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.