Superman #86 (February 1994)
Superman #86 (February 1994)
The most awaited crossover event of 1994: Superman meets the Sun Devils! You know, from that obscure DC comic that ended 10 years earlier! Or Sun Devil, anyway, since there's only one left. We start with Superman stuck in deep space again, only this time it isn't because he killed some villains and got depressed. No, this is Lobo's fault: after fighting zombie robots in space with DC's favorite mass murderer, Superman tried to head back to Earth, only to realize he has no idea where that is. As if being lost in the vastness of the cosmos wasn't bad enough, Superman is also the victim of a hit and run by a big spaceship coming out of hyperspace. Before he can even flip off the pilot, a smaller spaceship shows up and starts shooting lasers at the first one, with Superman stuck in the middle. Superman has had it with all these rude spaceships trying to kill him, so he shoots back.
That spooks away the smaller spaceship, so Superman invites himself into the big one to see if the passengers can help him get back to Earth. Inside, Superman meets a lizard person called Kerrt who claims the other ship was piloted by pirates trying to steal his frail old grandpa's art collection. As Superman admires the fine selection of art pieces from all over the universe, the "space pirates" attack again. Superman flies out to stop those philistines, but the attackers manage to trap him by beaming him into a teleportation booth and leaving him at 95% solid (meaning that if a fly or something goes into the booth, we're gonna see some nasty body horror shit).
The main "pirate" says his name is Rik Sunn, and he has spent decades chasing Kerrt's grandpa, Karvus Khun, who is actually a genocidal maniac (but not a lovable one like Superman's pal Lobo).
After Karvus' forces killed his entire family, Rik formed a group called the Sun Devils to fight the evil reptilian empire, but he's the only original member left by now -- all the others are either dead or think he's nuts. Rik leaves Superman stuck in the transporter and enters Karvus' ship to kill him AND his grandson, just for getting in his way. That's cold, but gotta admit it's kinda impressive that this 80 year old guy easily overpowered and murdered a lizard man who appears to be at least half his age.Meanwhile, Superman realizes he can free himself from the transporter by frying the controls with his laser eyes, which he used so intensely that he apparently burned off his eyebrows! (Don't worry, they regrew after one panel.)
Superman arrives on the other ship just in time to see Rik confront he evil Karvus Khun... who is indeed just a frail old lizard man dying in a bed and doesn't even remember Rik. Superman tries to stop Rik from killing the old guy, but it's too late. He's tired and just wants to rest, plus he didn't come all this way for nothing, so he blows up Karvus, himself, and that ship with all the art pieces.Everyone's dead, the end! (Except for Rik's pilot, but I went through this entire thing without mentioning her so why start now.)
Plotline-Watch:
Sun Devils was a 1984-1985 maxi-series drawn by Dan Jurgens, with inks by this issue's guest inker, Steve Mitchell. The series was originally written by Gerry Conway, but he dropped out on issue 9, leaving Jurgens without a writer... and that's how DJ got his first writing gig at DC. A fortuitous start to an illustrious career!
Don Sparrow says: "While Rik's vengeful attitude, and inability to let go of the hurts of the past might seem out of place in a Superman comic, it does line up with the way the character was portrayed toward the end of the Sun Devils series. Rik wanted not only vengeance, but would welcome death." Also, it's important to point out that one of the things that pushed Rik over the edge in Sun Devils was finding out that the cat lady he was dating as a spy for the lizard people. Understandable.
A couple of Post-Infinite Crisis comics written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Jurgens mention the Sun Devils among all the cryptic clues in Rip Hunter's blackboards, but if DC had any plans to bring back the characters, they still hasn't gotten around to it. Curiously, in Sun Devils #3, Jurgens drew a guard who's wearing a uniform awfully similar to one of Booster Gold's early designs -- maybe Rip and Booster were supposed to travel to that time period and become these guards?
Another artistic coincidence that probably means nothing (or does it?!): one of the art pieces in Karvus' ship looks a lot like the fake aliens in buffalo masks from Adventures #469, who came to capture Superman's greatest enemies: freakin' Psi-Phon and Dreadnaught. Could... could it be? Is Jurgens teasing a return for those legendary villains?
Meanwhile, back on Earth, Lois Lane sneaks into Lex Luthor Jr.'s personal gym to snoop inside the locker room, where she finds a bag belonging to Lex's missing personal trainer, Sasha Green. Lois deduces that Sasha MUST have died here, so a LexCorp employee MUST have killed her. That, or Sasha's just super forgetful.
Rik says he caught his "nemisis," and I caught a typo. Where's my Baldy?!
Patreon-Watch:
As usual, special thanks to Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris "Ace" Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, RyanBush, Raphael Fischer, and Kit, who read an early draft of this at patreon.com/superman86to99. You are the wind beneath our capes.
And now, more from Don Sparrow! Click to keep reading...
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
Dan Jurgens' covers have a simplicity that sometimes treads between iconic and generic, and this one leans a little more toward the generic to me, as it gives little indication of the story, other than the factthat Superman is in space. Still, it's a gooddrawing, and I always like yellow rim lighting on covers.
On the inside, we can tell right away the inking is a little different than we're used to seeing from Joe Rubinstein. This is because this issue is inked by Steve Mitchell, who uses a simpler,thicker line most of the time. It's fitting, as this is essentially a Sun Devils story, that also features Superman, and Mitchell was often paired with Jurgens in his time on Sun Devils. Page2-3 have a pretty great splash of the ship buzzing past Superman--having the rainbow-like trails of the ship really suggest movement more than a starry background might.
Later on page 5, Superman's multitasking of both crimping and welding the hull shut is well done, and I'd say another hint at the ongoing story of Superman adding bulk.
The most interesting portion of the story is Lois' investigation into the death of Sasha Green, and the scenes of her skulking around looking for clues are helped a lot by the shadowy colouring.The art team excels in this issue at texture, as all the different materials the space teams wear has real weight and substance to it, along with the different skin textures, and signs of age. Lastly, Superman out flying the explosion is well paced.
Story-wise, this is a strange issue. I get Jurgens' inclination to go back and revisit some of his earliest work in comics,but this issue could have used a little more exposition. While Rik and Sarique are named, once, we are thrown into the middle of a larger saga, with only a few lines to get our footing (and those come after Khun has told a completely different story, so it's hard to know what's actually true, if we weren't already familiar with the Sun Devils as "good guys"). And even so, it's kind of a dour ending--Superman bears witness to Rik executing his old enemy, with barely enough time to rescue one other person. It must have been fun for Jurgens to give these characters a little epilogue, but I'm also glad he got it out of his system, and that these characters don't reoccur in these pages.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
Sarique, we are told, is the daughter of original Sun Devil character Scyla, but we're given no mention of who her father might be. By the end of the Sun Devils series, Scyla was quite chummy with the clone known only as "Two", so it might have been a neat connection for this lineage to have been made clearer.
Leaving Sasha's gym bag behind seems sloppy,even for someone with as much hubris as Lex Junior. [Max: Maybe it was so stinky that he was like "Ew, I'll just stop using this locker room. I have twenty more."]