Luthor is messing with Superman's head today, which has already had a surprising effect, namely getting Clark Kent fired and his reputation destroyed. As Superman, he had saved a falling satellite, then written up the story as Clark Kent; only the satellite had never fallen! Clark had to confess to fabricating the story, which led to his dismissal from both the Daily Planet and WGBS. This issue opens with him in the unemployment office, as the other applicants gossip about him; and he doesn't even get to finish, since he hears a construction disaster. After gathering up the fallen glass, Supes makes a strange request, if the workers could verify what they had seen, since he wasn't sure he could trust his own senses. This of course is all part of Luthor's plan; although he has "nothing personal" against Clark Kent, an unfortunate casualty of his crusade.
Although he had some of his recurring assistants (including conjoined-twins Plato and Pluto!) Lex is a hands-on type of boss, and plants his "high-potency 'scrambler rods'" around Metropolis, nearly impaling Steve Lombard with one. It's incidental rather than intentional, but when Superman gives chase, Lex hits him with a red-sun based force-field, finally pushing Supes too far, and he drives his arm through Lex's chest! A by-stander comments "Look what happened to Flash when he killed his arch-foe!"
Great, twenty-eight issues of a trial to look forward to. Maybe we'll get lucky and Luthor's armor will blow up Metropolis and save us that?
Luthor's death and subsequent explosion were another hallucination, as Superman hangs onto the spire of a skyscraper. Unable to trust himself, can the world still trust Superman?
Without really intending to, I feel like I've blogged about ninety of these pre-Crisis Superman/Luthor stories, where Lex surreptitiously zaps him with some new ray to cause some weird effect in the hopes of breaking and/or killing Supes. Was that used more than red Kryptonite? Well, they got three issues out of this one, interrupted by a Julius Schwartz tribute issue. This is very much a pre-Crisis story, though, as we'll see if we ever check out the next one.
I've got to say seeing Clark at the unemployment office is definitely something I never thought I'd see, but I'm certainly glad I did. The whole thing is so fucking absurd, it's worth doing at least once, right?
ReplyDeleteAnd just going based off the way Swan draws all those lines on Superman's face in that last panel, I can definitely see where (possibly) the makers of the music video for Genesis's song "Land of Confusion" got the idea to stick the puppet of Ronald Reagan in a Superman suit from. He really does look like Reagan in that panel.
Red Kryptonite wins, hands down, if only because it was a Silver Age thing and they used the same concepts over and over again in slightly different ways back then. I don't think Luthor started using rays/hypnosis stuff specifically on Superman until the 70's.
ReplyDeleteI've got all three issues of this storyline, plus the Julius Schwartz tribute issue. Actually, my collection is heavily weighted towards this period. It's good stuff but a bit odd that so much from those specific years shows up in back issue bins.