Superman #79 (July 1993)
Superman #79 (July 1993)
REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN! After the Last Son of Krypton’s team up with Guy Gardner and the Man of Steel’s team up with Superboy, now it’s the Man of Tomorrow’s turn to team up with… Bill Clinton. The story is actually told by Daily Planet columnist Ron Troupe, who was deeply moved by the apparent death of his colleague and role model, Clark Kent – so moved, in fact, that he asks Perry White for Clark’s job while they’re helping Clark’s family pack up his stuff. Classy.
Perry reminds Ron that Clark got that job in the first place by bringing him one heck of a scoop (Clark’s exclusive interview with Superman, which must have been incredibly hard to get), so if Ron wants to replace him, he’ll have to bring something just as good. Fortunately for Ron, there are currently FOUR Supermen going around, so his chances of scoring an interview with one are considerably higher.
Ron decides to cover the mysterious (okay, they’re all mysterious, but this one’s extra mysterious) would-be Superman who appears to be half man, half Terminator. Since the Cyborg Superman’s phone number and email address aren’t public, Ron tries to contact him through Maxwell Lord, the sleazy businessman who runs the Justice League. Lord happens to be on his way to visit President Clinton for some unexplained reason (I bet it involves high-end hookers), so Ron just waits outside the White House to ambush Lord when he gets there.
Unfortunately, some Quraci terrorists had the same idea. While Ron is pestering Lord outside the White House, the terrorists use Lord’s limo to crash through the gates. The terrorists are shooting up the place when… It’s a bird! It's a plane! It’s half of Superman! As the Man of Tomorrow shoots at the terrorists with his laser eye, the White House’s hi-tech security system decides to start working and shoots at him. The terrorists are dispatched pretty quickly, but now the problem is that the White House’s lasers won’t stop blasting the guy who just saved the President.
In an incredibly selfless act, Ron ignores all the extra copies the Daily Planet would sell if Superman died AGAIN and dodges the lasers to bring our hero a convenient DNA-testing gizmo. The gizmo verifies that the Cyborg IS Superman and the security system stops shooting at him (without so much as a “whoops, sorry”).
Perhaps feeling useless since a random reporter just saved the day, the Cyborg Superman connects to the White House’s computers, and from there to everyone else’s computers (thanks, NSA!). By snooping on the terrorists’ credit card purchases, Cyborgman realizes that Maxwell Lord’s briefcase has been replaced with an explosive one and prevents it from detonating.
Bill Clinton then crawls out from wherever he was hiding (probably not under his desk; not much space down there) to thank the Cyborg for his services and endorse him as the real Superman. They even take a photo together like the best of buds. It's unclear what the Cyborg Superman and Clinton did later, but once again, I'm assuming it involved high-end hookers.
Ron delivers his sentimental report on the events at the last minute, and Perry is very impressed. I bet he was like “Wait a minute, a super-cyborg saved the President from terrorists yesterday and I’m only now hearing about it?! Everyone else is fired!”
Plotline-Watch:
Fun fact: At the time, being endorsed by Bill Clinton was supposed to come off as way better than being endorsed by Guy Gardner.
Don Sparrow tells me: "The best page in the book is the collage of images of all the stuff that Cyborg Superman accessed through the computer network, because, to the observant re-reader, it gives away EVERYTHING! Satellites, a Green Lantern logo, a seemingly innocuous ship in orbit, a space plane, and, if you look really closely at the right side of the page, what looks to me very much like a Fantastic Four logo. Spooky!" What's the big deal? Like you didn't look up superheroes and sci-fi ships too the first time you went online, Don. (Also holy crap, I'd never noticed the FF logo. That's awesome.)
Besides Ron and Perry, the people packing up Clark's stuff are Ma Kent, Pa Kent, Lana Lang, Pete Ross, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen – who seems bizarrely cheerful given the nature of the situation. Maybe he's stoked that he's getting a good deal on Clark's stereo system. There's also a cameo for Clark's Baldy Award. Hopefully whoever buys it on Craigslist puts it good use.
Another Don Sparrow observation (Donservation™): "So, wait -- that Quraci terrorist isn't "Ugly" Bruno Mannheim? Because he looks a LOT like Mannheim. And a little like Charles Bronson." Mannheim is dead, Don, and dead means dead in this universe. Maybe it's his cousin?
Since the two are now best buds, the Cyborg Superman gives Clinton a special communicator that he grows out of his own robotic body. The idea is that Clinton can use it to call the Cyborg if there's trouble, like Jimmy's signal watch. Just don't eat the thing, Bill, or that could get awkward.
