I'm nowhere near the first blogger to bring today's book up; but it's one I have fond memories of unrelated to the issue itself! From 1980,
Superman in "The Computers That Saved Metropolis" Written by Cary Bates, pencils by Jim Starlin, inks by Dick Giordano. Cover and prologue art by Ross Andru.
This was a giveaway comic from Radio Shack, with Superman doing his level best to pitch the
TRS-80--which, according to that article, was outselling the Apple II until 1982! For some reason, my dad, a junior high principal, had this in his office; and I probably read it a hundred times; yet I don't think I've ever seen a TRS-80 in person: our schools had Apples. It's weird to imagine a world where instead of Apple Stores, Radio Shacks are still a thing...there would be more cheaply made remote-control crap, anyway.
The bad guy here isn't the competition, though; it's Major Disaster, who for years (possibly until just now...) I thought he had been created specifically for this comic: he first appeared in
Green Lantern #43 in 1966. Besides having a sweet A-V set-up--presumably a kickback from the good people at Radio Shack--MD had a fairly decent scheme, using a tornado to seed Metropolis with "microscopic
Kryptonite crystals!" Not to merely kill Superman, or weaken him, but to impede his control of his powers. As he lays out his blackmail demands, Disaster also knocks out computers citywide, to keep Superman from getting help from them...lot of math involved in being Superman, apparently. But, the two little TRS-80's and some punk kids might just help him save the day.
Superman captures Major Disaster, and brings him in on live TV that then turns into an ad for TRS-80's. But he also announces that the Kryptonite crystals had worn off, which seems like a mistake: it worked pretty well short term there. And Kryptonite was easier to find in those old issues than...geez, than this comic. I feel like I must have picked up another copy in the last forty years; but I'm not positive. Now, if I could find another copy of
Captain America and the Campbell Kids, another one from dad's office. It had art by Kupperberg, Trimpe, and Romita; but I think Starlin and Giordano is a bigger get. Wonder if they got a free TRS-80 out of the deal...I'm going to go ahead and guess no.
Nice looking ad though if nothing else, especially since they were able to snag such a high-profile artist like Jim Starlin to draw it.
ReplyDeleteSurprised you didn't know Major Disaster was mainly GL villain. I guess one of my favorite stores involving him (Besides the 1st issue of that brief Giffin Suicide Squad run) was that one Underworld Unleashed tie-in issue of Aquaman that started out MD causing an airport guard to have a heart attack using his powers in a sneaky way. Don't know why that always stuck with me for so long like it has.
He was also a pretty regular part of JLI.
ReplyDeleteThere were something like three of these (plus a few with just the kids) so maybe you picked one of those up. Pretty similar story in all of them, as I recall.