Superman #95 (December 1994)

"Dead Again!," Part 6! Superman goes to New Genesis to check on Brainiac, and it would have been a very short visit if it wasn't for a special guest star acting like an idiot and almost killing everyone. Who could it be?! (Kindly pretend you didn't already see the Atom on the cover.)

Last time, Superman determined that Lex Luthor couldn't be the one who placed a Superman-looking corpse in his old tomb because Lex is in a coma, and so the one responsible must be Brainiac... who's also in a coma. This issue kicks off with Superman asking Professor Hamilton to fix the Mother Box from Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey so he can use it to travel to New Genesis, where Brainiac was taken after his little brain-frying incident at the end of the "Panic in the Sky!" storyline.

Hamilton fixes the Mother Box (rather easily; he probably just had to turn it off and on) and, as Superman uses it to order a Boom Tube to New Genesis, which always looks very cool...

...we see a tiny figure hitching a ride via Superman's cape. Again: who could that possibly be?! My money's on Ant-Man. Or maybe Mighty Man, of Mighty Man & Yukk fame.

At New Genesis, Superman is welcomed by Highfather and taken to meet Orion, Lightray, and Metron, who's busy building himself a new Mobius chair since his old one blew up during Zero Hour (poor Metron probably isn't used to standing up for so long). At this point, an alarm is triggered in Metron's lab -- Superman thinks it's Brainiac, but nope, it's the mystery character who snuck into New Genesis in his cape, who turns out to be... freakin' Psi-Phon and Dreadnaught?!

Wait, no, that's clearly the Atom. He explains that he tagged along with Superman because he wants Metron (an expert in time-related matters) to undo the unfortunate mishap that turned him into a 17-year-old, also during Zero Hour. Metron says he can't do that because "tampering with time's course is forbidden," and Atom proves that he really is 17 by throwing a tantrum, going into Metron's unfinished Mobius Chair, and trying to operate it on his own, the little dumbass.

The result: Atom moves the wrong cable, and Metron's entire lab is transported into hyperspace, where it’s about to get pulverized by thousands of asteroids. Superman and Lightray go out to deal with the asteroids, which also looks very cool...

...while Atom goes "I can fix this by myself!," shortly followed by "Nope, definitely can't," so he pops up in front of Metron and agrees to act like an adult this time. Outside, the asteroid situation is getting dire as the lab and everything around it starts getting sucked into a black hole. Even Superman thinks there's "no chance" they'll make it (the "S" on his chest stands for "shit outta luck"), but at the last second, Atom fixes his mistake and the lab is transported back to New Genesis.

Atom feels terrible that he almost killed everyone, but even more terrible that he seems to be permanently stuck as a stupid teen. Where does he go from here? Superman gives him one of his classic pep talks: "You've been given a very special opportunity. A second chance at life. Now I have to go check on Brainiac!" Inspiring words.

Anyway, Superman does go check on Brainiac and, yep, he's in a coma all right. The only evil scheme he could realistically pull off right now would be flooding New Genesis in drool.

Metron offers Superman and Atom a Boom Tube back to Earth, but Supes declines because now he's really figured out who's behind his doppelganger problem, and in order to confront them, he needs to go to the butthole of the universe: Apokolips!

TO BE CONTINUED!

Plotline-Watch:

• Where will Atom go from here? Don Sparrow says: "This almost reads like a backdoor pilot for an Atom spinoff, though the character (particularly the teenaged version) sits on the shelf for a couple years until he's made leader of the team by none other than Dan Jurgens in the largely forgotten (but beautifully illustrated—Jurgens AND George Pérez!) 1996 Teen Titans series." Yeah, it's my understanding that the de-aging storyline is (eventually) resolved there. Always wanted to read that series, mainly because Jurgens/Pérez.

• I love a good recap page, and this issue has a GREAT one: we see Brainiac's full story, from his ponytail days in planet Colu, to his Milton Fine phase, to his Warworld era, complete with the brain-frying moment that left him all drooly. We even see Superman in his Gangbuster outfit from the time he fought Brainiac dressed like that. Good times. Not for Superman, or Brainiac, but still.

• At the start of the issue, Superman says he's gonna ask Metron if the Super-corpse could be a temporal anomaly from the time crisis, but then he never asks him. Maybe he forgot, maybe it happened off-panel, or maybe that's also a temporal anomaly. Are they teasing Zero Hour 2?! (One Hour?)

