Action Comics #680 (August 1992)
Action Comics #680 (August 1992)
THE BLAZE/SATANUS WAR: PART 2! In which Superman punches a crapload of demons, and… his former editor? As seen last week, Blaze (ruler of sort-of Hell) has started a demonic invasion of Metropolis through a poor sap called Sam Foswell (ruler of the Daily Planet, 1991-1991). Blaze's forces have taken over Sam's current place of employment, the Newstime Magazine building, so there's a whole bunch of reporters being terrorized inside – including Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, who don't work there but decided to visit at the worst moment.
At one point, Jimmy tries to stop a demon from emerging through a glass by breaking it, but this only makes things worse, because now they have a whole bunch of tiny demons coming at them from the broken shards. Dammit, Jimmy.
Meanwhile, Superman is fighting off the demons with the help of Lord Satanus, Blaze's brother who seems slightly more chill than her. Apparently, Satanus had Blaze's job a long time ago but was deposed due to her treachery (presumably, she exposed his dubious tax practices). As for Foswell, Blaze has used her devilish audio dubbing powers to convince him that Superman, Jimmy and Lois want to kill him as revenge for firing Jimmy from the Planet that one time – as a result, Foswell gives in to Blaze and she turns him into a powerful, muscular demon that I like to call Sam Fos-HELL.
While Superman fights Fos-hell, Satanus realizes that Blaze's dominion could spill out of the building and into Metropolis any moment, so he takes drastic measures to prevent that: he teleports the entire Newstime building into a wacky, Salvador Dali painting-looking dimension. T-T-TO BE CONTINUED!
Plotline-Watch:
Despite the fact that her plan is to take over Metropolis, Blaze actually seals the building from the rest of the city. Maggie Sawyer and the Special Crimes Unit try to break through the mystical barrier by shooting at it with a giant laser cannon they borrowed from Lexcorp, but it's not working. I like how it's common knowledge that Lex Luthor's company is full of Bond villain gizmos but no one thinks this is strange.
Luthor II himself is on his way to a Tokyo vacation with Supergirl while all of this happens – but once she hears Superman is in trouble, Supergirl bails and leaves a flustered Lex alone in his plane. I question how well their relationship is going, anyway, since he still calls her "Supergirl."
It's really sad how much Foswell's state of mind has deteriorated: he actually thinks Superman and Lois hate him for kickstarting the series of events that resulted in Jimmy Olsen ending up homeless, but no sane person would do that. They probably wanted to buy him a drink after he fired Jimmy (or at least I did). Incidentally, non-sane person Don Sparrow says about that scene: "I know it’s just a fake-out vision, but Jimmy Olsen with a bloodlust is a scary thing! And not least because Max is the first person he’d come for."
Uh, crap, he's right. I'm outta here! More from Don after the jump…
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We open with a so-so cover from Art Thibert, who seems to be borrowing a little from Mike Mignola in his hatchy, fade-away background shadows. It’s always neat seeing Superman’s uniform in tatters, because, in this era at least, it happens so rarely.
Then as the story opens we get two pretty awesome splash pages, one of a desperate Sam Foswell panicking, then a pretty spectacular double page spread of what he’s seeing–namely Superman duking it out with honest-to-goodness demons.
I like the way the art tam handles the visual of the mystical barrier that Blaze puts up around the Newstime building, once again looking appropriately weird and Ghostbusters-esque, with the waving lines seeming mystical rather than seeming mechanical or scientific in nature.
The reveal of what LS looks like under his helmet is a bit disappointing, on page 10, so I can see why, in future appearances, they keep the Magneto look. Unless they were going to go all out with a weird appearance, it was probably better left a secret, especially since he just looks like an ageing purple drummer.
While his figures can still look stiff at times, Jackson Guice sure does a lot of little things well, in a story that demands a lot of different looks. He can do the spoooky demon stuff (his demons looking a lot more aged and wretched than last week’s) but then shift gears and do a great job of the tech being used by Maggie Sawyer’s SCU team on page 12.
Guice also seems to want to challenge Jon Bogdanove for the artist show can show the most skin in an all-ages book, as his “angelic” version of Blaze is pretty revealing on pages 11 and 16. Interesting that a lot of these supernatural pages follow the same pattern from the last couple of weeks of those long, tall skinny panels.
PANEL OF THE WEEK! goes to the last panel on page 15, where Superman takes a very cool John Wayne style sheriff pose when reprimanding LS.
Lastly, the colouring effects are pretty well done as things get mystical on page 21, both the inverted panel where Supergirl gets the brunt of LS’s fiery blast, and that last panel where some kind of Monster Squad portal opens up. Then things get weird, and kinda stay that way for a few issues…
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
I continue to adore how square Superman is scripted in the 90s. I can’t get enough of him calling people–even clearly evil demons like Lord Satanus–“mister”. Showing respect, even when he’s expressing a lack of trust.
That’s a very Jack Kirby looking Jimmy Olsen at the bottom of page 4. [Max: Agreed! The Turtle Boy suit under his shirt helps.]
The slightly comedic rising of the demons from the shattered glass on page 5 puts me in the mind of the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness films. [Max: Ha! Never made that connection but you're right. See, I told you last week those demons are hilarious.]
At this point, Superman seeing a million versions of the back of himself is visual short-hand for “his powers won’t work typically in this place”, Einstein’s curved space theory having been used so often by Byrne, Jurgens and now Stern/Guice.
Angel Blaze’s happy-faces minions look like The Heckler. Almost a premonition of Heckler creator Keith Giffen doing a fill-in spot…
How do you know this is a comic from 1992? Because when entering a blood pact with actual demons (who he saw tearing people to shreds minutes ago), Sam Foswell is chiefly concerned, apparently, with not getting AIDS.
