Action Comics #599 (April 1988)
Action Comics #599 (April 1988)
Return of the Metal Men, who are a group of robot superheroes and not a bunch of long-haired dudes in devil shirts, as you might think. A while ago in Action #590, one of the Metal Men sacrificed himself while helping defeat a giant green evil version of Superman. In this issue the Metal Men (disguised as humans) recruit a LexCorp scientist to rebuild their fallen comrade, Tin.
As it turns out, LexCorp employees aren’t the most trustworthy people in the world, and the scientist gives the Metal Men technology to his boss, Lex Luthor. Naturally, Luthor uses this technology to build a killer robot made of kryptonite, because this guy has a one-track mind. The Metal Men are betrayed and incorporated into the kryptonite robot, which then proceeds to beat up a debilitated Superman while Luthor laughs maniacally.
However, as soon as Luthor has finished explaining his plan, Superman shakes off the robot – turns out this imitation kryptonite isn’t quite as effective as the real thing, and Superman was only pretending to be dying to find out what Luthor was up to. The Metal Men then return to normal and want to have Luthor arrested (he slipped away as soon as things turned hairy for him), but Superman convinces them that they couldn’t testify against him, since they’re just dumb robots. So Lex got away with it again, but karma is about to deal him a bad hand.
Plotline-Watch:
I was sure this issue explained what the hell was up with Doc Magnus, the Metal Men’s creator, who in the last team up with Superman was acting strangely and refused to rebuild the fallen Metal Man himself. Instead Magnus barely appears this time around and the plot isn’t resolved. The next reference to it I can remember is in 2006, when Magnus was like “Oh yeah, I was doing a lot of drugs back then.”
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