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superman86to99 · 6 months ago

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Superman #91 (July 1994)

"THE FALL OF METROPOLIS," Part 3! Superman vs. giant city-destroying robots, although the real villain in this story is… the greed of man. Specifically, one random LexCorp corporate climber called Mr. McDonald who, at the start of the issue, is digging through the ruins of a bank to look for a safety deposit box full of money. A homeless man (technically, everyone's homeless now that Metropolis got bombed, but he was already homeless) called Wild Bill tries to make polite conversation, but McDonald tells him to piss off. Even when the aforementioned giant city-destroying robots show up, McDonald is too focused on finding his box to get scared.

Meanwhile, Superman is shocked to learn that Lex Luthor is being kept in a fancy hi-tech medical pod while thousands of people injured during Metropolis' destruction are on the street. However, a doctor convinces him that this is actually necessary to keep Lex alive now that he's in a vegetative state, meaning he's conscious but can't move or talk. That last part is unfortunate for Lex and everyone around him, because if he could talk, he'd be screaming about the killer robots that he knows are heading directly this way.

The robots do arrive and hit Superman pretty hard, causing him to come crashing down right in front of Wild Bill and Mr. McDonald. Bill, who by the way is a friend of Bibbo's, thinks they should help "Sooperman," but McDonald is only interested in the fact that the fight broke part of the bank's vault, finally allowing him to reach his precious money box. It's up to Wild Bill to nurse Superman back to health using nothing but a juice box -- or at least I think that's juice. Maybe there was something slightly stronger in there.

(Note: Those panels make it look like Superman drank the juice and immediately flew off, but I need you to know he actually thanked Bill first and told him any friend of Bibbo's is a friend of his.)

After the revitalized Superman goes back to fighting the robots, Wild Bill hears a scream and sees a girl whose legs were buried under the rubble. He tells McDonald they should dig her out, but LexCorp Bro refuses because he's already on his way to use his box full of money to buy himself a cozy room in the only major building in Metropolis that wasn't bombed out, the Newstime Building. Again, Wild Bill helps the person in need all by himself (no juice for her, though, which is probably for the best...).

While fighting the robots, Superman finds out that they were made by Luthor to "prevent Metropolis from suffering the same fate as Coast City" in case of an alien invasion -- or, failing that, finish wiping the city out in order to "leave nothing for the conquerors." Given Metropolis' current state, the robots assumed it must have been invaded and went into "scorched earth" mode. The robots have now reached the hospital where Lex is and are about to give their creator a very ironic and very painful death, but Superman intervenes and saves him (and only feels a little bit sorry he wasn't too late). Instead of thanking Superman, Lex curses him out because he would have "welcomed death" now that he's a vegetable, seemingly forgetting that two pages earlier he was all "NOOOO!"

(Pretty sure he soiled his medical pod there.)

Once he's finished punching the robots into scrap metal, Superman starts relocating the people from the now half-destroyed hospital, plus Wild Bill and that girl he rescued, to… the Newstime Building, just as McDonald has finished bribing his way into it. McDonald is indignant that he spent all his money to get here and now there won't be any space for him, and even brags about being one of the "top dogs" at LexCorp who helped fund those impressive robots. Superman is unsurprisingly unsympathetic to his plight.

I'm assuming the crowd jumped on McDonald's ass one second after Superman left. As a general rule, it isn't very wise to brag about being responsible for killer robots in front of the people they just tried to kill.

Creator-Watch:

As with last issue, this one is guest-drawn by Brent "Kurt Busiek's Astro City" Anderson, since Dan Jurgens needed a two-issue break from drawing Superman to focus on drawing Superman and like 200 other characters in the upcoming Zero Hour event (it's kind of insane that it was only two issues, considering Zero Hour will have five in one month). As a kid, I didn't appreciate "the good Superman artist" (they're all "the good one," foolish child!!!) going away for two issues, especially since the cover credits promised a Jurgens/Rubinstein joint, but Anderson's moody style has grown on me over the years. More on him in Don Sparrow's Art-Watch section below!

Plotline-Watch:

I guess we're meant to understand that the other giant city-destroying robot that appeared in Man of Steel #35 and Wonder Woman #88 was part of the same LexCorp program, even though that one looked completely different and had a human brain inside it (Superman made no mention of anything like that in this issue, though it's possible he's just numb to finding human brains inside robots by now). I prefer to think that other robot was a leftover Cerberus agent awakened by the city's destruction. Seems like the sort of thing they'd come up with.

