Super Friends #11: Never Mind Joker's Boner, Here's The ...

It’s pretty clear to me that E.Nelson Bridwell looked at his 1976 assignment to write the companion comic to the popular Super Friends Saturday Morning Cartoon as one fuck of an opportunity. He extrapolated on the premise of the team, worked in references to contemporary continuity in the DC comics universe proper, and featured guest appearances not only from other DC heroes but the occasional oblique cameo from a Marvel character or three. Bridwell also introduced a long-running storyline pitting the Super Friends against an evil mastermind, created what may be the first international and multi-ethnic team of super heroes by the way of the Global Guardians, and created an extensive backstory and developing story arc for Wendy, Marvin and the Wonder Twins. Oh, and also this:



Yes, Superman. You. Uh. You blew that job. One might actually call it a … well, they’d just call it that is what, Superman.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Superboy Spectacular 1980

Note: This article was written back when Smallville was in its first season, just to give you some probably-not-necessary background. The only difference it made was that I was not yet aware that Kristen Kreuk is an actress only in the same regards that Hitler is some sort of cuddly bunny, and as an actress actually resembled something less like an actress and more like a horrible odor that clings to your curtains and you don't know where it came from but you spray and spray with Febreze and it never gets any better so you replace the curtains finally and the smell lingers on and then it turns out that it's a dead raccoon in the heating vent. Seriously, she is not very good.

Anyway, the article ...


Yo, is it warm in here or is it just me? Anyway, I'm the Man O'Metal as I'm sure you could probably have deduced from my very metal-appearing blue skin and my flaming shoulder which just SCREAMS "metal." Yes, ever since I fell into a vat of molten metal, I've been encased in metal and on fire ... pretty much like would happen to ANYone who fell into a vat of metal. Difference is, I can still wear pants, breathe, and survive.

But neverminding what appears to be the most insane and haphazardly put together Man of Steel, here's a Man of Steel in the making, plus his dog of steel and planet of idiocies. Was that mean? It might just be that MY EFFING SHOULDER'S ON FIRE! Yow! It makes me testy!

What with the WB Network's upcoming "Smallville" TV show, I thought it appropriate to take a look at the kind of young Clark Kent we frankly will never see again. Back before every young Superman had to have a six pack that'd take top honors at the Arnold Classic, doe eyes, artistically tousled hair, and a pouty mug hanging from a set of cheekbones that'd make Linda Evangelista weep, we had a very earnest, round-faced farmkid in a set of fancy pajamas. And a six pack that'd take top honors at the Arnold Classic - jesus, you'd think with all the times Clark visited the "ol swimming hole" with Lana and the kids from Smallville High, they might've noticed that their pet bookworm was built like Lee Haney, only mildly paler.

Anyway, I was recently able to get my hands on a
Superboy Spectacular from 1980, which overall reads like "Superboy's Most Embarrassing Home Videos" - seven "classic" stories, one of which was a brand new fable letting us in on YET ANOTHER chance meeting of the teenage Clark Kent and teenage Bruce Wayne before their adult super-careers. These two kept meeting long before forming the World's Finest team, and each meeting was a triumphant exercise in stupidity, pretty much.

I should stop and point out here that my affection for the superman Family is unchecked: I love me some Superman. I love me some Krypto. I love me some Nightwing and Flamebird, some Supercar, some Bottle City of Kandor and, to a degree that worries my wife greatly, I love me some Supergirl. But Lord,
some of these stories.

The opening tale, for instance, relates the oft-flashed-back-to origin of Superman's costume, which was called during his Superbaby days (I kid not) his super-playsuit. That's right, Superman isn't flying around in his pajamas, he's not flying around in his underwear ... no, folks, he's flying around in the playclothes he wore as a toddler and which were woven from his swaddling blankets. Inspired personally, I now wear footed fuzzy pajamas to the office.

Some people say the Crisis On Infinite Earths was a bad thing, what with decades of admittedly haphazardly assembled canon taking a fucking savage beating in the name of revisionism. Personally, I think that when you've got a secret origin for your UNDERWEAR, you're criminally overwritten anyway. Like, I'm pretty sure the St.John's Bay jeans currently shielding my chair seat from the unfettered superpowers of my ass just came off an
assembly line in Botswana. I don't need to know how the threads were individually unravelled in order to appreciate that these are pretty nice pants.

One of the best parts of these old Superbaby stories, besides the infant Superman's charmingly retarded personal twist on baby speak - "This am not ice cream cone! Me sad! Waaaaah!" - was that Ma and Pa Kent honestly called him "Superbaby." Occasionally "Clark," sometimes "Son," probably - off-panel - they may have called him "Oh please stop beating me with your super fists, I'm sorry I said you couldn't have a cookie before bedtime," but predominantly they refer to their bundle of pride and joy as "Superbaby." I don't know what to make of that, but I think I would have gotten a little bit of a kick out of it if my parents had called me "Humble G&F Editor Baby," myself.

Second story in this tome introduces one of my favorite Superboy villains, the "Kryptonite Kid," and his immensely more brilliant partner ... "KRYPTONITE DOG!" If the odds of Superboy's pet
dog making it to Earth from his random path through space were already long, add to it the factor of a criminal from another planet being sent into space on a deadly experimental mission where he AND THE BULLDOG THEY SENT WITH HIM fly through a kryptonite cloud and gain amazing powers and then go to Earth to fight boy-on-boy and dog-on-dog with Earth's Mightiest Teen ...
in the Silver Age DC Universe, it's about a two-to-one chance. Odds are even in an 80-page giant.

Kryptonite Dog is pretty much the most cruel and amazing villain EVER in the Superman rogues gallery - yes, even more so than Zha-Vam, Terra Man and the Puzzler COMBINED. Don't believe me? Well, dig this ... At one point he maliciously lures Krypto to a tasty pile of bones which he then TURNS INTO KRYPTONITE BONES for NO other reason than to rub it in Krypto's face. He doesn't even fight Krypto, or try to kill him or whatever. He just teases him for not having any tasty bones. Wow! That's some complex motivation for a freaking bulldog, kryptonite or no.