And now I'll shut up and just let Don continue with everything else I missed. After the cut:
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We start with a doozie of a cover, and it's one of the most enduring images of Cyborg Superman. And it works on a few levels. On the one hand, it's a heroic, stirring riff on so many Superman with the American flag covers we've seen before. But there's an unpleasant, subtle edge to it, that comes to the surface on re-readings. Why is the flag in tatters? Why does Superman's hand look like it's just fired--or burned--something? To say nothing of Superman's unquestionably frightening robotic skeleton face. While some people would say covers with blank backgrounds are a cheat, or lazy, the ones Jurgens has produced in this run are all spectacular, and would make great posters, like this one.
Inside is a slightly different story--I have always found prose comics a little gimmicky (even when they're written by the best writers in comics), particularly when the conceit is that it's a newspaper article. Like issues that tried this in the past, I find the articles are so atypical of real journalistic writing that it takes me out of the story (but at least in the Christmas story, it was more of an editorial by Perry, so the decidedly non-newsy writer was a little more understandable). So while I have misgivings about this concept, and the narrative execution, the art that accompanies the prose is pretty great. Pages 2 and 3 give us a nice, varied collage of heroes of sport and politics, as well as the heaviness of packing up the belongings of a lost loved one.
The artwork is sold throughout, and the larger main panels on most page really lets Jurgens breathe a little, and he find interesting ways of breaking up the story (like TV monitors acting as panels, etc). His consistency with his depictions of the 4 new Superman makes them feel like they've been here for years, instead of being only a month or two old.
The image of Superman's cybernetic arm opening up and reconfiguring itself is both cool to look at, and scary at the same time, which I suspect is the idea.
So for all my resentment of Ron Troupe in general, and his attempt to usurp not only Jimmy, but now Clark, I see why Jurgens used him for this issue. As stated, I don't particularly like prose comics, but there are very good reasons why this article couldn't be written by Jimmy or Lois, so like Jar Jar Binks in the Star Wars saga, I may not like him, but I see why he's in it. (Yes, comparing Ron to Jar Jar is the cruelest thing I've ever said on the blog). [Max: Don has been banned from this blog.]
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
Kudos to Dan Jurgens for correctly, if inadvertently predicting the look of mobile phone text messaging in his on-screen narrative!
I know I seem like I have it in for Ron Troupe (mainly because I actually DO) but it isn't good writing to assume, as he does on page 3, that Clark Kent is confirmed dead. By saying he died covering Doomsday's rampage, he is giving his readers false information--how did he come by this information? How did he know Clark was covering Doomsday at all? We haven't seen Lois give that explanation. I wonder if it's a subtle hint, to us readers, that he isn't that great of a writer or fact-checker?
More Ron hate: dude, you're cleaning out the man's apartment with the people who loved him most--you couldn't wait like an hour to ask about the dead man's job? And worse still, you're wearing the most obnoxious shirt anyone has ever seen.
"The obsequious Oberon." Can you imagine sitting and reading this in a newspaper? I'd crumple it up right there and then.
It's interesting to me that Max Lord plays a role in the story, given his own history of manufacturing crises in order to further his own deceptive goals.
This is the second time Jurgens has implied that Cyborg Superman can do something or withstand something that even the original Superman couldn't have (when he stands up to the White House's defenses) and it kinda sounds like malarkey to me, intended to beef this character up. In coming years, the writers will use similar tricks, invoking Doomsday a lot to bolster lame-o characters, eg, "I haven't been hit that hard since Doomsday".
"I sprinted like a madman." Honestly, newspapers would shut down over writing like this.
Superman plugging into the White House computer network would be a scary idea even if he didn't look like a monster. But he DOES, which even the unobservant Ron Troupe gets weirded out by.
The role of President Clinton in this story has always stuck with me, and it's such a nervy thing to do, as a writer. I remember, back when I first read this back as a teenager, this part depressed me so much, because it meant, as Ron Troupe was insisting, that this really was the real Superman, because they'd never have a sitting President in a story with a fake Superman. So while I had been cheering for the Last Son of Krypton to be the real Superman, I then began to hope that there was some way to heal the flesh of the Cyborg, since he was so clearly the real one. I don't know where Jurgens political beliefs lie (though I have some guesses) but given the popularity of Clinton at the time, and what a role he played in the funeral storyline, what comes makes this issue really bold and interesting.
Ron Troupe wore that JAM shirt to the White House, by the way. The White House. [Max: He just really likes jam, Don.]
At least Perry didn't say that Ron's prose was good, he just wanted to run with a Presidential assassination attempt story.
Lastly, I know it's exciting to be in the White House and all, but I would have thought Ron would have a little more decorum in this solemn moment.
