Superman #15 (March 1988)
Superman #15 (March 1988)
A Maggie Sawyer spotlight issue! Yesss.
After Captain Maggie’s little daughter Jamie has been missing for five issues (she disappeared on Superman #10), Maggie finally gets around to asking Superman for help in finding her. Superman is a little busy trying to locate a gang of tiny winged thieves, but both problems turn out to be connected: Jamie has been taken in by a gross being called Skyhook who lives in an abandoned church and mutates kids to give them wings, then persuades them to steal shit for him. He’s like a satanic version of Fagin from Oliver Twist.
Superman rescues Jamie just as Skyhook has put her inside a cocoon to mutate her, and then Maggie pumps some lead into the fucker as he’s trying to escape and his body falls into the river. Jamie is returned to her dad safe and sound, but the end-of-the-issue-twist is that there’s something weird growing in her arm. Uh-oh.
Character-Watch:
Maggie tells Superman her whole life story when she asks him to find her daughter: before realizing she was gay, Maggie married a fellow cop in Star City but obviously things didn’t work out. When they split, the husband was granted full custody on account of Maggie digging chicks and… no, that’s the whole reason. Superman actually thinks about how similar Maggie’s unfair parental situation is to Cat Grant’s (explained in Adventures #429), then presumably got distracted wondering what if Cat likes making out with other ladies too and flew into a building.
This is the first appearance of Jamie and Skyhook, who will both return in a later issue to deal with that loose end in Jamie’s arm and explain where Skyhook came from (and what’s up with that desecrated church, which leads to another storyline). Also appearing for the first time is Jimmy Olsen’s mother – as a running joke, the white-haired Mrs. Olsen only appears from behind, like she’s Dr. Claw or something.
WTF-Watch:
Although Jaime has been missing for five months in real time, it’s mentioned that it’s only been a few days in comic book time, because otherwise Maggie would be a pretty bad parent not to ask Superman for help earlier. However, Maggie is shown to be a in a serious relationship with Toby Raines, the reporter she met briefly six months ago… so, like a week in comic book time? Unless, that is, they only pretended to be complete strangers in that issue because they were in public and Toby isn’t out of the closet yet.
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