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Monday, August 20, 2018

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #436 & ACTION COMICS #596

“JUNK”
Penciller: Jerry Ordway | Inker: John Beatty
Letterer: Albert T. De Guzman | Colorist: Tony Tollin | Editor: Michael Carlin
And Welcome Aboard to Scriper: John Byrne | Plotters: Byrne/Ordway

The Plot: Superman arrives in Smallville and changes to Clark Kent, but the townspeople know who he truly is and capture him. Superman is taken to a Manhunter hideout, where Smallville’s Doctor Whitney explains that he’s been a Manhunter agent for decades and that every child born in the city since he arrived was a sleeper. Superman soon manages to escape his bonds and Whitney blows himself up to avoid capture, revealing he was actually a robot.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Clark bumps into Pete Ross in Smallville, making this the post-CRISIS debut for that character (at least in the main SUPERMAN titles; I suppose it’s possible he showed up someplace else that I’m unaware of). Pete is Smallville County’s Notary Public.

Doctor Whitney explains that the Manhunters had an agent on Krypton, who learned of Jor-El’s plan to send baby Kal-El to Earth. The Manhunters attempted to intercept Kal-El, but were delayed by the Green Lantern Corps. Whitney was placed in Smallville to prepare the town to one day capture its Kryptonian son.

My Thoughts: Y’know, for someone who grouses about writers doing “Everything you thought you knew was wrong” stories and who has often complained that certain writers can’t let any supporting characters just be normal…

In this tale we learn that Smallville has been the home to dozens of alien sleeper agents for thirty years, including among them Lana and Pete.

I’m just saying, John Byrne really shouldn’t be casting any stones here.

“HELL IS WHERE THE HEART IS…”
Story & Pencils: John Byrne | Inks: John Byrne and Keith Williams
Lettering: John Costanza | Coloring: Tom Ziuko | Editing: Michael Carlin

The Plot: All the Smallville sleeper Manhunters are dead, while their elders have been freed from suspended animation. The Spectre appears and tells Superman the young people’s souls may yet be saved in the spirit realm. He transports Superman there, where the Man of Steel finds a ghostly facsimile of Smallville inhabited by the deceased sleepers. When the Doctor Whitney manhunter arrives to taunt Superman, the Spectre appears and possesses him, causing him to rip himself apart from within.

Later, the Spectre explains to Superman, Lana, and the Kents that no one was ever truly dead; Whitney had simply created a fake spirit realm as a final ploy to distract Superman. With his mission in Smallville complete, the Man of Steel departs with the Spectre to join the battle against the Manhunters.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: The Spectre explains the plot of MILLENNIUM, a mini-series event written by Steve Englehart, to readers. Interestingly, the Manhunters’ plot apparently involves stealing or canceling the upcoming millennium, which was still almost fifteen years away at this point! This feels like a story concept that might have worked better in the late nineties.


It was stated in THE MAN OF STEEL that Lana had left Smallville and followed Clark around the world, observing him as he performed humanitarian acts before adopting the identity of Superman (this was used as a plot point in an early SUPERMAN issue when Luthor’s people recognized Lana in several photos and kidnapped her). It’s now revealed that Lana was acting under Manhunter suggestion when she did this, and that all the other sleepers left Smallville as well — but they all moved back after Clark became Superman, and was therefore much easier for the Manhunters to track.


It seems highly unlikely Byrne planned all this in advance, since MILLENNIUM was over a year away when he wrote those earlier stories, but I’ve always found it kind of cool when a creator is able to retrofit their own continuity to fit someone else’s storyline (and this is something that really only happens in comics due to the whole “shared universe” concept).

In a nice nod, Ma Kent recognizes the Spectre from her childhood, when he was a much more public figure as a member of the Justice Society of America.


My Thoughts: Back when I looked at the WRATH OF THE SPECTRE comics by Michael Fleisher and Jim Aparo, I commented on the pulpy feel of those stories. They were dark and moody, and always featured the Spectre doling out some sort of gruesome punishment to villains based on the nature of their crime. Though Superman in general is miles away from the style and tone of those stories (notwithstanding John Byrne’s occasional bouts of post-CRISIS bloodlust), it’s nice to see the tradition kept alive here, as the Spectre gives the Whitney Manhunter a suitably disturbing demise. He may be a robot, but his getting ripped apart from the inside out, in a huge splash page no less, is still a disturbing sight.