Wild Bill's role in this issue could have been played by Lois Lane's homeless friend (and occasional George Carlin lookalike) Charlie, if they hadn't killed him during the Clone Plague storyline. Or, going further back, by Jimmy Olsen's homeless friend Pete Shoemaker, if he hadn't been murdered by Brainiac. Hm, I think I know why Wild Bill never showed up again...

I was recently lamenting the fact that late '93/early '94 was the first time since Jurgens joined the Super Squad full-time that we didn't get a Very Special Dan Jurgens Christmas issue. '89/'90 had "Homeless for the Holidays," '90/'91 had the drunk driving story, '91/'92 had "Metropolis Mailbag," and '92/'93 had "Metropolis Mailbag II," all classics. Unfortunately, now that we're in constant crossover mode, there doesn't seem to be much space for little stories like that. This issue has nothing to do with Christmas, but I do feel like it could have scratched the same itch as those older one-off stories... if it wasn't set in the middle of a big storyline and didn't have to devote most of its pages to it, anyway.

Shout Outs-Watch:

Shout outs to everyone who joined our new newsletter (check your spam folder for that verification email if you haven't clicked it!) and double shout outs to our supporters, Aaron, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Kit, Sam, Bol, Gaetano Barreca, and Dave Shevlin! Become a supporter and get extra articles via Patreon or by upgrading to the newsletter's "pay what you want" mode!

And shout out to Don Sparrow too, whose section is up ahead...

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We start with the cover, and it’s a pretty good one, if a little generic—Superman battles an AT-AT like walking robot, firing its between-the-legs blasters at Superman’s cap, as he punches one of the legs. A pretty simple, if dynamic pose, and Jurgens�� Superman is always a welcome sight, particularly in an issue with a guest artist.

Speaking of the guest artist, Brent Anderson takes pencilling duties on this issue, and it’s a mixed bag. The closest description I’d use of Anderson’s work in these pages is like a rushed Neal Adams. There’s lots of great dynamic realism, but it gets a little loose in places. That could be just that his style isn’t gelling with the scratchier, sketchier look of Joe Rubenstein’s inks, or it could be that it is loose like that at the pencil levels. As the story opens we’re thrown into the rubble of Metropolis, picking up from Action #700 where Lex’s machinations leveled the city. We get a full three pages of people we’ve never seen before (kudos to the art team for including the very ‘of its time’ line art shaved into Mr. McDonald’s fade!)...

...until the big 4th page splash, where the ED-209 looking battle bots descend on the rubble. There’s a very Neal Adams-esque angle as Superman spies the onslaught from afar on page 7, which definitely stands out in a good way from the rest of the page. As with some previous fill-ins, Brent Anderson’s ability to draw realistically is almost a detriment—if he had a simpler style, the little errors might be forgiven or look less glaring. But because he can really render, when the faces go wonky, they really go wonky. Obviously the comatose Lex Luthor isn’t looking like a living magazine cover, but the asymmetry in the way he’s drawn here looks really eerie.

[Max: The Cryptkeeper comparison from a few issues back is even more apt now...]

Same as a few pages later, we see Mr. McDonald improbably find his safety deposit box full of cash, with a very wall-eyed expression. Superman getting blasted by a high intensity ray is well done, particularly the grease pencil edges on the bolt hitting Superman.

Superman frequently has the yellow of his crest in shadow, reminding me of a later era where Superman dons black in the S in mourning. The next best highlight comes in the splash on page 20, where Superman flies through one of the battle bots in explosive fashion.

Strangely, the frenetic pace of the issue, with Superman careening wildly from one battle or rescue to another ironically leaves this reader a little bored. It’s all action, sure, but it feels pointless, and a little repetitive after Action #700 had a pretty similar plot. I know the fable of Mr. McDonald, and his cash being useless in a no man’s land scenario was supposed to be poignant, but I found it hard to care much about the story, even in a negative sense. We’re supposed to cheer against this guy, I think, and be inspired by the rabbinical looking homeless man, but since this is just about the first we’ve ever seen of them, I just wasn’t interested. [Max: See, it would have worked better if that was Charlie!] Making matters worse, when McDonald confesses he knows all about the robots as he designed them, Superman is happier to leave with a bon mot than he is getting McDonalds’ expertise on how to stop any further robots, or perhaps what might come next.

