Action Comics #699 (May 1994)
Action Comics #699 (May 1994)
“THE BATTLE FOR METROPOLIS” STARTS HERE! Well, not here here, since most of the issue is actually just the setup for the battle itself, but this still counts as the first part of the storyline that will reshape the City of Tomorrow forever (in comic book terms, so “for a few months”).
We start with Lex Luthor Jr. being interviewed on a panel-style TV show that conveniently recaps all the relevant plot points: Lex Jr. is at war with Project Cadmus because he blames them for the virus that’s killing all the clones in Metropolis (including Lex Jr. himself, because he’s actually Lex Sr. in a clone body). The Underworld clones living in Metropolis’ sewers also blame Cadmus for their malaise and have been voicing their displeasure by breaking Cadmus shit all over the city, using big ‘90s-type weapons Lex secretly provided.
During the interview, Lex points out that Metropolis’ so-called protector hasn’t been terribly helpful during the current crisis, but that’s because Superman’s been occupied dealing with his power issues – as in, his superpowers going out of whack, not that his landlord cut off his electricity or something. Fortunately, Superman managed to get rid of his excess powers last issue by just letting the Parasite absorb them (which turned the Parasite into a big-ass monster, but that’s a problem for another storyline).
After recovering from his fight with the (now-missing) Parasite and confirming with Professor Hamilton that his powers are completely back to normal, Superman catches up with Lois Lane, who recently lost her job due to Lex’s h4xx0r skillz. Talking to Lois, Superman finally learns the shocking truth about Lex Luthor Jr. = Lex Luthor Sr., and he also finally connects the dots between the clones of Metropolis getting sick and Lex suddenly looking old and frail.
When Superman goes to confront Lex, he sees that a kinkily dressed-Supergirl is about to kill him and has to stop her (see the Supergirl miniseries for more details on how the heck that happened).
Once Supergirl leaves, Superman goes after her, apparently forgetting what he came to LexCorp for (or deciding to give poor Lex a break, given his frail state). Lex’s faithful medical team, Drs. Kelley and Packard, end up putting him in a “hyperbaric chamber”/big healing tube and chopper him to his private yacht so he can recover.
Meanwhile, the city is being evacuated and things are tense between the various groups that are supposed to protect it. A fight is about to break out between members of Team Luthor, the Special Crimes Unit, and Project Cadmus, when some nasty Underworlders suddenly emerge from the ground and attack the Cadmus guys. Superman drops by to reason with the Underworlders, and they actually seem to be listening to him… until Lex, from the safety of his yacht, remotely fires one of those sci-fi guns he gave the Underworlders, and all hell breaks loose. OK, now we can say the battle has started. TO BE CONTINUED!
Plotline-Watch:
- We get an appearance from Jimmy Olsen’s mom AND Bibbo in the same page?! Oh boy. Unfortunately, Jimmy himself appears too (along with Ron Troupe, both riding Bibbo’s bike straight into the danger zone). Interesting that Jimmy has an Uncle Fred and Aunt Lynn in the city, yet he still ended up living in his car for a while. Is there a a deleted scene where he asked if he could crash with them and they just laughed for ten minutes?
- Lex publicly blames Cadmus for destroying his private homes all over the world, but those who read the Supergirl mini know that was actually S-Girl subtly letting him know she’s breaking up with him. Incidentally, in Supergirl #4, she actually throws Lex through his office’s window and Superman rescues him, but in this issue, Superman arrives before she can throw him. Continuity error… or an anomaly caused by a certain time crisis looming in the horizon?!
- When Superman is having his check-up with Professor Hamilton, he notices Hamilton seems distraught – Hambone claims it’s because of the chaos going on in the city, but I think it’s clearly because Superman didn’t even comment on the fact that he just dyed his hair brown at some point since his last appearance.
- What with the city being under martial law and all, Perry White moves the Planet’s city room to the newspaper’s printing plant on the edge of town, and thinks to himself: “I’ve endured fires, blackouts, and riots, but I’ve never been forced to evacuate my own city room… until now.” He might be talking about the fires, blackouts, and riots that happened during and around the “Blackout” storyline, when Metropolis was going through a Lex-triggered economic crisis.
- Incidentally, Perry also seems to notice for the first time that all of the Planet’s computer equipment was made by his biggest enemy’s company, so he asks to see a test run of anything that’s printed from now on. Don Sparrow says: “Interesting that Perry White, no longer a reporter, is the first to have the notion of checking the presses while investigating the wacky headlines Lois was purportedly creating. Lois and Clark are both intrepid newshounds, and neither of them thought of that? I suppose Clark was busy being enormous at the time.”
- Mayor Berkowitz, usually a level-headed chap, sides with Luthor and says on TV that Cadmus is intentionally creating all that chaos as revenge for that time he and Lex didn’t let them steal Superman’s corpse (during “Funeral for a Friend”). Surely this means Lex will finally forgive Berkowitz for having him arrested way back in The Man of Steel #4, right? (Spoilers: haha, no.)
