#newstime

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

As any regular reader of this blog knows, I read all these issues in my youth, and am re-visiting them for this blog.  Whatever allowance or paper route money I had, I would spend on comics, and since that wasn’t much, I cherished the comics I had.  I would read and re-read the issues over and over, to the point that for some beloved issues, I had them just about memorized (which has come in very handy with this blog). So I remember loving this issue, if only because it had so much to read in it.  I read every article, hoping each would contain some secret hint of what was to come (and there are plenty of those, there’s just no way to know it until you read later issues).  It’s also just a nervy concept, especially at the time, when writing and story was taking such a back seat to artwork with the Image Comics boom underway.

The cover is a real highlight, and a fun way for Denis Rodier to show his ability.  The torn threads around the edges and holes are amazing, as are the folds and ripples.  I love the painterly, thick brushstrokes, though they sort of defeat the internal narrative of the issue (and discussions we’ve seen in past issues) stating that this is a Jimmy Olsen photograph, as the style is a little thick and impasto to be photorealistic (to say nothing of the prominent “Rodier 92” signature).  My favourite detail is that we’re holding Clark Kent’s magazine, sadly left unread since his passing. [Max: Stealing a dead man’s mail. Shame on us.]

The first image we see within in a two page spread for Ferris Aircraft, with the shadow of an airplane revealing the Coast City skyline. Coast City, Green Lantern Hal Jordan’s stomping grounds, gets prominent mention throughout the issue, which is a noticeable detail for a Superman publication.  Again, it’s a right-under-your-nose type of hint, which just reads like any other innocuous magazine ad.

As the issue continues, we get another DC brand advertisement, Koul Brau beer with echoes of Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl.  Next is a publisher message from Collin Thornton, pretty much played straight, as is a lot of this issue.  But below it is a WayneTech ad, with a focus on “tools for tomorrow” which I read as subtle foreshadowing of a more technologically based Batman. [Max: I buy it!]

The letter pages are great, showing the variance of opinion on how people within this universe would interpret events (I also wonder if the mushroom cloud cover—which actually appeared on an issue of Deathstroke the Terminator {yeah, he had his own book} is another prediction), with some recaps of recent events in the Superman world.             

Page 6 boasts maybe my favourite drawing ever of the Daily Planet, a very photo-realistic image without attribution. It’s in an ad for Samson technologies—Samson, you’ll recall, was the Biblical hero whose great strength came from never cutting his hair. A strongman with long hair, you say? [Max: Hmmm...]

The next page has a tasteful little hotel chain ad, and I can’t tell you how exciting it was to see “Saskatoon” in print.  There’s also a nice wink to soon-to-be-departing super-teamster Jerry Ordway, as his luxury hotel is in Captain Marvel’s Fawcett City.   Page 9 has a full-page ad devoted to GBS’ cartoon lineup, and it’s a hint of things to come mentioning Courageous Man’s cartoon (more on that later) as well as a funny reference to the Titans Sellout storyline going on in their pages around this time.  Courageous Man, by the way, looks a whole lot like Supernova, who was first a disguised Superman, and much later a different Metropolis hero.

[Max: I feel like it’s important to note that the realistically dopey “Not Just For Kids Anymore!” line was something DC used with a straight face for a while.]

Pages 12-13 has a nice two page spread of Lois tending to Superman—a cool way of showing how the world saw those final moments that are so familiar with us.  Beyond that, all the images are clipped from various stories in the Doomsday saga, so not a lot to focus on here. The article itself is also really worth a read, as it continues the narrative from recent issues, putting Superman’s death on par with tragic assassinations like Lennon, Kennedy and King.  The last line also recalls Crash Test Dummies’ Superman song, which gets mentioned later.

A little later, the magazine shifts focus from Superman to his killer, Doomsday, where once again there is speculation (by Emil Hamilton) that Doomsday was a failsafe left behind by Brainiac at the end of the Panic in the Sky storyline, which further explains why that was such a popular theory among fans (in fact, I’m now wondering if that was the original plan, and the Bertron origin came later) especially since it has twice been brought up within these pages.          

