Last week I began the idea of Matrix Mondays, a spotlight on some of the pieces of the Matrix Supergirl's history which I haven't covered during the 10 plus years of this site.
First stop is The Supergirl Saga, the storyline which brought back a Supergirl to the DCU. Last week I covered chapter one in Superman #21. Today we'll dive right into the second chapter in Adventures of Superman #444, by writer John Byrne and art team of Jerry Ordway and Dennis Janke.
This was an interesting time in the DC Universe. The Crisis was only a couple of years in the past. The idea of something being pre-Crisis or post-Crisis was still fresh in readers' minds. And the long-reaching continuity ramifications were still being discovered. It also meant that if creators wanted to take one last look back, they could do so. Readers still remembered infinite Earths.
Ahhh ... but we should have been able to remember. There was only one universe throughout time after the Crisis. As a result, if you wanted to cobble together some sort of coherent patch in Legion continuity, you would come up with the concept of a 'pocket universe', a slice of time/space that wasn't a whole universe.
Please pass the ibuprofen.
Still, something had to be done to fix the Legion. So here we are.
This issue does what a middle chapter is supposed to do, filling in the details of a story while setting up a satisfactory ending. This issue is basically a flashback of the Pocket Universe Earth and what happened after the death of Superboy in the Baxter Legion book. It does give artist Jerry Ordway the opportunity to revisit Silver Age looking elements of the DCU. Nothing like old school Quex-Ul to make a long time Superman fan happy!
And we get just a smidge more of this Supergirl.
But this is an info dump in preparation of the finale's conflagration.
One last note. I love that the cover of this issue is basically the first panel of the story. Here is Superman kneeling at the graves of the Kents who on this world have passed.
On to the book.
And page one is him kneeling at those very same graves.
Here in the intact Smallville, the last viable area on this Earth, Superman asks what could cause such devastation.
There is plenty of blame to go around. To Lex's blond friend Pete, the Legion are to blame. But Superman knows that isn't true. They were just pawns in this game.
And so we get a lesson in Pocket Universes.
The Time Trapper looked back in time to the origin of the Legion and saw their inspiration, Superboy, a being that never existed.
Somehow in the distant past, the Time Trapper carved out a small section of the cosmos that included and entire universe. And then, in this sliver of a reality, this pocket universe, he removed all planets ... all life ... except Krypton and Earth, recreating their histories and letting things unfold as he desired, setting up the creation of his version of Superboy.
This Earth and this Krypton were similar to the 'real' versions. But there were differences. This was the headband wearing, jewel mountain, super-science Krypton of the pre-Crisis. This was an Earth with no other heroes but Superboy.
And it was this Earth that the Legion thought was historical. It was this Earth they would go to when they went into the past. Thus Superboy existed and could inspire.
As for the Trapper became an absentee landlord.We know he became an absentee landlord because Superboy had died.
But these people, this pre-Crisis-y Earth went on without knowing Superboy had died. The Kents passed on. Pete Ross revealed Clark's secret identity. And Lex, never a jealous bald rival of Superboy, became an upstanding citizen and leader and came to Smallville to give Superboy a cure for Kryptonite (a nice nod to his Silver Age origins).
Thinking Superboy was only in the future, hanging out with the Legion, Lex, Pete, and Lana decided to explore the Kent's farm to see if there was any communication device.
In the Kent basement, Lex stumbled into Superboy's lab. Thinking he found a time viewer to communicate with the future, Lex inadvertantly tunes into the Phantom Zone.
And General Zod, the devious guy that he is, played Lex.
Calling himself Von-El, Zod says he fled to the 'Survival Zone' to escape the destruction of Krypton. With Lex's help, he and his 'family' could enter the plane of reality and be helpful like Superboy.
So Lex, with a little help, builds a Phantom Zone projector.
Of course, we know these are villains. There was a pit in my stomach knowing what was to come.
And Byrne using the words Survival Zone, the slice of unreality that Zor-El and Alura escaped into in the Silver Age, is another nice callback.
Of course, Zod, Zaora, and Quex-Ul were villains. As soon as they were let out, they smashed the projector and all of Superboy's machines. There'll be no putting these genies back into the bottle.
How funny to see this Lex be so naive. He didn't even dream a place like Krypton would have a criminal element.
What happens next should be expected when you release three Kryptonian sadists onto an unsuspecting world.
Outright devastation.
And the creation of a rebellion, led by Lex, Lana, and Pete Ross but with some familiar volunteers - Oliver Queen, Hal Jordan, and Bruce Wayne.
Not bad.
Somehow, the rebels, including the now augmented Lana as Supergirl were able to stymie the Phantom Zone villains to the point of utter frustration.
Realizing the best move was to end it, the three villains burrowed to the Earth's core, releasing the contents onto the surface. Only Smallville under the force dome survived.
