Super Titles Round-Up (August 1994)
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Super Titles Round-Up (August 1994)
This month: Superboy gets wet! Steel gets a new armor! The Eradicator gets sad!
Superboy #7
“Worlds Collide” continues, but pretty soon it’s gonna be more like “Waves Collide” because of the two tsunamis about to hit the inter-dimensionally connected cities of Metropolis and Dakota. While Superman and the Blood Syndicate team up to stop the wave on the Metropolis side, Superboy, Static, and Rocket try to do the same in the Dakota one, but none of their powers are really suited for stopping massive amounts of city-destroying water.
(At least we get some excellent sound effects out of their failed attempts.)
In Metropolis, the Blood Syndicate’s Aquamaria (whose powers, as the name implies, are “being made out of water” and “Spanish”) turns into a smaller tsunami herself to try to counteract the wave. Meanwhile, Superboy and his Amazing Friends decide to change strategy and try to fool the god-like being causing all of this, Rift (“the world’s most powerful disgruntled postal worker,” as Superboy calls him), into stopping the wave. Instead, they anger him so much that he turns both tsunamis into a wave of fire – just as Aquamaria was about to crash into it. RIP, Aquamaria (or “Steamaria” now, I guess).
In Dakota, Rift does end up turning the wave back into water and freezing it in time, just to show off. Superboy, Static, and Rocket manage to work together to knock Rift down, but he easily gets up again and freezes them too by trapping them inside a giant headstone. They’ll stay stuck there until breaking out in Man of Steel #36, which leads to…
Steel #7
Sorry, this isn’t the issue where we find out why Steel was wearing nothing but boxers in MoS #36 (you’ll have to wait for the “Milestone Side” post for that). What’s important is that Steel is working with his former rival Hardware and current enemy Hazard on a plan to stop their even bigger common enemy Rift. Part of that plan involves getting himself a new armor with Hardware’s tech, hence him not being in his undies anymore. Other than that, the plan doesn’t seem to be going too well, considering Rift carelessly squashes Metropolis and Dakota together into one city on the second page.
Rift announces that now that he’s merged the cities, he’s gonna sort out the “continuity problems” by getting rid of all the redundant elements, like the two evil labs/sleep clinics where he was experimented on when he was a regular mailman. The heroes don’t want Rift to destroy the lab because it contains the weapon Steel and Hardware created to depower him, so they join forces to distract him while Superman, Icon, and Hazard go retrieve the anti-Rift device.
By the way, while all the heroes fight Rift, there’s a coloring error that suddenly turns Rocket into Superboy – further evidence that Superboy’s Milestone Universe counterpart is a pregnant girl.
Superman and Icon get the weapon out right before Rift remembers what he was doing and destroys the labs and everyone in them –including Hazard, apparently, which leaves Steel with some conflicted emotions. The guy seemingly died saving two worlds, sure, but he did also try to kill most of Steel’s family. Rift teleports away at the end of the issue (he’s gonna go mess with the Blood Syndicate in their own series) and the heroes fly off to see what they can do with that weapon. TO BE CONCLUDED IN ANOTHER POST! Here’s some cool Humberto Ramos art to tide you over until then:
Outsiders #10
After helping the Outsiders break out of jail, the Eradicator joins them on a trip to “the underworld nation of Abyssia” to look for their teammate Looker, who has been turned into a vampire by the Dracula wannabe ruling that place. While down there, everyone suddenly starts experiencing visions related to tragic moments in their lives. In the Eradicator’s case, he remembers he had two kids as Dr. David Connors and sees them calling him a freak.
Did that really happen? Because that’s grounds for getting disowned, young men (though I guess they’re getting their inheritance anyway since everyone thinks Dr. Dave is already dead). Anyway, you might think the vampire lord is causing these visions, but nope, he’s getting them too and no one has any idea what’s going on. The Outsiders find Looker, who betrays them, but then it turns out she was only pretending to betray them… and then it turns out she was only pretending to be pretending to betray them. So, yeah, she’s evil. CONTINUED!
The Spectre #21
Superman is part of a truly random assortment of DC characters appearing in this issue, including most of the Justice Society, Lucien from Sandman, Nightshade from Suicide Squad, and Naiad from Firestorm (who, coincidentally, is also a lady made of water, like Aquamaria). Oh, and Adolf Hitler and Bill Clinton appear too. Jesus, who isn’t in this issue? Not Jesus, he’s also in here. Seriously!
President Clinton has tasked a guy named Professor Hazzard (another coincidence! Worlds ARE Colliding!) with finding a way to kill the Spectre if that ever becomes necessary. Hazzard travels into the Dreaming (read: takes a nap) and, with Lucien’s help, learns about the Spear of Destiny: a spear that once struck Jesus, which eventually ended up in Hitler’s hands and was used to keep all of the Justice Society, including the Spectre, out of Germany during World War II.
The Spear is now in a Raiders of the Lost Ark-esque warehouse, but Clinton orders they take it out once he learns that the Spectre has apparently flooded part of Tokyo and killed hundreds of people. Of course, that wasn’t the Spectre, it was Naiad the Water Elemental, who went crazy and decided to kill everyone working in the Japanese oil company that caused the incident that gave her her powers. But Clinton doesn’t know that, so he needs someone to wield the Spear and use it against the Spectre. Guess who he drafts for the job?
But that’s not gonna happen until next issue. CONTINUED, TOO!
Legionnaires #17 and Valor #22
I wanna mention these issues since they make reference to the Pocket Earth Superboy, even though his role in the Legion of Super-Heroes’ origin had been erased some years earlier (at this point, Valor was the young hero who inspired the Legion, not Superboy). The Legion’s continuity is a complete mess, which is nothing new, but suddenly they’re aware of it and that’s causing troubles. For once, the Legionnaires are as baffled as the readers.
In fact, it’s such a mess that their entire world is falling apart and they start looking for a new one to settle on. That’s when one of them remembers there’s an empty planet just sitting there: Superboy and Supergirl’s Pocket Earth, which has been deserted since Superman killed its last three non-synthetic inhabitants in Superman #22. The plan is to literally haul the planet out of the Pocket Universe and put it where the old Earth used to be. Easy! The only problem is that once they bring the Pocket Earth over to the non-Pocket DC Universe, its core inverts or whatever and it turns into a time bomb. Whoops! ALSO TO BE CONTINUED, BELIEVE IT OR NOT!
Showcase ‘94 #9
The Dan Jurgens-written Waverider/Monarch story that started last issue concludes here (finally, something without a “CONTINUED” at the end). Monarch, who was always a bit of a knucklehead when he was a superhero called Hawk, has somehow invented a device that captured Waverider and his fellow Linear Man, Hunter, and forced them to ping-pong through time. Waverider finally breaks free and attacks Monarch – but that was all part of his plan.
Monarch uses Waverider’s chronal energy to look into his own past and find out why he’s so smart now: it’s because when he killed his former partner Dove at the end of Armageddon 2001, her “powers, reason and intelligence” merged into Hawk’s dumb meathead body and turned him into a superior being. This warrants a name (and costume) change, so from now on, he’s calling himself “Extant.”
Extant dies fighting Waverider and Hunter… or that’s what should have happened according to Hunter’s temporal research. Instead, Extant completely owns both of them and steals Waverider’s time-traveling wrist-cuff, which means he now has the powers and smarts to change history as he pleases. This also means I LIED! TO BE CONTINUED IN ZERO HOUR! 0:
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