As I mentioned in my first Action Comics post, I was more of a Marvel Zombie than a DC . . . um . . .what are DC fans called? Well, whatever they were, it wasn’t me. Just didn’t look interesting to my 12 year-old-brain. And yet, with the impeccable logic of a 12 year old whose head was spinning with the heady potential of collecting, the idea of having a comic that I bought today become valuable in the future had me willing to buy anything that had the potential to be worth money down the road. Such a topsy-turvy view of economics and investment strategy is why I majored in English and not Accounting.
Favoritism aside, for any title to reach a milestone issue like 100 or 200, never mind 600, is something to crow about. On a monthly schedule, it takes a comic a little over eight years to publish 100 issues. That means a creative team(s) has to engage a large enough audience with interesting enough stories for 100 consecutive months. If you think that’s easy, you try it some time. And to continue to do so for 50 years (go on, do the math: 600 / 12 = 50) is pretty damn impressive, whether you personally like the product or not.
When Acton Comics #600 rolled around, the John Byrne era of Superman was in full swing, even though at the time I wasn’t too interested in it. In fact, I think this issue may be the first Superman comic I purposely bought. I don’t remember much of my reaction when I first read it, although I do remember thinking the Man-Bat story seemed a little weird, and I was very disappointed to see that the plotline was going to continue in another comic. I remember thinking it was unfair that this issue set something up that I had to buy a whole ‘nother comic to finish; so not only was this my first Superman comic, but also my experience with cross-title-plotting.
Reading it now, twenty-some-odd years later, is a curious thing. The main draw of the issue—whther or not Superman and Wonder Woman will become lovers--is amusing. The opening shot of the two sucking face, but Wonder Woman’s eyes wide open is pretty great, even if it tips off that the idea of them being lovers is obviously not going to happen. I detect a bit of meta-textual irony in the fact that these two adults seem utterly inexperienced when it comes to relationships with the opposite sex, much like the kids reading the story. There’s a jarring bit of dialogue in their initial conversation, where Superman admits to Wonder Woman that he had “a rather intense dream about you”. Admitting to a girl on the first date that you had an erotic dream about her is definitely the sort of comment you’d hear from a guy who has no idea how to interact with a woman in a mature manner, so it’s outright laughable to hear it from Superman of all people. Now, John Byrne was at the top of his game in the mid/late 1980’s, but as wonderful a storyteller as he was, meta-textual commentary was never his forte. So I truly doubt Byrne wrote such dialogue as an ironic comment on his audience. That has scary implications in itself, but we’ll have plenty of time to discuss the decline and fall of John Byrne as this blog goes on.
Suffice to say, Clark and Diana (yes, I’m referring to them by their real names here because I feel stupid relating dialogue between “Superman” and “Wonder Woman”) decide it’s best to be “just friends”, not so much out of a lack of romantic interest/chemistry between them, but because Clark decides Diana is out of his league. Seriously. Clark tells Diana that he’s “really” just a boy from Kansas while Diana stands among Gods. This from a guy who just stood up to Darkseid and can fly into outer space. I suppose it’s meant to play into the idea that Clark Kent is the real person and Superman is just a costume, whereas Wonder Woman is who Diana is. But, like his earlier confession about his erotic dream, it illustrates the decidedly adolescent idea of what a romantic relationship is about. Sure, Clark may have been raised on the farm, but he’s actually an alien being who spends his free time battling demigods and moving mountains with his bare hands. If he was really “just a boy from Kansas”, he wouldn’t be able to be Superman. In fact, for Clark to close off the possibility of a relationship with Diana just because they come from different backgrounds, when there’s clearly some chemistry between them, strikes me as horribly narrow-minded and, my God, I’m seriously analyzing the feasibility of a romance between Superman and Wonder Woman.
Right. Well. I didn’t read comics for twenty years for nothing, eh?
Moving well along: This Superman/Wonder Woman story was the headliner, but it was only 32 pages of an 80 page comic. (Random side note as I have no other place to mention it: In 1988, this comic book sold for $2.50, a pretty decent price but not too shabby for 80 pages of story and art. Last month, the 900th issue of Action Comics came out and it too was 80 pages. It cost $5.99.) The rest of the comic looks spotlights Superman’s supporting cast, weaving new plotlines with other ongoing ones, with varying degrees of interest.
