A
comic review of art, storytelling, and theology.
COVER
GRADE: B+
Art:
Nick Cardy
The
design and quality of Superman and the monster in battle is top notch. The
ripping action as a double identity reveal is incredibly difficult to do and I
can’t think of a way it could get better.
The
background characters are surprisingly blank especially for how relatively
large they are. And on the whole, the cover feels very empty.
I’m
not usually a fan of text balloons on the cover, but these are rather good for
exposition. You could probably leave out the third and final balloon since
anyone reading the magazine already knows Clark Kent is Superman.
STORYTELLER'S
GRADE for "The Monster Who Unmasked Superman": A
Story:
Cary Bates
SYNOPSIS:
(Grade
A stories get a detailed synopsis)
Clark
Kent and four of his apartment neighbors board the Clinton Street bus for the
morning commute. As the bus turns the corner it disappears from Metropolis and
reappears in a jungle. The passengers, too baffled to panic, realize they’ve
been kidnapped, but by who? Martin Thorpe has a theory. A few nights ago he saw
Superman fly into their apartment building, so it’s possible one of the bus
passengers are hiding their secret identity as Superman. Perhaps the kidnapper
stole the whole bus just to get to Superman. While the passengers argue if
Superman should risk his secret identity to save everyone, fellow neighbor May
Marigold runs to Clark Kent for comfort. However, Clark’s mind is elsewhere as
he recalls the night he learned one of his neighbors was a monster from the
future. Superman was chasing the Quakerer who has the powers of a chameleon to
change not only its own appearance, but also manipulate the objects that it
touches. It uses this power to control a cloud of smoke to attack Superman
while it escaped to its hideout. Unfortunately for Superman he discovered that
the Quakerer hides in the same place Superman does, the apartment building at
344 Clinton Street. The monsters camouflage skills are so powerful, even
Superman can’t use his X-ray vision to figure out which one of his neighbors is
hiding as the monster. Superman has narrowed the suspects down to four: Nathan
Warbow, Martin Thorpe, May Marigold, and Jonathan Slaughter.
Just
then Clark Kent is snapped back from his memories, when the passengers panic as
the trees and plants begin to attack them. The Quakerer has used his powers to
manipulate the plants into attacking to force Superman to reveal himself. Much
to the surprise of everyone, Clark Kent reveals this true identity as Superman.
The plants stop there attack as Jonathan Slaughter transforms into the monster
known as the Quakerer. Before anyone can move, Superman knocks the monster far
away from the other people. Superman confronts the monster, confused as to why
he would reveal himself so easily. Even more confusing is that monster pleads
for help. Jonathan Slaughter has no intentions to fight and pleads that
something transformed him. Superman and Slaughter recall that right before
Slaughter transformed, he was touched by Martin Thorpe.
Superman
races back to the group just in time to see Martin Thorpe driving off in the
bus. As the bus drives off, it starts to fade away again. Superman grabs on
just in time to disappear with it.
Thorpe/Quakerer,
as a time traveler himself, has discovered that the bus is really a time
machine that brought all the passengers to the prehistoric past. It was
Superman who used the bus to unmask the Quakerer and not the other way around.
As the bus zips forward to the future, Superman boards the bus to fight the
Quakerer. The Quakerer has every advantages because with every punch he
transforms Superman’s molecules into different forms and shapes. With one
punch, the Quakerer knocks Superman towards the bus’s control board. Superman
accelerates the bus to the point that both fighters are tossed to the back of
the bus. The acceleration forces are so great that the Quakerer can no longer
focus his transformation power and Superman gets the upper hand. The Quakerer
breaks free and jumps off the bus to escape. Superman watches helplessly as the
Quakerer flails around in the maelstrom of the time stream. If he survived, the
Quakerer is lost somewhere in earth’s past with no hope of returning to the
future.
