BHOC: ACTION COMICS #496

This next issue of ACTION COMICS was forgettable, and consequently I’ve forgotten it. Seriously, I don’t remember a single thing about buying this one. I must have done so during my weekly trip to the 7-11 on Thursday, new comic day, as I was buying the book regularly again. But the story contained within really made little impact on me, it seems. So we’ll rediscover it together as we get into it more deeply.

I think part of the reason why this story has slipped through my memory for all these years is the fact that ACTION COMICS and editor Julie Schwartz were still going about business as usual, doing the same sorts of stories that they’d been doing for years. That meant primarily single issue and two-part tales, enjoyable on their own merits but without any particular connective tissue to the ongoing life of the Man of Steel. Consequently, as I was becoming more and more enchanted by the Marvel books, with their emphasis on long-running soap opera and subplots, a place where an issue from decades previous might suddenly be important again, this manner of modular storytelling failed to make much of an impact on me–at least apart from in those moments where some bit of it connected with something emotionally.

And this story does have a pretty good hook to it. After a premable that sets up the overall status quo, Superman is summoned to his Fortress by the inhabitants of the Bottle City of Kandor, who had awesomely bad news to tell him. The last time he visited their city, one of their antiseptic sprays malfunctioned, meaning that Superman returned to his normal size carrying a Kryptonian bacteria with him: X-584. This illness is akin to the common cold for Kryptonians, but it will prove fatal to all of humanity in less that a day. And in carrying out his worldwide patrol, Superman has unknowingly spread it to every corner of the world.

Superman doesn’t take this news well. In fact, he flips out completely, overcome by rage and guilt. But all of that needs to be packed away, there are still hours remaining before the virus does its deadly work. However, when the Man of Steel seeks out first the Justice League and then his cousin Supergirl to enlist their aid in finding a cure, they both vanish into the ether before Superman can get to them. This is truly strange. Superman thinks that maybe some unseen enemy is behind it–so he’s not all that surprised when the mountaintop he’s sitting on is pulverized by Zurnnulaxi-Vraxil, an agent for another planet which intends to harvest the Earth’s resources once humanity has been wiped out in a day. He tells Superman to leave Earth and seek out some other planet to live on.

To punctuate his message, Z-V zaps Superman with weaponry from his starship, which batters and burns the Man of Steel. So Superman is under extraordinary pressure at this point, still needing to find a cure while also battling to stave off Z-V’s scavenging operation. And that, it turns out, is the whole point. For we cut back to the Bottle City of Kandor where we find the top scientists and physicians in congress. It is explained that they bombarded Superman with a concentrated dose of C-W3 serum, a cure for the virus. But in order to get it to spread across the globe in time, the Kandorians needed Superman to experience high levels of stress–it’s his own bodies adrenal response that will trigger the curative effect. Consequently, they told Superman that there was no sure, and used their science to cloak the JLA and Supergirl from him.

The Kandorians has intended to create a false menace to occupy Superman’s time and to keep him under pressure so that the antidote could sweep the Earth. But it turns out that Z-V and his scavenging threat isn’t a part of their design, he’s a genuine menace. So now the Kandorians can only watch and hope that Superman can cope with the threat. Elsewhere, the Man of Steel finds himself under fire from Z-V’s spacecraft, weaponry that can likely kill him. Seeking a strategy to turn the tide, he creates a vortex into which Z-V’s ship also passes, pulling it through the time barrier into the far future. Superman intends to strand the would-be scavenger there, on a barren and desolate Earth, but Zurnn indicates that there’s no longer any reason for them to fight.

And that’s because the ruins all around them evidence a build-up of civilization long past 1979 when this story was taking place. This convinces Superman that the Kandorians must have devised a cure for the virus and saved humanity. Z-V’s people aren’t thieves, it isn’t their way to take from other species, so knowing that mankind will survive, he no longer intends to scavenge on their world. So Superman takes him back to the present, for an utterly abrupt wrap-up where in a caption, we’re told that the Kandorians explained what they had done to Superman to save everybody and that Z-V had departed back for his own world.

In addition to the regular Superman in Action letters page, this issue also includes that week’s edition of the promotional Daily Planet page, a thing I loved. I was always interested in hearing about what comic books would be turning up in a week–we didn’t have Previews catalogs or online solicitations in those days, so this was all the information I would get as to what might be coming next. As usual, the page includes Bob Rozakis’ Answer Man column in which he responds to questions from the audience, and another silly comic strip by cartoonist Fred Hembeck.