Otherwise, it’s business as usual for ACTION COMICS — another issue, another team-up. And at this point it’s pretty obvious that post-CRISIS Superman has met literally every other hero in the DC Universe over the five years he was in action up to this point. I mean, if he knows Spectre and Phantom Stranger, it seems pretty likely he knows everybody. It’s actually kind of weird now to think about it: DC kept nearly every single one of their titles running post-CRISIS with a lot of the original history in place… except WONDER WOMAN. I mean, there may be others I don’t know about, but from my perspective, it’s she and she alone who is receiving an actual, full-fledged reboot here, complete with meeting all her villains and all the other heroes for the very first time as she goes along. I wonder how George Pérez managed to get away with that when no one else — not even fellow superstars John Byrne and Frank Miller — managed to.

Next Week: The “Millennium” saga concludes (for Superman, anyway) in SUPERMAN #14 and ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #437.

19 comments:

  1. He may be a robot, but his getting ripped apart from the inside out, in a huge splash page no less, is still a disturbing sight.

    The bastard is having a practice run for Vision.

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    1. Maybe, though Vision's fate in WEST COAST AVENGERS wasn't as explosive as this!

      (Bendis would of course have She-Hulk rip Vision in two during his inaugural AVENGERS story arc... another reason to hate the guy, in my opinion.)

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    2. It's even worse that it was done as a delicate disassembly by some scientist dudes who didn't even think anything of it than if it would have been out of mischief by a violent villain who at least would have had the courtesy to acknowledge Vision as a person.

      I'm not quite sure anymore if Doombot A 76 didn't also shed a tear right before he was torn apart despite having done his best with his programming into which his creator had failed to duplicate his own egomania.

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    3. That's a funny idea -- I believe the official line is that Doombots only have Doom's personality when they're not present with him -- i.e., when he's in the same room, they behave like programmed robots, but as soon as he leaves, they "become" Doctor Doom. But I like the idea that they might have feelings about being demolished by Doom.

      (Totally random side note: When I ran the Marvel Super Heroes RPG campaign I've mentioned here once or twice, the group of heroes purloined a Doombot and reprogrammed it to become a valued member of the team -- but it maintained Doom's attitude and arrogance. It was just a good guy instead of a despot. And it dressed in Doom's battle armor from SECRET WARS to differentiate itself from the real thing.)

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    4. Now to think of it, I'm more intrigued about the Doom portion of the scenario: Doom would actually have programmed a "noble" idealized version of his personality on the Doombots out of distorted self-image, and the bots consequently would be when acting as the "real" Doom more decent than the actual real Doom who's legitly a bit unhinged.

      A 76 paid for having shown a disturbing lack of petty.

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  2. Ahh yes, when you have robots handy, you can have them explode apart without repercussion.

    I was reading more DC than Marvel at this point in time-Marvel I'd basically collapsed into the X-Men and occasional things that looked interesting, and if Simonson's Thor run wasn't done by now, it was CLOSE to being done, so, might as well say I'd dropped Thor-and I have no real memory of Millennium. In the least.

    Probably has a lot to do with the main book being written by Steve Englehart, who...well let me just say there's no ego in the Englehart family, because Steve got it all.

    I also thought Ordway took over the writing on Adventures immediately, but I can chalk that up to not actually reading the book. Given how close we are to Byrne's departure, relatively speaking, it's amazing how much of the Superman books he's on. No wonder things got jumbled for a bit after he left.

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    1. Jack, it seems you and I have the same opinion of Englehart. He makes John Byrne look positively humble. Reading his website and seeing him take full credit for inspiring things that his work at best tangentially influenced is hilarious.

      I don't love him as a writer, either. I've tried his AVENGERS, knowing it's pretty beloved, but it did nothing for me. I can't stand his FF. That said, I do believe his brief DETECTIVE COMICS run is really, really good, so I give him some credit for producing that, at least.

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    2. My memory of Englehart's work in the 80s was best summed up by his title at Marvel's creator owned line Epic, Coyote. It had a run of something like 9 issues that were flat out amazing, should be talked about today as essential issues leading towards more mature comics in the 80s.

