Superman #0 (October 1994)
Superman #0 (October 1994)
“Peer Pressure,” Part 2! Note: this issue includes no instances of Superman standing on smoldering ruins with his eyes glowing red while thunderbolts go off behind him. But, damn, that’s a cool cover. We’re not huge fans of the “Superman with eyes glowing red” trend in this blog, but gotta give this one a pass.
The actual plot follows the events of Man of Steel #0, in which Clark Kent survives several suspicious “accidents” while a bad guy with cables all over his body curses his stupid luck. This issue starts with the cable guy sneaking into a building to plant a bomb, electrocuting a cop to death in the process, and then finally revealing his name: not The Cable Guy (missed opportunity), but Conduit. Now you know whose action figure to ask for, kids!
(I think there’s some evidence of murder: a dead guy on the floor.)
Meanwhile, Lois Lane is helping Clark Kent move back into his apartment, which he’d lost back when everyone thought he was dead at the same time as Superman. Lois sees some old trophies, which triggers a flashback about Clark beating his childhood buddy Kenny Braverman during a track race. Not only does poor Kenny get some passive-aggressive digs from his Clark Kent-adoring dad, but Lana Lang rejects his invitation to go to the prom together because she’d rather salivate over Clark. In the present, Clark says he and Kenny “never got along as well” after that, for some reason. Not sure why we’re hearing about all this in the middle of a story about a mystery villain who wants to kill Clark, but okay.
Later, Lois and Clark attend this years’ edition of the Zenith Award for Integrity in Journalism, best known as the Baldy Awards. There, Clark gets a special award for his coverage of that time time went all wonky, as well as for being a swell guy everyone loves. Clark is giving his acceptance speech when the podium explodes – luckily, Superman happened to be in the area and quickly moved Clark out of the way. So quickly that no one saw it happen.
(Guess this is the moment the cover is meant to represent, with some artistic liberties.)
Conduit isn’t sure if the bomb got Clark, so he sends his version of Lex Luthor’s Lex-Men (SPOILERS: Braver-Men?) to make sure he’s dead. Superman stops the goons from torching the whole place, and just as he’s trying to interrogate them about who their boss is, Conduit activates the obligatory goon brain-frying device in their helmets. Superman rushes them to the hospital even though goon brain-frying devices never fail, but this gives Jurgens and Breeding an excuse to draw this cool page:
After the goons die, Clark, who has gone through four murder attempts in this storyline so far, starts thinking that maybe someone is trying to kill him. He’s like “nah, I’m just being paranoid”… until he sees that someone has pinned a high school photo of him to his apartment door with a knife. Wait, no… that’s clearly Superman’s photo. Never mind, false alarm!
“MY FAVORITE DOOR!”
We see another flashback, this time showing Kenny Braverman coming home after Clark got elected Prom King and getting chewed out by his dad (who seems weirdly invested in teenage popularity contests). Kenny goes to his room, pulls out a gun, and for a second it looks like he’s gonna use it on himself, but then he points it at a photo of Clark taped to his wall. That same photo above. Kenny says that one day he’ll get rid of Clark. In the present, Conduit finally removes his mask and we see that this entire time, he’s always been… gasp
Kenny Braverman! (You thought I was gonna say freakin’ Psi-Phon and Dreadnaught, didn’t you?) Who still thinks he can be Prom King if he kills Clark, apparently. You can do it, Kenny. I’d vote for you.
CONTINUED!
Plotline-Watch:
As we’ll find out, Kenny loves stabbing doors. Doors are his most hated thing in the universe after Clark Kent, presumably because he kept coming in second to a door during sports competitions in college.
We learn in this issue that Clark owns a Captain Action action figure, that superhero whose entire purpose was getting dressed up as other, cooler superheroes like Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman himself. Between Marvel’s characters being off-limits and DC’s not existing yet, this toy must have been pretty lame in this universe. I bet young Clark had to dress him up as, like, Walter Cronkite. Maybe that’s how he got into journalism!
While talking about how well did at sports in school, Clark makes sure to mention that his powers hadn’t developed yet, so it was all fair. Don Sparrow ain’t buying it: “The timeline is a bit hazy on the development of Clark’s powers, though I suppose these little inconsistencies could be attributed to the Zero Hour reset of time? In the first issue of Byrne’s Man of Steel miniseries, a clearly school-aged Clark is shown casually lifting a truck and surviving a trampling by a bull (which, if average, would weigh 2400 lbs). Later as he’s either 15 or 16, in Adventures #474, Clark survives a collision with a semi-truck, and says he “didn’t even feel it”. All this to say: other than a timeline reset, I don’t fully buy that the ability to lift trucks and withstand head on car crashes didn’t give Clark an advantage on the gridiron, despite his assertion to the contrary.”