• Sort of a Forever People #1 callback when Superman arrives in New Genesis and Highfather tells him he could stay here among the super-people -- why, he might even find "companionship." The difference is that instead of moping about being all alone, this time Superman says he's actually pretty happy on Earth. What a difference a hot fiancé makes.

• Don again: "At first I thought that it was Hamilton narrating, until they got to New Genesis and the narrator horned out over those flying women. The concept of an unseen narrator secretly being the Atom is old hat for Jurgens as he did a near-identical reveal in issue #66 of the pre-Doomsday Justice League comics." Yeah, this is the second time Jurgens pulls this trick, as far as I know. Maybe there's a Sun Devils storyline where it happens five more times.

Shout Outs-Watch:

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Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We start with the cover, and it’s a very good one, with the now familiar (but less frequently seen) pencil and ink team of Jurgens and Breeding.  They seem to excel at exactly this kind of shiny, techy contraptions, plus it gives us a good grounding in who we can expect in this issue—even one that is something of a spoiler.

We’re greeted by a great full page splash as we start the comic.  Mike Manley, the inker for this issue is an interesting middle ground between the thin, scratchy style of Joe Rubinstein, and the slick, thicker linework of Brett Breeding.  It’s more controlled, and thicker than Rubinstein, but less solid and more detailed than a Brett Breeding.  It works quite well, and there’s a nice three dimensionality to the figures, demonstrated well on page two as Superman chats with Hamilton, his sharp jaw jutting forward.

The lighting on the panel with the reborn mother box lighting up is well done, and three dimensional.

The hatching using parallel lines that Manley employs puts me in the mind of another Atom great, Gil Kane.  Once the gang hits hyperspace, the big panel of Superman and a radiant Lightray smashing asteroids is a great one. 

Finally we get a glimpse of Brainiac, and I have questions.  First of all, last time we saw him, he had green eyes (or at least he did on Action #675—though the back cover to the "Panic in the Sky!" collection has them as red) but here, he has blue eyes.  (That we could chalk up as a colouring error, as they also missed his eyebrow colour.)  Secondly, when last we saw him (immediately after Maxima lobotomized him) his van dyke beard was scorched off.  Yet, here, in captivity, it has grown back, and is perfectly groomed.  Is Metron painstakingly shaving Brainiac to his preferred form of facial hair?  Or is this yet another function of the mother box? [Max: I think Metron is treating Brainiac's beard as a bonsai-like project to relax.]

Finally, as Superman once again decides who is definitely, no question, absolutely without a doubt behind the hoax corpse, we get a good drawing of Darkseid as well as Hank Henshaw.

SPEEDING BULLETS:

• There’s a LOT of exposition in this issue!  From Superman’s quick summary (nominally to Professor Hamilton, but really, to us) explaining the history of the Mother Box, to what a Boom Tube is, to a very detailed history of Milton Fine/Brainiac, Jurgens isn’t leaving anything to chance when it comes to a new reader following along.  Mostly it works quite well, but I do feel like Superman is giving Highfather the long tour when he gets into the whole Gangbuster guise.

• A potential storytelling error there, as even for Metron, constructing a Mobius chair should be beyond his skill.  Longtime DC weirdos like me know that the morally ambiguous Metron got the Element X he needed to power the chair from Darkseid, in exchange for giving Darkseid Boom Tube technology, weakening Highfather’s strategic advantage.  But maybe Metron is refining the chair, rather than creating one wholesale—then again, we saw it destroyed in Zero Hour, so maybe he really does have to rebuild it.  Maybe Element X is now available at 7-Eleven.

• I do like that New Genesis’ alarms rely on the “Arrroooga” sound. Until I turned the page, I thought it might be Booster Gold reacting to seeing Power Girl. 

• Second issue in a row of Superman using the phrase “vegetable” to describe someone comatose. 

• Sure, Atom’s meddling with the Mobius chair almost kills them all, but you have to admire his youthful exuberance!

• Doesn’t it seem slightly out of character for Superman to be the “we’re all doomed” and Lightray to be the one shouting “never lose hope!”? [Max: The corpse would never say that...]

• Metron is generally depicted as quite haughty, but here he actually has a legitimate beef.  It’s pretty low of Superman to think that Metron and all his New Genesis tech could allow someone as dangerous as Brainiac free rein to reach across the cosmos and create a global hoax on planet Earth—all completely undetected.  Can you imagine?

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