Superman #22 (October 1988)
Superman #22 (October 1988)
The end of the Supergirl Saga, and John Byrne’s run on Superman, and General Zod’s life, and Superman’s 50-year no-killing streak. All in one fun-filled package! (Actually, it’s kind of depressing.)
Per last issue, Superman is visiting an alternate dimension where literally everyone in the planet except six people (Bruce Wayne, Hal Jordan, Oliver Queen, Pete Ross, Supergirl and non-evil hair-having Lex Luthor) has been murdered by three Kryptonian criminals led by General Zod. On the first pages of this issue the world population drastically falls by over 60% as Bruce, Hal, Oliver and Pete die right away. Lex and Supergirl are left in bad shape, too, so it’s up to Superman to stop the criminals before they… I’m not sure what else they could do at this point, actually. Everyone’s already dead.
Superman tussles with the Kryptonians for a while but they’re stronger than him, so it isn’t going well. Then a dying Lex gives Superman an idea: digging up a secret stash of kryptonite (the same one that once belonged to Superboy and which turned his superdog dumb – it’s a long story) and using it to de-power Zod and company. Superman does just that, but then the criminals boast that they’ll somehow get their powers back and repeat their little planet-killing number on Superman’s reality, which proves to be a huge mistake: Superman feels he has no choice but to kill them, so he unleashes another deadly dose of k-radiation on them.
FUN FACT: This is known as the issue where “Superman kills General Zod,” but it’s actually the General’s brutish pal Quex-Ul who does that, after a frightened Zod claims he’s innocent and that the others tricked him into killing those millions of people. Meanwhile, Zaora makes Superman a hard offer to refuse:
Now Superman will never know Zaora’s secret muffin recipe.
Superman then sheds a single tear (for the muffin recipe) and returns to his reality with the badly damaged Supergirl, whom he drops on the laps of Ma and Pa Kent because he’s got some introspectin’ to do.
Character-Watch:
This issue reveals Supergirl isn’t simply alternate-universe Lana Lang with powers as Good Lex had somewhat unconvincingly claimed, but an artificial being Lex created after the real Lana’s death. By the end of the issue she’s reduced to a mass of purple goo which will slowly grow itself back on Supergirl form (but not before going psycho for a while).
Speaking of Lex (and psychos), he tells Superman he could have used the kryptonite on Zod at any time, but didn’t because of his “pride.” Even when they started killing the entire planet. So it turns out “Good” Lex is an even bigger jerk than “Bad” Lex ever was.
Creator-Watch:
This is the last issue of John Byrne’s Superman run, discounting the two issues of World of Metropolis still left (which he had probably written months earlier on cocktail napkins). A lot of Superman fans don’t seem to like what Byrne did with the character, but hilariously off-putting weirdness aside, I think he did an amazing job. He established credible personalities for the cast, set in motion plots that will fuel stories for years to come and established a streamlined mythology that was way more interesting than the bulky and inconsistent continuity of the pre-Byrne, post-Silver Age years. Perhaps his greatest contribution was striking a balance between character moments and epic stories (like this one), one that future writers and artists will not only continue but improve upon.
(Dude’s still kind of a creep, though.)
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