The whole thing ends with Superboy and Krypto getting their impervious asses saved by Master Mxyzptlk, the teen version of ... man, if you can't figure out who he's the teen version of, me changing one freaking vowel in his name isn't going to help.

The absolute winner of this collection is a clumsy and inarticulate "Life On Krypton" story where Superboy uses some kind of mind ray device to recall his infant memories of his home planet. What we learn is that life on Krypton is nothing but a series of unconnected and unconscienably stupid vignettes, and that "Me want ice cream" is still retarded baby speak, even on a world light years away.

Actually, the highlight of this epic adventure into rambling pointlessness is Jor-El's FIRST accidental launching of Krypto into the icy grip of certain death deep in space. That's right folks, Krypton's greatest scientist doomed his boy's favorite pet not ONCE, but twice! The greatest mind on Krypton, folks. Personally, I think maybe Jor-El was just getting tired of finding his anti-grav slippers chewed down the atomic generator, or 'accidents' all over the Phantom Zone controls. Kal-El would've come home from space-school one astro-day to find science-dad saying "We gave Krypto to a family of cosmic farmers, son. He'll be happier there ..." and then a couple days later Kal-El notices Krypto's collar in the garbage on the curb. "Me want dog him no at space farm ice cream! WAAaah! Gargle!" he'd bellow, typically.

Not-yet-Superbaby's mom Lara is so incensed at Jor'el's attempted canicide, she actually LEAVES Jor-El. Why this gave me such inordinate pleasure, I cannot say, but on some levels it seems to me she probably should've seen the writing on the wall when Jor-El was firing every living creature he could get his hands on into space. "He might have a mean streak," I'm sure she found herself thinking on occasion.

So she ups and takes baby Kal with her, and to help keep his mind off their current troubles - you know, his dog is dead, his dad's fucking insane, the planet is doomed - she takes her beloved boy on a tour of Krypton's recreational marvels, ending in what I THINK is supposed to be comical mischief on the part of Kal-El, but really just comes off as pointless stupidity that filled ten pages the same way a stopped toiler can fill a bathroom. At a "robot showroom," Kal accidentally gets locked inside a robot and almost chokes
to death on robot farts, or whatever was going on. Then mom send Baby Kal on an underwater rocket into the midst of a battle between sea monsters. Maybe to teach him not to climb inside any more damn robots.

But oh, the finest moment occurs when Kal visits the "Hall Of Worlds," where donning a cape and rocket pack, he zooms around among the exhibits of life on other worlds, including a life-size diorama featuring - you guessed it, because you can sense stupidity as well as I can - Kal's future adoptive parents, complete with name tags. Awesome. Good lord.

Getting back to the Crisis On Infinite Earths, briefly, is there even the most die-hard fan out there who honestly thinks it benefits anyone to keep that kind of nonsense in continuity? That kind of nonsense is what precipitates ... bitter and profanity-laden articles like this one. Let's stop the cycle
of hate.

Anyway, more stupidity keeps abounding until Jor-El's public humiliation inspires Lara to return to her man, while along the way Kal inadvertently saves Krypto from endless decades trapped in the cold, unforgiving void. Until the next time it happens.

The next half of the comic wraps up with some pretty standard classic tales from a number of Superboy's creative eras, beginning with one where Superboy rather graphically demonstrates to the town of Smallville why he shouldn't be asked to compete in high school sports like football - in not so many words, but rather eloquently spoken after atomizing a tackle dummy in his demonstration of his gridiron skills, Superboy seems to tell the crowd of hicks: "I'd fucking kill everyone."

Then there's Superboy on a "To Tell The Truth" type panel show, and fighting ANOTHER damn Kryptonian - Last Son of Krypton my ASS, the only Kryptonians who didn't escape that planet's destruction were ones who'd deliberately been tied down to the planet's core, and shot in the fucking face before the explosion. It all ends with the aforementioned meeting of teen Clark and teen Bruce Wayne, one of the small legion of meetings between Superboy and the teen versions of his Justice League pals - remembering that Hal Jordan, Aquaman, and Oliver Queen ALSO met Clark as teens, and so did Lois Lane, Braniac, and for all I know, me.

In closing, though, I leave you with this: Best wishes from Superboy and his friends. You know, like Mxyzptlk, and the Kryptonite Kid who, earlier in that very issue, was trying to kill superboy to death via the loss of his life. Here, he warmly places a hand on Pete Ross' shoulder and smiles
gently. Ah, how time has tendered us all.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Christmas With The Super-Heroes

The first ever audio Gone&Forgotten comes to you courtesy of a plainly horrible holiday offering which comes screaming from the heart of the Seventies - Christmas With The Super-Heroes.


Every Christmas with the Super Heroes starts out as smiles and gifts, but after a few holiday scotches, Robin's demanding a divorce from Batman, Superman's crying on the patio and Wonder Woman's locked herself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine.



Man, good times.

If you grew up in the Seventies, or even the Eighties, you probably had a couple of these albums yourself, either the stand-alone albums or the ones which came with a horribly written comic attached to the sleeve. The art was usually stock, if I remember.

Nowadays, I have more than a dozen of these things - far more than I ever had as a kid, and this includes Reflections Of A Rock Super-Hero, which was this mixed-genre rock concept album that caused you to die of horribleness anew with each track. Then Stan Lee would do a spoken segment, and you'd be soothed back to life, only to be brutally killed again by the NEXT goddamn caterwauling. For more accurate description of this album, please see Dante's Inferno.

But back to this album, what we have are three Christmas-themed stories featuring the Kennedies of DC Comics, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Appropriately, they all deal with traditional seasonal themes, such as Santa Claus, charity, and nuclear missiles killing the merry fuck out of everything. HO HO HO!

Superman starts us off with "Light Up The Tree, Mister President," which is fun to sing along to "Turn Me On Mister Dead Man" or "What's the Frequency, Kenneth." Jimmy Olsen kicks off the scene, interviewing folks - like this excitable fella from the Pacific Northwest - at the site of the annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the lawn of the White House.

