Action Comics Annual #3 (1991)
Action Comics Annual #3 (1991)
Hey, remember that time Superman became President of the United States in 2001? What do you mean, you don’t? What are they teaching kids in schools these days?! Sheesh. OK, let me educate you.
Back in Superman Annual #3 we met a guy called Waverider who can see anyone’s future just by touching them, and he’s using that ability to try to find out which DC superhero will become a despot called Monarch ten years from now (so, in 2001). Waverider already saw Superman’s future once, but he wants to double check that Supes won’t become Monarch and grabs Clark Kent just as he’s about to go on a date with Lois Lane. Maybe he figures the glasses will make a difference.
As it turns out, the future Waverider sees this time is completely different from the one he saw before: the first difference is that, when Lois and Clark come back from their date night, they find out a tractor fell on Pa Kent. Unfortunately, Pa isn’t quite as tractor-proof as his adoptive son, and he dies. Time passes and life changes: Clark and Lois get married, Ma Kent moves in with them in the suburbs, and the Ricky Martin hit “Livin’ la Vida Loca” rises to the top of the charts in 1999 (this isn’t explicitly mentioned here, but it’s a constant in all realities).
Anyway, politics! In the year 2000, Superman’s childhood friend Pete Ross announces he’ll be running for President of the US and asks Clark to help out with his campaign. Of course, Pete has no idea Clark is also Superman… until some crazy guy shoots at Pete during a rally and Clark sacrifices his shirt (and secret identity) to save him.
“WAIT, THE SECOND THING SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE HEADLINE, NOW THAT WE THINK ABOUT IT.”
Pete drops out of the race due to “having several bullets inside of him” reasons, but he asks Clark to run in his place. After consulting with his wife and mother, Superman decides to run for president and eventually wins the election, because he’s freaking Superman, of course he wins the election. Immediately, President Superman starts getting shit done: he fixes the economy by digging up a shipment full of gold from the bottom of the sea (with Aquaman’s help), fixes the environment with futuristic solar power technology, and fixes terrorism by punching people. He’s still Superman, after all.
One of the plans in Superman’s government is gathering the Justice League, Teen Titans and others (even the Doom Patrol is there) into a group with the mission of disarming the entire world. All the superheroes are in favor except for Green Lantern Guy Gardner, who is still a total butt in the future.
Guy attempts a one-man coup by attacking Superman with his GL power ring, but Superman’s will is stronger and he ends up taking the ring for himself. So, to recap, Clark Kent is now: 1) President, 2) Superman and 3) a freaking Green Lantern. Waverider is like “Welp, that’s it, he’ll go crazy with power and this is how he turns into Monarch” – but nope, Superman just declines the Green Lanterns’ invitation to become one of them and goes back to being regular ol’ Super-President.
So, Superman has pretty much fixed the entire world (except Ireland, because Ireland is un-fixable), but he’s still pretty sad that his Pa isn’t there to see all of this. That’s when Waverider stops watching Superman’s future and we go back to the night Pa Kent died, except…
On a hunch, Superman flies across the country and reaches Smallville just in time to save Pa from being crushed by the tractor (only to almost kill him anyway with a big hug). Superman changed the future! On the other hand, this means no President Superman, but hey, I’m sure whoever gets elected for office at the turn of the century won’t be that bad.
Character-Watch:
Speaking of which, I’d completely forgotten that this annual is, technically, the first appearance of Lex Luthor II. We haven’t met Luthor’s mysterious young heir in the “present” yet, but since this story jumps to the future, we get a glimpse at him when he tries to ruin President Superman’s campaign by pointing out he’s an illegal alien. So, basically, this comic predicted the whole “Where’s the birth certificate?!” thing, too (Don Sparrow’s Luthor/Trump comparison was even more apt than I thought).