      Ahh, but then came Coyote #10, and I have no idea what happened, but the book just drove off a cliff. The writing was awful, the tone of the book completely changing, characterizations thrown out the window. One issue from being my favorite book on the stands to dropped.

      That takes doing, let me tell you.

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    3. I've actually heard COYOTE was pretty good, but my experiences with 80s Englehart had turned me off from ever checking it out. Fascinating that it went downhill so quickly, though. There had to be something behind the scenes that caused that.

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  3. The "Millennium" plotline for John Byrne's "Superman" universe I found to be highly intriguing. I'm happy about the Man of Steel's contribution to those events.

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  4. The MILLENIUM tie-in with the DC titles was that an established character was actually a sleeper agent. Supes had Lana Lang, Batman had Commissioner Gordon (turned out to be a robot), Flash had Ira West (this was after they changed Wally's dad from wholesome 'No.1 Dad' to Deadbeat dad who gave Wally a hard time), the Outsiders had Dr. Jace (this one had major repercussions to their storyline), the Legion of Super-Heroes had Laurel Kent. You probably know who it for Wonder Woman...
    Remember in MoS when Lana told Clark that his leaving ended everything good in her life? Well, JB revealed in his WORLD OF SMALLVILLE LS that it wasn't because Clark dumped her. The Manhunters compelled her to follow him to Metropolis. However, a rural High School gal living in the Big City was tough, and the Manhunters weren't paying the bills. Lana had to do some rough things to survive, a scrubwoman washing floors, doing dishes, etc. She mentions the work was demeaning, which suggests she might have prostituted herself. And she even had to forage via garbage cans. But she couldn't leave (via the mind-conditioning) and suffered these holes in her memories (when she reported to the Manhunters).

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    1. Well of course she prostituted herself! This is late 1980s John Byrne we're talking about. No female character may be untarnished (except She-Hulk for whatever reason).

      I did learn who Wonder Woman's Manhunter was, and we'll cover those issues in just a couple of weeks. I didn't realize there was a mandate that every series needed a Manhunter sleeper, though. That's good to know!

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  5. I wonder if I just didn't notice this Action Comics on the stands when it came out, 'cause it looks like the sort of thing I would've impulse-bought. Byrne's Action was a great excuse to look at DC characters I was vaguely familiar with, yet intrigued by, and Spectre was one of those guys. Mostly through Alan Moore Swamp Thing stories I'd picked up, Spectre was just cool. I wasn't even familiar with his m.o. of dispatching the guilty in creative, grizzly ways, which I probably would've gone for as well at my tender, somewhat nihilistic age...
    -david p.

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    1. Yeah, much as I complained about it early on being nonessential fluff, I do like Byrne's ACTION as DC's MARVEL TEAM-UP. Seeing Superman team up with a different character every month is fun, even when the stories rarely feel very consequential.

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  6. DC kept nearly every single one of their titles running post-CRISIS with a lot of the original history in place… except WONDER WOMAN.

    Just wait for the mess that is Hawkman. Or should that Hawkmen?

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    1. Ah yes, I've heard about the mess that Hawkman became post-CRISIS. I seem to recall it still hadn't been cleaned up by the late nineties, prompting Grant Morrison to create Zauriel for JLA since he couldn't use Hawkman (or something along those lines; I read about it a really long time ago).

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    2. There were many attempts including literally merging all the Hawkmen *and* Hawkwomen into a single "Hawkgod" during Zero Hour but it didn't last. Even the New 52 somehow managed to just restart the mess.

      What the character desperately needed was a writer, editor and title that would all last for at least the same five years, nailing things down absolutely, whereas instead every time someone managed to settle on the Egyptian Hawkman as the basis, someone else would come along and try to do more with Thanagar and vice versa.

      They're making another attempt to fix him but we'll see how long this lasts.

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    3. I don't know what attempts were made in the comics over the years to reconcile the origins, but I liked what the JUSTICE LEAGUE TV series did... Hawkgirl was an alien from Thanagar, but they used the Egpyt origin for Hawkman -- however he was inspired by ancient Thanagarians who had crashed and lived in Egpyt centuries earlier.

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  7. I’m just saying, John Byrne really shouldn’t be casting any stones here.

    I feel like when it comes to creators doing things that bug John Byrne, he's very much a "do as I say, not as I do" type.

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