Welcome to the sixty-eighth episode of From Crisis to Crisis: A Superman Podcast! This podcast has a simple premise; examine just about every Superman comic published between Man of Steel #1 in 1986 to Adventures of Superman #649 in 2006 in an informative and hopefully entertaining format.
Part index. Part commentary. Part history lesson. All podcast.
In this episode a bold new era of From Crisis to Crisis begins!
Okay, things aren’t that dramatic, but Mike and Jeff do begin the comic book year 1991 this week and not only does it usher in a price increase for the Superman books (from seventy-five cents to a whopping one dollar) but it also marks the beginning of the Triangle Numbering era. For those who may be unaware starting with the January 1991 Superman books and going all the way up to the end of 2001 the Superman titles had a little triangle somewhere on the cover that had the year and a number to let you know where that particular Superman comic fit into the overall continuity. So Superman #51 (which featured the first appearance of Mister Z) was 1991/1, Adventures of Superman #474 (a thought provoking issue where we see an untold tale from Clark’s past) was 1991/2 and Action Comics #661 (featuring Plastic Man) was 1991/3.
After that the boys cover the Adventures of Superboy #12, a goofy little tale where strange things happen in Smallville right around the holidays. Then Jeff goes into his thoughts on the first eight episodes of the third season of the Adventures of Superboy television series with Mike providing color commentary. Then it’s Elsewhere in the DCU and Elsewhere, Elsewhere and things get kind of goofy because it was late and Mike was getting punchy.
The scans return this week as Mike finally got off his duff and scanned some choice images from the Superman books discuss in this week’s episode.
There was some moody art in this week’s issue of Superman and both this image and the one below were among the moodiest. Ordway’s use of shadows was awesome here and showed that, as Bruce Timm and company would later figure out, sometimes Superman looks pretty neat in the dark.
The guys spent a lot of time talking about the Adventures of Superman issue this week and it features an image that had, to the knowledge of the hosts, had never been seen before. Clark Kent…grabbing a beer…to consume. Here’s the page.
This week’s issue of Action Comics featured Plastic Man and Woozy Winks. Artist Bob McLeod made an interesting artistic choice by carrying over the “Plastic Man Vision” that Hilary Barta established in the Plastic Man mini-series from 1988. Here are two examples of this from the issue.
And you thought that Ordway drew a large chin on Superman.
I mean it’s enough to make Clark Kent ponder.
Finally this week the back cover to this weeks batch of comics. Splatterhouse. Embrace the horror.
Next Week: The return of Terra-Man, Superman goes to Happyland and Clark has something really important to tell Lois.
Also some guy named Scott Gardner guest stars.
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