Episode 108 - The Reign of the Supermen (Comic) with Zach Herring

Superman defined the modern superhero, but his death and subsequent impersonation by 4 pretenders opened the doors for him to be reassessed through a lens of a redefined modernity. Zach Herring returns to discuss the uncertain time of the Reign of the Supermen!

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Transcription

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00:00
Case
And I have not read all of them. I've read a lot of them, but there's just so many. And I have a vague idea of how it ends. I think I read it, but I never owned the last one in that group. But it was just like it was the annual for each book. So, yeah, they kind of came out in order, I guess, every couple of weeks. But if you're buying them in back issues, you have no idea which one comes first or anything like that. Because it was just like the annual that year for this book. And it was roughly all at the same time.

00:28
Zach Herring
Wow. Okay. That's super interesting. Yeah, interesting editorial mandate, especially as they were kind of like, that felt like muddying the waters a little bit. Right, for these.

00:40
Case
Yeah, because that's the same thing that's going on with the reign of the Superman thing, which is like, let's see who's popular for these.

00:47
Zach Herring
Exactly. Exactly. Super interesting. Okay, cool. Yeah, that's great.

00:51
Case
All right.

00:51
Zach Herring
That actually clears up something. On page four, I think you had.

00:55
Case
A note of, like, what the fuck is the story?

00:57
Zach Herring
Yeah.

01:24
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm case Aiken, and as always, I'm joined by my co host, J. Mike Falson.

01:30
Jmike
Welcome back, everybody. Glad to have you guys here with us today.

01:33
Case
Yeah. It is the day that we've been waiting for the triumphant return of Superman, sort of. But dollar store, we knew that the longest running superhero comic of all time, the original superhero comic that is still somehow going to this day, was not going to let its main character die and just never come back. That just wasn't going to be the case. So we knew he was coming back. The thing is, it was coming back kind of in a weirder way, just for fun sees. And we figured, on that note, we should have someone back on we haven't talked to in a while. So we are joined for the return of Zach Herring.

02:14
Zach Herring
Woo. Hello, everybody, and thanks so much for having. Is. This is the first time I've actually gotten to talk about Superman and DC.

02:23
Case
That's true.

02:23
Zach Herring
No, actually, DC, we did the justice society. But this is the first time I just talk about Superman. And I'm super excited. Super excited. Get it? To talk about Superman. Yeah.

02:35
Case
You've been on for Superman analogues.

02:37
Zach Herring
Exactly. The whole time.

02:38
Case
Talking about Apollo and Dynaman and all that. But now we're actually getting to talk about Superman. And not just like any Superman. We're talking about the triangle era of Superman. At this point, the 90s, they'd settled into sort of a workflow after John Byrne restarted the franchise in then left the books. And what was going to be the direction of this new type of character? Well, it was a character who had a lot of books running simultaneously. And they were like, let's do big stories that we can kind of focus on our particular niches, but at the same time have big metaplots. And also, this is the time where all of a sudden, the comic investors bubble got really big and people wanted to do big events.

03:19
Case
And arguably, this is, like, the, er, example of it all, because the death of Superman was a huge event that had actual real world national news that drove up values. They had, like, collector's edition version that had the badge, like the armband that you would put around your arm to celebrate Superman's death. And then they treated it like a real thing. I was, like, reading the newstime bonus magazine that was put out. And I think some of the quotes by real people are real quotes because there's, like, one from William Shatner talking about how when he was a kid, he put on a cape to be like Superman. And in universe, that doesn't. So I think it was actually people talking about what it felt like to have Superman die.

04:02
Case
And then the news shifted gears when they announced that he was coming back, but he was coming back times four, because it became a whole thing about, like, oh, man, Superman's coming back. Which one's the real all? I read this in post, but I was incredibly aware of it when it came out because the news covered it. Disney Adventures had things about Superboy's coming out. Yeah, I know, right? Just like any sort of nerd outlet, which is funny that Disney Adventures was kind of like one of my gateways into that. But video game magazines and obviously wizard talked in great detail about all this. It's a big event for me.

04:45
Case
But then it was the big thing that drove up value or drove up sales of a thing expecting value to rise because it was in the wake of action comics number one, selling for some crazy amount of money. And then it didn't do because everyone had a copy. It didn't need to be valuable.

05:02
Zach Herring
Do we know how many of this printed like it sold?

05:07
Case
It's a huge. If I needed to look up the death of Superman itself, it was pretty high, but I couldn't tell you off the top of my head. And then all the other issues are, like, all over the place on that.

05:16
Zach Herring
Yeah, it was millions. So the reason I ask is because this action comics, this first issue is the first comic I read, I feel like everybody has two first comics. They have the first comic that they bought themselves, that they picked, and then if they're lucky, they have the comic that their parents gave them that they're like, I like this. My mom, I think this is one of the few. This was definitely an investment that she bought for. She was like, I will buy this for an investment because it came in the plastic sleeve. This is the first comic book, and I read it until the COVID fell off. And so I'm sorry, mom, for ruining your investment.

05:56
Zach Herring
Parents did not do comics, but this was the comic that was, like, this thing that immediately connected all the dots in my head in terms of visual storytelling and all that stuff. If it was big enough that my parents bought it, then I think it was probably a heavily saturated market at that point.

06:14
Case
Yeah. I think I had two copies at one point of the Adventures of Superman because I had one to read and one to collect. Yeah. And that was later. It was me hunting it down, and I could hunt it down because there were a lot available. It's kind of like trying to hunt down a copy of Sonic two. You can do it.

06:32
Jmike
I still have mine.

06:33
Case
Yeah. Or like, the Super Mario Bros. Duck hunt cartridge. Yeah, you could find.

06:43
Zach Herring
You could find it.

06:43
Case
Although at this point, it might have shifted.

06:46
Zach Herring
At this point, we're all just kind of. I mean, the joke was, back in the day, the joke was like, well, you and everyone else is collecting this for money. What are you relying on? And the joke was like, well, I'm hoping that your parents throw yours out. And at this point, it might actually be true. The timeline is getting long enough where I wonder if there are enough people just kind of, like, ditching these to where the few pristine editions left will be worth money at some point, and.

07:14
Case
Even just poor storage. Recently, I had the fairly devastating moment where when I went to college, my parents put a lot of my comics in storage, and I had checked on them a few times, and then there was a couple year gap, like when I moved up to New York, where I didn't really have a chance to just confirm that everything was good. And apparently there was a water leak that even my parents weren't aware of. A lot of it was on the ground. A bunch of it weren't just, like, regular boxes. And even the stuff that was bagged got destroyed.

07:44
Zach Herring
Damn, that sucks, dude.

07:46
Case
Yeah. And there's a lot surviving and a lot that's fine for reading, just not like the collection sale value would be completely gone. So those I'm fine with. But, yeah, it kind of sucks that a lot of my original run of impulse, which was one of the big comics I really cared about, bad enough that I'm like, well, I could maybe make it work in a binder with individual pages or something. Time is going to destroy a lot of the original copies eventually, and that will eventually make some of these valuable, like, at this point. But the problem is everyone wanted it to be valuable immediately.

08:23
Zach Herring
Immediately.

08:24
Case
And it just wasn't going to be.

08:25
Zach Herring
And it wasn't. No.

08:26
Case
Well, so you mentioned the bag part for that. And each of those books had a bagged first issue with. Then it was like a two cover thing where it was like an outer cover that had a cutout so you could see the s. So it actually was kind of like the episode art that we do for the show. And then it was just like a solid color. I think it was like green for action comics. I forget exactly, but it was like color that kind of made more sense for each of the characters. And then you opened it up, then you opened it, and then there was a second cover, and that had this full page spread of each of the Superman or waist up kind of like spread. So it was like a big close up on the s.

09:05
Case
But you could see all the details of their body, with the exception of Superboy, who was turned backwards. So you could see the s on his jacket. So you can see he was wearing a leather jacket because that's the part that it's like, oh, he's cool. He's edgy, and he's like, turning back.

09:21
Zach Herring
He was so cool.

09:22
Case
Oh, my God, he was so cool. We will get to Superboy.

09:26
Zach Herring
Superboy and how, I think this is how Jonathan Kent should dress today. I'm just going to tease that everybody listen for 4 hours, and then we'll get.

09:39
Case
So, it's so cool. So, Zach, I had been presenting this hypothesis that the four Superman are a commentary by the Superman writing team about the nature of comics at this point to varying degrees. There's also an element of them just testing the waters of, like, which Superman do people gravitate towards? Which one's the cool one? Although clearly they never were going to be like, and the original is never coming back because rereading it now, knowing how it actually plays out, I'm like, oh, no. They really do set up all the things for Superman coming back in that first issue of action comics that opens this arc. But we had made a point that Louise Simonson is the writer on Superman. Man of Steel. And that her previous big gig was doing New Mutants, which she was ousted by Rob Liefeld on.

10:32
Case
And I can imagine her having an axe to grind in discussions of some of the Image era comics.

10:37
Zach Herring
That's crazy. I didn't know that. That is fantastic context and actually makes Mana still slightly better for me. It's still pretty cringe, but it does make it a little bit. It still makes.

10:49
Case
There's a thing man of Steel will have to talk about. I mean, obviously we're talking about all.

10:53
Zach Herring
These, but we're going to talk about all these.

10:54
Case
There's things going on.

10:56
Zach Herring
Man of Steel. Oh, my God. I took pictures and sent to my friends going like, look at this shit.

11:04
Case
We'll get to. Because I think there's a lot of stuff that doesn't hold up very well but had the best of intentions at the time.

11:09
Zach Herring
Yes, it did.

11:13
Case
But yeah, so we've got cool hit like 90s superhero superboy, who is wearing a jacket, which has become kind of the cool thing for stuff like, this is the era of the X Men having jackets. This is the era like the jacket Avengers. This is all post animal man. And before that one, pin up done with miracle man wearing a jacket that everyone gravitated towards. So it's that era where they're adding, like, fashion accessories to the characters and just needless belts everywhere straps. So that's one thing.

11:44
Zach Herring
He's got that mid thigh strap, which has to stay for the resurrect for when Jonathan Kent adopts it in 2023. And then the amazing circular glasses, which he should never take off, even indoors, because that's an amazing look.

11:57
Case
Yeah. Oh, God. There's a lot of stuff where it's like, the fashion choices do not work today anymore or have started to come back around in some cases. I was going to say so much.

12:10
Zach Herring
Some of it put him in crocs and he looks like every other Gen Z or that I see at broad.

12:16
Case
Superboy definitely would have a TikTok today.

12:18
Zach Herring
He would. And it would be great.

12:20
Case
Yeah, no, absolutely. And he'd levitate the phone with his telekinesis once he realizes he has it. And it would be just like that scene from Chronicle where Dane de Hahn is just like having phones float around him while he broadcasts. But then you get steel, who is like, classic armor guy. We've got the cyborg Superman. And how many fucking characters were being introduced at that time that were cyborgs? Look at the image slate. Look at Bloodsport. Look at all of anything from Todd McFarlane.

12:51
Zach Herring
Superman looks like cable basically Superman, if cable looks like cyborg Cyclops, then Cyborg Superman is just kind of like, looks like a DC riff off of that aesthetic, which is basically, yeah, and then.

13:05
Case
You have eradicator, who has a very of the time center column color thing. That's the legion of superheroes at the time that was completely across the board standard for their outfits. That was very much like an early 90s design convention. Not that it had never existed before, but it was just like, that had become popular at that point. But then his characterization as this hardcore, I'm going to kill everyone kind of thing, I think, is a commentary on a lot of the post punisher antihero movements that had been occurring in comics. And so you can see that there is a lot of commentary about comics seeing, like, all right, well, which things works and opportunities to reintroduce stuff that the team had felt that they had lost in the wake of the Silver Age being reset to the John Byrne era.

13:54
Case
Superboy is a big part of that. They had finally figured out a way to have Supergirl not be completely insane to discuss, but even then, they hadn't quite nailed her yet. We'll get to some of the other cool additions that we get there, but it's fun to have those elements and to play fake outs with everyone. And obviously, from the marketing standpoint, it's really good to be like, which of these four is Superman? Even though in the actual comics there's only the question for two, because it's very clear, like, yeah, Superboy is a clone, and that has some interesting stuff going on there. And then Steele is very explicitly not Superman. Like, he's like, I'm literally not Superman. My name is John Henry Irons. I have a suit of armor I built.

14:33
Zach Herring
It's something I really liked about both Steel and liked. It's almost like the Everyman. Basically. It's a commentary on how much of an inspiration Superman has been. And then they basically allow these grassroots supermen to kind of, like, rise up and take his place. Honestly, it kind of reminds me of that series that was five or six years ago, Robbins, plural, where it was like, robbins became a thing that everyone, it became like a symbol that everybody kind of inspired to and all really. I actually really like that. I think there's, like, a really interesting thread that you could continue to pull even today on that side.

15:14
Case
Yeah, there's definitely, like, bibo super. Is that to the point where I love every side story of Bibbo doing just, like, good deeds in the name of Superman? Awesome stuff.

15:24
Zach Herring
It's so great.

15:25
Case
Steele, I will say when we're saying he's the everyman, he is like a six foot five Adonis who is also a rocket scientist.

15:33
Jmike
He's like, 610.

15:34
Zach Herring
Yeah.

15:37
Case
I mean, the suit's got to add some height because he's so big. There's like one point where he's, like, holding a guy up against the wall and he's got, like, 3ft on it.

15:44
Zach Herring
Right. No, you're right.

15:46
Case
And it's not supposed to be like a small guy. It was like a gangster. But I do agree that it is the idea of, like, a human could attain this. While it is sophisticated weapons that he's developing, he is still a person. And arguably he is like a literal superman, a superhuman being. He is a genius. He's a physical specimen, but he can't to compete. But he is able to compete with the likes of the eradicator. He has to use his tools. And that's, I think, so cool. And then there's a lot of. We'll get to it in a.

16:25
Zach Herring
To. I want to dovetail into what you're saying there, where it's like each of these different interpretations of Superman. So steel is both the everyman, but also I feel like if you had a what if book and it was like, what if Bruce Wayne tried to be Superman? You would get something really similar to.

16:39
Case
He's this.

16:39
Zach Herring
He's this athletic, perfect person. And even the art motifs, which I love, I thought the art in steel was kind of really interesting and kind of like, kind of future facing for its time. There are moments where steel is hunched over a building looking like Batman. He has the cape kind of like blowing in the wind and everything. And there's moments where I was like, this looks like Superman posing as Batman, which I thought was really interesting.

17:08
Case
Yeah, absolutely. There's a real getting back to basics element, actually kind of with all of them, or especially, I would say, steel and the eradicator. And then to a degree of Superboy, is getting back to the basics of Superboy. But Bachdanov, the artist on man of Steel, has a very golden age style or a lot of love for golden age stuff, like he would later do when they did the arc where they were each set in different eras of Superman. He did the golden age stuff. And it was like, yeah, that looks exactly like what you want to think. Like how you want to remember golden age art. And there's a bunch of shots where steel is, like, flying. Like the shot where he picks up Lois. He's got literally a golden age style leap to the frame.

17:51
Case
And I think there's a lot of points of like, yeah, we're getting back to the basics of Superman is stopping people from getting executed, stopping wife beaters, stopping low level crimes that the police won't touch. He's getting in there. And I think those are really good elements there. And I think there's something also kind of like that with the eradicator when we get into this more lethal kind of enforcer, like a more brutal Superman, but taken even more extreme. So I think both are kind of doing interesting takes there. And then when we get to Superboy, like, man, Superboy is like such a love letter to Silver Age stuff, but being like, but now it's the 90s, bro.

18:26
Zach Herring
Yeah, it's the Brady Bunch movie. Superboy, it's like we're taking something, but then we're updating it for all the kids who are now like.

18:37
Case
And then there's Cyborg, who is there. And part of that is that he doesn't look, let's start at the beginning of this, because we want to talk about each issue. Because the arc that we're talking about is effectively the first two issues of each of the books of Superman running. Because that's the last point where we don't get into the real return of Superman. And then we're also going to talk about the two annuals that take place during this time, which is the man of Steel annual and the action comic. The Superman no subtitle annual. And then next time, the action comics and the adventures of Superman annual. I keep wanting to call it Superboy.

19:17
Zach Herring
I do too. Yeah.

19:21
Case
The story opens with multiple catch ups of, like, all right here. Is this Superman getting on this? It's like little sneak previews for each of them. It was at the end, I believe, of the previous of the Superman five or adventures of Superman 500. But we get quick snippets for each. So we get steel emerging from. I'm going to call him Steel because I can't help it. It's such a perfect name for him. John Henry Irons. We get him emerging from a destroyed construction site saying, I got a soft doomsday looking like a goddamn giant. While gang fighting is going on. We get a mugger who gets, like, zapped to all heavens by a Superman who has the cool visor look, we get the clone escaping and he says, like, don't ever call me Superboy, which is a running theme for this whole thing.

20:11
Case
And then he takes it on pretty, like, he's pretty cool. Once he actually goes for it. And then we get the vague Superman shows up to the plaque being like, here is where Superman fell. And then he burns it away and it's revealed that it's actually a cyborg version of Superman. Gasp. Shockingly, the one who looks the most evil is the one who's most evil in this.

20:29
Zach Herring
Gasp.

20:32
Case
And I don't have a lot to say about each of those. Probably the one that matters the most from a story standpoint. Well, man of Steel sets up the gang warfare stuff that would become the major subplot of that arc. But it doesn't really go like, you get caught up pretty well on it. The adventures of Superman one has a lot of interesting stuff going on because they talk about how he's Project 13 or like that clone that they talk about the implants. They start setting up the mystery of how they successfully clone Superman here. And I think there's more actual, worthwhile exposition. Whereas some of the other ones are just like, here's a quick scene with our character. That one's much more like, for example. So Superboy punches out this grate to escape.