- I mentioned in our post about Man of Steel #33 that the nonchalant way in which Lois told Superman about Lex Jr. being a clone kinda bugged me. It was so nonchalant, in fact, that Superman didn’t even seem to remember that bit of information in this issue, since he exclaims “What?!” when Lois mentions it again. Or maybe he thinks Lex Jr. being a clone was predictable but it’s the part about him having Lex Sr.’s brain that took him by surprise? Either way, I’m actually glad we got a do-over on that moment, even if it still wasn’t as dramatic as I would have hoped for.
Patreon-Watch:
This post was published today and not in like three months thanks to the Superman '86 to '99 Patreon gang, Aaron, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Kit, Sam, and Bol. You rule!
You know who also rules? Don Sparrow, who has more commentary on this issue after the jump…
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We start off with the cover, and it’s a very blocky, Kirby-like pose, of Superman fast-walking into gunfire. I love the one eye in shadow, which gives the pose an intimidating and mysterious air we’re not used to seeing with Superman. As always, Guice’s Superman seems to have the longest Tarzan locks (at least until Stuart Immonen joins the team) and that’s true here.
Inside the issue we get extremely '90s guest artwork by Norman Felchle and James Pascoe, and while it’s not my cup of tea, he is remarkably consistent throughout. Felchle would go on to do storyboard work for Pixar, Netflix, Marvel and others, so hopefully he isn’t sweating the criticism from a never-was like myself! The opening splash page is a good example of the 90’s style “extreme” stylization, as we see a computer-generated Lex Junior with a big old curly tress blocking his eye.
The length of this stylization changes panel to panel. We get more extreme linework a page later as Perry White’s disapproving expression makes his forehead look like cracking clay. [Max: Are we sure this isn’t Darkseid posing as Perry as part of some nefarious plan?] After this argument, we get our first look at Superman himself, and it’s not bad overall—the S-shield is consistent throughout, and his wavy hair is well rendered. One of the main things that bug me about this art style (apart from when he attempts regular clothing, but we’ll get to that) is that every male character has an identical nose, particularly from the front view. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop seeing it. [Max: Dang, can’t unsee it either.]
A few pages later, as Superman trails the Parasite underground, we get an example of Felchle’s penchant for perhaps-unnecessary detail. Rather than the gritty cement he has at the top of the panel, the Metropolis sewer is drawn to have been made up of European cobblestone, which is both pleasing to look at, and an unlikely building material, especially some 20 feet below the ground. Felchle does excel at motion—there’s a great image of Superman flying away from Professor Hamilton’s apartment.
It’s followed immediately, however, by the strange physics of Lois Lane dislodging a cathode ray television set with a couch pillow! The following page is the best example in the book of Felchle’s aforementioned weakest point—drawing regular humans in regular human fabric. Lois’ green sweater clings in such an unnatural and revealing way to her body that it appears to be made of cellophane (there was a similar instance earlier in the book when a beat cop’s uniform appeared to have been painted on, and again in a few pages on poor old silver-haired Sarah Olsen). [Max: To be fair, Byrne did establish early on that Mrs. Olsen is actually pretty young and attractive, but her hair greyed prematurely.] Sadly for the industry, this kind of cheap fan service depiction of women would become the norm rather than the exception in the decade to come, but in this era, it is a real deviation from the naturalistic look we’ve gotten used to.
A few pages later we get a tiny glimpse into the concurrently running Supergirl mini-series, where Superman talks Supergirl out of taking her vengeance on Lex Jr. too far. This whole scene is a little blasé for my tastes, as the stuff Supergirl describes (attempted murder, cloning experiments) is as bad or worse than the stuff Lex Jr. has been pulling on Lois. As Guardian looks for the Underworlders, we get still more of Felchle’s unique brickwork, this time above ground, at least. Lastly, we get a pretty lean and mean Superman on the final couple of pages as the Underworlder/Cadmus conflict becomes a shooting war. The three-fingered mutant firing on Superman recalls a couple Byrne panels, starting with flesh-suit Metallo getting (temporarily) blown away by S.W.A.T team members in Superman #1, and also Superman getting shot at by Bloodsport a few issues later in Superman #4.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
- There’s just a ton of stories going on here, perhaps too many to comfortably deal with in a single issue. We have the abrupt end of the Super-giant storyline (with no sighting of the Parasite that Superman crashed to Earth with), the who-cares war between Cadmus and the Underworlders [Max: I care, Don! I care!!], the Lois-bonkers headline storyline, the Lex-is-dying storyline, and then even a glimpse at Supergirl’s mini-series. It’s no wonder this issue feels quite long, but also incomplete.
- It’s nice to see a little more of the Daily Planet’s operations, but the introduction to plant manager Jeff (no last name) and Jane (no last name) are so quick, and staged so distantly, we really get no sense of them as people. [Max: Jane Stewart, Don! Big fan of Jane Stewart, who appears for all of three panels. I don’t know if she ever shows up again, but I’m giving her a tag on the blog anyway.]
- Without saying too much, they’re certainly telegraphing who the mole in Lex’s organization is. Whenever this character appears in this issue they’re either admonishing Lex, or revealing details of Lex’s life to underlings. The reveal they’re setting up for really doesn’t feel so shocking after all this. [Max: Is it Vekko? I bet it’s Vekko.]