Action Comics #693 (November 1993)
Action Comics #693 (November 1993)
Presenting the Eradicator’s exciting new incarnation: he’s been an egg-shaped Kryptonian relic, an energy-based supervillain, a hyper-violent knock-off Superman, and now he’s… a cranky scientist dying of cancer! Or, to be more accurate, he has the SPIRIT of a cranky scientist (no longer) dying of cancer inside him while retaining his Superman shape, only wrinklier. Said scientists is Dr. David Connor, the S.T.A.R. Labs xenobiologist in charge of examining the Eradicator’s “corpse” after he got blasted by a giant kryptonite cannon at the end of "Reign of the Supermen". The S.T.A.R. gang determines that although the Eradicator's mind is kaput, his body is still alive, and Connor gets obsessed with using it to cure his terminal cancer, somehow.
One night, Dr. Connor is working late at S.T.A.R. when he has some sort of cancer-related body spasm that makes him press the convenient “OVERLOAD ERADICATOR’S BODY WITH ENERGY” button. As a result there’s a huge explosion in the lab, and when another scientist stops by to see what's going on, she sees the Eradicator standing by Connor’s body. (Yeah, lots more “nude muscular old guy” panels in this issue than in the average Superman comic.)
But that’s not really the Eradicator – that’s Connor in the Eradicator’s formerly mindless body, thanks to the magic of comic book science. Of course, Eradiconnor realizes how this looks so he promptly flies away from S.T.A.R. (after putting on some clothes, thankfully). He bumps into Superman and they fight for a few pages because this is Action Comics, not Talk Your Problems Like Civilized Adults Comics.
Eventually, Connor stops to explain what happened. While at it, he says he’s planning to use his new bod and powers to “Eradicate” criminals everywhere.
So… he’s basically the Last Son of Krypton version of the Eradicator, but with a wife and kids. Superman wants to take him back to S.T.A.R. for some tests but he’s like “nah” and blasts Superman in the face to get away. The issue ends with both our hero and the reader wondering: what will this chucklefuck do next?!
Character-Watch:
The answer is: he'll join the Outsiders, the same super-group he was hearing about on TV, whose new series started in the same month as this issue. In Outsiders #1, a vampire frames the Outsiders for killing the Queen of Markovia and murdering a bunch of innocent citizens (actually more vampires), because “heroes doing mass murder" was DC's favorite trope in 1993-1994.
I've always been curious about the Eradicator's appearances in Outsiders so I'll be reading them for the first time and giving you brief recaps here. I’m not totally clear on exactly when he stopped being Dr. Connor, but that’s okay because I suspect that DC’s writers don't know either…
Plotline-Watch:
Superman stops by the Fortress of Solitude for the first time since "Reign”, only to find the place totally trashed. A dying Fortress robot informs him that the Eradicator caused the whole thing to crumble when he sucked up all of its energy right before going off to fight the Cyborg in Action #691. And, since the Kryptonian Birth Matrix was in the the Fortress, this reinforces the “Superman’s resurrection was a fluke and can NEVER be repeated” message the Super-writers have been hammering for the past few weeks. PS: RIP Kelex. :-[
Superman briefly wonders if Lobo of all people destroyed the Fortress, due to that time Lobo and Bibbo drunkenly stumbled upon the place. This foreshadows Lobo’s return appearance in a few weeks. Another little foreshadowing moment: the only thing Superman salvages from the Fortress are Bloodsport’s kryptonite bullets from way back in Superman #4. He’ll meet a paler, racist-er Bloodsport in a few weeks.
After saving some people from yet another suspicious building fire, Superman is accosted by the crazy cultists who worship him as a god (as seen throughout “Reign”). They’re even more convinced that he’s some sort of deity now that he’s back from the dead, but Superman claims he’s no different from some heart attack victim resurrected by paramedics. He also tells them to go home and get a life, basically. (Note: they call him “savior”, which fits in nicely with my theory that the upcoming Superman-obsessed villain of that name was a Superman cultist.)
Cat Grant has another Harvey Weinstein moment with her boss, TV mogul Vinnie Edge, who offers to advance her career if she takes care of his little Vinnie. She's rightfully disgusted… though I'm not sure her "I don't force my attentions on someone who's not interested" comment is accurate, given her shameful history with Jimmy Olsen (I really gotta go back and add images to that old issue). To be fair, she was drunk at the time – so drunk that she found Jimmy Olsen sexually appealing. Anyway, this is, sadly, not the worst thing that will happen to Cat this month.
And finally, further evidence that Lois' cat Elroy hates Clark (and that getting scooped by him is still a sore subject for her):
Patreon-Watch:
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