VIEWS FROM THE LONGBOX #24- IT'S SUPERMAN PART FOUR: THE STORIES

[Michael Bailey]

Week 24- It's Superman! Part Four: The Stories

As I was conceiving this particular installment I realized something about being a Superman fan who read the books months after month during the time between 1987 and 2006.

I was really spoiled regarding good Superman stories.

Oh they weren’t all good. The early part of the twenty-first century was a mind field really for good Superman stories, though at some point I should re-read those to give them another chance because it couldn’t have been as bad as I remember, right? (Right?) There was a period from about late 1996 to early 1999 when the Superman titles went through a period where my enjoyment went on a roller coaster ride through Hades. Some of it was good and enjoyable and then there was Superman Red/Superman Blue, which served as proof that you really shouldn’t let the colorist pitch story ideas at creator summits.

Actually I don’t know if that’s true. I was just going for the cheap laugh. I doubt it worked.

When you look at the books from about 1988 to 1994, though, there was a series of really good story arcs that came one right after the other. The titles were pretty much on their own for the majority of 1987 and 1988. Sure they crossed over in cover date March 1987 for the Legends crossover and then there was the Supergirl Saga in the summer of 1988 but it was Exile that really started the series of story arcs that made being a Superman reader so much fun for the next few years.

Oh what a glorious time and I mean that. Yes this was during my teenage years and that might color the issue because unless your teenage years were a time of horrendous strife and suffering it is usually an era that people look back on with favor and rose tinted glasses. I wasn’t very social until high school, so my junior high school weekends were made up of comic books, the live action Superboy series, My Secret Identity and a host of bloody action adventure, martial arts or horror films that would come on HBO. And Superman comics. Lots and lots (or at least it seemed that way at the time) of Superman comics.

It’s not that I didn’t want to go out but I only received five bucks a week in allowance, I couldn’t drive and had dubious social skills, so yeah it was television and comics for me then.

So from 1988 to 1994 there was a comfortable pattern to the Superman titles, which swelled to four a month making it an almost weekly release. The pattern was as follows; big story followed by some smaller tales that allowed for characterization and a certain amount of decompression (in the physical sense, not the story sense) before getting into the next big story. For example Day of the Krypton went through the then three Superman titles in 1990 followed by a month of connected but still stand alone stories you had Dark Knight Over Metropolis. After another month of connected, character driven stories (see Lois and Clark on vacation!) they gave us Soul Search followed by an entire month of Curt Swan art and then, to end comic book year 1990 you had Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite.

Yes the continuity could be a bit dense. Yes you did have to read all three titles. Yes, a newer reader might feel a bit lost but there was one fact (and I use the term fact in a completely biased way) that overruled all of those potential objections.

The stories were really freaking good.

I mean as far as an ongoing narrative you really couldn’t ask for better. I distinctly remember getting to the end of some of those issues and thinking, “Oh my God! I can’t wait for the next issue.” This was years before the weekly trip to the comic shop. Heck, this was before I bought my comics exclusively at comic shops. This was taking the aforementioned five dollars and going to Waldenbooks or the neat little newsstand at the Trexlertown Mall to find the latest issue. It was also the era where the act of reading a comic lasted what seemed like hours. I am not saying that things were better then and terrible now. I’m just saying that to my teenage brain time slowed to a crawl when I read a comic and I seemed to absorb every word and every panel. Superman, Lois, Perry, Jimmy, Cat Grant and all of the others were important. What happened to them mattered. I wouldn’t say they were my “friends” which some like to do when wistfully harkening back to a more innocent time because I had flesh and blood friends and I liked them very much thank you. What those characters were and what they meant to me was entertainment when I needed it and then escape when I desperately needed it. They were what I followed and thus were very important to me and to a large extent they still are.

Good times. Truly good times.

All of which is a long winded lead in and explanation to why you will see stories from that era in four of the five slots of my Top Five All Time Favorite Superman Stories.

