Bass and Siskoid cover Superman #26, as the Man of Steel faces Thanagarians and... voodoo?!
Listen to Episode 10 below (the usual filthy filthy language warnings apply), or subscribe to First Strike: The Invasion! Podcast on iTunes!
Relevant images and further credits at: First Strike ep.10 Supplemental
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I loved Kerry Gamill’s artwork on Superman. If only he’d stuck around a bit longer. It’s like Superman by a later day John Buscema disciple, so it’s possibly even more “Marvel” than Byrne doing the books.
This was a very odd time for the title, obviously. Byrne leaving the books in such a shape would have totally wrecked most titles. It’s a testament to the creative teams involved that they picked up these threads and somehow made them work, and didn’t turn thousands of fans against the titles.
Another aspect these creators balanced well in this era (although it’s hard to see here) was Clark’s humility and his confidence. He can have SOME doubts and be a bit self-effacing, but also be the confident leader the DCU needs. That aspect of Superman seems to have been lost in the last 20 years in Superman Returns, MoS, BVS, and the comics starting sometime in the early 2000s. It looks like they might be going back in that direction in Rebirth…under one of the creators from this era (Dan Jurgens).
The Superman Animated Series is a bit under-rated, compared to the other DCAU shows. It occasionally suffered from some bland animation, but the overall direction of the show was strong.
Christopher Reeve is still MY Superman…although I have a soft spot for George Reeves as well. He’s Earth-Two, and Chris is Earth-One. š
You put a big smile on my face by using the old Adventures of Superman opening. Hey, those memories run deep.
Great show!
Fine episode gentlemen.
I have never been a big fan of Superman, but I have never found his moral center to be a detriment–if anything, I liked that DC had one hero who was not suffering from endless doubt or cynicism. (I think that’s where the current movies go so wrong, but that’s a discussion for…never)
Gammill and Breeding are perfect artists for Superman: solid and dynamic but not too individualistic. I’ve always found Superman (with some exceptions) works best when drawn classically.
I haven’t read this issue but you guys made the second-hand experience a treat. I especially liked your analysis of Superman after you finished discussing the tie-in issue. My reading experience with this era of the Superman books is a little scattered, but I always liked the Crimebuster in these stories. Never was a big fan of the Guardian, but Crimebuster was cool.
As for the listener feedback segment, I love the idea of Bass playing Star Wars with his son and them trading off who gets to be Rey.
Gangbuster. Jose Delgado might make a nice addition to the Supergirl show, contrasting their very different styles. showing that someone’s still fighting for the little guy, while everyone else is looking up in the sky.
I really love that idea!
Oh man…where to start?
They say that every comic book fan has a personal Golden Age and while I started buying the Superman books because of John Byrne in 1987 this was the era where getting the next issue became non-negotiable. The run of SUPERMAN and ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN leading up to EXILE (which will be released in hardcover next year) were the comics that made me a lifelong fan. Roger Stern and Kerry Gammill had a lot to do with that. I was a bit crushed when I realized Byrne wasn’t coming back to the title but if you’re going to lose Byrne then Gammill is a perfect replacement. He had that same dynamic quality that made me love Byrne’s Superman and between that and Roger Stern coming on as writer made this one of the rare moments where a solid creative team leaves and is replaced by something that surpasses it.
And that is the real key to why this run and then the next four years worth of comics are so special to me. Beyond being “my” Superman it was the near perfect mix of plot and character. We were given a great supporting cast, villains (both good and meh) and just the right amount of soap opera to make you care about the characters you are reading about. Everyone has their own flavor of Superman and this one was mine. Until he was 17/18 this Clark believed he was the natural son of Jonathan and Martha (though I have long felt that there were a bunch of people in Smallville that looked at Clark and then looked at the Kents and wondered if they had spotted a tall, dark haired man passing through town around the time Clark was born) and when his adopted status was revealed to him he just assumed he was a super powered human. He was a full grown adult by the time he learned he was alien and while I do agree with those that think he might have ditched his Kryptonian heritage a little too easily in MAN OF STEEL I think the Post Byrne crew did a lot to rectify that while still making him think of himself as human first, alien second.
That’s what made me connect to this version. I have a sliding appreciation for just about every iteration of Superman from the rough and tumble champion of the weak and the oppressed from the Golden Age to the anything goes/ultra powerful/look at all this cool stuff version from the Silver Age to the more introspective/still ultra powerful/we can’t decide how far we want to go with making him a little more relatable version from the Bronze Age. Even the current movie series, misguided though it may be, has flashes of what Superman is at his core. For me I like the idea of a mixing the George Reeves and Christopher Reeve takes on Superman and especially Clark Kent and putting them in a comic book setting.
The scene where Clark and the others are called into the office by Sarge Steel is a good example of this. Even though Clark is sleepy and a bit cranky I LOVED that he had enough of Steel’s crap and stormed out. One of the other moments that stands out to be is him standing before the mirror in his bathroom right after shaving and still looking like he had been ridden hard and put away wet. Better, but not by much. Gammill’s art and Stern’s writing gel together to make the moment three dimensional. I especially liked how angry Superman was when the Thanagarians begin their attack on Metropolis. To hell with Sarge Steel’s orders. This was a Superman that had had enough of the aliens’ s***. It got to me when I was 12 and this book was new and it still gets to me when I’m forty and the book is nearly three decades old.
