Adventures of Superman #503 (August 1993)
Adventures of Superman #503 (August 1993)
REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN! After totally destroying Coast City, the Cyborg Superman totally destroys… Superboy. Does it count as domestic violence if it’s supposed to be your clone? Anyway, the issue opens with the Cyborg coming across some Coast City blast survivors and playing a rather mean practical joke on them, the little scamp:
(Where did the fourth lady go? I bet she's still standing off-panel going "Hmm, still don't see it, dude.")
The Cyborg asks his buddies in the White House to send Superboy over so the Kid can assist in apprehending the evil bastard “responsible” for turning Coast City into a crater, the Last Son of Krypton (who’s actually just the Cyborg’s patsy). The Metropolis Kid’s media handlers at WGBS are naturally thrilled with the opportunity and send a whole news team with him in a helicopter – and you know what happens every time a news chopper is involved in this storyline.
Hmmm, you know, I’m starting to get the impression the Cyborg might not a good guy after all. The Kid puts up a valiant fight, and even manages to surprise the Cyborg by somehow undoing his robot arm with a mere touch… but the Cyborg just punches him with his regular arm.
The issue ends with the Cyborg seemingly punching Superboy’s head off. RIP, Metropolis Kid. Next: Funeral for Some Kid We Barely Knew, followed by Reign of the Superboys!
Jokes-I-Definitely-Didn’t-Get-When-I-Read-This-As-A-Kid-Watch:
I can’t believe this was seriously in a Superman comic:
I mean, that’s an Atari 2600 joystick. Superboy and Roxy Leech are supposed to be playing the “Death of Superman” video game, which only came out on Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. Very sloppy, DC. Hope someone got fired over this.
Plotline-Watch:
New-ish Adventures of Superman writer Karl Kesel proves to be a worthy successor to Jerry Ordway by giving us lots to talk about in this section:
The hints that Superboy isn’t really a Superman clone are so obvious by now that even he gets them, and starts worrying about his parentage: he has no X-Ray vision, he can be harmed by fire, and there’s that whole “telekinesis via touch” thing (there's gotta be a better name for that).
Today it seems unrealistic that a major American city could be blown up and the media wouldn’t know much about it hours later, but remember: this was the early ‘90s, when the internet wasn’t everywhere and people communicated via telegraph and carrier pigeons. Cat Grant’s hairdo here might seem unrealistic too, but I assure you it’s accurate for the era.
I love that Superboy was playing the "Death of Superman" game… and lost on the Doomsday level. Maybe he IS Superman's clone after all! It's probably a good thing that he died there, though, or he might have seen spoilers for this storyline.
Superboy’s reaction to hearing about an unspeakable tragedy that killed millions: “Fresh!” I’m calling it. Cyborg’s a patsy too and the Kid is the real villain of the story. Don Sparrow calls that moment"pretty gross" (in contrast to Superboy's bravery at the end of the issue), and adds: "I sense a new catch phrase for this blog being born." Oooh!
This is followed by a sweeter moment between Superboy and his reporter pal/eventual romantic interest Tana Moon, who was forbidden from going with him to Coast City by the WGBS higher ups (inadvertently saving her life). I’ll just overlook the comment about the age difference here.
While all of this happens, we see the Awesome Kryptonian Battle Robot emerge from Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, jump down into the ocean, and start its loooong walk to Metropolis. We’ve been led to believe that the Last Son is in it, but I’m pretty sure it’s someone else… yes, Doomsday (he’s even yelling his name to announce himself in the panel below!).
Despite the amorous hand-kissing display at the end of the previous issue, it turns out Mongul isn’t entirely happy with his new role as the Cyborg’s lackey and would prefer to rule Earth all alone after turning it into Warworld 2.0. Don adds: "The narrative seems to besetting up for Mongul to betray his commander, the Cyborg, but to my memory it never really happens. But I guess it just again signals how flimsy this whole plan and coalition is." Maybe they were upping the stakes for the upcoming Mongul/Green Lantern fight? Like saying "look, even if the Cyborg is defeated, this other guy is still trouble!"
When the Cyborg says he wishes he had Superboy’s confidence in his powers when he was “his age” on a TV broadcast, Lois Lane exclaims “WHAT?!” As shown way back in Man of Steel #1, the real Superman’s powers weren’t fully developed when he was a teen. However, the Cyborg did admit to Lois that were gaps in his memory when they met. My theory: Lois is actually reacting to whatever Whit’s hands were doing in this panel.
Don Sparrow observes: "So, the Daily Planet is essentially a more profitable, more famous in-universe version of the New York Times, and all they can afford is a small cathode ray TV on a pile of books?"
More from Don after the jump!
