A massively chewed-up quarter bin copy today: from 1977, Action Comics #470, "Even Superman Must Die Sometime!" Written by Cary Bates, pencils by Curt Swan, inks by Tex Blasdell.
The issue begins with a Superman costume being thrown away--traditionally, the costume goes in a garbage can. Or eBay. Superman actor Gregory Reed throws his costume off a cliff, since he's out of a job: Superman had just been killed, gunned down by Terra-Man! Back in Metropolis, the Planet staff is taking it pretty hard, especially since T-M is leisurely moseying--er, flying--around town. But while he had put a force-field around the city to keep everyone else out, that doesn't stop the Flash from getting through and attempting to "even the score." The strangely quiet Terra-Man launches Flash speeding backwards: no one's sure quite how, since he had a vast repertoire of alien tricks and gadgets. Green Lantern then joins Flash, as an alien saucer arrives over the city; and we're treated to a couple possible clues as a beat cop repeatedly gives a bum the hassle.
Things are even more complicated: Superman wasn't dead at all (duh) but had somehow been transformed to look like Terra-Man! The alien saucer belongs to the brother of the alien pirate who gave T-M his knowledge and gear, then was killed by him: in fairness, I think the pirate had abducted Terra-Man, so he wasn't exactly an innocent there. Supes realizes Terra-Man's scheme, to get him killed in his place. Meanwhile, Gregory stares at his latex Superman mask--he looked pretty close to Supes, I don't know why the mask would be necessary--and fantasizes about taking the alien saucer down with Superman's powers. Which is exactly what happens, then Terra-Man shows up to for-real kill Superman this time--which prompts the beat cop to unmask, since he was the real Terra-Man hiding out! Flash and GL had helped Gregory take out the saucer as "Superman," then still looking like Terra-Man, the real Superman had confronted him to draw out the "Cosmic Cowboy."
There are way too many unmaskings this issue; I can only hope Lois kisses the real one in the end!
Ren & Stimpy panels from the Ren & Stimpy Show #5, "Commander Höek and Cadet Stimpy vs. the Croco-Men from Planet Zed!" Written by Croco-Dan Slott, art by Croco-Mike Kazaleh. A surprising amount of Ren & Stimpy jokes I remember are from the comic.
2 comments:
First of all, this is one of my favorite covers of the 70's.
Terra Man's a great villain. I have no idea why DC hasn't used him more- the space cowboy hook has a lot of possibilities. As for why he killed the alien, it was for one of the most Old West reasons ever- he killed his pa! Granted, he did adopt him, train him, and remove his memory of the death temporarily. So that would make Terra Man the outer space villain cowboy version of Doctor Fate, I guess.
What I'm trying to say is that Cary Bates is one of the best Superman writers of all time.
A decent gimmick, sure, but his overall look was/is HORRIBLE!
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