Action Comics #590 (July 1987)
Action Comics #590 (July 1987)
For the second time in one month, there’s an accident in a place Lois Lane is visiting. OK, now I’m sure she’s part of some sort of insurance scam. This time, Lois and Clark Kent are in a chemical plant when the railing breaks and Clark falls into a vat full of chemicals. Clark emerges with white skin and a smile frozen on his fa… nah, he’s all right. However, what no one knows is that this pool of chemicals is actually a supervillain named Chemo, who ended up here after getting defeated in another comic. After having Superman inside him, Chemo is able to replicate his Kryptonian powers and becomes a giant green version of the Man of Steel, naturally.
Super-Chemo flies to the headquarters of his old enemies the Metal Men and kidnaps the only Metal Woman, Platinum, for reasons that are unclear (I mean, neither of them has genitals). The Metal Men, by the way, are each named and have the properties of a different metal: Iron is a strongman, Mercury is irascible, Gold wears a monocle and calls everyone “chap,” and so on.
Superman and the Metal Men eventually defeat Chemo by shielding him from the sun’s rays, which is where he gets his mock-Superman powers. Superman then throws him to space, because that old strategy has never ended up causing any problems.
Plotline-Watch:
The issue ends with a cliffhanger, not for Superman but for the Metal Men. All through the issue their creator, the pipe-smoking Dr. Will Magnus, is behaving strangely and trying to keep the Metal Men away from a certain room in his laboratory. In the end, Tin sacrifices himself to stop Chemo and the other MM bring his remains to Doc Magnus so he can rebuild him, which is a routine procedure for them, but this time Magnus refuses to do it.
It looks like there was supposed to be a Metal Man series to continue the story but that never happened, so John Byrne will wrap it up himself in the last team-up issue of Action Comics (#599). As for Chemo, he once destroyed an entire city because Superman didn’t properly dispose of him in this issue. Whoops.
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