Action Comics #0 (October 1994)
Action Comics #0 (October 1994)
"Peer Pressure," Finale! The climactic showdown between Superman and his childhood pal Kenny Braverman, who now has cables all over his body and calls himself "Conduit." Oh, and he can shoot kryptonite rays. Adventures #0 ended with Superman getting knocked down by Conduit (see: kryptonite rays) and sinking underwater, suggesting that perhaps he's... dead again? Nah, that'd be ridiculous. This issue starts with Superman thinking "Lois...!" and dramatically emerging from the water, which means he either found strength in his love for her or he just remembered she owes him money.
While Superman checks in on Lois, Conduit goes to the secret headquarters of his also-secret organization, Pipeline. Yeah, he has an entire criminal enterprise staffed by more people than a mall, which he created for the specific purpose of murdering one bespectacled reporter.
(I like that they seem to have a bunch of people in a Zoom call in there, presumably about the most efficient way to kill Clark Kent.)
We now reach the part when Conduit goes into another series of flashbacks detailing his life story. Last time, we found out how he joined the CIA as a lab rat and then rose to agent by unintentionally botching a terrorist attack. We skip ahead a few years and see Kenny (already in his final Conduit form) performing a hit for the CIA but getting carried away and killing a ton more people. His superior tries to tell him to take it easy with the killings, but Kenny intimidates him into shutting up. This doesn't strike me as a wise career strategy, but I've never worked for the CIA so what do I know.
Next, Kenny is at a CIA base, looking at photos of his hated high school rival, as every well-adjusted adult does once or twice a day...
...when masked gunmen show up and try to kill him. Before killing them right back, Kenny finds out they were sent by gasp! the superior he threatened earlier. For a second, Kenny seems genuinely hurt that he'd do this to him ("But you... you were almost a... father to me!"), but he quickly gets over it and blows up the guy's office. This also counts as his formal resignation from the CIA.
Meanwhile, in the present, the Daily Planet staff takes part in a nice ceremony to celebrate the paper's reopening after it was destroyed by Lex Luthor's missiles in Action #700. Unfortunately, only a few seconds into Mayor Berkowitz's speech, everything starts exploding again, courtesy of Kenny and his Bravermen (Pipeline operatives).
Clark pretends to fall into a hole in the pavement so he can change into Superman and fight Conduit at the city's traditional "empty buildings set for demolition" district. However, some homeless people happen to be squatting in those buildings, so Superman panics and leads Kenny to the nearest empty space: Centennial Park. You know, the place with that big Superman statue that used to be his tomb, which has evidently lost its appeal as a tourist attraction since there's no one in it now. Yep, that thing sure is empty.
Superman seems to be falling to Conduit's kryptonite rays again... but he was only playing possum so he could surprise Conduit and crush the blasters on his suit. The fight ends with Superman pushing Conduit through the base of the statue, leaving him unconscious. Later, as the Special Crimes Unit takes Kenny away (in some sort of net that I guess neutralizes kryptonite-based powers), he makes it clear that he now hates Clark Kent and Superman equally. Oh well. Maybe he can still be buds with Kal-El?
Later still, as a cleaning crew takes care of the debris left around the statue, they look inside Superman's tomb and find... Superman?!
Did he decide to take a little nap in there after that exhausting fight? What's with that unusually pale skin tone? Is he pretending to be a Dracula? And, more importantly, why would he cut his totally rad long hair?! We'll find out the answers to these questions in the next storyline, ominously titled: DEAD AGAIN.
Plotline-Watch:
I kinda like that they never spell out the fact that Kenny got his powers from being born right next to the place where Superman's baby rocket landed in Smallville, showering him in just enough Kryptonian radiation to mutate a baby. We all guessed that the moment we saw that scene in Man of Steel #0.
A non-plot essential but still interesting flashback shows Clark running into Kenny during his college days. The interesting part is that Clark is hanging out with his gal pal Ruby the waitress, from John Byrne's World of Metropolis #3 (1988). Kenny immediately starts putting the moves on Ruby, which Clark claims not to mind because they're "just friends" (I did not get that impression in her first appearance). Within a few weeks, Kenny and Ruby are engaged, but then she accidentally sees the cables on his chest and Kenny absolutely loses his shit. Did he plan to go through an entire marriage without showing his wife his freaky metal muscles? Whatever the case, he threatens to kill everyone she's ever loved if she tells Clark about this, and they break up. Poor Ruby. At least we know from WoM #3 that she ended up married to some other dude (presumably with regular human skin).
