If you can give blood, you probably should. There's a constant demand for it, but people seem to mostly only go out of their way to donate if there's a big disaster or a celebrity that needs it. Like in today's book! From 1971, Action Comics #403, "Attack of the Micro-Murderer" Written by Cary Bates, pencils by Curt Swan, inks by Murphy Anderson.
It's a pretty good opening here, that I don't think is quite capitalized on: in four different times, a criminal is executed, but the kicker is they were all the same criminal. Then, in modern Metropolis, another of said criminal is killed in a helicopter crash while attempting to escape Superman. Dying, the "Zohtt" swears vengeance, and Superman researches the name and discovers it to be a magical wraith that possesses people, turning them evil. After attacking Clark Kent at the Daily Planet, the Zohtt sends a message from the year 3486: come to the future and face him, or it will unleash carnage on the present.
In 3486, Supes finds a dead woman and her message: she had been a micro-biologist, presumably before being possessed by the Zohtt, since it doesn't sound like it has the temperament for that kind of long game...although, I guess trying to get your revenge after 15 centuries might qualify. The biologist had created a microbe so deadly it could even kill Superman, which contains the Zohtt. Already starting to feel it, Superman returns to his Fortress of Solitude in the present, planning on seeing the Kandorian doctors in the shrunken bottle city. The microbe Zohtt, being magically unaffected, ruins that plan: Superman nearly has a heart attack trying to shrink with the Zohtt not shrinking, and has to blast the micro-beamer with his heat-vision. Now cut off from Kandor and a Kryptonian blood transfusion--a Supergirl cameo mentions their blood types don't match, which may or may not be the case the next time something like this comes up--a doctor suggests maybe a transfusion of human blood could flush out the microbe, but it would take a lot. Hundreds of volunteers donate a veritable river of blood, which Superman has pumped through his veins at enormous pressure. (Presumably, they used Kryptonite needles to pierce his skin, although they don't mention that.) The plan also fails, as the Zohtt hides out in Superman's lymph nodes.
Dying, Superman makes a final address (that we don't see here) and journeys to a burial ground he prepared on an asteroid in deep space. When Superman's heart stops, the Zohtt wants to take a better, non-microscopic body; but there's no life within millions of miles for it to live in. Superman left a message of his own for it: either it could re-enter his body and restart his heart, or they could both die. The Zohtt complies, but it's a trap: Superman rigged a trick coffin, with a decoy Superman-robot to contain the microbe. With the Zohtt out of him, Supes is able to beat the infection, and returns to earth. Where, presumably, he'll have to dispose of a ton of blood. Wait, wouldn't Supes have been full of human blood, at least for a bit? And why didn't the Zohtt just possess Superman in the present? Anyway, the rest of this issue is the short "The Man with the X-Ray Mind" in which a janitor with ESP powers learns Superman's identity, so a severe blow to the head is in his future; and Vigilante in "The Impossible Legend." The cowboy hero tries to bring an old western legend to life, by facing a gang with a different handicap each time: first deaf, then mute, then blind. He may just be showing off at this point.
1 comment:
I thought for a minute that you were going to talk about the story where Superman donated blood. In fact, I think you may have at some point. If not, I won't spoil it- a hint though, it has a secret guest star.
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