Superman #92 (August 1992)

Massacre, a big red alien who goes around the universe punching people, comes to Earth to steal some ice cream… and punch Superman, while at it. The ice cream thing isn’t a joke, by the way. The issue starts with a space mobster called Chadda telling Massacre that he owes him for punching too many people to death “from his direction,” so he has a mission for him. Massacre is ready to punch him to death too, until Chadda mentions that the mission involves going to Earth.

Earth, as you might know, is where Superman lives. Massacre feels like he owes Superman some punches from the last time they met, so he agrees to take the mission as a flimsy excuse to do that. He turns himself into energy and lands in some island in the Southern Hemisphere, where he instantly yells out for Superman to “reveal himself,” but the only people around are some confused locals.

Massacre draws an honestly pretty good rendition of Superman’s symbol on the sand (has Massacre been drawing the S-shield on his notebooks for months? omg he’s just like me) and the islanders point him in the general direction of the USA. Of course, the USA is actually pretty big, so Massacre ends up asking directions from a random cowboy, who tells him he’s “gots to go” to Metropolis to find Superman. And so, Massacre goes to Metropolis… Illinois.

Meanwhile, in the correct Metropolis, Superman is hard at work rebuilding the city’s water purification plant after it was destroyed by Lex Luthor’s missiles (along with most of the rest of the city), probably because he just wants Lois Lane to take a damn shower for the first time in a week. Unfortunately for the increasingly stinky people of Metropolis, Massacre finally finds his way to the city and distracts Superman from his job with, you guessed it, punching.

While Massacre keeps Superman occupied by burying him in cement, the little “Skimmer” alien who follows him around completes Chadda’s mission: filling up a spaceship with an exotic substance that only seems to be produced on Earth called “ice cream.” Superman breaks free from the cement, but Massacre throws him towards the ice cream-filled spaceship, causing it to come crashing down and explode. Did the little alien guy survive? Did the ice cream? Will Lois ever shower?! You’ll have to wait to find out, because this is the part where I say TO BE CONTINUED!

Plotline-Watch:

• Massacre kept his promise to Superman from his previous appearance that “We will meet again – on Earth!” Now he needs to fulfill the second part, which is that he’d kill all of Superman’s friends. Or at least Jimmy Olsen. C'mon, Massacre. You can do it!

• Despite the insalubrious conditions in Metropolis, Superman feels like he can’t fly off to some other city with Lois for a little romantic vacation because the last time he did that, their work friend’s child was murdered by the Toyman. That’s an understandable concern, but look at it this way: what if Jimmy is the one who gets killed this time? C'mon, Superman. You can do it!

• Speaking of which, there’s a subplot about Jimmy and Lucy Lane looking for clean clothes because all the ones they owned were blown up by Lex Luthor. I don’t remember where this storyline goes, if anywhere, so I’m just going to assume it leads to Jimmy trying on a sweater that’s two sizes too small and accidentally choking. Fingers crossed.

• Don Sparrow points out that Massacre is part of a trend where villains were built up as the next Doomsday. They’re not subtle about it, either. Superman already remarked during their first fight that he hadn’t been punched that hard “since Doomsday,” and now Lois says “That Massacre looks so tough! Almost as tough as… Doomsday!” You know one thing Massacre could do to elevate his status in Superman’s rogues gallery and surpass Doomsday? Killing Ji– okay, that’s enough dead Jimmy jokes, sorry.

• I like how Massacre says “Today, someone dies!” right before the Doomsday reference. That’s right, kids! This one could be another collector’s item!

• Don says: “I appreciate the line of dialogue explaining that Clark will shave before jumping into action as Superman, so that no one connects their matching stubble.” My question is, won’t they end up looking alike anyway once Clark shows up again with a clean face? And won’t the other Metropolis survivors be like “Hey, man, where’d you find shaving implements? You holding out on us?” The logical solution would be for Superman to glue some hair to his face once he goes back to being Clark.

• I’m not clear on what Chadda the ice cream-addicted space mobster means when he says, in his weird Yoda speak, that Massacre owes him for “Kills you have from my direction.” Is he saying he gave Massacre directions to people he could kill? Or that Massacre killed too many people in his general direction? We need a Chadda miniseries to clear this up. (Or someone could ask Dan Jurgens, but I doubt he’d remember.)

• I feel bad for the cowboy who kindly told Massacre about Metropolis and got killed as thanks. Based on his attire, he’d apparently survived since the 1800s, only to die in such a senseless way. If only that had been some other member of the supporting cast…

Shout Outs-Watch:

Ice cream-flavored shout outs to our supporters, Aaron, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Kit, Sam, Bol, Dave Shevlin, and Dave Blosser! Join them (and get extra non-continuity articles; we just finished covering all of the 1994 Superman Elseworlds annuals) via Patreon or our newsletter’s “pay what you want” mode!

