Here we are diving into February! We’re definitely moving along pretty well this year. I’ve managed to get a good routine of reading and writing down. I consider it training for when I start writing my dissertation, and having just finished a conference paper, I think the practice may be doing me some good! Anyway, this month we’ve got a promising line-up of books. I wonder how they’ll stack up in the reading. For today, we’ve got a double-dose of Super, and despite a real clunker, the net result is mostly positive!
If you’re new to this little journey, you can check out the first post to learn what it’s all about.
- Idi Amin ousts Milton Obote and appoints himself president (dictator) of Uganda
- A series of house searches by the British Army in Catholic areas of Belfast, resulting in serious rioting and gun battles
- OPEC mandates “total embargo” against any company that rejects 55 percent tax rate
- National Guard mobilized to quell rioting in Wilmington NC
- Apollo 14, 3rd US manned Moon expedition, lands near Fra Mauro, and Alan Shepard & Edward Mitchell (Apollo 14) walk on Moon for 4 hrs
- South Vietnamese troops invade Laos
- Richard Nixon installs secret taping system in White House
- Algeria nationalizes 51 percent of French oil concessions
- Many deaths in Ireland as the Troubles continue to escalate
Things are really getting bad in Ireland. I’ve condensed a half dozen or so entries on the subject here. Sadly, there’s no relief in the near future. We also see the rise of OPEC, heralding all kinds of complications later on in the decade. Notably, this is the month that Nixon started his notorious tape-recording operation. We’re still three long years away from his impeachment. I wonder if history will be repeating itself any time soon. On a more positive note, man once more walked on the Moon this month. That’s a bright point at any time.
This month’s number 1 was the Osmonds with the very cheerful “One Bad Apple.” This song of encouragement in love despite disappointments and ‘bad apples,’ seems surprisingly fitting given the ugliness of this month in history.
Roll Call
(You can see everything published this month HERE)
- Action Comics #397
- Adventure Comics #402
- Aquaman #55
- Batman #229
- Detective Comics #408
- The Flash #203
- Justice League of America #87
- The Phantom Stranger #11
- Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #108
- Superman #234
- Teen Titans #31
- World’s Finest #200
Bolded entries are covered in this post, the others will be covered soon.
Action Comics #397
“The Secret of the Wheel-Chair Superman!”
Writer: Leo Dorfman
Penciler: Curt Swan
Inker: Murphy Anderson
Editors: E. Nelson Bridwell and Murray Boltinoff
“The Super-Captive of the Sea!”
Writer: Leo Dorfman
Penciler: Curt Swan
Inker: Murphy Anderson
Editors: E. Nelson Bridwell and Murray Boltinoff
Urg. I suppose it will come as a surprise to pretty much no-one who read my coverage of the previous part of this story that I was dreading reading this issue. It ended up being pretty much exactly what I expected, and not only did the cover story not fix the problems with the previous issue, it magnified them as well. To his credit, Dorfman does attempt to address the obvious issues with Superman becoming a super-bum, but his efforts are woefully inadequate.
Our story, such as it is, picks up right where the previous one left off. As the not-so-Superman takes off in his wheelchair, pursued by a curious, gawking crowd, Jimmy Olsen notices the disturbance and sets out to discover what has brought his former friend to this extreme. The Man of Tinfoil, after escaping from the lookey-loos with the aid of a cloud of steam created by his heat vision, returns to his squalid home. There Jimmy finds him and finally gets the story of the former hero’s disappearance. It’s a pretty lack-luster tale.
What we don’t hear is the agonized screaming as the crowd is scalded by steam…
Apparently after a series of disappointing missions, his powers just began to fade away, one after another, leaving only his invulnerability and visions. I don’t know about you, but I think I could find some way to use being invulnerable and being able to melt things with my eyes. I’m just saying. Anyway, the now hobbled Kryptonian was fired by Moran Edge for taking too many sick days….despite the fact that he’s still invulnerable. I don’t think Dorfman quite thought that one out all the way. For a while he tried to continue hero-ing with the aid of his superman robots, but they were eventually all destroyed, and Superman, not having any savings, was forced to live on the streets. There’s some nonsense about him not wanting to mooch off of his friends because of his pride too.
Of course, that’s silly six ways from Sunday, but we covered that last time. Anyway, we also discover who the strange, plague-ridden people are who were sharing Superman’s hovel. They are a doctor named Reynolds and his wife who were infected with a terrible disease while trying to cure it, and the super-bum has promised to care for them for the few weeks they have left to live so that they don’t risk infecting anyone else. We’re supposed to see all of this as a sign of Superman’s continuing altruism, but that conflicts with his petty motivations for the rest of the story, which are revealed when Jimmy convinces his friend to visit a neurologist.