As usual I am not picking the best Superman stories ever written. These are just the ones I like the best and the ones I look back on and think, “Yup, liked it then and sure as shoot like it now.” It’s not complicated. It’s horribly subjective but more importantly it is what it is. So let’s get right into it shall we?

5. Superman Vol. 1 #s 296-299

This story was published in 1976 so it comes from a time when a multi-issue story arc was something of a rarity and this was one was rarer still because it went over four issues. This is kind of strange for a Julius Schwartz era book since most of the time if a story did continue into the next issue it was wrapped up in that second chapter. Lots of one shots in the seventies and eighties though I do tip my hat to Schwartz and his writers for producing such a complex story as this. It’s going to be a tad inconvenient to continue to discuss this story because it didn’t have a convenient story arc like title. No Time and Time Again or Death of Clark Kent for the seventies. All four issues had their own story titles and everything. Despite this handicap I will solider on because this was a really solid story.

The plot was fairly simple; an alien race wants to obliterate the Earth for transportation reasons and they send an agent to check the place out and then destroy it. He comes across Superman when he was still only Superboy and realizes this is the guy that can help him with this mission. So years later the time comes for the Earth to buy it and this mysterious Mr. X (whom was created by Len Wein apparently) enacts some sort of process that made it so that if Kal-El was wearing his Clark Kent clothes he had no powers but as soon as he lost those threads and donned the costume (or uniform if you will) of Superman his powers would return. Somehow Mr. X used some artifacts to absorb energy from Superman, which would ultimately destroy the planet. Not that Superman noticed. He was too busy deciding what to do about his problem and apparently the only options were deciding which identity to live out his life in; Superman or Clark Kent?

The reason I like this story so much is that the writers (Elliot S! Maggin and Cary Bates) got to do a lot things that they had previously been unable to as far as Clark Kent was concerned. Clark was allowed to be the dashing, adventurous reporter, to finally get one over on the crummy Steve Lombard (even knocking him out at one point), telling his boss Morgan Edge to shove it and, most importantly, he got to have some special time with Lois. Of course the next issue he was mostly Superman to see how that worked out for him but the whole Clark Kent centric issue was the highlight of the four-parter.

Of course all of what had happened was ultimately undone at the end of the story since character progression was not at the top of the list of things to do with Superman during the seventies. After an action packed final issue where Superman fought all of his major villains and the destruction of Earth was averted everything was put back exactly where it had been. Kind of like an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation really. The cruel/very amusing part was the fact that Lois was left in a very confused state at the close of Superman #299. She just could not wrap her mind around a Clark that was at one point all of that and a bag of chips and then, suddenly and with no explanation, was back to his normal self. It was kind of mean when you think about it but looking back now with the jaded viewpoint that only comes from a future generation looking upon the past with haughty self-importance I think it’s kind of funny.

The first time I read this story, btw, was in a tome called The Great Superman Comic Book Collection. It was a hardcover (though the cover is kind of squishy at the same time) collection of Superman stories. The book was published around 1981 or so and had some neat stories in it from the Man of Steel’s past. These four issues were the finale to that collection and if you happen to spot it on eBay or at a convention I recommend picking it up because it is rather swell.

4. The Supergirl Saga – Superman Vol. 2 #s 21 and 22 and Adventures of Superman #441

I think most comic book fans shortly into their reading history receive a pretty swift punch to the stomach that changes how they look at the material they arte purchasing. The Supergirl Saga was that for me. This was the story that at the end of which I was left feeling…well, I don’t really know what I felt, but it was different. I had changed somehow as only a twelve year can feel that he has “changed”.

For those coming in late The Supergirl Saga was a three part story that was the payoff for a mystery that had been running through the Superman titles since Superman #16. Now if you do the math that was only six issues between sixteen and twenty-two, but you have to understand that I was twelve at the time and those six months seemed to drag on interminably. Who was this Supergirl? Was she Superman’s cousin? Why does she look like Lana Lang. Oh the suspense.

No seriously. I was on the edge of my proverbial seat.