There's a short scene where Ron Troupe asks Clark if he's ever heard of Bhutran, a "little Asian country" that's "not even on some maps." Apparently, they just "aced LexCorp out of a big contract," whatever that means. This is setup for a Bhutranese character who will debut soon and is sure to become a long-lasting part of the Superman mythos!
Shout Outs-Watch:
Kryptonite-irradiated shout outs to our SUPporters, Aaron, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Kit, Dave Shevlin, Dave Blosser, and Bryan! Join them (and get extra articles... which I've been slacking on, but got some good ones coming) via Patreon or our newsletter’s “pay what you want” mode! Both of those also have free tiers, if you just wanna get posts like this one in your inbox.
And now: it's the Don Sparrow Super Show. Let's-a go:
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We start with the cover, and similar to the other Zero issues, it’s a fairly straightforward simple cover, and a good one at that. The shadow of Superman’s belt, and the stretch between his hand all the way to his toe is a great piece of dynamic foreshortening.
The longer Denis Rodier inks Jackson Guice, the thicker and looser his lines get. Don’t get me wrong—I love my fellow Canadian Rodier’s inks generally, very confident and brushy, but it’s an imperfect marriage between the lighter, scratchy line I associate with Guice. The shot of Superman soaring out of a very flat Metropolis river has a good energy to it.
Guice has long excelled at Lois Lane, and that’s apparent here, too, as the still-workout-clothes-clad Lois sweeps up from the assassination attempt from last issue.
The final battle with Superman and Conduit ends pretty abruptly, and a little sketchily (particularly that last panel of Kenny’s face poking through). [Max: Always thought he looked pretty funny there. Doesn't help that Kenny's helmet now surrounds his face like the parka of his South Park namesake.]
Overall a little disappointing how quickly this big deal character came and went (though it’s setting up for the big storyline around issue 100). Finally we get the big reveal of the next storyline, as a surprisingly well preserved (and open coffin?) Super-corpse is found by city repair workers.
SPEEDING BULLETS:
GODWATCH: On page 4, Lois thanks God Clark’s alright after their encounter with Conduit last issue.
There’s a lot of manpower associated with “Pipeline”, Conduit’s clandestine organization of influence and assassination—perhaps too many to plausibly believe they could remain in the shadows without anyone slipping about any of their activities. I had a similar thought about Luthorcorp in the mostly great most recent Superman movie—who are all those dorks that program Ultraman’s moves? They just punch in, commit enormous crimes, and then punch out and go home to a pizza pocket? And tell no one about what they did all day?
More Ron Troupe praise. Again, apart from his sartorial endeavours, I don’t have anything against Ron, except a dislike of duplication--the cub journalist slot available in this comic is better filled with the better established and less personality-challenged Jimmy Olsen. But in the next few years there will be a number of duplicate characters for this grumpy old fan.
Lots of lazy shoutouts in the flashback crowd scenes, as “several years ago” Clark and Ruby have their choice of shopping at Kesel-Mart (named for Karl Kesel) or playing an arcade console called Bog Beast (named for Jon Bogdanove). [Max: "Critter Hitter" is a pretty good name for an arcade game, though. I'm gonna look that up on MAME.]
I don’t pretend to know that much about women, but I think Braverman is a bit off the mark jumping immediately to threats like “I’ll kill everyone you’ve ever loved!” Might a simple, “Hey Ruby, I’m a bit embarrassed about my appearance with the shirt off” have sufficed? [Max: Or he could have worn one of those fake muscle suits, like Michael Cera in Arrested Development, and impressed Ruby with his massive pecs.]
The photographer’s professor is a professor Parker, perhaps a nod to another famous photojournalist from a different Marvelous universe. [Max: Definitely a nod, since David Michelinie did write that guy for a good while.]
I wonder if the photography student’s t-shirt was meant to have a logo of some kind in the script, which got interpreted by the letterer as literally those same words, when it was meant to be a drawing by the artist.
Good note on the abandoned building Superman felt fine about destroying having been full of unhomed people—that “abandoned building” trope pops up a lot in comics.
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