21:15
Case
And as they're leaving, one of the teen newsboy Legion is like, oh, fascinating. A blow should have dented that great. But it seems to only be damaged by the impact of it hitting the rock surface that it was knocked to. And what that is doing is it's setting up that Superboy actually is not super strong, that he has tactile telekinesis and that anything he touches, he's able to manipulate with his telekinetic aura. And so he's not actually punching a thing so much as touching it and causing telekinetically it to be hurled away from him, which I think is a really cool detail. And it's really fun that they're setting it up all the way back here.

21:51
Zach Herring
Yeah, it's also, I mean, let's look back at cable again. Right like that. Ninety s the thing. Telekinesis and using telekinesis for super strength and all that. Also, these newsboys in this first issue, is that a reference to the Kirby newsboys?

22:06
Case
Yes.

22:06
Zach Herring
Okay, cool.

22:07
Case
They are clones of the Kirby newsboys.

22:09
Zach Herring
What? Okay, that makes sense.

22:10
Case
Yeah, they'd be newspapers. The original Kirby newsboys are the scientists at Cadmus. And they clone themselves as a test project so that they could then successfully clone Guardian, which is why he's still alive.

22:22
Zach Herring
I love it. I love that. That's fantastic. Okay, cool. That's super helpful. I was wondering about that.

22:26
Case
These books love the Jack Kirby stuff. They love it a lot. And then this is a good point to note that. So this is when Jerry Ordway has left the adventures of Superman and Carl Keesel has come on as the writer. And now Kiesel and grummet have gone on to do tons of stuff together as collaborators. And a lot of that has been very Kirby influenced. Like, they did a lot of very kirby heavy stuff when they did Superboy. And then they would go on to do lots of other books, such as Section Zero, which is like the biggest love letter to the Fantastic Four you could imagine, where it's like an area 51 style fantastic Four book. And it's a lot of fun.

23:03
Zach Herring
I'm adding this to my to read list now. That sounds fantastic. Is it like an image comic or what?

23:10
Case
I think it ultimately was published under image. It was like a self published. It was like that gorilla press or whatever. That was like Mark way did. Empire, I think was the name of the book. It was a bunch of small imprints that I think ultimately settled under image, although may have been dark horse a day's image.

23:27
Zach Herring
God, this looks great. Okay. All right. Adding that to my to read list for 2023. Thank you.

23:33
Case
But then we get on to the first issue of action comics in this run. And this is. It's actually, I think, wonderfully written from the standpoint of deceiving you to think that Superman himself, that Kal El has been recreated. But then, in retrospect, seeing how it is absolutely not the case, I think they do a wonderful job of having this fake out so that you, the reader, if you're reading this book, you're like, oh, yeah, Superman's back.

24:03
Zach Herring
Yeah, absolutely. This was also. It's important to. Right. Like, he definitely looks the most evil, but they sold him as the most. I think the Eradicator is probably the most evil of the super, or at least like the most antihero of the Superman. He just seemed, gosh darn it. He seemed like he had a heart of gold there at the start.

24:27
Case
Well, yeah, the Cyborg Superman is ultimately revealed to be the most evil. He's trying to pretend to be the best, but he looks like the Terminator.

24:39
Zach Herring
He does.

24:39
Case
And then the eradicator is like, I mean, eradicator has, like, cool stuff. Why don't we just talk about the Eradicator costume for a second?

24:46
Zach Herring
Because it's awesome.

24:48
Case
I really like it. It's hard for Superman specifically to be the symbol of hope and the idea that they're trying to do with the black on the outside, I do understand as being like, it's this darkness to him. But here's the thing we've seen in future state. The Mark Russell written story, the one where it's set like old Superman and old Lois, like, doing a diplomatic mission to a planet that to Lexor, Lex Luthor's planet. He's got the same costume, but with white instead of black. And it looks fucking dope.

25:20
Zach Herring
Really?

25:21
Case
I haven't seen really good.

25:23
Zach Herring
I'll check that out. Yeah, I think it's. Of all of them, in terms of modern aesthetics, I would say, like, timeless superhero looks, I would honestly say the eradicator sands the glasses is, like, the one that holds up the best. And even with the glasses are very, like, 90s. But oh, my God, there's some amazing images, this one. And I'm going to just hold up the bit where you can see the people. The reflection of the television in his.

25:51
Case
Yeah, that shot right there is great.

25:53
Zach Herring
Oh, my God. That is burned. I would say every panel of this first issue is etched into my brain. I will forget the names of loved ones before I forget some of these panels. But that one especially is just like. I feel like I've drawn this panel multiple times without actually knowing, realizing I've drawn it. It's just like it's so heavily influenced me. And it's all because of the costume, really. That design for eradicators is so good.

26:21
Case
I'm a huge sucker for a vertical stripe. I love it. I realize that it doesn't look that great in real life because I very slimming, cosplayed in costumes that had vertical stripes. And they even just weird positions will sometimes not look right. It's the hardest one to translate into a real world anatomy without it sometimes just being a weird line because your body turned in a weird direction, or you sat down and all of a sudden that vertical stripe is now like some sort of weird ampersand symbol.

26:52
Zach Herring
And I think if you look at the movies, that's one of the first things they get rid of is the vertical stripe. I'm just thinking, like, wolverine, they got rid of that. They kind of got away from there. There's a couple of others where I.

27:03
Case
Feel impulse on the flash TV show. It's hard to make. So I think there's a compromise to be had where you get it on the torso and then maybe break for the pants or something like that.

27:15
Zach Herring
Yeah, dude.

27:17
Case
But on the page, I love it. I love it so much. I wish he had boots. Instead of the stripe continuing all the way to the toes. I do like having that, have it a little bit of a breakup. But I love the giant s that seems to be like a plate that attaches to him. And in fact, the notes at the back of the trade, which I love. Talk about that. It should be some sort of, like, magnetic thing attaching to his own energy field. I think that looks great. And you know what? Energy blasts from his hands on Superman looks appropriate for the era. I would argue that this Superman specifically is very similar to majestic, but I would not be surprised if there's some kind of commentary going on.

27:58
Zach Herring
Oh, that's a great call. And I also love Mr. Majestic, specifically the Ed McGinnis era. I don't think anyone draws better superheroes than Ed McGinnis. And specifically, that majestic McGinnis stuff was amazing.

28:12
Case
Yeah, but that was Jim Lee's take on a more cold, aggressive Superman who is very logical, like, nope. For military victory, we have to do this thing here, and here. And I will admit that I don't know the exact timeline on this. Could that be a response to it? Very easily could have been like, this came out first by, like, a year or two years. Something to that effect. I'm not sure. I'm not looking it up right now. I'm just saying that in terms of the zeitgeist and where were having discussions of Superman, that colder kind of approach was out there. We know that it was a thing from the 80s already, and so the fact that it became mainstream in the 90s is not surprising.

28:53
Case
There is a straight line from miracle man to a lot of this stuff that I think is pretty evident. And it makes sense that we'd have that kind of commentary about, like, yeah, we have a superman who is very law and order and dark. And grim. And grim. Dark. Hey, yeah. But in that specific way where it's like, oh, I'm going to be kind of, like, hardline punishing everyone he's known for the things that are the closest to war crimes here.

29:25
Zach Herring
Yeah, absolutely. He should be arrested. There are multiple things he does that he should get arrested for. That's pretty grim for in his punisher run in some of these.

29:39
Case
Yeah, exactly. Some of the stuff he does is, man. Like, Frank Castle would probably go like, God, that was too much, man.

29:48
Zach Herring
Take it down a notch. When the guy who needs to take it down a notch tells you to take it down a notch, you probably should go two notches.

29:56
Case
If John Barenthal on his podcast would be like, that was a really extreme take. I think that was too.

30:01
Zach Herring
Exactly.

30:03
Case
But I think the reason they did that for, particularly this book, why is each book doing the Superman that they're doing? And I think having action comics be the book where we have the most compelling case for him to actually be Superman. Because we are with this character as he is a reconstituted intelligence. And he goes to the body of Superman and seemingly unites his soul with the body. And it's just this horribly traumatized by the process. But he's interacting with kryptonian robots. He's operating out of the fortress of Solitude. He looks like Superman. The visor is one thing that they use to sort of differentiate his face, but if that wasn't the thing, he would just look like a fascist version of Superman.

30:51
Zach Herring
Yeah, absolutely. You could see him squaring off against red sun. Honestly.

30:58
Jmike
Yeah, totally see that happening.

31:00
Case
And I think they could get away with that take of Superman by way of us seeing him as the actual reincarnated Superman. And I think it gets weird when we start talking about Cyborg, who has a lot of compelling evidence also. And there are moments where we have his internal monologue, which doesn't make any sense, but that version, we never see the story behind him. We're not riding with him being like, oh, yeah, no, Superman was reincarnated by his rocket ship or whatever. There's no moment of the body being resurrected there. Because it happens in this book. We just have a sleight of hand going on here so that we don't get all the details right. But we really think we do. This weekend, we've been introducing. We're visiting my wife's family and her mom had never seen knives out.

31:46
Case
So we did marathon of knives out in class. Onion. And it's that kind of bait and switch, whodunit kind of stuff going on here in terms of like, no, you're very convinced that we're with Superman and he is traumatized and has gone dark. That's what is going on in this book.

32:01
Zach Herring
I totally see that. And it's dueling narratives, which is kind of a Rashimani sort of thing, honestly. Which for a DC comic in the 90s who are really just trying to goose sales with limited edition special stuff, that's kind of interesting. It's actually a really interesting approach for them to take.

32:20
Case
Yeah. God, can you imagine if all four of the Superman were presented as being legitimately Superman?

32:26
Zach Herring
Yeah, that'd be really cool. They could have done that with Superboy.

32:29
Case
I was going to say, if they made steel, a robot instead of a person. They probably could have gone even further on that, like, if he was the intellect of Superman or something.

32:37
Zach Herring
What they could have done with steel, if they wanted to keep it a separate person, is just have, with his dying breath, Superman says, like, you have to protect the city now or something like that, like a deathbed, like passing of the mantle or something like that, which I think would be kind of interesting.

32:53
Case
Yeah, they have an element of that. But I'm just saying in terms of the mystery, because the mystery only really exists with, between the two, the eradicator and with Superman. And the eradicator is the one where they tease us as if it actually is Superman. We see the kryptonian robots working frantically in the fortress. It opens with scientists being like, man, there's a lot of weird shit happening over in that area recently, which I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess it is pretty recent that the fortress would have been established while it's been a couple of years at this point in the comics. When I say a couple, I mean, like, literally like two. It's only been two or three at this point because it was 19, 86. 87 when man of Steel happened. And we get the relaunch of Superman.

33:37
Case
This is 1993, so we're talking about six years total. And the fortress was established when the eradicator came around, which was part of the original post crisis war world story with Mongol. And that happened after or as part of the exile arc. So, yeah, I'd say it was probably about three years into the run because 88 was when Byrne left the book, and that was before any of this happened. So, yeah, like, you know, two or three. This is a lot sooner after the man of Steel relaunch than some people remember because so many comics came out because he had four simultaneously running books. But so scientists note that the fortress of solitude has all this electromagnetic energy going on, and it's crazy and it's weird.

34:26
Case
And the kryptonian robots in the fortress, who we've established, and we know who they are, we know Calyx, we know this setting, they reconstitute this kryptonian intelligence, and they're talking about it as if it's the master. And then every time where they would directly contradict it, they get cut off when he's like, what happened? Well, and before they have a chance to say specifically that he died at Superman's hands, he's like, no, wait, I'll just research it myself. And he brings up the news report of Superman dying. So it's wonderful subterfuge in terms of setting that all up. And then this intelligence flies off and encounters, goes to the coffin of Superman.

35:09
Case
And it's really good that the shot where he goes to engage with the body, which previously the eradicator has had to utilize the kryptonian form before he had possessed Superman in his first real attempt to take over the world, and had later created an energy construct that looks very much like an inverted version of this. It was black within white glowing stuff. So we've seen all that before. So when he goes to the body of Superman, though, and he forms his new body, he's standing directly in front of the coffin at every point, so he can't see in and see that the body of Superman is still there. And then he just flies off. And it's because he's also not fully aware, like, he takes the body here. Also, I was looking at this because there's a later point where they talk.

35:55
Case
I think it's in the next trade. I didn't remember seeing it on this part of the read where they talk about how the stone pedestal that the coffin is sitting on became shorter by like 3ft. And I was, like, trying to see if the art supports it. And I can't really tell, but it's because he absorbs the mass of the stone pedestal to create the form that he is currently occupied in. Because he's a construct, he's a golem. Which, again, gets back to, like, there is some back to the basics kind of stuff going on here with the golden age Superman. And there was this idea of the Siegel Schuster Superman being this representation of the jewish golem.

36:33
Zach Herring
I'm actually reading Cavalier and clay right now, which is like, basically heavily features into that. It's basically taking that and then building a whole alternative world around it and. Yeah, fascinating. Interesting. Yeah, really interesting read of Superman.

36:49
Case
But that's not the only Superman that we're introduced to in this book, because then right after that, after we saw this really emotional moment during the world without Arc, where Bibbo closes down his bar and prays that the world can be a better place, because he really misses Superman. And this is the point where he really is dealing with some trauma, like he has some PTSD here. He was desperately trying to save his friend and failed. And now he takes all this merch that is like in universe Superman. Merch that would be sold for charity money and decides to dress up as Superman and go out and help people. And I love it because he's just in a t shirt and athletic shorts and, like, jogging leg or, like, leggings underneath it?

37:31
Zach Herring
Yes. Like the boxing pants. Like the everlast boxing pants. He's kind of got a spare tire.

37:36
Case
Oh, God. It is.

37:38
Zach Herring
It's kind of got a spare tire going on, like, squeezed into the boxing pants. And I'm just like, I want a comic about Bibo. This is amazing.

37:48
Case
And I love that Bibo is like, he's a tough guy and he's very strong and he's very big, but he is also fat. And I like it. He looks like a dock worker because he is.

37:58
Zach Herring
Exactly. You were talking about how Steele is like, the Adonis, right. Bibo is like the everyman person who's doing that. This is, again, one of those images that's burned into my memory. I remember seeing this as a kid going like, what is this? What is going on? Why is he dead? Who is this guy? This is such a good shot of him. And just the determination of trying to make the world a better place with his fists and not much else. And his boxing shorts. His adorable boxing shorts.

38:38
Jmike
At first, I thought his shoes were wonder woman's shoes because the stars and stripes in the back.

38:42
Zach Herring
Yeah.

38:43
Jmike
Wait a second.

38:44
Zach Herring
You know what that makes it better is he was just like, I couldn't find the Superman shoes. They were sold out, but they had these wonder Woman's. And it's kind of the same colors. So it's like. That makes it even better.

38:57
Case
Yeah, because it's all, like, store bought stuff, which I really.

39:02
Zach Herring
Exactly like.

39:03
Case
I love that they talk about how Supergirl was trying and gangbuster was trying and both of them couldn't really do enough because stuff has just gotten bad. Like, Superman used to be around and so, not that metropolis was the worst place in the world ever before, but people had gotten used to being afraid of Superman as a force of good in the space. And now it's just like open season right now, and it's 1993. And there's definitely some conversations about LA riots and stuff going on here that we'll be talking about shortly. But at the moment, at least, it informs the general sense of where crime was in the country at the time.

39:35
Zach Herring
Yeah, man, Biebo is great.

39:39
Case
Yeah. But then we get this reconstituted Superman. Like, we see him in his visor for the first time. And he talks about how light burns his eyes, but that his powers are different and changed because of the process. But he still has powers greater than an ordinary man. And I feel like this is a good bit of internal monologue, where he convinces himself that he is Superman, even though he. We know that he takes the body of Superman just now and that he set him up in this regeneration matrix. So we know that there are moments where he's acting according to his programming and then moments where he starts to be like, no, I'm Superman.

40:14
Zach Herring
Yeah. He starts to fool himself, basically. You tell yourself a lie long enough, you start to believe it. This is essentially what's happening with him.

40:20
Case
But we get him flying around and realizing that his energy blast can just destroy everything. And then we get the shot of him looking at all the news, and this is the shot you mentioned, Zach, of the visor, reflecting all of the horror of the world. Like, it's like all this news broadcast stuff all together reflected there. Really great shot.

40:39
Zach Herring
And you have the crowd shouting, Superman. And then he have that. He just says one thing. He says, I hear you. And then he flies off, starts wrecking people, and it's awesome.

40:51
Jmike
It's kind of like that Mr. Incredible shot where he's like, it's showtime.

40:54
Zach Herring
Yeah, exactly. This is like one of those perfect. This is one of those perfect last panel page turns, and it looks so good.

41:06
Case
Yeah. And then, like, the shot of the eradicator. Spoiler. It's the eradicator. The shot of the eradicator flying out, leaving the fortress.

41:16
Zach Herring
In the sketches, they call him eradicator, so they're spoiling it even in the back material.

41:21
Case
Well, and super hinted at throughout this all, like, the second issue, almost every time that he's in the fortress, they're like, are you sure you don't want to put on the eradicator outfit? Are you sure you don't want to put on these clothes? But when he flies off, we get this great shot of the vertical stripe outfit design there, which I think looks so cool, but it also does feel more like an image book at this point. There are some complicated details of it that are just like. It's part of this more artist centric kind of approach to comics that had become popular in the early 90s. But then he stops at bank, like, some bank robbers and, like, man or not bank robbers, like the ones assaulting the woman, and he bursts through the wall and all that.

42:02
Case
And that feels like classic Superman right there. But then what doesn't feel like classic Superman is he fucking kills them.

