Adventures of Superman #512 (May 1994)
Adventures of Superman #512 (May 1994)
FINALLY: The climax of the Super-Superman saga, which was getting about as bloated as Superman himself in this issue’s cover. After coming back from the dead, Superman went from having no powers to having too much power: it started with him occasionally misjudging his strength or commenting that things are easier to lift than usual, and eventually led to every single issue having a moment where he accidentally destroys a bridge by winking too hard or something. In Action #698, Superman actually started growing taller and more muscular, leading to the monstrosity you see above.
Last issue, Superman was taken to a space station owned by Project Cadmus where they tried to “safely” siphon his extra energy into space, but that ended with the entire space station blowing up and crashing into Metropolis’ bay. Turns out Superman returned to Metropolis just in time to hear Lois Lane’s apartment blow up (more on that in the plotlines section below), but he can’t comfort her because he’s so ridiculously strong that he’d turn her into human jelly if he tried to hug her.
Just when Superman is about to say goodbye to Lois forever, his super-supersenses pick up a convenient disturbance nearby: some rowdy Underworld mutants have attacked the Cadmus transport that happens to be holding Rudy “Parasite” Jones, the power-sucking supervillain. The Underworlders sympathize with Rudy’s predicament and free him, and he thanks them for their generosity by turning all of them into skeletons.
Parasite recently got a taste of Superman’s enhanced powers in Man of Steel #33 and is itching for another fix, so he tracks Superman down – and Superman lets himself be tracked. Even though Cadmus already tried to use Rudy’s powers to cure Superman’s condition, Superman is all out of ideas, so he decides to give him another shot. Last time, their fight had to end because Parasite started parasite-ing some Cadmus workers, so this time, Superman takes them somewhere a little more private: the moon.
After flying them both to the moon, Superman unloads his full heat vision on Parasite, and actually thinks he killed him for a moment… but then Rudy regrows himself as a Doomsday-sized monster with a freaky leech-like mouth. It seems that Rudy truly can’t fail.
The good news is that Superman is his normal size again and can actually control his powers. The bad news is that Parasite is much more powerful than Superman now and has no intention to stop knocking him around and absorbing his powers. Uber-Parasite punches Superman through the moon’s floor and they end up in… some sort of hidden armory? Turns out they’ve stumbled upon the moon lair owned by Scavenger, the villain from the latest issue of Superboy, who was probably in the toilet while all of this happened (he doesn’t appear in this issue).
Superman is able to use one of the weapons in Scavenger’s stash to keep Parasite at bay untii they bump into a teleporter that brings them back to Metropolis – more specifically, to its sewers. But they’re not there for long, because Rudy is still much stronger than Superman and uppercuts him into the sky. The issue ends with an unconscious Superman laying in the rubble as the people of Metropolis wonder if they’re gonna have to start wearing black armbands again… TO BE CONTINUED!
Character-Watch:
Debuting the Parasite’s bulkier body and leech-faced look, which is the second creepiest incarnation of the character (the creepiest is “Lois Lane,” but let’s not talk about that here). Everyone’s pal Don Sparrow says: “This version of the character would go on to become the most consistent look for the character, though I prefer the original look.” Same here, especially because I feel like once he started looking like a monster, they started writing him as such and forgot that he’s supposed to be a blue-collar guy named Rudy who was once S.T.A.R. Labs’ janitor. He never says stuff like “I feel like I should'a brung roses” anymore, sadly.
Plotline-Watch:
Oh, yeah, the Lois stuff. Last issue, Lex Luthor Jr. got Lois fired from the Daily Planet by hacking into her computer and publishing wacky stories about how he’s a “space-alien clone” and somehow Elvis Presley at the same time – all because Lois uncovered the equally wacky truth about him (you know, that he’s Lex Luthor Sr. in a clone body and murdered his personal trainer but then aliens brought her back to life). In this issue, Lois is planning to get her job back by showing Perry her evidence on Luthor, but then her apartment blows up just as she’s about to walk in. There goes the evidence!
I know what you’re wondering, but don’t worry: Lois’ cat Elroy is fine, he bolted out of the apartment the moment she opened the door. In fact, he’s the one who finds the monstrous Super-Superman hiding in that alley. Elroy’s dislike of Clark has been well documented by this blog in this past, but he actually seems to feel sorry for the guy in these panels. That, or he’s overwhelmed with joy because he just likes watching Clark suffer.
Incidentally, the scenes between Lois and Clark in the alley are very nice, and further evidence that the often-ignored post-“Reign” period was still capable of producing classic moments. I particularly like that Kesel and Kitson are allowing Lois to be vulnerable for a moment; her entire life just blew up, she can’t be a badass 100% of the time.
Another standout scene is the tense moment when the increasingly sick and paranoid Lex “Jr.” loads a single bullet into an antique gun (once owned by George S. Patton) and points it at his top lackey, Dr. Happersen, accusing him of being Lois’ source. Happersen panics and blurts out that the rat must be Dr. Packard (Luthor’s mole inside Cadmus, so this would make him a double rat), while repeating that he’s always been loyal. Lex’s quick shift from anger to “Hmm. Packard. Yes.” is just classic Luthor.
