Superman #2 (February 1987)
Superman #2 (February 1987)
The cover image above just told you the entire plot of this issue, but let me repeat it for you anyway. After noticing that most articles about Superman are written by Clark Kent (in Action #584), Lex Luthor launches a whole investigation to find out what the connection could possibly be between these two tall, muscular, black-haired men with the same facial features. At the same time, the room full of mini-skirted female scientists he hired to comb over footage of all of Superman's public appearances has noticed a recurring face in the crowds: Lana Lang's. Because, as established in The Man of Steel #6, she was obsessed with Clark/Superman at the time, to the point of stalking him.
Lex's goons shoot Ma and Pa Kent with tranquilizers and ransack their farm looking for anything connecting Clark to Superman. They find the scrapbook where Ma has been keeping track of Superman's deeds since before he even debuted as Superman (as seen in The Man of Steel #1), among other things – but while they're leaving the place with all that stuff, a neighbor sees them and they're forced to knock her out and bring her to LexCorp. Lex is livid… until he realizes that the neighbor is the mysterious super-groupie, Lana.
While they have Lana tied up and blindfolded at LexCorp, Luthor's head scientist, Dr. Gretchen Kelley, determines that she's somehow allergic to "drugs" as a whole, meaning that they can't inject her with truth serum. Instead, Lex's strategy for finding out what she knows about the puzzling Clark Kent/Superman connection is to torture her for a couple of days, dump her in a warehouse, and let her limp over to Clark's apartment.
As Lex predicted, shortly after Lana is released, Superman flies over to that warehouse, believing the Kents must also be somewhere in there. Instead, he finds the goons who broke into the Kent farm (I guess Lex told them that's where they had to collect the "special bonus" he promised them). Superman demands that they tell him what they've done with the Kents, but before they can form a coherent answer, the entire place blows up. Enjoy your bonus, guys!
An even more pissed off Superman flies straight to Lex's office, knowing he must be behind all this evil crap. As soon as he gets within punching distance of Lex's smug face, though, Superman starts feeling weak – courtesy of the glowing green rock Lex is now wearing on his finger, which is just a small chunk of the kryptonite he acquired by abducting Metallo at the end of last issue.
Unable to touch Lex (physically or legally), the distraught Superman simply flies Lana back to Smallville and solemnly steps into the Kent home, lamenting the death of the two most important people in his life. It's a heartfelt moment that never fails to crack me up, because why would they be dead? Lana never saw them at the warehouse; she just sorta assumed they'd be there. I love her "whoops, I made you think your parents blew up" face when Ma and Pa casually step out of the kitchen in the middle of Superman's dramatic speech.
Anyway, it's now time for Lex's team to collate all the info they've gathered on Clark and Superman during the issue and determine how they're connected. It literally takes a computer the size of a house and a genius informatics engineer to process this information and conclude that… CLARK KENT IS SUPERMAN.
Luthor’s reaction? He says “Nope, I refuse to accept that” and fires the engineer.
The end. It’s… it’s kind of awesome.
Character-Watch:
We meet Luthor’s favorite cronies for the first time: Dr. Sydney Happersen (who’s like the Smithers to Luthor’s Mr. Burns), and a grey-haired lady named Dr. Gretchen Kelley (who is also like Smithers, in that she and Luthor were lovers… but we’ll find that out later). The informatics genius who figured out Superman’s identity, Amanda McCoy, gets fired in this issue but will show up much later and cause some trouble.
Plotline-Watch:
Luthor’s Kryptonite: As mentioned, after abducting Metallo in Superman #1, in this issue Luthor tears out the kryptonite in his chest and makes himself a fancy radioactive ring to keep Superman away. Dr. Happersen tells Luthor he shouldn’t come near the kryptonite without a protective suit, and Luthor is like “Meh, what’s the worst that could happen?” Um, cancer. You’ll die of cancer in 50 issues, Lex. (Kind of.)
That stolen scrapbook will also play a role in future storylines, and eventually cause Superman and Batman to not hate each other anymore.