42:09
Zach Herring
Superman is dead. He's like, no, you are. Actually, I'll say this 90s action had some amazing one liners, and Superman eradicator. Superman is full of them.

42:20
Case
Oh, yeah. He has a dry sense of humor. Oftentimes, quipping of like, that was the wrong decision. You can't be Superman. No, you are.

42:32
Zach Herring
You can't be Superman. He's dead. No, you just. It's like he could be saying, cool off, Dennis. And it would totally fit. He could have, like, all of Schwarzenegger's lines, one liners, his action movies. And it would totally fit with the eradicators vibes.

42:48
Case
Yeah, but with, like, a guess.

42:51
Zach Herring
Absolutely.

42:53
Case
Because I think that's the take they're trying to go with here. It's like the cold, calculated intellect.

42:58
Zach Herring
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

42:59
Case
Which can be like, I think people underestimate the value of intelligence and humor. But then we get the news report that we saw at the end of adventures of Superman 500 where the woman is like, I'm glad my attackers are dead. Which is like, that's a. Joyce.

43:15
Zach Herring
Seriously? Yeah, it's great.

43:17
Case
And then we get news reports. We see them being like, oh, violent Superman energy blasts. Oh, also, the body of Superman is gone from the grave. He might be back. Lex Luther's really mad about it. And Supergirl shows up. Get the implication that the guards that were trying to prevent her from coming into the meeting are all going to die. Yeah.

43:38
Jmike
Well, I mean, I guess it's not like they could have stopped her, right?

43:43
Case
Yeah. I don't know what he expected them to do, but there's, like, thought bullings, both from Lex and from the guards, where it's just like, this isn't good. Those guards are going to pay for this. Blah, blah. Zach, by the way, are you familiar with what's going on with Lex Luthor here?

43:59
Zach Herring
No, I am not.

44:00
Jmike
Oh, buckle yourself in, sir. This is true.

44:03
Case
J Mike, I have explained this the last two times. Do you want to take a. Gosh.

44:08
Jmike
Okay, so this is Lex, but he took his brain out and put it in a clone's body, right?

44:17
Case
Yes.

44:18
Jmike
Okay. And that's how he has all the 90s gorgeous locks. The previous issues, like, he had these long, flowing locks that came down his shoulders, and they did, like, really crazy close ups of his face just to.

44:31
Zach Herring
Accentuate his hair, his amazing amish beard. Yeah. And I think even in Superboy, right, there's basically a reference where they both say they're both clones or something like that. Yeah.

44:45
Case
There's a wink where he just goes. It's like we have more in common than you think.

44:49
Zach Herring
What?

44:49
Case
You're a clone. Wink, wink.

44:52
Zach Herring
Yeah. I don't know what comics I read because there's actually a scene missing in here that I don't remember. There's a couple of scenes missing. I don't know what comics I read, but there was a bit where he said something to the effect of, like, Lex was he lost his body. The radiation, he wore, like a kryptonian ring, and the radiation killed his body. And so he had to clone it and something like that. But I have no idea where that knowledge came from.

45:16
Case
There was a previous issue where he goes, of action comics. I think it was the issue right before.

45:19
Zach Herring
Okay, cool. So I guess my mom had both.

45:21
Case
Idly thinking about how he had died and had his brain transferred, but, yeah, so that's the deal. He faked his death.

45:28
Zach Herring
That's where he strangles the bodyguard, too. Is in the. Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool.

45:33
Case
That happens in the previous arc, but.

45:35
Jmike
Friday instructor or something like that.

45:37
Case
That was in the Superman book because it was a Dan Juergens plot thread. And also I just remember it being Dan Juergens art for the actual murder.

45:46
Zach Herring
Scene, which tags into the bloodline.

45:50
Case
Yeah, the annual that we'll be talking about, which surprised me. But we'll get there.

45:55
Zach Herring
Yeah, but, yeah.

45:56
Case
So Lex Luthor. This is Lex Luthor Jr. Who is actually Lex Luthor senior, but in a cloned body, he'd faked his death. So everyone thinks that this is not the original Lex Luthor. Everyone thinks this actually is just a nice guy who has been funding city projects, has like the Lex guards or Team Lex or whatever. And then Supergirl, because this Supergirl was created by a lex luthor of a different reality, decided that this must be that Lex Luthor, who was good, must be like, this Lex Luthor, who she thinks is good. And so now they're fucking.

46:29
Zach Herring
Yeah. Oh, well, I didn't catch that.

46:32
Case
Oh, you didn't catch that.

46:35
Zach Herring
So good to know there. Which makes the superboy issues even creepier. So good stuff there. Let's keep going on that.

46:42
Case
It is fucking explicit. In the issues leading up to this, there's like one shot where they both come out of the bedroom, like, putting the robes on.

46:51
Zach Herring
Awesome. Well, that's good to know. That adds a lot more color to the Superboy comic or the adventures of Superman.

47:00
Case
Yeah. And then you have to ask, like, how old is Supergirl? Well, the actual answer is several hundred years, but also kind of.

47:09
Zach Herring
Because she.

47:10
Case
Is an artificial construct who has the memories of an adult Lana lang. But then she was sent back in time and lived in the ICE. She was frozen in ICE for a long time and then emerged. But she's actually still like a construct that's only, like a couple years old and was living as this confused child with the Kents for a while.

47:27
Zach Herring
Wow.

47:28
Case
And then she met Lex Luther, and she's like, I'm going to be a woman, so I can bang that.

47:32
Zach Herring
I'm going to be honest. Was this a John Byrne plot?

47:35
Case
It started off as a John Byrne.

47:37
Zach Herring
Okay, there we go. Lucky guess. All right, cool. All right, interesting.

47:45
Case
So we move on to a plane collapsing. The pilot has a heart attack. It took me a minute to realize that this was like, a private plane as opposed to, like, a big airline.

47:54
Jmike
It looks like a bomb 47.

47:57
Case
Yeah, it looks like a drawn too big, but it's supposed to be like a small plane, possibly just like two people or three people. It's a very small private plane as opposed to some big thing. But Superman catches it. And this starts a series of shots that appear throughout this entire run of Lois Lane catching up to Superman, shouting, hold it, buster. And then being surrounded by a crowd and him taking off with her. And it's exactly that way that happened in man of Steel issue one, like the public appearance of Superman. And in this case, it was from him saving a plane. So they're really trying to draw parallels to like, yes, this is Superman.

48:38
Zach Herring
He's back.

48:41
Case
If you didn't have the hype machine and this issue came out first. So if you were not aware of all the news that, like, oh, man, four supermen are coming back, you would think that this issue was just, yep, Superman is back, and he's different now.

48:55
Jmike
He's straight up killing people this time.

48:57
Case
Taking no shot for the crowd shot. And we see it a bunch more times, like the same crowd shot of Lois and Superman together and then a bunch of people mobbing around them and then him flying away with her. And this is the most compelling Superman also from the standpoint of he is very aware that she is. Well, that he is Clark, or rather, that Superman is like, he talks around it a little bit because he's not able to empathize with us all because he wasn't actually. But, like, he's the one who's. No, I know you were engaged with Kent, and Kent had a double life. He was me or he was Superman. But no, I tell you, Kent is dead. I am Superman.

49:40
Zach Herring
Now, I think the respective writers for this really play kind of interesting. You get kind of the similar emotional beats, but with Lois handling it in very different ways right between the two supermen coming back. And it's really interesting to kind of see two different takes on that.

50:00
Jmike
Be honest. I kept reading his lines in the. What are those things called from Doctor who? The Daleks.

50:07
Case
The Dalek.

50:08
Jmike
Yeah, I kept reading his lines in that voice.

50:12
Zach Herring
Eradicate.

50:13
Case
Kent loved you very much, trusted you with his.

50:25
Zach Herring
Awesome.

50:25
Case
But yeah. So, again, this is the most compelling story from the standpoint of what we watched in terms of the evidence, like, yeah, no, from his vantage point, we have seen him be a Kryptonian. We've seen him be Superman. But in terms of proof, he doesn't really offer that much. It's mostly just like, oh, yeah, he's got the memories of Superman, and he looks very much like Superman. It has similar, but not the same powers as Superman and a very different attitude. Then we move on to a story that is not at all related to that. We jump over to man of steel, and we start with a retelling of the story of John Henry, while simultaneously, a drive by shooting is about to happen with a lot of gang violence. So man of Steel is being written by Louise Simonson.

51:13
Case
And we have observed at this point that she has the habit of writing or not. Like, she tends to write about more down to earth people. She's the only one who focuses on the actual human beings that are living in this underground community under metropolis. She tends to care about homeless characters and just more regular human beings living in the city, as opposed to just the people who are working at the Daily Planet or the richer people, like the Lex Corp stuff. And action comics deals a lot with the police, but she's dealing with, like I said, the people down on the ground. And this is their attempt at doing some real commentaries on, again, talking about, like, La riots era, talking about gang violence in the United States and the problems with.

52:00
Case
Know, I think it was incredibly progressive for the time, but it is two white people telling the story.

52:13
Zach Herring
Yes. I'm just going to say, yes, that's a good.

52:17
Case
Acknowledged it. They are aware that it's questionable in retrospect, when you get to it. It's the same situation we sometimes would have with Chris Claremont. Yeah. Trying to raise awareness about situations, but you're not the right voice isn't necessarily great. But also, if you weren't going to do it, who was? They would have just put another white person on the comic.

52:39
Zach Herring
Right. Yeah. It's still a hard read for me personally. Just kind of like, going through. I'm like, whoa, boy. I don't enjoy reading this. Just in terms of, like, I don't know. I don't know if it's entirely successful in the story it was trying to tell. But I love the art for this. And so I feel like I might have tuned out a little bit on the actual word balloons themselves and just kind of watch the art because this double page spread with the drive by shooting. You even have John Henry kind of, like, waving to the kids. He's got the Superman coloring, right? Like the blue shirt with the red pants. And then I love the shot in the next page of him with the kids, jumping with the kids, with the explosion kind of, like, all backlit and everything.

53:36
Zach Herring
It was really interesting to me to see the four different artists kind of here. Actually six different artists, but, like, the four different artists here on display. And they all bring something really unique to the table in terms of what they're doing on the pages. And I thought this was fascinating, kind of like how he was working with the different cross hatching and the lighting and the color. Even the colors, I think, is really solid for near future computer stuff. There's, like, some really bad examples of computer coloring later in this trade, but they did a good job here. I don't know if this is, like, right at that moment or. Yeah, there's actually some gradients here. So I think this is actually also computer coloring. And it's actually really good for kind of the early era of that.

54:26
Case
Yeah. When I was first reading, I was wondering if it had been done, it had been adjusted for digital. And then I went back to the trade and I was like, oh, no, it's actually there. So it's very nice that it's all there. Yeah. This comic really plays with a lot of coloring in an artistic way that isn't just like, can we add more nuance to the color? Like, we've got a black and white sequence for the flashback. We've got a lot of uses of monochromes, especially, like, when he's working on the armor and it's the forge and he's lit yellow and everything else is red. Like, really dynamic use of color that isn't across the board. And you can get away with it when you have this much more abstracted kind of design that Bogdanov goes for.

55:11
Case
He has these really exaggerated features, kind of like an ed McGinnis that I think works really well. And with these sort of more cartoonish kind of figures, that more dramatic color scheme plays better. That said, when I was a kid, this wasn't, like, my favorite art style, but it's cool.

55:32
Zach Herring
It's one of those things where I feel like I had to grow up to appreciate, because right now, looking at it now, especially that splash page at the end, right. You get the full costume. Splash of steel. That's awesome. It's so cool. Just in terms of the line, were talking about how vertical stripes, right. Are really nice graphic, I think Bachdanov, everything he does in here, all the lines he's using to form kind of, like the shape of the human itself is just so graphic and so striking. And it's definitely something I would not have appreciated as a kid. But now that I'm not, and I kind of, like, just have some different ideas around what I like, this is, to me, like, one of the most unique.

56:21
Zach Herring
He's probably the most unique artist of the four, outside of that first artist from the bloodlines. He's really interesting. Really interesting work.

56:31
Case
Yeah. And I love the steel design. I think it holds up really well. Every version sense has just been like, well, what details do we want to add? That doesn't take too much away from this design because I think it's so striking of, it's a suit of armor with a big superman symbol and a cape and the hammer. Sometimes they go for a helmet instead of the human face, which I go back and forth on. Obviously, from a practical standpoint, a helmet makes more sense, but from the look of the character, the human face stands out. Like you always remember, it's not Iron man.

57:04
Zach Herring
Yeah, absolutely. And I also want to call out, I don't think that if you look at this splash the feet, it doesn't look like it's adding any height. So he is actually just seven foot tall. There are no platforms to his feet. It looks like it is just, there's maybe like a quarter of an inch of steel there, and the rest of it is all him. He's actually seven foot tall.

57:30
Case
That's true. I do want to call attention, though, to the boots, though, because I love a lot of the practicality of the design. The boots have these big rockets, and they look like just like legit rockets welded to the backside of it. And then there's a line that runs fuel down to it along the side, and I think that's, like, such wonderful practical details.

57:49
Zach Herring
The same. No, I love that. That really stands out. I think I had the toy of this. It also made this action figure stand a lot more easily than all of the others. Yeah.

58:02
Jmike
Is that why they put it?

58:04
Zach Herring
I mean, as a kid, Steele was always standing front and center because I could count on him to not topple over versus everybody else.

58:15
Case
Yeah, but so we get the tale of this guy, John Henry Irons, who is under the alias Henry Johnson, which is like, okay, cool. That was your.

58:24
Jmike
All right.

58:25
Zach Herring
No one would ever put those two together.

58:29
Case
I am Ike Caseman.

58:31
Zach Herring
Yeah.

58:34
Case
But he gets thrust into this gang violence thing. We get a bit of a supporting cast for him. We get the psychic who lives upstairs. We find out that he's now being targeted by the gangs who he tried to stop one kid from dying. Who I think the kid, the friend, is supposed to be the one who we saw a bunch of in world without Superman. But it's just like fun to have this larger world that we're investing this character into. They very much aren't. Just like we're going to have cyborg Superman has no supporting cast at all. He's just there. And eradicator has the scientist. Or like the kryptonian robots, but also lesser of one.

59:17
Case
This is one where you could see how this is the foundation for a new character who is going to be an ongoing character and is, again, very explicitly not Superman. He's not Clark Kent. Or maybe I shouldn't say that. He's very explicitly not slash Clark Kent. He is John Henry irons. And they make this idea that, well, maybe Superman's soul traveled into this body because he could have died. Like he was buried under rubble during the fight with. So, like, there's this idea that maybe the soul of Superman went into this body. So he has all of his memories and whatnot, but he has this inner nobility and sure, maybe, yeah, it's a fun way to play with it. And it's literally what they do with new Superman during the Superman reboot birth era, where the new 52 Superman's soul goes into Kong Keenan.

01:00:09
Case
And that's how he gets his powers the way he does.

01:00:14
Zach Herring
I did not read new 52. That's good to know. Yeah.

01:00:19
Case
When they brought back the post crisis, pre new 52 Superman into that, he was a separate character from the new 52 Superman, who dies. And then regular Superman fills in that spot. But the soul of new 52 Superman travels into this chinese guy by way of an experiment.

01:00:36
Zach Herring
Yeah, I did read that, actually. Jin Yun Yang, run.

01:00:41
Case
That was great. Yeah. So the experiment they do is they harness the Qi of the new 52 Superman and infuse it into his body.

01:00:50
Zach Herring
Okay. Apparently, I don't remember the origin. I just remember. And I think that was probably happened pre trades. I was just reading the trades of that series. That was great, actually.

01:00:59
Case
Really?

01:01:00
Jmike
Next time on Dragon Ball Z.

01:01:02
Zach Herring
Basically.

01:01:06
Case
Yes. There's definitely a bit of, like, spirit traveling and stuff. Anyway, so as he's, like, building this armor, the gang decides to attack him because there's just, like, so much damn gang violence in it all. And we get the story for why the end of Adventures of Superman 500. It was like, oh, he saved his burning family. He saves the fortune teller. I love the shot of him saving the fortune teller, like, leaping out, dude, I love that because that looks golden age super.

01:01:31
Zach Herring
Yeah, it looks so good. I love this shot.

01:01:35
Case
That full page shot of him just standing there with a hammer is also gorgeous. But the way he moves feels like a classic superman. And this is where we also get him perched up on a building a couple of pages later. Really good stuff.

01:01:48
Zach Herring
Yeah. The bottom lighting, the dramatic lighting is also fantastic on this one. And that's something worth calling out is that the artist, he is really uniquely suited for this in that, I don't know, he plays a lot with the lighting. He's someone who really focuses on the lighting. And so you have this entirely steel person. Right? Like the steel Adonis. He actually makes a lot of really great usage of dramatic lighting and how it would reflect in the armor and such. And it's just really wonderful graphic interpretation of this costume.

01:02:23
Case
We do get the one thing I don't really love about this arc but I kind of get why they're doing it, which is that Lois has, like, a suitor in the. It's. I get what they're doing, which is that each of the Superman takes a thing away from the regular Superman. They take a piece of the things going on in their life. And in this book, that thing that is being taken away from Superman is his woman to a certain degree, obviously. But it doesn't go anywhere, is the thing. And that's why it's, like, all literally. Superboy takes several things away from Superman, including his copyright. But it's just like, okay, sure, whatever. This is already set up to be its own book is the thing. The fact that it's a Superman, it's continuing.

01:03:10
Case
Man of Steel, or, like Superman, the Man of Steel, almost doesn't matter. This could have just been any kind of spinoff book without having to even have that pretense. And that's why Steel works better in a lot of ways than some of the other than really any of the others, either on his own or in a thing like Superman, the animated series. Because it's really easy to explain. Yeah. Weapons manufacturer, disgusted with his work, decides to use it for good. You know what? That sounds a lot like Iron man. It works pretty well as a superhero by himself.

