A CLEW!
DC just published a trade paperback which reprinted all of the Adventure Comics “Tales” stories. I’ll check it out and if I find the reference, I’ll be back to bow and pay homage to you!
Thanks,
Fenris
I read The Last Son of Krypton. It was published to coincide with the release of the first Christopher Reeve movie. IIRC, the publisher wanted a novelization of the movies screenplay, but the producers wanted too much for the rights, so the publishers hired Maggin to write an original story and put a photo of Reeve in costume on the cover. The success of this novel inspired DC and Marvel to publish other paperbacks (and even hardcovers) featuring Batman, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, among others.
Alan Moore’s two-part story was the last one published before John Byrne revamped Superman to what he is now. IMHO, it’s the very best Superman story of the 1980s. I and my friends read it and found ourselves wishing Moore would take over Superman instead of Byrne. (But I don’t recall the continuity error you mention, Fenris.)
Wasn’t it also the last Superman story drawn by Curt Swan? If so, wouldn’t that make it his swan song?
Fiver’s right. In the Silver Age, EVERYthing from Krypton was made invulnerable by a yellow star. They cooked that up to explain why Superman’s costume was as invulnerable as he. But then someone asked how you cut or shave invulnerable hair, so the writers said Superman’s hair doesn’t grow while he’s under a yellow sun.
I don’t think Krypton orbited Antares. In the early 70s, there was a story about a wandering orange star that comes close to Earth and Superman discovers weird aliens in the star’s core who tell him that their star was once Krypton’s. The star was orange instead of red because it was “ill” and the aliens were dying along with the star. After Superman refueled the star with a huge piece of green Kryptonite that was being used as food by a creature that looked like a living heart (!), it became red again. An odd story redeemed by the fabulous art of Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson.
I ignore the dreadful pun and point out that Swan (my all-time favorite Legion artist) did several issues here and there before his death.
Oh hell. I can’t ignore a pun like that. Pffffbt! That was a pretty fowl pun. I think it was for the birds.
The continuity error has to do with what we see in the last panel.
<Spoilers follow. BEWARE!!!>>
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The story wouldn’t have worked without the continuity error, and since it was an an imaginary story, AND, as you say “the best Superman story of the '80s” (which I agree with), it doesn’t bother me. But I feel compelled to acknowledge it’s existance:
When a Kryptonian is exposed to Gold K, not only do they lose their powers, so do all their future offspring. We know this for a fact, as a couple of Kandorians who’d been exposed were exiled from the Bottle City because if they bred, their offspring wouldn’t be powered under a Yellow Sun, and if the kid bred, etc…eventually no Kandorian would have powers (circa Superman #179, I believe). So Little Jordan shouldn’ta been able to do what he did. But it made for a FAR better ending, so who cares?
Let me stress that this did NOT detract from the story in ANY WAY for me.
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Nope, not quite everything: Kryptonite (as Fiver noted IS frictionproof, it’s NOT invulnerable. (Other than that, though…
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I do remember that story, but it was contradicted by a later (Maggin?) story which put Krypton around Antares, Thanagar around Polaris…ermm…I can’t remember most of the others, but he’d worked out where a several of the major 1970’s DC players were. Which, as a kid, I thought was cooler than words, so I’m sticking with the Maggin version.
By the way, Maggin fans, you did notice that Mark Waid and Alex Ross were also fans of the novel and tied the Maggin novels into Kingdom Come right? (and you DO know that Maggin wrote the novelization of Kingdom Come?)
Fenris
Swan did occasional stories up until his death. I think he was one of the best comic book artists ever, and certainly one of the most underrated.
Other artists may have drawn a better Lois, or Supergirl or Krypto, or whoever. If I close my eyes and picture Superman, sometimes I’ll picture Swan’s, sometimes Boring’s, sometimes Perez or Garcia-Lopez’s. But if I picture Clark Kent: it’s always Swan. No artist ever got Clark Kent right other than Swan. He perfectly captured what Clark Kent must look like.
My all-time favorite Curt Swan issues, though, strangly don’t feature Clark much. Around Action 319-320 was a rare (for DC) two-parter featuring “The Juvenile Delinquents From Alpha-Centauri” (not Adam Strange’s Alpha-Centauri either). Granted, the kids weren’t JD’s even by the wildest stretch of the imagination, but it was a good solid story with wonderful, imaginative art. Kirby may have been more exciting and dramatic, but Swan’s stuff was more human.
Swan’s other masterpiece is the first Mordru story in Adventure #369-370. It was reprinted as a tabloid edition and, in the larger format, Swan’s artwork becomes even more magnificent (that damned tabloid got me hooked on reading the Legion for the last 25 years and probably was one of the two or three comics that started me collecting).
Those are my favorite issues to pull out when someone says “Curt Swan? Who’s he?”