Baron Sunday was never one of my favorite Post Crisis villains but he didn’t really make enough appearances to leave a firm impression. It was interesting to see him on LOIS AND CLARK but unfortunately it was in the third season and by then L & C was well on it’s way to losing my interest. Unlike the animated series that ran in the same decade there were serious diminishing returns on that show even though I still liked the cast.
Well…not fake Jimmy from seasons 2 thru 4. He was an all right actor but I much preferred the Jimmy from season 1.
Where was I? Oh right. Live action Baron Sunday. He was pretty keen.
On a ultra personal note a few years after this issue came out my Dad picked up the Hot Rocks greatest hits Rolling Stones album. We would listen to that on our frequent car trips to visit my aunts and the look on 14 or so year old Mike when “Gimme Shelter” came on while reading this issue must have been amazing. It was the first time I realized that Stern had used a lyric from that song as the title to this issue.
There’s a lot more to cover but I am going to wait until we get further into this end of the crossovers. Gangbuster. Guardian. Brainiac. So much to talk about but I’ll wait until certain characters appear and certain revelations are made.
Great job, guys! As ever you are doing the Lord’s work and thanks for playing the FCTC trailer. We are working on getting back to that soon.
I loved the just about every Superman book from Byrne’s renovation up till Zero Hour. It was truly lightning in a bottle and I doubt anyone could replicate the feat of editing coordination.
Whatever my issues with the John Byrne run in reflection, I was quite into it at the time, and regret not sticking around through the parallel earth storyline that capped it. This stuff that followed though is the beginning of my true disdain for Superman comics in the modern era. Gangbuster alone makes me want to stuff a book back into its polybag with haste. When Superman sleep-vigilante-cosplays as Gangbuster because his brain broke after executing the genocidal alterna-Kryptonians, I just want to scream “oh, f— right off!” It irks me that the anti-prolific Kerry Gammill, still at the peak of his considerable powers, wasted so much of his scant time producing sequential art on these lame stories. If only Gammill had finished off the DeMatteis run on Captain America instead of Paul Neary after Mike Zeck bolted for Secret Wars (which wasn’t contemporaneous to this, but I’m just saying.)
I completely disagree with Rob in that I think Superman is at his worst when drawn “classically,” which is to say, by guys in the Neal Adams mode. That’s perfect for Batman, a character based squarely in a heightened, slightly fantastical version of reality that benefits from grounding. The failure of Superman in the post-Weisinger era is thinking that approach serves a stranger visitor from another planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman belongs to the Jack Kirby school, not Continuity Studios, but that’s the round hole DC’s has been trying to shove a diamond-shaped peg into since Julie Schwartz took over.
I believe my introduction to one of my favorite Superman villains, Mongul, was from afar via “Exiled.” It looked cool, but was already in progress when I found a comic shop in 1989 after returning to Texas newsstands largely bereft of DC Comics. When I started really getting into DC a few years later, I accumulated all of Mongul’s impressive Pre-Crisis stories, then hit “Exile,” which completely misunderstood and ruined the character to this day by taking a guy who was arguably smarter and more powerful than The Man of Steel and turning him into a jobber who literally kneeled to kissed Hank Henshaw’s ring and got killed to build up Neron after failing downward as a rogue of Green Lantern and The Flash. Just a symptom of the greater disease of Superman being made so much smaller to fit into a Marvelized DCU.
I agree that Superman: The Animated Series is not given its due. I remember that show had A LOT of reruns in the early going, but I found that because they were lighter and more action oriented, I didn’t mind sitting through the same handful of episodes over and over again. Meanwhile, I had a low tolerance for repeats of Batman: The Animated Series, because they were much slower paced and cerebral detective stories that I “got” the first time and resented having to sit through again. B:TAS had higher highs, but it also had lower lows and an overall poorer batting average of enjoyable episodes than S:TAS. I also prefer the optimism and scale of Superman. So much more powerful watching Dan Turpin sacrifice himself to fend off the forces of Apokolips than Barbara Gordon having an apocalyptic fever dream about how much worse Gotham could be without her.
I grew up on Reeves & Reeve, but I think I’m still waiting for “my” Superman to appear in live action. Henry Caville has the physique and there are moments here and there in the Snyderverse where I see him for half a second, but then he debates allowing people to die because he’s having an existential crisis and it’s the desaturated mope-monster again. Maybe resurrection will allow him to bring some life to the part.
“Gimme Shelter” was one of my first and best exposures to the Rolling Stones, but mine was through Red Cross commercials that ran in the early ’80s. I love that song so much, especially the opening humming/guitar.
Excellent podcast episode as per usual, Siskoid and Bass. Am not sure how far ahead the Superman creative teams knew Invasion was coming down the line but they did an excellent job of incorporating the Invasion into the regular Superman storylines. Too often of late, you would see these crossovers as either once off books where the regular subplots are tossed to one side to allow the writers deal with the event. In both Superman and Adventures however, both Stern and Ordway used the Invasion storyline to accentuate Superman’s issues which were brought to a head at the end of the crossover. I would also echo the praise given to Kerry Gamill – his Superman art was excellent and it was a shame he never had a longer run.
While I don’t have anything specific to add to this episode, I just wanted to comment how much joy this show brings me each episode!! Thank you for tackling this project!!! Love it!!