Superman: The Man of Steel #17 (November 1992)
Superman: The Man of Steel #17 (November 1992)
The historic first appearance of the classic Superman villain that's a massive monster with spiky bones coming out of his body: Clawster! You know, Clawster? This guy?
Clawster, for the philistines who don't know him, is one of the Underworlders, failed genetic experiments that the government flushed down the toilet. For years, the Underworlders were content with just chilling in the caves under Metropolis (hence their name), but recently they've started stealing weapons – because they're arming themselves to take over the surface world.
Keith the Unlucky Orphan has ended up in the hands of the Underworlders after he mistook one of them for his long-gone mother last month. The new leader of the Underworlders, an alien with giant nostrils on his forehead who got stranded on Earth during the recent Warworld invasion, tries to recruit Keith into the monster revolution (come on, kid's not that ugly), but Keith rejects this kind offer.
(I can't remember if this guy has a name, so I'm gonna call him Nostrilhead.)
Meanwhile, Superman has been tracking down the stolen weapons and arrives just in time to save Keith from getting clawster'd by Clawster. Before escaping, the other Underwarworlders tell Keith they'll kill his mom if he tells Superman about their plans – apparently, they expect Supes to think they were gathering all those guns to stage a Civil War reenactment. The point is, the kid is safe, his mom is still missing, and the uglies can't start their revolution yet. THE END!
Oh, wait, one more thing: the issue ends with some panels of someone punching a metal wall.
Weeeeird.
Character-Watch:
So, yeah, that last page is officially Doomsday's first appearance (or his fist's, anyway), and the reason why this issue goes for as much as $300 on eBay. That, or all those people are big fans of the Underworlder who's a blue guy with the head of a ram. According to the Death and Return of Superman video game I played on Super Nintendo, his name is "Rambeau" and there's like 20 of them.
As for Clawster, I remember mentioning him before and assuming he was an alien Warworlder, and others on the Internet seem to agree, but in this issue it's pretty clear he's one of the failed genetic experiments. Then again, there's so many of these characters that it's possible the writers got confused and started writing him as an alien in future issues.
Plotline-Watch:
The Underworlder Keith mistakes for his mom, a hypnotic lizard lady called Kathana, mentions she's working for someone called "Blood-Thirst" who apparently likes eating children. We'll meet that delightful character (minus the hyphen) in about a year. About this scene, Don Sparrow says: "Never forget, underground stew chefs – carrots really add a needed zest to your cockroach-and-clothed-boy soup recipes."
At one point we see Clawster stealing guns from a group of drug dealers – but where did some street thugs get such advanced gear in the first place? The answer, of course, is that every gun in the DC Universe looks like a sci-fi weapon, but I'm choosing to see this as foreshadowing for an upcoming storyline about a certain John Henry…
There's also a plotline about a panhandler named Charlie that Lois Lane has befriended, who ends up gleefully joining the Underwarworlder revolution along with other hobos. What makes Metropolis' homeless population so susceptible to being recruited by supervillains?
Perhaps more alarmingly, why does Jimmy Olsen seem so surprised that Lois knows Charlie's name, when he not only had a homeless friend, but recently became one himself?! I take back my previous question: it's because of people like Jimmy that hobos in Metropolis turn evil.
More insights and commentary from our resident shameless Jimmy Olsen-defender, Don Sparrow, after the jump!
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We start with a classicly Fleischer-esque Bogdanove Superman fighting off hordes of weird mutants–is that Angry Charlie? –which gets more upsetting the closer you look at it. The bird-like face dangling off of that top right guy’s spine pretty much wrecked my whole day. Moving on. [Max: Angry Charlie is another color. Could this be his bizarro clone, Serene Charles?]
Inside the issue, the inks look a little more solid, and a little less diagonally hatchy, as our usual Bogdanove inker, Dennis Janke is sitting this one out in favour of former Super-regular, Bob McLeod (my guess is Dennis is busy on his upcoming penciling gig over in Adventures of Superman, but more on that later). McLeod has always used large areas of black in his inking, and this story, set underground for the most part.
The panel of a bemused Superman–looking right into camera is a funny one as mutants attack him with uzis on page 3 (side note: ever see a good guy use an uzi? It’s pretty much just a bad-guy gun). The scenes of a lost Keith are heartbreaking, and you really see the emotion as he skulks around unfamiliar territory.
Maybe it’s just the lack of contextual reference, since Keith is all alone in the caves, but Keith looks much older and larger than I’m used to seeing him. Since Keith is a heartstring-puller at the best of times, his story in this book is pretty tough to take, and is filled with disturbing images. Even though no real harm comes to Keith’s kitty, Tiger, her being held aloft over a boiling pot by Kathana is just awful. I know that’s the intent, but still.
Speaking of awful, the ghetto war between the weirdly named T-Birds (what, was the Buick Skylarks taken?) and the Underworlders got real violent, real fast. Mercifully the really gory stuff is blacked out, but it’s done in such away that it makes me think it was censored after the fact.
More grossness ensues for the pages that follow (boiled rats, imperiled Keith) until Clawster shows up. Clawster has always struck me as a weird character (especially given his debut appearance in such close proximity to another powerful monster with bony protrusions) but credit where credit is due–the detail on his scaly, Thing-like skin is pretty convincingly drawn, especially on the full page splash on page 11.
Another great panel on page 14, where a blurring Superman speeds through the sewers.
The backgrounds disappear a bit during the action of Superman’s rescue of Keith-though the panel of Superman dampening a grenade blast is pretty excellent on page 19. [Max: I love the smoking S-shield!]
And of course, our first glimpse of one of the most important additions to the Superman mythology–that glove stretching over the knuckle claw looks so strange!
Like last week, this issue feels a little like filler, or maybe an hors d'oeuvre for what’s to come, but that might be my own bias against stories about the Underworlders, who I’ve never really found all that interesting–plus, I continue to have problems with their designs, which oscillate between genuinely scary, or tragic, or worst of all,funny, and the inability to be just one of those things doesn’t work for me.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
Whoops. Some lazy panel repetition between page 9 and page 13.
That dude menacing Keith on page 17 [Max: Rambeau, Don! Rambeau!] reminds me of a later addition to the Superman books (one that to many fans felt like a Mary Sue shoehorned unnaturally into the storylines, but I digress). [Max, again: I'd never noticed, but you're right, they look like they could be second cousins.]
Anyone else that couldn’t help thinking of this guy when seeing the sound effect on the last page?