Adventures of Superman #446 (November 1988)
Adventures of Superman #446 (November 1988)
GANGBUSTER’S BACK… is still broken. So how is he back in action? Buy this comic to find out! Or read this summary I wrote here.
In Adventures #437, Jose “Gangbuster” Delgado had a little accident involving a guy in a metal armor, which left him crippled for life. But this is the DC Universe, where all unfixabled spinal injuries are always fixed sooner or later. In this issue, a nice scientist named Dr. Happersen shows Jose some technology that would let him walk again, and promises they could fix him permanently with some chip implants. Jose is overjoyed… but probably shouldn’t be, because long time readers will recall that Happersen is the lackey of Lex Luthor that we saw way back in Superman #2. Long time readers will also recall that Luthor has it in for Jose (as does life in general).
Meanwhile, the shady-as-shit Morgan Edge (network executive by day, follower of Darkseid also by day) sends some thugs to hijack a beer truck that is secretly full of LexCorp weapons. Superman fights the thugs and eventually captures them, but in the expert opinion of Detective Dan “Terrible” Turpin, Superman was holding back against those guys, as if he didn’t want to kill them, as if he had some sort of trauma about killing his enemies recently, as if… you get the idea.
The issue ends with news that Gangbuster apparently assaulted a LexCorp factory (holding more weapons) and beat up some employees. Lois, who is sort of dating Jose, reacts by saying “No! It can’t be him!” (And it isn’t, but we don’t know that yet.)
Plotline-Watch:
Among the discarded LexCorp weapons are some faulty “Lex-Men” armor suits, which we’d previously seen in Man of Steel #5 (and which are based on the armor suit Lex wore in the pre-reboot comics, back when he was slimmer and could fit inside one). Right now they have the small disadvantage of frying the brain of anyone who wears them, but eventually Luthor will perfect them and have his own army of Lex-Men.
Six-Fifty: Jose takes a cab ride to meet Happersen, and of course it costs $6.50. It’s a little thing, but I’m seriously blown away by how many of the storytelling kinks of the ‘86-'99 period were single-handedly established by Jerry Ordway.
Captain Maggie is still investigating those voodoo killings, but she has no idea what the hell is going on there (because John Byrne left before explaining it).
Morgan Edge wants to convince Cat Grant to come work for his TV station. This is bad news right now, because Edge is bad news, but Cat will eventually end up leading the whole network.
Jimmy Olsen’s hot mom chews his ear off for having so many wacky adventures in other dimensions and haunted Irish castles against her wishes. Also, it turns out Jimmy’s maligned hobo pal Pete Shoemaker, murdered by Brainiac, had a daughter, and she wants to set up a homeless shelter in his name (Pete’s, not Brainiac’s). Jimmy will live in that shelter some years from now.
WTF-Watch:
I saved the best for last: the issue starts with Superman having a nightmare about the time when he was a kid and wished his mean teacher would die, and then she did (to be fair, she was pretty old). Young Clark attends the funeral, and then the teacher morphs into General Zod. Superman sleep-trashes his whole apartment fighting Zod’s ghost in his pajamas. Why wasn’t that the cover for this issue instead of Gangbuster?!
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