Just caught the Blue Beetle trailer, and I was amazed to see Big Belly Burger make an appearance!

Chris, fascinating analysis! I had considered the possibility in the Luthor panel that it was the result of a last-minute lettering decision. After all, he was singing for his guests a few panels earlier. Perhaps Oakley (or maybe Stern) felt Guise's pacing needed to be sped up.




In regard to the rest of your criticism, yes, swiping explains a lot of what Guice is doing. In particular, his art has taken a turn towards realism as of late, but (as you've noted) this correlates with a move towards less action/more inactive poses. Seems like he might be using photo references.

Superman #67 (May 1992)



"Another Panic in the Sky!"

Script: Dan Jurgens
Pencils: Dan Jurgens (layouts); Brett Breeding (finishes)
Inks: Brett Breeding
Colors: Glenn Whitmore
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: B


So, in the wake of a major Superman event in which the villain never had a clear goal nor plan, and his threat to Earth was undefined and existential at best, Jurgens is going to give us a done-in-one story in which that same villain's B plan is a clear danger to Earth and seems far more threatening than that other never explained thing he spent eight issues never getting around to doing.

Weirder still, while Panic in the Sky took great pains to explain that absolutely nobody died and the damage was minimal, we've got people dying left and right this time around:







It was so thoroughly unbelievable that absolutely nobody died and nothing was seriously destroyed during Panic. Why even try to sell us on that if you're just going to start a body count like it's no big deal right afterward?


And yet, the rules surrounding the "swarm" keep changing so that it can look dangerous without killing too many folks. So, while one excuse we're given for why pretty much everyone on Earth isn't dying all at once is that the swarm starts up above and then gradually works its way down:



that's not at all what Jurgens' art is showing us in other panels:



And besides, in the prologue to this issue, with the final remaining family on another planet jumping to their death to avoid the coming swarm, the swarm shows up AND descends fast enough to kill them mid-fall.

Of course, we're also told that the swarm eats through buildings:



...except when that is inconvenient to the story:



Stupid enough as all that is, let me also beg the question: isn't the swarm sent to destroy planets? So, then, why is it only attacking Metropolis and (at times) only attacking Superman?



Oops.


I mean, there are more problems too, like since when does Warworld use/need settlers?



Building and settling isn't really what they do.

Additionally, while previous issues alternated between depicting Warworld's champions as a single race of green invaders:


from Action Comics #675


or as the best champions from any number of worlds and (mostly green-skinned) races, but all wearing the same uniform:


from Superman #66 (also drawn by Jurgens)


they're a rag-tag band of aliens wearing completely different war gear from one another here.




Come on, Jurgens. You can't even be consistent with yourself?


Beyond this, Jurgens does his best to return to the human aspect of this franchise with mixed results. I really like the uncomfortable balance this office is achieving with Lex II, who is self-serving and not to be trusted, but also capable of compassion and almost heroic at times, too:



Sure, he ultimately uses this moment of heroism as leverage to win the public's trust away from Superman:



but it still makes him a more complicated and potentially almost likable villain for Superman than his one-note predessessor who never ever purposefully broke a sweat to accomplish anything.


On the other hand, I don't think anyone in this office is ever going to manage to make me care about Lana Lang and Pete Ross's adventures in DC. While the human-aspect of this series is arguably its finest selling point, it doesn't work the same when there are no superheroics and no fight scenes.





This sort of day-in-the-life soap opera drama might work with characters we are already invested in, but we have absolutely no reason to care about Lana and Pete, and what they are involved in has absolutely nothing to do with anything happening anywhere else in the Superman franchise, so I think this subplot is doomed to fail unless Pete ends up single-handedly taking down political assassins or something.


Finally though, I absolutely adore this little Clark moment enough to forgive this issue the rest of its flaws. Clark and Lois are discussing the first films they ever saw, and Clark's answer is both a clever acknowledgement of how different Superman is from Batman AND a fundamental key to better understanding exactly who this non-Byrne Superman is:



To Kill A Mockingbird is the ultimate story of compassionate, non-violent heroism in the face of hopeless adversity. Atticus Finch is a personal hero of mine. Somehow, I never made the connection until now just how closely Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch resembles Clark Kent:



To be fair, the Adventures of Superman television series long predates this film, so it may have intentionally been channeling Clark Kent (and certainly not the reverse), but darn if the Clark that Jurgens, Breeding, McLeod, Bogdanove, Janke, and Grummett are drawing doesn't look just like a hip-for-the-'90s version of this character.