The Supergirl Saga explained all. Apparently the Supergirl that had been discovered by polar scientists was from the pocket universe that the Time Trapper had created to destroy the Legion of Super-Heroes and he would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for that pesky, pocket universe Superboy. The Lex Luthor of that reality sent her to Superman’s reality to seek his aid because, well, Luthor had sort of, you know, released three Phantom Zone villains who then went on to destroy the Earth. By the time Supergirl found Superman and got him to that pocket universe things were bleak. The villains had decimated the planet and there were about six people left. During the final battle all of the good guys bought it with the exception of the very scorched Supergirl. Before going to his final reward Lex revealed that Supergirl was a synthetic life form he had created and Superman took the Phantom Zoners’ powers away with Gold Kryptonite. This left the Man of Steel with a bit of a quandary. What should he do? If he left them there they might find a way to restore their powers and come to his reality to do a reprise of their “world tour” of the pocket universe Earth. To Superman there was one thing to do.

He executed them.

I touched on this last week and I really don’t feel like getting into the philosophical implications of Superman taking a life this time out. I could probably do a whole column on that frankly. I do remember how that issue made me feel at the time it was released. It was late summer in 1988 and I was gearing up for the seventh grade. I was getting my first pair of glasses that day and I walked over to the Waldenbooks afterwards and picked up Superman #22 and Captain America #350. After getting home I read issue twenty-two and thought, “Wow. Superman just killed those guys. Wow.” I really couldn’t articulate it. Something had happened, though, and the comics I read would never be the same.

And to a large extent I was right because not only was John Byrne gone (not that I knew that at the time because I wasn’t involved in fandom and the Internet was nowhere near it is today) but the writers actually dealt with what happened. It wasn’t something that happened and quickly swept under the rug. I’m sure this story no longer happened as far as the current continuity but hey, thems the breaks. I re-read these issues a few months ago. Surprisingly they still hold up, which is nice really.

3. Panic in the Sky – Action Comics #s 674 and 675, Superman: The Man of Steel # 9 and 10, Superman Vol. 2 #s 65 and 66 and Adventures of Superman #s 488 and 489.

This story arc was a good example of what I was discussing earlier actually. The events of this story keyed off of events from several other stories. This was the return of who would become known as the Matrix Supergirl after her/his self-imposed exile. The Brainiac end of it came from stories published in 1990. It even had this character named Draaga, who had been introduced in a storyline I’m going to get to in a minute and was featured in a first season episode of Justice League, which surprised the heck out of me really because I thought I was the only one who remembered him.

Now it may seem as if I enjoyed this story because it had a bunch of stuff from other stories that I like and to a certain yet small extent that is true. At the time I loved, absolutely LOVED when something that I had previously read about was referenced or came back or whatever. The reason for this is simple; I had previously been the person who was playing catch up and now I was the one “in the know”. I can’t really justify it based on logic but there it was. “Hey,” I would think. “It’s Draaga! He hasn’t been in the books since Day of the Krypton Man. I remember him.” Heck, I still like that sort of thing though not as intensely as I did when I was about to turn sixteen.

Continuity is a lousy sole reason to put a story in the top five though, so what is the main reason Panic in the Sky is number three?

Superman and other heroes fighting aliens.

I mean you can’t get much better than that. I’m serious too. I love deep and insightful stories that really explore the character and his world but frankly you can’t get much better than Superman and friends fighting off an invasion led by Brainiac.

So the awesome.

Okay, there’s a bit more to it than that. This story did indeed have more to it than heroes versus aliens for the fate of the world. I mean we got that a few years previous in Invasion!, which is in my Top Five of DC Crossovers by the way. No, this one was different. In my travels I remember reading that the genesis of this story came from the fact that most alien invasions are thwarted after they start. Usually the alien force rolls up, blows up a city or two and then the good guys go, “Hey, you blew up a city or two! You must be defeated!” In Panic in the Sky Superman gets wind of the upcoming invasion and brings the ruckus to the aliens before thousands of civilians are incinerated. That’s kind of cool. Proactive super hero work. It was rare in 1992 to see such things.