Little does Jimmy know that a crazy-ass mad scientist-type has rigged up what is probably the least rational doomsday plan in the history of everything. A kidnapped Jimmy has the plan explained to him - via a series of images on television screens, very helpful for those of us LISTENING TO A RECORD, MAN! - by apocalyptically-obsessed madman genius Thurston Killgore, who probably wouldn't be half the menace he is had he been born "Ted" to Ira and Dianne Shelby.

In a flashback, we hear the once-respected Killgore addressing Congress with a program I believe he called "Operation Enduring Killing Everyone On Earth With Nuclear Bombs Until America Is All That's Left," and not to go all political here but I SWEAR some of the stuff he's bellowing sounds like it came straight from a Rumsfield press conference. Naturally, Congress would NEVER go along with any plan which involved America launching pre-emptive strikes on another country with weapons of mass destruction - right? Right - so they lock Killgore up in the nut pokey and forget about him.

But he comes back with a plan for revenge, based on the following logic - he wants the world to die in nuclear fire, right? Right. But the only man who can launch America's arsenal of nuclear weapons - in this story, that's FIVE - is the President, via the special button in his office. But Killgore has RIGGED the button which lights the Christmas Tree on the White House lawn so that IT launches the missiles when the President lights the tree! AND it explodes one that's hidden in the tree itself! It's DEVIOUS, and only about NINETY-PERCENT RETARDED, since you figure that if he could rig this freaking button to launch the missiles, he could go ahead and do it himself.

Only in comic books are the words "Evil Genius" and "Downs Syndrome" pretty much synonmous.

Fast forward to the end, Superman wins. Beats him up or something. NOW, two things stand out for me in this story. First off, at the same time that Jimmy Olsen is covering the tree lighting ceremony and Lois and Clark are watching Jimmy on WGBS' live feed, the United Nations is unanimously passing a worldwide resolve to ban all nuclear weapons forever. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know the news business, myself ... in fact, I don't even watch television news, or read a newspaper, or in fact know HOW to read OR write, and instead rely on shouting at the keyboard in order to create these articles, BUT ... it seems to me that I'd have at least ONE of my three top reporters assigned to COVER THE GADDAMN UNITED NATIONS BANNING ALL NUCLEAR WEAPONS! I don't care HOW pretty the lights are, man ...


There's no image here because bandwidth is more precious than gold, and these sound files take up enough space. Sorry, folks.

Second thing which stands out is a constant for this album - the sound effects. For some reason, the foley on this thing is flat-out bizarre, particularly when anyone takes a walk. Check out, for instance, this scene where Superman inquires as to the whereabouts of Jimmy Olsen and, upon receiving a clue, dashes across the quad in his brand new cordurouy pants.

Moving on to the Batman story - "The Christmas Carol Caper," this is where the album gets sort of ... unsettling. I was never the world's biggest fan of Batman, and maybe I'm not as hep to the mythos of the guy as some of you out there, but upon listening to this recording I feel I can say with some certainty: THIS IS NOT BATMAN!

Batman is an avenger of the night, a dark and brooding figure, and even at his worst a campy fat man with a stick up his ass. He is not a laid-back bon vivant with a song in his heart and singing telegrams coming in on his telephone! I'm not even 100% convinced that Batman should be answering his own phone, but I DO know for sure that Batman would NEVER say "HOW NICE!" or "SING AWAY", never mind ONE AFTER THE OTHER!!

This story starts off with Batman and Robin chilling at the Batpad on a quiet, crime-free Christmas Eve when the ... ugh ... when the PHONE RINGS AND BATMAN ANSWERS IT and it turns out to be A SINGING TELEGRAM ... OF DOOM!

Now, what I know of Gotham City villains is that they each have their own theme, right? Joker uses comedy-related stuff, Two-Face gets double-gimmicks, Riddler riddles, Penguin gets the arctic, umbrellas and birds, because who else will, right? Well, here's a little known fact - all OTHER non-gimmick Gotham villains are required to either sing or have Christmas related motifs. No, it's true! Why else would both the threatening voice on the phone sing a menacing version of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" while Rodney The Red Nosed Hitman (I ain't kidding folks) fires away, singing "Deck Them All With A M3 Volley," just before Batman and Robin are almost run down by Maxy the Minstrel Man and Sammy the Southside Santa?

Seriously, the attempted hit-and-run is all Batman's fault, anyway. I'll let him explain, and I'll let you shudder at Batman singing a merry tune...

All this ends at the Southside Mission, where the famous Dr.John - probably not the one you're thinking of - manages his home for rehabilitated hobos. Secretly, one of these hobos is a terrible criminal who's there to kill Batman, which I think everyone should have expected because he refused to sing Christmas Carols with the other hobos. Or, actually, he probably wasn't able to, since I don't think there were more than three voice actors doing this whole record. You could barely afford to have someone interrupt ...

The berserk-ass foley continues to meet my highest expectations. I sincerely wish I had the room to post this whole fourteen minute adventure, as some of this should not be missed - the sound the Batarang makes as it whizzes in midair - that being a sound not unlike slide whistles in a washing machine - or all the hobos' endless Christmas Caroling - ACTION PACKED! At the very least, I can share this much with you - Batman and Robin getting around Gotham via tap-dancing bat-ponies. Sorry Madam!

This all ends with Wonder Woman in "The Prisoner Of Christmas Island." This is probably the least of all three stories, cause whereas Batman's was sort of disturbing and insane and Superman's story was just flat-out retarded, Wonder Woman's story is only sort of obtuse.

Or hey, maybe it's me, I never quite 'got' Wonder Woman anyway. I mean, most other superheroes have a theme by which they abide, you know, Superman is 'Super,' Batman has a bat costume and bat-themed gadgets, Spider-Man has spider powers and Captain America is all about America, and so on. But with Wonder Woman, she's a little harder to define. Right off the bat, she's a patriotic polytheist from Sorority Island, not to mention being a D-Cup golem with a golden bikechain which makes you tell the truth, and who splits her free time between chucking bullets off her wristwatch and talking telepathically to her imaginary airplane. Danant danant dant danant!! WONDERRR WOMAAAAN!