The doctor elicits a more substantive account of the missions that preceded Superman’s power loss, and it turns out that in each case, the Man of Steel discovered he wasn’t needed because mankind had advanced technologically to the point where they could deal with any disaster. Instead of being proud of his adopted race or in any way acting in accordance with his established characterization, this cause Superman to develop psychosomatic symptoms and imagine his power loss because he feels sorry for himself. Despite being told its all in his head, the former Metropolis Marvel can’t get out of his own way long enough to restore his powers, giving up after a whole five minutes of effort, really displaying that willpower and drive that made him such a great hero.
What a hero!
Then, to cap things off, back home he gets distracted while heat vision drying his clothes and sets the building on fire. He finally recovers his powers in time to pull the doctor and his wife out of the inferno, but they die anyway. They die because of his carelessness, but we’re supposed to be okay with it because they only had a short amount of time left anyway. Then, after burying his friends, Superman heads out into space to find a new world that needs him, not for their sake, but for his, because in this comic Lex Luthor was right all along.
I don’t have much to say about this comic that I didn’t say last time. It’s an example of terrible characterization, and Dorfman’s efforts to address the glaring problems with his portrayal just don’t hold up, especially because the entire conflict of the story is that Superman felt so bad for himself because human beings weren’t in mortal danger from natural disasters that he sank into a power-robbing depression. That’s fairly awful. I’ll give this, like the first issue, two Minutemen. The story is so-so, but the characterization is what sinks it.
“The Super-Captive of the Sea”
Our backup for this issue is another ‘Untold Tale of the Fortress,’ which seems like a pretty decent setup for interesting stories. This one stretches the the theme a bit, as we begin by discovering that Superman had two other Fortresses of Solitude, one in a meteor and one at the bottom of the Sea. Now, I’m no Superman expert, but I was surprised to learn of their existence. I was curious if these alternate Fortresses had some life beyond this book, and according to the Fortresses’ Wikipedia article, the undersea version was introduced way back in 1958! Who knew?
Anyway, our untold tale begins with Superman re-opening that very undersea Fortress and using its monitoring equipment to watch for threats beneath the seas. What’s this? Has Superman decided that lording it over the whole air-breathing world isn’t enough and he he needs to horn in on Aquaman’s territory? We don’t find out right away, as the Man of Steel rushes out to dispose of some barrels of radioactive waste that are caught in a fishing boat’s nets. While rounding up the barrels, the Metropolis Marvel turned Marine Marvel (Aquaman is so going to sue him) accidentally leaves the sea and suddenly begins to suffer some strange ill effects.
Swan draws some great underwater action. I’d love to see him tackle an Aquaman tale!
We learn that a cloud of space pollution (sure) recently drifted into the Earth’s atmosphere, and it plays merry havoc with Superman’s sense of direction. Water seems to block the effects, so he moves into his old Fortress while he waits for the cloud to dissipate. Over the following days, the Man of Tomorrow has to get creative to deal with threats that aren’t in the sea, like using his heat vision from a distance to weld a bridge that is collapsing and creating a tidal wave to put out a forest fire. At each adventure, he thinks he spots two shadowy figures leaving the scene, but when he investigates he finds only innocuous sea-life. One wonders how he’s explaining Clark Kent’s sudden absence from the Daily Planet during these escapades.
Eventually, Superman begins to get lonely, so he uses his powers to create a suit of lead-glass that should protect him from the cloud’s effects. Come on, Supes; if you’re lonely, just visit Atlantis! I’m sure Arthur and Mera would roll out the red carpet for you! Well, just as the Submariner of Steel prepares to leave the ocean, he’s confronted by two strange aquatic aliens. They catch him in a net that gives off red sun radiation and explain that they are the source of all of his problems.
Apparently, they’re from a water planet which has observed Earth for some time, and they decided that they just had to have a Superman of their own, so they devised these tests to see how he would operate on a oceanic world. I’m reminded of the opening lines of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds:
[T]his world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. […] Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
Literary associations aside, Superman’s not about to stand for being carted off to some other world without so much as a ‘how-do-you-do,’ and he’s got a clever plan. The invaders tell him that they were the sea creatures he kept seeing, as they have the power to change shape, so the Man of Steel says he doesn’t believe them and challenges one of the aliens to turn into a seahorse. When the aquatic alien obliges, the Man of Tomorrow goads him into coming close ‘so he can see clearly,’ and the seahorse/creature swims into the net. Once he’s inside, Superman bets him that he can’t turn into a whale, and the dim-witted alien (Okay, so maybe the ‘intelligences greater than man’s’ bit doesn’t fit so well after all) cheerfully shows off, snapping the net and freeing the Kryptonian. Superman quickly freezes the pair and, donning his suit, hurls them through space towards their homeworld and disposes of the cloud. Yeah, I’m sure that will work great and they won’t die horribly in the vast and frozen void of space.
