also donating his presents since he’s so rich he wouldn’t notice half his toys being gone.

One of their stops is, in fact, Grouch and Meaneys mansion where Santa delivers an armload of gifts even though they tried to sabotage all his efforts and second degree murder everyone in the Daily Planet, and they’re so grateful and overcome by the magic of the holiday season they immediately reform.

And so, as Tiny Tim remarked, may Gloom not Prevade the Universe, one and all

 

[Octopus Prime]

So now we’re heading off to Action Comic 319 for the exciting conclusion to a two-part story, The Condemned Superman. And Henry Boltinoff, Edmond Hamilton, Curt Swan, Jim Mooney and/or Geroge Klein wrote and drew it!

I covered part 1, like, a month and a half ago, but the tldr version is the Superman pursued Lex Luthor to another planet hoping it had *really* strict extradition policies and winds up accidentally million-dollar-babying him. And he’s immediately put on trial for his life because, as the name implies, the planet Lexor loves Lexs Luthors.

The justice system on planet Lexor is roughly as impartial and logical as the one in the Phoenix Wright games; you have three days to prove your innocence or you’re condemned to death by petrification, the jury is made up of a child and adult and an old
Person so you’ll be certain to be convicted by someone roughly your age, and also the defense attorney is chosen by playing spin the bottle.

That last bit is especially relevant since Supermans defenders really, really don’t believe his story or that the death was an accident, so they’re not wasting their time with things like “cross-examining the witness” or “finding evidence that proves innocence”

Two things happen that affect the attorneys mood however, first being that Lex was very strict that he not receive an autopsy in case he was killed by suspected foul play, and second that Supermans own honesty prevented a sure fire defense of “temporary insanity caused by toxic flowers” from working, and that he was trying to get a local animal that caused you to blurt out the truth if you’re near it as a character witness. This failed since aforesaid Truth Beasts die of madness if they’re near too many people, and that’s *honestly* the biggest twist of this story since they were putting an awful lot of bullets into that particular chekovs gun.

Anyway, the public defender has now down a total 180 on Superman on the pursuit of truth and justice, and decided to put his total faith in him… by putting on some monks robes to visit him in prison the night before his execution, expecting that Superman knocks him unconscious and sneaks out of the prison in disguise, leaving an even more innocent man to die in his place on death row.

Superman wasn’t in on this plan but went right ahead with it anyway so… umm… not… helping your case a whole lot that Clark.

Anyhow, rather than fleeing the planet in disguise, Superman breaks into Lexs lab hoping to find something incriminating. And since we’ve got two pages left, he does!

Y’see, Lex concocted a powerful knock-out drug that can feign death and made everyone *think* Superman killed him when he took a dive in their fight. The drug lasts five days, Supermans trial and execution would only take 4. And he left these pills out in the open in clearly labeled jars because it’s not like anyone on Lexor can read English (how they’re speaking it is left unresolved).

So Superman grabs some comparably powerful uppers, and heads off to Lexs open air grave and wakes him the hell up to clear his name.

Lex… does not do that, but the justice system has to admit that “attempted murder” isn’t as bad as “successful murder” and doesn’t carry a sentence stronger than an insincere apology from the Judge and a to be banished from the planet.

And Superman says “Well… fine, this planet sucks anyway.” And leaves, with Lex Luthor in charge of a planet that reveres him as a god.

Now this story was written about 60 years ago but I’m pretty sure this is surely the last we’ve ever seen of Lex Luthor

 

[Octopus Prime]

We’ve got some pretty severe double standards from the heiress to the House of El, a scathing indictment of the American Education System circa the mid 60s and a shot being thrown away as Henry Boltinoff, Edmond Hamilton, Curt Swan, Jim Mooney and/or George Klein bring us The Super Cheat!

I feel like this is definitely a Jim Mooney one since he did in fact sign the title page.

We open at lovely Stanhope College, a place of higher learning with a curriculum somewhere between 2nd Grade and Greendale, where we learn that former Primary Mean Girl Donna Storm still holds a grudge against Linda Lee Danvers for managing to pass her sorority hazing ritual thanks to her friendship with Supergirl.

Attentive readers will remember that Donna was convinced that Linda *was* Supergirl for about five minutes until multiple homicidal counterpranks discredited the idea. So now she’s just mean to her.

And not just mean but… also *using an enormous calculator to cheat on her college course arithmetic problems*

Err… technically cheating by mid-60s standards, I guess. By modern standards this is kind of… standard. It took me a momentto realize “oh yeah, digital pocket calculators weren’t a ubiquitous thing back then”. Furthermore I’m typing this entire post out on one that can also make phone calls, function as a television set, and play music.


Nevertheless, Supergirl is scandalized to witness such cheating; and it’s hardly the only example of Donna using her obscene wealth to get good grades.