Wonder, indeed.


Thanks to that sound clip and years of idle internet surfing, this is pretty much what Wonder Woman looks like to me, in my mind.

Still, I don't think it's me. Dig this: Wonder Woman's story begins with an Ex-Nazi quisling kidnapping Santa Claus from his North Pole toystore on the orders of the legendary Valkyrie, Brunnhilde. This is a devious plan of the war god Ares, who is introduced to us while arguing with Aphrodite. Meanwhile on Earth, the President enlists Wonder Woman to save Christmas while news agencies around the world report of Santa Claus' sudden absence and orphans cry themselves to sleep at the prospect of a Christmasless winter. So, it's up to our heroine to return the jolly old elf in time to make his yuletide rounds or else the Third Reich rises again, and JUMPING JESUS ORANGUTAN, PEOPLE!! Confusing or not, all I know is that's a lot of myths, archetypes and cliches to pack into a fifteen minute adventure!!

At least they talk pretty in this one. Either that, or the narrator is practicing his sibilants.

Naturally, Wonder Woman comes out on top in this adventure - keep the dirty joke to yourself, friends. Nonetheless, her victory is amazing to me. Sure, in the comic book world, most supervillains may be Downsies, but even the greatest superhero has a greater-than-even chance of being a total 'Tard. Take, for instance, Wonder Woman's musings on geography. I think she means it figuratively. Or, in any case, I can't help but find the way she says this ... oddly arousing. If I start writing erotic fanfic, please stab me in the eye with an icepick, please. Thanks.

Not to be left out, Wonder Woman also gets saddled with profoundly puzzling foley. Specifically, she's off to go cheer up the orphans - presumably by eating a straw hat. And that's what Christmas means to me, CRONCH CRONCH!

---

Transcriptions of the audio files ....

• ... this excitable fella from the Pacific Northwest ...
  Jimmy Olsen: I'm Jimmy Olsen, WGBS TV, can I talk to you for a minute?
  Man: Sure.
  Jimmy Olsen: How do you like Washington?
  Man: GREAT!
  Jimmy Olsen: What do you think of that tree up there?
  Man: FANTASTIC! I'M FROM OREGON!
  
• ... dashes across the quad in his brand new cordurouy pants. ...
  Superman: Did you see where he went?
  Man: Last we saw, he went over to that van over there.
  Superman: Oh, the WGBS Mobile Unit. Thanks. (SFX: Cordurouy pants on the move!)
  
• ... ONE AFTER THE OTHER!! ...
  (Phone rings)
  Batman: I'll get it. Hello?
  Voice: Hello. Is this Batman?
  Batman: Yes.
  Voice: I have a singing telegram for ya!
  Batman: How nice, sing away!
  
• ... Rodney The Red Nosed Hitman ...
  (SFX: Bullet ricocheting)
  Batman: Nyah, missed again Rodney! Ready or not, here I come!
  
• ... explain, ...
  Robin: Don't you think it would be better to go the rest of the way by Batmobile?
  Batman: Oh, I don't think so. With Rudy in jail, we shouldn't have any more trouble. Aaaand it's such a nice, clear night for walking. (Singing and apparently tap dancing) Dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh, da da da da deee, doooo...
  
• ... tap-dancing bat-ponies. ...
  Batman: Now!
  (SFX: Tap dancing ponies kicking up a storm)
  Batman: GOTCHA!
  Old Lady: AAAAAAH!
  Batman: Oh, I'm so sorry madam ...
• ... talk pretty ...
  Narrator: And like a grey-black ghost, her massive engines purring softly in the murky depths, the powerful sub sails silently South with its precious cargo ...
  
• ... Wonder Woman's musings on geography. ...
  Wonder Woman: The ocean is so large and that island so small!
  
• ... eating a straw hat. ...
  Wonder Woman: I'll do my best to cheer them up. (SFX Crunching taps...)

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Adventures of Jimmy Olsen Vol.2

So, a few weeks back I picked up my copy of Jack Kirby's Jimmy Olsen Vol 2 - a fantastic book, hands down, for fans of the King of Comics. Jimmy Olsen is possibly my favorite of Kirby's Fourth World books, if just because the imagination behind it was absolutely unbridled, plus it's got that irascible Newsboy Legion tied up in the mix, an they're my fav'rits.

Anywez, with all that said, there's really nothing in here that matches the peak of the Volume One saga, which had to be where Don Rickle's goody two-shoes identical twin popped up in the middle of the debut of Darkseid and the war between New Genesis and Apokolips. The start-off story of this volume, tho, beats all your asses with a stick. To wit:

Jimmy and Clark Kent find themselfs embroiled in the machinations of Count Dragorin, a pasty-faced wampyr who's on a quest for the renegade genius of genetic thinktank Project Cadmus, the mad scientist Dabney Donovan. In tow of the chalk-white Count is a movie-molded wolfman and a passel of like-likenessed famous monsters of filmland.

Their story? Well, dig this: Dabney Donovan is obsessed with creating artificial life. In a fit of questionable pique, Donovan creates Dragorin and all the other residents of their homeworld, Transilvane. Their homeworld, you may ask? Donovan has his own planet on which to make life?

Why yes, yes he does. It's in his basement.

Take THAT, Grant Morrison and your johnny-come-lately The Filth! Kirby has Donovan creating a miniature planet, populated by microscopic lifeforms consisting of an "atomic liquid" structure which casts itself into finalized forms - in this case, movie monsters - sheerly by the persistent use of visual stimuli and suggestion. Donovan ensures that his bacteria-sized beings turn into Universal theme park characters by showing non-stop monster movies against the atmosphere of Transilvane, via those floating movie projectors you're seeing in the picture up there.

To summarize: Amorphic subatomic artificial beings were turned into B-Movie monster clones by a mad scientist who showed late night horror flicks into the upper atmosphere of their schoolbus-sized home planet, accessible by the door at the back of the kitchen. Oh, and I forgot, they transport themselves to the exterior world by special space-travelling size-changing coffins.