First up, in an epilogue to the lead story, we have a character piece focusing on Lois Lane, where we are reminded that while she is a tough-as-nails reporter, when it comes to Superman, she cries just like a little girl. It also serves as another mile-post in the slowing forming relationship between Lois and Clark.
The next story is far more interesting, mainly because it involves Maggie Sawyer. Maggie, a Metropolis police officer, was created by John Byrne and pretty soon after her first appearance was revealed to be gay. But, as this was 1988, you couldn’t have a character actually come out and say “I’m gay”. Instead you had to do with through innuendos of varying degrees of obliqueness. For example, you could have a story where Lex Luthor, annoyed that Captain Sawyer keeps investigating his it’s-not-illegal-because-you-can’t-prove-it-in-court activities, invites her to his office and threatens to expose her sexual orientation unless she backs off. But instead of having Lex say “Maggie, if you don’t back off, I’m gonna tell the world you’re a lesbian.” you end up with a fascinating scene where Lex makes it clear he knows she’s gay without actualy saying she’s gay.
What’s fascinating about this is the scene actually works, even if it’s the result of the taboos in place at the time. Lex Luthor is a manipulative slimeball, and it’s completely in character for him to dance around a subject, implying what he means without actually saying it. Although the bit where he has a very attractive secretary come in and stick her ass in Maggie’s face is definitely over-the-top, Byrne gets away with the scene because Lex is arrogant enough, and heartless enough, to be that insensitive. (Of course, it also plays into the stereotype that homosexuals automatically view their gender in sexual terms. I don’t know if Byrne was naive enough to think a lesbian would automatically drool over a sexy female secretary, or if he did it to show was a dick Lex is, but it still reads poorly. Given the degree of humanity that Sawyer is portrayed with in this story, I’m willing to give Byrne the benefit of the doubt on this one, but I did find this blog post about Maggie’s initial coming out that suggests I may be a little generous in that.)
Mind you, all of this went over my head in ’88. Maggie’s sexual preference was a non-starter for my 12-year-old-self; the only thing took away from this particular story was that it introduced the “Lex is suffering from Kryptonite poisoning" plot. And it was clearly written that way: older/adult readers would be mature enough to understand what Lex and Maggie were talking about, and kids would miss it completely. I also recognize that a Superman comic was not the place you could expect to openly advocate gay rights in the 1980’s. But if you’re going to put a gay character in your story, and if your intent is to portray said character in a positive light, then I think it would have been nice for my 12-year-old self to have taken that message from the story, as much as anything else.
After the Maggie story, the comic becomes pretty formulaic. Jimmy uses his signal watch to have Supes deal with a toxic waste spill, but that’s just the excuse to set up the real storyline where Superman begins to suffer from Kryptonite radiation poisoning. (Not to be confused by Lex’s Kryptonite poisoning. See, Lex is getting poisoned because of the Kryptonite ring he wears to keep Superman at bay. Superman is suffering from radiation released due to Krypton’s explosion that, after traveling through space all these years, has finally reached the planet Earth. Big difference.)
The radiation leaves Supes both weak and hallucinating, which explains why he ends up battling Man-Bat in a cave in the issue’s final story. This story is notable for two things: 1) Man-Bat’s first person narration features some pretty flowery language on Byrne’s part (random example: “Again my questing senses seek the melodies of the night.”) 2) It was the first time I saw Mike Mignola’s artwork. Mignola’s angular, shadowy lines were a world apart from the usual super-hero fare, especially in contrast to the rest of the art in this particular issue. My 12-year-old self didn’t care for it much but I would definitely grow to appreciate Mignola’s talents over time.
The issue ends with Hawkman coming to get Superman out of the cave. (Really, if he just showed up in the first place then you wouldn’t have needed the pointless fight with Man-Bat. But there’s a dearth of awesome Man-Bat stories in the world, so we should be thankful for the scraps we are given.) That final panel leads into what the “to be continued” box calls “Superman’s Return to Krypton!” But I, not sufficiently swayed by the previous 80 pages, decided not to join Superman on his journey home, and did not read the resolution to the story. God knows I’d be suckered into following his never ending storylines soon enough.
Up Next: We ruminate on the demise of the anthology as a popular form of entertainment, the value in trying something different, the writer formerly known as James Owsley, and an amazing amount of violent imagery in a little thing called Action Comics (Weekly).
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