01:03:40
Zach Herring
Yeah, absolutely.

01:03:42
Case
And the design is so great and so classic, but it works as he's inspired by Superman. But that's a pretty low bar for a comics character. Like, Superman is pretty ubiquitous in the DC comics. And even then, you could still just be like, no, I like the idea of a Superman. And do, like the Shaquille O'Neill Steel movie.

01:04:02
Zach Herring
Yeah.

01:04:02
Case
Like, once again, it could just know the Jay Garrick was my favorite comic book character. Flash scenario.

01:04:09
Jmike
Once again, I read this in Shaq's voice the entire time.

01:04:12
Zach Herring
Yes.

01:04:13
Case
Which is funny because they're very explicit that he has James Earl Jones's voice. They keep talking about how he sounds just like Darth Vader.

01:04:18
Zach Herring
Really?

01:04:19
Case
Yeah.

01:04:21
Jmike
I was like, oh, man. It's like watching those terrible Shaq movies from the 90s. Terrible, but also very fun.

01:04:29
Zach Herring
I was going to say, think you misspoke when you said awesome. Yeah. In the next page, you have him basically creeping as Batman. And then you have one of my favorite shots of Steele's face, again with the rim lighting kind off to the side, which is just so cool.

01:04:50
Case
Yeah, he bursts through walls and he's got such great motion to him. He's also just so fucking huge.

01:04:55
Zach Herring
Yeah, he's awesome.

01:04:57
Jmike
Seven foot six.

01:05:01
Case
We get a lot of economy of storytelling in terms of all these flashbacks to sort of set up his whole deal of, like, okay, we know that his grandparents were murdered by gang violence. We know that he studied hard, became a scientist, went into weapons manufacturing, then saw what his guns were doing and quit. Destroyed the blueprints and didn't realize that plans that he had, I like that there's a personal stake. That's the design for a gun that I made that never was even made. How is that here? I think that's really cool. And then we get White Rabbit, who is complicated. She's supposed to be a femme fatale, kind of, like, villain. She's crime boss type character. And I like that she's not like, more recent versions of White Rabbit have actually used rabbit shit, like ears and tail stuff.

01:05:50
Case
And I like that we don't.

01:05:51
Zach Herring
She even says, I bet you expect to be in ears and tail and sorry to disappoint or something like that. So they even address it in the comic that she's not.

01:06:02
Case
And I'm curious if there's an earlier white rabbit, this could be an update to a pre existing character, and I'm just not aware of, like, I like the idea. Is she supposed to be albino I don't think so.

01:06:15
Zach Herring
I don't know, man.

01:06:16
Case
She has pink eyes. So here's the thing about John Bagdanov. He draws very luscious lips on everyone. But because we're focusing, we're shifting gears to being actually mostly about an african american community, which I appreciate that we're trying to make that distinction. I can't tell when a character is supposed to be african American or not if the coloring is off because he does the same thing for everyone else. Like, the features, that would be, like, the more telltale. Man, it's so complicated to get into some of that. I'm just saying that I couldn't tell either.

01:06:51
Zach Herring
Yeah.

01:06:54
Jmike
I thought they were playing with, like, the bunny motif so she'd have more bunnyish features, coloring features. It's like the pink. Like, the pink lipstick or, like, pink eyes or something like that. I just went along with it for that point.

01:07:07
Zach Herring
Her model changes a little bit. I feel like I had to flip back to the first issue and then the second because I feel like just kind of the model that he was using to draw her changes. She kind of, like, changes from issue one to issue two in that. In issue two, I wasn't sure she was the same character as the one that I saw in issue one. And I had to kind of, like, cross reference between the two of them.

01:07:34
Jmike
I don't think she's albino. I'm looking right. I'm looking through all the page.

01:07:37
Case
I'm like, I don't know. Like I said, it's just a thing where he draws Lex Luthor the same way. But the thing is, it's also typically when artists, especially in comics, where we're usually not dealing with the most high level of detail on the faces, when they're drawing characters of color, they typically will use certain signifiers in terms of how you illustrate that difference, because when it's not just the coloration, but because this character might be. Because, again, she has completely white hair and pink eyes. I'm just not sure, and I'm not saying it matters. It was just, like, a weird detail. This is, by the way, the first time where we actually see Pa Kent responding.

01:08:14
Case
And we noted during the world without that, the man of steel issues were the ones that really got into the pathos of the depression that Pa kent was in. And I appreciate that, even if it's, like, just a quick being, like, martha, I told you our son's back.

01:08:29
Zach Herring
Yeah, just a random. I also love these small panels, just in terms of, like, you've got really nice line work here. I'll shut up about the art, but the really nice line work on. I think it's like a nib. Very like Klaus Janssen y both with Pa, you kind of have, like, the mirror image of Lex and Pa pointing their remote controls. Kind of like centering. Yeah.

01:08:54
Case
That's a really good shot.

01:08:55
Zach Herring
That's really nice stuff there in terms of page design and execution.

01:09:01
Case
Yeah. Lex doesn't factor as much into the story arc. For one thing, he's just not the villain of it. White Rabbit's the main character. He does try to make efforts in terms of gaining leverage on the man of Steel, but it's very clear that this is not a clone or a resurrection or anything else going on. It's just he wants to maximize his opportunity with this character. So he's there, but it's actually much more of a straightforward businessman lex thing as opposed to some of the dirtier dealings that go on in the other books. Then let's cut over to Superman, where we get a shot that I have to say would be more interesting now with better coloring techniques of Lois Lane.

01:09:44
Case
Thinking about Superman and him being in the reflection, I imagine that a better kind of gradient to illustrate the windshield would make this art, like, the pencil work, just look amazing.

01:09:54
Zach Herring
Yeah. You almost used to be like a pass through, just that you could kind of see him. It's more ghostly, this one. It looks like he's growing out of her face, which is kind of.

01:10:04
Case
And again, it's not the pencil work. It's just like, coloring techniques. Just is. Yeah.

01:10:09
Zach Herring
It was probably something written in the script that the artist was like, well, okay, let's try to do like, they got to it. And then I think, yeah. It just wasn't.

01:10:18
Case
Well, you say that, but it's Dan Jurgens on both.

01:10:20
Zach Herring
That's true.

01:10:23
Case
I think, again, just the penciling as it is. If they had better ability to color it to look like glass, it just computer work. It just wasn't there yet. It's 1993. So we knock out the little teaser about a Superman stopping a nuclear reaction, because it's kind of like, oh, yeah, were about to have a nuclear meltdown. He stopped it. Very classic Superman three opening story. That doesn't really factor in. And then we get Superman going to.

01:10:52
Zach Herring
Cadmus to deal with Doomsday, which, like, I love this infrared shot where you can kind of clearly see the parts that are human and the parts that are metallic. Really neat.

01:11:06
Case
Yeah. I have one question, though. Why is his cape also showing up as like, human.

01:11:09
Zach Herring
As human. They knew it.

01:11:13
Case
To illustrate, like, all right, here's the artificial parts, but then they have the cape also glowing the same way the rest of him is. And it's supposed to be. This is the normal Superman. Here's the weird part.

01:11:22
Zach Herring
It's looking at organic material, and that cape is cotton.

01:11:27
Jmike
There you go. That'll do it.

01:11:30
Zach Herring
Stan Lee just delivered me a no prize for no good reason.

01:11:34
Case
Yeah, there are a lot of lines of, like, nothing can move that fast. And it's like, bitch, like, you live in the world where the Flash is a. Like, there have been more than one know. Cadmus security tries to stop this thing. Guardians, like, fighting it, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden, they turn the lights on and it's Superman.

01:11:53
Zach Herring
Give him to me.

01:11:54
Case
Now it's this fucked up cyborg Superman, who legitimately looks just like the Terminator Cyborg Superman. What? Right now we've seen everything. And if you didn't have the eradicator, this would be a very compelling case for this character. Like, he has all of his powers, and then later we get more information in terms of what the metal is on his body and the DNA of the character. And it all was like, yep, this is a very compelling case. But this issue has a little bit of his inner monologue, and those moments are, like, for the most part, I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm cool with him being like, yeah, this probably shouldn't deal with this thing. Although I imagine he's probably thinking.

01:12:40
Case
There are moments where I'm wondering if the Cyborg Superman here has also convinced himself that he's Superman, particularly because of not so much this issue, but then the annual. But he definitely has moments where he's thinking thoughts the way Superman would, that I find interesting.

01:12:57
Zach Herring
Yeah, absolutely. It's a great shot, too, wrapped up in cables and kind of the body suspended over him. And then you have Superman in shadow. That's really nice. Yeah.

01:13:10
Case
Jergens is a good, like, I think that his fight choreography is oftentimes not quite as compelling as some of the other artists, but he is a very capable artist. Like, he was considered a hotshot in his day.

01:13:21
Zach Herring
Yeah, no, absolutely. I get, This was kind of the era of the writer artist, right, between Byrne and Miller and that sort of. Get it? I get it. In terms.

01:13:32
Case
Yeah, I would say he's in the Byrne kind of school of.

01:13:36
Zach Herring
Oh, yeah. Very heavily influenced by the Silver age.

01:13:40
Case
And I like this idea of getting doomsday on this sort of, like, crucifix. In space on this asteroid and sending him off with some kind of probe. It does beg the question eventually, like, what was the point? And they do address it in a miniseries later.

01:13:54
Zach Herring
Yeah, I'm sure.

01:13:55
Case
Talk about that at some point. And then we've got him confronting Lois Lane, and I don't remember how. Hank Henshaw. Hank Henshaw. How case spoilers.

01:14:10
Zach Herring
Oh, my God.

01:14:12
Case
I don't remember how he knew the Clark Kent part, but maybe that.

01:14:17
Jmike
I think somebody could have told him.

01:14:19
Case
Case, he has a lot of access at this point. And he does find the. Actually, he does find the farms, because he gets. The thing is, he finds Superman's rocket. So never mind. I retract my statement there, and he's just playing it up, being like, oh, I don't know that much, but I've got these little fragments, and somehow I'm back. And they take him to email Hamilton, who scans him. And it's like, oh, yeah, all the tech matches up appropriately. It's all kryptonian technology and the DNA. It's Superman. It's legitimately Superman. And this one has all of Superman's powers. Exactly. Plus, then all the tech stuff is able to be reconfigured. So he has a very compelling case of being like, yep, I am the body of like, with cybernetic parts to revive me. They're making a strong case for that.

01:15:04
Case
And again, this is Superman. There's no other subtitle. The book is just Superman. And so there is a case to be made that this is literally Superman's book.

01:15:15
Zach Herring
I feel like this was the one where they leaned in the most. We have this one, and then we have the next issue right where it felt like this was the one where they were trying to christen him. I felt like the eradicator line had the most visual evidence right for it, where you're like, oh, he's clearly Superman. But then this one you had the most. I don't know. It's not circumstantial. You had the most people vouching for him. He was the most like Superman. You had the president of the United States literally vouching for him, saying he was the Superman, et cetera. So it was really interesting, almost like, going with, like, do you believe what your eyes see, or do you believe what all these people and all these people who are vouching for him say as well? Which is really interesting.

01:15:56
Zach Herring
It was good tact to take.

01:15:59
Case
Yeah. It's just wild, though, that again, this one acts the most like Superman while he's acting like Superman outside of the whole, like, steel is like, honestly the nicest guy of the group. He's behaving in ways that you would sort of expect. He tracks down Doomsday. There's a little bit less bullshit being taken, but he's not being overly aggressive or anything like that. It fits the superman of the post crisis era. And again, yeah, Emil Hamilton has a lot of evidence for him, and it's a lot of evidence that the people get. So it would make sense if Lois decides that this is Superman, even though we, the readers saw more that would indicate that the eradicator is then, you know, Steel and Superboy just aren't fucking Superman.

01:16:47
Zach Herring
Yeah, I almost like the idea of this. I'm sure this created, like, a fair amount of playground arguments about who's the real Superman.

01:16:58
Case
Yeah. And those two issues are the ones that have the most question, because then we get this little tease, the end of, like, doomsday laughing, which is supposed to be either, yeah, sorry. Either a metaphor or we find out it's actually real. He actually still alive because doomsday doesn't die. That's his deal.

01:17:15
Zach Herring
Right.

01:17:16
Case
But we did not know that yet.

01:17:18
Zach Herring
That's a fantastic, to me, this is, like, one of my favorite lines and the comics in this entire 300 plus trade, one of my favorite bits written here was Jurgens writing, like, at the end. Right. If we could bend the laws of science and assume that we could hear for just a few seconds, we would hear. That's just, that's awesome. That is such good arch comic book storytelling. I love it.

01:17:42
Case
But let's move on to the adventures of Superman, where I have spent the most time with this character. Because the way I got into DC Comics was, liked Batman as a kid, like, Batman, like the Adam west show was really into that. And then got, like, my first trade was like, the untold Tales of Batman, black and white trade that was published, but that was before trade paperbacks were really a thing. It was like a digest size book. And then I got into comics, but I really came into Marvel particularly.

01:18:15
Case
It was like, through the X Men adventures, like the adaptation of the animated series, and then got into regular X Men and then Marvel comics as a whole, and then Superboy, because I have just like, or at least especially when I was a kid, I was really into teen superheroes, and I was like, oh, that looks really cool. And I checked out Superboy, the book, and then I got this trade was one of the first things I've ever actually, this is my second trade ever after that first, until Tales of Batman thing. And so Superboy I have spent a lot of time with because it's a character I just really like.

01:18:51
Case
And this era is so interesting to me because this is them trying to figure out how do we bring back all the fun of Superboy in this modern era where we're not allowed to have other Kryptonians? And also, Superman was never Superboy. So let's do Superboy as an updated kind of character, but have fun. Nods to all of the stuff that was Superboy stuff, not just, like Superman, stuff that was shared. How do we make it all kind of feel like? I don't think it's a surprise that the woman he saved at the beginning looks like Lana Lang.

01:19:22
Jmike
Oh, I didn't notice that.

01:19:23
Case
Holy crap. The issue is titled when he was a boy. That was the original tagline for Superboy books, that it was the adventures of Superman when he was a boy.

01:19:35
Zach Herring
Yeah. This one, I'll be honest, this is the one that I didn't like at first, but it grew the most on me towards the end of the trade. I love the art in this, the vibes, you were saying? Silver age. I think in my notes, I wrote, like Archie just in terms of the G shucks. Just sort of like all the bouncing around, all the horniness and all that jazz. And this was like, towards the end of this. This has my favorite drawing in the entire trade. And it's so fun. It's such a fun. Especially given how grim, dark the other three books are. Not to mention even, like, the bloodline stuff. This is a blast. I really like this one. Yeah.

01:20:19
Case
I think grummet in general, he has a very clean style. I think he has, like a Kurt swan kind of thing for him. So I think it's really appropriate that he's doing superboy. I think it's the right look for that character in general. And I love the notes about the design stuff. But again, jackets were cool and I like the pants design. I think it's a pretty effective update with then just excessive belts.

01:20:42
Zach Herring
Absolutely. Yeah. Honestly, I think you could kill the belts and give him more of like a Superman e sort of belt boot sort of thing. And I think this would work today. I think it's great.

01:20:55
Case
Yeah. Like his updated look that they gave him later in the series, I think they went a little too hard on some details, but it was basically just like, doubling down on the red and the blue with fewer belts. And then his jacket was like red and blue in design. And I thought that was just, like, pretty close to perfect. But it's great here. And I like a lot of the details. I like subtle details, like the shoulder design to his costume. He's got this black upper part of his outfit. Looks rather similar to Guardian. And so I wonder if there's, like, elements going on with the Cadmus design for.

01:21:26
Zach Herring
Yeah, yeah. I really like just the. The work here. So good, so clean and so good.

01:21:39
Case
There's some subtle stuff with his TK. I think in that first shot of him picking up a woman, he's able to just hoist her up by her ass cheek, but he's just, like, one handed, and it's fine because he's not actually lifting her up. He is using telekinesis to levitate her by maintaining contact.

01:21:53
Zach Herring
Right.

01:21:54
Case
There's a couple of points where he has, like, casual uses of super strength that wouldn't work because of physics if it was actual super strength, but it works just fine because it's telekinesis. So that's one spot later when he picks up Jimmy Olsen, he's able to hoist him over his head and then upside down. And that shirt would have ripped, and that person probably would have.

01:22:14
Zach Herring
He's holding his shirt right here. Right.

01:22:17
Case
It's all these things that real super strength wouldn't work. That.

01:22:20
Zach Herring
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

01:22:21
Case
But we also get other silver age throwbacks because we get Bibbo and his quest to bring food to the homeless, which I really like that bit. There's an element of, okay, suicide slums is entirely occupied by what look like fairly well off white people because it's a little censored. It's a little like, where they're like.

01:22:44
Zach Herring
Right, exactly. Silver age. Right. So even, like, the people down on their locks, down on their luck look pretty clean shaven and all that. And then he saves some puppies. A sack of puppies. Yeah.

01:22:55
Case
Literally saves puppies.

01:22:56
Zach Herring
Puppies. Perfect. He's perfect.

01:22:59
Case
Yeah. So this woman didn't realize they have no food. I get being poor not having food, but it's weird that it's like, oh, biblical, show me up. She has food to this community. She's like, better kill these dogs. I know. That's a real thing that has happened plenty of times in the world. It is just, like, the specific circumstances. They're not, like, cut off or anything, but I get it. And then he jumps into the water when she realizes, oh, I didn't realize food was coming. I wanted to spare these little puppies, so I threw them in the water. So they die. A quick death. He jumps in and he pulls out this bag and it is really fucking sad because it looks like just a bunch a bag of dead dogs and it still is because only one survives.

