Action Comics #657 (September 1990)
Action Comics #657 (September 1990)
Superman vs. Toyman vs. Intergang! And vs. John Byrne too, because this issue contains a very small inconsistency with an earlier Byrne comic that always bugged me. You see, three years ago at the end of Toyman’s first appearance in Superman #13, we saw him getting kidnapped by someone wearing what appears to be a glowing green ring on his right hand. Here are the specific panels from that issue:
(Uh, the green is clearer in my TPB copy.)
Note that this was back when Lex Luthor still had a right hand, and wore his kryptonite ring on it. Well, in this issue we find out that the guy who kidnapped Toyman was Metropolis businessman/criminal mastermind…
…freakin’ Morgan Edge! Holding a cigarette! Is that a marijuana cigarette? Marijuana has green smoke, right? I told you it was a small thing but it still bothered me irrationally as a kid.
Anyway, we learn that Edge recruited Toyman to work for Intergang since he was the only one who could make sense of the weapons they were getting from Apokolips. However, since Edge went to jail (Action #654), Intergang’s new bossman “Ugly” Mannheim has been having trouble keeping Toyman in check – lately, he’s been squandering Intergang resources by creating animatronic toys to kidnap the children of Lexcorp executives, since he still hates Luthor for firing him from his toy company.
As Luthor laments that this whole “everyone’s kids are getting kidnapped” thing could affect his employees’ productivity, he arranges for the remaining children to go on a fun camping trip with some armed guards to keep them safe. However, all the kids’ sleeping bags morph into animatronic bears at night, courtesy of Toyman’s technology, and they take the children into the forest as they sleep (I’m never getting inside one of those things again). Superman arrives right in time to watch the bears march into a Boom Tube.
Superman figures out that Toyman is keeping the kids in an Intergang hideout set in an abandoned amusement park, goes there, and starts punching stuff. Meanwhile, Intergang’s goons try to take Toyman to a safer place but he wants to stay with the children, so he actually helps Superman defeat the goons by activating the convenient “melt all weapons” feature. Toyman explains that he only took the children because he wanted them to be happy and their parents ignored them… but as soon as they see their parents with the police, all the kids instantly abandon “Uncle Toyman” and run towards them. Awww.
Character-Watch:
That last panel is kinda creepy in light of Toyman’s future transformation into a child killer. All through the story I kept thinking how out of character that thing was/will be because Toyman really seems to care about the kids in this issue, but it makes a little more sense considering he’s doing all of this because he was so lonely. Clearly, spending all those months alone working on Intergang weapons did a number on his head.
Plotline-Watch:
This, somehow, is the first time Superman notices that Intergang is using technology from Apokolips, since he recognizes the Boom Tube (up till now he just figured they must have great scientists).
Speaking of which, the abandoned amusement park, Happyland, has a history with Apokolips: Darkseid’s lackey Desaad used that place to secretly torture people in Jack Kirby’s old Fourth World comics until it exploded. Despite the fact that the hideout is exposed for the second time in this issue, Intergang will actually rebuild the Happyland franchise and use it for crime once again.
I like the understated way Roger Stern deals with the death of Luthor’s biological son, Jerry White (a week earlier in Adventures #470). The one panel below is the only way the issue acknowledges what happened – we already saw Luthor dropping a single tear for Jerry last week, so anything more than this would have been tacky.
WTF-Watch:
Hmm, why does this bear look so familiar?
Hey, wait a minute…
ARGH, IT’S SLEEZ! RUN, GIRL! RUN!