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We begin with a pretty great cover, letting us know we're past the episodic, individual chapters of the Reign of the Supermen, and into a full-on, little triangle number crossover, where Cyborg Superman is manhandling Superboy by the scruff of the neck. There's more Grummett signature rubble (no one in the industry does rubble as well as him!) and it's neat to see Cyborg's hand completely missing as he converts it to a weapon. While I'm not always the biggest fan of cover text, the angled presence in the shadowy foreground was a good solution. Great cover.
Inside we're greeted by a great,ominous splash of the Cyborg Superman surveying the damage for the White House, with the latter not realizing he's the one who caused all the damage.
What follows is maybe even more disturbing than the issue that preceded it, as we see the human toll of the Cyborg's evil(lending credence to the horrible adage most often attributed to Joseph Stalin, "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic") as seeing the Cyborg callously wipe out a group of bruised and battered survivors is perhaps harder to take than seeing the whole cityscape of Coast City obliterated, as we did last week. The Cyborg's ice-cold annihilation of the survivors, who think he's saving them, is legitimately chilling (with some cool artwork as Grummett shows Cyborg's pointing finger turns into a raygun).
Moving along, we get a funny scene (and some back-channel promotion of the the upcoming "Death and Return" video game) with Superboy creeping on Roxy directly in front of her father. Seems to me, Tom Grummett has a lot of fun drawing Roxy.
The layout on page 13 is well done, with panels set against the full splash of the smouldering California coastline. Grummett does a great job of showing motion as the Cyborg dives in flight to get on the other side of the helicopter, away from the Metropolis Kid. Lois' reaction to the Cyborg's factual slip-up is great, too.
It's hard not to cheer for the Metropolis Kid as he struggles to his feet to fight the Cyborg after his attack on him and the GBS helicopter, and their battle (which is more or less a game of cat and mouse) is well-staged. One of the earliest appearances of the Metropolis Kid's tactile telekinesis is very well drawn, an interesting contrast seeing how different it looks to have the Cyborg's arm dispersed rather than assembling.
As the beaten-down Metropolis Kid struggles to fly away, the motion lines do a great job of showing he's less flying than he is floating, revealing his exhaustion and pain.
And the final panel with the Cyborg seeming to kill the Metropolis Kid is so heavy. It's a great use of the page, as the story just abruptly seems to end mid-page, with blood instead of panels continuing down on the page. Yikes.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
Wouldn't Cyborg Superman's cover story that he was putting "some wounded animals" "out of their misery" raise alarm bells with the White House? Is animal euthanasia a role we typically think of Superman as filling? It seems like a slip-up, storytelling wise, but to me it shows the first hints of Cyborg's mental state not being quite there. He's overconfident in people believing he's Superman (and he's flat out bonkers crazy),so he begins to get little details wrong here and there, jeopardizing his larger plan. He's also quite dickish throughout, especially how dismissive he is of the White House representative's plans to send in assistance.
It's just a throwaway line in the background of page 5, but the fact that they mention that Coast City's destruction is causing fires as far as Oregon really lends reality to the story (and fleshes out Coast City's geography a little bit—it's sort of a placeholder for LA the way that Metropolis is for New York, but, like Metropolis, seems like a brighter, happier version of LA, and I would guess, more Northerly?). Bummer that THOUSANDS are dying as far as Portland, though!
The other phone call, where someone says "went in but never came out" could have been an interesting storytelling thread. If they had more issues, wouldn't it have been interesting if Lois Lane got that call, and uncovered the Cyborg's villainy because he killed that handful of survivors? (Hire me, DC, I have dozens of similarly great ideas)
Have I mentioned that I think Vinnie Edge's look is based on Aaron Spelling? I have? Well, then, carry on. [Max: Does that mean Morgan Edge is the DC Universe version of Tori Spelling?]
Is Superboy's revision of Superman's famous catch phrase to "Up, up, and I'm outta here!" a riff on Dennis Miller? He's was off SNL by this time, and had not yet started his HBO show, but I think his catch phrase was still relevant enough for this to be a hip reference. Which, yeah, is weird to think about now. [Max: "I'm Norm MacDonald, and here's the fake Superman clone."]
The Cyborg's arrogance is again pretty risky when he blows up the GBS helicopter. It's a media helicopter, and could have been recording (and simulcasting) the events right before they were attacked by the Cyborg. Could have been very easy to have been caught, in spite of his "we're under attack" claims.
I appreciate the narration of Superboy trying to reason his way through why his powers are so different than Superman's. There's actually quite a lot of info given to the reader here.
The ending of the issue almost seems to suggest to the reader that this really could be the real Superman, though Lois' reaction indicates otherwise. [Max: And the whole "killing millions" thing. That too.]