Superman: The Man of Steel #2 (August 1991)
Superman: The Man of Steel #2 (August 1991)
Superman versus a hippie with robot parts and a military guy who pukes acid! They are called Rorc and Sgt. Belcher (guess which is which) and they come courtesy of Cerberus, the terrorist organization that has been targeting LexCorp properties in Metropolis. Now Cerberus is threatening to make “the city burn” if LexCorp doesn’t give in to its demands, which makes everyone in Metropolis lose their shit – except Lois Lane, because she has balls of steel (and an invulnerable fiancee).
The big wusses in LexCorp’s board of directors eventually give in to Cerberus’ demand to pull their business out of a tiny tropical island called Tattamalia, but Sgt. Belcher’s fingers get itchy and he shoots some missiles all over Metropolis anyway. So now Superman has to deal with that.
Meanwhile, Keith the orphan manages to get himself kidnapped by Belcher and Rorc because of his dang cat, Tiger, and its tendency to run off and go hide in supervillain hideouts. Keith uses his version of Jimmy Olsen’s signal watch (called “screaming really loud”) and Superman comes to the rescue.
Superman eventually defeats Laurel and Hardy here, but just as they’re about to tell him who Cerberus is, they are remotely killed off by a cyanide brain chip implant or whatever. Too bad. I liked ‘em.
Character-Watch:
Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove continue their quest to make Metropolis a little less pale-looking by introducing more minority characters (they already started with Keith and Orphanage Lady Myra last issue). First off is Yoshi, best known as Babe, Jimmy Olsen’s co-worker at his new job in Newstime Magazine… ’s cafeteria.
Speaking of fire, when the Newstime building is hit by a Cerberus rocket (it’s a LexCorp building), Jimbo and Babe help some people not burn to death. Then they quit, because the place sucked anyway.
Babe will have a plotline involving Billboard Top 20 hits and supernatural curses, which will run for a loooong time, mostly because they sorta forgot about her for a while and didn’t close off her story until much later. In this issue we also meet Fran, a reporter at the Daily Planet and eventually one of Lois’ maids of honor (hey, maybe that wasn’t Marsha Warfield after all in that wedding flash-forward).
Above: Fran getting spooked by Whit and going home early just to get away from him. That cracker is creepy.
Plotline-Watch:
Superman: The Man of Steel #1 already started the tradition of introducing increasingly bizarre-looking Cerberus operatives that never survive the issue, and this one cemented it. They deserved their own team book, damn it!
What is Cerberus’ relation with Tattamalia? Why do they want LexCorp out of the island? Stick around to find out, because I have no clue. I didn’t even remember “Tattamalia” was a thing.
Like Fran says above, Metropolis’ economic problems following the death of the insane billionaire who apparently funded the entire city with his Superman-killing devices have hit the Daily Planet, and there’s trouble brewing there. Jimmy got out just in time.
For a few issues, Superman has been trying to get ahold of Lana Lang on the phone to get that awkward “Hey, I’m engaged now! To someone who isn’t you!” moment out of the way, but she’s ignoring him. If they had Facebook, she would have blocked him by now.
Cape-Watch:
As Don Sparrow pointed out the other day, Jon Bogdanove loves murdering Superman’s capes – he goes through two different ones in this issue. It’s hard to complain when he gives us shots like this one, though:
(For the record, Superman is a saint for not letting Tiger burn. That cat is out-Jimmy Olsening the real Jimmy Olsen.)