Superman #47 (September 1990)
Superman #47 (September 1990)
Soul Search, Part 2! Superman is still in Hell, and he runs into a guy he sent there a while ago: Skyhook, the hideous flying child abductor. By the way, there was some confusion about my phrasing the last time Skyhook showed up: Is he a child abductor who is hideous and can fly, or an abductor of hideous flying children? Both, actually, since his power is giving gross-looking wings to the kids he steals away. Hope that clears things up.
Anyway, Superman is trying to save the souls of Jimmy Olsen and Jerry White from Blaze, a demonic entity/Metropolis nightclub owner. Blaze throws a bunch of demons at him, including our deceased pal Skyhook.
“I thought that was another satanic lady called Blaze.”
Skyhook turns Superman into a winged demon by re-opening a wound he’d made the last time they fought. Superman, however, de-demonizes himself through sheer force of will and rescues Jimmy (who takes this opportunity to admit he’s “been a butthead” towards Supes lately). However, Jerry is already too far gone and Blaze completely takes over his body for a last fight with Superman…
Character-Watch:
The last time we saw Skyhook was in Superman #34, when we found out that he was originally a doctor who accidentally made a deal with a satanic entity and turned into a monster. That entity was Blaze… which explains why she chose the desecrated church Hooky has been using since his first appearance (Superman #15) to open her club. It all comes together!
Plotline-Watch:
While Superman fights Blaze in “Hell,” Gangbuster does the same thing in the mortal plane. He finds the drug dealers who shot Jerry and Jimmy, who turn out to be working for Intergang (of course). The dealers try to set fire to Blaze’s as revenge for getting scammed, only to find themselves mystically trapped inside the club too. Gangbuster shows up and saves the clubgoers from the fire… but not before dealing Jerry’s shooters some Gangbuster-style justice (they both die).
The Black Racer, the ski-riding incarnation of death who is also the cousin of Jerry White’s ex girlfriend Tammy, appears again, and this time the Jerry connection is acknowledged: it’s while Gangbuster is visiting Tammy that the Black Racer shows up and helps him find the drug dealers. Family is more important than the cosmic balance, apparently.
Meanwhile, the always opportune Lex Luthor picks this sensitive time to let Perry White know that he’s Jerry’s father – Luthor even did a DNA test back when he was financing/running experiments on Jerry’s street gang and confirmed that he’s the real daddy. Perry always suspected that but didn’t know for sure until now. However, Perry says he still considers Jerry his son and deals Luthor a punch in the gut (one in the nuts would have been more appropriate).
Excuse-Watch:
At this point, I was supposed to cover the World’s Finest Superman/Batman miniseries by Dave Gibbons and Steve Rude but, uh, the copy I ordered online hasn’t arrived yet. Hopefully it gets here by the time we reach the end of the miniseries so I can cover all of it at once. Otherwise, in order to preserve the sanctity of the strictly chronological order of this blog, we’ll have to wait until we reach 1992 (the point when the tradepaperback collection was published).