DECIPHERING DC
Artists: Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, Kerry Gammill, George Perez, Mike Mignola, Curt Swan, Brett Breeding, Dennis Janke, John Statema
Collects: Superman issues 28-30, 32, 33, Adventures of Superman issues 451-456 and Action Comics issues 643 and Annual 2
Published by DC Comics.
Welcome to another chapter of Deciphering DC! After a lengthy gap comes the next collection in the monthly Superman series, made even more profound by the fact that the only Superman collection before this one, when it came out first, was the original Man of Steel collection....the other volumes were collected much, much later. There's a lot of catching up to be done from where we left off.
Gangbuster loses the use of his legs when he goes up against Combattor. With the use of Lexcorp's technology, and making a deal with the devil, Jose Delgado can walk again. But there's a new Gangbuster on the streets, and it isn't Jose, and nobody knows who he is. Meanwhile, the Dominators are readying their allies for the upcoming crossover, Invasion, which fails, though it leaves the continent of Australia devastated.
There's a new Supergirl in town, and she's Lana Lang. Superman discovers that she isn't from this universe, but from the pocket universe that he had travelled to and met the Superboy of. She isn't actually Lana Lang, but a protomatter clone. Lana was in love with the Lex Luthor of that universe, who recreated her after her demise.
Lex makes a mistake when he releases three exiled Kryptonian criminals from the Phantom Zone. Lana travels to our universe to ask Superman for help. After a long battle in the pocket Universe, Superman decides to kill the three Kryptonians as he couldn't risk them finding their way to his universe. Everything in the pocket universe is destroyed, save for Supergirl/Lana Lang, who has reverted to her protomatter form. They call her Matrix.
Back on Earth, a confrontation with the Guardian reveals that Superman is the new Gangbuster. The pent up rage and guilt leads Superman into having a multiple personality crisis, and he finally decides that he's a danger to everyone around him, and things would be better if he just left Earth. This is where we step in.
Superman leaves Earth with his supply of oxygen in order to find a new planet to survive on. The first planet he finds has everything he'd like, but for the freak weather. The next planet he finds himself on worships him, not unlike Earth and he finds that he must leave as well.
After encountering a couple of strange aliens, he decides to return to the planet he last ventured to, which brings him in renewed conflict with Hfuhhruhrr, the word bringer (earlier encountered in Superman: The Man of Steel Vol 6) who is still on a quest for knowledge, leaving behind dead people and collecting their disembodied brains.Haunted by visions of the kryptonians he had to kill and weary from the lack of oxygen, he gets captured by the minions of the tyrannical Mongul rather easily. Mongul wants Superman to fight in the arena against Draaga, his champion.
Back on Earth, Intergang is gunning for Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Adam Morgan due to a series of exposes run by Clark Kent. An investigator is killed in Clark Kent's apartment, thought by everybody to be Clark Kent....until Matrix shows up, in the form of Clark Kent. Jose Delgado is rid of Luthor's control, due to the efforts of Emil Hamilton. The new Brainiac, a mentalist named Milton Fine, in the control of a disembodied being from Colu calling himself Brainiac is a new wrinkle, and is under Lex Luthor's control.
Meanwhile, word of the last kryptonian having been brought to Warworld reaches the Cleric, an alien, who has journeyed to Krypton to spread his teachings. He fought in the War against cloning. The opposite faction built a machine called the Eradicator, in order to destroy him. Eventually, he overpowers the Eradicator, and takes the artifact with him and his followers, and leaves Krypton. Tragically, all the kryptonians who left the planet die, due to the genetic link that binds them to the planet. Superman is alone free of that link, due to the efforts of his father.
After humiliating Mongul by refusing to kill Draaga, Mongul faces Superman in the arena, only to face defeat eventually at the hands of Superman and Draaga. Before dying, the cleric hands over the Eradicator, the last relic of Krypton to the last Son of Krypton.
Storywise, this is a perfect example of the continuous, weekly, Superman epic that worked for the entire nineties, with so many running subplots. Say what you like about the nineties, but I really, really loved the extended cast of the Superman family - Lois, Jimmy, Perry, Lana, Ma and Pa Kent, Pete Ross, Matrix, Cat Grant, Bibbo Bibbowski, Jose Delgado, Emil Hamilton, Guardian, the Newsboy Legion and the entire cast of the Cadmus project amongst many many more. No punches are pulled, even in the lengthy fights. The book itself reads like an epic, due to it's length being increased by the presence of numerous flashbacks and hallucinatory trips. It's at least 14 issues worth of story, and an excellent story at that.
Of course, the artists here are the ones that shaped the title for the next decade to come - Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway. While Roger Stern is a much superior writer than Dan Jurgens (at least at the time this was being written) I have to admire Jurgens' layouts, and looking at his progress in the coming years of Superman stories, I don't think we'll ever get someone who breathes Superman as much as Jurgens.
Rating: 9 on 10. It's not perfect, as it wasn't written with a purpose to being collected. Also, they left out a very excellent story with Mr Mxyzptlk, and also the 'Hostile Takeover' shorts by Roger Stern and Dan Jurgens from the Superman monthly.
But I can't actually complain too much. I mean, it's 12 issues plus an annual for US$15. The shame is....that it's out of print as well. It's a wonderful piece of history, an excellent slice of life, and maybe someday they'll collect the preceding Supergirl Saga that set it all off. Wouldn't that be neat?
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Aalok Joshi is a total fanboy and claims to read everything in the comics genre but American comics and Syndicated strips totally win him over. He has been reading comics since he was 5 and started off with Indrajal Comics. After his relatives started pestering him about changing his reading habits, he switched over to novels after junking his erstwhile collection. Gotham Comics, the Indian Authorized publisher of DC/Marvel brought him back in 2002 and he has stayed here ever since.
Now concentrating largely on DC and slightly on Marvel and few selected independents, he is interested and taking steps towards writing for the genre. He also dabbles in illustration and his dream is one newspaper style cartoon per day.
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