Epilogue:
Superman goes back in time to rescue the other bus passengers. The commuters
are surprised that Superman doesn’t seem to be worried that a bus-load of
people know that Clark Kent is Superman. The bus arrives at it normally scheduled
stop right at the same moment it disappeared. No one is aware that it ever
left, including the passengers on the bus. They have no memory of the events
that took place in the prehistoric past. Even more surprising, at the next
stop, Clark Kent exits the bus with Martin Thorpe. The two men return to Clark
Kent’s apartment where the man dressed as Martin Thorpe asks Superman how he
did it. Superman reveals that he installed special hypnosis wiper blades on the
bus to command all the passengers to forget everything that happened. But he
needed someone to pose as the missing Thorpe. Superman then thanks his friend
for helping pose as Thorpe. The impersonator is revealed to be Batman.
REVIEW:
This
issue is a conclusion to the cliffhanger from issue 430. As you may call, Issue
430 got a D+ for the story being overly complicated. The only reason it didn’t
get an F was because the cliffhanger was so good: How will Superman catch the bad
guy without revealing his own secret identity?
In
hindsight, the previous issue did set up some important plot points for our
story today. However, the first couple pages of this issue are a
near-reproduction of the last couple pages of the last issue. This proved to me
that the first part of the story was completely unnecessary. Everything could
be told in a simpler way to focus only on the good stuff, and it was in this
issue. The author even waited to include the flashback so he could get to the
cliffhanger (will Superman reveal his identity), then told the flashback to leave
the readers hanging on the answer. Perhaps the cliffhanger is not as powerful
when it’s not spread out over two issues, but the story isn’t watered down with
weirdness. The cliffhanger resolution, where Superman reveals his identity is a
little bit of a letdown in it’s somewhat plain presentation, but it’s in line
with what Superman would do. It does set up a problem that Superman has to deal
with, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
For
starters, I love the lead-up and reveal to the true villain. The twist of
Thorpe transforming Slaughter into the monster-form as a ruse to steal the bus
is brilliant misdirection that fits perfectly into the plot. On a second
reading there are lots of little clues that Martin Thorpe is the true monster.
The obvious one being that Thorpe is touching Slaughter as he transforms, but
there are more. Thorpe is the one who originally proclaims that one of the
passengers is hiding his identity as Superman. That’s something only the
monster could probably figure out. Although it’s not expressly drawn, there is
an assumption that it’s Thorpe that calls for Superman to reveal himself. One
last little detail. When Slaughter transforms into a monster, Thorpe exclaims
“G-great suns!” What normal human has ever said that? The only other person
I’ve ever seen say this is Superman on the cover of Superman 340. That’s clear shows that only aliens and
future monsters would think in such terms. Round these parts, we only got one
sun! Perhaps that’s just campy 1970’s writing, but I’m giving the author credit
for that as a clue.
There’s
also the twist that you assume that the villain kidnapped everyone on the
disappearing bus, but actually it was Superman who created the ruse to catch
the Quakerer. Nice!
One
last thing that I mentioned in last issues review, but couldn’t go into too
much detail because it revealed the villain. Of the three innocent suspects
that live at 344 Clinton Street, all of these characters appear in more than
one issue. Here are the suspects:
May
Marigold previously appeared in Superman 262 (March 1973) and will go on to
appear in 6 more issues (Superman 273, 296, 393, 413, Action Comics 508,
Superman Family 197)
Nathan
Warbow previously appeared in Superman 246 (December 1971), but won’t appear
again.
Jonathan Slaughter later appears in 2 issues of Superman (296 and 393 both including May
Marigold).
Martin
Thorpe unsurprisingly doesn’t appear again although that would be a crazy plot
twist if he did!
I
love the universe building of using previous characters, and that future
writers will use them again.
This
story would get an A+, except for three words: “hypnosis wiper blades”. Really?
That came out of nowhere to solve the problem of a bus-load of people knowing
his secret identity. It’s a huge letdown for the primary cliffhanger. But I
guess if Superman is squirreling away a time traveling bus then he could have
those too. It’s just too much of a stretch for me, and it happens right at the
end to leave a bitter memory. The saving grace is the great reveal that it’s
Batman that helped Superman. Nice cameo. Although it could have been crazy to
have the Human Target do it since that’s kind of his specialty and he’s a
backup feature of Action Comics. But that’s a big stretch and Batman makes a
lot more sense.
How
I’d fix the story:
(Maybe
I’ll make this into a new feature, because it seems like it comes up a lot.)
