Mild Mannered Reviews - Classic Post-Crisis Superman Comics

Superman #1 (1987)

Superman #1

Cover date: January 1987

Writer: John Byrne
Penciller: John Byrne
Inker: Terry Austin

"Heart of Stone"

Reviewed by: Josh Gehling (rgehling@concentric.net)



"Come out, come out whoever you are!" Superman taunts as he makes a huge wall into a pile of rubble! Once finished, he walks inside to find a gigantic laboratory fully equipped, but strangely, no one seems to be home.

As he walks through the building he wonders why someone would abandon this huge lab and why they would go through the trouble of lining it with lead (the only substance which Superman cannot see through). Exploring deeper and deeper into the building, he thinks back a few months to the time when he found that the rocket that brought him to Krypton was gone (Man of Steel Miniseries #6). The trail leading away from the rocket's touchdown point had led him here. At this point he comes to a door that he immediately rips down and inside he sees... himself! Projected onto monitors all around the room are pictures of him, also displaying oddly precise statistics on him. The strangest thing, however, is that the man has actual photographs of Superman's face in focus (during these early post-crisis days, Superman vibrated his face rapidly in public, so that all the shots of him would turn out blurry, so no-one could recognize him. Whether Superman got a headache from doing this, or the writer's got a headache from trying to remember to do this, this was taken out after a few issues).

As he walks into another room, he spots a dead man on a table and guesses that the man has been dead for nearly six weeks! A quick glance at the man's fingerprints (thanks to Microscopic Vision) reveals that they are a match for the one's found on a truck outside, whose trail led him to this strange place. Nearby, Superman finds another oddity... a large vat of acid! Inside the vat are fragments of human bone! To make sure nothing happens to this potentially harmful laboratory (because it has so much secret information on Superman), he burrows around the lab at super-speed and then uses his heat-vision to fuse the silicates in the soil into a steel-hard bowl so he can lift the entire complex into space for storage (I'm not sure if this really works but it sure is awesome!).

Flashing down at light speed into an alley, he does a quick change to Clark Kent to meet Lois for a jog. He meets up with her and they have the usual Lois-Clark talk while jogging ("Where were you at?" "I'll never go out with you." blah blah). Suddenly, !BBRRAAANNNGGG! (that's right folks, Brang, the deadliest of all comic word sounds!), it turns out to be the alarm at the bank. Lois runs over to catch the story as Clark warns her there may be armed men inside the bank. When they reach the door they are shocked to find that it has been nearly ripped all the way off. Lois comments that whoever did this must have been as powerful as Superman! When she walks inside, an amazingly built man grabs Lois' wrist and tells her "No Miss Lane. More Powerful!" Clark runs forward and punches the man, but he retaliates and Clark rolls with the punch, sending him across the room behind a row of desks, out of sight. Metallo tells Lois that he will be the one to kill Superman. A few moments later, Superman enters the room and orders Metallo to put her down. He does and the ultimate battle can now begin!

Superman slowly approaches the man and grabs onto his shirt but notices an odd green glow in the man's eyes. After some talk, Metallo punches Superman out of the building and across the street into a truck. He notes that for a moment he felt slightly vulnerable, then quickly flies towards Metallo at full speed, knocking him back against a wall. Lois, who has been inside watching the fight, finally acknowledges the terrible danger she's in (the building may collapse) and runs to safety. On the way out, she notices that there's a tunnel going underground from where Clark was and assumes that Superman drilled him to safety and also notices how badly Superman is being beaten. Superman tries to reason with Metallo as he holds the beaten Superman in his arms. Between Superman's conversation, Metallo starts to have flashbacks to the man who made him (the man who was found dead at the beginning).

The man tells the newly-made Metallo that he is powerful enough to destroy Superman thanks to a piece of Kryptonite that he obtained from the baby Kal-el's rocket ship. The man explains to Metallo that Superman is here to "conquer" Earth and that he manufactured Metallo to destroy him.

We are now back to present day as the police arrive and shoot many bullets at Metallo. Lois runs over and helps Superman up but Metallo is already on his feet and viciously attacks Superman. He punches him in the stomach, then the chin, then with a kick and finally tackles him into a wall, causing the whole building to collapse.

Many miles away, Lex Luthor watches on TV as Superman is being brutally beaten by Metallo. This makes him very angry because he promised Superman that when he dies it will be by Luthor's hand.

Dead silence has fallen over the bank, as everyone looks for any sign of Superman. And out of the rubble the familiar cape is seen rising up, but it's just a torn shred held by Metallo! Metallo's outer skin has been torn away, revealing a metal skeleton! Bragging over his "victory" he starts to laugh, but at his left foot, the hand of Superman reaches out and grabs it, telling Metallo that he is not defeated yet. But Metallo smiles and his metal chest opens revealing a whole kryptonite rock! As the radiation gets more and more intense Superman rolls over in pain, mere moments from death! Until suddenly, Metallo vanishes!

Lois runs up to comfort him and Superman comments in fear that whoever took Metallo probably wanted the kryptonite from his chest. He looks around, his fear quickly turning to anger and says that he has an awful feeling about who might've taken him... Luthor!

3Story - 3: Simplistic... fun.... and painfully John Byrne :)! Everything about this book crackles with excitement. It has just enough story to keep from calling it mindless, continuity that's cool not bland, and more than enough action to keep you involved! I think one of the most wonderful things about John Byrne is that he constantly keeps such an involving storyline going on, even though we've heard most of it before. This is most certainly John Byrne's golden age and I'm delighted that Superman got to be a part of it. Even though Superman has fought Metallo a hundred times before... even though Clark has always wanted Lois to like him instead of Superman... we get a feeling of all this happening for the first time. When Byrne left these books it becomes obvious a year or two later, that the people have no idea where to take the stories. So instead of the fun and light-hearted post-crisis feel that Byrne envisioned, we get the stories that are most associated with this era. These are the stories that *included* and followed "The Death of Superman" all the way up to the Jeph Loeb issues (which do a great job of mixing the post and pre-crisis worlds). These stories are mainly just boring cross-over's with a continuity so tight and confusing that it almost became another pre-crisis world. Unfortunately, this tight continuity was not one of alternate dimensions... no, nothing that interesting! This was a continuity of how Lois' sister was having a black man's baby and Superman's good friend Bibbo and... WHO CARES! These are comic books not soap operas! So with a review praising a book this much, you're probably wondering, why would I possibly give it a 3. Well, as mentioned earlier, there's really not much story here other than the very cool fact that someone stole Clark's rocket (which also made for one of the better episodes of the "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" TV series) but it's just plain old-fashioned rock-em sock-em fun that I am delighted to read over and over and over and over again!

5Art - 5: Byrne's Superman (especially the first ten) are some of the easiest comics I've ever read. Sometimes because of the fantastic stories but always because of the art. It's not the most beautiful stuff I've ever seen, but it's always very nicely plotted with great angles!

3Cover Art - 3: "It's your first issue----and it could be your last!" the cover reads. I must confess this is sorta cheesy but it fits in with the context of the issue. Not alot of effort went into the cover, obviously, but it gets the point across.


Classic Post-Crisis Superman Comic Book Reviews

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