Action Comics #652 (April 1990)
Action Comics #652 (April 1990)
Day of the Krypton Man: Last Part! Or as I like to call it: Pa Kent vs. the Eradicator. Superman appears, too.
Ma and Pa Kent are visiting Metropolis to check up on Superman, since he sounded weird when they talked on the phone in Adventures #465 (for starters, he actually called them their real names instead of “Ma” and “Pa”). When they get to Clark Kent’s apartment, they find him sitting in a floating sofa and using some robots to pack up all his stuff. Also, he’s wearing Kryptonian clothes.
Superman has decided to move to the Fortress of Solitude forever, because he doesn’t want to be Superman or Clark Kent anymore. The Kents think he’s gone crazy, so in an attempt to convince them that everything’s fine, non-Superman has his robots take the elderly couple all the way to Antarctica so they can check out the Fortress for themselves and see how nice it is. Why, there’s even a statue of Superman’s REAL, considerably more attractive parents! How could Ma and Pa not love this place?
The whole thing is a celebration of the superior Kryptonian race. The Kents point out that, hey, didn’t Superman’s biological dad Jor-El admit that Krypton sorta sucked? (As seen in World of Krypton #4.) While Superman is stumped trying to think of a counterargument, the Fortress goes nuts and the robots start trying to kill everyone.
That’s when we find out that both the Fortress and Superman are being controlled by a secret manipulator: the Eradicator! (Unless you’ve been paying the slightest bit of attention to the previous issues, then you already figured this out.) Superman confronts the hunk of floating egg-shaped metal from Krypton, which can talk now by the way, and tries to resist its influence while flashing back to the various other attempts to control his mind in the past:
Ah yes, Superman’s greatest enemies: Darkseid, Brainiac, the dude who made him star in a porno, etc. Anyway, in the end it’s Pa Kent who saves the day by exposing the Eradicator to Superman’s secret stash of kryptonite… which doesn’t seem to do much to it, but it makes Superman snap out of his trance by making him remember all his loved ones.
Superman blasts the Eradicator with his heat vision until it explodes (conveniently wrecking the big statue of Superman’s parents too, for some nice symbolism). The Eradicator is dead now, but just to be on the safe side, Superman decides to throw it and the “Krypton Man” costume into the sun. Luckily, Ma Kent had packed some extra red-and-blue tights when they left Smallville, so Superman doesn’t have to fly into space in the nude.
TL;DR Superman’s original personality and costume are finally restored, the end!
Character-Watch:
That’s it for the Eradicator… in this form. We only found out in this issue that the thing could talk, but it’s gonna be a lot more chatty the next time it shows up. Or he shows up. That’s a spoiler, I guess.
Plotline-Watch:
This isn’t just the climax of the Krypton Man storyline, but of the whole extended plot that started three years ago in Superman #20 and Action #591. Superman’s trip to Superboy’s Pocket Universe in those issues led to the Supergirl Saga, which led to his “dressing up as Gangbuster” period, which led to the Exile in Space, which led to the Eradicator, which led to this. That’s why I like the panels where Superman flashes back to his enemies and friends: it’s a way to connect all the previous storylines into one big climax (a rare thing in never-ending superhero comics). In fact, Lana Lang’s “Superman belongs to the world” dialogue there is from Man of Steel #6, so that takes us right back to the origins. More plots:
How was the Eradicator able to make Superman’s costume change into the Krypton Man suit? Because this was the costume the Eradicator made for Supes in space back in Adventures #455. See, he should have just kept the gladiator clothes and the beard.
Now that weird vision from Adventures #461, where a Kryptonian scientist murders a caveman and both of them have Superman’s face, makes more sense: it represented the Eradicator making Superman “kill” his emotional side. And right after that, in Superman #39, he first started acting weird and quit the Daily Planet.
Also, remember when Dubbilex looked inside Superman’s mind in Superman #36 and said he wasn’t fully cured of his personality problems? Yep, he was on to something there.
Six-Fifty: When he arrives on Metropolis, Pa Kent is outraged that the cab to Superman’s apartment costs $6.50. Apparently he’d never been in Metropolis before.
Creator-Watch:
This is also the end of George Perez’s short run on the Superman titles: he started as writer of two of the three comics and co-artist of one, but by the end he was only doing rough breakdowns for one comic and not writing any, so apparently the guy lost interest at some point. Still, he introduced the Eradicator and Maxima, redesigned Brainiac and, in general, brought an epic feeling to the Superman comics that was lacking since John Byrne left. For instance, if another artist had done the sequence of Superman destroying the Eradicator, it probably would have been a single panel of Supes standing there with some tiny red lines coming out of his eyes, but Perez turned it into a big dramatic moment:
Since Roger Stern is more about world-building and Jerry Ordway likes the little character moments (and making supporting cast members miserable), with Perez leaving Dan Jurgens is sort of naturally gonna fall into the role of the one who comes up with the cool, epic scenes. One of those upcoming Jurgens scenes made headlines across the world, so I think he didn’t do it so bad.
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