My
suggestion would be to state that forces involved in super-speed time travel creates memory
loss. It’s still a stretch but it buys you something else. When Superman and
the monster are fighting as they zip through time, it’s the stress of the
acceleration force that makes the monster weak. This is when Superman gets the
upper hand because he’s accustomed to the stresses of ultra-fast time travel.
So if instead the acceleration force caused disorientation and memory loss, it
would still be a near identical end to Superman beating the monster, but also
foreshadowing how Superman will get the other passengers to forget the whole
incident. Two-for-one win.
ARTIST
GRADE for Superman: C
Art:
Curt Swan, Murphy Anderson
Last
issue there was a huge confusion with the disappearing bus, so I was happy to
see it looked much better this go round.
I’ve
come to the conclusion that Curt Swan really is not very good at drawing
people. They always just look a little too fake.
Which
is odd since every once in a while you’ll get something like this extreme
close-ups that looks really good.
It
boils down to a consistency problem. There are some moments of good action.
And
I love the sequence where the monster is scrambling Superman’s molecules.
But
I think this picture sums up the quality of art best…
At first you think the picture looks good. But if you were to tell a comic book artist, “I want you to draw Superman
holding onto the top of a time traveling bus that is speeding past the dawn of
prehistoric man,” is this really the best you think they could do? I submit that it is NOT!
STORYTELLER
GRADE for "The Case of the Runaway Shoebox": B
Story:
Elliot Maggin
The
primary story line is the basic superhero catches a thief cliché. But the story
gets bonus points because of a subplot sandwiched around the chase. Oliver
Queen is living paycheck to paycheck and has just enough money to pay the rent.
However a pickpocket swipes the money along the way. As Queen is trying to
retrace his steps, he witnesses another robbery and decides to do his duty as a
superhero instead of solve his own problems. It just so happens that as Queen is
turning in the other thieves at the police station, his own pickpocket is
brought in at the same time. It’s like a generic story wrapped in a slightly
interesting story. But I will say that Queen is a fairly well fleshed out
character in this story. I don’t like him at all, but he’s well written. Queen
even kinda breaks the fourth wall a bit talking directly to the reader. I also
enjoyed that Green Arrow takes a verbal jab at Hawkman. It adds to the feel of
the DC universe.
ARTIST
GRADE for Green Arrow: B-
Art:
Dick Dillin, Dick Giordano
There’s
a stark difference between the quality of the drawings of people in this story
verses the Superman story.
Truthfully
these people look more like caricatures, but they are consistent and likable.
Plus when there’s a close up, the art is quite good.
But
what’s the deal with the flash marks coming from the Green Arrows mouth? Did he
make a popping noise?
The
action sequences aren’t great, but they get the job done.
THEOLOGY
GRADE: B
Green
Arrow touches on the idea of karma. Instead of working on his own problem, Green Arrow helps someone else out.
As a
result, Green Arrow’s problem is solved for him in a way that he would not have
been able to do himself.
The
basic idea behind karma is that if you do good things then good things will
happen to you, but if you do bad things then bad things will happen to you. It’s
important to note that the principle of karma is not Biblical. There are some
teachings in the Bible that kinda sound like karma. For example, in Matthew 6:37-38,
Jesus says “Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn
others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be
forgiven. Give and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in
full--pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and
poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get
back.” That sounds like karma but there’s a subtle difference. Karma is an
impersonal comic rule, where the Bible teaches that we have a personal God. Karma
teaches that you will get what’s coming to you either now or when you are
reincarnated. The Bible teaches that “God saved you by his grace when you
believed. And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation
is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about
it (Ephesians 2:8-9).” So while it feels good to get rewarded when you do the
right thing, I know I mess up a lot. I would rather be forgiven than given what
I deserve.
EXCESSIVE
USE OF FORCE:
Superman
needs to flush out a monster hiding in his building. So what does he do? He
stages an elaborate time traveling bus to strand all of the passengers back in
prehistory. Was that the simplest solution you could come up with?
DEAR
EDITOR (seen in #435):
Not
much to note unless you want some odd trivia from the last letter.