Superman: The Man of Steel #38 (November 1994)

Beginning a dramatic new storyline: "DEAD AGAIN!" Which I believe is short for "The Death of Superman 2: Here We Go Again!"

PREVIOUSLY: A fight between Superman and his childhood friend/adulthood enemy Conduit broke open Superman's former tomb, revealing a familiar-looking corpse inside. Now many people are wondering if the corpse is the real Superman, who never came back to life after his run-in with Doomsday, and the long-haired dude we've been following over the past year is another impostor, like the one who turned out to be an evil cyborg. Among those doubters is Perry White, who raises some reasonable points, but Lois offers a compelling counter-argument:

Even someone who just got rescued by Superman is like "hmm, I don't know about this guy who saved me from dying in a horrible plane crash..." Clark tries to take his mind off the subject by writing a nice and thoughtful column about Conduit, who's currently sitting in a cell at S.T.A.R. Labs. The next day, a guard there has the brilliant idea of taunting Conduit by reading him Clark's column just when one of his radiation-spouting hands is free (because it's lunch time).

("Noooo! Why did we have to feed him beans?!")

As you might have guessed, this ends with a bunch of dead guards and Conduit escaping from S.T.A.R. Labs. When Superman hears about it, he rushes over to fight Conduit again -- but first, he makes a phone call. Superman tries to take the fight out of Metropolis, but Conduit's krypto-stench has already weakened him. Conduit hits him with a kryptonite blast, causing Superman to come crashing down on a park. Man, these two are causing a lot of park property damage lately.

Superman ends up buried in the dirt, looking quite defeated. Are we gonna have two separate Superman corpses in this comic? No, because this is where the issue ends. TO BE CONTINUED!

Plotline-Watch:

• It's been a while since I've read this storyline, so I have no memory of what that mystery phone call could be about. I'm gonna assume Clark just remembered he needed to book his biannual dentist checkup and decided to do it right away before he forgot again, otherwise next thing you know it's five years later and the dentist is giving you a deeply disappointed look. Or so I've heard. I go to the dentist every day, personally.

• Maggie Sawyer doesn't think Superman is an impostor, which is good. I'm not convinced Maggie herself isn't an impostor, though, based on how fugly she looks in this issue (see Don Sparrow's section below for a more professional critique of the way she's drawn).

• A few pages are devoted to Man of Steel's current co-star, Superman's Boss's Wife, Alice White. Alice is currently volunteering at the orphanage where Keith the Unlucky Orphan lives -- I mean, lived, since the orphanage burned down during a Conduit attack last issue. Now the kids are staying at a creepy shelter, where Keith has a bit of a meltdown when he thinks he saw his long-missing mom. If only there was a loving older woman around who could adopt him!

• Alice says that Keith gives her a strange feeling of deja vu, like she's "known him before." At one point I wondered if this meant Keith was being possessed by the ghost of Alice's dead son, Jerry Luthor White. But nah, I don't recall Keith holding up any liquor stores, or getting into satanism, or being a little turd in general.

• Elsewhere, Alice (I told you there was a LOT of Alice in this comic) mentions hearing that the rocker Babe donated money to build a new orphanage. Very nice of Babe! Sounds like someone who's definitely not some sort of bloodthirsty monster in secret.

• Upon being hit by the weakened Superman, Conduit says "That it? I been hit by the best, impostor -- and, fella, that ain't you!" As a kid, that always confused me, and not just because of the excessive italics (it's the '90s, everyone talks like that). I thought Conduit was saying he's been hit by the "real" (pre-Doomsday) Superman, but I couldn't figure out when that could have happened. Now I'm guessing he's just saying he's been hit by other super-strong people and this latest punch doesn't compare. Presumably he's fought other superheroes while running Pipeline, but the fights weren't interesting enough to be included in their comics.

Shout Outs-Watch:

Deja vu-filled shout outs to our SUPporters, Aaron, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Kit, Dave Shevlin, Dave Blosser, and Bryan! Why deja vu? Because they saw half of this post a couple of weeks ago, since I wasn't able to finish my part until now and threw them a sneak peek. Join them (and get extra articles, plus the occasional preview) via Patreon or our newsletter’s “pay what you want” mode! NOTE: If you've subscribed recently, check your junk mail for the activation email! Still have a few un-activated subscribers in the free tier.

Anyway, heeeeeeeeeere's Don!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We pick up right where Action #0 left off, with the world (and this cover) seeing an eerie short haired deceased Superman still in his coffin.  In a little bit of art credit misdirection, this issue features a great Bogdanove cover, but the interiors are a guest spot by Steve Erwin (no, not the Crocodile Hunter) with Jackson Guice on inks (they’re credited on the cover, but the interior breakdown of who did what is buried (pun not intended) at the end of a page of text in the Daily Planet newspaper).  The art is mostly serviceable throughout—Guice’s linework keeps it looking familiar, but there are a few gawky facial panels throughout.  Page 6 is a good example of that contrast, with a soaring Superman looking right as rain, and then the next panel with a truly terrible low angle shot of Maggie Sawyer (not helped with the shadow on her face looking more like bruising than tone). [Max: At least the color looks better on the digital copy, for what it’s worth.]

Page 10 features Clark with computer screen light visible on his lenses, which is a nice piece of colouring.

The escape sequence where Conduit disassembles his captors with focused blasts from his whole hand is reminiscent of Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan (who is also radiation based) only (so far) Conduit has the decency to wear some pants for Gosh sakes. Still, there’s a wonky facial expression in there, too.

The hardest luck character in comics (even more than Jimmy) remains Keith Parks and there’s a tragic sweetness about his mystical moment with Alice White, where it seems an apparition of his Mama (who, according to my research, never gets a name) leads him right to Alice’s arms, in a nice bit of foreshadowing. [Max: Speaking of names, the DC wiki calls him Keith Steven Parks, citing 2010's The Essential Superman Encyclopedia, but the Planet article in this issue calls him Keith Stevens... unless there's another Superman-loving orphan named Keith at the orphanage, which isn't far-fetched.]

The full-page splash of Superman tackling Conduit in midair (at great personal expense) is a good one as is a page or two later when Superman’s head snaps back with the painful force of Conduit’s gauntlet blast.

SPEEDING BULLETS:

• S.T.A.R. Labs' very ‘90s uniforms are surpassed in goofiness only by the image of Jakes’ posture, reading the newspaper with his feet up like in a cartoon.  He has a lot of unearned trust in that cage, that’s for sure.  It’s also confusing storywise, why those men in containment suits are locked in with Conduit as he begins to radiate through his bindings.  They didn’t seem to be in there before, and there’s not much explanation. [Max: I assumed they were there to keep a closer watch on Kenny as he had lunch with one free hand, not that it did much good.]

• It’s entirely possible that I wasn’t paying attention in earlier issues, but Clark Kent’s article (read tauntingly by Conduit’s jailers) details that Conduit’s “radiation spouting cables grew from his body”—was that made clear previously? [Max: Nope, in fact I got the impression from previous issues that he got the cables from the CIA experiment, though it’d make sense if that bit of info was classified.]

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