Adventures of Superman #451 (February 1989)
Adventures of Superman #451 (February 1989)
SUPERMAN IS MISSING! In completely unrelated news, a reporter who looks exactly likes Superman is presumed dead. Here are both their photos, side by side.
Of course, Superman isn’t really missing: he simply exiled himself to outer space, possibly forever, to sort out his head problems. In this issue, Superman uses his handy teleporter to make another space jump and arrives in a strange place where some big, sticky parasites jump all over him. Eventually he realizes the teleporter screwed him over by taking him inside some sort of giant being that’s trying to digest him.
After a while, Superman decides that the last place he visited (the planet of the grabby pink ET people from Superman #28) was way better this one, so he tells the teleporter to take him back there. After all, Superman figures, nothing could be worse than being pooped by a giant space… something. (As we’ll see next issue, he’s wrong.)
Beard-Watch:
It spends most of the issue obscured by Superman’s oxygen mask, but you can still tell it’s progressing well.
Plotline-Watch:
On Earth, the police find the charred remains of the dude who got killed by Intergang inside Clark Kent’s apartment (in the aforelinked Superman #28), and naturally everyone assumes it must be Clark. Clark’s “death” is reported by every news station, until Daily Star reporter Toby Raynes (Captain Maggie’s girlfriend!) gets around to calling Ma and Pa Kent for a quote and they’re like “Uh, no, Clark’s right here with us. Yep.”
Speaking of Ma and Pa, they’re still taking care of Matrix, the dimwitted shapeshifter formerly known as Supergirl, who now spends all day staring at pictures of Clark. That’s going exactly where you think it’s going.
Morgan Edge is feeling quite full of himself for having “killed” Clark Kent for his Intergang expose. The next item on his murder agenda: the person who gave Clark all that inside info about Intergang. He just has to find out who that is.
WTF-Watch:
You may have noticed that Superman doesn’t actually do much in this issue, but that’s because a good chunk of it is taken up by Jose Delgado going on his most bizarre misadventure yet. As seen in Adventures #450, Lex Luthor and his main cronie, Dr. Happersen, can now remotely control Jose using the implants on his spine that allowed him to walk again. Luthor decides to try his new toy by sending Jose to terrorize Professor Emil Hamilton, because way back in Adventures #425, Luthor had warned Hamilton against using his own inventions (since they’re technically owned by LexCorp) and Lex keeps his promises.
So, the remote-controlled Jose, wearing a robot armor but masked under a hologram that makes him look like a LexCorp security guard, takes a cab to Hamilton’s place (the cab is $6.50) and starts messing shit up. Luthor gleefully watches all of this through a camera in Jose’s helmet, until Hamilton manages to interrupt the remote signal using a force field. Luthor has Brainiac’s unconscious body wheeled into his office and tries to use his telepathy to regain control of Jose, but Brainy sleeps soundly after being given too many sedatives (Lex actually slaps him around to try to wake him up, but it’s no use).
And then it gets weirder: Hamilton somehow transmits a feed of Lex yelling threats at him to every television in Metropolis – upon finding out he’s on live TV, Lex turns nice and plays along with Hamilton while Happersen hurriedly hides Brainiac’s body from sight.
Oh, and also, Lex’s secret son Jerry White is there with Hamilton, too, for some reason. Anyway, all of this means that Jose is not only fully cured from his “irreparable” spinal injury, but also free from Lex’s control! Jose Delgado finally catches a break! It’s not like he’ll go and get himself crippled again in a few issues, right?
Right?