Action Comics #665 (May 1991)
Action Comics #665 (May 1991)
Superman fights zombie prisoners or whatever, but never mind that. The really important part of this issue is: TOM GRUMMETT JOINS THE SUPERMAN COMICS! And he arrives just in time to draw Superman returning to Lois Lane after his epoch-bouncing expedition. No one draws Supes coming back to Lois after an extended absence like Tom Grummett.
Superman finds out that although his era-vaulting escapades lasted almost five months for him, it was only a couple of hours for Lois. Does this mean Superman is five months older than he should be? Will he start celebrating his birthdays in October instead of February from now on? Did Chris Nolan rip off this comic on Interstellar? This issue answers none of these questions, because this is the part where we have to get to the zombie prisoners thing.
So, several inmates have suddenly dropped dead at Stryker’s Island, and they all just happened to be rivals of the resident voodoo-themed supervillain, Baron Sunday. When the dead prisoners are taken to an off-island morgue, Sunday uses a magic ritual to turn them into zombies, all part of a plan to bust himself out of prison. But first, he tells them to go raid a warehouse so they can put some damn pants on, for decency’s sake. That’s where they run into Superman.
Sunday’s undead prisoners are giving Superman a tough time, since he’s never very efficient when it comes to dealing with magical villains. Superman takes the fight to a sewer, where the uses a power line to electrocute himself and the zombies – the shock brings them back to life, since it turns out they were never really dead. Sunday just put them in a mystical coma! Speaking of comas, Sunday himself ends up in one after his psychic link to the “zombies” made him feel the full force the electric jolt.
Hey, at least his tear ducts still work.
Character-Watch:
We met Baron Sunday back in Superman #26 (after several months of being teased about voodoo-related killings in Metropolis), and he recently made a cameo in Action #662, and… that’s it, this is his last appearance ever, unless you count the episode of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman where he showed up. I like how this issue explains that Sunday doesn’t really have voodoo abilities, because that would be silly – nope, he has black magic superpowers. Ah, yes, that makes more sense.
Plotline-Watch:
Clark Kent has been a freelancer at the Daily Planet since he came back to work in Superman #43 (after having quit and joined Newstime Magazine for a while). In this issue, with Perry White out on a romantic cruise, new editor Sam Foswell practically begs Clark to come back full time, and he accepts… probably just because poor Foswell looks worse than the zombies lately:
Lois takes the story about Luthor’s will mentioned above, because she has a brand new contact at LexCorp (that Ray guy Superman was jealous of in Superman #52), so she might as well use him.
Speaking of Clark’s romantic rivals, the bitter feud between him and Lois’ cat Elroy continues.
There’s a nice scene between Clark and Inspector Henderson, someone we hadn’t seen in a while. He’s still basically a nicer, more absent-minded Commissioner Gordon. I’d totally watch a CW show about him.
Creator-Watch:
This post is like half images, but it’s not my fault, it’s Tom Grummett’s. The guy could draw a guy sitting on a desk and make it look interesting (in fact, he did). While he’s just filling in for Bob McLeod in this issue, he’ll join another of the Superman books as a regular artist very soon. I always thought Grummett was the most balanced of the Superman artists of this era: his style is clean but dynamic, and his panel layouts are always interesting. He’s like some Dabney Donovan-created amalgamation of John Byrne, Jerry Ordway and George Perez (incidentally, the cover to this issue always reminded me of Byrne’s cover for Batman #434).
We’ll have a Grummett-related surprise in this blog soon, courtesy of donsparrow – and speaking of Don, check out the previous post on this blog and scroll down to the bottom for a new section he and I just added!