It was also neat to see a big crossover happen in one character’s books. All you had to do was buy eight issues of the various Superman titles and that was it. And the things were only a dollar at the time, so eight issue cost you less than ten bucks instead of over twenty. Ah, the halcyon days of youth. Of course all things being equal I am sure that there was a thirty-one year old guy looking at the comic book landscape in 1992 and thinking, “Man, these things were less than a quarter when I was fifteen. I could get eight of these books two bucks, not eight! I say a pox on the current generation!”

Still, loved this story. The title, by the way, was a reference to an episode of the George Reeves Adventures of Superman series where Superman flies into the sky to stop a wayward asteroid, is flung back to Earth, gets amnesia and then remembers who he is just in time to save the planet. It was a concept that was done to lesser effect in both the Superboy syndicated series and Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

2. The Death and Return of Superman – Too Many Issues to List

I’m really not going to get into this one too much because I devoted to like three installments of this column to the epic back in September. Anything of interest that I could say about it was probably beaten into the ground then. I’m sure there is a way to go back and read those installments if you haven’t already.

Still, I really dig the whole Death and Return of Superman saga. I mean there are now only five storylines that produced not only the comics themselves but novelizations (two really; one adult and one for “younger readers” that featured some early Alex Ross work for DC), action figures and radio dramas. Sure it wasn’t a directly translation but it is the only one thus far that had a movie made about it.

It might seem strange that the three arcs that made up this storyline isn’t number one on the list. It seems to be the story that the bulk of Superman fans that I have encountered hold as the pinnacle of that era. It was a fantastic story. Epic one might say, but as much as I like it I can’t say it is my favorite. No, that spot is reserved for one story and one story alone.

1. Exile – Superman Vol. 2 #s 28-33, Adventures of Superman #s 451-456, Action Comics #643 and Annual #2.[/I]

I mentioned before that most fans get hit with a metaphoric punch by some story at an early point in their reading history. Well, there’s another rite of passage that fans go through that is just as important.

The moment you come to the realization that you totally buy into the fiction and think, “Oh my God! How can they do this? What’s going to happen next?”

Exile was that story for me. It was the moment where I went from steady fan to hardcore addict where even the thought of not reading the next issue was blasphemy.

The story itself is great. After killing the Phantom Zone villains Superman suffers a bit of a breakdown and exiles himself to space until he can sort things out. In Adventures of Superman #450 he makes some arrangements, says goodbye to Ma and Pa Kent, Matrix and Lana Lang and flies off into space. From there we are not only treated to what Superman goes through during his travels but also to see what is happening back on Earth with various sub-plots involving the supporting cast and the villains. Lex Luthor had a lot of good moments during this storyline as he deals with the fact that his one, true adversary has left and he can move forward without having to worry about him. He has to deal with Mr. Mxyzptlk for an issue and also got his own little sub-story arc called Hostile Takeover where Lex tries to takeover S.T.A.R. Labs.

More than that it was the fact that Superman left and it seemed at the time like it was going to be forever. If this happened now I wouldn’t buy it for a second but at the time I was young and inexperienced in such matters. I frankly don’t know what’s better either. Is it better to totally buy into the fiction or is it better to see that the Wizard of Oz is just some old guy behind a curtain with great audio and video editing equipment? I really don’t know. It’s a question for the ages I guess. In any case to my twelve and thirteen year old mind this was high drama. You could not get better than this. What will Superman experience this time? Add in the fact that it was continued into an annual and then have as it’s big finale the return of Action Comics from it’s weekly status and it was everything a teenage comic fan could ask for.

I can literally tell you exactly where I bought each and every chapter. I won’t because that might be boring, but I remember buying them and I remember reading them.