In the midst of all the war, Lex's devices were able to pierce the dimensions such that they saw the Superman who fought Superboy all those years ago.
Thinking Superman was their only hope, Lex sent Supergirl through the portal. She would be addled a bit, probably amnestic. She'd be stuck in ice for 200 years. But when awake, she would be compelled to go to Smallville and find Superman. It was the best Lex could do.
This whole thing is crazy in a way. This is a pocket universe with one planet ... Earth. There is no other place for these Phantom Zone villains to go to. So they would rather rule over a heap of rubble, the three of them, instead of somehow working a little together. How about just being a benevolent despot?
And so we come full circle.
That is how Supergirl made it to the real Earth.
And so we get a rather angry Superman vows to make these genocidal maniacs pay 'in full'.
Will he be able to? And what of Supergirl/Lana?
I guess we'll have to wait for the next Matrix Monday to find out.
All that said, this was a very expositional issue, laying the groundwork for this saga. It is a lot to take in. That said I like it for its brevity. In the current market, this would probably be a twelve issue story, not three. Still, trying to make sense of pocket universes, false pasts, two planet universes, etc is quite a chore.
Ordway's art is gorgeous. No surprise there. I especially love the middle pages showing the quasi-pre-Crisis Krypton, the pocket universe sort of pre-Crisis-y Earth, and all the goodies from before: Pete Ross, redhead Lex, etc. And we continue the 'letterbox' format of the first chapter as well.
But it all comes to a fiery conclusion next chapter.
Overall grade: B
10 comments:
"Please pass the ibuprofen."
Never. It's mine to hoard.
To be honest, this kind of story is proof that Crisis on Infinte Earths was a mistake. The Multiverse is too confusing, readers were told. The different alternate Earths are too complicated for fans figuring out, readers were told. But somehow this is easier?
And you can always count on John Byrne to reiterate that Krypton was a terrible, terrible place full of terrible, terrible people and Superman should feel no nostalgia whatsoever towards that place (even though Superman and his cousin are the ultimate immigrant). Oh, and find a way to insult the Legion.
Maybe we should rebrand the "Post Crisis-Pre Kara's Return Era" as the "Ibuprofen Age"? I don't have much to add here, the whole issue is a nigh perfect distillation of John Byrne's imbedded prejudices when it came to Superman's Continuity. Say what you like about him, but Byrne had the "Courage of His Restrictions".
One of those restrictions was a very naive ineffectual take on Matrix/Supergirl that slid very easily over to outright bimbo-dom and her subsequent "Albatross Moment" as Lex Luthor's bewildered arm-ornament.
In a larger context though, I'm going to offer the unquiet notion that DC discovered thru it's misbegotten post crisis continuity that its easy to create "a shared multiverse" its nigh impossible to abolish such a creation without creating ongoing convoluted chaos across dozens of titles. The Crisis was sold to us as a "simplification" of the DCU it created and perpetuated nothing but needlessly complicated confusion. If a DC book made sense in those days, it was almost by accident.
JF
Given the overall absurdity, here's a narrow question, something I don't remember - was the explanation for why Supergirl had amnesia in her trip to our universe simply that she had been buried under ice for hundreds of years?
Because neither she nor Superman suffered mentally when traveling to the pocket universe, and Superman also returned home fine (well, physically fine - emotionally is another matter, and that comes with the aftermath of the Saga).
Is it this Saga that planted the seeds for what I guess is now called the "Superboy Punch?"
T.N.
I wasn’t a fan of this storyline and yet I’m still feeling a weird nostalgia for a time when we didn’t know what the heck we were going to get... super-Stockholm Syndrome?
And how dare Byrne sully Quex-Ul, he’s the guy who got to reform?
Thanks for comments.
I don’t know if we ever get a true explanation about her amnesia.
I’m all for The I unproven Age!
And it took a while for legit patches to happen. Valor replacing Superboy as the Legion inspiration makes better sense than a pocket universe.
Will finish up this saga soon!
"To be honest, this kind of story is proof that Crisis on Infinite Earths was a mistake. The Multiverse is too confusing, readers were told."
Well, here's what Roy Thomas had to say about the "confusion" of the Pre-Crisis Multiverse (this is from a panel interview by Michael Eury at HeroesCon in Charlotte, North Carolina June 17, 2017 and published in Back Issue 106):
"When it was confusing was when you had writers or editors who
didn't know what they were doing....What happened is a lot of
people would just dip into Earth Two for one story...they were
the ones who were confused and messing it up."
I wonder if Roy had Bob Haney or Murray Boltinoff in mind when he said this.
Later in the interview, Thomas said this about Crisis:
"I will say I think that Marv and George did a really nice job
with the series. It's a good looking series if you want to
do kind type of thing. I just don't think it should have
been done."