By using her fathers chemical lab to determine the best nutrients and additives to help tropical plants thrive in cold climates (one of the rare instances of something that could be a college course being taught in Stanhope) she gets an A, but she also catches the attention of the her professor who brings it to the Dean.

Who mentions that’s not really anything punishable, especially since her dad donated an obscene sum to the school which would explain why they have such a nice campus when all their classes have assignments like “describe a fish” and they give full scholarships to students on merit of how polite they are.


Also, hate to side with the billionaires but, like… she’s doing nothing wrong. For all the mustache twirling she’s done, nothing about Donna’s actions is remotely immoral. But she’s a *jerk*, and this is a Superman adjacent comic so something *must* be done. And that something is preposterous overkill.

Eventually Supergirl decides that if the school administration won’t stop what could be only described as “obnoxious, I guess” behavior, then it’s up to her to stop the cheater by… cheating much more thoroughly, but for more people’s benefit!



First in geology class where the assignment is “whoever finds the most valuable mineral wins an A”, Donna smuggles in a gold nugget she had laying around her estate, but Supergirl digs a hole underground and squeezes some coal into diamonds and hands them to the students.

Diamonds are worth more than gold so everyone except Donna gets an A.



In biology, Donna cuts up some expensive encyclopedias to get detailed illustrations of fish, but Supergirl takes the rest of the class to Atlantis and has a mermaid act as a substitute teacher to learn about Weird Fish. And of course, for history class, Donna goes to a film set to learn about the Battle of New Orleans from a historical epic being filmed there while Supergirl… takes the class back in time to watch the fatal duel between Aaron Burr and the orphan, bastard, son of a whore, Alexander Hamilton.

Lin Manuel Miranda left out the part where Supergirl tried to save his life but failed because of the immutability of history. But he *did* mention a hurricane that came into his life, so… maybe he knew.

Anyhow, Donna got a failing mark for that class because the movie was riddled with historical inaccuracies which got a polite chuckle.

Anyway, Donna has, at this point, been upstaged in her using her resources to ease her education by Supergirl using her resources to further everyone else’s education and figures the best solution to this problem is to frame Linda Danvers for theft by stealing all the jewelry on the campus and hiding it in her room!

I don’t see the A>B on that plan but it works and Linda faces expulsion on the grounds of stealing jewels.


But Donna also Makes the fatal mistake of loudly and proudly explaining to Linda that not only did she frame her, but also explains step by step her means and motive for doing so… and announces it over the colleges intercom no less!


How did she do this?

Why, because Supergirl contacted the far futures equivalent of the Justice League, the Legion of Superheroes, who had their shrinky teammate Shrinking Violet hop back in time for a minute, get real tiny, and replace the interior of the tape recorder in Donna’s earrings with a radio transmitter programmed to the schools intercom, of course.

How else did you think that would happen?

Anyway, the Dean says “Oh… yeah that’s a felony.” And has Donna expelled. Serves her right for… giving a teacher a gold nugget, owning a calculator and cutting up an encyclopedia!

 

[Johnny Unusual]

This is probably me telling on myself but I think the writer wanted that to look like Shrinking Violet was working in a mechanical tiddy chamber.

 

[Beowulf]

Anyway, the Dean says “Oh… yeah that’s a felony.” And has Donna expelled. Serves her right for… giving a teacher a gold nugget, owning a calculator and cutting up an encyclopedia!

Honestly, I think this was a valuable use of Supergirl's time. I think she should spend more time driving billionaires crazy that they can't just buy their way to success and then exposing them when they immediately jump to felonies as retribution. Otherwise, they'd probably just align themselves with right-wing fascists and buy the entire government.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Honestly I’m liking the almost Bugs Bunny-esque “I have perceived you being a jerk and now I have become your problem” style of Superman stories way more than the ones where he has to fight a supervillain

 

[Octopus Prime]

Off to the 1955s for another three stories in one issue of Jimmy Olsen which I would deem "two duds and a... decent if slight noire thriller". Which really ain't what I come in to Jimmy Olsen for. Not a damn Turtle Boy in sight. Anyway, collectively, Henry Boltinoff, Otto Binder and Jack Miller wrote it, and Henry Boltinoff, Curt Swan and Ray Burnley drew it. And if the order of the creators matches the order of the stories, Otto and Curt, that's the good one.

Anyway, first off is The Disappearance of Superman and even with the caveat that these are hastily scrabbled together collections of short stories intended for 8 year olds, this is... pretty dang slight and the most memorable part of it is the introductory splash pages which implies that amnesia, killed space disaster, secret retirement or drowned at the bottom of the ocean/earths core are the only possible explanations for why Superman isn't around.

Anyway, Jimmy is backpedalling a back of recent disasters Superman averted trying to figure out why he hasn't been protecting Metropolis from the truly outrageous number of accidents and disasters that plague it and eventually finds him buried in a mine with some Kryptonite while trying to save some miners. The miners, as it turns out, were actually part of the Cob Mob (so named because the head of the gang is named Cobb, and not because they do corn themed felonies) and they lured Superman in there so they could steal stuff more effectively.

