Superman: The Man of Steel #29 (January 1994)
Superman: The Man of Steel #29 (January 1994)
Spilled Blood, Finale! The year 1994 starts with one of Superman's most heinous villains: Jimmy Olsen. We open with Jimmy chilling at a burger joint with Ron Troupe and going "Hey, isn't it nuts that some Nazi just tried to murder us with homing missiles, and then a weird lady absorbed the missile meant for me and exploded?" (Which is a convenient recap of Part 2 of this storyline.) Then the aforementioned weird lady, Hi-Tech, bursts into the joint transformed into a completely technological being, as a side effect of having exploded.
Since Hi-Tech absorbed a missile programmed to kill Jimmy, now she has an irresistible urge to do the same thing. Too bad she didn't absorb an electric foot massager or something nice like that. Superman also bursts into scene to save Jimbo (that poor restaurant owner) and fights Hi-Tech for a couple of pages before being confronted by her boss: Bloodthirst, the mysterious mastermind behind the last few supervillain attacks in Metropolis, who looks like Apocalypse from the X-Men if he was more into S&M.
Bloodthirst blasts Superman with a time-stopping ray so he can comfortably deliver his villain monologue. Apparently, he goes around the world creating conflict to make humanity "stronger." Usually he sticks behind the scenes, but since Metropolis is already used to ugly beings in weird getups fighting each other in the middle of the street, he decided to come out in the open this time.
After a massive effort, Superman is able to overcome the slo-mo effect and punch the time-stopping device off of Bloodthirst's hand, only to find out that several days have passed outside of this little time bubble he's been trapped in (presumably, Clark Kent has been fired from the Planet and Lois is married to Jeb Friedman by now).
Bloodthirst is like "See, you're stronger now because I pushed you, just like I've been doing with humanity in general!" He goes on to claim that he was behind many of history's most tragic moments, like the Holocaust, Kennedy's assassination, and Superman's own death. Yes, Superman had previously met Bloodthirst when he was called… DOOMSDAY?!
Superman calls bullshit, and Bloodthirst immediately admits he's just kidding about the Doomsday part… but hey, the fake-out served as an excuse for Jon Bogdanove to draw the character again, thus justifying this storyline's existence. While Superman is getting double teamed by Bloodthirst and Hi-Tech (who was also in the time bubble), Jimmy theorizes that he and Ron can delete Hi-Tech's evil programming by grabbing some live wires and zapping her with them. Normally this would result in Jimmy electrocuting himself like a dumbass, but because this is a comic, the plan actually works.
With the pesky robo-lady out of the way, Superman finally gets Bloodthirst to shut the hell up for a second with one well-placed and satisfying punch.
At this point, Bloodthirst conveniently claims he just got some "new information" and decides he doesn't need to fight Superman anymore, because there's someone "much worse" than him in Metropolis. He teleports away with a cryptic comment about how he thought Lex Luthor Jr. was keeping the city together but he "totally misread the situation." On the last page, we see Bloodthirst spying on Luthor, satisfied because Metropolis has an agent of chaos in its midst. The end?!
Character-Watch:
For Bloodthirst, yeah, it IS the end, because that's the last time he ever showed up. He did say that he only likes stepping out of the shadows "every thousand years or so" to test himself against someone like Superman, so maybe we'll see him again 973 years from now. Meanwhile, Hi-Tech did reappear in her own Showcase serial. I haven't read those stories yet, so I'm kinda curious to find out if they acknowledge Bloodthirst at all or if they decided to keep this storyline as an unexplained gap in her job experience (I think I'd go with the latter).
Plotline-Watch:
More "powers out of whack" stuff: Superman accidentally flies THROUGH Hi-Tech's body, tearing her apart, and freaks out because he think he killed her. Of course, she just pulls her parts back together, because she's that kind of character. Good thing Superman wasn't fighting the Prankster this week or he'd be in jail.
Don Sparrow says: "There's a cute aside between Jonathan and Martha Kent, asthey hastily try to get the comics to match the ABC TV series that wasairing at the time, by noting that Martha had lost weight, and here theother shoe drops, as her better hair matchesK Callan's portrayal of Martha." The best part is Pa wondering why the heck he's been dieting these past weeks if he still feels so old, but then seeing Ma with her new Lois & Clark hairdo and SHWING! he's young again.