01:23:37
Case
Yeah, but you know who that one is? The post crisis version of crypto.

01:23:43
Zach Herring
Oh, my God. Really good.

01:23:47
Case
Mean. So he's not a super dog. It's just a dog. And the dog here who will get named in the second issue but is going to be, well, he's named Krypton here, but he becomes crypto has a six character limit, which I think is just a great detail. This whole book in general is like more cheeky and fun than the others. It's a younger oriented book. It's supposed to be like, yeah, adventures. And he's like cool in 90s, but it's lower stakes in general, right?

01:24:16
Zach Herring
Absolutely.

01:24:17
Case
But yeah, this dog becomes like a regular part of the Superboy book and just stays with him up until they decide to bring in real crypto, the superdog. And then they just immediately forget that this dog exists, which is kind of sad in its own right. But I love him because he's like this yappy little thing that fucking hates Superboy. I love it the whole time. He just barks at him all the time.

01:24:39
Zach Herring
This is the one I would actually be down for reading the full run of just because it's so much fun.

01:24:45
Case
Well, the good news is that it continues on and becomes its own standalone book. Like full team moves on. Carl Kiesel and Tom grummett move on to do Superboy from here. So there's a couple of issues after the return of Superman arc that lead to Superboy splitting off. But this book was like very quickly. They were like, yeah, we're launching a Superboy book. This is a good way to introduce that character.

01:25:06
Zach Herring
I wish I wasn't playing Marvel snap so much. I could pull up the sales because I would really be curious to know how each of these books did comparatively and how that kind of weighed which teams got to continue doing what and that sort of thing. I'd be really curious to know that.

01:25:21
Case
Yeah, I mean, it's clear that they weren't setting up the cyborg Superman to do that because we know you knew who each of them was beforehand, right. So that one was never going to be a spin off book and eradicator got an opportunity, but it wasn't as big of one. So I'm just curious if they were like, well, maybe we'll see if people want to do these spin off books for these other two characters. But I think these are the only two that were really primed for it. And maybe eradicator, they could have made a case for it because very shortly after, there's a whole thing where a human intellect overrides the eradicator and that body is able to function as a member of the outsiders. Blah, blah. Comics are fucking weird.

01:25:58
Zach Herring
Comics are bizarre. Oh, my God.

01:26:01
Case
But yeah, I think they knew that they wanted to at least test the waters with Superboy and with steel. And in both cases, they decided to go to series. This is good.

01:26:09
Zach Herring
Did Simonson and Bagdavon, I forget his name, did they get Bogdano did not.

01:26:16
Case
Continue on to the main series because it's actually Chris Batista who we've had on the show.

01:26:21
Zach Herring
Really?

01:26:22
Case
Who would go on?

01:26:23
Zach Herring
That's cool.

01:26:23
Case
Do those first couple issues.

01:26:24
Zach Herring
Oh, my God.

01:26:25
Case
I don't remember if it was Louis Simonson or not. I'd have to look.

01:26:28
Zach Herring
Gotcha. Okay, cool. All right. Interesting.

01:26:32
Case
But there's a mean, like in both Superboy and Steel's case, they move away from Metropolis, so they shift to have their own kind of setting. So it's interesting that the steel one, they very much were trying to have a cast of characters for him in this book. But he then moves to DC and it's a totally different cast of characters, at least with Superboy. So they introduced Tana Moon, who, the fact that she's named Tana and it rhymes with Lana I think is on purpose. Again, I think they're trying to have nods to the Silverade Superboy. So I think his relationship with Tana is supposed to be reflective of that. Acknowledging that she's an adult reporter as opposed to a teen who goes to school with him because he's also a different kind of character in general.

01:27:14
Case
But I do think that being, you know, she's hawaiian, she's explicitly of color. And having a kind of different design to her probably paved the way for character or for people like Kristen Kruek to play Lana Lang on small. She's now consistently no longer like a white redhead. Depictions.

01:27:35
Zach Herring
That's super interesting. I hadn't even thought of that. I also want to call out in this page where you're meeting her, Superboy is playing air guitar, which is kind of awesome. Kind of great. Kind of great. I don't know if we've sold you yet on at least reading adventures of Superboy man boy, dear listener, but you should totally pick this up. This is hilarious.

01:27:58
Case
It's very fun. The art is super clean. There's no question that you'll be able to follow what's going on. It may not have some of the more experimental elements which pay off at a lot of points and have problems at other ones, but it always looks good. Every character always looks great. Everyone's so pretty. Every character is pretty. Lois is so gorgeous in this book. And when we see Supergirl, she's so gorgeous in this book. And every character, Superboy is so handsome.

01:28:32
Zach Herring
Yeah, everyone, this is, I mean, it'silver age. It's like you're saying, right, like, it's Silver age. Everyone's got that squeaky clean kind of, like beautiful. I always think of kind of everyone. It doesn't look like Kirby, but it does remind me of Kirby in that everyone's got these. All the men have lantern jaws and all the women. It's a lake Wobagon style sort of thing. Everyone just looks great.

01:28:58
Case
But. So he links up with GBS, which at this point is being run by Vincent Edge, the father of Morgan Edge, and yada, yada. They decide they're going to start staging events for Superboy to go interfere with or like, villain situations. They have a tip in this scenario. It's actually pretty above board where they think this is the hideout of this mob boss that the cops can't touch. Let's drop Superboy into the middle of it. And this is a level of a video game. They're like he jumps out of a helicopter, lands in the street, and then walks down this row of people just coming at him with guns and trying to beat him up. And it's just a level from a video game. I can't say more. It's just that then explosions start happening because they had booby traps. Just a video game.

01:29:43
Zach Herring
Yeah, you get walls of fire. Like, this feels like a Mario level, basically.

01:29:48
Case
Yeah. Now it's on the easy mode setting because the Guardian is actually taking out all the snipers, which I like that they set that part up. Also, when the walls of fire start erupting from the manhole covers, we get him getting burned. And that's nice because that's secretly one of his weaknesses, which is that he is telekinetic and can't stop heat and stuff. Like, he can prevent the air a little bit, but he has to, like, he's just not straight and vulnerable. Like, physical stuff. He easily can reflect. It takes a lot more work to protect himself from energy attacks. But we do get a nice bit of an explosion where everything is where his jacket is destroyed, but he's fine, which I think is a nice detail.

01:30:25
Case
And he goes in and he takes out this criminal and it's not a big deal, like steel hand, whatever. It is fun when he grabs the guns and they explode because again, telekinetic. Superboy is not a tactical thinker. He's inexperienced. He is brash. He is supposed to be this youthful energy and every moment continues to sell that character. And that kind of gets back to the old idea of Superboy having a learning curve and in some cases being like a bit of a joker and a mischievous character who would do pranks because he could do superpower stuff like things that you wouldn't expect. Superman, who is everybody's dad to.

01:31:06
Zach Herring
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Great shot of him standing on a helicopter. Standing on the rail of the helicopter.

01:31:14
Case
This is so much fun.

01:31:15
Zach Herring
This is the most fun, I think, of the books in this trade.

01:31:20
Case
Yeah. It's also the most fun, like, standalone issue. Even though the steel one is its own story, its arc is totally separate. The eradicator one and the cyborg one are both directly tied into fallout from Superman's death. And this one barely, you know, this one's like, let's set up this new character and he's a go. And it's all fun. And his backstory is way easier to explain than Steel's. So it's just like, oh, yeah, I'm a clone.

01:31:47
Zach Herring
Yeah.

01:31:48
Case
Ta da.

01:31:50
Zach Herring
Superman and Lex.

01:31:53
Case
But I like that he gets confronted by Guardian and we get some more reminders of that. Cadmus is know, continuing to tie back to Jack Kirby stuff.

01:32:05
Zach Herring
Steelhead, Vincent Edge. Yeah.

01:32:07
Case
Hinting that he's going to start hiring criminals and also possibly trying to assault, sexually assault Tana because that's one of his character traits.

01:32:16
Zach Herring
That's part of his personality apparently that passed his personality back then. Steel hand, glass jaw. It figures. Yeah, this is just a lot of fun. It was really fun book.

01:32:28
Case
And then we tease the fact that he's not actually a clone of Superman. A bit more like they say. I thought Luther confronts one of the cabinet's people. It's like, I thought we couldn't clone him. And he's like, yes and no. Let me explain. And they cut off so that we don't see. And the fact is that they were able to take data from Superman but not actually create a proper clone, otherwise he would be a bizarro.

01:32:48
Zach Herring
Yeah, absolutely.

01:32:51
Jmike
Bizarro is awesome.

01:32:53
Zach Herring
He's great. He's great. I kind of want a Superboy bizarro now.

01:32:58
Case
I think we lost a golden opportunity to have the cyborg Superman be a bizarro, that had to keep on being.

01:33:05
Zach Herring
That would have been fun.

01:33:08
Case
It wouldn't be a thing you could do in the death of return or when he's pretending to be Superman part. But it would be a cool element if that's how we found out that he was actually not really Superman, that it turned out he was a bizarro, and that the robot part was the.

01:33:22
Zach Herring
Like, keeping him together and everything.

01:33:24
Case
Yeah, that would actually be a really good reveal.

01:33:26
Zach Herring
I like that.

01:33:26
Case
That would have been fun because we never really find out why. I mean, we know why he's able to properly clone Superman, but it'd be interesting if it just continued to be a detail that, no, it's hard to clone Kryptonians. And as good as he is, he's not perfect. But next up, we're going to take a side story into bloodline.

01:33:48
Zach Herring
Let's not spend a lot of time on this one because this is all over the map. Oh, my God.

01:33:54
Case
No, we're not going to spend too much time here. So, listeners, here's the deal. This same year, DC had this line of annuals called Bloodlines, which was a connecting event. I think the annuals were functioning as fifth week events at the like. So comics come out on a four week cycle in months that have five Wednesdays. There's a gap week in there as a result. And so they usually put, like, events, and sometimes that's annuals, and sometimes it's just like, here's a side story comic that's coming out. So at the time, they had annuals running in all these books that were then doing this year. The decision was to try to introduce lots of new characters to test the waters, to see who sticks, who was cool, who resonated with audiences.

01:34:37
Case
And to do so, they introduced this meta plot of aliens invading that when they attack humans, most of the time you die. But if you have the meta gene, you come back with superpowers, and it works differently every time. But it's just a convenient way to be like, here's why we have superheroes. The only character people actually care about that came from this is Hitman, the Garth Ennis character, who has x ray vision and telepathy. But that's because the book was good, and it was good everyone else, no one gives a shit about. Every now and then you'll see, like, loose cannon show up or like Geist, but no one really gives a shit about any of these guys. And the one that shows up in man of Steel, which I think they call Razor's edge, is, like, terrible.

01:35:17
Case
I enjoy moments in this book.

01:35:19
Zach Herring
Think of the worst version of Wolverine and then ten exit. And that's what this character is.

01:35:26
Case
It's even worse on the COVID where they give him this bodysuit that he.

01:35:30
Zach Herring
Doesn'T have in the comics, which doesn't happen.

01:35:32
Case
It's atrocious. And he's wearing, like, barbed wire and he has blades just growing out of his body.

01:35:36
Zach Herring
It's so bad. It's so bad. I love the art for this. It's kind of a weird thing, like very outlaw arty sort of thing or much more kind of in keeping with what you see in Vertigo at the time. Specifically, I'm thinking, like, swamp thing and animal man. And the art in this is actually really interesting. And you've got some weird body horror. Like, whenever the aliens look like.

01:36:05
Case
I mean, they look like the xenomors from the alien series. They're all, like, hulking masses.

01:36:08
Zach Herring
Yeah.

01:36:09
Case
Which is really cool. And they're company wide. Like, they encounter Batman, they encounter Green Lantern. Like, every book has a crossover with these guys just completely across the board. And it's like the same six of them. So they all escape. And then at the end, the last annual, and I can't remember which book had the last annual. The DC heroes round up to face off against these aliens as they try to do something with all the spinal fluid from people. They drain.

01:36:37
Zach Herring
It doesn't really matter. It's so bizarre. The art to me was really interesting and I liked seeing kind of like some gory. They are stacking up the bodies here. But my God, this is the worst character ever created. He's so bad.

01:36:59
Case
Yeah. So the things I like about this issue, I like that we get just another adventure with steel, with his neighborhood and knowing all the people around. And they talk about the collateral damage of the gang war from before. I think that's all great. It's, like, nice just spending time with John Henry Irons, who is a good guy. And we don't get that much time where he's with this particular neighborhood that he's living in because he moves to DC when he gets his own series. And it's just kind of fun having this period of the character. I think that's good. That's the main part. I like in the fight when they have the team up element of like, all right, your blades can cut it, but they can't go deep. And my rivets can hit it really hard, but they can't pierce it.

01:37:38
Case
So they start doing team attacks of Razor's edge or whatever, starts throwing his blades and then steel fires his rivets behind it. I enjoy that as just kind of a cool moment of got a blade and then, like, a hammer driving it in. Teamwork moves are always fun with super.

01:37:56
Zach Herring
Exactly. It's the fastball special. I do like that part of it I love. Just kind of, like, the everyday moments. Right? Like, he's pumping out this iron factory piece right here, right where he's like, he's got. I'm pretty sure that looks like 150 pounds one arm. That looks like a 45, a 25, and then a ten, and then a five. So whatever that is. And then on either side of that, just really good stuff. Love the art here and all this stuff in these different pieces. But yeah, man. And I agree, watching them team up is fine, but Razor's edge is a hilarious. It's so bad. It's good almost. I would pay money to see a Corbin 80s movie starring him is how bad he is.

01:38:54
Case
Right.

01:38:56
Zach Herring
I can't ever hug anyone again because I have all of these razors sticking out of my body. It's just ridiculous.

01:39:02
Case
Yeah, it's 90s excess is at its worst. It really is. It's like all the things with, like, archangel being able to, like, oh, he can fire razors from his wings, but this is from every orifice blade.

01:39:12
Zach Herring
Every orifice of his blades. And honestly, Jay Lee made it look dope. Not even the guy on this book can make razor's edge look good.

01:39:21
Case
One last thing I do like is that I do like that we check in with the underworlders again. The man of Steel book is the only book that cares about the non villainous members of this underground society. And that, I think, is nice, but there isn't a lot else to say about it, aside from just being like, it happened. And it's nice to have a story with steel, just not part of the bigger story. It's just like a one off for him. And that's fine.

01:39:44
Zach Herring
Yeah, no, absolutely. There's, like, a shot in here of him. Like, I wish they had played it for laughs. There's a shot of Razor's edge holding a phone, and I really wish that, like, a payphone, and I really wish the phone would have fallen apart in his hands. Like, he'd accidentally sliced it up while he's on it, and he's like, no. And then he'd, like, try to pull a chair back, and then it falls into three pieces. If they had done that with it, I would have totally got behind because this is a terrible power.

01:40:11
Case
Yeah. Although he's apparently able to shed the blades. Like, when he catches his brother, they say that he shed the blades so he didn't cut his brother, which means, oh, could he just shed all the blades and just be like, fine until he needed, and then pop him out? And so does that make him the human torch but with knives instead of fire?

01:40:27
Zach Herring
God, that is a perfect summation.

01:40:29
Case
It's a steel type Pokemon instead of a fire type Pokemon.

01:40:32
Zach Herring
This is a perfect summation of why he's bad.

01:40:39
Case
So next up, we're back at action comics, and we are talking about, well, we're introduced to Guy Gardner reading articles about Superman.

01:40:47
Zach Herring
Love this.

01:40:48
Case
And this is fun because, well, first off, we're reminded that guy Gardner sucks. He just reads newspapers off the newsstand and then drops them on the roof like he's like, floating. And I admit it's kind of badass that he's like, hanging out on a lounge chair in the air reading stuff. That is fun. It's a good use of a green Lantern ring or a yellow lantern ring because at the time, he has Sinestra's ring because comics are weird. At the time, he'd been kicked out of the Green Lantern corps, but he's just a dick to the average newsstand owner, which has to be also like, hey, kids, don't just read the newsstand stuff and then not buy the comics. A problem that existed then and now is like, all the digital piracy stuff of today. Same shit. But he's just a dick.

01:41:34
Case
And he's like, I'm going to go take on these other Superman because they're not real. Superman was a guy I didn't like, but you know what? He fought doomsday.

01:41:41
Jmike
Take it. I respected him.

01:41:42
Case
Yeah, exactly. Fully come to respect you for that.

01:41:45
Zach Herring
I respect you. Yeah.

01:41:49
Jmike
I don't think they put any, except for that one frame of him, the Justice League getting their ass kicked by doomsday. This is that one frame. I was expecting to see a lot more because that beating was.

01:42:04
Case
So I did go check out the issue of Justice League. That happens right after death of Superman since we recorded last time, and it is a lot of them, especially guy, being like, man, we got our asses kicked. And thinking back on it keeps cutting to each different justice league. Or being like, man, we got our asses kicked. That was real bad. And like, flashback to the fight, man, we got our asses kicked. Flashback to the fight.

01:42:26
Zach Herring
It was really bad.

01:42:28
Case
It's bad. For this reason. Oh, it's bad for this reason. Anyway, so cut to eradicator. Stopping someone from breaking into a vault, which apparently is, like, a fair. Like, it's at night. It's like a bank robber who's tunneled in and is, like, nonviolent. He even makes a point like, I don't even carry a gun. And he's like, well, but you're still hurting people by taking their money. Which is like, very. Call him, like, fascist Superman. Which is like, yeah. On the one hand, it's like, yeah, but also, money's fake.

01:42:55
Zach Herring
What?

