Men of Steal, part 1

Everybody knows Superman. There are cultures that communicate exclusively with clicks and whistles who know what Kryptonite is. The whole reason the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor is because they thought Superman was catching some rays. But for as much as Superman is THE superhero to most of the world it could be argued that he’s not a very good one, that he’s not all that interesting, or even that he was a massive dick. Over the years DC and other publishers have made many attempts at reinvigorating the Man of Steel, throwing crazier and crazier variations on Superman into the mix. And after almost 80 years of continuous publication you had better believe they’ve tried some wild shit, from evil Supermen to parallel Supermen to “grim and gritty” superheroes that are just Superman with a coat of paint. What follows is part of a series of posts dedicated to all the wonderful, weird, crazy, and fucking desperate ways people have tried to make the Action Comics lightning strike twice.




Meet Joe. Joe was a gifted athlete desperate for attention, so he tried to re-create the high dive routine from a Bugs Bunny cartoon and jump off a building into an empty tank. Luckily, Superman prioritizes his schedule around helping gigantic morons and Joe was rescued. Superman the gets Joe a job as a janitor in a museum...dedicated to Superman. It seems like less a "I'm a swell guy" move and more of a "I own you now, worship me and toil for my edification" sort of move, especially considering that a phone call or visit from Superman to, say, the Daily Planet could have gotten Joe a job on the sports beat. Frankly anywhere in the city would have given Joe a hell of a better job than Janitor based solely on Superman's recommendation.

Joe's luck took another...let's say "unexpected" turn when he was working late during a thunderstorm. Stay with me: First, a bolt of lightning politely lets itself in through the museum window. Then it strikes miniature statues of perennial Superman hangers-on the Legion of Superheroes. The statues are actually the tiny dead bodies of the real LOSH due undoubtedly to some other, earlier stupidity. They then give off a second energy bolt that strikes Joe, giving him every superpower ever and several super-powers more than twice. Even for comic books, fucking wow, huh?

Now he owes his (admittedly shitty) career and life to Superman so it's not surprising that, upon becoming a small god, Joe decides to murder the fuck out of him and rule the world. That'll teach you to interfere with Darwinian processes, Supey. Since Joe debuted in World's Finest he also took up the proud tradition of "villains who develop an instant, tremendous hard-on for killing Batman for no other reason than his tendency to hang out with Superman." Using Saturn Girl's telepathy he learns their secret identities and proceeds to wage a campaign of terror against them using the most fearsome image he can conjure (a drawing from every kid's 2nd grade notebook) and a super-scary moniker: um, The Composite Superman. Tip: never pick a world-conquering supervillain name that needs explaining. Call yourself Killcrush or Omnipoto or Destroyator; get your point across efficiently. Spend less time talking, more time killcrushing.

Composite Superman sounds like a much better idea than it turns out being, and it doesn't sound all that great to begin with. Joe's motives seem murky and his logic either confounding or not present. Also every single story ends the same way: he absolutely dominates Superman and Batman, destroying their lives and chasing them to the ends of the earth, and then his powers magically vanish and he forgets ever trying to kill anybody. After the first time this happened one would thing the world's greatest detective would have suggested Superman do something about those statuettes, but no: Joe goes back to custodial duties and in a short amount of time an alien comes back and gives Joe his powers again. This alien would eventually go back in time and steal Joe's powers and blah blah blah.....the alien sucks, don't pay attention to him.

While Composite Superman was a great example of the Good Crazy of the Silver Age it definitely comes under the heading of "What the fuckity fuck were they thinking?" As far as that goes it comes down to a few things. The first, something that you'll see as a pattern in these columns, being that it's really hard to keep coming up with enemies to throw at Superman. This is why any random Superman story from the era is an alien coming to earth and turning Superman into a hamster...you run through credible threats quickly and after that it's about filling pages, so you turn to craziness. While it's hard to confirm in this instance this is also the era when Julie Schwartz would basically entreat his creators to design their stories attention grabbing covers that are crazier than a shithouse squirrel, rather than the other way around. It's hard to fault the logic of this particular reverse-engineering; the only way to make the Composite Superman more eye-catching is to give him seven titties. Nor is it particularly surprising that he kept coming back; in addition to being on the short list of credible threats as indicated above, this was also a time when the feeling was that the readers of these comics rotated out 100% every few years as kids got older, so why not just do essentially the exact same story two years later?

Next time on Men of Steal: Omni-Man!