Superman #80 (August 1993)
Superman #80 (August 1993)
REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN! The Cyborg Superman vs. Coast City! With the poor Last Son of Krypton caught in the middle. After tussling with Steel in Man of Steel #24, the Last Son decided to stick around Coast City for a while, rescuing surfer bros and applying sunscreen to old ladies or whatever passes for an emergency around there. Unfortunately, this is when the big-ass spaceship we’ve seen approaching Earth for the past few weeks happens to arrive, and it goes straight for Coast City (maybe the mystery aliens saw those tourism ads in the Newstime special?). The Last Son just watches in bafflement as the spaceship teabags the city with thousands and thousands of metal balls.
Meanwhile, the White House asks Clinton’s buddy, the Cyborg Superman, to go to Coast City and check out this spaceship business. The Cyborg finds the Last Son already there and accuses him of being in cahoots with the aliens.
Ah, this is when they fight for a few pages before straightening up the misunderstanding and joining forces to stop the invasion, right? So predictable. Right on cue, the Cyborg… shoots the Last Son in the head and orders the metal balls to detonate, obliterating the entire city and killing millions of people.
Wait. What?
The ship then drops more metal balls on the giant crater that was Coast City. These are actually robotic “seeds” that expand into machinery and start building some type of massive engine. While that happens, the Cyborg lies to the White House (who can’t see anything with their satellites due to the smoke and ash) and tells them the Last Son was the leader of the aliens, and the city-wide spaceship just sneaked away somehow. In reality, the ship lands in the middle of this new “Engine City” and out of it comes the real leader of the aliens: Mongul! Then Mongul kneels in front of the real real leader: the Cyborg Superman!
Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiit.
Character-Watch:
We last saw Mongul (not counting his obscured figure in recent issues) way back in Adventures #455, at the end of Superman’s Exile in Space, when he ran away from Warworld after being beaten by his former champion, Draaga. In this issue, his identity is teased by… well, the fact that the leader of the aliens is a big, Mongul-shaped guy. But also, by the fact that the invaders use metal balls reminiscent of the one Warworld dropped on Metropolis after “Panic in the Sky”. The guy loves his metal balls.
As for the Cyborg… he mentions that Earth people should have "accepted" him, making him sound like a scorned lover. We'll find out what his deal is soon.
Plotline-Watch:
Don Sparrow says: "This issue is really where the plot gets shifted into high gear, as there's really not much of a "B" storyline. In fashion similar to the Doomsday storyline, it's pretty much wall-to-wall action in this issue, making it feel pretty important."
Don again: "I get chills from the final sleight of hand in this issue, as we go in sequence from seeing the Last Son--reduced to energy form--arriving at the fortress, to the Kryptonian Battle Suit starting to move, with its occupant saying he'll need it to survive. The implication here is that the Last Son has commandeered it, but we'll see whether that's true or not in pages to come." Spoilers: it's actually Gloria Gaynor.
Green Lantern doesn’t appear in this issue (he was probably saving space kittens from space trees), but we do see some members of his supporting cast: Hal Jordan’s ex, Carol Ferris, phones her Ferris Aircraft partner Clay Kendall to let him know she’s ready to go back to work… which conveniently establishes that Carol wasn’t in Coast City when it got nuked. I’m pretty sure Clay and Guy Gardner’s ex girlfriend were the only people who actually died in that explosion.
More spoilers (real ones this time): So, we later find out that the Cyborg's plan was to ruin Superman's name by doing evil deeds while posing as him. In that case, I wonder why he went through the trouble of telling the White House that the Last Son nuked Coast City, when he had them convinced he was the real Superman. Maybe he was buying himself some time? I would have just said "Yes, I, the real Superman, killed all those people! Mwahaha! Bye."
More commentary from the great Don Sparrow in his section after the jump!