As Cat Grant presents Clark’s award, she mentions that the Zenith is “affectionately referred to” as the Baldy. Uh, affectionately… towards who? The bald guy who funded the awards and who recently tried to destroy the city? The cute “Baldies” name made more sense when everyone thought Lex was a harmless philanthropist. I think they should rename them to honor Metropolis’ only ethical rich guy and true benefactor: The Bibbos.
SIX-FIFTY: Lois and Clark take a cab to the Baldy Awards, and the ride is $7.50, up from $7.00 around the time of the last awards, and of course $6.50 for a long time. Maybe Luthor was the one actually keeping the city’s economy together.
In Man of Steel #0, we met Clark’s neighbor who also works as a door lady in their building, but this issue shows a different doorman (who has appeared before, but I don’t think we’ve ever gotten a name). Will each of the #0 issues feature a different door person, like the four Supermen in “Reign”? Hopefully one of them is Frank, Clark’s Pre-Crisis doorman, who our pal Patrick Ryall has written about in his list of 28 Black Superman Characters.
That last shot with the cables creepily covering Kenny’s face always reminded me of that scene in Superman III. You know the one. And now that I’ve seen that clip again, I have to go hide under my parents’ bed.
Shout Outs-Watch:
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And ten Bibbos for Don Sparrow, who sent me his section almost two weeks ago, only for me to get bogged down by other stuff. Here it is:
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We open with the cover, and it’s a genuine classic of minimalism, with a silhouetted Superman against lightning. While I think Superman’s eyes glowing red is an over-used trope (is he using his heat vision, or what?) to show intimidation, it works well here, as does the semi-transparent cloud of fog or dust at bottom right. Great, great stuff.
The story opens with a similarly silhouetted figure silently zipping his way through an authorized area. The return of Brett Breeding is unmistakable. No slight to Joe Rubinstein, but there’s a slicker, more polished feel to Breeding’s lines over Jurgens’ layouts that is very pleasing—and well suited for a high-tech character like Conduit.
Lois and Clark moving Clark back into his 344 Clinton Street apartment has a cute intimacy about it, as they both wear athletic outfits as they unpack.
For the most part, Jurgens does well at drawing the high school versions of Clark and Kenny as looking like actual kids, though there’s a few moments where Clark looks more adult than he should (a funny colouring error makes one of their fellow athletes look really old!). The image of Kenny soaking in his father’s disinterest is a good one, the cool lighting on his face adding to the emotionally blue feeling of the moment. Another good moment: Lana’s eye bulge of panic as Kenny asks her to the prom, which she disingenuously turns down.
As the story continues, Lois’ belly-baring dress seems a little more like a gown she’d mock Cat Grant for wearing once upon a time, but she does look great. It’s interesting how frumpy the mid-1990s tailoring makes all the men look—the wide legs and loose vests make the usually svelte Clark, Jimmy and Ron look like they have a similar midsection to the more portly Perry White.
As the super-books adjust to more detailed colouring now that we’re firmly in the Image Comics era, there are some growing pains, it appears, as what I assume is supposed to be highlighting on Cat Grant as she presents an award looks more like she’s been spray painted white in places. The effect works a little better a couple of panels later as Lois congratulates Clark with a moving kiss. The awards in general are strangely laid out, as there doesn’t appear to be seating, just people standing in clumps, but I suppose that’s easier to draw. I’m also not used to Clark’s new eyeglasses, and can’t tell if they’re supposed to be tortoiseshell pattern, or if they are indeed made of a cork-like wood, as they appear to be in certain panels. It’s an interesting note that the glasses are visibly different once he grabs some from his rooftop stash, after the rest of his Clark garb was incinerated.
Finally, at the end of the story, we get the reveal that Kenny Braverman, the only character mentioned prominently these past few issues, was the one behind the attacks. As a mystery, it’s a pretty A-to-B one, but I do like how painful Conduits cables look.
SPEEDING BULLETS:
I gotta say, Conduit’s assertion that there’s NO evidence of murder, or trace of his presence—I feel like scorching a man alive would leave smoke, if not an acrid odour. But who knows, maybe he has a shopvac in those cables?
While it’s become ubiquitous in the culture, Clark’s reference to not needing a “steenking” hammer is a commonly mistaken reference to a real line of dialogue from the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Similar to Casablanca’s “play it again, Sam” or even Star Trek’s “Beam me up, Scotty”, the line as remembered is never spoken in the film. The line Clark misquotes, (as misquoted in movies like Blazing Saddles, or UHF) is “Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges!”. But the actual original line from the film is in fact “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges.” So there you have it, another example of the Mandela effect!
Issues like Adventures #474 showed that high school Clark didn’t have the same near-perfect morality we expect from adult Superman, and I gotta say, accepting Lana’s invitation to prom, knowing she lied to Kenny seems like one of those lapses.
So, Clark couldn’t like, use his arctic breath to cool down the mercenaries boiling brains? [Max: He also wanted to see that cool Jurgens/Breeding art of himself rushing the goons through the city.]
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