Superman #8 (August 1987)
Superman #8 (August 1987)
Superman is resting in Smallville after his fight with Rampage when some troublesome time-traveling teenagers called the Legion of Super-Heroes show up, claiming they knew him back when he was Superboy. Problem is, Superman never called himself Superboy when he was a kid, because that’s ridiculous. After a brief fight, Superman manages to convince the others that there’s no Superboy. Then Superboy shows up and freezes everyone with a stasis ray. What the Byrne is going on?
Character-Watch:
One of the Legionnaires in this issue calls himself Brainiac 5 after Brainiac, a Superman villain that Superman hasn’t met yet. That’s a little like making your superhero name Hitler Jr. Incidentally, the cover up there is John Byrne’s homage to John Byrne’s cover for Fantastic Four #249, with each Legionnaire representing a member of the FF: Brainy is Mr. Fantastic because he’s clever, Blok is The Thing because he’s made of rock, Sun Boy is the Human Torch because he throws fire, and Invisible Kid is Invisible Woman because he has boobs.
Plotline-Watch:
This is continued from an issue of Legion of Super-Heroes where
the Legion visits their old pal Superboy in an idyllic alternate version of Smallville, but Superboy turns on them. A group of Legionnaires escapes and they end up in this comic. The whole crossover was created to fix a continuity error: the Legion had Superboy as a member for decades, but all those silly elements from the old Superman comics liked the caped dogs, caped monkeys and caped babies were deleted with the reboot. Superman actually got his powers as an adult, so who the hell is that kid the Legion has been hanging out with? We’ll find out in the next issue of Action Comics (“Superman vs. Superboy!”).
More continuity wankery: Superman says the only Superboy he knew was that crazy kid from Earth Prime he met during Crisis on Infinite Earths, who will actually come back as a major villain twenty years later and kill some Teen Titans. Also, the fight with the Legion starts because Superman’s heat vision malfunctions and he accidentally shoots at them – we’ll find out why that happened a couple of issues later. And finally, I think I’m literally the first person on the Internet to point out that the place where the fight takes place, Smallville’s old Simonson Limestone Quarry, will be used again in a future issue under creepy circumstances. I deserve some sort of nerd medal for that.
WTF-Watch:
I feel like I need to mention that this issue starts with a full page shot of a shirtless, hairy Clark Kent ripping a tree from the ground while Lana Lang stares at his pecs. For some reason what cracks me up the most about that shot is that Clark’s belt buckle says “CK.”
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