WTF-Watch:
Maybe it’s just me, but I could with less beating/torturing/threatening to assault women in Superman comics. Lana is tortured for two days and Lex gets all rapey with Amanda McCoy before tossing her away. From now on, I’ll just pretend those panels show the Legion of Super-Pets instead.
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We start with the cover, and it's an absolute classic. I'm old enough to remember when the needlepoint style graphics on Lex's screen were state of the art in terms of computer drawing, and the green and black look was definitely era-accurate. It's also a classic, silver-age style "huh?" cover that begs that you open the issue. As with all the Byrne issues, he's just such a great draughtsman that it's tempting to feature every darn panel in the book. So here, I'll limit myself to only the very best. In these early pages, we get a glimpse of how high-tech Lex's operation is, and his creepy, Robert Palmer-style insistence that his staff be mainly women. This gets quietly dropped as years go by, but in Byrne's Lexcorp, it's as much a fixture as Lex's black suits.
Byrne's Metallo continues to look realistic and terrifying, in a Terminator sort of way. The very subtle blue tinges of colour hint at a chrome colour, without losing any surface detail. I've long held the opinion that Byrne is consciously or unconsciously channeling Albert Finney in his characterization of Luthor (both in appearance and in demeanour--I can certainly hear a lot of Lex's lines in this issue being shouted like Daddy Warbucks in Annie) and that's never clearer than the panel where Lex is jubilantly holding the chunk of Kryptonite in his hand.
As the setting changes to fit in the astonishing amount of story there is in this issue, I have to commend Byrne for the detail of the Kent kitchen, which quietly looks like every farmhouse I've ever been in.
The PANEL OF THE WEEK can only be Superman flying upside-down over Metropolis, as his inner monologue assures us he's back to full power after his showdown with Metallo a month earlier. As always, Byrne's Superman in flight is a joyful image, made all the more astonishing by the bird's eye view of Metropolis. Rather than the cardboard box buildings of the silver age, every building is different and accurate to the skyscrapers of a major city. Awesome.
In a rare misstep by Byrne, the perfectly spherical balloons defy the physics of a flexible material being pulled down by a string, but that's overshadowed by the great staging of the flying eye chase.
As he tenderly cares for Lana's injury, the sorrow in Clark's face is extremely well observed. Superman's face, crumpled in anguish is an affecting image, and the shattering door frame certainly adds to the sense of urgency.
In places either Byrne or his inker fall a little too in love with texture tone cutouts, though it works great on Lana's era-appropriate acid-washed jean skirt as he flies her back to Smallville.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
I'm sure this wasn't intended all the way back then, but Lana's constantly bewildered look in all her surveillance images tracks with the upcoming Millennium storyline, where she may not always be moving consciously through her life. [Max: Ha! This is now canon in my head.]
The telegraphing of the dangers of Kryptonite couldn't be more prominent unless it had a glowing light reading "foreshadowing" during Happersen's update on the Metallo project.
Godwatch: Confirmation of Lex's atheism, as he plainly states he doesn't self-identify as a religious man.
I know the timeline isn't right (this issue came out long before the first Simpsons episode aired) but I can't hear anyone say "hello, what's this" without thinking of Homer saying it in "Brush with Greatness".
The Flying Eye worked pretty well, even if Superman detected it. Weird--and lucky--that Lex completely abandoned it.
If Lex really had murdered the Kents, would Kryptonite have really kept him away? How did the rest of that scene play out? Superman just left?
Interesting that Lex tosses out the idea of Clark and Superman being brothers as he questions Amanda about Clark Kent. That same notion comes into play in future issues, so it makes me wonder, reading it now, if Byrne already had that story in mind.
I love that Lex's computer spits out answers, not unlike the Batcave computer in the 1966 Batman series.
As Max mentioned in his review, this is some really dark stuff from Lex. While I think that Byrne sometimes writes Lex as more short-sighted and bullish than I imagine the character should be, he is certainly an utter villain in these pages--physically coercing a subordinate into dating him (which is implied to have been the overnight kind of date) and then berating her and firing her for--checks notes--reading a computer screen aloud. To say nothing of torturing sweet and kind Lana Lang for days at a time.
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