Jimmy digs him out, Superman wrangles them up, and Jimmy is pleased for saving Superman for once.

Anyway, the second story, The Hunted Messenger is much better, and is pretty much Premium Rush, but with Jimmy Olsen instead of Joseph Gordon Levitt, and it opens with Jimmy stopping a pair of muggers shaking down a courier with the help of his special crime-foiling fountain pen.

Which absolutely has to be an illegal weapon to carry around concealed. Then again, Jimmy leads the kind of life where I'm sure everyone in the city agrees it's a better for him to carry around weaponized aerosol; he's *going to* get in trouble regardless and every minute Superman doesn't have to save him is a minute he could be saving someone from a plummeting helicopter or throwing an earthquake machine into the sun or whatever.

Regardless, the courier is still beaten pretty savagely, even if the crooks didn't take his, apparently quite valuable, package so Jimmy says "I got nothing else planned for this afternoon, I'll make the delivery for you". And the guy agrees since Jimmy is Supermans pal and that's a pretty solid character witness.

Anyway, Jimmy was a bit distracted since this is a lot to fall in his lap all at once and there's apparently a lot of street addresses in Metropolis with similar names, and additionally, those crooks are still after that package so we have a deadly game of cat and mouse as Jimmy is trying to figure out where the heck he has to go while avoiding deadly criminals dedicated to his death and robbery.

Which, again, is a fun story to read but nothing really worth recapping. Jimmy has a secret collapsible hat on his person at all times in case he needs to disguise himself as a guy with a hat, that's something.

Anyway, Jimmy eventually figures out what the address he was supposed to be delivering the package to, only to learn he was a decoy all along; the owner of the mansion had the actual valuable delivery made in secret and had several fake deliveries made with useless crap at the same time, so if someone was looking to steal the rare book he purchased they'd get nothing instead.

I... don't know why he bothered with that second step if he already had a secret delivery system in place. Furthermore, the crooks followed Jimmy to the guys house and they figured "Oh, it's way easier to just steal all this rich guys valuables at once instead of shaking down a delivery man, let's just do that." Also, the rich guy knows that Jimmy isn't his usual fake delivery man so he figures he should shoot him just to be on the safe side.

All in all, not the best conceived plan. Especially for everyone who decided to shoot Jimmy since Superman finished whatever errands kept him out of this story until now (Let's say he had to thwart, I don't know... Silver Banshee) and figured that he hasn't heard from Jimmy Olsen in twety minutes or so so he's probably about to die. Supes comes in, catches the prospective robbers and the rich old man said "Oh, you're THAT Jimmy Olsen, let's forget I pulled a gun on you, eh?", which is all that Supes needs.

And Jimmy Olsen... get's chewed out by his boss when he tries to write a story about his day because he spelled the name of the street wrong again. Oh Jimmy.

And that brings us to our final story, King for a Day, a story which really stretches the credibility of nobody realizing that Clark Kent is Superman.

We open in the small European country of Doraynia which, like all European countries in 1950s comics, has pretty much never opted to advance beyond the Iron Age. Furthermore they’ve decided they’ve had enough of the tyrannical dictator that replaced their beloved child king with and want the kid back.

As it so happens, Superman knows that kid personally as he was the one who had him secretly brought to America so he wouldn’t be killed in the ensuing bloodbath when the aforesaid tyrannical dictator took power.

I’ll Assume he also helped a bunch of other refugees from Doraynia, but they’re not relevant to this story.

Anyway, the dictators underlings figure “ah geez, better murder this kid so our boss will stay in charge” and elect to do this by hucking bombs at him from over the fence of the private school he’s employed at.



Superman stops them and the boy king says “Well, definitely feel obligated to pay you back for that” and gives a ring with the royal insignia of Doraynia to Jimmy for safekeeping so he can give it to Superman later. Or pawn it off and give the money to charity if he doesn’t want to lock it up in his trophy room or whatever.

Anyway, Jimmy and Clark Kent are assigned to imbed themselves in the Doryanian coronation of their king and cover it live. And Jimmy, since he’s wearing the ring and nobody has seen the king since he was a child, is assumed to be the king.

This is temporarily great for Jimmy since he’s showered with gifts like unlimited milkshakes and also being smooched by the kings fiancé (not sure on the ethics of not correcting her since it’s a matter of national security in this case, but he probably should have rebuffed her).

But there’s also some drawbacks, like how the palace is still crawling with assassins who want the dictator back in power. Luckily Clark is, like, right there. And he keeps interfering with the assassination attempts. And *not a one of them* thinks “hey this mild mannered reporter is astonishingly hard to kill” and connects that thought to the fact that Superman is also nearby.

No, they just assume that everyone sucks at assassinating people.

Anyway, eventually the dictator figures that if direct murder isn’t working it’s time for something convoluted; and fakes Jimmy’s signature on a document indicating that he intended to sell the country to a hostile power and so must be executed by firing squad.

