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superman86to99 · 24 days ago

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Superman #93 (September 1994)

ZERO HOUR CROSSOVER! Due to the time-related shenanigans going on around the DC Universe, Superman meets his Kryptonian parents again -- and this time, his mom doesn't want to puke when she sees him! In fact, she even gives him a motherly kiss. Aww.

We start with Supergirl fighting some 68th century aliens who found themselves transported to present-day Earth and apparently figured they might as well invade it. Superman drops by and deals with the aliens via his usual approach to problem-solving: he just chucks their ship back into space.

As the heroes land back in Metropolis, Lois Lane hands Superman her cellular telephone because he has a call from Ma Kent, who sounds pretty panicked. The call abruptly cuts off, and there's a dramatic moment where Superman wonders if he can really leave the whole "the universe is in danger" thing aside for a while...

...before deciding that, yes, his mom is more important, obviously.

So, Superman flies to Smallville to check on his parents, only to find two surprise characters in their home: freaking' Psi-Phon and Dreadnaught. Wait, no, it's his other parents, Jor-El and Lara, just standing in the Kent's kitchen. Jor-El explains that, after sending little baby Kal-El's rocket to Earth all those years ago, they realized Krypton wasn't exploding after all, whoops. A scientist called Jen-Em had figured out how to stall the explosion, and then, after years of work, they managed to cure Krypton of its explosive tendencies for good.

Superman quickly figures out that this must be the result of the weirdness caused by Zero Hour (after all, he's been to Krypton and saw that there's nothing but a big ball of green gas there), but he agrees to put on a Cyclops-esque visor that will show him Jor-El's story in more detail.

Through the futuristic Viewmaster, Superman learns that in this timeline, Krypton's near-death experience caused the Kryptonians to re-evaluate their priorities and abandon their cold, emotionless ways (hence this Lara not being repulsed by her son). In fact, Lara became the first modern Kryptonian to get pregnant and have a child the old fashioned way -- meaning that, yes, Superman has a brother, Zan-El. Zan not only grew up to become "prefect over the entire planet" (so, world president) but, more importantly, he also brought back the shorter togas and fashionable headbands of Krypton's ancient, Mike Mignola-designed past.

Meanwhile, Jor-El had spent all those decades working on a cure to the genetic defect that kills Kryptonians if they try to leave the planet. He finally came up with a serum that temporarily allowed him and Lara to visit Earth, but it's already wearing off. So, Superman has to decide quickly: will he go live in alternate, non-exploded Krypton with his biological family? Or will he stay with his adoptive one that actually raised him and made him who he is?

Superman agonizes over the choice for a moment, but then he's like "hey, wait a minute, I can just go visit!" He informs the Els of his decision and they're overjoyed -- until a poorly-timed thunderbolt full of chronal energy strikes their spaceship and erases them from reality.

"The last son of Krypton is orphaned once again." Damn, Jurgens.

Metron of the New Gods comes to remind the grieving Superman that all the other superheroes are waiting for him at Zero Hour #3 (now on sale!), but Superman says they can wait a little longer because he has something important to do: hug his Earth parents and tell them he loves them.

CONTINUED IN ZERO HOUR!

Plotline-Watch:

This is a classic issue, obviously, but my problem with it is that one of the "next issue" blurbs in another Super-Title had teased it as "Guess who's coming to dinner?" -- and yet there's no scene of the Kents and the Els enjoying any type of meal. I haven't read the recent Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special by Jurgens (I will once we're done covering the event), but this scene better be in it.

At the start of the issue, as she fights the aliens, Supergirl sees the Superman hologram that he and Metron created with Green Lantern's help in Zero Hour #4. We'll go over every DC comic that got spammed with green holo-Superman in another post.

It greatly pleases me that Superman specifically mentions the time, exactly 75 issues ago, when Hawkman took him to see Krypton's remains (at which point Superman hallucinated a timeline where the Kryptonians survived by becoming even bigger assholes). Sure, it later turned out that this was an evil Hawkman impostor who inexplicably helped save Superman's life, but Superman probably doesn't know about that whole mess, plus I think Zero Hour is about to delete it from continuity anyway.

The reason for that genetic link to Krypton that Jor-El mentions was the Eradicator, as revealed in Action Annual #2, but Jurgens also refrains from opening that particular can of worms in this comic (especially since the Eradicator is currently running around with a superhero team and even appears in Zero Hour).

