Superman: The Man of Steel #13 (July 1992)
Superman: The Man of Steel #13 (July 1992)
Superman finally meets Cerberus and gets to punch him in the faces! For just over a year, the mysterious Cerberus has been pestering Metropolis via terrorist attacks and kooky cyborg tag-teams. Last week, Superman managed to learn Cerberus' location by interrogating Metallo's disembodied head, and now he's headed over there to ask this dude or dudette what's his problem. As hinted before, Cerberus turns out to be both dude and dudette, because "he's" actually a series of evil heads in jars who take turns operating a giant robot body.
The head that looks like Doc Brown's evil twin attempts to get rid of Superman by strapping him to a rocket headed for space (hence the cover image), but Superman's like "Hey, that's MY tactic!" and escapes by blowing up the rocket with his heat vision. Superman tussles with another of the heads and manages to unscrew it from the body, accidentally allowing the most insane of these Futurama characters to get ahold of it. This turns out to be bad for everyone, since that guy is basically a bull in a head shop.
After carelessly smashing all his friends against Superman, the psychotic head figures their whole terrorist operation is probably done so he might as well take out Superman with them – he turns their entire headquarters into a giant missile headed for Metropolis. Despite being weakened by a magical burp cloud that comes out of the Cerberus body's stomach, Superman manages to change the missile's course and crash it into a mountain.
And so ends Cerberus' reigns of terror… OR DOES IT?! As Superman walks away from the place of the explosion, he fails to notice that one of the heads somehow survived this nutty series of events. Dun dun dunnnnn!
Character-Watch:
So where did Cerberus come from? What exactly did they want, except to blow shit up? And what will the one surviving head, the mysterious Dragon Lady, do next? Maybe open a hair salon with Doctor Stratos? It's been 22 years and two months since this issue came out, and I still haven't given up hope that one day this cliffhanger will be resolved. Nothing so far, though. As evil as Dragon Lady probably is, I do hope she hasn't been buried in that mountain all this time, occasionally getting pooped on by stray bears.
Plotline-Watch:
Superman's Childhood Pal Who Is Now A Congressman, Pete Ross update: after beating around the bush for months, Pete's "friends" the Sons of Liberty finally unload their whole evil plan on him. Turns out they've kidnapped his fiancee, Lana Lang, in order to force Pete to smuggle a gun into Congress and shoot their former leader, Colonel Holcraft (who was arrested by Superman two years ago). Don Sparrow points out: "The Sons' plan to kill Holcraft is perfect – and giving Pete a gun with no handle will allow him to bypass the sophisticated wood detector the Capitol buildings are known for."
Perry White is annoyed that the Daily Planet is still being targeted by gosh dang social justice warriors who want them to hire more minorities. His wife Alice points out that they might have a point there. Still, narratively, it's a little weird that this scene came right after Perry hired Ron Troupe, since I believe this is as far as this pseudo-storyline goes.
Don Sparrow recaps the Jimmy Olsen-related happennings, so that I don't have to: "Oh shoot – Lucy Lane thinks Jimmy and Babe Tanaka are a thing, simply because she saw them kissing, and then Babe kept holding his arm long after Lucy passed, and Jimmy did nothing to stop it, nor did he travel the 8 steps necessary to actually explain himself. Oh well, with everything that’s happened to her I’m sure she’s better in the hands of her caring doctor. Unrelated: how come she has her hand to her neck in two separate panels? Better get that looked at, Luce!"
Thank you, Don. More from Mr. Sparrow after the jump!
Art-Watch (by donsparrow):
We begin this wrap-up to the long, long, long-running Cerberus storyline with a pretty excellent, Kirby-esque cover from Bogdanove and Janke. I was so sure it was an homage, but I couldn’t seem to find anything closer than Kirby’s Mister Miracle #1 cover–if anyone knows better, please let me know. [Max: Maybe you're thinking of Tom Grummett's cover to Superboy #60, which looks like an homage to both the Mister Miracle cover and this one.]
And the story jumps right into the action, picking up from last week, where Superman is hot on the trail of Cerberus. Cerberus’ Futurama-like head gallery bicker over who will face Superman, and it definitely gives an eerie feeling. The pages that follow, catching us up with the cover image do a good job of suggesting the speed and gravity-forces exerted onto Superman. Storywise, I like that he uses his smarts to free himself, even if it means sacrificing his body (slightly, though he is weakened) by detonating the rocket’s fuel tank. This team always does explosions well, and page 6 is no exception.
The pace doesn’t really relent, as Superman flies right back into the thick of things, confronting Cerberus directly. It’s here that the story veers into cartoonish territory never to return. Credit where credit is due–the energy sapping ribbons are at least novel in appearance and not the first thing you expect from this ED-209-like creature.
Superman’s anguish at being used to destroy life–even bottled, bodyless life is palpable as Cerberus tosses Superman around on page 10, and later in the issue as well. But visually, the story gets a little confusing thereafter, as Superman seems to merely shove Cerberus, at the end of page 11, but then the next thing we see, he’s in a red Kirby-dotted pile of rubble, emerging in his true form. And honestly, even with the giftedness of Bogdanove and Janke’s art–it’s a ridiculous visual. All the more so because we’ve seen other creatures who are essentially just mouths with appendages in previous issues’ void dimension, where they’re largely played for laughs.
Plus, Superman doesn’t really react that much to what he’s seeing, as he’s much more horrified about the disembodied heads being destroyed. Which, again, is awfully similar to when he fought The Word-Bringer, and was worried about him destroying brains in jars rather than human heads. Cerberus even seems to draw from each personality, harnessing their attributes, like the Word Bringer. [Max: I never noticed the similarities between the two storylines. Maybe Cerberus' heads are victims of Hfuhruhurr who decided to go evil too?]
Plus there’s not even a very good explanation for what Cerberus is, or what his goals are. In previous issues, he seemed like a simple terrorist, dealing in arms and blowing stuff up. Now he’s on about guarding the gates of hell (might he be related to Blaze, somehow?
He does seem to affect Superman similarly to other magical entities), and his headquarters is some sort of missile, a la The Prisoner (40 year old spoilers at link)? Even at the very end, Superman, like the reader, is forced to ask himself “what was that creature… how and why did it appear on Earth?” And ultimately–what did any of this matter? I’d love to know the behind-the-scenes story on Cerberus, because this story concluded so abruptly, after such a long build-up, I feel like there must be something more here–this is all pretty out of character given the usual excellence of the Superman books of this era. [Max: As much as I love this title, I agree. Long, drawn out storylines that are ultimately abandoned seems to be a vice Louise Simonson probably picked up during her X-Men years. I wonder if there was more planned for the Dragon Lady but it was dropped after the… dramatic developments coming soon-ish.]
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
This might be a stretch, but Cerberus’ battle armour looks like an orange version of Darth Vader’s face, hinting that underneath there, there’s… a face.
Again, the protestors in these pages are so goofy! I love their type-written, one sentence missives on page 14. Yes, Perry White IS very White… so?
How can anyone fault an Editor in Chief that managed to sign Jack Lemmon as one of their columnists?
I do appreciate the exchange of ideas between Perry and his wife, Louise Simonso… I mean Alice, regarding demographically representing hiring. This is a real conversation with neither Perry White’s colour-blind, merit-based hiring; nor Alice White’s encouragement of the merits of broadening perspectives being right, or wrong, necessarily. A very mature handling of a sensitive issue.