This is a fun little story. It’s very much a Silver Age plot, but it’s handled well enough that the silliness of the concept isn’t too much. The aliens are pretty cool looking, very fitting for aquatic extraterrestrials. I quite enjoyed Superman’s plan for defeating them. It’s straight out of a fairy tale. It’s the kids tricking the witch into the oven or the like, and I found it charming, a pleasant expression of the character’s cleverness. My only real problem with the story is its wasted potential. What a perfect opportunity to have Aquaman guest star! I’ll bet the Sea King was relieved when Superman went home and stopped stealing his thunder. Other than that, this enjoyable backup is just fine. I’ll give it 3.5 Minutemen.
Adventure Comics #402
“Love Conquers All-Even Supergirl”
Writer: Mike Sekowsky
Penciler: Mike Sekowsky
Inker: Jack Abel
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Mike Sekowsky
“Rat-Race”
Writer: Mike Sekowsky
Penciler: Mike Sekowsky
Inker: Tony DeZuniga
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Mike Sekowsky
This offbeat issue of Adventure provides us with an interesting angle, a superhero falling for an old, old scam. The villains of this piece employ a honey trap, a scam wherein a grifter/spy/general-ne’er-do-well seduces a mark in order to get something out of them. It’s a new one on me to see this done with a superheroine, at least outside of a specific espionage-esq setting.
The villains in question here are a new femme fatale named Starfire (no, not the famous one) and her conman minion, a Brit named Derek. Starfire has a neat look, with a distinctive star-burst eyepatch, but we don’t learn too much about her. Apparently she’s got aspirations to world domination, but with an unusual twist. She plans to put a female hegemony in place, with her at its head, of course. That’s a pretty neat take on an old refrain, and it definitely has potential for an antagonist of Supergirl. Well, this unknown megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur has an ace up her sleeve. Her scientist henchman has been developing a pill that removes superpowers…all superpowers…which seems a bit of a stretch. One pill that counters everything, power rings, genetic mutations, alien DNA? That’s…convenient. For some reason, Starfire has pegged Supergirl as her first victim, so she’s hired honey trap expert Derrek to seduce the young heroine and slip her the pill.
What the devil is going on with his hair in the second panel?
The ‘young man,’ who in Sekowsky’s lackluster art looks to be in his late 30s, has to get his introductions the hard way, so Starfire arranges a fake mugging for the grifter in Supergirl’s home town. It works like a charm, unfortunately for the make-believe muggers, who get a real beating. They also yell out their plans to one another, which is probably not a fantastic idea when dealing with someone who has super hearing, but luckily for them, the Maid of Might seems to not be paying attention. When the heroine goes to check on Derrek, he surprises her with a kiss in thanks and turns on that British charm.
“I THINK SHE’S FALLING FOR OUR SECRET PLAN, GUYS! JUST BE COOL!”
The next day, Linda Danvers finds Derrek in one of her classes at Stanhope College, and she finds herself thinking about him. Later, she finds a sign a note on the campus bulletin board from the conman, begging Supergirl to meet him that night. The Girl of Steel reluctantly agrees, even though she knows she can’t get involved with a mere mortal.
She meets Derrek, dressed in a formal version of her costume, which is a fun little touch, and they have a night on the town, where he works his magic. Still, Supergirl is made of sterner stuff, so she tells him that they can’t be together, and after one last kiss, agrees to meet him the next day for a farewell picnic.
What…is going on with that car’s back end? It’s apparently floating several feet off of the ground!
On that day, Derrek slips the anti-powers pill into her cup, completing his mission. Meanwhile, Starfire’s flunkies have staged a robbery to put the drug to the test, and when Supergirl intervenes, she finds her powers rapidly waning! She dodge gunfire for a moment but suddenly crumples to the ground. When the grifter checks her, he declares to his confederates that Supergirl is dead! Dun-dun-DUN! That’s a good cliffhanger to end on. It’s hard to get much more serious than ‘the book’s star is dead!’
So, this month Supergirl became a romance comic. This story was an interesting departure, and there is actually a little bit of good character work here. That’s the part of the tale that I found most enjoyable. It’s reasonable that Supergirl might fall for a charming rascal who said and did all the right things. After all, she’s still just a girl, young and inexperienced with romance. I know I was pretty darn stupid at that age and got into all kinds of romantic troubles before I meet my wife. It’s a plot that actually takes some advantage of Supergirl’s age and setting, which is a pleasant change of pace.
The whole thing moves a bit too quickly to make the betrayal have the punch that it could have, and the anti-power pill is a bit of a silly gimmick. Yet, the biggest weakness with this story is the art. Sekowsky’s usually uneven pencils are absolutely abominable in this story, and there are several pages that are just plain ugly. The creativity and inventiveness that marked Manhunter don’t have much opportunity to shine here, and his figure-work and perspective are all kinds of wonky. The final effect is a solid if unattractive story of an unusual type. I’ll give it 3 Minutemen. Amor vincit omnia!
And since I’m not covering the very short-lived backup feature in Adventure (I believe this is its last month), that will do it for this post. I hope you enjoyed my musings and will join me again soon for another leg of my journey Into the Bronze Age! Until then, keep the heroic ideal alive!
The Greylands 