Superman #26 (December 1988)
Superman #26 (December 1988)
Superman versus a voodoo killer, and also aliens, and also himself! (So, more aliens.)
Since Superman #20, Maggie Sawyer and her team at the MSCU have been investigating some strange deaths that are always accompanied by a small straw doll of the victim hidden nearby. In this issue the culprit turns out to be a hitman/voodoo priest called Baron Sunday, who looks exactly like you’d imagine someone with that name to look. Superman is trying to find Sunday as Clark Kent, when he’s called to Perry White’s office due to an emergency: the comic has been invaded by DC’s 1989 crossover event, Invasion!! The crossover is about pretty much every alien race in the DC Universe (except Kryptonians, for some reason) getting together and deciding that humans suck and should be enslaved.
At first, the government asks Superman to not do anything about the invasion, which makes the unusually short-tempered Clark Kent blow a fuse. Superman’s ban on fighting aliens doesn’t last too long, though, because some evil Hawkpeople from Hawkman’s home planet, Thanagar, show up in Metropolis and start shooting stuff, pissing Superman off even more. It was probably at this point that the Hawkpeople realized “Isn’t… Isn’t that the guy who once singlehandedly punched like 200 of our ships?” (in Action #588). And he wasn’t even angry that time.
Meanwhile, Baron Sunday has managed to create a voodoo doll of Superman using a piece of his cape that he somehow acquired, and chooses this moment to attack him. A combination of Sunday’s magic and a Thanagarian laser make Superman crash into a sewer and disappear, but luckily the Hawkpeople were already in the process of fucking off whilst peeing their pants in terror of Superman. Hours pass and no one can find Superman – not even Brainiac with his mind probes.
In a completely unrelated plot, shortly after Superman disappears the mysterious new Gangbuster shows up again and starts throwing people out of windows until they tell him where Baron Sunday is. Gangbuster survives a direct attack by Sunday and dumps him at a police station, but the attack leaves a lingering “buzz” in his head. Simultaneously, in yet another completely unrelated plot, we see Jimmy Olsen at the top of the Planet building, spamming his Superman-calling signal watch, hoping he’ll finally appear. You know, the watch that makes Superman’s head buzz. Yep, the past few sentences aren’t connected in any way.
Character-Watch:
After all that buildup, Baron Sunday was a huge disappointment. Half a year waiting for him to show up, and he gets punched by Gangbuster and arrested in one issue. I believe he only made one more appearance and then was forgotten forever, deservedly.
On the other hand, The Guardian, the cloned 1940’s hero who now works security at a secret government clone factory, will gain some protagonism in the Superman-less next issues. In this issue he’s drafted by Captain Atom to help the other superheroes against the invaders (Atom was hoping for Superman, but was like “eh, you’ll do”), and in the last page we see The Guardian stalking Gangbuster across Metropolis’ rooftops. I’m not surprised that Roger Stern likes using this guy, since he’s basically Captain America with a different color scheme and Stern used to write the real Cap for Marvel.
WTF-Watch:
Apparently the new Gangbuster has a much stronger spine than the old one.
OK, they’re not even trying to hide his identity by now, are they?
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