And now, more from Don!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We start with the cover, and it’s an absolute beauty, combining the talents of two of my all time favourite pencillers (making up two out of four on my comic art Mount Rushmore), Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway (though on this cover, Ordway handles inks).  There’s always a greater sense of depth and texture from Ordway’s detailed signature hatching, and it elevates a fairly static cover into a really gorgeous piece.  As the story continues, we’re thrown into an alien tavern, with some imaginatively diverse creatures within, which must have been fun to design.  [Max: Speaking of which, the guy on the far right here looks familiar… where have we seen him before, or at least his race?]

It’s on page two that we’re re-introduced to Massacre, the new big bad in the Superman mythology (who we saw briefly in Adventures #509, murdering the loose end known as Auron).  Full disclosure: I never really warmed to this character.  To me he was emblematic of a bad trend in Superman comics of the time, to try to recapture the heat of the Doomsday storyline by adding characters who could go toe-to-toe with Superman, requiring the telltale comment that the new character was “almost as tough as Doomsday”.  Massacre was one of these types, completely devoid of personality, other than confidence, making him read like a humourless Lobo (right down to the dreadlocks, it seems).  [Max: I’ll admit I did warm up to Massacre, but mainly because I had the action figure and thought he looked pretty badass as he punched my other toys.]

It’s in these early pages that we’re reintroduced to Skimmer, inexplicably our narrator for this issue, as he was in Adventures #509.  He looks like an earthtone version of a Ralph Bashki design from Heavy Metal, and of all the one-off characters I’d like to see more of, this guy is not high on my list.  As the story continues, I appreciate the look at bomb ravaged Metropolis, especially the detail that the terrain is uneven, really making it seem like a disaster area. 

Quite a nice drawing of Lois Lane on page 7, in profile.  I always felt like Dan Jurgens generally drew her as resembling Geena Davis (Ordway’s Lois always looked like Julia Roberts to me) but in this instance she looks like Emma Caulfield as intrepid 90210 reporter Susan Keats).  The world tour Massacre takes as he hunts for Superman is an interesting way to fill the time, a nice detail that not every alien lands in the continental USA right away.  I appreciated the subtle hints through language and attire that Massacre’s second stop in the outback, interrupting what must have been a Foster’s Lager ad with Paul Hogan.  [Max: I always assumed it was somewhere in the US, because otherwise that’d mean the islanders pointed Massacre in the wrong direction and they strike me as honest folks.] Given that our real-world Metropolis Illinois is the home of the biggest Superman convention in the world every year (I gotta make it out to that one of these times!) it’s neat to see it mentioned in these pages.

The fistfight that occurs once Massacre finally does find Superman is well-drawn, even with the irksome dialogue establishing just how deadly this guy is.  The push that Massacre gets through Superman’s lines like “Too fast” and “how can anybody be so fast” or “I missed? Impossible!” put me in the mind of Poochie’s first appearance on Itchy and Scratchy.  And Massacre is totally in my face.

Superman bursting out of Massacre’s concrete trap is a killer image, and I like the Neal Adams style rim lighting on the next page as Superman gets blasted backward by Massacre’s wrist gauntlet.

SPEEDING BULLETS:

• The revelation that Skimmer is on Earth to stock up on ice cream is cute, but perhaps a bit out of place in a story that is otherwise so violent.  [Max: Ice cream is never out of place, Don.]

• Proof that I read too many comics—I had remembered Jimmy and Lucy being broken up already (maybe back during the Cerberus storyline?) so maybe they’re scavenging as friends? Or maybe that was just a blip? [Max: Maybe Lucy couldn’t resist his manly stubble… which, in his case, I’m pretty sure he did glue to his face.]

• I wonder what Elliot S! Maggin would say about Superman rebuilding things like water treatment plants, given the point of view espoused in the now classic “Must There Be a Superman?” story.  On the one hand, creating infrastructure seems beyond the normal “catch them when they fall” Superman parameters, but on the other hand, I felt a little uncomfortable seeing Clark just chilling out and barbecuing in the disaster area earlier in the issue, and not doing more to help.

• Another pet peeve of mine (which happens more in the movies than in the comics) is where super-beings use props to fight each other, when their fists would be more durable and do more damage than, say, the i-beam Superman uses to bat Massacre with on page 13.  The baseball looking hit is a nice visual I suppose, and breaks it up from just being a boxing match, so maybe that answers that.

• There’s some dissonance in the placid expressions these middle-aged concrete workers wear as they stand feet from a monster named Massacre, and casually discuss that “Supes ain’t got a chance.”  Maybe we should run a caption contest for what else they could be saying with those benign faces. 

[Max: Let me give it a shot…]

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