Adventures of Superman #508 (January 1994)
Adventures of Superman #508 (January 1994)
Superman teams up with the Challengers of the Unknown, who are like the Fantastic Four but, uh, less Fantastic. They’re still Four, though! As the first page informs us, this story takes place between the panels of a 1958 Challengers of the Unknown issue where they fight a guy called Tiko, the Wizard of Time, one of many Silver Age comic book villains who managed to find a way to travel in time and used this potentially world-changing technology to steal stuff. After catching Tiko in the year 3000, the Challengers are taking him back to 1958 when they accidentally crash down in the also-futuristic-but-not-that-futuristic year 1994. Upon being exposed to 1994 fashion, the Challengers describe this era as “some sort of post-apocalyptic future world,” which is technically true since this is the DC Universe and there’s like two apocalypses a month.
Anyway, Tiko escapes from the Challengers and hides in an alley, where he takes out a box containing some stolen 31st century weapons that happen to look like fancy rings. As he’s monologuing to himself about how powerful these things are, Tiko is jumped by four hoodlums who steal the rings and decide to try them on, at which point there’s a big explosion of green light. That’s right: these four alley-dwellers are the new Green Lantern now that Hal Jordan went insane! Wait, no, wrong Tumblr…
Meanwhile, the Challengers, having seen a Daily Planet headline about Superman, show up at Perry White’s office to ask if he knows how to contact Supes, because he looks like the kinda guy who might be useful when you need to find a time traveling-wizard. As Perry nerds out on the Challengers (who knew he’s a Jack Kirby fan?), they all hear some sort of commotion going on outside: the four muggers, transformed into elemental beings by the futuristic bling, are tearing up the street. The Challengers jump down to contain the hoodlums using their amazing acrobatic abilities and superior intelligence. Soon, Superman stops by to help out, using his punches.
(Hehe, he said “Thing.”)
The hoodlums are promptly taken care of, but then Tiko shows up with the fifth ring, which gives him the powers of the fifth element: no, not “Heart” or “Life Itself” or something cute like that, but vacuums. Tiko starts sucking up everyone and everything into a big void, which even Superman is having trouble resisting. Luckily, Tiko’s love of monologuing allows one of the Challengers (the commie-hating one) to sneak behind him with something even more powerful than a 31st century ring capable of producing vacuums: a gun. No bullets, just the gun.
So Tiko is apprehended, and before the Challengers take him back to 1958, one of them (I made it through this whole summary without looking up their names, so let’s call this one “Gary”) asks Superman whatever became of the team. Before Superman can say anything, the brainiest of the Challengers, Prof (I did remember that one!), tells Gary that they shouldn’t know too much about their own futures… and besides, this radical world full of super people in leather jackets probably doesn't even need four powerless adventurers like them. The issue ends with Superman thinking that the Challengers are an inspiration just as he flies over Prof’s headstone in a cemetery. A nice tribute, and also confirmation that, yeah, we don’t need you (don't think Prof would have been much help against Doomsday or the Bloodlines aliens).
Character-Watch:
So what DID become of the Challengers? They starred in a 1991 miniseries by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale where Prof gets blown up (but then returns as a ghost) and the others turned all weird and violent and… ‘90s. On other hand, Loeb and Sales’ take on Superman in that miniseries is just as great and timeless as it’d be years later, in Superman: For All Seasons. Superman shows up to defend the Challengers during a trial and says some pretty Superman-esque stuff:
Other than Prof’s death, that series isn’t acknowledged at all in this issue, and I kinda wonder if that’s because Karl Kesel didn’t care much for the modernized Challengers. Oh, and he later went out of his way to bring back the original team again during the “Hyper-Tension!” storyline in Superboy, even though a brand new Challengers series with different characters was going on at the same time, so that’s more evidence for that theory. Finally, Kesel merged the original Challengers with the Fantastic Four in his Spider-Boy one-shot during the DC vs. Marvel crossover, which we'll have to cover here at some point because it's one of the finest single issues ever to grace this medium.
Plotline-Watch:
The Daily Planet article the Challengers read is about Superman catching the all-new, all-child-killing Toyman, as seen the previous week in Superman #85. Wonder how they figured out which one's Superman.
This issue also includes the funeral for Cat Grant’s son Adam, a victim of Toyman, and Cat’s boss Vinnie Edge tries to hit on her again, right in front of her child's grave. Incredible that Vinnie’s own son had a criminal empire and tried to kill a bunch of people with a giant robot and Vinnie is STILL the biggest sleazebag in the family. Cat’s reply here is foreshadowing:
Also at the funeral, a man named Ira Green comes to talk to Cat about his missing daughter, Sasha (who was murdered by Lex Luthor Jr. in Superman #77, and then brought back to life by aliens in Superman Annual #5, but he doesn’t know that). Cat would have been justified in telling him “poor timing, dude” but instead she promises to help him find out what happened to Sasha.