Which everyone accepts with no scrutiny whatsoever.

Anyway, again, Superman is around so it’s hard to do something unethical; he saves Jimmy from the firing squad, exposes the prime minister as being the dictators chief assassin and then the real boy king shows up since his flight was delayed and he’s made Adult King instead.

And Jimmy admits that he didn’t like the assassination attempts when he was king but he liked being smooched by the boy kings adult fiancé.

STORY OVER, NO MORAL

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Which everyone accepts with no scrutiny whatsoever.

OUR LAW FOLLOWS GENIE RULES!

 

[Octopus Prime]

As expected from a Lois Lane comic from the 1950s, we've got gaslighting and subterfuge, but we also got possibly the worst impulsive idea Lois Lane has ever had and Jerry Seigel beating Chris Claremont to the punch by, like, 25 years as we're invited to spend Three Nights in the Fortress of Solitude!

This one was written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Kurt Schffenberger and I know that with a degree of certainty this time because the credits page lists the writers in order and there's only one artist for the whole issue!

So we open up at the North Pole, in Supermans Fortress of Solitude, which Lois is writing an article on for the Daily Planet; one of the rare instances of Perry White assigning his star reporter something that is actually worth her talents. She's been there before, of course, but this time it's for business not pleasure.

Well... it's also clearly a date, but she is on the clock.

Anyway, after a quick rundown on the essential details of what the Fortress is for any readers new to the idea (Supermans vacation home, full of alien artifacts he's recovered) we get to the real meat and potatoes of why Lois is interested in the place. And this time it's because Lois is stuck in "I will use my beguiling talents to convince Superman to marry me" mode for this story, as opposed to the much more fun "Step aside pops, *Ace Reporter Lois Lane* is on the case" mode.

To whit; she understands that the reason Superman won't marry her is because it would make her a target for basically every criminal in the world since a reporter with no regard whatsoever for her own safety when it comes to following a hot scoop is *way* wasier to kill than an alien strongman who survived a planet exploding when he was a baby. However, she also udnerstands that Superman has his own *Fortress* so it's hard to imagine there's a safer place on the planet.

She didn't really pick up on the other half of the name of the place which implies he doesn't usually like entertaining visitors so much in it, but Lois gets the idea in her head to the Fortresses defenses in her favor to prove she'd be safe enough to be a stay-at-home wife for Superman.

The idea comes when he's showing off a deadly telescope that catches and emits the preposterously deadly rays of a rare star; anyone exposed to them will, for three days, be *instantly vaporized to death* if they come into contact with direct sunlight. This is... an incredibly, incredibly dangeous thing to just leave laying around Clark, but on the other hand... it's not like Superman himself is in any danger from it, and it's a Fortress of Solitude, not a Fortress of Public Gathering.

On the other hand... he invited Lois and she has a duplicitous scheme to marry Superman in mind so she douses herself with absurdly lethal radiation so he'll be obligated to keep her in the Fortress for several days before the effect dissipates; otherwise a barely open window would blow her atoms apart.

Supermans reaction is more of a resigned "I brought this on myself" than concern his girlfriend may have just killed herself weird. And he still has Superman Jobs to do, so he leaves her in the fortress solo while the radiation runs its course.

And naturally we get three days worth of Lois trying to keep herself busy in the Fortress. Which is extremely easy for an ace reporter with no concept of self preservation... and she immediately regrets it.

Like the day she accidentally wandered in front of the rays of a hypnotic jewel that convinced her she was transformed into a plant-girl.

Or when the coat she was wearing enraged an alien pet which then wrapped her up in its tentacles.

Or... uh...

Calm down, Jerry Siegel.

Between this we've also had instances of the Fortress' heater failing (a problem when you're at the North Pole), and all the bedding in the Fortress flying around at night.

We also have Lois finding the closet where Superman hides his Christmas Presents and we learn that he has a fake one for Clark Kent, just to throw off anyone who breaks into the Fortress looking for proof that Clark and Superman are the same person. It is a level of overthinking things worthy of Light Yagami.

Anyway, after a long weekends worth of being terrorized in her boyfriends house in the most inaccessible place on Earth Lois decides that the Fortress of Solitude *sucks* as a place to live if you're not super-charged by Earths Yellow Sun and decides to get the hell out. Which, luckily, is when her radiation poisoning has passed so she easily can. And Superman reveals to us that all of the terror and trauma (and spankings) Lois went through for the last few days was a little silly prank he was pulling. The Fortress was WAY more comfortable and secure than he let her think; he arranged for the heater to fail, her to put on a housecoat that would enrage his pet tentacle monster, and planted a hypnotic gem that makes you think you're a plant and programmed his robot to give her a spanking all in order to prove that...

uhh...

Superman doesn't want people in his personal space?

Well I'm convinced.