01:42:55
Case
Doesn't matter. The point is he overreacts terribly, which is that he crushes this man's hands completely up to the elbows and that there are handprints all over the broken, mangled forms, and that they have to have him doped up on morphine, because the amount of pain that he's in.

01:43:13
Zach Herring
This is also adorable because the assumption is that the money in this bank actually belongs to. You're hurting the people who deposited their money here. It's like, that money is not there. I don't know. They are insured. FDIC man. Yeah, come on.

01:43:31
Case
Yeah, it's that comics code view of crime where it's like, okay, yeah, we've got bank robbers and muggers. That's it. There's no nuance to it. There's no approach to systems or anything like that. He's a hard right, Superman.

01:43:50
Zach Herring
I love that shot of the dude. Both the guys. My hands is great.

01:43:58
Case
So Lois interviews him, and it's like, oh, it's the one with the visor. Oh, shit. Yeah, that guy's pretty fucked up. Kat Grant talks to her for a bit, and they're like, none of these guys are probably real. And then because she is so tired and whatnot and really wants to see Clark, she sees just a random dude wearing a hat, and she's like, clark. But then we cut back to more of the eradicator going back to the fortress, and it kind of continues to sort of sell it all. But every time he's done being Superman, they bring the red and black clothing that the eradicator exclusively has worn. Like, Kalal has never casually worn that outfit. It has only been at this point.

01:44:35
Case
Later on, he would, but at this point only when he was possessed by the eradicator and then when the eradicator created the Krypton man. So we've only seen that costume and just being like, no, guys. Like, he's not Superman. He's the eradicator. We're trying to make this very clear. And then we get Maggie Sawyer talking to now Commissioner Henderson. Again, it's fun that Inspector Henderson, this character from the radio show, is actually a part of the story, and he's just kind of like a less known Superman character, but it's, like, fun to see him. And Maggie Sawyer, I fucking love, and I love that there's a point where she talks about how the weird friction, it's like, is it my gender? Is it my sexual orientation? And again, this is 1993, and I like that we're actually having those conversations.

01:45:18
Zach Herring
Yeah, absolutely.

01:45:19
Case
Also, I like that the response is like, no, it's the fact that you're a captain running a division that has inspectors and people who you should be reporting to. So I'm promoting you so that you outrank them because I care about chain of command, but I want you to be in charge.

01:45:31
Zach Herring
Right. Really good.

01:45:33
Case
And this is the book that probably deals the most with the cops. Like, every time we've cut into action comics, like, Sawyer is a part of, like, we actually care about police procedure and stuff. So it's important to check in with them and see how they see the Superman. It's like, oh, it's so weird. There's these four supermen when it's clearly there's two guys who are definitely not Superman, and then two guys who might be.

01:45:52
Zach Herring
Right. Very thematically in keeping, though. Right. If this is fascist Superman, I guess, like, the most hard. Right. Superman. Right. Like, then you're going to be looking at his relationship to law enforcement, his relationship to traditional power structures. Right. So it's pretty interesting. Pretty interesting. Again, for a 90s comic that was all kind of a gimmick, trying to juice sales on those pieces. There's some really interesting, I feel like, kind of like a lot of depth of thought here that I wasn't expecting going into it that I'm actually, I was pleasantly surprised to discover kind of on reading this.

01:46:33
Case
Yeah. And it's nice that we have such a deep inner monologue for the eradicator. It is really selling you that at the very least, he believes he's Superman, which I think works really well here, especially. And I like that. Then in this next scene with him, he's observing a thing he wants to go inspect, and then guy Gardner attacks him. And he's able to use both to solve both problems. And I think that's a very supermany kind of thing to do where it's like I'm dealing with two problems. How can I solve them both at the same time, because Superman saves everyone, and I think that's cool. Now, this Superman doesn't save everyone. He beats up everyone, but it's good. I like establishing, like, oh, man. Guy Gardner's ring is just not up to the task of dealing with a.

01:47:15
Zach Herring
Just.

01:47:15
Case
I hadn't really thought about that before. Like, Superman just could have done this to me, but he just never did.

01:47:20
Zach Herring
Yeah, no, I love that. I also love some of the constructs that Gardner does. He turns himself into a knight, which, when you think of people that, you know, who have kind of guy Gardner vibes, they do usually think of themselves as the main character. I guess I got to fix everything again. It's very good graphic storytelling to tell you exactly who guy is. They're not just using his words or his inner monologue. They're using the constructs that he's creating to communicate who he is as a person, which is really.

01:47:55
Case
Like, Garter gets hit really hard by Superman into a building that he wanted to investigate, and it turns out to be a bunch of criminals. So Superman's like, you know what? I'm going to deal with these guys first. And he horrifically wounds them in ways. That guy Gardner gets a hard on. Yeah. Just is super into it. And Gardner's like, no, dude, you are Superman in my book. Or at least you're the Superman we should have. Which immediately, Superman's like, I've made a mistake. I like you.

01:48:26
Zach Herring
That was on my notes of, like, I love using, again, really good storytelling in that they used contrasting the eradicator. They used, basically, someone that he wouldn't want. Basically, Guy Gardner's approval is the wake up call for Superman that he needs to be like, oh, maybe I should take this down. Maybe I should take this down a notch. It's great. Yeah.

01:48:49
Case
He goes back to his fortress and he's like, man, I took out so much aggression on those criminals because I was mad at Gardner, and now Gardner likes me, and I'm like, there's got to be a better way. I got to be a better superman. I am failing at the Superman thing. If Guy Gardner fucking likes me.

01:49:03
Zach Herring
This is like the rock bottom where he looks into the bathroom mirror and he's like, what is wrong with me? Guy Gardner approving of him was his rock bottom moment where he realizes he needs to get himself together, which is great.

01:49:16
Case
But last page, we get another very explicit shot of Calyx bringing the eradicator uniform being like, are you sure you don't want to change it to something more comfortable, sir? Yeah, all right, so next up, we get like, again, really la riots vibes going on here. These gang guys chasing down the man of steel with like, they've got a dude videotaping them to put out. I don't know, man. Put out videos talking about how badass they are. That might have been a thing. I believe it was a thing. You could certainly see it being a social media thing now. So I'm not surprised at it all. But it was just like, oh, yeah, fuck, man. We're going to do a Superman book dealing with gang violence in the United States in the early 90s, which is like, good. Yeah.

01:50:03
Case
But again, it's just two white people doing it. And so it's not as effective as like, icon in terms of what book is doing this, doing racial sensitive Superman, best statics.

01:50:14
Zach Herring
Yeah.

01:50:15
Case
And I'm not bashing this book. I think both of, first of all, we know that John Bogdanov has been on friend of the show, Seth Decker's podcast, film rescue, and was talking about steel and talking about how, yeah, it was the early ninety s and it was like they were trying to be progressive and raise awareness of stuff and deal with social issues, but it is two white people. And so looking back on it's like, well, what could have been done? And I don't know. I don't know what the answer is in terms of like, well, is it better to have someone speaking for people who aren't theirs but at least speaking up for them? Or is it better to have no one talk about it? Because that has been an issue with Superman books.

01:50:51
Case
That's a thing that happened in the 50s during the Weissinger era where it was like, yeah, it was like fairly notorious that it was like they didn't want to deal with politics. So that's why things got really fucking weird. There's a reason why Beppo the super monkey is a thing at that point. Because it was like, yeah, well, it's not controversial.

01:51:07
Zach Herring
We can talk about. Yeah, yeah. This second page spread is like flying in.

01:51:15
Jmike
Yeah.

01:51:16
Zach Herring
So good.

01:51:17
Case
Steel is a living fastball special.

01:51:19
Zach Herring
He really is. His arms and what I love about this superhero pose, I love superhero poses that are so heroic they're physically impossible. I love how his fists are so jacked back that his elbows are probably touching behind his back and it still looks totally real. Like, it totally works. That to me is like the magic of comic book art is whenever you can have something that clearly doesn't actually physically work and yet you totally buy it whenever you're looking at it, that is the most heroic pose I've ever seen in my life. This is fantastic.

01:51:52
Jmike
He's like eight foot five in this picture.

01:51:54
Zach Herring
He is. I like that every time you call out his height, he's eight inches taller. You almost have, like, a formula. Basically.

01:52:04
Case
Every time he's just six inches taller. It's not a J mike thing. It's just like John Bogdanov has just continued to add height to him.

01:52:12
Zach Herring
Keeps on adding, like, he takes out a strip and he adds, like, another six inches to his character sheet for.

01:52:21
Case
Is the. This is the shot where he's just, like, holding a dude up against a fence and just completely dwarfing him. Yeah, I like that. The guy who's videotaping pulls out a gun and kills the person snitch, which is great.

01:52:34
Zach Herring
Again, really nice work with the chain link fence and everything. This is visually, graphically, this is such a cool book to just kind of, like. I kind of want to see if. I would love to see the original art for this book because it's really interesting.

01:52:51
Case
We get the Lex Luthor subplot, which doesn't really do anything in this book. It's Lex trying to gain leverage on, like, he's trying to gain leverage on all of the supermen. And in this case, he's like, oh, I found out some stuff about this gang war that you're on. Maybe I can get some coverage for, like, his news station to cover. Doesn't, like, it doesn't really matter. If Superman never came back and the story kept going, it could have done something, but it's there just as kind of a thing for Lex to do in the book. And it does give steel some information. Like, he does find out where the White rabbit's lair is by way of Lex giving him the info, but it just doesn't amount to much. It's a story, but it's, like, not a big beat.

01:53:34
Case
But then we cut over to White Rabbit. We get some more stuff going on. We start to see her personal henchmen, who are both very weird. There are these two very large dudes. One who's, like, a hacker and looks like the mutant Lord from Dark Knight returns named Digit. Anyway, then she's got this giant, heftier guy with glasses who seems to be not all there and very suffocating towards her. He'll pop up later, but just a weird personal bodyguards for her. And again, she's this, like, femme fatale. She's a Bond villain.

01:54:09
Jmike
Yeah, I can totally see that.

01:54:11
Case
Back at the Daily Planet, we get a little bit of a fight of people arguing about which Superman is real. And the thing that caught me the most was that a dude just casually walks up smoking a cigarette. And I was like, all right, yeah, it's like the 1990s or like early 90s. It's well before they were like, no, you can't smoke at the workplace. Jimmy kind of gets into an argument about it all and then that date storyline continues to happen. Because this book is so focused on steel, every time we cut back to the normal Superman cast, it feels like a weird inclusion that it's whatever, but it's so clear that Steel just lives better as his own character, inspired by Superman, part of the Superman family. But it's just not a Superman book. It's a steel book.

01:54:54
Case
But I do like this crossover with Superboy. Like, the issue cover looks like that it's going to be a fight between Steel and Superboy. But it's actually like Superboy shows up to try to help deal with the same situation, but being reckless and not particularly, not experienced. Like he's weeks old, he accidentally lets, he dodges a shot that goes behind him and hits the helicopter that Lois Lane was in and the pilot dies. And I think that's really good. And, like, Steel giving him a talking to and him being like, wait, did I fuck up? And that's actually some really good teenage moments there and moments that they wouldn't have been allowed to do, at least not at this point in the Superboy book, because that's from his perspective. And so yelling at him wouldn't have felt like, as natural.

01:55:38
Case
And look, you'll get there once the book gets its green lit and its own book. But it's very clear that Adventures of Superman is doing a lighthearted, fun story and not Superboy necessarily learning lessons quite as much the hard way. Having blood on his hands is not a thing they wanted to do, but in this book, he does. I'm not saying they wouldn't have him grow at all as a character. He does grow and he does make mistakes because he's young and impetuous. But the mistakes don't quite, while they should, as far as we know, don't get quite as bad.

01:56:12
Zach Herring
Yeah, it's just very much like a. I don't know. Tonally, it's different, which I always think about when I think about different comics and kind of like the different, they're existing in the same universe, but they have very different styles. Even the characters themselves are a little different across the books. I always think about it in terms of the eyewitnesses. Right. From one person's perspective, a person's going to sound different than another person's perspective. Right. And so you're getting kind of like these. I don't know, I think it's really interesting to kind of compare and contrast these different folks.

01:56:48
Case
But I will say I really like how Bogdanov draws. Like, I think he's got a nice, he looks like a younger superman, and I think that works really well. Lex gives the info to Steele about where to and with the implication that he'll get some leverage on him. But he goes and he confronts white rabbit. We find out that white rabbit is his former lover. And they're pretty explicit about all that.

01:57:11
Zach Herring
Yeah.

01:57:12
Case
Entire backstory. Yes, a lot of backstory. And she's like, join me and we'll share profits, you'll get 20%. And I love everything about that there. And then when he's like, no, this is terrible. I was trying to close Pandora's box and you're like, making it even the hole even bigger. And she's like, all right, well, fine. And she pulls out a gun and.

01:57:32
Zach Herring
Shoots him and shoots him. The second surprise giant cannon that they pull out of nowhere in the series.

01:57:39
Case
That'S not out of nowhere, actually, like right before. It is clearly behind the pillow, which is also a nice detail right there. But he gets launched into a fuel truck and explodes. And Superboy flies in to save him, but burns his hands in the process. Again, Superboy is not invulnerable, and it's nice that everyone is on the same page.

01:57:55
Zach Herring
Also a great moment of physical comedy. I love how you've got two different faces of him facing either way. As you can tell, he's like switching. Alternating between his two on fire hands is great.

01:58:06
Case
But White Rabbit has escaped and Lois is thinking maybe steel actually has the soul. Oh, yeah. So earlier is after he saves her, there's a shot that is just like the man of steel shot with him pulling Lois away and then being mobbed, he catches her, they all run around him and then he flies off. So I just wanted to call out that they're constantly alluding to man of Steel every time Lois interacts with these Superman. And then Supergirl goes off to go find Superboy, and that is just set up for future stuff. I like that they put that detail there. It does make it feel like a more coherent series of books. But it is also only beneficial if you're reading every Superman book in the right order, which I guess is the ethos of the triangle era.

01:58:58
Case
They were trying to make it just like one perpetual book.

01:59:00
Zach Herring
Yeah, this page even. Really nice line work, too.

01:59:05
Case
So the next issue is probably the most intimate issue of this chunk of story. It is the story. Prove it. Which is told from the perspective of a young reporter or a want to be reporter working at the Daily Planet. And instead of being a comic story in the perspective of here's thought and word balloons and so forth, it's him writing the article about his encounter first with some stuff that just happened to make him think about being a reporter, which was, like, just how awesome a dude Clark Kent was. And so he goes to the White House, and that's when Kiraki, aka generic middle Eastern country terrorists, attacks the White House.

01:59:44
Case
And it's interesting because as a result of the way they write the story, there's so many characters listed as appearing because there's so many just, like, single panel shots of them where it's like, here's all the people who came to help clear out. And, like, so on the DC website for what characters appear. It's like, literally, like Pete Ross, Lana Lang, Perry White. Like, every single person that has ever been in a Superman book, it's all because they're in one panel of this thing. And, like, every Justice League and everything is in here because it's a character describing events and then having illustrations backing it up. So it is a way to tell a lot of story in a very short amount of time. Because this story would have been, like, three issues if you were going to do it as a conventional comic.

02:00:25
Zach Herring
Yeah, it would have been a full trade with kind of, like, modern decompress comic storytelling.

02:00:31
Case
In fact, it'd be a very fucking boring trade.

02:00:34
Zach Herring
It would.

02:00:36
Case
But it would take that because so much happens and none of it's that important. You don't need to know what the exact conversation was between Perry White and this guy because it doesn't fucking like, the point is, it's like, no, I'm getting put on an assignment because I want to live up to Clark Kent's standards. And then the White House gets attacked by terrorists and Maxwell Lord. And then the cyborg superman shows up and he gets recognized by the White House signatures or defense systems as actually Superman. And that's when President Bill himself says.

02:01:04
Zach Herring
That he's Superman, guys.

02:01:07
Case
Fucking what?

02:01:08
Zach Herring
Absolutely.

02:01:09
Case
And then the last page is a panel of the headline or, like, the actual headline and the picture. And it's a much more, like, photorealistic drawing of Bill Clinton than the one we get earlier. In the issue, we talked about this last time on world without, because during Superman's funeral, Bill and Hillary give a speech, and it's like, you turn the page, and it's just like, bam. Oh, yeah. This is 1993, guys.

02:01:35
Zach Herring
So I'll be honest. I loved this issue. It's really interesting. I don't know if the words worked for me as well as it did, but it almost doesn't need it, right? Like, if you completely ignored what was being written and just kind of, like, read the story. Just read the story as kind of, like, the images being depicted, it all clocks. It all makes sense, right? Like, you have his friends moving. You have people, like, moving Clark's stuff out. You have him talking. You have the main reporter approaching Perry White. You've got them kind of like, you see he's angry. There's a series of comics that came out right after 911 called. Enough said, I think.

02:02:21
Case
Yeah, the nuff said issue.

02:02:22
Zach Herring
Yeah.

02:02:22
Case
Which to me is Marvel. Every issue for Marvel that month had no dialogue.

02:02:28
Zach Herring
Had no dialogue. And I think there was like a. I can't remember who said it, but someone basically said, if you want to know if the artist is doing a good job, can you tell what the story is? If you removed all the words, if you didn't read the words, if you just looked at what was happening, that's kind of how you can tell whether or not an artist is properly kind of communicating the story. It's also kind of reflects back on the writer as well. Are they showing more than they're telling, et cetera? And I think this is a really interesting way to tell, like you were saying, tell three issues worth of stories in a single 24 issue format.

02:03:03
Zach Herring
There's some really cool juxtapositions of images between him walking down the street and thinking about the four different Superman, you've got guys pouring out of the van. I wonder if there's a. It's just really interesting. I really enjoyed this issue.

