Superman #27 (January 1989)
Superman #27 (January 1989)
Guardian vs. Gangbuster! Fun fact: At first sight this looks like the rare Superman cover that doesn’t feature Superman in it, but if you pay attention, he’s actually in there twice.
Last time we saw Superman, he’d gone off to appear in Invasion! #2, where he and the other superheroes kicked out the Alien Alliance currently trying to conquer Earth. After Superman is done with the whole invasion business, he finally heads back to the Daily Planet, where Clark Kent still has a job despite not having shown up for days. Perry White and Lois Lane are worried about Clark’s mental health, so Perry sends him home early. Clark arrives at his apartment (still a mess after the nightmare he had in Adventures #446), and falls asleep watching a news story about LexCorp…
Cut to Gangbuster literally crashing a LexCorp business meeting, locking Lex Luthor in a room and threatening to beat the crap out of him. That’s when Luthor’s new buddy Brainiac (living in Lex’s office since Superman #25) tries to stop Gangbuster with a mental attack, but looking into Gangbuster’s disturbed mind makes him go catatonic – say, when have we seen Brainy do that before? Anyway, Gangbuster is about to kill Luthor, but for some reason he can’t bring himself to do it and jumps out the window instead.
Gangbuster escapes from the cops for a while until he runs into Metropolis’ only superhero without mental issues, the Guardian, who’s eager for a rematch after their last encounter. During the course of their fight, Gangbuster survives a seven-story fall without a scratch. Guardian takes a swing at Gangbuster with his shield and rips off the logo from his chest, and they’re both shocked to see that under that logo is… TO BE CONTINUED!
Plotline-Watch:
Superman thinks the alien invasion is over by now, but clearly he’s wrong, since there’s another issue of the Invasion! crossover left. In fact, the invaders still have a big ace up their sleeve that will change the DC Universe forever (for a while).
WTF-Watch:
I like that, after Gangbuster leaves Luthor’s office, the first thing the evil, fearless Lex Luthor does is hurriedly hide Brainiac’s catatonic body in a closet like he’s a stash of nudie magazines, so that his own security people won’t see it:
He actually forgot about Brainiac for 30 issues and when he checked back, he was all soggy and full of mold.
Plug-Watch:
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