 

[Kirin]

What a dick. Though to be fair, Lois was also being a manipulative brat. I suppose maybe these versions of the characters deserve each other? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Between this we've also had instances of the Fortress' heater failing (a problem when you're at the North Pole), and all the bedding in the Fortress flying around at night.

Superman faces public outrage after giving a Christmas gift to Louis CK

 

[Octopus Prime]

We’ve got Superman not scrutinizing things too deeply, some ridiculously contrived excuses and a plot point I’m shocked hasn’t been mined for all it’s worth by Grant Morrison in… The Three Super Enemies! Otto Binder, Leo Dorfman, Jim Mooney and Al Plastic are all in the credits and my gut tells me this is an Otto and Al joint.

Anyway, as usual there’s nothing newsworthy happening in Metropolis (Winston Churchill died and Lyndon Johnson was inaugurated as president following the death of JFK, but neither of those things were inside city limits) so Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen has volunteered to test an atomic fallout shelter for the army by being locked inside for a few days and seeing how they like the place.

This being a Superman comic, and the inciting event being “Superman is stuck in a room for a little while” things in Metropolis *immediately* take a hard swerve into Weird Disaster; a massive EMP hits the city causing all electric systems to fail. One may, logically, assume that there’s some Connection between an EMP wave, such as what follows a nuclear blast, and all the lead characters being in a place that protects you from nuclear blasts.

But nope; just a coincidence! Turns out some crooks build a machine that sends out inhibitor waves to turn off security alarms so they can steal stuff more easily. And, luckily, they opted to do this when Superman was locked inside a room with two other people so he can’t duck away and solve the problem himself. So he gets himself some ringers in the most elegant, sensible way possible;

He distracts Lois and Jimmy by telling them to go make him some supper, then he quickly tears apart the radio transmitter in the shelter and rebuilds it into a Time Machine, hoping to get the Legion of Superheroes on the horn and have them stop the crooks and disable the EMP.

But it turns out the EMP also turned off the future (…?) so he has to put his Time Machine telephone in reverse and contact the distant past instead. And, luckily, several of mythologies mightiest figures are all… hanging out together near Ancient Metropolis. And Superman figures “Second choice is good enough” and brings Hercules, Atlas and Samson to the present to stop the threat.

The three of them introduce themselves to Superman and show off their incredible powers and Superman thinks that’s *kind of weird*, since he’s met the three of them before a few times (Superman leads an interesting life) and their superpowers begin and end with “Very Strong”, not water control, lightning, shapeshifting, petrification and hypnosis.

But he also doesn’t dispute it and sends them off to stop the crooks and restore power to the city, which they do with gusto.


And then they say “Yeah… the futures great. We’re going to stay here. Furthermore… this whole city? It’s ours now.” And proceed to terrorize Metropoolis and also flood a chunk of it beneath the ocean; and Superman thinks “Ahh geez, are these guys evil? I don’t remember them being evil…?”



Anyway, the army realizes that the fallout shelter that Clark Lois and Jimmy are in is radiation proof, but not water proof, so they let them out so they don’t drown and Clark can scamper off and turn into Superman to deal with the three Super Enemies more directly.Superman also goaded them into flooding the city hoping for this precise outcome so… uh… sorry about your homes and livliehoods everyone around the Metropolis bay; but *someone* was embarrassed about their second job.



Anyway, Superman and the trio tussle for a bit but it doesn’t go far; everyone is comparably strong and invulnerable and the powers of the gods doesn’t count as “magic” in terms of hurting Superman this time so Superman says “Look, this has been fun and all but there’s another *even worse* supervillain I accidentally brought from the past! So I gotta go deal with him first!” And the trio says “What! No way is anyone worse than the three of us!” And opt to go off to deal with the new villain themselves in order to show off who the *real* evil mythological strongman is.

This is, of course, a ruse. Besides having the wrong powers Superman noticed that the three of them are *kinda dumb* and probably wouldn’t notice if he changed his shirt and used his powers to replicate other, more specific powers.

Starting by drinking the ocean (he drilled a hole in the seabed and then stuck a straw into the water), reshaping metal (heat vision to make it soft), petrification (ice breath) and causing baldness.

The trio quickly realize they’re no match for the Omni-Menace (né Superman) and immediately fall back to plan B; immediately submitting to his power.

Superman works them like slaves to rebuild what they’ve wrecked of Metropolis and build a palace in his honor (except Samson; he’s bald now, and therefor powerless) and, at their first opportunity flee him and head back to the time telephone to go back to Ancient Greece… and also Rome… but outside of Metropolis.

So Superman says “Awesome, my jobs done and donates the castle he used slave labour to build to the museum, and then learns why exactly Atlas Hercules and Samson were evil.

Turns out he didn’t build a *Time Machine*, he built an Evil Parallel Dimension Time Machine and yanked the three of them from an alternate history where Earth was dominated by cruel tyrant versions of its ancient protectors. A story point that, inexplicably, Grant Morrison never discovered and ran with like the cops were after them. Surely it would have come up at some point during Death Metal or in some extra dark Wonder Woman story or something...