Superman gets involved by saving the Transilvane-ites from Donovan's "Demon Dog," a pesticide-spewing robot gargoyle scheduled to spit death on the tiny creatures of Transilvane at the hour of midnight. I know, how could I NOT get a scan of that? I guess I'M the REAL monster here ...

Superman, natch, saves them, but both he and Jimmy muse upon the injustice of the Transvilane-ites tiny, ghastly, cinema verite (ho ho). Superman, of cuss, has a plan, and that plan is to show a new movie into the atmosphere of the planet, resulting in ...

...CREATING A TINY PLANET FULL OF HIGH-STEPPING, ALL-SINGIN', ALL-DANCIN', ROOTIN'-TOOTIN' COWPOKE MONSTERS!!!! Holy shit, AND THIS IS WHERE THE STORY ENDS!!!

Man, so, Transilvahoma. How you can read comics and not love the hell out of Jack Kirby, I'll never understand.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Superman 2001

SUPERMAN 2001

COCK-BLOCKED!

Personally, I can't even remember what Superman was really doing in 2001. For all I can remember of the last fifteen years of mucking about they've done with the big guy, he was either dead, revived, reincarnated, mulleted, electrified, split in two, evil, emotionless, cloned, too big, too small, stuck in the past, stuck in the future, crazy, mind-controlled, married, divorced, over-powered, de-powered, wearing a funny hat, getting his ass kicked by Batman, learning to snorkel in the Bahamas, eating marzipan cakes in a locked bathroom and weeping, or possibly all of the above at once.

As an aside, if you ask me what has defined Superman over the last fifteen years, I honestly would have to reply "I have no idea what's going on with him from day to day." And it's true - back in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, it didn't matter HOW alternate a future or HOW imaginary a story to which we were being treated, Superman was Superman. They had some stories which featured his descendant in the 24th century or something, and it basically looked like Superman with a weak chin and a Hitler haircut. If we went to a parallel world where Superman was a villain, he wore a little black mask along with his regular costume. Since the Crisis, Superman's changing costumes, powers and appearance at the drop of the hat. I blame the action figure market.

See? See how his skin reflects the laser?
Check it out. You see yet? I'll keep doing it, see?

But hey, that's beside the point! We're going back to the Golden (or, actually, Bronze) Age of 1976! More specifically, we're going back to Superman #300, the self-proclaimed "tricentennial" issue of Superman - My, he's come far since 1676 - and an imaginary tale which moved the Superman mythos up a few decades.

"Just imagine," the cover begs of us, "The MAN OF STEEL coming to Earth as a Baby TODAY -- -- and growing up in the world of TOMORROW!" (i.e. several years ago). Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin provide the writing and Curt Swan and Bob Oksner do the drawing on what is actually a very good story of the era - which doesn't mean it's free from silliness, oh no. Oh no no. God bless it.

I'm sorry, I meant to say "Me
am rocket zoom bang double
Ice Cream Cone GARGLE FAAAAART!!!"

The story opens with the same, familiar stirrings of the traditional super-origins. Jor-El - Superman's father and evidently Krypton's worst public speaker - responds to Krypton's violent dissolution by packing up baby Kal-El in more fabric than all three of Michael Jackson's kids combined, and shoving him in an atomic dildo headed straight for Earth. And so far, even with my overwhelming shame at the cheap Michael Jackson joke, nothing much different from the traditional here.

Now here's where the story gets ALL FUTURISTIC AND ULTRA-MODERN NOW, JUST YOU WAIT!

Soviet and American radar pick up the trace of Superbaby's cosmic bunting, and make a mad dash to beat one another to the oceanic crash site. After an I'm-not-kidding and totally-awesome action sequence, the ship is claimed by mustachioed Special Secret Operative Agent or something Lt.Thomas Clark! Hey, waitaminnit, CLARK? You don't suppose...

The ship is taken back to a secret government bunker where scientists attempt to blast baby Kal-El's face right off, there's some super-toddler hijinx, and for ONCE goddamn Superbaby can actually speak proper English and not that insane Bizarro-shit he used to go on about. "Me am shoot in rocket boom space eat cosmic bang-bang happy double cake ice cream cone WAAAAAAH!" Oh no, this time it's speaking every language on Earth fluently and knowing syntax, and where's the fun in that, I ask you?

Awww, I love you too, little French Superbaby!

Also, I think it puts the finger on Ma and Pa Kent for not hooking Superbaby on Phonics the first time around.

Superbaby is code-named "Skyboy" and raised by the U.S.Military, so you know he's going to grow up completely straight in the head, right folks? Eventually, news of his existence leaks out, causing a terrible increase in Cold War tensions. This is capitalized upon by an unnamed third-world country whose flamboyant and middle-aged major-domos have world conquest on the mind. They arrange some computerized tomfoolery which makes the US and USSR believe that the other country is launching a nuclear attack, believing that in the ruined aftermath, they'll be able to pick up the pieces and take over. Enjoy your glowing hunk of scorched soil, gentlemen, you're both assholes.

Oh, and did I mention that this brief US/USSR exchange happens in 1990? We were so young, once.

By 2001, Milton-Bradley's boardgame favorite takes on a scope of horrifying
proportions. C-17? YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIPS, IMPERIALIST DOG!

Anyway, "Skyboy" takes it on himself to stop every nuclear missile and space laser in existence, then following the death of his military mentor - General Kent Garret HOLD IT, KENT? OH. MY. GOD! That's AMAZING! - disappears into an anonymous existence, which takes us into the futuristic world of the twenty-first century.

Now, no offense intended to these guys - many of whom are my artistic heroes - but Seventies' comic book artists had no business drawing the future. Most of these guys barely knew what the present looked like, for crying out loud.

Swan's always been one of DC's exceptions when it came to a modern look, though, and he was damn good at giving his characters contemporary fashion and style. I think the problem came to him - in this story specifically - when he was called on to design a future world of advanced technology, BUT not render it in such a way that it looked exactly like the future of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

So now he has to achieve a delicate balance of ju-u-u-ust the right moderation and tweaks and finesse and nuance and - oh, I'll shut up, it looks like the Legion of Super-heroes future. Except they didn't call everything "Cosma-Ice Cream" and "Super-Clothing," and that everyone's wearing three-layered pantsuits instead of really ugly Underoos with their home planet printed on the jerkin, or whatever. The Cosma-Jerkin. Fucking future.

