November 2013 – THE FORTRESS OF BAILEYTUDE

Welcome to the one hundred and sixty-second 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.

This time out Mike and Jeff begin their coverage of the Superman books with a March 1994 cover date which means they also begin their coverage of BIZARRO’S WORLD! Well, they talk about the first chapter at any rate. Before that story begins the boys dish on Superman: The Man of Steel #31 where the clone sickness story kicks into high gear and several supporting characters meet their final fate. Then in Superman #87 BIZARRO’S WORLD begins as Lex Luthor and Happersen create another imperfect clone of Superman! Why would they do such a thing? Well, you’ll have to listen to find out. This is followed by Supergirl #2 where our heroine discovers that things with Lex may not be on the up and up. Finally the boys give a quick look at Superboy #2 and then hop in a cab to head to a segment they like to call Meanwhile, At The Daily Planet.

Quick heads up…which just became an unintentional joke. Mike and Jeff spent a bit of time during the preamble talking about the Highlander television series. Since that didn’t have anything to do with Superman Mike cut it out of the main part of the episode but put it back in after the credits. So if you like Highlander stick around after the end music for a little bit of Duncan McLeod talk.

At the beginning of the episode Mike mentioned that some of the variant covers to the series Superman Unchained had a Post Crisis theme to them. Mike has made it a point to buy these particular covers because of their connection to this era of the Man of Steel. So here, for your visual pleasure, are the covers up to issue four. Enjoy.

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Next time: March 1994 continues with Adventures of Superman #510, Action Comics #697 and Superman: Under a Yellow Sun!

HOUSE ADS – BIZARRO’S WORLD

SUPER POWERS COLORING BOOKS

Years ago on eBay I picked up a trio of coloring books that came out during the time of Super Powers. If you are wondering why I would refer to the three years and change where you could go to your local toy or department store and buy Super Powers figures as a “time” then I guess I have to explain how much I loved and continue to love that line of action figures and vehicles. So…I loved and continue to love the Super Powers line. Like a lot. Like a whole lot.

I hope that was a sufficient explanation

Because it was the eighties and because any successful toy line would have additional merchandise beyond the toys themselves there were always stickers and lunch boxes and things that manufacturers would slap the logo from the toy line on in an attempt to make some extra money. Being a capitalist I fully support such behavior. A few years ago I found some Superman related Super Powers coloring books on eBay. The lot they came in was a weird too. It had the Superman book, the Lex Luthor book and…the Penguin. Figuring I could always track down the Batman book to go along with the Penguin one and factoring in the fact that I paid next to nothing for the books I was happy when I won the auction. When they arrived I was pleased to discover that the Superman and Lex books have absolutely beautiful covers.

I don’t know if that is straight up Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez (praise be his name) art or redrawn to look like JLGL (pbhn) but either way these are fantastic. Lex’s armored look never fails to bring a smile to my face and it looks particularly awesome here. This art would later get re-purposed for the Superman vs. Lex Luthor trade paperback.

The insides of these coloring books are rather neat too and at some point I may do scans of those. I am still insanely picky with it comes to coloring books despite the fact that I haven’t colored in one for several decades. I like iconic shots of the characters and you get plenty of those in these books. The creepy part comes when you look at the back cover.

On the surface these are awesome face shots of the characters and I suppose if I were a kid it would be cool to have a Superman or Lex mask. As an adult all I can see is what happens after you cut the masks out. See, you have to cut the eyes out too leaving you with a soulless, eyeless Superman or Lex Luthor. And that’s creepy. These masks were big in the eighties (I distinctly remember the ones on the back of that Star Wars cereal) so I can understand why they included them but man they just weird me out.

Other than that these are pretty darn cool. I am glad to have them in the collection. If I was a different sort of guy I would bust out a 64 pack of crayons and get to work. I am not that sort of guy. I’m the sort of guy that puts stuff in a drawer and takes it out from time to time to look at it. Part of me wishes I could get over myself and color these bad boys but I know I would end up screwing up a page and then regretting the whole thing. So back in the drawer they go.

For now.

WHO’S WHO CLASSICS – TERRA-MAN

Welcome to another installment of Who’s Who Classic, a regular feature here at the Fortress where every Monday I will present an entry from the original series of Who’s Who comics that DC published between 1984 and 1988. Superman was well represented in those series and I wanted to share the entries with you just in case you have never seen them. Today’s entry is Terra-Man!

(originally published in Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #23 (January 1987)

Remember that you can click on the images to make them larger.

RANDOM BOB MCLEOD PAGE

MEANWHILE COLUMN WITH JERRY ORDWAY

Today is usually the day I post a new From Crisis to Crisis but schedules and real life have once again gotten in the way. Instead of posting a random image or panel or cover I thought I would finally get around to posting the scan you see above. This Meanwhile column appeared right around the time the Superman books were rebooting in 1986. John Byrne and Marv Wolfman are usually the ones that get mentioned when the early days of the Post Crisis Superman are discussed but Jerry Ordway was there from the beginning and stayed on for over five years. So while Byrne and Wolfman (who is also mentioned in this column as you no doubt noticed) are most deserving of every bit of credit they get I think that Jerry sometimes gets forgotten as one of the founders of the Post Crisis Man of Steel and one of the creators that helped make that era so memorable.

I mean check out these pages and panels from the Time and Time Again issues of Superman.

One of my holy grails as far as Superman collectibles goes is the poster Jerry drew from around this time period. I had little to no disposable income at the time it was first released (I was like 14/15) and it got away from me.