Fenris
I remember that one (it was a multi-issue story, I believe, around 1970?) but I think that the first appearence of white kryptonite was in a Superboy story, probably from around 1964, judging from the artwork. Superboy gets transported to the future somehow where everyone has super-powers from mechanical devices, meets a girl from there who just happens to look like Lana Lang, and saves their society from some sort of plant-plague with a chunk of white kryptonite, which just happens to have some Kryptoneese (sp??) inscription on it, proving its origins.
Kryptonite, pre-Crisis version:
Planet Krypton and everything in and on it was made of “super-matter”, the properties of which didn’t become apparent unless exposed to a yellow sun. Krypton exploded when a chain reaction began in it’s core where the super-matter underwent a transmutation into Kryptonite.[sub]1.[/sub]
Although never stated in so many words, Kryptonite could be taken to be a superheavy element that emitted magnetic monopole radiation(!)[sub]2.[/sub]
Also, I seem to remember a story where a Kryptonian (?Phantom Zone escapee?) was not merely killed but tranmuted into kryptonite by exposure to K radiation. I don’t know if this was another variant of Kryptonite or merely bad continuity.
[sub]1. There was a story about “The Kryptonian Killer”, an alien who hated all things Kryptonian and claimed to have caused Krypton’s destruction! Unfortunately, I’ve never read it so I don’t know if that was really the case or not.
2.The continuity was inconsistant over whether kryptonite was a fundamental element or some sort of compound. I personally lean to the former on the grounds that it makes more sense out of everything on Krypton becoming transformed. Various Superman and Superboy stories established that kryptonite radiation had magnetic properties. The conclusion that it was monopole radiation is mine.
Making the radiation monopolar wouldn’t help continuity much, if you care about minor details like real-world physics. Monopoles catalyze proton decay, which would make them pretty deadly against any normal matter, certainly.
On the other hand, we’re talking about a guy who can fly. Sure, monopoles are cool.
On one hand, once, in one story…[sub]somewhere[/sub]…Kryptonite was given a place on a “super-periodic table” and was put in the 220s (or the 320s), but that was never mentioned again and I can’t find the reference, so who knows.
On the other hand, Element Lad, even in his early “I can only do pure elements, so I’m a walking excuse for a science lecture” days was able to mess with Kryptonite.
On the gripping hand (Niven joke: if you don’t get it, nevermind), per one notorious in-continuity story (Earth-1), so could Color Kid (who turned Green-K to Blue-K), which implied that if you, say: put White Kryptonite under a bright red light near Superman, he’d turn into a giant Super-Koala.
Chronos: He can fly because of Earth’s lighter gravity! When, someday in the future, astronauts go to the moon, they’ll be able to jump great distances, because our gravity is so much greater than the moon’s! Superman comes from a planet FAR heavier compared to the Earth than the Earth is, compared to the moon. So Superman’s ability to fly is very scientific! (Paraphrased from memory from a Mort Weisinger letter column, ca. 1960 or so) Later it turned out that it was the “yellow-solar radition” that let him fly, but the gravity made him strong)
Fenris
Originally Superman couldn’t fly, he just jumped around.
The Earth-2 Superman (from the 30s-40s) originally just jumped around, but it eventually turned to flying.
The Earth-1 Superbaby/boy/man (1955-1985) flew from day one, although he lacked any sort of agility or control, leading to a sadly hysterical (it was really bad) story featuring Pa Kent trying to teach Superboy to fly. (Pa Kent’s training method: “Well, Clark, we’ll start by tying helium ballons all over your body…”)
The Post-Crisis Superman (1985-Present) couldn’t do either until about age 17 or so when suddenly poof he could fly, no practice necessary.
Fenris
err, that should read (from the 30s-50s)
Fenris:
Ah, yes, Adventure Comics # 351. As a heavy Legion fan (and author of the comprehensive Legion Help File, I came up with a theory about that, which is that it’s the specific wavelengths of Kryptonite radiation that cause the effects they do, and since Color Kid could change the wavelengths of visible light, he could do the same for rays of Kryptonite radiation as well.
In other words, it wouldn’t have been completely dependent on the color, but of the same properties that affect an object’s color.
You realize, of course, that I did all that thinking prior to getting a life.
That’s YOU? I never made the connection! I love that help file! (Granted, there aren’t that many Chaim Kellers out there, but I never made the connection.)
Was I the only one who, in those days before the internet, and when I was too young for APAs, searched in vain for the issue where the “first” Mordru story happened (as seen in the flashback in issue #269)?
Fenris
Were you ever an apa guy, Fenris? I was in CAPA-Alpha and LEGENDS once upon a time, back before the Internet.
Chaim’s help file is indeed the bomb. I don’t recall why I have it…Chaim, did you send it to me when we both used to hang out in Compuserve’s Comics Forum?
Fenris, I bow to your greater knowledge re: Krimson Kryptonite vs. “new” red Kryptonite. It should be noted that I stopped reading super-hero comics after Zero Hour, when it became clear DC no longer had any interest in maintaining a cohesive continuity (I started back with the publication of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #1. In between it was all Vertigo, Fantagraphics and other indies for me, and I couldn’t be more proud).
