Mild Mannered Reviews - Superman Adventures Comics

Superman Adventures #38

Superman Adventures #38

Scheduled to arrive in stores: October 13, 1999

Cover date: December 1999

Writer: Mark Millar
Penciller: Aluir Amancio
Inker: Terry Austin

"If I Ruled The World!"

Reviewed by: George O'Connor (LukeSky500@mindspring.com)


In the Metropolis Power Plant, the Parasite hurls guards and workers out of the way as he begins to suck the energy out of the central core. Planning to kill Superman, he is interrupted by Mister Mxyzptlk, who informs Parasite that he's the one that's going to kill Superman and that it would be a wise move for the Parasite to go suck someone else's energy instead.

The Parasite takes his suggestion and immediately drains Mxy of all his magical powers. Surging with might, the Parasite sets off to cause havoc as Mxy runs off to the Planet, gets Kent's attention and convinces him that the Parasite has stolen his powers.

Creating a diversion for the Big S, Clark changes into Superman and Mxy grabs hold of the Man of Steel as he flies out to stop the Parasite.

Meanwhile, the Parasite goofs around with his new powers, by causing mannequins to attack while he sinks parts of the cities in ponds of marshmallow! It is not long before he has created a giant anvil, which he attempts to smash a group of law enforcers with. Fortunately Superman shows up, catching the anvil and pushing it towards the sky. Supes weakens when the Parasite uses his powers to make the anvil larger and larger, going from a mere 2 tons to a whopping 16 in a matter of seconds with his magic. Superman succeeds at hurling the anvil out into the harbor, but not before the Parasite has caused a giant statue of Superman to come to his aid.

As Superman battles the giant statue and finally triumphs over it by tripping it up, the Parasite changes Lois and Jimmy, who have both arrived on the scene, into Darkseid and Brainiac. The two of them pound Superman as Mxy incites Parasite by citing the Parasite's past losses as evidence that Superman's the better combatant.

The Parasite decides to change the past, by having Superman beaten during his past encounters with the Parasite, instead of the other way around.

The Parasite goes into overdrive, realizing for the first time that he can do whatever he wants to. He makes it so that when he was in college, he was the most popular kid in school, creates dinosaurs and spacemen in history so that kids won't be bored and adds in some chimps with custard pies for seasoning. To top it off, he makes himself the president and zaps Mxy away to somewhere where he can use him later for draining energy off of.

The Parasite then puts Superman through a battle that lasts three days against all of his super villains, at which point Superman is bloody and beaten. Supes moves like lightning when he realizes that three days have passed, however, and knocks the Parasite out, reminding his enemy that he has lost Mxy's power now that three days have elapsed.

All of a sudden, Mxy shows up with his powers intact, deciding to create havoc, but Superman reminds him of the notepad in Kent's office where he wrote "kltpzyxm" twice in order to prove that he didn't have his powers earlier. Mxy is sent off grumbling to his own dimension as Kent marks off his calendar, hoping for at least 90 more days of rest.

3Story - 3: The story was fun but the solution wasn't entirely brilliant. I would have preferred that the Parasite did something with his magical powers that resulted in his losing them. For instance, if he'd beaten Superman the first time they fought, than he wouldn't have had to go to the power plant like he did in this issue, which would have meant that he never would have met Mxy and thus never gotten the powers. An ending where the Parasite messes up like that would have been much more interesting than Superman waiting around for three days for the powers to wear off. Also Mxy as a human didn't seem to do much. Earlier he claims that he can help Supes but is really pointless throughout the issue. The one touch I did like was the Parasite changing things around as he did. I have to admit: I'd rather be studying dinosaurs fighting spacemen than American History! ;)

4Art - 4: Another nice job by Amancio, but what I really would have enjoyed is a full page shot of Superman's enemies beating the tar out of him. If Amancio had had the room for that, it really would have looked impressive. Instead, there's only a small panel of this happening.

3Cover Art - 3: Nice homage to the old Detective Comics with Robin's first appearance, but it's hard to tell that it's Mxy. What might have worked better is if Mxy was falling through the screen, or if the screen was too high for Mxy to jump through. He might have been looking at Supes and been complaining that the Big Lug was too tall. As it is now, it's kind of boring.


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