BHOC: ACTION COMICS #492

For some reason that I can’t really recall, I had taken a short break of about three months from buying both SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS. I came back to both titles before too long, and eventually filled in the missing issues with 3-Bagged Whitman copies once they became available. But as for what drove me to such an action, all these years later I haven’t a clue. Far as I can remember, I still liked the Superman books. Best I can figure is that it may have been a response to expanding my interests further into the Marvel titles, and my income not being able to accommodate everything. But that’s only a guess on my part. In any case, this issue of ACTION COMICS is where I dipped my toe back into the Man of Steel’s world.

Especially now that he had given up editing THE FLASH and was about to relinquish control of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, editor Julie Schwartz’s Superman titles were the most rock-solid books there were in terms of regularity of content. You could pick up almost any issue at random and know exactly what you were going to get: a story, typically written by either Cary Bates or Elliot S! Maggin and usually illustrated by Curt Swan. There were exceptions, such as writer Marty Pasko’s extended run writing SUPERMAN, but even there, the book was drawn by Curt and looked of a piece with its sister title ACTION. These were dependable offerings, seldom the most exciting or ground-breaking titles on the stands, but always sure to run the bases, to provide a minimum amount of a specific style of thrills and adventure. The Superman books were taken for granted in large part by comic book fandom for decades, but their reliability was a big part of their ongoing success. They were the comic book equivalent of picking up a Hershey bar rather than some more modern and ostentatious candy bar.

The story in this issue is a variation on a premise that has become a bit of a cliche over the years. But as this was possibly the first time I had seen it done, I found it very effective. The story opens with Superman returning from a space mission, and encountering a strange anomaly along his flight path. He attempts to avoid it, but it grasps him and pulls him in–and then Clark Kent falls out of bed, realizing that he was simply having a bad dream. As Superman heads off to work, we see that he’s being observed by a trio of Kryptonian villains: General Zod, Faora and Jax-Ur. They comment on what is happening to the Man of Steel, but we the readers are left in the dark. Arriving at the Daily Planet, Superman receives word of a deadly trap that Lois Lane and Lana Lang have been placed in. Each one is imprisoned about a satellite that is racing towards a collision with the other one. With no time to waste, Superman streaks to the rescue.

Superman is, of course, able to rescue Lois and Lana before the fatal crash, but on their way back to Earth, Lois suffers a fatal heart attack due to the stress of the experience. The trio of villains are still here observing, and Faora tells Jax-Ur that she doesn’t think it was a good idea to have killed Lois. A grieving Superman wakes up the next morning to find that a decade’s worth of time has passed, and that he’s married to Lana. Attempting to get to the bottom of things, Superman is ambushed, teleported away by assailants who are as strong as he is. But they turn out to be friendly, emissaries of the Kryptonian city of Kandor, which Superman successfully re-enlarged many years earlier.

It’s at this point that writer Bates turns over his cards. The three Kryptonian villains reveal that Superman has been ensnared by the strange space-spiral that we saw at the start of the story. And while he’s continuing to struggle, the entity is draining away his life essence, bringing him closer to death. In Kryptonians, apparently, rather than a person on the brink of death seeing their life flash before their eyes, but rather the Ytrrym Effect, which show what their life would have been like had they lived. Even though they are still trapped in the Phantom Zone, through telepathic concentration, the villains are creating these false future memories, keeping Superman’s mind occupied until his body eventually succumbs to the space-spiral’s energy drain.

But due to their hatred of the Man of Steel, the villains cannot help but be cruel. And so Superman experiences another forward time-skip of fifteen years, at which point he and Lana have two unnamed children. Superman is distraught at the fact that he seems to be missing great swaths of his life–but he needs to take action immediately as a series of missiles have been fired at his home, attempting to kill his family. He quickly pulverizes them before they can strike and detonate, but he winds up covered by poisonous dust himself. And so when he returns to the house to see if Lana and the children are all right, he inadvertently kills them, too. Superman is positively suicidal at this point, ready for his tragic life to end.

So Superman makes his way to a cave where he’s secreted the most powerful Kryptonian weapon in existence, in case he ever wanted to take his own life. But before he can be blasted out of existence by it, he avoids the deadly blast and begins to struggle like mad. He’s realizes what is actually happening, and while he cannot free himself, he is able to drag the space-spiral into the path a the comet he deflected, which is able to destroy it. As he emerges from the destruction, Superman tells the Phantom Zoners that they overplayed their hand, and that his vow never to take a life extends to his own as well. Once he realized that, he was able to put the pieces together and escape their trap.

A new week meant a new edition of the Daily Planet promotional page, including another new gag strip by fan cartoonist turned pro Fred Hembeck. This one isn’t really one of his best, but I may be biased as I was never a huge fan of the DC mystery titles of this period.