Action Comics #646 (October 1989)
Action Comics #646 (October 1989)
Continuing Superman’s brief antarctic excursion: now he gets swallowed by a giant bug. You know, one of those pesky giant bugs they have in the South Pole.
The issue starts with a flashback to 300 million years ago, when some aliens dump a deadly “spore” in our planet because they figure “Meh, no one lives here anyway.” Cut to the present: Superman happens to be in Antarctica because he just tossed the legacy of his ancestors into a crevice (in Adventures #459), and the alien spore picks that day to finally hatch into a bug the size of a city. The megaworm starts causing mayhem and Superman goes and punches it, because that’s his job.
The worm reacts by eating Superman, but before he can be fully digested, Superman uses his heat vision to try to shoot his way out – however, it turns out the worm’s stomach was full of methane, so by lighting up a fire, Superman caused the monster to explode into a million gross pieces. They’ll be cleaning out giant worm parts in Antarctica until 2050.
And then… THE END! (So much for Superman’s no killing rule.)
Plotline-Watch:
If this issue seems weird that’s because it’s a special fill-in by Keith Giffen, since George Perez had the shits that week. (The lettercol says “pneumonia,” but we all know what they mean.)
At the beginning of the comic Superman checks on the Eradicator with his X-ray vision to make sure it’s still safely contained inside that metal egg he put it in. Unfortunately, all the tremors caused by the giant worm apparently caused the egg to open, because at the end we see that the Eradicator is free. Uh-oh.
There’s a short update on the still-unconscious Brainiac and his caretakers, the comical duo of Dr. Happersen and Dr. Kelley. The doctors are nervous because their boss, Lex Luthor, went through a considerable amount of trouble to acquire an entire super-advanced lab exclusively dedicated to exploring Brainiac’s mind powers, but no progress has been made on that front. This is because, as we saw in Superman #35, Brainiac’s mind is actually roaming the lab as a ghost while his body sleeps. This means the stage is set for one of the coolest Superman storylines, “The Brainiac Trilogy.”
It’s interesting (to me) that Superman eventually returned to Antarctica to fight another giant bug, this one with electric powers, right before he got electric powers himself (in 1997). The theory at the time was that the monster somehow caused Superman’s year-long transformation into a sparkly blue dude, but it was never confirmed. Hey, I wonder if that monster was another one of the spores the aliens left behind? We’ll find out when I get to that issue, in about 200 years. And speaking of giant bugs…
WTF-Watch:
For those keeping count, this is the second time Superman is almost pooped out by a gigantic creature: the first one was the space monster Superman accidentally teleported into in Adventures #451, which is actually mentioned in this issue because at some point someone must have said “Wait, didn’t we just do this?” (but it was too late to redraw the whole thing). I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last time “Superman potentially turning into bug poo” is a major plot point, either. I’ll make sure to keep track of that.
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