Adventures of Superman #464 (March 1990)
Adventures of Superman #464 (March 1990)
Day of the Krypton Man, Part 2: Asshole Superman vs. Drunk Lobo! Somehow, Superman gets a vision showing that Lobo, Bibbo and a furry teleporter named Raof have drunkenly stumbled upon his Fortress of Solitude in the antarctic (as seen on Superman #41). Superman quickly gets out of his Clark Kent clothes, only to find that someone replaced his uniform with a Kryptonian suit:
The suit turns back into the classic Superman costume, though, and Superman flies off to the Fortress to kick out the home invaders. Unfortunately, Lobo refuses to leave until he has killed Superman, since he promised some dolphin-headed merchants in space that he’d get them a video of Superman’s death. Lobo and Supeman start fighting as Bibbo records the action with some 3D-goggles the dolphin dudes provided.
After fighting through holographic recreations of Krypton’s various historical periods, the brawl reaches the part of the Fortress where Superman recently hid a container with kryptonite. Lobo uses the kryptonite on Superman, but luckily Supes has time to protect himself inside his (Mike Mignola-designed) Awesome Kryptonian Battle Robot. Unfortunately, Lobo happened to bring some missiles in his bike and blows the battlebot to pieces, killing Superman.
End of the series! Wait, no, that’s just a hologram Superman made, and Lobo and Bibbo were too drunk to realize it. Once the boozy trio has left to continue their bender in space, Superman explains that bailing out on the fight was the “logical” thing to do. But hey, at least Lobo got paid for his video of “Superman’s death,” right? Not really, since it turns out Bibbo had the goggles on backwards the whole time.
Character-Watch:
This is Bibbo’s most extensive appearance yet, and despite the fact that he spends the whole issue drunk, we find out a little bit of his backstory: when Superman steps into the battle robot, Bibbo points out he “never cheated by wearin’ no armor on da ring” – this is the first mention of him being a former boxer, although you could have sort of guessed that from looking at his face. Bibbo seems rather disappointed in Superman by the end of the story, but it’s explained that the Okaaran juice he, Lobo and Raof were drinking causes amnesia and will make him forget this whole adventure. Sadly, we never found out the details of the trio’s weeks-long bender in space, or how Bibbo made it back to Earth.
Plotline-Watch:
Superman continues his transformation into Mr. Spock. At the beginning of the issue he (as Clark Kent) bumps into Lois Lane and she invites him to dinner to catch up, but Clark says there’s no point in socializing now that they’re not colleagues. And so continues the time-honored tradition of Lois thinking “hey, maybe Clark’s not so bad” only for him to ruin it.
Also upset with Superman: Lana Lang. Ma and Pa Kent try to cover for the fact that Superman clearly forgot Lana’s birthday and didn’t get her a present, but she knows it’s bullshit. At least this gives Lana the impetus to realize that maybe she should get over the guy who got her kidnapped, brainwashed and hospitalized.
There’s a scene with Clark’s new boss at Newstime, Colin Thornton, re-hiring a long time employee that Clark (in his new asshole mode) fired. The employee says he remember when Thornton started in the magazine as a copy boy, which contradicts future revelations that Colin is an immortal being. Maybe he was wearing a backwards cap and rode a skateboard at the time to look young?
And finally, Superman’s former gladiatoring opponent Draaga is still on that slow-moving space cab headed for Earth (since Action #650), but then the cab nearly gets rear-ended by a bigger spaceship and ends up stranded in an asteroid. The spaceship is actually Maxima’s, who is headed to the next issue of Action Comics, and it turns out that of all the asteroids in the universe, Draaga happened to end up trapped in the only one with a grave sporting an S-logo on it (it’s the one where Superman and Blurpy buried the Cleric in Superman #33).
You know what’s even more cruel? Poor Draaga is gonna be buried in that same asteroid, years later. So, Draaga is basically like Space Jose Delgado now, huh?
WTF-Watch:
Best moment in the whole issue: Bibbo is seriously baffled that there aren’t any dancing girls in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.
Also, note that when they first found “Superman’s house,” Bibbo said he was glad because he really needed to use the bathroom. Presumably, Superman would go on to find a little “surprise” decorating his replica of the city of Kandor at some point.
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