Metropolis Mailbag:

Imagine our delight (and our embarrassment) when we opened the newsletter archive page for Man of Steel #37 last week and saw there was a comment there from Mr. Jon Bogdanove himself, which had been sitting there unanswered for over a month! Agh! Here it is in full:

"Don—Outstanding job identifying all the Batmen ( You even got Walt!!). The only one you didn’t get reflects my failure. What you guessed was Marshall Rogers was meant to be Bernie Wrightson. However I deeply regret NOT including Marshall. I really should have. I also left out Norm, mainly because I didn’t think I could do him justice. I tried a few sketches and was able to identify a number of tropes we took a similar approach to—but I just wasn’t satisfied that I could really nail Norm—at least in the time I had left. Teaching myself all these different styles really pushed the drop-dead deadline to the limit. I really put poor Dennis and Whitty under the gun on this one. I did learn a hell of a lot drawing this issue though. Nothing like studying the masters to help you learn!! BTW: Weezie and I love that everyone hated Jeb so very much. One gets to draw many villains in one’s career, but rarely does one get to create so dislikeable a douchebag! I consider Jeb a genuine achievement. I know 90’s Jimmy annoys some people, but to me Jimmy was always meant to be comic relief. I liked playing Jimmy as this doofus kid with a middle-aged dad’s sense of cool. He still cracks me up. I would love to do a Retro look at Zero Hour—perhaps a vignette from that same night— in which 90s Jimmy meets himself from various other timelines—Golden Age office boy Jimmy, Silver-Age drag queen Jimmy, Kirby-era Jimmy, etc. I’d dedicate it to Max!"

And my shamefully late response (gonna go ahead and blame the time disturbances for it):

"I am mortified that we hadn't seen this comment until now! (Didn't realize the newsletter wouldn't alert us, argh) Sir, if you don't draw that Jimmy idea, I swear I will commission it from you one day. I would add Turtle Boy Jimmy, My Adventures with Superman Jimmy, and of course bald, Superman-hating Jerry Ordway Jimmy. Just no Jebs, please."

(I now check the newsletter archive pages for comments 75 times a day, unless I forget.)

Shout Outs-Watch:

Time-displaced shout outs to our SUPporters, Aaron, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Kit, Dave Shevlin, and Dave Blosser! Join them (and get extra non-continuity articles; the latest one was about Superman fighting a guy called BONECHILL in the 1989 cartoon) via Patreon or our newsletter’s “pay what you want” mode!

And now: more from Don Sparrow, who sent me his section weeks ago but it also got lost in time (actually, I decided to cover Zero Hour #4 first). Keep reading:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We open with the cover, and while it’s a bit broad, it’s certainly accurate for the story within. I kinda dig that “DC Universe” trade dress, though it didn’t seem to last very long. Inside the issue, we’re met with a lovely full-page splash of Supergirl amidst a LOT going on—thunderclouds, lightning, a firing spacecraft and a Star Wars style holographic projection of Superman.

I wasn’t sure which review to tackle first, Zero Hour #4, or this one, but since they seem to take place more or less at the same time (with the holographic message coming early into issue 4, but the New York meeting coming in Zero Hour #3), I flipped a coin and went with this one as happening first. As the story progresses, Supergirl gets an assist from the Man of Steel in dealing with the timelost aliens, brusquely tossing them into space. This issue exemplifies a trend I’ve noticed with Jurgens’ layouts since the Death and Return storyline—he uses a lot fewer panels per page than he once did, often with a near full page splash and then two or three panels laid overtop. Visually, it’s very arresting, and Jurgens knocks the background splashes out of the park—on pages 4 and 5, despite being nearly identical scenarios (Superman and Supergirl flying in a stormy sky), they’re both so well handled, you don’t even mind the repetition. But from a storytelling standpoint, it really does feel like a little less to read each issue, so the Superman issues seem a little thinner in terms of what actually happens. Anyone else notice this? [Max: For me at the time, the shorter plots were balanced out by the fact that I spent more time looking at the big, awesome pictures, as opposed to the smaller, lamers ones in the backissues I was buying, with all that wasted white space between panels. I'm paying for the full page to be used, dammit!!!]

Back to the art, page 7 has a great drawing of a pensive Superman. Page 9 is a great image, but a bit of a missed opportunity—the last panel would have been more impactful had Jor-El REALLY looked identical to Kal-El (which I’ve mocked up). [Max: I also made a small change to the panel, see if you can spot it...]