02:03:22
Case
And some repeated frames as well to emphasize character faces. Like that one Lee terrorist who looks just like Saddam Hussein. They show that same shot of him holding a gun multiple times because they're trying to convey, this is the takeaway image for it. You're kind of building the news story as you like. Arguably, this is like, if you were to do in a magazine more than a newspaper, but do a news story about this, all the images you would have put in there, and it's a really compelling. I agree. In terms of visual storytelling, it is a tour de force by Dan Jerkins.

02:03:54
Zach Herring
Yes, it really is mentioned. You'd referenced Dark Knight returns earlier. I can't remember about.

02:04:01
Case
Yeah, the one guy looks like the a this.

02:04:05
Zach Herring
The video monitors of Superman, all in black silhouette with his red eyes glowing. And it's basically like, it's super compressed storytelling, except for these really key moments, right. One of which is Superman approaching. And they're watching him approach on the monitors, and he's like a tiny little silhouetted dot. And then he gets closer and closer, and then you see his eyes, his red eye glowing and everything. Really good storytelling. That reminded me a lot of, like, the talking heads, panels, repetition of panels in Miller. And you get the same thing, like when his hand turns into a bazooka. It's just great. To the point where I read this and thought to myself, like, how can I incorporate this into a comic at some point? Because this is just really interesting.

02:04:49
Case
Yeah. I mean, it certainly isn't a thing you can do every issue and have it still be considered like a normal comic book. Because at that point, it's like an illustrated or a prose text with illustrations to supplement, which is cool. And I think that you should blur the lines more. But it is interesting to do it here. And it's like fun to have this moment. But one thing it does do is it keeps us away from having direct inner monologues of the cyborg Superman. And so it's an issue entirely from someone else's perspective. And as a result, we are not challenged to know more about this character. And so while I think that this is a really good way of setting up some stuff, including what happened to Clark Kent's job.

02:05:30
Case
Because, again, each one of these books takes away a thing of Superman and of Clark Kent. So he loses his job here because someone else takes it.

02:05:42
Zach Herring
While moving his dead stock, like the dead reporter's things out of his apartment, he takes his.

02:05:46
Case
Right, which is kind of when we find out what happens to the apartment next or not immediately next, in this order, but very shortly. But we keep some distance from the cyborg Superman. And I think that any reader who was actively wondering if any of these four were should probably be like, oh, now we can kind of, like.

02:06:07
Zach Herring
Bill Clinton told me, either say for.

02:06:09
Case
A fact that this isn't or say for a fact that this is because they're not letting us get confirmation and they're trying to keep it a mystery. And it's one or the other, because we're just not able to get more info about this character because he's not the perspective and I think there's a good place for those kind of Superman stories. I like Superman stories where we see how people see Superman. But again, in terms of who's the real Superman of these four, it's really only between two. And at this point, we have seen way more evidence that it's the eradicator. All right, we got two issues left.

02:06:42
Zach Herring
To go through, and one of them is, again, I don't even know if it's worth covering.

02:06:51
Case
All right, so we're back for bloodlines annuals. And so this is actually the only one I hadn't read before. I just never got a hold of this copy, like the Superman bloodlines annual. And it actually continues the story more than I thought. So the character in it is Sasha Green, who was murdered in the previous arc of Superman stuff. So I appreciated that we picked that up there. So she's a corpse that the vampires drink from and that revives her. And that's kind of cool. I remember that this comes to a head, but I don't remember how it all plays out. But clearly she's back alive and she's able to steal people's memories.

02:07:29
Zach Herring
I have two notes for this. The first one is about the artist, which we can talk about. The second note is that essentially it's like memento mixed up with, like, what was it? It was like memento mixed up with some other thing. It's just really interesting, kind of, oh, quantum leap. It's like momentum plus quantum leap. It's kind of like, how is the dynamic here where she's, like, she touches them, she gets their memories? That's actually pretty interesting concept. Did this character continue on or was this just tying off?

02:08:03
Case
I think she does effectively, but I don't know how much she's used. But she does at least, because Sasha Green's like, the whole murder of Sasha Green comes back as, like, a story point later. So this continues and establishes she's still alive. And honestly, the thing I thought of was who only did the mind stuff and not the power. So she copies or parasite, but she copies the memories of a person. And to a certain extent, it overwrites the personality that she currently has. So she wakes up as Sasha with no personality because she actually died. So she's so traumatized that she's got none of it. So she imprints on this one person, then another person, and it keeps on going, and certain triggers will have different personalities emerge.

02:08:45
Case
And it seems that she has an ability to control people while she's actively linked with them, which I find interesting.

02:08:50
Zach Herring
Yeah.

02:08:51
Case
So that's all cool. I hate how much the cyborg Superman has an inner monologue in this. It was one thing in that issue where he digs up doomsday where. Yeah, yeah, doomsday is a threat to want to. Again, this is getting back to knowing the spoiler that Hank Henshaw is not actually Superman. This issue, he feels just like Superman. It's just they don't trust him. But his inner monologue just is Superman. And so I keep wondering, like, oh, well, is it a scenario where it's like the Skrull invasion for secret invasion, where they have the memories of whoever they're emulating imprinted over them so that no one can psychically scan them, which would make sense, but it's just like, again, it directly contradicts what we will find out. And while that's fine, I don't think they ever provide an explanation for it.

02:09:42
Case
And so it just feels like they're lying to the.

02:09:47
Zach Herring
This is, this is kind of like the one big hole in kind of like the, I would consider pretty unique storytelling. Airtight. Yeah.

02:09:58
Case
I think that the Cyborg Superman, we should have had less, like, we should never have had inner monologue unless they were going to directly address it. And this issue in general is just like, it feels like a waste, aside from the fact that it is directly advancing a story plot. Yeah, but it's more bloodlines. It's not particularly interesting. Bloodlines, myriad. Both plays more of a part than some other characters, but no one really cares that much about. It's not that exciting of a character. I don't know. I mean, it's cool that it is an established character. A lot of these are just like, random dude gained superpowers. Now let's follow him. And in this case, it's a character who had not only appeared, but was already, her death was like a plot that were following what was going to happen.

02:10:42
Case
So that was all cool. It was fun seeing Lex Luthor trying to continue to hide his dual identity, secretly being Lex Luthor, his own.

02:10:52
Zach Herring
I was, I got really excited whenever I opened this up because it's David Latham who's on the art, which, if you haven't read stray bullets, he's a comic creator in his own right, a great writer who does, like, crime comics called stray bullets. And he's done some really good stuff with bad idea lately as well. And I really like his style of artwork. It's kind of like, got a Hernandez brothers feel to it. Like, it's simplistic. But has a lot of weight and a lot of really interesting stuff. I got really excited when I saw his name on this. None of that is present in this issue. He's like one of the few known quantities. And it was kind of a disappointing art side. I speed read through this one. It was pretty disappointing.

02:11:42
Case
I mean, I think that could be chalked up to being early in his career and also just, this is also.

02:11:47
Zach Herring
Maybe not just not the stuff that he early in his career. I don't know if this is really what he wanted to draw.

02:11:53
Case
Probably not. The Cyborg Superman is probably not the type of character he was getting into comics to.

02:12:01
Zach Herring
He's done, yeah, he's done some more Sci-Fi stuff with bad idea lately, and he did a great job. So he's definitely matured in this direction. But, yeah, this is not his finest moment for an early, pretty killer comic creator.

02:12:14
Case
Yeah. So ultimately, this advances one story arc that is not really a big part of the death and return of Superman. It just happens to happen in the midst of it and then gives us some conflicting, contradictory information about the cyborg Superman. And yay. I feel like that kind of sums up the value of this. The annuals you could totally skip. It's just like, are there good moments for these characters? And I think this one actually does a disservice to the character. Unlike both steel and Superboys, and to a lesser extent, the eradicator, where we find ourselves caring about these characters and dealing with their worlds. And this one is just like, fine, fuck it, whatever. Move on. So we're moving on to the last one of this chunk of issues that we're talking about.

02:13:00
Case
We're back at Adventures of Superman, aka the adventures of Superboy.

02:13:04
Zach Herring
Blade girl on this cover. Fantastic.

02:13:08
Case
Yeah, I love the COVID It looks like such a romance cover of Superboy and Supergirl together. I love the way Tom Grummett draws Supergirl in. Like, she looks so distinct from Cara Zorrell the way he draws her. And I love that part about it. And some of it's just like she's got this big heather Locklear blonde hair as opposed to the shorter 50 style looks that we've usually seen for Supergirl. She's wearing the costume that was the Supergirl movie costume. I really like that look here, but we actually don't see cars or all in the comics wear that look very often. So it also kind of feels like it's her own thing. She feels a bit more like a college student, and he feels like a high school student. So it's like a nice dynamic between those two.

02:13:55
Case
And Zach, you had called out that the splash page, that's not the first page, but the second page of it after Superboy is kind of like toying around with saving a car that had veered off a bridge, which is classic superhero scenario. And he just even does a knot joke when he picks it up over his head. And then it's followed up by her jumping in.

02:14:14
Zach Herring
This is my favorite page in the entire book when she, Superboy lifting a car, and then she's lifting the grate that Superboy standing on. It's wonderful. It really kind of underlines. This to me is like the perfect encapsulation of these two issues. And I would hope, like the rest of the series. When I saw this page, I basically thought to myself, I'm reading the rest of this series. It's so good.

02:14:39
Case
Yeah. And I kind of like that we established that they're already very similar characters. Like, they are both artificial constructs. In one case a clone, in the other case, like a protoplasmic robot with the brain memories of long story that I've sold too many times. But they're both working for corporations. Like, she's working for Lexcore and he's working for WGBs. They're both wearing earpieces at this point. They have microphones on their faces. They're in constant communication with stuff. There is an element of modernity in terms of comics. This is a big trend of the corporate sponsors and having endorsement deals, and they're actually celebrities. And that was really popular, especially with image stuff like Youngblood. That was like, the defining idea was like, well, what if a superhero was a celebrity? Did they do much with it?

02:15:26
Case
Not in the original run, but they eventually would when other writers would work on it. But that was the thing about comics. And both of them are kind of cavalier about their superheroing. Like, Superboy is literally toying with this car that's like falling off. And then Supergirl picks up this grate after, which could have easily caused him to slip. And also, what's this? Great. She just picked up part of the bridge and flew off of it, which, it's a cool shot, but she also is not as responsible as neither. These are both immature superheroes, right?

02:15:58
Zach Herring
No, absolutely. Yeah. It's just great again.

02:16:03
Case
And then we get a boobs joke at the end of the third page of. I was just choking.

02:16:09
Zach Herring
Just joking, really reaching there. And I'm sure Lex finding out that they were sleeping, that they're an item. And then Lex watching this just makes it all the worse. Oh, my God.

02:16:21
Case
Yeah.

02:16:21
Zach Herring
Awesome.

02:16:22
Case
He's like, wouldn't she like to spend more time with my girlfriend? Yes, of course you would.

02:16:25
Zach Herring
Of course. Then we've got Spider man as the.

02:16:29
Case
Yeah. Okay. So she flies off saying that she gets all her news from WLAx. And so, like, cuts off her audio, which I think is a good moment there. And they're like, yeah, Superboy's awesome. Cool. Because they're doing this whole PR thing for him. And the TV gets destroyed. And there's Stinger, who is just fucking Spider man. And this is his first appearance. And I think he's, like, had a handful of background. Like we needed a supervillain just to be in the background. It's fucking Spiderman. I love it. It's Spiderman.

02:16:59
Zach Herring
Spiderman. He even web slings away at one point.

02:17:03
Case
Yes, he's clear in every shot. He's got the full body swinging posture. He's not just using a grappling hook. He's like, doing spider.

02:17:12
Zach Herring
Yeah, he's like. He is almost like. He almost is doing the webbing thing is basically what he's doing right here.

02:17:18
Case
Yeah, his costume is red with this kind of tan kind of accent for a shoulder pad and some gear. And then he's got these arcs around his eyes that look kind of like the 2099 Spiderman outfit.

02:17:30
Zach Herring
He's even got. 2099 had kind of like the spider legs or the spider legs down further on his legs, which he even has here. And he's got the spider legs kind of like going down on his rib cage as well. This is pretty blatantly Spiderman 2049 as the villain.

02:17:49
Case
Yeah, it's Spiderman. It's Spiderman. But as an evil mercenary. And it's fun.

02:17:56
Zach Herring
And he's been hired by a dead shot also.

02:17:58
Jmike
Yeah, that's where I was thinking.

02:18:00
Zach Herring
Yeah, he's also got, like, kind of. He's Spider man. He's like a mashup. He's an amalgam of deadshot.

02:18:05
Case
That's true. The stinger is like a deadshot kind of look right there. It's similar to Ben Riley, who does not exist yet at this. And actually, it makes me think of Scarlet Spider a lot because his main costume is red. But again, I think this predates the clones saga.

02:18:20
Zach Herring
Stuff like a couple years.

02:18:21
Case
Yeah, a couple of years, yeah. But we did get Rex Leech, who last time we saw him was at world without Superman, where he tries to convince Jimmy Olsen to sign over the rights to the photos of Superman's death. And then when he doesn't, he has armed guards try to attack him, which is like, so weird at a funeral full of superheroes.

02:18:40
Zach Herring
Right?

02:18:40
Case
But here we get more of the Rex leech that I really know because he becomes Supervoy's agent going forward or manager, and is mostly just like a guy hanging out in hawaiian shirts who's trying to grift endorsement deals. And so this is like the last time where he's kind of shitty and then he becomes more of a fuck up than a villain. And so this is like that transition point, but so he hires stinger and to stage a fight so that Superboy can have a win and it can be cool. We get the cute little bit of Bibbo trying to buy dog tags for Krypton and there's a six character limit, so it becomes crypto and we all love it because it's, again, Superboy and Crypto are like, crypto is Superman's dog.

02:19:23
Case
But it's really during the Superboy era that dynamic is played out as an adult. Crypto is still around, but he only shows up sporadically. But it was always the flashbacks of him as a boy in Smallville where he has crypto. Yay. And so we're very clearly setting that up. And then we get Lex just throwing Supergirl at Superboy in the most aggressive way. And again, I have to reiterate, Tom Grummett draws everyone. So pretty.

02:19:48
Zach Herring
Yeah. Although I will say this is like the one weird page. Like, I'm looking at it now. She looks gigantic. If you look at the chairs, how the chairs are pushed together with the table and then you look at them in the background with how tall the waiter is and then how tall she is. She looks like she's 8ft tall. And then you've got, or possibly Lexa and Superboy are like 4ft tall.

02:20:14
Case
Yeah, the perspective is little questionable. But also, she is tall.

02:20:18
Zach Herring
She is tall. She looks tall. And she's wearing.

02:20:20
Case
And they want to show off, like, she's got this slit on her dress to show off her legs. They just wanted to show off all of that. Again, she's there.

02:20:29
Zach Herring
Yeah, but that, to me, is kind of the funniness of it. And I was talking about how comic book pages, you know, it's working. They'll do things that look weird but are weird if you think about it, but then look off. Right? Like, if you actually think about anatomy and everything, this is like one of those pages where it's like everything is arranged for kind of like maximum dynamic impact. Whereas if you actually think about it, because I didn't clock it the first couple of times I looked at this and now I'm looking at it and I'm going like, actually, the perspective is really weird here, but I totally bought this as like, it's a curvy perspective.

02:21:04
Case
Exactly. As opposed to the 90s. This doesn't look like J. Scott Campbell, where the legs are like three quarters of the character's body. Her proportions actually look fine. It's just that the vanishing point is a little messed up to make the figures look interesting and dynamic and to have her be the center of our focus. We're supposed to have our eye go from Superboy looking at her. It's supposed to draw her attention. And so I think it's deliberate, but I think it is definitely skewed away from realism. But his style is so clean and again, very like Kurt Swan style that it doesn't read it as being an abstraction. And that's where I think the disconnect's happening because it's a much more conventional Archie style kind of design.

02:21:45
Zach Herring
Yeah. God, and that next page, he does such good work with their body language where you have Superboy just kind of like he is the teenager. So he's even kind of like, got that hungry teenager thing going where he's just like digging in. He's talking with his mouth full, et cetera. Lex is constantly dabbing his, like, he's kind of like the professional one. And then you can see she's kind of like talking to both of them. She's looking left, she's looking right. This is fantastic acting on the page that he's doing here.

02:22:16
Case
Yeah. With the sun setting behind them to show the passion of time, which is really good.

02:22:20
Zach Herring
So good.

02:22:21
Case
Oh, also the page before is where we had that moment of Lex being like, we have more in common than you might think. And he said, what, you a clone too? And he goes, ha. And then changes the subject.

02:22:30
Zach Herring
So good.

02:22:32
Case
So that's good. I love that. Like, puts the cell on Superboy. And Superboy has no ability to say no to these kind of things. And the only reason that Lex doesn't succeed here is he didn't have the contract right with him because he would have just won right at that moment. But Superboy, being an impulsive and horny teen, then goes off to see the apartment that WGBS is setting up with him. And it's Clark Kent's apartment. And this is like, yeah, so Superboy now takes the copyright for Superman and also Clark Kent's apartment. And I think it's so fucking funny, especially because a lot of it's by accident. Like, they don't know that Clark Kent is any connection to Superman. It's just like, oh, well, there's a lot of damage to buildings because of Doomsday's destruction.

02:23:09
Case
So when I saw that this apartment was free in the news because I read the article in the Superman issue about Clark Kent's apartment being cleared out, I reached out and bought it.

02:23:18
Zach Herring
It's a competitive real estate market. When a vacancy opens up, even if it's dead, Superman's apartment, you have to jump on it. And yeah, it totally worked out for him.