The word "kind" may have been a misprint, but I copied the quote exactly as it was in the magazine.
DC seemed to think that getting rid of Kara (and her post-crisis non-existence) helped guarantee Superman's "uniqueness". What they didn't realize is that just having other costumed superheroes around took away from Superman. But aside from that, please tell me why Matrix and other characters wearing the "S" emblem didn't make Superman less unique? Because they weren't survivors of Krypton? I guess that means that Kara had to go, but Streaky and Comet could have stuck around.
"DC seemed to think that getting rid of Kara (and her post-crisis non-existence) helped guarantee Superman's "uniqueness". What they didn't realize is that just having other costumed superheroes around took away from Superman. But aside from that, please tell me why Matrix and other characters wearing the "S" emblem didn't make Superman less unique? Because they weren't survivors of Krypton? I guess that means that Kara had to go, but Streaky and Comet could have stuck around."
I fully agree with you. Post-Crisis Superman wasn't the first super-hero. He wasn't the best and mightiest, either. He wasn't fouding member of the world's first and premier super-team and he wasn't the inspiration of the heroes of the future. And his powerset was shared by at least one dozen of characters. But somehow he was more unique because he was the only Kryptonian around?
By the way, I've been reading Bronze Age comics of late and I've realized that the Superman Family barely made any appearances in Action Comics and Superman during the early 80's. So, I seriously wonder why DC blamed Superman's disappointing sales dropping on them when Supergirl, Krypto... weren't a factor at all. How could they be scaring readers away?
The fact that DC received a lot of fanmail of people who didn't read Superman comics before Byrne but praised him by turning Superman, Lois, Jimmy and Lex into real characters and ditching the kiddie Legion of Super-Pets tells me people back then weren't reading Superman comics because they were clinging to a view of his universe which had been outdated during twenty years and was never true to start with.
Roy was probably referencing his own work on All-Star Squadron, which was heavily impacted by the Crisis (it took place on Earth-2 during WWII and was pretty successful). It was also one of the few series that openly addressed the problem of retconning what had happened before, without a proper reboot.
Actually, THAT was the main issue: Crisis was supposed to simplify the Multiverse into an Universe, but later it became the starting point for an uneven reboot. Kara was supposed to die - which was sad, but greatly done in the mini series, not to be ERASED. That came later.
So, at this point, Byrne was given the task to solve the resulting Legion continuity hell by justifying the existence of a Superboy who wasn't supposed to be, and get rid of him for good at the same time. To be honest, he managed this part amazingly, but the thing was stretched a bit too far when Supergirl was thrown in, just because "Hey, it's Supergirl!".
When you read it, Supergirl as a character has nothing to do with the main story, nor with the Legion continuity mess: no need to remind that Supergirl HAD BEEN a Legionnaire, and this part was swept under. Re-inventing a non-kryptonian Supergirl at this point could have been neat, but mixing it with the Superboy-Legion closure was completely out of place. Byrne could have used any other character to play the role of the emissary, and it would have changed nothing, as the Supergirl storyline is quickly dismissed as they reach the pocket universe only to be resurfaced years later.
And, of course, the Legion history stayed a total mess anyway, but I wouldn't blame Byrne for this!
"So, at this point, Byrne was given the task to solve the resulting Legion continuity hell by justifying the existence of a Superboy who wasn't supposed to be, and get rid of him for good at the same time. To be honest, he managed this part amazingly"
I don't think so. That story was convoluted and nonsensical, even for comics.
I've read Silver Age comics that make more sense than this.
"And, of course, the Legion history stayed a total mess anyway, but I wouldn't blame Byrne for this!"
I do. He always hated the Legion, and he didn't care for the fact that his "Let's remove Superboy and ditch four decades of stories because _I_ think he's unnecessary" idea would mess up Legion continuity or his "incomplete historical records led the Legion to believe Superman had a Superboy career" fix was ludicrous and didn't work at all.
His decisions driven by ego, hatred and carelessness ruined the continuity of the Legion and led to a nightmare of endless retcons and reboots which the Legion never recovered from. Prior to MoS it was a best-selling book. Nowadays it's cancelled after a string of reimaginations and underwhelming runs that caused non-fans to stay away from the Legion and its undecipherable continuity.
So, yes, Byrne MUST be blamed because of it.
One may not like one author's work, but one can't blame them for a continuity mess caused by editorial choices to a series on which they did not work. DC editors agreed to make Superman Krypton sole survivor, without caring to actually reboot the whole universe. We're talking about the guys who erased Kara Zor-El from existence, forgetting there was another from Earth-2, alive, kicking and without a past!
Also, most of the Superman pre-crisis mythology has been restored and nearly all Byrne's ideas undone, since then, but the no-Superboy thing still stays!
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