Ah well.

 

[jpfriction]

Man I need a machine that calls and instantly teleports evil versions of mythological figures to my location. I’d get so much done.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Apparently all the parts you need are in any two-way radio

 

[jpfriction]

Sweet, I’m going to get evil Odysseus to fix my dock.

 

[Octopus Prime]

We’ve got the tactical deployment of space hunks and a *l’il bit* of off screen genocide as some quantity of the assembly of Otto Binder, Leo Dorfman, Jim Mooney and Al Plastino bring us The Man Who Broke Supergirls Heart.


One day, like many days, an invisible spaceship lands on Earth for the sole purpose of messing with people. In this case, it’s a spaceship piloted by Bronor and Skoll of the planet Colyx and they're just there to spy on Supergirl.

You may think that them taking inventory of their various supplies as they approach the planet is plot relevant. Don’t worry, this is a Silver Age Superman story, pretty sure they were just being paid by the word, not even the careful explanation of what their knockout drugs do ever comes up again.

Using a special Weird Hat they’re able to perfectly analyze all of Supergirls emotional responses to colours, music, fashion and her parents opinion of her (by studying the Bottle City of Kandor… which is *not* where Supergirls very deceased parents lived), all as part of an insidious goal… To make the Perfect Hunk!

Behold the perfect man; Randor!

Naming a completely generic man “Rando” is a bit on the nose, but Supergirl doesn’t think so after saving him from a staged rock slide and he gives her some mild compliments.

You wouldn’t think “Super describes your beauty as well as your abilities” would be as effective a pickup line as it is, but I guess Kara is really starved for attention because she’s now head over heels in love with this bland, bland man. Though I guess she may just want to hook up with someone who isn’t her horse.

We’ve all been there.



Meanwhile, back at the invisible spaceship, the evil Bronar, maker of Hunks (I want to stress that this comic was written in the 60s before “Bro” and “Rando” had their current associations) are delighted that their evil plan is working; Supergirl is totally dtf a boring boring man! And also he gives Randor a belt made of a material similar to Lead!

Weirdly the “not quite lead belt” is the plot relevant thing out of everything Bronar does.

Meanwhile after informing Supergirl (as Linda Lee Danvers) that she skates very well, Rando decides it’s okay to reveal his secret; he’s a prince from the planet Colyx and he abdicated his throne because he thought Supergirl was hot!

Supergirl thinks “aww, that’s sweet” and elects to take a vacation with him to meet his family.

They’ve met each other twice and it would be charitable to call the second time a date, and both of their conversations have consisted of him saying “Wow! You’re pretty!” so this is a pretty rapid progression for a relationship.

Also if he abandoned his planet I don’t know if you can, like… just go right back.

Evidentially you can, since they do, and Supergirl decides to give being a Royal Princess a shot and hops on to the throne… only to immediately pass out because *HA! IT WAS A TRICKY TRAP!*

The king reveals himself to be Bronar, someone she’d never met before, and furthermore that he and Skoll are the last living beings on their planet of Evil Geniuses, after they’d built lifelike android slaves to replace everyone else on the planet. Furthermore, it wasn’t a Princess Throne she was tricked into sitting on, it was a super power transfer chair, and all her powers have now gone to Bronar! But to put her mind to ease that Rando betrayed her, he also informers her that he was a robot full of goo; which he then stabs.

There was a hell of a lot of wind-up to this plan!

This would be a pretty bad state to be in, but luckily that sword wound hit Randor right in the loyalty circuits (I… guess?) and it allowed him to act on his hearts true feelings for Supergirl and he reveals that his not-quite-lead lined belt also had a rock of Kryptonite in it for some reason, which he aims at Bronar.

Since Bronar got a Kryptonians weaknesses as well as powers, this weakens him enough for the dying Rando to huck him on to the power switching chair and give Supergirl her power back.

Bronar confesses his love to her again while he melts into goo, and Supergirl informs the Android population of Colyx that if they wanted to overthrow the last two living things on the planet, she wouldn’t mind, then carves Randos face on the moon and leaves.

Aww, Happy International Womans Day, y’all.

 

[Octopus Prime]

We’ve got the surprise (sorta) debut of a major DC comics character, lots of irrelevant cameos, and some size envy as Jerry Siegel and Curt Swan bring us Superman in Kandor

It’s a three part story, so… I’m assuming that’s the title they’re using for the whole thing. Kind of fits better. Also, unfortunately it’s one of those stories that’s *kinda* good, but in a way where over five decades worth of advancement in comic book storytelling really holds it back so it’s just disappointing.

Anyway, it’s a normal day in Metropolis; which means, of course, that a bunch of mysterious raiders in silly striped costumes are committing a series of daring high value robberies all over the world.

