“TOYS IN THE ATTIC”
Story & Pencils: John Byrne | Inks: Karl Kesel
Lettering: John Costanza | Coloring: Tom Ziuko | Editing: Michael Carlin
Story & Pencils: John Byrne | Inks: Karl Kesel
Lettering: John Costanza | Coloring: Tom Ziuko | Editing: Michael Carlin
With no leads to pursue, Superman returns to the Daily Planet, where he’s confronted by Lana Lang. Lana reveals herself as an agent of the extraterrestrial Manhunters, and flies back to Smallville with Superman on her trail.
Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Though they refuse to reveal their names, the British agents in the opening pages are clearly John Steed and Emma Peel, of THE AVENGERS television series. They note that a British heroine named Godiva, who Superman has apparently met, tried to capture Schott but failed.
Luthor complains to his doctor about pain in his hand; this will eventually be revealed as the onset of Kryptonite poisoning from the ring he wears. Also, as Superman leaves Luthor’s office, he calls attention to the ring, recalling that Luthor wasn’t wearing it in SUPERMAN 10 because he had already placed it inside the Booster Gold robot he set against the Man of Steel in ACTION COMICS 595. And, miraculously, there are actually footnotes to both of these issues!
This issue features the post-CRISIS debut of the Toyman, one of Superman’s classic foes. He looks pretty much just like I remember the Silver Age version appearing, though I’m not sure the original Schott was as much of a cold-blooded murderer as this guy.
Though Superman doesn’t know what’s become of Schott, we readers see him trapped in a dungeon, where he’s confronted by a shadowy figure with something green and glowing on his finger, who tells the toymaker that he will now serve his captor.
When Lana reveals herself as a Manhunter, Clark wonders if she’s the one he was “warned about”. There’s no footnote, but presumably this happened in an issue of the main MILLENNIUM mini-series.
My Thoughts: Byrne’s trademark civilian carnage continues this issue, as the armored car robbery to start things off features one of the guards getting his head blown clean off by a little toy tank. I know Byrne has always done this sort of stuff in comics, but it really feels more prevalent in his Superman work than in anything I’ve read from him before or since. Maybe he just went through a phase. But in any case, I’m not a fan.
Not to go too far off course here, but often when I read scenes with deaths like this one (or worse), I think of the Silver Age of comics. Nobody ever died back then; or if they did, it was a big deal. Casual murder just wasn’t a thing. Sure, Betty Brant’s brother or Fred Foswell might die in an issue of SPIDER-MAN, but it was presented as a big deal when something like that happened. But you never saw, say Doc Ock — or even the Green Goblin — randomly killing cops and bystanders during a rampage. It simply wasn’t done!
Certainly the Comics Code Authority had something to do with this, being much stricter in the sixties than in the eighties. But even without the Code, it’s hard to imagine Lee, Ditko, Kirby, and the rest engaging in such violence. It feels more like a certain generation of comic fans grew up and decided comics needed more indiscriminate death. Villains needed to kill, kill often, and kill gruesomely in order to be perceived as real threats. You see this sort of thing not just in Byrne comics, but in the works of Peter David, David Michelinie, and even Chris Claremont, to name a few.
It just seems odd to me — if you grew up in an era where comics didn’t feature a ton of violent death, and if you liked those comics just fine, why would you decide after getting into the business that this sort of thing was necessary? I can only speak for myself, but I always felt a little, I guess, guilty somehow when I read a story about the Joker going on a killing spree or Venom suffocating a guard with his symbiote. It was like I was reading something that I wasn’t supposed to and it made me feel unclean.
(On the flip side, I had no problem at the same age with implied sex and/or nudity — Peter and MJ used to go at it like rabbits early in their marriage — I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be seeing that either, but I liked it!)
Anyway, I guess I did go off course after all. So, uhh… Toyman, Superman, Manhunters. You get the idea.
Next Week: The “Millennium” event continues in ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #436 and ACTION COMICS #596.
Funny you should mention Claremont. The innocent bystanders used to get it uncomfortably plenty during the Claremont/Byrne era. Proteus, Wendigo, N'Garai all gruesomely slaughtered people to whom Claremont gave a scene of their own to get us endeared on them. The Hellfire goons were little more than cannon fodder to both Wolverine and Emma Frost.
ReplyDeleteByrne didn't quite get on that train in his FF, and I agree with everyone it's just wrong for SUPERMAN, but good luck trying do SUPERMAN right in the post-DKR, post-Watchmen, post-Sin-Eater, post-Mutant-Massacre world.
Definitely true, Teemu. I've always assumed, based on his later activities, that a lot of those bystander deaths in the Claremont/Byrne run were primarily Byrne's idea -- though Claremont himself would still do it now and then after Byrne left, but not as frequently to my recollection.
DeleteI don't know, I personally would like to point out Claremont as a worst offender, though he has the knack of making you care for the victims so it's kind of artistry instead of merely a means for cheapo gravitas.
DeleteThough the most memorable singular ones for me are Nicholas Damiano and the mugger rapist and his intended victim, all killed by Selen whose whole deal is the lifeforce stealing so those killings kind of are unavoidable (our book omitted the Selen-picks-up-and-kills-John-Byrne page so I can't count it).
From Mutant Massacre onwards there's Old Soldiers hunted Priscilla shooting the couple on road, the Marauders kill bystanders in the San Francisco hospital, Dallas was messy business I think, the Reavers' Singapore bank slaughter very much so, the demons of Inferno, Zaladane's power tower emerging kills a bunch of Russian scientists... life is very cheap in the Claremont world in ways not imaginable in for example the regular variety Spider-Man.
