Adventures of Superman #444 (September 1988)
Adventures of Superman #444 (September 1988)
MA AND PA KENT ARE DEAD! But it’s actually Ma and Pa Kent from another dimension. So they’re not really dead, and Superman has no reason to be as upset as this cover shows him (other than tricking you into buying the comic).
Last issue, Supergirl transported Superman to her home in the Pocket Universe, which is like the regular universe but smaller and you can play the latest Pokemon. Supergirl’s version of Earth has been completely ravaged by asshole villains, and this issue is mostly flasbacks as we learn how that happened: Ten years ago, they had Superboy, Ma Kent and Pa Kent. Now there’s no boy (he disappeared into the future, as seen in Action #591), no Ma and no Pa (they both died from sadness). In the flashback, Superboy’s biggest fan, a young genius named Lex Luthor, comes to Smallville to see if he can figure out how to bring the Boy of Steel back. He hooks up with this Earth’s versions of Lana Lang and Pete Ross and they show him Superboy’s secret lab (of course Superboy had a secret lab).
While poking around in the lab, Lex finds a machine that sees into the Phantom Zone, where Krypton’s criminals are vanished. The Phantom Zone criminals (General Zod, Zaora and the big guy) trick Luhor into freeing them, then set about fucking up the world just for kicks. You know when Zod and Superman destroy half of Metropolis in the latest movie? It’s like that, but on the whole planet. A human resistance forms in Smallville, led by a guilt-ridden Lex plus some regular guys named Hal Jordan, Oliver Queen and Bruce Wayne (you don’t have time to dwell on your daddy getting killed when the world is conquered by aliens).
The Earth’s only hope is apparently creating a “Supergirl,” sending her to our Earth’s past, leaving her frozen in the arctic for 200 years, waiting until Superman finds her, and then bringing Superman to the Pocket Universe to defeat the Phantom Zone criminals… so Lex does exactly that. Now that he’s caught up on all the relevant plot details, Superman goes off to fight Zod. CONTINUED!
Character-Watch:
Supergirl’s given origin in this issue is that she’s simply this universe’s Lana with powers Lex managed to give her, but there’s so little detail that it’s pretty obvious the story is fake. We’ll find out who (what) she really is next issue.
Plotline-Watch:
There’s some clever continuity trickery going on here. The Pocket Universe Earth is obviously modeled on the old Superboy comics. In those comics, Lex Luthor becomes Superboy’s enemy when he comes to Smallville as a kid and loses all his hair in an experiment (yep). But, since Superboy disappeared in this universe, Lex never met him and never turned evil. On the other hand, in the old comics Superboy would grow up to become Superman and deal with the Phantom Zone criminals, but clearly it didn’t work out that way here, either.
Of course, all of this just means that Lex could have waited a few years for an actual Supergirl to show up (as in the old comics), and she probably would have been way better off without her creepy cousin always messing with her.
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