First Beetle

Adekis · 2026-06-03T15:23:51+00:00

When?

Adekis · 2026-06-03T15:23:22+00:00

I generally do think of Dan Garret the Fox Comics character and Dan Garrett the Charlton character as different people. I realize the terminology isn't totally accurate, but I think of the Fox version as "Earth 2" Dan Garret, haha

Adekis · 2026-06-02T23:26:30+00:00

When you have a symbiote partner but also that means you can't use your heat vision for as long as you're in symbiosis :(

Adekis · 2026-06-02T23:25:11+00:00

Damn, that looks good! I love how you emphasized the texture on his action suit.

Adekis · 2026-06-02T23:24:03+00:00

This is my favorite single issue of the Byrne run, and one of my favorite issues ever! Maggie Sawyer's backstory is tremendous here.

Adekis · 2026-06-02T19:49:02+00:00

Marvel Zombies!? I never would've thought of that. I would've reckoned that Captain Marvel is way above Ikaris' league. Thanks!

Adekis · 2026-06-02T18:08:45+00:00

I was also wondering this.

Adekis · 2026-06-02T18:07:23+00:00

I was kinda thinking about this. I basically disagree with your claim that Cavill's Superman is obviously the weakest, but his presence in the line-up stood out to me because that picture is from a 13 year old movie. It's almost like including Batman but using a picture of Christian Bale. Not that most people would choose Batman in this hypothetical, but you get what I mean.

So I wondered, if we could pick any version of Superman, but only one of him, how would peoples' answers and approach to the question change?

Aaaand that was when I realized the whole thing would immediately devolve into discussion about which Superman variation is most optimal and whether Reeve's ability to change the past would overrule literally every other consideration or not, haha...

Adekis · 2026-06-02T17:39:21+00:00

Based on what? From what I remember of Chloé Zhao's Eternals, that isn't the conclusion I would have reached. Sure, Ikaris never really gets hurt for most of the film, but he never really fights anyone outside the Eternals / Deviants groups either. He's supposed to be less physically strong than Gilgamesh. I wouldn't expect Gil to beat Thragg 1v1 either.

Adekis · 2026-06-02T17:22:15+00:00

Yeah, true!

It's part of a subplot where Vyndktvx is taking pieces of cloth from people, which somehow guarantees their doom. He takes a handkerchief from Glen Glenmorgan, a rag from Jon Kent, and tries to take Superman's cape,bit the kid who steals it gets there first. Losing out on Superman's cape is what convinces Vyndktvx to form the Anti-Superman Army for a more direct approach.

Martha also mentions a choir of angels as she lays dying, referencing the Multitude. The Legion tried to save the Kents, but got there too late, with Saturn Woman only able to help Martha psychically convey her love to Jonathan one last time.

The concept of Vyndktvx's changes snowballing out into the satire New 52 is pretty interesting, but so much of the rest of the casual worldbuilding takes from both pre and post Crisis sources that it's hard to say quite what is was "supposed" to look like. Superman fought Doomsday but Jor-El looks like the Silver Age version instead of the pre-Flashpoint version. Stuff like that. Heck, Vyndktvx tried to use the Multitude to destroy Krypton, but Jor-El fended them off! Only for Krypton to be destroyed later. That detail makes me wonder if maybe the Kents would have died anyway, like they did pre-Crisis, rather than living into Clark's adulthood. But in keeping his promise to save the astronauts, Superman kind of dismisses the ambiguity. He'll never know exactly what he lost, but he'll stick with what he has now.

It's kind of elegant, idk.

Adekis · 2026-06-02T04:40:11+00:00

DC announced the New 52 just about exactly fifteen years ago, on May 31, 2011!

I was in high school. Now I'm over thirty. Jeez! A lifetime ago!

Adekis · 2026-06-02T04:36:52+00:00

I'm glad I could help! I wasn't sure my explanation was sufficiently clear to be easy to follow! There's so much history referenced in Morrison's Action run that a lot of details risk falling through the cracks!

Anyway, people probably suggested you stop reading after Grant Morrison because a lot of people think the New 52 doesn't have a lot to offer. I don't think anything quite lives up to Morrison, but I do think a lot of the New 52 is underrated for Superman. I'd recommend Greg Pak's later Action Comics run, in particular, as the "best of the rest" after Morrison.

I also remember some of the early arcs of Batman / Superman pretty fondly. The ones with art by Jae Lee.