Brilliant review on this "Superman" comic. Having read it all the way, I could see that the Toyman wasn't "toying" around.
ReplyDeleteMy only recollection of this issue had been a montage of Toyman's victims being murdered by different devices. I'd forgotten that tank-decapitation scene (but remember those images now that you've reminded me).
ReplyDeleteBeing in my mid-teens when this stuff came out, I remember I quite liked the emerging violence in comics, although more from the angle of "no mercy for criminals" rather than villains killing innocent victims. Rorshach was my favourite character in Watchmen, I liked the Shadow comic book at the time, and Frank Miller was a favourite. I even liked Joker's huge mass murder in Dark Knight Returns, seeing it as truly bad ass, although I also liked that, since that was the "final" Batman vs. Joker, there was a bit of closure after it. Like many, I got tired very quickly of the "Joker ruins lives/goes to Arkham/gets out/ruins lives/Repeat..." pattern of the character. Getting away with murder can get old pretty quick. (the worst example in recent memory was Detective Comics #826 featuring Joker joyriding in the Batmobile...the internet seemed to love it, but yeesh, was it ever pointless and dumb...)
I don't know if the body count in Superman bothered me, but I did notice it, and knew it didn't add much to the experience. Much like Byrne's Hulk run highlighted hundreds of dead civilians during an early rampage. Just sad, with no real upside.
-david p.
I can see how this sort of thing could appeal to readers. I wasn't/am not the audience for super heroes killing villains (though I don't object to James Bond or Han Solo killing bad guys; different genres and all that). But there definitely was a generation of readers to whom this appealed, and I don't blame them for their tastes. I personally don't like it, but that's just me.
DeleteHere's another CW DC show reference - Toyman's son (entirely made for TV, AFAIK) is like the third or fourth star of SUPERGIRL. Toyman is certainly a bigger villain than Silver Banshee, but also not a character you'd expect to be tied to a TV show in such a way that he's (obliquely) referenced in every episode.
ReplyDeleteAs for the indiscriminate killing, yeah, I don't really disagree with you. I get why readers from the 60s grew up to make their comics more violent though; not having innocent bystanders get caught up in the crossfire of these big superhero battles isn't realistic, and the trend towards injecting as much realism into comics as possible really climaxed in the 80s (thanks in part to stuff like WATCHMEN). I know when I was teen, I wanted my comics to be as realistic as possible (a desire I've since shifted away from), so I can totally get how 60s kids could grow up thinking the same, and then helping do it once they made it into the industry.
But for me, it doesn't work for two reasons:
1. The more a villain kills, the harder it is to justify the hero not killing the villain. And I don't want my heroes to be killers. The occasional villain kill, especially when its something like Gwen Stacy dying or Robin, is fine, and work well enough to raise the stakes in a long hero/villain conflict. But making a recurring villain an indiscriminate killer is problematic. It makes "Maximum Carnage" Spider-Man less heroic, because he's valuing his "no killing" morals (morals I agree with!) more than the lives of all the people who would be saved if he killed Carnage. Carnage can still be *a* killer, in order to generate the necessary storytelling angst over Spider-Man debating whether or not to put him down, but making him a super awesome extreme killer just destroys the "don't kill" argument for Spider-Man.
2. Civilian causalities may be realistic, but no superhero story is interested in following through the ramifications of what that means. So they should probably just avoid big numbers of civilian deaths, whenever possible.
I never really thought of this until after 9/11, an event which fundamentally changed our society, immediately and in ways we're still coming to understand. In the Marvel Universe, in terms of the scale of lives lost & destruction, it would have just been another Wednesday. Basically, going out of the way to show the (yes, realistic) fallout of superhero battles means that, realistically, that world would change as a result of that fallout in ways that would make it no resemble our world. And the whole point of superhero comics (especially Marvel Comics) is that, in all possible ways, resemble the world outside your window, just one which also has superheroes.
(This is also why I'm generally okay with the fact that Stark tech or Richards tech or whatever hasn't fundamentally altered the technological development of the Marvel Universe. It *should*, but then the MU wouldn't resemble the world outside our window, so I'm fine that it doesn't, even if its not as realistic).
But just ignoring huge swathes of civilian deaths and property destruction feels wrong (in a way ignoring fictional technological advancements doesn't), so I'd just prefer writers try to avoid drawing attention to the realistic fallout of superhero battles and supervillain attacks as much as possible, unless they're really prepared the impact of those deaths and how they're going to alter society as a result.
DeleteGreat points! The argument about a hero looking foolish for not killing a mass-murdering villain is one I've seen before, and I totally agree with it. The fifth or sixth time Batman hauls Joker back to Arkham, with another few dozen lives lost along the way, our Caped Crusader starts to look like an impotent fool, rather than a hero. I don't want to see Batman snap the Joker's neck, but comic writers over the past couple decades have made it something to hope for anyway.
Delete(The other option is to use the Joker exceedingly sparingly, like once every five years or something, so the fact that he kills that many people every time he escapes sticks out less -- but obviously that can't happen since he's a popular character.)
This scenario fits your second point, too. DC may be less "the world outside your window" than Marvel, but even in DC's universe, the fact that so many people still live in Gotham is absurd. There's an asylum filled with mass murderers just outside town, they're all constantly escaping, and they will kill anyone -- young, old, rich, poor -- without a thought. Gotham should be a ghost town at this point, as everyone with a shred of common sense should have long since moved away.