Notably, besides their ridiculous outfits, they all possess an extreme level of super strength, flight, and are speaking Kryptonian. Which, all together, makes Superman say “uh… hey… umm… that’s… that’s my thing”.

And when he goes to confront the Super Raiders about it, the immediately beat him into the ground like a fence post and run off.

Since none of the Raiders were Supergirl or General Zod or Bizarro or Ultraman, that kind of limits the list of suspects Supes has for what Kryptonians could be at large so, along with Jimmy Olsen who happened to have his name on the comic so he needs to be around, he heads off to the Fortress of Solitude and confirms his suspicions; the door has been knocked out from the inside and the Bottle City of Kandor has been unsealed.

Kandor, of course, was the capital city of Krypton that was yanked out of the bedrock and shrunk down to microscopic size by Brainiac for further study, until it was liberated by Superman, who has never been able to figure out how to restore the city without destroying it. Turns out sentient supercomputers that absorb the knowledge of entire civilizations are *pretty good* at building one-way shrink rays when they put their mind to it.

Anyhoo, figuring that the people of Kandor might be able to explain what the heck is going on, Supes and Jimmy use a two-way shrinking device on themselves and head into the Bottle City, landing on the outskirts; where a kindly hermit Nor-Kan greets them and says “Superman, I love ya, but stay out of the city; they really hate you there now”.

And Superman says “Nah; I’m *Superman*, being hated isn’t my thing” and heads into the city. …where he’s Immediately confronted with people burning effigies of him and sending attack dogs after him and Jimmy for the evil he’s visited upon their society.

Which, besides being demoralizing, is an actual problem since Kandors perfect replica of Krypton’s environment means Supes’ powers don’t work here. Anyway, the two make their way back to Nor-Kans cottage who says “Told ya!” and explains that another scientist; Than-Ol, invented a relatively simple way to restore the Kandorians size to the and Superman deliberately kept it from them.

Supes says “Well that doesn’t sound like me…” and wants to get More information; and since everyone in the city would attack him on sight; that means is *disguise time*; and he and Jimmy decide to dress like Batman and Robin! But Krypton doesn’t have Bats or Robins so they go for the next best thing;

Nightwing and Flamebird!

Wildly different costume aside, yes, this *is* where Nightwing got his name from. I think there’s a Flamebird as well, but, if so, I don’t know much about them.

Together, Superman and Jimmy Ambush one of Than-Ols (*really* hard not to write Thanos) goons and find his re-bigulator and, studying it, Superman says “Oh… okay, in fairness, yes I did discover this and deliberately kept it from everyone.” But doesn’t elaborate further until way later in the story.

No, we still got a bunch of pages to fill so Supes and Jimmy try to break into Than Ols’ lab only to find it full of poison gas, and also raise a militia of people who trust Superman and don’t believe he was betraying them and also disguising himself as someone who looks inexplicably identical to Superman.



Eventually Superman and Jimmy realize they have all the information they need so they leave Kandor and hide in the Phantom Zone for a bit to avoid pursuit by the Super Raiders (briefly meeting up with Jax-ur; the worst mass murderer in Kryptonian history who mainly just taunts them a bit) and also popping over to Atlantis to say hello to Supermans mermaid ex girlfriend Lori.



Anyway, after escaping the Raiders Superman explains why he kept the growth ray a secret; it’s only effective in short bursts; after a few hours whatever is expanded disintegrates.

Naturally, time was of the essence so he couldn’t have said that before now in the story. And it's hard to imagine something dissolving without a real-time visual aide is out of the question so they took 3 hours to enlarge and then dissolve a tiny replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Superman has a very stressful job and sometimes he likes to take some time to unwind.

Of course it took so long to watch the Eiffel Tower melt that Thans guys successfully took Kandor to a more secluded part of the world and expanded it, and Superman says “Oh right… the exact situation I was trying to prevent.” and flies off to Kandor; Just in time to Re-shrink it just as it atoms start flying apart.

So Than-Ol says “Oh… I just about caused another Kryptonian genocide. Uh… sorry about that everyone” and everyone immediately does a 180 on thinking Superman betrayed them to lord over everyone as a gargantuan god, and Superman learns a valuable lesson about time Management, I guess.


Happy March Madness, everyone!

 

[Felicia]

And naturally we get three days worth of Lois trying to keep herself busy in the Fortress. Which is extremely easy for an ace reporter with no concept of self preservation... and she immediately regrets it.

Like the day she accidentally wandered in front of the rays of a hypnotic jewel that convinced her she was transformed into a plant-girl.

Or when the coat she was wearing enraged an alien pet which then wrapped her up in its tentacles.

Or... uh...

Calm down, Jerry Siegel.