The Underworlders who attack that Cadmus transport do it with the hi-tech weapons Luthor gave them recently, and they even call themselves “Lex-Men” in gratitude (though those giant guns make them look more like “Lex-Force”).
The fire chief who tells Lois that her apartment blew up due to a “gas leak” and totally not because of a bomb planted by Luthor is of the opinion that they should just “tear it all down, build a real city of tomorrow.” That’s intentional foreshadowing for a storyline that’s about to start and unintentional foreshadowing for one that will come much, much later. (Spoiler talk: maybe they should have rebuilt Metropolis as a “city of tomorrow” after “Fall of Metropolis,” instead of magically restoring it to how it was at this point. They could have debuted the new look in the post-Zero Hour issues, fitting in nicely with the “soft reboot” theme and giving “Fall of Metropolis” more weight in the continuity.)
Patreon-Watch:
As always, a Super-Superman-sized shout out to our patrons Aaron, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Kit, Sam, and Bol, who last month got to read a Patreon-only post about Man of Steel Annual #3 (an Elseworlds story and therefore out of the scope of this blog). More Elseworlds posts coming soon! Join them here: https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99
And now, click through for more commentary from the great Don Sparrow!
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We open with a cover that's about as mid-nineties as it gets, with a grinning parasite riding a metal-head looking Superman in outer space. The overlaid purple Kirby-dots are a nice touch.
Inside the cover, we are swiftly greeted with Elroy exiting the danger, which we learn a full page splash later is Lois Lane's apartment detonating from within. The minimalism of the explosive light is a good choice, though the bulk of Lois' winter coat makes her look a bit matronly. The effect of Superman's heat vision crackling behind the space shrapnel is another good bit of colouring.
Ditto on the next page, where Lois and the fire chief are warmly lit from the flames of her apartment.
A little later we briefly meet an Underworlder running a strong risk of a copyright infringement suit from Marvel, as apart from the colouring, he looks for all the world like one of Spider-Man's goblin-based villains. Actually now that I look at it, the other Underworlder attacking the Cadmus vehicle reminds me of The Lizard, another Spider-Man baddie. Any other villainous Easter eggs I'm missing? [Max: I see a store-brand Savage Dragon down there, too…]
As Lois and the hulking Superman say their teary goodbyes, there's a great detail showing the moistness on Lois' eye.
The effect of Superman's full force heat vision is well done, later introducing us for the first time to the lamprey-eel faced Parasite. The fight that follows is perhaps a bit repetitive, particularly since it lasts a full five pages. But the exposure to the Parasite does the trick, and we're back to a normal sized Superman. I know I keep harping on the inconsistency of the size of the overloaded Superman, but it would have been so easy to make his cape a little smaller in the scenes when he was gigantic (to say nothing of the belt and buckle I mentioned last time) so that when he goes back to his normal size, the cape would be the appropriate scale. I get the tight uniform scaling, for the most part, but the cape is a bit of a head-scratcher.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
While I share the Cadmus agent's sentiments about country music, “Achy Breaky” as a reference is a full two years after Billy Ray Cyrus' heyday.
The Lex Luthor is deteriorating storyline is to me the most interesting part of the issue. It's hard to tell if he's behaving more erratically because his clone body is dying (affecting his original brain?) or if it's he's getting desperate in his illness. This seems sloppily unhinged for someone as methodical and controlled as Lex.
In art school a quick rule of thumb that we learned is that every line you add to a face ages that character by a year. But this logic, Gretchen Kelley must be about a thousand based on her appearance on page 11. I know the Jim Lee, hatchy style was hot at the time, but she's looking like Dana Carvey's Church Lady in places here. [Max: I think it’s interesting that Lex never even considers that Dr. Kelley could be Lois’ source. She’s been with him the longest, but she also calls him out on his BS and apparently tried to defend Lois before this scene started. Is Lex underestimating her, or are his own deeply buried feelings for her clouding his judgment? Isn’t that special?]
Lex as a Patton enthusiast? Interesting idea, and perhaps a callback to Lex's lair of the silver age, where real life conquerors like Genghis Khan, Nero and Julius Caesar lined his hall of heroes. I wouldn't quite put Patton in their ranks, though. [Max: Maybe he should have threatened poor Sydney with Gengis Khan’s spear or something like that.]
I rarely refer to the letter columns, but the letters in this issue (addressing that weird Challengers of the Unknown fill-in issue, Adventures #508) features a letter from Jeph Loeb, author of the Challengers of the Unknown maxi-series that #508 referred to. Loeb will of course become a super-team member himself in about sixty-two issues from now, the lone good writer in a truly terrible era of Superman comics. In any event, Loeb was touched that his (unfairly largely forgotten) Challengers series lived on in that issue.