The other reason this is number one to me is how much of what would become so important to me as a Superman was introduced in this story. You had Mongul’s re-introduction into the new DC (there was no stopping them then). You had the introduction of the Eradicator as a concept, both of which would figure into the whole Reign of the Supermen thing. You also had the first and final appearance of a character named Cleric, who would reveal more of Krypton’s past to our hero. Just as those who came before were thrilled and amazed at stories of Superman’s home world in their time so was I in mine. The writers working on Superman at that time had such a solid history going on and if you were the type of reader who liked getting into such things then it was a fantastic time to be into those books.

Top to bottom Exile is my absolute favorite all time Superman story and is also the name of an episode of the George Reeves series.

The obligatory runner-ups include: For the Man Who Has Everything, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, [B]Day of the Krypton Man, Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite, Time and Time Again, Death of Clark Kent and a bunch more that would take up too much time to list.

Next week: Well, I have no idea what I will be doing next week, but I’m sure it will be over long and under quality.

[I](Michael Bailey is a lifelong super-hero fan who lives in Fayetteville, GA with his wife Rachel and their little dog too. Michael does a little weekly podcast which just so happens to be called Views From The Longbox in addition to writing reviews for the Superman Homepage and participating in the Unique Geek bi-weekly podcast. It is interesting to note that with the exception of the Supergirl Saga Michael owns not only the individual issues that make up the stories on this list but also either the trade paperback, a collection that contains the issues or in the case of the Death and Return several different versions. Maybe if DC ever gets around to putting out the rest of the Man of Steel volumes we’ll get that wonderful three part story in trade format. One can dream.)

[Dalarsco]

One thing I think you missed even on your runner ups list was Birthright. This was the story that made me like Superman. It made him seem like a real, round character for the first time.

[Michael Bailey]

Originally Posted by Dalarsco

One thing I think you missed even on your runner ups list was Birthright. This was the story that made me like Superman. It made him seem like a real, round character for the first time.

Birthright is one of those stories I enjoyed later. While the series was coming out I was pretty much down on the Superman line as a whole, which probably colored my perceptions but later, when I read it in hardcover, I really, really dug it.

Good choice.

[Kani]

I have really been enjoying your articles on Superman. I plan on picking up some of the story arcs you mentioned in this article (already have the Exile arc ordered). Historically I have been much more of a Marvel fan than DC, and when I did read DC books it was usually Batman, so its nice to get someones opinion on some good Superman reads. That being said, I recentely read Alan Moore's "The Last Superman Story" and really liked it, what did you think of it?

[Michael Bailey]

Originally Posted by Kani

I have really been enjoying your articles on Superman. I plan on picking up some of the story arcs you mentioned in this article (already have the Exile arc ordered). Historically I have been much more of a Marvel fan than DC, and when I did read DC books it was usually Batman, so its nice to get someones opinion on some good Superman reads. That being said, I recentely read Alan Moore's "The Last Superman Story" and really liked it, what did you think of it?

If you're talking about "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" then I dig it. It's a touching story and really put Superman and friends in a place that they just couldn't have been before. I think it was a great way to close out the Silver and Bronze Age of the character.

Glad you liked the articles. I think you'll like Exile. It's too bad they didn't include the Hostile Takeover back-ups, but maybe someday they'll put out a hardcover.

A man can dream.

[chrismozer]

Action Comics #365 always found a place in my heart.

Really liked the column. Bought back many great memories of past stories during the heyday of my collecting.

[Kani]

Originally Posted by Michael Bailey

If you're talking about "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" then I dig it. It's a touching story and really put Superman and friends in a place that they just couldn't have been before. I think it was a great way to close out the Silver and Bronze Age of the character.

Glad you liked the articles. I think you'll like Exile. It's too bad they didn't include the Hostile Takeover back-ups, but maybe someday they'll put out a hardcover.

A man can dream.

Yeah you are right, It was titled "Whatever Happen to the Man of Tommorow", I just had a brain fart...hopefully my issues of the Exile storyline will get here soon, is the "hostile takeover" a back up story in the Exile issues? Keep up the great work