Just catching up with this, and I have to say: As far as "famous Golden Age writers who wrote comic stories about their kinks" go, Jerry Siegel is no William Moulton Marston. But I admire the attempt.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

That said, you can find horny Joe Shuster art with characters who sure look like Lois and Clark (the new adventures of superman)

 

[Felicia]

That said, you can find horny Joe Shuster art with characters who sure look like Lois and Clark (the new adventures of superman)

Yeah, but I got the impression that those were more "eh, a paycheck's a paycheck" than a genuine interest.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Superman finding a series of increasingly bonkers solutions to a weird problem *and* falling in love with a woman with the initials LL? Looks like Ed Hamilton and I presume Curt Swan and George Klein brought us a typical Wednesday in The Weakest Man in the World.

And this Wednesday, like so many others; opens with a *space crime!*

More specifically; alien thieves appear in a giant ball ship and steal the Washington Monument! Presumably to attach to the middle of their ship so that other aliens can look at it and snicker.


Anyway, Supes ain’t having none of that, retrieving the Monument and then chasing the thieves in their ship to deep space, eventually catching up to them near the planet Thorona. Unfortunately Thorona has a red sun, whose light weakens Superman, but he didn’t notice since the thieves ship also had the ability to mess up the colours of anything near it.

So Superman crashes outside the Thoron capital, powerless. Which is unfortunate but hardly the first time he’s been in that kind of situation. What makes this situation a bit different and *much* worse is made clear when he finds a couple of kids who are playing catch with a steel ball the size of a car, and he realizes “oh geez… everyone in this planet *except* me has extreme super strength."

He comes to this conclusion after an adult tells those kids to stop tossing a stranger around like a softball and Superman decides to deck him; breaking his hand in the process. Anyway so Superman gets arrested, but only on the charge of being a scrawny weakling and not because he punched the first person who tried to help him in the face.

At his arraignment, courtesy of a mind reading device (because why ask when you have wear a silly hat attached to a TV; this is a Superman comic after-all) the Thoron people learn that Superman is the mightiest hero and protector of the Earth; and immediately figure “Oh, if *this guy* is the best they got it’ll be incredibly easy to conquer the planet!”. So they huck Supes into prison while they get an invasion fleet ready.

Luckily this is a Superman comic and one of the jurors who convicted him is named Lahla, and a double L initial is, by far, Supermans most prominent fetish, so they immediately fall in love; and she breaks him out of Puny Weakling jail and they go on the lam to the mountains.

Naturally Superman is a more bit concerned about the whole “Unstoppable flying strongman army poised to ransack the Earth” thing, and, this being a Superman comic, opts to solve the problem via convoluted trickery; using Layla’s enormous strength to put her to work as a miner and hew strong metals out of the mountain and then fashion them into a robot Superman that has enormous strength hoping to trick the Thorons into thinking he was just pretending to be a weeny.

A plan that works for about two seconds before a bunch of them melt its skin off with heat vision. The Thorons didn’t care that Superman escaped prison, he’s so pitifully weak that they had no reason to be concerned; but building a robot to destroy their city is kind of where they draw the line (understandable) so they sentence him and Layla to the harshest fate their planet has; sending them to the Dark Side. A region of the planet that never gets any sunlight and has nuclear volcanos all over the place.

This was, like, a decade before Jack Kirby knocked on the door so a “Dark Side” of a planet with perpetual fire pits is just a coincidence.

Anyway, Layla explains that Thorons gain their extreme strength from exposure to daylight; and their planet usually just has the one side ever facing the sun, so being exiled to the darkness is pretty much the harshest punishment possible; even setting aside the atomic volcano issue.


Luckily, half the planet being a nuclear oubliette in a vast plane of lead-enriched soil is exactly the break that Superman was hoping for; and he fashions some protective shielding from the flames out of the lead stone that’s everywhere and turns a volcanic vent into a forge that he and Lahlya can shape metal with. You *might* think that scraping up vast quantities of lead with your bare hands and then using a radioactive fire as a crucible to refine metal would be a bad idea for all kinds of health code violating reasons.

But you’d be wrong; it all goes really smoothly and soon Superman has built a gigantic robot with a hell of a strong pitching arm; which he uses to chuck Lahla and himself clear into another solar system, with a much more hospitable *yellow* star.

Suitable repowered, Superman shoves an asteroid in front of Thorons Sun, causing a permanent eclipse, removing their super powers and thereby saving the earth.

The Thorons reaction to this is mild annoyance that they can’t conquer another planet, but it’s no big deal otherwise. Again you’d think that a permanent darkness covering the planet would be an apocalyptic situation since they couldn’t grow any plants or anything but *nope* just spoiled their fun afternoon of conquering a planet.

Superman takes Lahla back to Earth, since she’s a condemned felon on her own planet and prepares himself for having another angle in his complicated romantic life of being town between Lana Lang and Lois Lane… when she reveals that, no, he does not.

Turns out she’s really into being the big tough one in a relationship and only was into Superman thinking he was a snivelling worm; so she immediately dumps him in favor of a meek nerd; who is… also really into the idea.


Definitely a happy ending for those two; everyone else can take five.