BHOC: SUPERMAN FAMILY #193

I had skipped buying SUPERMAN FAMILY #192 the previous month, for reasons that I’m not quite certain of apart from just a general dissatisfaction with the title. That was the problem with DC’s Dollar Comics anthologies, they were wildly inconsistent. While any given issue probably had something in it that you thought was pretty great, it also tended to include something that you thought was lousy, and all points in-between. Tip too much in the direction of crummy and that buck price tag became difficult to rationalize spending. But for whatever reason–maybe I simply had more spare cash on me this week–I came back again for #193, seen above.

The Dollar Comics had gone to an ad-free format, which meant that the inside front cover was dedicated to this contents page in which the assorted characters report in to editor E. Nelson Bridwell about what their upcoming adventures would entail. Hard as it may be to believe, I’m not really a fan of editors self-promoting themselves in the pages of their books, but Nelson had already earned a bunch of good will from me through his reprint and historical efforts, so I didn’t have any issue with it here. As Nelson has become one of the more overlooked figures in the History of Comics (and the more mocked, as Alan Moore did in his recent nasty Roman a Clef of the industry) I think it’s nice that there’s some evidence of his presence still.

Each issue of SUPERMAN FAMILY gave you six stories, each one featuring a different player in the Superman cosmology. In the lead-off position was a Superboy adventure written by Tom DeFalco, late of Archie Comics, and illustrated by Joe Staton. In it, the Boy of Steel has a pressing day when he’s got to both contend with a new foe, the self-styled Mechanical Master who builds gigantic contraptions to loot Smallville, and also helping out with classmate Lana Lang’s bid to run for school President. It’s a fun, low-stakes tale, and both DeFalco and Staton execute the work rather nicely. Staton in particular is a good fit for the more laconic Superboy strip, with the strong cartoonyness of his style.

The second story, also written by DeFalco and illustrated by the reliable Kurt Schaffenberger, starred Jimmy Olsen. And not just Jimmy, but his cohorts in the Newsboy Legion from Jack Kirby’s seminal run on his title several years earlier. The Jimmy Olsen strip at this point was chock-full of continuity references to other earlier stories being woven together–on multiple occasions, DeFalco has told me that this was Nelson’s influence, and that their arrangement was something of a “one for you, one for me” sort of a deal in which DeFalco would take on the task of streamlining and exploring the continuity that Nelson wanted to play with in Jimmy Olsen in order to be able to do more universal stories in Lois Lane and Superboy and elsewhere. This installment sees Jimmy, The Newsboys and Speedy of the Teen Titans (who it will turn out is the nephew of the Newsboy Legion’s Guardian) infiltrate the DNA Project that isn’t yet named Cadmus.

DeFalco was really paying the rent with this issue as the third story is written by him as well, and illustrated by longtime DC artist Win Mortimer. It’s a Lois Lane tale that pulls Lois into the orbit of the goings-on in the earlier Jimmy Olsen adventure so that the two strips can combine for a big climax next month. Previously, Tina Ames had been struck by a ray that had her turning into a powerful energy monster. While doctors try to cure her of her condition in the hospital, there’s an attempted abduction by masked agents of the DNA project’s nefarious director. Lois and novice super hero the Human Cannonball (one of my favorite obscure super-stars) work together to fight them off. And they do so–but in the end, seeking a cure for Tina’s condition, Professor Potter arranges for her to be transferred to the DNA Project for study. Oops!

At this point, DeFalco’s stranglehold on the issue loosens, and so it is Gerry Conway who plots the Supergirl story that comes up next, even if he doesn’t dialogue it. That duty is fulfilled by Scott Edelman. Relative newcomer Arvell Jones provides the artwork, as Supergirl is helped out by the New Doom Patrol in taking down a pair of gravity-manipulating rival villains. I had really liked the New Doom Patrol in their three SHOWCASE appearances, and so I was happy to see them in action again, even though they’d never quite be able to mount a series of their own. It’s mostly an extended action sequence, the plot having been dispensed with in the first two chapters, and Edelman’s dialogue is functional but not especially insightful. One has to expect that this was simply a gig for him, a way to earn a few dollars rather than a story he was sincerely invested in. Still, it had the New DP, so I liked it.

Gerry also wrote all of the Superman story in this issue, the art for which was handled again by Kurt Schaffenberger. In it, on a slow day, Superman uses the computers in his Fortress of Solitude to follow up on an earlier story in which he had it project what might have happened if krypton had exploded before his birth. In that tale, Jor-El and Lara both migrated to Earth through convoluted means–so now superman wonders if they would have fallen in love on their new homeworld. And so he’s surprised when the computer predicts that his mother would have become a youthful Supergirl just as he had become Superboy. She has a secret identity as Laura Clark and is infatuated with Jack Kent, who is a powerless Jor-El, his abilities destroyed by exposure to Gold Kryptonite. The complication here is that her parents assume that she and Jack are brother and sister since they were found together in the rocket that ferried them from doomed Krypton. Fortunately, Jack Kent is a good enough scientist to prove that their DNA doesn’t match, and so the pair are now free to get involved with one another. It’s effectively an Imaginary Story, but possibly because of that, I liked it.

The final tale in this issue was dedicated to Nightwing and Flamebird, the Batman and Robin of the Bottle City of Kandor. It was written by Paul Kupperberg and illustrated by Ken Landgraf, the two least-senior creators in the issue. And it’s fine, if a little bit rough around the edges. In it, the villainous Crime-Lord that the Dynamic Duo of Kandor have been hunting for a few adventures has brainwashed Ak-Var and turned him against his partner Van-Zee. Or so it seems–Ak-Var is really faking, so Crime-Lord is caught off-guard when Nightwing suddenly appears after Ak-Var has seemingly killed Van-Zee. It’s a pantomime to maintain their secret identities, of course, one of the favorite ploys in Superman family comics of the era. From there on, it’s mostly a big fight, but once again Crime-Lord eludes capture and is slated to return the following month. After that came a two-page letters page that continued onto the inside back cover, and that was all she wrote for this issue of SUPERMAN FAMILY. Overall, I had liked most of the contents, so I was back on board with buying the title regularly.