STILL at the funeral, there’s a moving scene where Superman comes to pay his respects and Cat asks him what it’s like to be dead, since, you know, he'd know. He says it’s different for everyone, which is probably true (I doubt Adam got a creepy procession by ghouls posing as Kryptonians).
Patreon-Watch:
This post was brought to you by our patrons, Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris "Ace" Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Dave Shevlin, and Kit! Last month we asked them if they’d rather have more Patreon-only posts or more activity here on Tumblr and they overwhelmingly voted for the latter option, so this post wouldn’t exist without them (well, it would, but like a month or two later). We’ll still post exclusive stuff from time to time at https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99 but the focus will now be on keeping this Tumblr more active, because seriously, it’s been eight years: you’d think we’d be AT LEAST up to the Electric Superman by now. Here's to tackling Zero Hour before 2021 is over!
And this post is also brought to you by the great Don Sparrow, who finished his side like a month before me. And he even did his homework and looked up all the Challengers' names! Read Don's section after the jump:
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We begin with the cover, and it's a good one, though like the rest of the issue, it seems to feature this week's guest stars as much as Superman. Superman's musculature in particular looks very Tom Grummett-like, but the squat wide faces, and large hair let us know it's definitely a Barry Kitson cover. Get a load of the detail he puts in the flowing water here, with three distinct areas, and a real sense of motion. Water is one of the trickiest things to draw, and he positively nails it, here.
The first few pages zip along nicely, though we're tossed pretty abruptly in the middle of someone else's story, so it's not hard to feel lost. They do have a caption naming the flat top wizard guy, Darius Tiko, but it's not actually on the page in which he appears, so I didn't think they'd named him until my second read through of this issue (I'd thought his actual character name was Green Goon since that's what Red Ryan calls him). [Max: I think I like "Green Goon" better.]
While the colouring in this era is attempting to be a little more airbrushy than the solid blocks of colour from the old newsprint format days, it's still a work in progress. The attempts to add tone, or shadow, particularly to the characters faces leaves a little to be desired, as they tend to look less like tone, and more like bruising.
The funeral scenes are well staged, and I appreciated the avoidance of the funeral in the rain trope. The sunny, if windy, skies help to put in relief the horror of a child's funeral. The shot of Superman paying a condolence call is a very good one, with a very McFarlane-y cape whipping around.
Kitson's Perry White looks a little chunkier than we're used to seeing him. I wondered, given the prominence of his wide smile, if this was supposed to be a reference to Lane Smith, the actor playing Perry in the then-airing Lois and Clark TV show (similarly to how the artists altered Lois' hair, and depicted Martha Kent as thinner and more youthful to match the show)but when I double checked, Lane Smith is much thinner than this Perry White (and doesn't have slicked back hair, either) so I'm not sure what brought on the new look for Perry.
We see a properly Jack Kirby-like intro to the different elemental mutants, reminiscent of the Fantastic Four on page 13.
More great texture work on the following page, as the water and fire creatures are drawn well in their attack on the Challengers. The full page splash as Superman (finally) enters the fray is a good one as well. There's a nice sense of motion as the items on the street get sucked into the void, but I will admit there's a real dearth of backgrounds for most of that sequence as well. Overall, a fairly workmanlike issue for the art team—they aren't asked to draw anything too spectacular, but they do serve the story well. In the issue's opening credits, they mention that this story was something of a passion project for writer Karl Kesel, and it reads that way—it doesn't really fit neatly into the present continuity, aside from the singular Cat Grant scene,nor does it really explain who the Challengers are, what they can do, etc. Even the ending assumes a lot about our base of knowledge of these characters, which I certainly didn't have at the time, reading this as a teenager. I'm not fully convinced it works as a Superman story, as he is so limited in terms of screentime, and, because we are given so little in the way of explanation of the Challengers, it doesn't fully serve them, either. It's just kind of a weird little novelty issue, for people who like the Challengers.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
Props to Perry White for being hip to who the Challengers are. I sure didn't! [Max: I think I did know the Challengers when I first read this issue, but only thanks to Kesel himself in Spider-Boy, which I re-read that issue like 90 times.]
It's odd that publisher Franklin Stern only sort of appears in the issue—almost behind the "camera", completely in shadow, then he's gone.
Rather than a bowdlerized swear word, I choose to believe that the criminal punk calling Tiko a "fudd" refers to Elmer Fudd, who also had a tall, sort of flat hat. Earlier in the comic, the rainbow haired lady calls one of the Challengers Barney, and I'm a little less clear on that reference. He's blonde, and so was Barney Rubble, but it could just as easily be early 90s slang. One of the many results for Barney on urban dictionary is "an unremarkable male" so maybe that's what she means? [Max: It's well known that being a "Barney" is the opposite of being totally rad.]
Professor Haley seems unimpressed by "miniaturized computing" but we don't hear the end of his sentence. Surely, it was gonna be about the cloud.
Hey Rocky, here in the future, we don't call them "future cars". They're just cars. And actually, that one's a van. [Max: For the sake of consistency, he should have called EVERYTHING future. Like, "Hey, Gary, pass the future pen. I'm going to future write something down. Future thanks."]