Superman #46 (August 1990)
Superman #46 (August 1990)
Superman vs. Terra-Man, the environmentalist supervillain, and his robot cowboys. Also starring Jade and Obsidian, the brother and sister superhero team. Did I mention the robot cowboys? There are robot cowboys.
Lois Lane and Clark Kent are attending a media event by a rich guy who says he figured out how to solve all the problems with the environment: just get every rich person inside a big dome! A new villain called Terra-Man takes offense with this plan and stages a protest, and by protest I mean he has his gang of robot cowboys terrorize the place. Terra-Man also has various hi-tech gizmos and guns, but luckily Superman isn’t the only superhero in attendance: Jade and Obsidian were also at the event because, having fallen on hard times, they’re now working as an expensive projection system, basically.
I like that the only use for Obsidian’s amazing shadow-based powers is “holding up a photograph,” but he still felt the need to be in full superhero getup. Anyway, Jade and Obsidian deal with the robots while Superman has an old fashioned cowboy duel with Terra-Man (there was a western movie set right there, so they couldn’t pass up the opportunity).
(Of course, it’s a “laser gun vs. super breath” duel, so maybe “old fashioned” isn’t the right term.)
In the end the defeated Terra-Man escapes by summoning a tornado, but at least the rich guy’s project is completely ruined, and that’s what’s important here.
Character-Watch:
The classic version of Terra-Man was a cowboy-themed villain with a winged horse. This more interesting version is Tobias Manning, a former industrialist who was responsible for an enviromental catastrophe and saw the error of his greedy ways (he might have gone a little too far in the opposite direction, though). Unfortunately, he’ll only show up a handful of times in this era before getting killed off and turned into a zombie by future writers, which is the ultimate fate of like 80% of DC’s minor villains.
As for Jade and Obsidian, I’m pretty sure they only appear here because Jerry Ordway was their co-creator on the Infinity Inc. series, about a superhero team made out of the children of the original Justice Society of America. In their case, they are the son and daughter of the 1940’s Green Lantern – the implication being that they came out looking like that because their dad’s sperm was mutated by wearing that ring for so many years. They’re going through rough times right now, but I seem to recall Jade had her own reality show at some point in the ‘90s.
Plotline-Watch:
Lois gets a new hairdo!!! Why the exclamation marks? Because it’s the one she’ll have during the entire “Death of Superman” storyline, so you know shit’s gonna get real. Eventually. She also gossips about her hot new stud with her hairdresser, Cyndi.
Jimmy Olsen is now officially in his punk rocker/satanist/potential drug dealer phase, all because he’s hanging out with Jerry White. Lucy Lane tries to talk some sense into Jimmy, but he’s like “leave me alone, square.” Then Jerry asks for a ride in Jimmy’s piece of shit car because he has to deliver yet another one of those mysterious brown bags for his boss. Jimmy doesn’t think there’s anything suspicious there and says sure.
#MORGANSPIRACY update: The media event mentioned above takes place at Monarch Studios, owned by Cat Grant’s ex, media mogul Joe Morgan. One of the attendants is Vinnie Edge, father of Cat Grant’s other ex, media mogul (and incarcerated criminal) Morgan Edge. The two bond over their mutual hatred of Morgan, and then Vinnie offers Clark Kent a TV job for helping bring down his son. Unfortunately, he’d have to change his hairdo and wear contact lenses, so Clark declines.
After the Terra-Man thing, Lois and Clark finally travel to Smallville like they were supposed to in Adventures #468, and then the issue ends with her doing this…
…presumably just to avoid any more silly “she likes Superman better than Clark” subplots in the future. Thank you, Lois.