Some of you may be too young to recall, but this actually IS what the internet was like back in 2001...

There's no greater comedy dollar than the "What did they think the future would look like wayyy back in the past" comedy dollar. Or "Comedo-Cred" or "Econo-Humor-Unit" or whatever. Cosma-comedy-dollar. In any case, let's take a look at ... THE STARTLING WORLD OF THE FUTURE!

For one thing, we're no longer watching television, but Tri-Vision! Which I think means that the future is offering us a triple dose of Univison, and that Mexican show where all those forty-five year old guys and tanned super-models dress in ridiculous school uniforms and pretend to be in grade school. Sadly, for my household, we only watch El Clon and CMLL/AAA, so we're screwed.

Siegfried and Roy 2001, evil foreign putzes.

A thousand Cosma-points for accurate predictions to Bates and Maggin though. Clark no longer is a reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper or even broadcasting giant WGBS, but is an anchorman for a "24-hour news network" made possible by the "around the world ... huge communications linkup."

The prediction of the cable news scene here didn't actually tell us whether Clark was working for any PARTICULAR news network, but since he wasn't obscured behind the scrolling equivalent of a James Joyce novel OR was gleefully muckraking with a smarmy political slant, I figured it wasn't CNN or Fox News. Judging by the fact that Clark is filmed in a full body shot and is DEAD-FUCKING-BORING, it's either E! or MSNBC. Your choice.

Another accurate prediction made by the Bates/Maggin team was that there'd be a frothy mocha available on every street corner. Or MOKA, sorry, let me get my notes straight as we get back to the story.

The aforementioned gaudy third-world nation, still helmed by what appears to be an elderly gay couple, strikes upon a brilliant plan, assuming that you're judging brilliance by comic book standards. On New Year's Eve, 2001, they send a four-armed android to perch on the clock above Times Square and declare that he his-own-bad-self was not only responsible for saving the world from total destruction back in 1990, but that he now demands their allegiance. Oh, and that his allies Frappe and Latte would be joining him shortly.

WERE! YOU! LISTENING?!

Amazingly, the world BELIEVES HIM, right off the bat. Gullible fools. Is that too harsh, you ask? Hell, I'm just quoting the MAN! Superman reads the dupes of Earth the fucking riot act while he turns MOKA into styrofoam peanuts.

ctually, his outright verbal abuse is meant to inspire folks to not look to 'heroes and false gods' for the answer to their problems, which Metropolis' citizens adhere to by erecting a ginormous Superman statue in the middle of Times Square.

As for the fashion nightmare that WAS whatever retirement home-turned-third world nation it was, they had their plans foiled AGAIN by Superman, and thus ... quit, I guess. I dunno, they didn't follow up on it.

Frankly, they're not the worst villains I've seen in Seventies' comics - In a SHAZAM! I was reading recently, Captain Marvel repulsed a world-conquering effort by a bunch of guys who lived in a city suspended by wires above a mountain chasm. Turns out if you, I dunno, cut a few of the wires supporting their nation, they tend to calm down. At least Future-Siegfried and Cosma-Roy had the good sense to quit while they were ahead, in the world of 2001 ...

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Superman Meets the Quik Bunny

This is slightly better than this one other cross-promotional
book that I own, Superman Meets The Press.

In lieu of the other prominent 1980's food-mascot-teaming-with-super-hero comic I'd WANTED to review – that being Frank Millers Kool-Aid Noir “The Dark Knight Returns, OH YEAH!” – I bring you instead what I think can only be accurately described as “a depressing newsprint abortion,” Superman Meets The Quik Bunny.

"By Rao, I am choking this down and it tastes
bitter, as bitter as ashes ..."

It must be said, before we go on, this kind of thing offends me - and I'm not easy to offend, when it comes to comics. I sat through Hal Jordan going from essential icon of the DC Universe to crazy nutball in the world's ugliest metal tuxedo to a dead guy to a dead guy in footed pajamas, and all the time I just chuckled like Fred MacMurray and thought "Boy, are they going to have to eat a lot of shit to bring this guy back to the status quo in ten years."

I sat through Jim Starlin's THE END, this Summer's event of choice for Marvel Comics, in which EVERY SUPER HERO IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE DIES … AT LEAST THREE TIMES! And I just laughed. A lot. I mean a really whole lot.

I know, it's some kind of
goddamned Moon Man
language ... aw, fuck it,
let's bomb his shit all up
in this piece.

So seriously, it takes a Secret Wars 2 or an IronJaw to drive me nuts, and yet the mere mention of a cross-promotional team up between Superman and some international chemical conglomerate food-hucking mascot sends me into a tizzy. You know why? Because SUPERMAN'S A LEAD CHARACTER, BABY! And my proof: Superman Peanut Butter!

Superman ain't here to help sell your chocolatey-ass milk, rabbit! Superman makes his OWN chocolate milk, and he does it out of space dust and magic wishes! You ain't got NOTHING on imaginary potential Superman Milk, fool! GO HOME, RABBIT! GO HOME!

This opus to brand collisions and paean to the phrase “Quik Thinking” is brought to us by writer Mike Carlin and artists Carmine Infantino and Dick Giordano. Because, of course, who else would? For the record, in their respective times, both Infantino and Giordano arguably each held the post of “Most powerful individual at DC Comics.” I bet that made them cry a little, as they put the final artistic flourishes on a bedraggled rabbit twisting its ears in orgasmic delight while it sucked back what appeared to be beige motor oil.

Right, Quik thinking, got it, very funny.

And also, seriously, I hope you don't get sick of “Quik Thinking.” Seriously.

The story starts commonly enough, what with Superman chasing down an antisocial stage magician in pajamas. In this case, it's Flash baddie The Weather Wizard, whose costume – green bodysuit, flared collar, pixie boots, golden sash – helps him cut a figure slightly less intimidating than the Quik Bunny hisself.