Lois talks to the former LexCorp employee who was almost killed by the ‘90s-est supervillain team ever last issue, per Lex's orders. At this point he doesn't even care if Lex sends more super-goons to kill him, he just wants his former boss to face justice. This random office schlub might be the biggest hero in this entire series.
Bloodthirst talks about preparing humanity for "the bad times that are coming." This is the DC Universe, so there are ALWAYS bad times coming, but it's interesting to take this as foreshadowing for Zero Hour. That, or he was talking about the quality of '90s comics in general…
Patreon-Watch:
Shout out to our patrons, Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris "Ace" Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts,Patrick D. Ryall, Samuel Doran, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, and welcome aboard, Dave Shevlin! Hope you survive the exp— wrong company. The latest Patreon-only post was the second half of my painfully in-depth look at the cancelled PlayStation 1 sequel for Superman 64, which includes this guy, so it was all worth it:
Learn more at: https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99
Now stay tuned for more commentary from the great Don Sparrow, after the jump!
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We start with the cover, and it's not great. In previous reviews I've shared my problems with this character design, and putting this character front and centre doesn't make me want to open the cover. Maybe it's the cartoonish shark teeth, or the giant eye with raised eyebrow, but there's something a bit childish about the design that doesn't sit well with me. The drawing here also seems a bit rushed-no background, flatly rendered smoke billows from his limbs.Just not one of Bogdanove's best, and we know what greatness he's capable of.
Inside we're greeted with a half splash page, and I continue to marvel at how human, and sensual he manages to draw Hi-Tech despite being a metallic organism, a lot of this owing to the gesture Bogdanove places in her poses. Pages 2-3 have a terrific splash of Superman arriving just in time to save Jimmy and Ron, and it's one of the better drawings in the issue.
The rest of the issue is a frenzied battle scene between Superman and the remaining villains. Again, aside from the pace of the writing, which seems in a big hurry to wrap this story up, the art has a rushed feeling, similar to the cover. There's almost no backgrounds in any of these battle scenes, just solid colour and sometimes rays of emphasis or motion. The sequence where Bloodthirst does his "pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name" bit, as the hidden influence through history is well drawn, but also confusing this speech would have a lot more impact if it were coming from someone we've known to be immortal (like Vandal Savage for instance). The other issue is that everything about this character has been hulking physicality, not the whispering influence behind the scenes. But, Bogdanove seems to draw Doomsday's bony protrusions like no one else, so I'll allow the tangent!On page 14, Bogdanove continues to make a meal out of Beasley's character face, less a man than a collection of crags and folds. Lastly, the shot of Superman standing majestically once Bloodthirst Mxyzpltks out of there is a good one I always like it when Superman is rim-lit by yellows or oranges.
On the whole Spilled Blood didn't do a lot for me. These villains show up, kill an absolute ton of people without Superman preventing it. And then Superman has precious little to do with their ultimate defeat.Hi-Tech gets taken out by Jimmy and Ron, Bloodsport killed himself, and Bloodthirst just randomly winks out, not much worse for wear. The whole story was kind of a big nothing, despite the high body count, and long list of racial epithets in the stories preceding this one.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
Neat shoutout to Mike Mignola at the top of page 16 where Bloodthirst is tossed into an electric billboard reading "Only from the mind of Mignola". I wonder what this was in reference to? [Max: Hmmm, Bloodthirst IS kind of a Mignola-ish design, isn't he? Not a GOOD one, but still.]
I've always thought of Big Belly Burgers as being the in-universe equivalent of McDonald's, but that big ol' sloppy burger Jimmy's munching on is strictly Whopper territory.
As discussed above, Bloodthirst as God of War is just kinda silly, especially against the all-too-serious backdrop of the past couple of issues. We just read 44 pages about how hatred can fester in the heart, and turn into violence. But then we're just casually tossed the notion that the Serbo-Croatian conflict is actually due to the interference of a bondage-gear-wearing alien, and not rising nationalism or decades of ethnic strife (to say nothing of his mention of the Middle East, either).
On that last page, Lex Jr's eyes appear to be a good four-to-five inches apart. [Max: Uh-oh, the clone body is already falling apart… maybe he came down with some kind of plague?]