I do appreciate Jurgens’ and Rubinstein’s effort to still give the Els expressive faces, without eyebrows.

As Jor-El shares the alternate history of Krypton, Superman in the VR visor is pretty reminiscent of Cyclops from X-Men. It’s compelling to see the flowing outfits that Zan-El and his bride wear, in opposition to the robes of Jor and Lara—much more like the early more Roman look shown in the first issue of the World of Krypton series. My guess is the group that attend Zan’s nuptials are all members of the El family--I had thought that the different Kryptonian houses would wear different colours rather than everyone in green, but aside from the odd panel from Action Annual #2, I can’t seem to find much corroboration of that assumption. The sweet image of Lara giving her son a peck on the cheek is quietly powerful, with a great expression on Superman’s face on page 17. Lastly, the tragic page of chronal discharge (which sounds like a rap metal band name) and electrical storms is well drawn.

SPEEDING BULLETS:

When Superman is hemming and hawing over whether to focus on the extinction level event the superheroes are facing, or head to the farm to help his parents, Supergirl posits “There’s only one choice and you know it.” I completely thought that it was setting up for him to focus on saving all of humanity rather than popping home for a visit.

Perhaps it’s because they were trying to have the Zero Hour books serve as a jumping on point for new readers (particularly the zero issues, which are coming soon) but some of the dialogue in this issue feels clunkily expository, like when Superman reminds his fiancée Lois and quasi-family member Supergirl that the Kents “may not have been {his} genetic parents, but they’re real as they come”, or later when Superman explains to Jor-El and Lara (and the reader) about Krypton’s explosion, and the Matrix chamber rocketship.

They kinda gloss over whether there was any fallout about being wrong about Krypton exploding, though I suppose it was more about Jen-Em stabilizing the core rather than Jor being wrong. [Max: "Krypton is gonna blow up, guys" is definitely a meme among the current Kryptonian generation because the scientists did such a great job stopping it, like Y2K or the hole in the ozone layer here.]

Have we ever seen a post-Crisis Kryptonian depicted as having anything but black hair? [Max: I'm pretty sure there were some non-black haired ones in World of Krypton, but it's hard to tell with the eyebrow-less, nun habit-wearing ones. It's possible they made other hair colors go away once they got all into eugenics, though.]

It’s interesting that this alternate Krypton goes one step further than Byrne’s origin, regarding the Els. In Byrne’s history, Jor-El was a rebel in his society because he had actual affection for his lifemate, Lara. The notion of natural conception and birth goes even further than that, and was explored in the Man of Steel film, where (spoiler alert?) Kal himself was the first child naturally conceived in love in generations.

This issue also reveals that the familiar robes and headpieces worn by Jor-El and Lara aren’t simply traditional garb, they’re referred to as life support suits.

Though the Kents are worried about losing Clark to his Kryptonian parents, Jonathan is all man, which explains why he picks this particular moment to go to second base with his elderly wife. [Max: He instinctively wanted to get working on a replacement son, forgetting he's been shooting blanks since youth...]

While Superman cries in anguish at seeing his biological parents detonate, Metron simply refers to them as “unfortunates”. All heart, that one.

Missed an issue? Looking for an old storyline? Check out our new chronological issue index!

#superman #dan jurgens #josef rubinstein #supergirl #jor-el #lara #krypton #zero hour #ma kent #pa kent #metron #new gods #superman's brother president zan #totally rad #superman throwing his problems into orbit

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superman86to99 · 5 months ago

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Superman #92 (August 1992)

Massacre, a big red alien who goes around the universe punching people, comes to Earth to steal some ice cream... and punch Superman, while at it. The ice cream thing isn't a joke, by the way. The issue starts with a space mobster called Chadda telling Massacre that he owes him for punching too many people to death "from his direction," so he has a mission for him. Massacre is ready to punch him to death too, until Chadda mentions that the mission involves going to Earth.

Earth, as you might know, is where Superman lives. Massacre feels like he owes Superman some punches from the last time they met, so he agrees to take the mission as a flimsy excuse to do that. He turns himself into energy and lands in some island in the Southern Hemisphere, where he instantly yells out for Superman to "reveal himself," but the only people around are some confused locals.