It's like some junior version of the Ethnic Super Friends, only everyone's wearing pants.

While the Wizard is pouring torrential rain down on the city of Metropolis, four plucky kid geniuses are busily constructing a super-robot treehouse off in the suburbs somewhere. The multicultural and gender-balanced Quik Qlub – That's Ronnie, Patty, Maureen and Miguel, which sounds like a Protestant family of three and their gardener – apparently do all this at the behest of their manic mentor, the Quik Bunny, who rushes in once all the hard-work is finished and turns on the TV. Yes, they have a TV in their treehouse. Patty built it. She's a genius.

Jesus, Ronnie, could you be any less cool?

Chancing upon a newscast of Superman's life-and-death battle against moisture and a fey Mister Greenjeans, the Quik Qlub begin to fear for Superman's safety – possibly because they're idiots, or maybe they have Weather Wizard confused with a black hole or God – and rush off in their transforming magic clubhouse to offer assistance. And chocolate milk.

Luckily, Superman enjoys a long tradition of humoring pathetic, weak-ass fucks who try to join him on adventures. “Sure, Robin, you mutt! Let's you and me stop Braniac!” and “I can stop Mordru .. er, but only if Triplicate Girl and, um, hey, Invisible Kid come along! Seriously, I won't be able to do it withoutcha, you crazy guys!” So with gentle but firm rebuffs, Superman slows down long enough to be visible to the human eye and lets the Quik Qlub tag along.

Right, we GET it, thanks.

I suspect this inclination on Superman's part is half fatherly good nature, and half that he knows the Weather Wizard couldn't even beat the Quik Bunny. And he's RIGHT!

So while the Weather Wizard is throwing hurricanes and tornadoes around the nation's capital - his strategy, by the way, is apparently that if he throws enough tornadoes at Washington D.C., he'll be allowed to run the place. Wh ... what? - and making it snow in Egypt and what-have-you, the Quik Qlub follow around in their big happy schoolbus of delight while solving mazes and word puzzles and whatnot along the way.

If there's a paucity of content in some high school history text, possibly, yes.

Whereas it's pretty enlightening stuff - I, for one, learned that the easiest path to the Great Wall of China is via the Canals of Venice - I sort of ended up confused. Then again, it's my own fault, as I'd decided earlier on to deliberately make-believe I was reading a sequel to that Superman/He-Man team-up promo comic, and I kept waiting for Quik Bunny to make with the Sword of Eternia and Battlecat and so on ...

The whole story wraps up in China, where Weather Wizard's been making it hail, and oh man, the Chinese hate hail. Seriously. They must, otherwise WHY WOULD HE DO IT?

Amazingly - or actually NOT amazingly really, if you think about it - the Weather Wizard is outgunned and outclassed by the Quik Bunny, who quickly fashions a lightning-attracting Quik Bunny metal decoy, and sets it up on the edge of the Great Wall. When the Weather Wizard zaps it with electricity, thinking he's striking the Quik Bunny himself, he instead ... somehow gets walloped himself, I think. The science seems to wear a little thin on the inner thigh around this point of the story, but from what I gather, the Weather Wizard is kind of a puss and then he's dead and thank you Quik Choclate Mouthwash, you've saved something from the forces of whatever!

OKAY. WE GET IT.

Then it's back to the Qlubhouse and all its horrible, dark secrets for a celebratory chug of powdered chalk dust and a hearty Kryptonian backslap, bringing to an end another exciting occasion wherein Superman slowed down long enough to let nitwits like the Quik Qlub, the Radio Shack Whiz Kids or Jimmy Olsen fart around and let super-criminals go on massive sprees of destruction and mayhem. I like me some Superman, no doubt, but I think the guy's priorities are a little screwed ...

Well, I'm thinking you're the devil ...

Bonus Images!

• I can never say this enough - Just because this is the internet, you KNOW that someone is masturbating to this image.


• It's always about YOU, isn't it?


• Here's a Superman for you to color! Seriously! Come on! I fucking dare you!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Five Other Identities of Superman

I'm a big fan of Superman, a huge fan. I'm Godzilla-sized, on top of the Goodyear Blimp, eating large sandwiches. BIG, is what I'm saying. That being said, though, as much as I love the character, I have something of a shit list for the handful of stories – numbering no more than a few thousand, at the outside – that I absolutely loathe.

As a Superman fan, you have to take the absurdity and outright stupidity in stride. The fact of the matter is that, whatever your intentions going in, you're going to have to endure the occasional "Outer Space Buccaneer and her magic space dogs" or "Superman fights the Viet Cong" story, it's just going to happen.

Although it's innocuous enough, what follows is probably my least favorite Superman story of all time: The Five Other Identities of Superman. I hate it. It's ridiculous without the charm of other similar stories, pedantic without the po-faced sincerity, and also I swear to God there's a photo of artist Al Plastino striking a two-year old child in the face with a hot waffle iron in-between inking panels on this thing. SWEAR TO GOD (Note: Seriously!¹).

The only copy I have of this story is in one of those awe-inspiring DC Digest reprint volumes they used to put out in the early Eighties, alongside a bunch of other stories that ought to give this one a run for its money – Superman pretends to be a genie, Superman pretends to be a bum, yar yar yar – but for some reason, this one in particular gets up my knickers with cleats on. I'm guessing it has something to do with my general fatigue over the origin story of Superman – it's a story that was so thoroughly padded out during the Silver Age with asides and distractions that Superman should have been forty-eight and balding when he arrived on Earth. Oh wait, I forgot, one of these stories established that he was actually a hundred years old when he got to Earth, BUT THAT'S FOR ANOTHER TIME! On to this barker!

The used spaceship dealership is totally wrecked!

The whole shebang begins with Superman flying over the ocean on patrol - keeping an eye out for Brainiac skinny-dipping or Metallo raping a whale, I guess - when Green Arrow starts taking potshots at him with a siren arrow from about five miles away, to judge by the panel. When Superman flies to the island – presumably to whip Arrow's ass, I guess – he finds his pals in the Justice League gadding it up on the beach.