However, as seen in Man of Steel #1, Superman was only born once his rocket ship opened in Smallville, so he’s deemed an American and Luthor is eventually arrested for plotting a little Lee Harvey Oswald thing. Another pre-debut in this issue is Agent Liberty, a Dan Jurgens character who will go on to join the “Doomsday broke half the team, what now?”-era Justice League. Liberty will officially debut in Superman #60 in a few months, but there’s a cameo of him in a superhero crowd scene here (see Don’s section below).
Plotline-Watch:
Oh, right: there’s a whole thing at the beginning of the issue about Superman fighting a newly resuscitated Kalibak (Darkseid’s dumbest son). Kalibak is sucked into a Boom Tube leading to Apokolips, and then Superman gets mad at Metron of the New Gods for manipulating him. It’s a cool sequence, but it’s so disconnected from the rest of the annual that I keep thinking this happened in another issue.
This is the second of the three Superman annuals that tied into the Armageddon 2001 crossover. The in-story reason for why Waverider decided to visit Superman again is that in the future he already saw, Supes goes crazy and gets killed by Batman, but nothing like that happened in Batman’s timeline when ‘Rider visited Detective Comics – meaning that the future has changed. The non-in-story reason is that Superman has three series while, say, Hawkman has only one, so of course he’s gonna get more crossovers.
In that other future, what made Superman lose his marbles was that Intergang destroyed Metropolis (and Lois) with an atom bomb. In this one, Superman is able to stop Intergang in time because he subconsciously remembered what happened/will happen/would happen/didn’t happen/I don’t even know. I’m pretty sure that’s the same reason why he moved his family to the suburbs.
When a Green Lantern comes to offer President Superman a permanent power ring, Superman turns it down by saying that too much power would corrupt him. That Green Lantern? Hal Jordan.
That’s it for me! I’m leaving you in the capable hands of Don Sparrow for more commentary (and a pretty cool story about Jerry Ordway and the time Don told DC how to un-kill Superman when he was a kid).
Art-Watch (by donsparrow):
The Armageddon 2001 annuals were some of my favourites, because it’s just such a cool concept–to see a character’s future based on that frozen moment in time. The best part was, for characters like Superman, with multiple titles, the futures we saw were so often different. [Max: Yeah, to my memory, this was the last time the Superman annuals were consistently great. For most of the '90s, annuals will be more like regular stories that were padded out to 40 pages and handed to an unknown artist to draw in 20 minutes, but these ones actually have top talent and are packed with plot.]
Of all the futures we saw in the Superman annuals, this one, Action Comics #3 was certainly my favourite. In the first place, Superman running for president is just a great idea, and one that is only made possible by the changes John Byrne instituted in his run, namely, that the rocket Jor-El and Lara sent into space contained only a fertilized egg, and not an infant Kal-El, as in other versions of the story. This way, Kal was “born” right on American soil, making him eligible for the highest office in the land.
There are a few other reasons this issue strikes a chord with me. One, it’s a very early Tom Grummett issue, and my love of his work is well documented. Two, I was fortunate enough to purchase a page from this issue (page 36) years later, and it’s one of the favourites in my collection (it’s actually what I’m holding in the photo of Tom and me previously posted).
[Max: For some reason, the “…and Aquaman!” part cracks me up.]
The last reason I love this issue is a weird one, and it comes into play on page 3–where something called a “resurrection pod” is introduced. After the death of Superman, when I was 12 years old, I wrote and drew a story on how I thought they should bring Superman back from the dead (as though they wouldn’t have an ideas how to do it!), and it involved that same resurrection pod. (In my version, a distraught Captain Marvel places Superman’s body into the pod, and hurls it into the sun) While the idea they used to bring Superman back was pretty different, when I sent it to DC Comics, I got a great response from Jerry Ordway, who sent me some original artwork and a handwritten letter that I still cherish. So seeing the resurrection pod in this story always reminds me of that kindness which really cemented my love of comics, and in particular these creators. [Max: Do… do you still have that story? Because that’s the awesomest thing I’ve heard this year.]