Massacre draws an honestly pretty good rendition of Superman's symbol on the sand (has Massacre been drawing the S-shield on his notebooks for months? omg he's just like me) and the islanders point him in the general direction of the USA. Of course, the USA is actually pretty big, so Massacre ends up asking directions from a random cowboy, who tells him he's "gots to go" to Metropolis to find Superman. And so, Massacre goes to Metropolis... Illinois.

Meanwhile, in the correct Metropolis, Superman is hard at work rebuilding the city's water purification plant after it was destroyed by Lex Luthor's missiles (along with most of the rest of the city), probably because he just wants Lois Lane to take a damn shower for the first time in a week. Unfortunately for the increasingly stinky people of Metropolis, Massacre finally finds his way to the city and distracts Superman from his job with, you guessed it, punching.

While Massacre keeps Superman occupied by burying him in cement, the little "Skimmer" alien who follows him around completes Chadda's mission: filling up a spaceship with an exotic substance that only seems to be produced on Earth called "ice cream." Superman breaks free from the cement, but Massacre throws him towards the ice cream-filled spaceship, causing it to come crashing down and explode. Did the little alien guy survive? Did the ice cream? Will Lois ever shower?! You'll have to wait to find out, because this is the part where I say TO BE CONTINUED!

Plotline-Watch:

Massacre kept his promise to Superman from his previous appearance that "We will meet again -- on Earth!" Now he needs to fulfill the second part, which is that he'd kill all of Superman's friends. Or at least Jimmy Olsen. C'mon, Massacre. You can do it!

Despite the insalubrious conditions in Metropolis, Superman feels like he can't fly off to some other city with Lois for a little romantic vacation because the last time he did that, their work friend's child was murdered by the Toyman. That's an understandable concern, but look at it this way: what if Jimmy is the one who gets killed this time? C'mon, Superman. You can do it!

Speaking of which, there's a subplot about Jimmy and Lucy Lane looking for clean clothes because all the ones they owned were blown up by Lex Luthor. I don't remember where this storyline goes, if anywhere, so I'm just going to assume it leads to Jimmy trying on a sweater that's two sizes too small and accidentally choking. Fingers crossed.

Don Sparrow points out that Massacre is part of a trend where villains were built up as the next Doomsday. They're not subtle about it, either. Superman already remarked during their first fight that he hadn't been punched that hard "since Doomsday," and now Lois says "That Massacre looks so tough! Almost as tough as... Doomsday!" You know one thing Massacre could do to elevate his status in Superman's rogues gallery and surpass Doomsday? Killing Ji-- okay, that's enough dead Jimmy jokes, sorry.

I like how Massacre says "Today, someone dies!" right before the Doomsday reference. That's right, kids! This one could be another collector's item!

Don says: "I appreciate the line of dialogue explaining that Clark will shave before jumping into action as Superman, so that no one connects their matching stubble." My question is, won't they end up looking alike anyway once Clark shows up again with a clean face? And won't the other Metropolis survivors be like "Hey, man, where'd you find shaving implements? You holding out on us?" The logical solution would be for Superman to glue some hair to his face once he goes back to being Clark.

I'm not clear on what Chadda the ice cream-addicted space mobster means when he says, in his weird Yoda speak, that Massacre owes him for "Kills you have from my direction." Is he saying he gave Massacre directions to people he could kill? Or that Massacre killed too many people in his general direction? We need a Chadda miniseries to clear this up. (Or someone could ask Dan Jurgens, but I doubt he'd remember.)

I feel bad for the cowboy who kindly told Massacre about Metropolis and got killed as thanks. Based on his attire, he'd apparently survived since the 1800s, only to die in such a senseless way. If only that had been some other member of the supporting cast...

Shout Outs-Watch:

Ice cream-flavored shout outs to our supporters, Aaron, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Kit, Sam, Bol, Dave Shevlin, and Dave Blosser! Join them (and get extra non-continuity articles; we just finished covering all of the 1994 Superman Elseworlds annuals) via Patreon or our newsletter’s “pay what you want” mode!

And now, more from Don!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We start with the cover, and it’s an absolute beauty, combining the talents of two of my all time favourite pencillers (making up two out of four on my comic art Mount Rushmore), Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway (though on this cover, Ordway handles inks). There’s always a greater sense of depth and texture from Ordway’s detailed signature hatching, and it elevates a fairly static cover into a really gorgeous piece. As the story continues, we’re thrown into an alien tavern, with some imaginatively diverse creatures within, which must have been fun to design. [Max: Speaking of which, the guy on the far right here looks familiar... where have we seen him before, or at least his race?]