For those who don’t know and are interested, I think some (mind you: some) of John Byrne’s update/corrections to the mythos were good ideas. Such as:
[ul]
[li]Superman’s clothes aren’t super, but his cells “radiate” their invulnerability about a centimeter outward from his body. This covers why his skintight costume doesn’t evaporate from friction when he’s moving at super-speed, and why his cape can still become tattered.[/li][li]His hair grows. He “shaves” and cuts his hair by bouncing his heat vision off a shiny piece of metal from the spacecraft that brought him to Earth.[/li][li]His flight is really a sort of psi power; it doesn’t have to do with Earth’s gravity and is more a matter of will. Which explains why he can pick up, for example, an oil tanker; his “will” extends to the whole object (otherwise, regardless of his strength, he’d simply push a whole through an object the size of a tanker instead of being able to lift it).[/li][li]Clark Kent is who he is. Superman is the pose (the reverse of the pre-Crisis situation).[/li][/ul]
Yeah, I seem to remember in some letter column or DC “Who’s Who” handbook around the time of the Byrne re-vamp that someone made the suggestion that he actually psionically manipulated graviton particles, enabling him to fly. This is kinda backed up in some of the very early issues of the new run of Superman (and in the “Man of Steel” mini series I think)…when, after lifting some huge, heavy object, Superman takes flight and realizes that when he’s flying, objects are easier for him to lift. I guess his manipulation of the gravitons extends to those affecting the object carried.
Do any of you live in the Los Angeles area? On the 17th is the latest Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention. They’ve had one every month (most of them at the Shrine Expo Center near USC) for YEARS. This is where I met the late Bob Kane and the late Jack Kirby.
Do you ever go to conventions, Fenris?
But how does this explain how Superman’s cape flaps when flying through outer space?
{insert obligatory fart joke here.}
No. I always meant to get involved but never did.
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Hated this one. Hated. Hated. Hated. Besides, if his cape becomes tattered, it should also burn up from friction when moving at super speed.
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I kinda like this one, but… See there’s this old Red K story where his hair and beard grow and it takes Supergirl and Krypto’s heat vision to burn off his super-beard…maybe you had to be there.
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[quote]
[li]His flight is really a sort of psi power; it doesn’t have to do with Earth’s gravity and is more a matter of will. Which explains why he can pick up, for example, an oil tanker; his “will” extends to the whole object (otherwise, regardless of his strength, he’d simply push a whole through an object the size of a tanker instead of being able to lift it).**[/li][/quote]
Hated this one. It’s the same silly pseudo-scientific gibberish that made me hate Next Gen Trek. Why are magicial PSI powers any more ‘realistic’ than “he’s strong because the gravity’s weaker and he’s invulnerable because of the different sunlight”. It’s also been forgotten completely.
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This is pretty much gone too. He’s both and has quit quibbling over who he “really” is.
On the other hand, some of the things I hate with a passion:
[li]Byrne took the complex, interesting character of Lex Luthor and turned him into a cheap Kingpin knockoff, with the BS explaination that “the only reason Lex hated Superman is that Superman made Lex’s hair fall out” proving that Byrne had no idea of the background/history/etc of Lex Luthor.[/li]
[li]He got rid of Superboy because “It’s boring reading about Superboy since you know he’s not gonna die.” Well DUH, like I expect Superman to die. The point of Superboy isn’t as much about a hero’s adventures, it’s about how the boy learned to become the man[/li]
[li]He ruined Krypton. Before, it was sad that Superman lost the wonderous world of Krypton with it’s Fire Falls, Jewel Mountains and Gold Volcanoes. Now Superman’s lucky that the place exploded. Byrne turned a well-realized alien world into just another dystopia.[/li]
[li]Superman should be able to travel through space unaided. He’s the galaxy’s greatest hero, not just the world. His Superman is too limited.[/li]
[li]I kinda like having Ma and Pa Kent around, but thematically it makes a hash of Superman. Before, their deaths showed that there were limitations to Superman’s ablitites (even with his power he couldn’t save them) and added a melancholy note.[/li]
[li]I hate Byrne’s Clark Kent. More than anything else, this is the worst of Byrne’s butchery. Before, everyone could identify with Clark the nerd having a Superman inside. Now, Clark the Pulitzer winning, award winning jock is also Superman, destroying the dynamic.[/li]
The worst part of Byrne’s Superman is that there’s no sadness in his history: Krypton was a horrible place that he was lucky to escape from, his childhood was perfect and he was a perfect person with a perfect life and perfect parents AND he’s Superman. The Earth-1 Superman had depth. Byrne’s character was a boorish, jockish lout. Byrne turned Superman into Steve Lombard Lite. He’s grown somewhat since Byrne left, but I don’t care about the character the way I used to
Fenris