Once we get inside past the excellent Dave Gibbons cover, the art on this whole issue is equally great, which is hardly surprising. But it has a real jumpy pace, with lots of quick action that leaps of the page. The inking is a bit all over the place, since it was done by several different artists over Tom’s pencils, and to varying degrees of success. Denis Rodier’s thicker brush style lacks some detail, but fits the New Gods themed story well as it gives Tom’s figures a blockier, Jack Kirby-like feel. Doug Hazlewood shows why he, besides maybe Karl Kesel, is pretty much THE best inker over Tom’s stuff. There’s lots of line weight variance, he spots his shadows well, and he’s never overpowering. Besides a weird panel on page 38 (which might actually be a colouring error as much as an inking one) where Superman seems wall-eyed, it’s a very solid start to the Tom Grummett era.
I always like seeing Superman interact with the New Gods, as it highlights Superman’s humanity–especially when he’s juxtaposed with the arrogant Metron, who’s barely even a good guy, in my books. [Max: I like Metron! He always looks so comfy in that chair.] But Superman’s humanity, and his place of birth are key components to the story, so it’s natural that they’d highlight that.
The story also does a lot of little things well. The prude in me so appreciates the detail on page 15, where Clark changes clothes away from Lois Lane. The open-ended coyness of how they deal with the are-they-or-aren’t-they question is something that really sets this era apart. They never come out and say that Lois and Clark are in an intimate relationship, nor do they deny it, which I think is the perfect approach. [Max: Meanwhile, my gutter-flooded mind giggles at the wording on the following panels. There’s something for everyone here!]
Another thing I like about the story is how plausible Clark’s ascension to the nomination is. They do a good job of establishing that Pete’s would-be assassin strikes early in the primaries, before the party has chosen their candidate, making it all the more believable that Clark could gain the nomination. Also, as pie-in-the-sky as some of President Superman’s achievements may seem (nuclear proliferation! Solar power! No more fossil fuels!) the story is still grounded with realism like, the ongoing Irish Troubles, which even a Superman (and his awesome Superman-logo lapelled President suit) can solve.
It’s also a shrewd move to never reveal which party chooses as their nominee. We all have our theories about the politics of each character (and they do indeed give little hints, even in this issue) but never stating it outright allows the reader to assume that Superman is a candidate of their own party, like any good-hearted American would be. [Max: He’s definitely running for the Green Party.]
MONARCH-WATCH:
When I read this as a kid, I had no idea who Monarch would be (and knew nothing of DC’s apparently last minute switch from their originally intended Monarch, Captain Atom). I was sure it would be Guy Gardner, given his flip-out in this issue. Superman’s standoff with him is really well drawn, and even something tricky to visualize, like the ring reforming itself due to Superman’s superior willpower, comes off as clear, and exciting. Though, in Guy’s defense, I think superpowered beings overseeing the removal of the only weaponry that might give regular humans a fighting chance against a rogue JLA would be met with similar resistance, were this the real world.
Even though I was wrong about Guy Gardner being Monarch, Monarch does appear in this issue, hint hint!
GOD-WATCH:
Roger Stern’s Superman comics always seemed to have a heightened spiritual dimension over the other Super-titles, and this issue is no exception. First, when Pa Kent dies, Ma Kent makes reference to the family pastor, Reverend Weeks, and his tombstone bears a nice big ol’ cross.
On that same page, when Lois and Clark are married, the officiant (Reverend Weeks himself?) reads from the book of Mark. And lastly, Superman thanks God directly when he’s able to rescue his father from being crushed by the wayward tractor.
FAVOURITE PANEL: For sure the full page spread of Superman addressing the group of heroes on page 40. I remember spending hours trying to draw all the characters–many of whom, particularly the Teen Titans of that era, I did so without knowing their names! [Max: That’s definitely a cool page (there’s Agent Liberty on the right!), but what always bugged me about it is, why do they all still look exactly like they did in 1991?! Even Robin, who was an adult in the other annual, looks like he’s twelve.]
Overall this is a very optimistic issue about Superman’s future, and best of all–nothing horrible happens to Lois! Definitely my favourite of the Armageddon annuals.