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We are officially in the big time! We start with the cover, which is so jarring given the heroic views we've had of the Cyborg Superman to date. But there are so many surprises within the actual issue, the Cyborg Superman attacking The Last Son is just the tip of the iceberg. First off, we get the payoff from the set-up in the pages of the Newstime memorial edition, where we first heard the "Coast City is Booming" tagline. This issue also slyly establishes the alternate look for the Last Son of Krypton. Up to now, he's pretty much been identical in appearance to the Kal-El we know and love, but starting with this cover, he's looking a lot more decrepit, and with much shorter hair than we've seen since the "resurrection". One very minor thing that makes a huge difference to this cover is the colour work, by Glenn Whitmore. By tinting the linework of the explosive background to red, it pushes the foreground characters forward in a pleasing way, and also gives the destruction in the background a searing, hot feeling. Just great.
Once inside the issue, we get a closer look at the enormous spacecraft that we've been teased with since Superman #79, where it innocently appeared in the array of satellite imagery that the Man of Tomorrow was accessing through the White House (along with, interestingly enough, Coast City itself, and the Fantastic Four logo), and it's a great, very space-y Jurgens design.
[Max: I never realized this issue has not one but two double-page splashes, on top of the single page splash at the end, and yet it still feels like so much happens in it.]
Page 5 has another great look at how the Man of Tomorrow can seem to "grow" different technological appendages, as his shoulder creepily opens up so that he can communicate directly with the Clinton Administration.
The scenes of the Man of Tomorrow confronting the Last Son are well done--I really like the way Jurgens and Breeding use so much pure black on the Last Son's costume. The scenes that follow are appropriately painful, as we see just how powerful the Cyborg Superman is, as his point blank blast pierces the last Son's skin, through the back, as on page 9, then even more grotesquely on page 11 when he scorches him directly through the temples.
The attack, followed by the enormous blast, reduces the Last Son to the energy form we last saw him in back in Action #687 (and even before that in Action #667, which we tried to tell you!)
As the ship releases what it calls seeds, there's some more great Jurgens and Breeding tech design, as the spores crash out of the ground like a warped version of a sunstone crystal.
PANEL OF THE WEEK honours go to the image that lets us know in no uncertain terms that the Cyborg is both evil, as he has no issue with Coast City being nuked off the map, but also completely insane, as he is moved by the beauty of the destruction he's wrought. This character's speedy descent into madness will be a major theme in issues to come.
We get one final shock as the confederate of the Man of Tomorrow is revealed to be a smooch-happy Mongul. Not a huge shock there, given his silhouette, though I had wondered if it might be Darkseid, until seeing the gold tinge to his beetlebrow in these pages.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
Some of the funnier commenters have pointed out how harsh we've been to Hal Jordan in these pages, and in this issue, Jurgens doesn't cut him much slack either, with a very pointed line of gratitude from a Coast City citizen, making prominent mention that "Green Lantern isn't around these days, so we'll take whatever protection we can get!" Ouch. Guilt trips like that could suddenly drive a guy crazy!
It's an act of kindness on Dan Jurgens' part that he doesn't leave us in suspense about whether Carol Ferris is in Coast City when the devastation occurs. In spite of everything Hal Jordan loses in this issue, Carol isn't one of the casualties. [Max: And neither was Pieface, nor Hal's brothers, nor any GL villains… seriously, was ANYONE other than poor Clay in Coast City at the time?]
The Cyborg lays it on a little thick, with the White House guy, as his specific concern about a rogue Superman "leading these aliens in an attack on Coast City" seems a little detailed, and perhaps a bit sloppy. Same as the aftermath, where he gets a little pissy with the disappointed White House contact. He's a little vague on the score that he "did everything possible to prevent it". It's a pretty spectacular failure, care to elaborate?
I'm curious how readers who thought the Cyborg was the real deal initially reacted to this reveal. I remember being shocked, but also relieved, as it felt like these books were really giving Cyborg a push as the true Superman. My money had been on the Last Son, though he didn't fare very well here either,though they did at least give us a nugget where he refers to having died before.
I'm a little dubious that the space craft could have withstood seventy-seven thousand atom bombs, but I'll roll with it.
The Cyborg mentions to Mongul they're "behind schedule"--what a slave driver! It seemed to me like the whole thing went off without a hitch!
Funny, I don't really remember them saying Mongul's age, but his dialogue on that last page makes him seem a little younger and more exuberant than I remember.