It’s on page two that we’re re-introduced to Massacre, the new big bad in the Superman mythology (who we saw briefly in Adventures #509, murdering the loose end known as Auron). Full disclosure: I never really warmed to this character. To me he was emblematic of a bad trend in Superman comics of the time, to try to recapture the heat of the Doomsday storyline by adding characters who could go toe-to-toe with Superman, requiring the telltale comment that the new character was “almost as tough as Doomsday”. Massacre was one of these types, completely devoid of personality, other than confidence, making him read like a humourless Lobo (right down to the dreadlocks, it seems). [Max: I'll admit I did warm up to Massacre, but mainly because I had the action figure and thought he looked pretty badass as he punched my other toys.]

It’s in these early pages that we’re reintroduced to Skimmer, inexplicably our narrator for this issue, as he was in Adventures #509. He looks like an earthtone version of a Ralph Bashki design from Heavy Metal, and of all the one-off characters I’d like to see more of, this guy is not high on my list. As the story continues, I appreciate the look at bomb ravaged Metropolis, especially the detail that the terrain is uneven, really making it seem like a disaster area.

Quite a nice drawing of Lois Lane on page 7, in profile. I always felt like Dan Jurgens generally drew her as resembling Geena Davis (Ordway’s Lois always looked like Julia Roberts to me) but in this instance she looks like Emma Caulfield as intrepid 90210 reporter Susan Keats). The world tour Massacre takes as he hunts for Superman is an interesting way to fill the time, a nice detail that not every alien lands in the continental USA right away. I appreciated the subtle hints through language and attire that Massacre’s second stop in the outback, interrupting what must have been a Foster’s Lager ad with Paul Hogan. [Max: I always assumed it was somewhere in the US, because otherwise that'd mean the islanders pointed Massacre in the wrong direction and they strike me as honest folks.] Given that our real-world Metropolis Illinois is the home of the biggest Superman convention in the world every year (I gotta make it out to that one of these times!) it’s neat to see it mentioned in these pages.

The fistfight that occurs once Massacre finally does find Superman is well-drawn, even with the irksome dialogue establishing just how deadly this guy is. The push that Massacre gets through Superman’s lines like “Too fast” and “how can anybody be so fast” or “I missed? Impossible!” put me in the mind of Poochie’s first appearance on Itchy and Scratchy. And Massacre is totally in my face.

Superman bursting out of Massacre’s concrete trap is a killer image, and I like the Neal Adams style rim lighting on the next page as Superman gets blasted backward by Massacre’s wrist gauntlet.

SPEEDING BULLETS:

The revelation that Skimmer is on Earth to stock up on ice cream is cute, but perhaps a bit out of place in a story that is otherwise so violent. [Max: Ice cream is never out of place, Don.]

Proof that I read too many comics—I had remembered Jimmy and Lucy being broken up already (maybe back during the Cerberus storyline?) so maybe they’re scavenging as friends? Or maybe that was just a blip? [Max: Maybe Lucy couldn't resist his manly stubble... which, in his case, I'm pretty sure he did glue to his face.]

I wonder what Elliot S! Maggin would say about Superman rebuilding things like water treatment plants, given the point of view espoused in the now classic “Must There Be a Superman?” story. On the one hand, creating infrastructure seems beyond the normal “catch them when they fall” Superman parameters, but on the other hand, I felt a little uncomfortable seeing Clark just chilling out and barbecuing in the disaster area earlier in the issue, and not doing more to help.

Another pet peeve of mine (which happens more in the movies than in the comics) is where super-beings use props to fight each other, when their fists would be more durable and do more damage than, say, the i-beam Superman uses to bat Massacre with on page 13. The baseball looking hit is a nice visual I suppose, and breaks it up from just being a boxing match, so maybe that answers that.

There’s some dissonance in the placid expressions these middle-aged concrete workers wear as they stand feet from a monster named Massacre, and casually discuss that “Supes ain’t got a chance.” Maybe we should run a caption contest for what else they could be saying with those benign faces.

[Max: Let me give it a shot...]

#superman #dan jurgens #josef rubinstein #massacre #skimmer #frank berkowitz #adam morgan #lucy lane #metropolis illinois #chadda the ice cream-addicted space mobster #mmm ice cream

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