Super Titles Round-Up (July 1994)
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Super Titles Round-Up (July 1994)
This month: Superboy collides with the Parasite! Steel collides with Hardware! This blog collides with the Green Lantern one!
Superboy #6
LOTS happening in this issue (“Worlds Collide,” “Fall of Metropolis,” the Super-Parasite, Cadmus’ fate revealed, a mysterious “Lady Dragon” villain cameo, Dubbilex loves tanning) but the most important part is: Superboy finally meets Krypto! You know, that little mutt Bibbo saved from drowning and then tried to name “Krypton” but the guy making the collar tag wanted to charge him extra for the final letter? Anyway, it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
About Cadmus: turns out everyone in it wasn’t crushed to death in Action #700. Superman deflected the missile blast but allowed everyone, including Superboy, to think that the place was destroyed to prevent Luthor from trying to destroy it for real, I guess. Now the place is in pretty bad shape (especially for Guardian, who gave up like half of his blood to create the cure to the Clone Plague) but they’re using this opportunity to go back to being a secret government agency, like they were before Superboy ran his big mouth.
Superboy is glad his friends at Cadmus are alive, but he doesn’t really wanna hang out underground, so he goes back to Metropolis to help rescue survivors (especially those right in front of TV cameras). He happens to rescue Cat Grant’s elderly neighbor just as Cat is reporting from outside her own destroyed building, and he even gives Cat a photo he found of her with some little kid we haven’t seen in a while…
By the way, this is how Superboy’s friends back in Hawaii find out he didn’t die from the Clone Plague (his manager Rex Leech was already starting to look for other “super-types” to manage).
Meanwhile, the Parasite, who’s been on the loose ever since he stole Superman’s excess powers and became all big and buff, runs into Fred Bentson, the reality-hopping mailman from the “Worlds Collide” crossover, and tries to absorb his freaky reality-hopping energy. Superboy intervenes and, with Dubbilex’s help, ends up tricking the Parasite into getting his own energy sucked by Metropolis’ electric grid, leaving him looking like an empty Parasite cosplay suit.
As for Fred, he’s understandably freaked out by the whole situation, runs away, and clumsily falls off a bridge (despite Bibbo’s efforts to rescue him). Superboy grabs him as he’s falling, and that’s when Fred teleports them both to Milestone Comics’ Dakotaverse, leading to their appearance in Icon #11. And that, in turns, leads to…
Steel #6
Last time we saw John Henry, he said he was gonna kill his old boss, the Colonel, for trying to murder John’s family and causing his nephew Jemahl to shoot himself up with a superhuman drug that messed him up pretty badly. For a second, it does look like John is gonna kill the Colonel… but nah, he was just scaring him into confessing who he’s been working for: some organization by the not very original name of “Black Ops” that operates in Metropolis.
So John goes to Metropolis to look up these “Black Ops” fellows, and as it happens, they’re the ones operating the shady sleep clinic from the “Worlds Collide” storyline. The head of the group is a generous philanthropist called Manual Cabral who in his spare time dresses up in a slick robot armor and tries to exploit the reality-hopping powers of innocent mailmen. Reality-hopping is exactly what Fred and Superboy do once again, but this time they also bring Milestone’s Hardware and Rocket along from the Dakotaverse.
Cabral (or “Hazard,” as he likes to be called when he’s wearing the armor) sends some goons to capture Fred, but his new super-friends won’t allow it. Steel hears the resulting ruckus and flies in to help, but Hardware mistakes him for another goon and their obligatory fight scene ensues. Just when Rocket has gotten the boys to stop fighting, everyone but Steel is teleported back to the other universe.
Superman shows up to increase this issue’s resale value even more, and Steel barely has any time to explain the situation to him before there’s another bizarre plot twist: Fred somehow made a literal bridge between the two worlds! (But we already knew that from the Milestone issues.) CONTINUED!
Outsiders #9
The Eradicator finds out that his old pals the Outsiders are now in super-prison and he’s like “That means they must be guilty! I’m gonna go there and kill them.” But, when he gets there, he’s like “Aw, I can’t stay mad at you guys” and helps them break out.
He ends up rejoining the team to help them prove their innocence, because deep down, he’s a big softie. By the way, that super-prison is the Slab, the same one Mongul broke out of in Green Lantern #52, which leads to…
Green Lantern #53
Superman drops by LA to help the All-New, All-Confused Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, who can’t understand why a yellow guy from outer space is trying to kill him. This issue includes the classic moment in which Superman and Kyle introduce themselves to each other and Superman says one of his most perfectly Superman quotes: “By the way, I’m Superman.”
Read my full post for this issue at the greenlantern94to04 blog, which finally caught up chronologically to this one, and I’m planning to keep them that way (especially with a certain timeline-shaking crossover coming up…).
Wonder Woman #88
We talked about this issue in the post for Man of Steel #35, but how could I pass up the opportunity to show that Brian Bolland cover here? Aside from the robot-fighting stuff we already covered, the plot is about Diana feeling unhinged due to some magical shenanigans going on in her series and coming to Metropolis to ask Superman to do whatever it takes to “stop her” if she ever puts innocent lives at risk. Too bad she can’t just give him a ring that’d take care of it.
“Unless it’s an innocent who’s been retconned into being evil. Then just let me snap his neck.”
Superman’s reaction is telling Wonder Woman she might be “overreacting” and then ditching her with Dr. Fate (actually a villain in disguise) because Diana “won’t be much use until she gets her head together.” Are we sure Superman isn’t the one whose personality was magically altered to make him a dick?
Showcase ‘94 #8
Not technically Superman-related, but this issue has a very interesting story written by Dan Jurgens in which Waverider and his fellow Linear Man (Rip) Hunter notice some time disturbances in 1994 and go check them out. This turns out to be a trap by the villainous Monarch, formerly the heroic Hank “Hawk” Hall (what’s with guys called Hal/Hall going evil?). Waverider touches Monarch to look into his future and find out what he’s up to, and what he sees shocks him. Then a blast to the face shocks him in a more literal way.
Monarch kidnaps Waverider, and… CONTINUED! All across the DCU!
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