SPEEDING BULLETS:

The angle that the robots are following a scorched earth policy in the wake of Coast City is at least somewhat interesting, but it does beg the question why so many programmers, like McDonald apparently went along with this plan.

Aside from a few wide shots later in the story, Metropolis is pretty sparsely populated as drawn here, which again diminishes the impact of the displacement caused by the missiles in Action #700.

Look, I don’t want to throw Cindee any shade, especially since she’s just a kid, but doesn’t it seem like she could have just moved those bricks off herself, one by one? [Max: Maybe she's a junior reporter taking a page from the Lois Lane playbook to get an interview with Superman?]

I get what Superman is saying when he reacts to McDonald’s greed, but the sentiment is a bit weird. Yes, Superman, the robots that killed and crushed are worse than the guy who tried to pay to get a better spot in the queue.

With Anderson and Immonen filling in pretty regularly month to month, it almost feels like these issues are auditions of a sort.

Though we do get an update on the “Lex is trapped in a dying clone body” storyline, the lack of the rest of the supporting cast is felt very keenly. This issue might have felt a lot less like filler if we’d seen what Perry or Jimmy or Lois or Bibbo were up to. Heck, the Bill character could very easily have just been Bibbo, though I guess then we’d lose the have and have not contrast between Bill and McDonald. [Max: Hmmm, I do like the idea of McDonald assuming Bibbo, who'd look particularly scruffy after spending time digging people out of the rubble, is a homeless person when he's probably richer than him...]

There something sweet—if weird—about Superman being revived with a juice box. Better that than a Hostess Fruit Pie, I suppose.

#superman #dan jurgens #brent anderson #joe rubinstein #fall of metropolis #killer robots #kind-hearted hobos #killer robots vs. kind-hearted hobos #dc comics

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the-antiapocalyptic-man · 1 year ago

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sketch page update: assorted Shazam characters and potential cast members for Action Comics: The Ophidiad

For Shazam we've got Vlarem, Oggar, Tanus and Blaze, Desira Sivana and her lieutenant Doctor Dynamo, plus Misters Atom and Mind, and a couple takes on Sobek since I'm still taking myself out of drawing him like Vector the Crocodile as a counterpart to Tawny.

Vlarem was the Wizard's champion identity (anagram of "Marvel" natch) and Oggar was a god ousted from Shazam (then "SHAZAMO")'s line-up, while his name is also a clear corruption of the word "Ogre". I can kinda see Oggar as a companion of Baal and Vlarem's rival. Vlarem himself is still the Canaanite Jebediah, but Mamaragan fills the role of the Wizard, so what happened to Vlarem between his war with Oggar and Mamaragan's empowering of Hurut , Aman and Teth.

Blaze and Tanus/Satanus are the children of Baal, returned to Earth in the modern day in pursuit of Baal's contemporary incarnation, Billy. Tanus uses a civilian identity as "Colin Thornton" owner and publisher of Newstime, while Blaze lived as Angelica "Babe" Tanaka, frontwoman for The Children of The Night. They both ended up during afoul of Superman after leaving Fawcett for Metropolis.

Desira Sivana is Thaddeus's wife, composited from Queen Desira (Golden Age Queen of Venus), Venus Sivana, and possibly Aphrodite? Mister Mind is Venusian as well, so it all kinda ties together. Beautia Sivana is an outright demi-god and the leader among the Sivana siblings, growing even more powerful with the transformative powers of the Black Sivana Equation...

The Ophidiad's a concept I've been cooking for a bit. It's a hypothetical Action Comics arc focused on Jimmy Olsen and Lex Luthor:

"After altering his DNA into a hypothetical copy of his father’s mythical “Thorulian” ultra-humanite, Lex finds himself further transformed into a host of Ophidian, the Orange Light Entity of Greed. How a shapeshifting snake man capable of summoning an army at a thought, Jimmy Olsen takes up his old Turtle-Man mantle to fight back. But as residual Doomsday virus effects alter Jimmy for the worse, all of Metropolis find themselves in a Kaiju fight between the distant cousins…and Superman nowhere to be found!"

Hector Hammond, Lionel Luthor, Pete Ross, Lana Lang, Steel, Devour, Hiro Okamura are part of the cast, but Captain Comet, Sand Superman, and Hope (from Superman: Lost) are potentially involved as well.

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