Action Comics #585 (February 1987)
Action Comics #585 (February 1987)
Superman vs. a graveyard. Not the bodies in the cemetery turned into ghosts and zombies singing jazz, but the actual physical land where they’re buried, which turns into a giant tornado monster and threatens Metropolis. This month’s action guest star is The Phantom Stranger, who is a phantom and likes hats. The Stranger alerts Superman to the graveyard situation and does most of the work to defeat it, because it turns out Superman isn’t so good against non-punch based problems.
Plotline-Watch:
They’re Called Illusions: This is the first issue that mentions the fact that Superman’s second biggest weakness is magic, though Superman is already aware of that at this time (presumably there was an earlier adventure where he was defeated by an assortment of little fairies and forest dwarfs). This would later be chalked up to his Kryptonian ancestors being so into technology that they never even knew what magic was.
Death-Watch: I’m gonna start keeping track of all the (fake) clues that foreshadow the Death of Superman storyline, which I see as the culmination of many running plotlines. The first one was Luthor saying “One day you’re going to die” to Superman after their first meeting in MoS #4. At the end of this one, Phantom Stranger says “Death isn’t as definitive as we tend to think” and Superman replies “Really?”. Ironically, the same Kryptonian science that made Superman vulnerable to the flying graveyard monster will bring him back to life.
WTF-Watch:
In this issue we clearly see the Twin Towers in Metropolis, which is sometimes based on New York City. However, on the previous month Superman fought the Teen Titans, who live in the real New York. Does that mean there are four Twin Towers in the DC Universe? Or two now, I guess? Did they take down the Metropolis pair after 2001 because they were in bad taste? And finally, why am I still single?
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