02:23:30
Case
But Rex Leach is there and he has his daughter Roxy, who is smitten with Superboy. And because it's this pretty blonde girl, a different pretty blonde girl, like actively kissing him. And Rex happens to have the contract there. Superboy's like, yeah, sure, I'll sign. Whatever you put in front of me, I will sign because Superboy is dumb or at the very least immature. And that is a continual thing for him. We get the heavy implication that because Vinny edge is like, make sure there's two helicopters trailing Superboy tomorrow. And it's like, why? Did you do something? And it's like, yeah, I did something. Of course I did something. So Superboy is like carrying a train because he's more powerful than a locomotive and we just want to be heavy handed with all the shit. And he's thinking like, man, I fucked up.

02:24:14
Case
I told Lex I was going to sign, but I didn't sign with someone else. It's a little like entourage to a certain extent. Immature boys. Yeah. Immature, horny boys, yeah. Train explodes, jackets wrecked up. He stops the train from hitting the ground and hitting anyone. And that's when he gets attacked by this Spider man type character. And the thing I love is. So he directs the train into this cleared out section of the park. And they're like, was that your x ray vision? Was it your tactics? Like the way eradicator had two issues ago? It's like, would you believe dumb luck because he doesn't have any of the senses, but also he's just lucky as hell. And it's like, hey, look over there. That's the guy. And he's like, so superweight, takes off and he says he's flying straight at the guy.

02:24:55
Case
And he says, thanks. I won't be caught by surprise. Or I was caught by a surprise before, but that won't happen again. And that's an gets hit in the back by a guy he was flying into. And the gymnastics to make that happen are amazing. But I also just love. It's like, yep. So this character is definitely a rogue.

02:25:10
Zach Herring
Exactly.

02:25:11
Case
And it just worked really well. It's just really funny. It also ends up looking very similar to the fight that happens in Marvel versus DC between Spider man and Superboy. Like, weirdly ending with them fighting on a rooftop with a water tower being part of the fight. Weird parallels. That's several years later. And I don't think it was on purpose, but it was just like, yeah, it's a convenient way to do this.

02:25:35
Zach Herring
Yeah, absolutely.

02:25:37
Case
Cut over to Bibbo's bar where a brawl breaks out because of different people thinking different supermen are real or the real Superman. Including, like, getting into a politics conversation at one point.

02:25:49
Zach Herring
We think the country is divided now, man. It was so divided back in the 90s when weren't sure which Superman was which. People got into fights.

02:26:00
Case
Cut back to the fight. Stinger does some really effective things, like tying a line to Superboy and then attaching it to the power grid of the city to shock the shit out of him. Good stuff. Really good moments in general. I like that Lex controlling thinking. He's controlling the narrative and is going to have Superboy as his. Has Supergirl, who's been standing right there but invisible, come out of being invisible to fight on command so that it can be like a triumphant moment as opposed to helping from at any point.

02:26:30
Zach Herring
Right. He held back for maximum impact and then you got Stinger bailing and blowing up.

02:26:37
Case
Yeah, because now it's like, oh, shit, there's two of you. Literally. My contract was one. I really don't fucking care about either of you. But also, that kid just punched me. I'm not dealing with the shit.

02:26:48
Jmike
I'll get paid for this.

02:26:49
Case
Yeah. So he fires a bunch of shots at the bridge and they're all explosive charges. And the issue ends with the bridge collapsing. And it's really nice here because Tana was aware that was probably going to happen, or rather that it probably was a staged fight, but the collateral damage is really big. So she's got that weighing on her. Superboy is just casually a fuck up. So that's kind of a fun detail. Supergirl is also kind of casually a fuck up, too. It's nice, but it's a good cliffhanger. I like how the story ends with like, oh, there's all this damage and blah, blah, down here on the ground, but also in space, there's a warship coming.

02:27:30
Zach Herring
Yeah. Which felt like it was out of nowhere. But I wasn't sure if it was the bloodlines thing or what it was.

02:27:38
Case
Yeah, because you were reading the blood. It's unconnected. This is the big story here. Like getting to the actual finale of this arc. But it's not connected to the bloodline things. It's a different set of aliens.

02:27:50
Zach Herring
Good. Awesome. And that's it. The Supermen have effectively reigned.

02:28:02
Case
Yeah. And have made a mess of a lot of things. This is the equivalent of the Brooklyn bridge being.

02:28:11
Zach Herring
Brooklyn Bridge is being destroyed. You've got two really immature superheroes getting more tangled up in their self interest than protecting the city. I think that's kind of an interesting thing that you kind of see with the others as well, which is really just kind of like the gap between Superman as we know him and what these different superheroes are able to. The different flavors and kind of like what's missing, I guess, between them. Yeah.

02:28:41
Case
Each one is like a facet of Superman, but missing something. Steel is getting. Has the spirit of him, but he doesn't have the scope of powers and the scope of impact. All he can deal with is stuff on the ground. Superboy is obviously this immature. He's got power, but he doesn't have any of the cunning or anything like that. And then we get into more complex cases with eradicator and cyborg who both have a lethal quality to them and also the power. But then they don't have the human touchstones. Like they don't have supporting cast, whereas both Superboy and Man of steel do.

02:29:16
Jmike
They also don't have the shades.

02:29:19
Case
Yeah, that's true.

02:29:21
Zach Herring
Are the jackets those cool shades? I love those shades. I love that jacket.

02:29:27
Case
It's just too many belts, man.

02:29:30
Jmike
Never. It's terrible. Just like having too many zippers in the 90s.

02:29:35
Zach Herring
Exactly. How else is his pants going to stay up, man?

02:29:40
Jmike
Exactly where you're going to put all that stuff you need. You're going to pull your gadgets and stuff, man. Okay.

02:29:46
Zach Herring
Keys to your car, keys to your apartment. Sorry, Clark Kent's apartment that you just stole. There's a lot. There's a lot going on. He's a guy on the.

02:30:01
Case
A. It's a big cliffhanger. But this is kind of like the end of part one. Initially, when DC collected the story, they also include the next section, which is actually the proper return of Superman. But this was our little time of two issues to each of them just like operating on their own and us being like, all right, so what's going on with these books before it really comes together? We've seen overlap. Obviously, there was the encounter between Superboy and Steel, but you wouldn't miss anything if you hadn't been reading man of Steel but you were reading Adventures of Superman and you're like, what's going on with Superboy? Like, he met Steel. He got a talking to for not being good at his job. We aren't getting into the real confrontations yet.

02:30:39
Case
We're not getting into the actual bigger villain story that is happening in this all. And the teasing is happening at the very end here. But, yeah, so this was like some nice time with each of these Superman and where we got a chance to kind of feel them independent of everything and get a sense of what their stories are. And obviously the eradicators feels more tied into the larger death of Superman plot because it's more directly part of that story.

02:31:04
Case
Meanwhile, the characters who are definitely being introduced to test the water to see how their series are going to do and get some publicity going for them are like, no, we're more independent characters who can live off on our own, but it's going to come all together because we're actually going to get the real Superman and we're going to actually find out what the hell's going on here. And the story is going to become more of a weekly book that just happens to be with four different titles instead of, in this case, at the moment, it's four different books, each telling their own stories that have some overlap. So we'll be back next time to talk about the return of Superman, the comics part, because we're talking about all these. But next time we're talking about the comics, the return of Superman.

02:31:45
Case
But in the meantime, they should check out some other stuff that's going on in the world. Like, Zach, you've got some stuff going on and you should give some.

02:31:53
Zach Herring
Well, thanks. Yeah, I don't know when this is coming out, but yeah, the big comic book series that I've been working on, abducted, it's like stranger Things meets, like, a Coen Brothers movie. It's kind of like how we've been pitching it. But we started in 2018. It wrapped up in 2021. We're actually finally getting to the Kickstarter for the trade paperback for the collected edition. So, yeah, I think that's like the really big thing that if folks are interested to see the stuff that I work on, definitely check that out. You can either go to abductedthecomic.com or jredcomics.com, and either one will redirect to the Kickstarter. But that is launching on January 24, so that's the big thing that we're working on right now.

02:32:44
Case
Yeah. So that'll be starting shortly after this episode. Oh, cool.

02:32:48
Zach Herring
Nice.

02:32:49
Case
Everyone check that out. I know you can follow. Kickstarter is the Kickstarter at this point. So go to Kickstarter and follow it and then back it because I've got the box collection that you have of abducted, and it's a great book and people should check all this stuff out. Especially, we should all be supporting independent books, even though we're spending so much time talking about the biggest franchise in.

02:33:13
Zach Herring
The history of comics. But in its defense, it did start. It popularized comics to the point of where no Superman means no medium, no indie comics of today. So I think that's still, we're paying our dues at this point.

02:33:28
Case
Exactly. So everyone should go check out that they should follow it, and then if the Kickstarter is running, by the time they actually look at it, they should back it because support Zach because he's their friend.

02:33:38
Zach Herring
Thank you. Yes. Thank you so much. Yeah, no, this was a blast. I'm going to be honest, I'd never had the opportunity to read this series before. I don't know if it was just kind of like the stigma of the 90s, but I really enjoyed coming back and kind of looking at what they were trying to do in this. This was a really interesting experiment for them.

02:33:57
Case
Yeah, I think it's both indicative of the 90s, but also way more introspective about the time than people really gave it credit for. So it's a lot of fun. I'm really glad that we're doing this retrospective, and obviously, next time we're going to be continuing the conversation. But in the meantime, J Mike, where can people find you and follow you?

02:34:15
Jmike
You can find me on Twitter at jmike 101 for however long the lights are still on that website.

02:34:21
Zach Herring
Heck yeah.

02:34:21
Jmike
But in the meantime, I am still there.

02:34:26
Zach Herring
Back up your tweets, everybody.

02:34:29
Case
Yeah, get the archive and then try to figure out how to decipher the archive. Good luck, because I got mine and it was like, oh, that's a lot of text files. That. What is it is. It is hard to decipher, but do that. But in the meantime, you can check us out on Twitter at Men of steelpod. You can follow me at case Aiken. You can follow me on Instagram at ketzelcoatl five because I'm a legion of superheroes nerd and a mythology nerd. So you can check all that out, or you can just go to certainpov.com where there's a link to our discord server where you can interact with us directly. We've got a lot of great new shows that have come on board, and they're all interacting.

02:35:05
Case
We got jukebox Vertigo recently, which is a music show where Keith and Josue each week talk about, well, they put together a new playlist on Spotify based on a specific theme, and then each week they do a listening session on Twitch. So check that one out. It's a lot of fun, and it's created a lot of music discussion on our discord. So even if you're not a podcast person, well, I don't know if you're not a podcast person while you're listening to this, but if you're a music person, it's a lot of fun.

02:35:31
Zach Herring
This was your first podcast ever. Oh, my God.

02:35:36
Case
Yeah. What a podcast to jump in on. But check that out. It's created a lot of great discussion on our discord, and they just do a great job with all that. So I do want to give a shout out to them specifically, but we'll be back next time with the actual return of Superman as we continue this retrospective on the death and return cycle. But until then, stay super man.

02:35:58
Jmike
Men of steel is a certain POV production. Our hosts are J. Mike Folson and case Aiken. The show is edited by Matt Storm. Our logo is by Chris Batista. Episode art is by case Aiken, and our theme is by Jeff Moon.

02:36:16
Case
Yeah, it's like, this was a thing in comics just across the board, because I think the same year Marvel did something like this, because they had a bunch of annuals. I had, like, one or two of them, but I don't think there was, like, a story. It was just like, we're introducing a new character in each of these annuals, and then they would do other fifth week type events like dead Earth a couple of years later or just company wide elseworlds. Just things that sort of stirred up each year.

02:36:45
Zach Herring
Gotcha, butcher.

02:36:47
Case
This year was bloodlines, and.

02:36:51
Jmike
It gave.

02:36:52
Case
Us Hitman, a thing that consciously, at every point, shits on the concept of superheroes.

02:36:57
Zach Herring
Yeah. I mean, honestly, it was all worth it. Frankly, I didn't realize that's where it came from. That's awesome.

02:37:03
Case
It's worth the trade.

02:37:04
Zach Herring
Yeah, seriously. Worth the price of invention. Okay, cool.

02:37:07
Case
Video games are a unique medium. They can tell stories, immerse us in strange, fantastic worlds, blur the very boundaries of our reality. But at the end of the day, video games are fun. Whatever fun is to you. I'm Jeff Moonan. And I am Matt, aka Stormageddon. And on fun and games, we talk about the history, trends, and community of video games. It's a celebration of all the games we play and all the fun we find within them.

02:37:34
Zach Herring
And there's so many more games out there, so we hope you'll share in.

02:37:37
Case
That conversation with us. Fun and Games podcast with Matt and Jeff find us on certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts and happy gaming. Cpov certainpov.com.

AI meeting summary:

●      The Men of Steel podcast hosts, **Case Aiken** and J. Mike Falson, along with guest **Zach Herring**, delve into the return of Superman during the 90s triangle era. They discuss how multiple characters embodied different aspects of Superman's persona, such as **Steel**, **Cyborg Superman**, **Eradicator**, and **Superboy**. The dynamic between these characters is analyzed for their symbolic significance within the storyline, with particular emphasis on editorial decisions shaping Superman's revival.

●      The meeting further explores significant plot developments involving characters like **Lex Luthor Jr.** and Supergirl. The narrative landscape gains layers of intrigue through covert activities and altered versions of familiar characters, driving complex interpersonal dynamics and tension within the overarching storyline. Visual elements from comic issues, such as Superman saving a falling plane and Lois Lane confronting him, symbolize Superman's heroic return amidst evolving challenges and moral dilemmas.

●      **Superman's** identity and legacy are deeply examined through various storylines involving **John Henry Irons** and **Superboy**. The storytelling elements, art styles, and character developments within each comic issue are highlighted. The meeting emphasizes creating diverse characters like **Tana Moon** with Hawaiian heritage and artistic choices like dramatic lighting effects to enhance visual storytelling.

●      Exploring heroism, identity, and themes within Superman's universe, the meeting delves into individual story arcs' specifics, including character evolution and unique powers. The impact on reader engagement is analyzed through narrative twists, character interactions, and visual representations. A brief mention of the "Bloodlines" side storyline introduces new superpowered individuals, critiquing character designs and overall reception compared to established superheroes, touching upon thematic explorations related to body horror tropes.

Notes:

●      📊 **Content Focus Discussion**

●      **Big stories with metaplots** discussed by the group

●      **Emphasis on particular niches** while still incorporating broader storylines

●      **Aim to balance focus on specifics and overarching narratives**

●      📰 **News Storytelling Techniques**

●      **Utilization of images for compressed storytelling**

●      **Focus on key moments** within a news story

●      **Consideration of showing more than telling**

●      💬 **Character Dynamics Analysis**

●      **Observation of character interactions** such as talking with mouth full

●      **Engagement in politics conversation** noted during the interaction

●      📸 **Visual Composition Evaluation**

●      **Attention to detail** in visual elements like chair placements

●      **Height contrast observation** between characters in scenes

●      🗣️ **Communication Strategies**

●      **Efforts to raise awareness** about various situations

●      **Consideration of appropriate voice** for specific messages

●      📝 **Narrative Clarity Review**

●      **Focus on making storytelling clear** and easily understandable

●      **Efforts to ensure coherence** in conveying the narrative

Action items:

●      **Case Aiken**

●      Follow up on the note about Superman's story (05:51)

●      Address the point raised about which Superman people gravitate towards (09:41)

●      **Zach Herring**

●      Discuss the four Supermen being a commentary by the writing team on comics at that time (10:31)

●      Explore whether Lex Luthor Jr. and Supergirl are involved in a romantic relationship (46:29)

●      **Louis Simonson**

●      Clarify the design elements for Tana Moon (1:26:51)

●      Provide more nods to Silver Age Superboy in character interactions (1:27:01)

●      **Chris Batista**

●      Continue illustrating adventures of Superboy with clean and visually appealing style (1:26:23)

Outline:

●      Chapter 1: Story Development and Structure (00:28 - 27:35)

●      00:28: Initial discussion on creating big stories with metaplots while focusing on specific niches.

●      03:04: Teasing the audience to listen for 4 hours before delving into the content.

●      08:23: Emphasizing the significance of every panel in the first issue.

●      27:35: Reflecting on the impactful nature of the panels and discussing the storytelling style.

●      Chapter 2: Character and Narrative Exploration (31:12 - 52:13)

●      31:12: Exploring the dueling narratives and internal monologue within the story.

●      41:09: Touching on real-world commentaries embedded in the narrative.

●      52:13: Expressing personal difficulty and engagement with the read.

●      52:44: Reflecting on the challenges and dynamics of the storytelling.

●      Chapter 3: Artistic Expression and Visual Storytelling (54:46 - 2:05:04)

●      54:46: Highlighting the use of black and white sequences and visual elements in storytelling.

●      1:00:50: Discussing the artistic details and character development through visuals.

●      1:47:41: Appreciating the graphic storytelling techniques to convey character depth.

●      2:04:55: Blurring the lines between text and illustration for effective storytelling.

●      Chapter 4: Intimate Storytelling and News Presentation (2:05:04 - 2:01:57)

●      2:05:04: Compressed storytelling and key moments in the narrative.

●      2:07:20: Reflecting on unique storytelling approaches and its impact.

●      2:13:07: Transitioning to the next chunk of issues and underlining key themes.

●      2:14:59: Noting the narrative progression and character dynamics.

●      Chapter 5: Future Narratives and Collaborative Storytelling (2:16:30 - 2:37:46)

●      2:16:30: Observing character interactions and narrative developments.

●      2:31:23: Anticipating the convergence of storylines and collaborative storytelling.

●      2:34:06: Appreciating the retrospective discussion and looking forward to future episodes.

●      2:37:24: Concluding remarks on the editing process and upcoming content discussions.