Superman #56 (June 1991)
"Red Glass, Part One: Breaking Up"
Script: James D. Hudnall
Pencils: Ed Hannigan
Inks: Will Blyberg
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: Bill Oakley
Grade: B-
The Superman Office appears to be taking time off this month to plan something, but what? Jurgens is working on Armageddon 2001 and just did Superman Annual #3, Stern is working on Action Comics Annual #3 and the prestige format "Superman for Earth", and Jurgens and Ordway are both doing a small amount of art assisting on the upcoming Superman The Man of Steel #1, but what's Ordway's excuse? These last two issues have required less of him as Karl Kessel has been turning in 5 page backup stories, and he isn't writing any of the Superman Office annuals this summer, so what gives? Is this break an opportunity for the team to plan the return of the Krypton Man, or perhaps to take the annual Super Summit? The letter column for this month announces that Jurgens will be taking over the writing of this title and Ordway will be moving to Adventures of Superman; perhaps there is some more restructuring in the works.
Anyway, James Hudnall isn't exactly a fill-in writer. He gave us the excellent
Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography, so it's a pleasure to see him get a chance to write Lex one more time in this issue
(even though it doesn't actually end up being Lex)
and Hudnall is either up on his continuity or getting some quality help from Carlin and/or the others, making references to the Exile storyline, the Day of the Krypton Man storyline, and making a slew of references to past Superman villains. He has done his homework, and this story does not feel like a disruption to the franchise.
However, it does feel awfully familiar. Just last month,
Superman Annual #3 presented us with a future in which Superman has gone mad with power, refusing to believe everyone else when they tell him he's become a monster and a murderer.
Well we kinda' get the exact same thing here:
Like, wasn't it Carlin's job to notice this and say something? Of course, it does feel like the office has been topsy turvy ever since Time and Time Again. Once again, I present my theory that Armageddon 2001 spun out of the original idea for Time and Time Again, forcing the Superman office to do a last minue re-conception of a seven part high profile storyline once DC decided to spin Armageddon 2001 company-wide. So maybe that's where the confusion we're still feeling is coming from. Maybe that's even why the Superman Office is taking a break this month for this storyline.
There isn't much here, yet. It's a very decompressed teaser for the two parts to follow, in which Superman has apparently gone mad with power and doesn't realize it, having killed most of his enemies, allowed injury to bystanders, and apparently gone somewhat insane, completely unaware that any of this has occurred. His encounter with Lois Lane is perhaps the most memorable part of this issue:
Though he does seem decidedly unconcerned with having just murdered his fiance. "Lois? LOIS??!!" might have worked a little more effectively on the heart strings than "Oh weird. I was trying to use X-Ray vision, not heat vision. It isn't what it looks like, folks!".
Clearly, this is all a deception, but the big mystery that will keep us reading into next issue is HOW. Sure, the Jimmy Olsen who was pretending to be Lex Luthor and now plans to kill Superman at the end of the issue is almost certainly the clone that escaped Project Cadmus
last issue,
but is everyone Superman is encountering a clone? Is this all happening at Project Cadmus? That would at least seem to validate the inclusion of the Project Cadmus backstories last issue and this issue. Maybe it's all coming together.
Of course, then there's the title. I absolutely do not recall reading this story as an adolescent (eleven year old me is about a month from quitting the Superman titles and is already half-checked out), but I'm guessing "Red Glass" is a reference to Red Kryptonite?
I swear though, if Superman goes insane and spends ages fighting himself and then working to forgive himself for a third time, I'm really going to be done with this office.
Minor Details:- This is the second time Metallo has been referenced in two months after having been killed off and forgotten way back in
Superman #2. And yet, here is his corpse, and it didn't die the way Metallo died in Superman #2.
Is Metallo coming back?
- Speaking of which, the frustration/anxiety the Superman Office is feeling in trying to find a worthy opponent for Superman now that Lex Luthor is out of the picture and Brainiac's return is still in the works becomes quite apparent here:
- Oh, the Superman Office is still trying to build a Rogues Gallery for Superman, but this is the best they could come up with for this issue:
Luthor, Brainiac, Darkseid, Mxyzptlk, Metallo(?) Prankster(??) and The Joker (!!) as the big players, and Hudnall and Hannigan can't even fill three shelves with the rest. Bloodsport literally had one appearance before he reformed (and he wasn't even super powered), "Otis" would appear to be a reference to the Richard Donner Superman movies, "Nucleon" is not even a DCU character from what I can tell, "Bert" might well be a silly made-up name, and this likely marks Abby Normal's first appearance in a comic book.
To be fair, they miss a few obvious choices -- Blaze, Skyhook, Mongul, Lobo, The Kryptonite Man, Baron Sunday, Mr. Z, and Bizarro and the rogue Kryptonians (if we're resurrecting dead villains anyway), but no, this Office has never prioritized non-Luthor villains, and it's really catching up with them this year.
"Charlie & Company"
Script: Karl Kesel
Pencils: Karl Kesel
Inks: Karl Kesel
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: Bill Oakley
Grade: D+
These backup stories featuring the Newsboy Legion at Project Cadmus continue to annoy me. I've read every Post-Crisis appearance featuring the Newsboy Legion in these titles, and I've read all of Kirby's Fourth World Jimmy Olsen stories, but I still don't get so many of the references nor understand these characters half as well as Kesel expects me to. More importantly, I don't care about them. I'm absolutely not invested in characters I barely know making references I barely understand.
And there's no clear point to these stories. I guess we're setting something up, a clone of the evil professor lurking in the depths of Project Cadmus, a Jimmy Olsen clone having escaped (and likely worked his way into this month's A story), and an angry but inwardly gentle mutant monster also dwelling beneath Cadmus:
I guess it's all going somewhere, so perhaps it's a bit unfair to judge it before seeing it play its hand, but right now I feel excluded and not at all invested.
