Superman 1993 Annuals
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Superman 1993 Annuals
A bunch of aliens who look like bodybuilder xenomorphs come to earth to feast on our delicious spinal fluids. What they don’t know is that, for some reason, some of the people whose spines they suck up gain superpowers instead of dying. That’s the premise of Bloodlines, the crossover running through DC’s 1993 annuals, like Eclipso: The Darkness Within did the year before. Also like Eclipso, most of these are kinda lame. The Superman annuals are probably the most (only?) noteworthy ones because they at least feature the four Supermen from "Reign", so they're technically also part of a far better storyline.
First up is Man of Steel Annual #2, in which Steel’s gym buddy, an 18-year-old named Tom, becomes one of the first victims of the spine-sucking aliens. Tom ends up among a pile of corpses the aliens hide in the sewers. When some Underworlders stumble upon the bodies, they witness Tom waking up transformed into a guy who can shoot shards of glass from every part of his body. After their obligatory fight scene, Steel and Tom team up against one of the aliens, and Tom’s little brother names him “EDGE”. Totally rad name!
Then comes Superman Annual #5, the most interesting of the bunch because it actually features a character we’ve seen before: Sasha Green, the personal trainer Lex Luthor Jr. killed on a whim soon after Superman’s death, because who’s gonna stop him now, Gangbuster? Her body ends up in a landfill, where the trashiest of the spine-sucking aliens feeds on it. Murdered in a locker room, tossed in the trash, molested by an alien, appearing in a Bloodlines annual… is there no end to the indignities they’ll put this poor woman through?
Anyway, Sasha comes back as a being called Myriad who can absorb other people’s identities and control them. Lex is worried she’s gonna rat him out so he tries to re-kill her, but she ends up faking her death in a helicopter crash and escapes, free to get her revenge one day! Yeah, you and Dr. Stratos.
Next, Action Comics Annual #5 follows a disabled, suicidal police detective (a “loose cannon”) who is assigned by Inspector Maggie Sawyer to investigate those piles of dead homeless people that have been turning up everywhere lately. While doing that, he gets lured into an alley by a sexy alien and jumped from behind by her friend. He awakes transformed into a giant blue Fabio who turns purple or red depending on how he’s feeling. Again, he gets into a tussle with one of the Supermen (the Last Son of Krypton, in this case) and again, they eventually join forces to fight the aliens and end up as the best of buds.
Finally, Adventures of Superman Annual #5 is about a teen girl named D.C. and her uncle, a werewolf, who come to Metropolis because she WANTS to get bitten by the aliens so it’ll activate her metahuman gene. Meanwhile, Inspector Maggie asks Superboy (who’s still recovering from a freaking missile blowing up on his face) to look into the whole alien murders thing, because she's a little short on staff. The Kid fails to prevent D.C. from getting attacked, but it’s okay, because she comes back as an electric-powered being called Sparx. Also, unlike the other new characters, she immediately hits it off with her Superman.
Character-Watch:
Something I just realized about Sparx: she can turn into a being made of electricity and was co-created by Karl Kesel, who is also the one who said "Hey, why don't we make it so Superman can turn into a being made of electricity?" some years later. The good thing about creating an obscure character is you can recycle the idea later and no one will notice.
Anyway, Sparx went on to appear in the Bloodlines spin-off series Blood Pack and Kesel’s Superboy and the Ravers, while Loose Cannon had his own solo miniseries. Both had the honor of appearing in crowd scenes during various Crises, even during the present century! Sasha/Myriad had a couple of minor appearances I’ll cover in the future, and… I already forgot about the other guy. Jim-Jam? Barfloom? No one cares about him.
Plotline-Watch:
Fun fact: The “Death and Return of Superman” collections didn’t bother including these annuals until recently, when DC was like “Hmm, what can we add to make people buy this again?” and remembered they existed.
Continuity wise, the most important event in these annuals is when Superboy goes into the Ace O'Clubs and meets not just Bibbo, but Krypto, his future pet. The encounter is short lived, though, because Bibbo takes underage drinking laws very seriously.
Creator-Watch: The Superman annual was penciled by David Lapham, who would later create the indie series Stray Bullets, while the Action one is written by Jeph Loeb, one of the scabs who took away the Super-Squad's jobs in 2000. Boo! Boo!
The Last Son doesn’t just learn about friendship in his annual, he also gets a little romance when the sexy alien (who looks exactly like Maxima) kisses him. Lots more kissing in these annuals than I remembered.
Commissioner Henderson doesn’t trust the Cyborg at the start of the Superman annual, even suggesting he might be responsible for that pile of corpses in the sewers (Cyborg’s like “Kill people? Moi?”). Great police instincts! Or not, since Cyborg earns his trust by the end. No kissing this time, though.
Superboy is worried about Maggie looking at his junk while he changes, and later tries to ask her out. Barking at the wrong tree, kid. (Maggie's girlfriend, Daily Star reporter Toby Raines, plays a big role in that story.)
The most unbelievable part of these annuals is the fact that Steel’s tarot reader pal, who seemed to be full of shit in Man of Steel #22 (she said John Henry had Superman’s ghost living inside him), actually gets something right this time: she senses that something will happen to Steel's friend before he gets attacked by the alien. Maybe the aliens attacked her off-panel too and gave her real psychic powers?