Adventures of Superman #476 (March 1991)
Adventures of Superman #476 (March 1991)
“Time and Time Again!” Phase One – Superman fights a living embodiment of ‘90s comics! A mysterious part-robot gunman called the Linear Man comes to Metropolis to take Booster Gold back to the 25th century, to protect the sanctity of the time continuum. And if he has to shoot the guy do that, so be it. At first, Superman has no problem with any of this… until he finds out that a security guard dropped dead of a heart attack just from looking at the size of the Linear Man’s guns. Superman wants Mr. Man to pay for his crime but, as they fight, his Linear equipment is accidentally triggered, opening a huge time vortex above Metropolis. Whoops.
Superman is swallowed by the vortex and wakes up in that same spot in Metropolis, only everything looks slightly weird. Like, more Jetsons-y. Also, Superman’s costume is black, for some reason. After trying to prevent a chemical disaster and totally botching it due to his unfamiliarity with the technology, Superman runs into three flying kids with superpowers who tell him he’s in Metropolis, alright, but in the 30th century. Double whoops. And then…
Character-Watch:
The flying kids, of course, are the founding members of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad. Superman met some members of the Legion before when they traveled to the past (during the Superboy Saga), but they haven’t met him yet here in the future, because time travel is confusing. The Legion in its different incarnations will act as recurring guest stars during this storyline, since Dan Jurgens is a big Legionnerd (not sure if that’s an actual thing Legion fans call themselves or if I just invented it).
This is also the first appearance of the Linear Men (or Man, for the moment) which is interesting, because they’ll have a huge role in events that will unfold across the DC Universe throughout the '90s. That’s kind of appropriate, since it’s pretty clear from the Linear Man’s design that he was meant to lampoon the wave of robot-eyed, gun-toting, cigar-smoking, pouch-having anti-heroes of that decade (a fact I totally missed when reading this comic for the first time as a kid and going “cooooooooooooooooool”).
Plotline-Watch:
“Time and Time Again!” is sort of like a spiritual successor to the “Exile in Space” saga: both feature Superman getting lost and visiting a lot of weird places, but more importantly, both have a clear emotional center. In “Space” that was Superman’s search for redemption after he Byrne’d those criminals, while “Time” is about Clark and Lois’ uncertainty for the future now that they’re engaged and she knows his secret identity. The issue starts with Lois still feeling weird about the whole “I’ve been making out with an alien for a year” thing:
Lois wants to know if Clark will grow older, or if he’ll just stay the same while her butt gets bigger and the rest of her shrinks, but he doesn’t have an answer for her. This comes up again the very end of the issue, when Superman’s first question to the Legion isn’t “How the hell do I get back to my time?!” but “Can you give me some spoilers about my life?” – for Lois’ sake, obviously.
“Just stay away from dudes called Doomsday. Let Batman handle that one.”
The other running theme in the storyline is “people in Metropolis are silly as hell.” There’s a sequence in this issue where the vortex above Metropolis is witnessed by various characters: Bibbo opening a beer in his bar (and showing us his buttcrack), Jimmy Olsen trying to score with Lucy Lane, and the panicked lawyers at LexCorp, who still don’t know what to make of Lex’s will and are feeling collectively suicidal:
We’ll keep checking back on all these jokers throughout the saga.
WTF-Watch:
Speaking of jokers, Booster Gold may have left the Justice League International at this point (he has his own team, the Conglomerate), but the JLI never left Booster Gold:
Dude! For all you know, Superman died in front of you! At least pretend to be sad.