It kind of looks like they're there for Superman's intervention, but instead they're presenting to him a tape recording sent to Earth by Jor-El which Aquaman found in some sub-oceanic rental return bin. After EIGHT HUNDRED PAGES are spent explaining how the thing got to Earth, it's revealed that Jor-El was really into fanfic, and he's used some hopped-up computer program to create cheap-looking syndicated adventure shows based on "What if I totally sent my son to other planets instead of Earth? Would it be stupid?" I can answer that one with a Magic Eightball and no more than three tries, but let's you and I keep going…

"Let's eat him!"

I'm almost proud of them for getting this first one out of the way, as it's so irredeemably stupid. Had I been the editor, I would have saved it for the end, so as to punctuate my shame-fueled suicide. The story here is that Superman ends up on Xann, planet of giants where he's no bigger than, dare I say it – AN ATOM? Or a crayon, I guess, actually. A dinner roll, a novelty keychain. He's tiny.

So yeah, he grows up on this planet where the rest of the population blithely acknowledges a perfectly-formed grown adult who's all of six inches tall. They are SO blasé about the whole affair, as a matter of fact, that when terroristd later abduct a number of townspeople and hold them hostage in a distant citadel AND a six-inch tall flying man with super-strength saves them and defeats the bad guys, NO ONE SUSPECTS HIS TRUE IDENTITY. He's all walking around in his street clothes, "Why does no one ever see Kal-El and Birdman in the same room? Aw, no, Kal-El is too meek to be BIRDMAN!" Honestly.

A Ntann-Goat? As opposed to what?

Next, Jor-El dials up Kal-El's life on Planet Valair, which - despite sounding like a seriously cut-rate airline out of Mexico City or something – is actually a planet where all life is completely underwater. Superman ends up as some sort of cut-rate Aquaman, IF YOU CAN IMAGINE SUCH AN INDIGNITY.

Then it's to Ntann, which Jor-El describes as a backwards world and which I'd have to agree because they're obviously illiterate. Someone let the deaf kid with the harelip name the planet, evidently.

Anyway, because they're so primitive, Superman ends up becoming a cut-rate Green Arrow, and similarly on the eternally benighted planet Saruun, he becomes "The Diro," an unpowered costumed lawman wearing a costume resembling the Batman's and bearing a name resembling something that very cruel seventh-graders call unpopular kids.

"And he appears to be comfortable with allowing young Kal-El
to suckle at his man-teat, as is the way of us Kryptonians."

Of all these possible – and incredibly stupid – futures for baby Kal-El's eventual planetary zipcode, Saruun and the faux-Batman kick disappoint me the most. I was hoping Saruun would be a world where people's parents were always getting shot and folks were always swearing vengeance and also everyone had a fancy belt. "Nice belt," you'd say to a stranger, and he'd reply "Thanks, it shoots fire."

Last planet is Gangor (oy), which is exactly like Earth by way of Leave It To Beaver, except that it has a red sun and gravity so powerful that Eddie Haskell would have been compressed into a liquefied mass of blood and powdered bone. What really matters, though, is that baby Kal-El gets adopted by a scientist who shoots him in the head with a magic ray gun and now Kal-El can run super-fast. PS – He runs so fast, he manages escape velocity and dies in space. I hope we've all learned something from this story.

Jor-El only hates this possible future because
there's not enough senseless torture involved.

Anyway, Jor-El eventually checks Earth, verifies that his son will wear pajamas all day and have some sort of killer allergy to rocks, and since Jor-El is a big torture aficionado (and he'd already run out of monkeys and dogs to shoot into space), that sounded okay to him. Thus, he saved his son from being (in order) small, wet, technologically backwards, beating people's asses, and asphyxiating. Also, at the end of the story, this adds absolutely bupkiss to the Superman mythos or the understanding of it, and we're basically back where we started, except everyone in the Justice league feels really pretty much replaceable and will probably resent Superman for it from here on out.

I truly hate this story, like I hate most of the stories which extrapolate on the days leading up to the destruction of Krypton, for two reasons; the first is that it doesn't add anything to the character or the atmosphere, it just always ends up "A bunch on unbelievably wrong-headed things happened for a long time and then everyone on Krypton died but this kid didn't and now he's Superman, the end." Congratulations, we've done a lap.

You just needed Aquaman to explain something to you. Don't you feel dirty?

The second reason is because I have a damn near photographic memory for these stories, and whenever I read one I can't help but build this visual timeline of Krypton's pre-destruction days. If we take into account all the test animals Jor-El sent to their seeming, lonely deaths, and the invention of the Phantom Zone Projector and all the criminals who had to be sentenced and sent away, and the alien visitors in numbers beyond counting, and all the other errata and pointless sidetracking and, in the end, Superman's father must have had about fifteen years to try and build a fleet of rocketships to save everyone on Krypton. And yet …

Not only was he Krypton's greatest scientist and worst public speaker, he was its biggest procrastinator.

Anyway, on a whole other topic, there's another story in this book where Superboy gets infected with some crazy super-virus and has to dress up in a totally airtight super-immune mummy wrapping from head-to-toe. Lana creeps up on his secret identity, in the meantime, but Superboy takes care of that problem by letting a COUPLE of the germs with which he's infected get onto Lana (at super-speed, make your own joke about how they were transferred), and thereby causing her to suffer enough brain damage that she develops a brief period of amnesia. Hm. He gave her super-roofies. And to think, this was thirty or thiry-five years before Identity Crisis.

This story, by contrast to the other story, is pretty great because they ran out of pages to tell the conclusion and instead just wrapped it up in a single panel. It's so efficient, I don't know why they don't just do that for every comic ever. "Lex Luthor tried to kill Superman, but he didn't, and now it is … THE END."

¹ No.

Superman, You Are An Idiot

Lest I neglect to take my bumps where my bumps are due, and acknowledging that I am a Superman fan to the exclusion of just about all others, I do like to think that I am able to make note of when my guy acts like a damn fool and deserves a sock to the super-snoot. To wit, this panel from Kurt Busiek's and Geoff Johns' One Year Later relaunch of the Superman cast:




Superman, my dear fellow ... you are an idiot.