Man, Superman and I have the same hero. This moment made my year.


Important Details:

1. The Warworld swarm is now following a Lexcorp satellite into the depths of space indefinitely and could foreseeably return.


2. Well, chadwilliam was certainly right. The metal ball that Brainiac launched at Earth at the conclusion of Panic in The Sky is revealed/explained here, and not only was it's intended purpose to be a beacon for the swarm, but it's also definitely too small to be what Doomsday will eventually bust out of:





Minor Details:

1. What was the point of this cheesecake panel with Lana undressing?



It's completely unnecessary to the story.


2. Look, I'm as big a fan of diversity and inclusion as anyone, but how come every time new minor characters are introduced in Suicide Slum lately, it's a black guy and a white guy?

This issue:




Last issue:




Six months ago:





3. And, speaking of race, maybe the same issue where we find out that Atticus Finch and To Kill A Mockingbird strongly shaped Superman's identity is not the time for Superman to choose this nickname for his antagonist:





4. I'm really surprised that Jurgens gives such a big shout-out to Singles (1992), a film that I adored so much as a teenager that I wore out my VHS tape from repeated viewings and had to buy another.



It wasn't exactly a major film that general audiences would know/care about, and it doesn't have any relation to Superman nor to comics in general. Did Jurgens perhaps know writer/producer Cameron Crowe? Crowe was writing for Rolling Stone prior to shifting into film, so perhaps a magazine writer and a comic artist crossed paths somewhere?


Anyway, while this was a deeply flawed issue (surprising considering how well the other titles are doing at this moment), I give it major credit for making Atticus Finch into Superman's Zorro.

Seems like the Superman books would do that a lot in those days. Something would happen in one book, and a week later another book would say contradict it as if it had never happened.

Although usually, it seemed to be whenever a book had something, anything, that might be even slightly moving toward the ballpark of edgy, another book would turn right around and soften it up. This case is a rare reversal, I think.




In one of those panels, they look kind of like Lenny and Carl from The Simpsons.

And in another panel, they look liked Lenny and Carl race-swapped. So there's some diversity for you.



Could be that Jurgens likes some alternative music. But later he was referencing Van Halen long after Van Halen had gone radio-friendly, so this seems like an isolated case.

The books also referenced the Spin Doctors, but I'm pretty sure that only because of their album Pocketful of Kryptonite and its song "Jimmy Olsen's Blues."

And when the books later featured punk bands and name-checked the "riot grrrls" trend, it seemed like another case of just trying to latch onto something hip right as it stopped being hip.

All of which leads me to think that the "Singles" bit was a product placement. After all, it was a Warner Brothers movie.

My work is complete.

I think your being a little hard on Jurgens on this one. The tough talk seems appropriate when he's been caught totally by surprise by alien invaders that, for all he knows, are behind this unexpected final attack on Earth that sort of looks like it's going to win.




That's definitely the part I was thinking of when he said that.



The swarm never really gave him a chance to collect his thoughts. From the moment he suddenly realized it was a lot more menacing and unstoppable than he initially expected, he spent every moment either dodging it, saving others from it, or in a sewer trying to process what a bunch of renegade warriors from Warworld were doing while also being badly wounded and more than a little spooked. I expect my Superman to be better than the rest of us in temperment and thinking, for sure, but I think he deserves a little leniancy on this one.


I will agree that, now that Simonson is stepping it up, Jurgens is beginning to feel like the amateur in the room, but I didn't have a problem with his depiction of Superman.

Yeah, that was a weird flex, though.

I think the theme of killing in comics, in self-defense or not, is a topic that deserves a separate thread.

Of course writers can come up with the most absurd situations where our hero manages to save the day without killing anyone, but when someone decides to use violence as a method of problem solving they have to take into account that he may one day kill someone, accidentally or not .

To say, it's absurd that Batman never manages to kill anyone, not even accidentally. Quite simply, a criminal with a heart disease who suddenly collapses because a giant bat suddenly appears in front of him at night.