Superman 1992 Annuals
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Superman 1992 Annuals
Some guy named Eclipso is going around possessing DC superheroes and putting moon tattoos on their faces! It's pretty rude. As mentioned in our entry for JLA Annual #6, all of DC's annuals for 1992 were part of the Eclipso: The Darkness Within crossover, in which the titular villain takes over the bodies of various heroes as part of a plan to… I forgot. Destroy the Earth? Conquer the universe? Something along those lines.
We start in Man of Steel Annual #1, where Eclipso tries to corrupt Superman but immediately fails, since Supes is just too dang good. He does, however, successfully take over the bodies of Superman's pals The 1980’s Starman and Dr. Kitty "Rampage" Faulkner, both at the same time. And then the two fight, even though they're technically the same guy, because comics.
Superman returns Rampage to her old self by exposing her to sunlight (Eclipso's kryptonite), but Eclipstarman escapes. Next, in Superman Annual #4, Lois Lane is investigating weird happenings in a town where the entire population is secretly Eclipso. When Superman finds out he tries to bring Lois home, but she's like "Don't tell me what to do, you paternalistic pig!" – that anger allows Eclipso to take Lois over, and a disturbing scene of domestic abuse ensues.
Once again, sunlight saves the day (ugh) and Lois goes back to normal. In Action Comics Annual #4, Superman makes a deal with Eclipso: he'll trade himself for all the other possessed people in that town. Eclipso accepts, then obviously doesn't keep his end of the bargain once he's got Superman's body, because he's evil and all. Now the Justice League must free the captured town while Captain Marvel keeps Superclipso busy with some stimulating philosophical debate (just kidding, they punch each other for 20 pages).
Then, in Adventures of Superman Annual #4, an impressive collection of 20 B-list superheroes (and Lobo) go confront Superclipso in the volcano where he's holed up. The heroes successfully smoke him out by causing a volcanic eruption… but then they have to spend like half the issue evacuating the locals before the lava melts their faces (should have probably done that first). In the end, it's Guy Gardner of all people who de-Eclipsifies Superman by traveling to the sun, grabbing a scoop of solar matter, and dropping it on his face.
The story concludes in Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2, in which Eclipso tricks the heroes to go fight him in the moon (where he's most powerful) and takes over all of them. They're eventually saved by a group made out of Professor Hamilton, Lex Luthor Jr., Doc Magnus and every other nerd in the DC Universe, armed with solar guns of their own invention. Finally, Starman (who has spent the entire crossover as Eclipso's bitch) blows himself up to take Eclipso out for good. RIP, Starman. THE END.
Plotline-Watch:
Or not really the end, since this crossover had two spin-off series: Eclipso for Eclipso and Valor for Lar Gand, even though that guy didn't actually do much in this story (he mostly just stood still with a moon on his face). I think a better spin-off would have been Nerd Squad, starring Professor Hamilton and the other solar weapon-armed geeks. I liked the continued interaction between Hamilton and Lex Jr., who have been "pals" since the latter bailed the former out of jail a year ago (he's still trying to get Ham to come back to LexCorp so he can screw him over again).
Eclipso needs to make people angry to take them over, and in Rampage's case he accomplishes that by impersonating Dr. Thomas Moyers, the ape-abusing jerkass who caused the accident that turned her orange. I think that's a cool use of continuity, considering these annuals aren't even written by the regular Super-writers.
The B-listers featured in the Adventures annual (my favorite of the bunch, in great part because it's drawn by Bob McLeod) are Nightwing and Baby Wildebeest of the New Titans, Aquaman, The 1990s Hawkman, assorted members of both Justice Leagues, and all of L.E.G.I.O.N. ‘92. The real star is Guy Gardner, though: at one point he quits the team (he does that a lot), but he makes a surprise return at the end and defeats Superclipso while reciting the Green Lantern oath, even though he's not one anymore.
(Everyone loves that I've started devoting large sections of this blog to Guy Gardner, right? I'm gonna rename it GuyGardner92toFOREVER.)