Page 20-21 is a two page spread of an in-universe car, the Camelot 3000, perhaps an odd nod, considering how many years passed between that mini-series and this comic, but a nice, minimalist piece of drawing (to my eye, it looks a lot like a Pontiac Sunfire, but my research shows those didn’t come out until 1995).

My favourite part of this magazine is the rememberances from various celebrities (in-universe, and otherwise), which are just weird enough to convince me that they really wrote it. Some are completely inappropriate for a magazine essentially pretending Superman is real (pervy sf writer Samuel Delany’s for instance) others don’t make sense based on the idea that Superman is in his early 30s (William Shatner pretending to be Superman as a child).

Brad Roberts, singer of Crash Test Dummies had an interesting one.   When this story was announced, part of me wondered if it had been inspired in part by the funereal music video for “Superman’s Song” (I also think the old, craggy men in bright costumes might have been a visual inspiration for Alex Ross, but that’s pure speculation).  The song was also my introduction to Solomon Grundy, who really wasn’t a player in the DC universe at the time. [Max: Roberts used his space in this issue to explain that he just used “Grundy” because it’s hard to find villains whose names rhyme with “money”.]

There are lots of excellent entries (Buck Henry’s gave me a chuckle), but my favourite goes to John Goodman, simply because of effort—it’s written with great flourish and tells a little story, and I had been curious about how Mr. Mxyzptlk would react to Superman’s passing. 

My least favourite is a toss-up between self-seeking satanist Penn Jilette, whose entry says virtually nothing about Superman (and pathetically name checks their appearance on a show already off the air by that time) and also Larry Niven’s entry, which I hate solely because I still hate his dumb “Woman of Kleenex” essay.            

Page 28 features a mock poster for dead Rick Moranis-lookalike Morty Beckman’s first and only film, Club Red, which seems a lot like Club Paradise, a Moranis vehicle. [Max: It’s revealed in the next page that Fake Moranis was killed by the destruction left by Doomsday. *sad trombone*]

The obituary page that follows features a great Jerry Ordway zip-a-tone portrait of Clark Kent (eagle-eyed readers will recognize this is the shot Jimmy took of Superman and Matrix despite the colouring error on the bathrobe).  But it’s also worth noting that baseball hall-of-famer Hank Halloran survived being trapped in the wreckage of Doomsday’s onslaught, emerging later.  So it shows how a mere mortal might return to a normal life after going missing for days and weeks at a time.   Also, Lex Luthor II is only supposed to be 21?  He is invariably drawn looking older.

Page 30 features an interesting, tongue in cheek review of “Courageous Man Strikes Back” a thinly disguised—and almost entirely negative—review of Batman Returns, right down to the clever portmanteaus of “unlikely hero” Michael Keaton’s name (Buster—as in Buster Keaton, Caine as in Michael Caine). Ditto Tim Burton (Richard as in Burton, Curry as in Tim).  The article praises the sophistication of the animated series (which we saw in the Turtle Boy ad) and also hints at praise toward Michelle Pfeiffer/Daphne Dean’s performance. 

The music reviews that follow, I couldn’t really decipher, aside from some Eric Clapton Unplugged references. Lastly, the back page has a great looking ad of the Metropolis skyline as Lex Luthor II brags that he (and his airline) is once again alone in the skies of Metropolis.  There’s just no way that, even in-universe, this wouldn’t seem like spiking-the-football to Superman’s death. 

All in all, this is one of my favourite elements from the death storyline, because it’s just so weird, and cool. 

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

So there IS a Steve Lombard in this timeline! Only instead of being a jock, he’s an actual former jockey, and apparently bald. [Max: Clark’s ‘70s work nemesis already showed up once during “Dark Knight Over Metropolis”.]

Molly Mayne-Scott (a veteran TV executive profiled in the celebrity section) would be Mrs. Alan Scott, the golden age Green Lantern, and also the first version of a now wildly popular character.