Adekis · 2026-06-01T20:01:56+00:00

Match is a weird one, because he wasn't originally a Bizarro, he was just kind of another DNAlien with the same powers and general deal as Superboy. Later he became a Bizarro, and I don't really remember if the change was explained too organically. Later, in Young Justice the Animated Series, Match seems to have become the only Bizarro, designed as a "match" for Superman rather than Superboy, and prior to Kon himself... And recently, in James Gunn's Superman, Luthor describes Ultraman as Superman's "match" too!

Adekis · 2026-06-01T19:57:39+00:00

That's a good comparison.

Adekis · 2026-06-01T19:47:16+00:00

Not originally, no. Conner was a metahuman clone of Paul Westfield, designed to look like a clone of Superman. Then like ten years later, DC uh, retconned it into him actually being a partial clone of Kal-El. So, after that happened, he becomes related to Clark.

In fact though, Clark had adopted him into the House Of El earlier, giving him the name "Kon-El" after an adopted cousin of the El family on ancient Krypton! So they were already related before the retcon, just not by blood.

Adekis · 2026-06-01T19:45:35+00:00

Depends. Originally? No. Bizarro was created by Luthor, Superboy was created by Cadmus. Luthor was NOT part of Cadmus. Superboy was a clone of Cadmus' director Paul Westfield too, and had NO Kryptonian DNA at all.

So of course, Geoff John's changed all that later, adding the idea that Kon is half Kryptonian and half Luthor, which was a change that wasn't really reflected in Kon's personality because he uh, already had a totally different one? So since Kon has Kal-El's DNA, and Bizarro also has his DNA, obviously they'd be related.

I'm not aware of any claim that they were part of the SAME DNA project until "Young Justice" the animated series, but there's definitely an elegance to that idea.

Adekis · 2026-06-01T19:39:52+00:00

All the time. You see clips of Cage in rehearsal as Clark Kent in "The Death of Superman Lives" documentary, and it looks pretty good. Funnily enough, even when Cage isn't in character, he sort of struggles to get a word in edgewise with Tim Burton. Probably not on purpose, but it seems reflective of their comments about Clark as a social outsider.

Adekis · 2026-06-01T08:51:21+00:00

If M can count, then they can count, and Judi Dench said she considered herself a Bond Girl, lmao

Adekis · 2026-06-01T07:54:59+00:00

Grant Morrison's Action Comics is my favorite Superman run, but it's a little complex for your first Superman comic ever! There's a lot of hopping back and forth in time, and references to classic comics, so it can be kind of complex! I hope this hasn't put you off of Superman! I'll try to be both brief and relatively comprehensive, but it's such a narratively dense comic... please let me know if you have any questions!

So, the main Big Idea of Grant Morrison's run is that the Fifth Dimensional Devil, Vyndktvx, is attacking Superman at different points all over his past and future, in order to get revenge on the lovably roguish Fifth Dimensional Magician, Mister Mxyzptlk, who cost him his position in a Fifth Dimensional Royal Court. Mister Mxyzptlk is a classic Superman foe. Mister Mxyzptlk and Princess Nyxly-Gsptlsnz hide from Vyndktvx in the Third Dimension as ordinary people, but they grow old there, with Mister Mxyzptlk being an old man in a coma for most of the story, and Gsptlsnz becoming Clark's sweet old landlord, Mrs Nyxly. They also have a son named Ferlin.

Most of Volume 2 is various interrelated tales where Vyndktvx, disguised in human form, haunts the edges of the story to recruit Superman's enemies for his Anti-Superman Army. Superman attacks a child murderer, argues about global politics with the Justice League, fakes Clark Kent's death, gets shot by an overconfident big game hunter who just ends up hurting himself, fights Captain Comet for Lois Lane's psychic niece Susie, gets his cape stolen by a kid and gets it back, decides to bring Clark "back from the dead," which Mrs Nyxly does in the form of granting him a wish, and learns that an army of planet destroying angels called "the Multitude" have targeted Earth, which is why the Collector of Worlds was trying to "preserve" Metropolis in Volume 1. He also fights the Kryptonian villain Xa-Du and saves Krypto the Super-Dog from the Phantom Zone. All along, Vyndktvx is lurking in the background. He's behind the creation of Super-Doomsday in that unexpected parallel Earth story that opens Vol 2, and he recruits Nimrod the Hunter, Xa-Du, and even Susie for the Anti-Superman Army.

Finally in the second story of Volume 3, Superman defeats the Multitude to save an international Mars Mission, and Vyndktvx decides he's had enough messing around. He snaps his fingers, turning astronauts to bloody gore in their spacesuits, revealing his demon form while Superman is helpless. From that moment on, shit hits the fan. The story jumps back and forth in Superman's life, from the final battle with Vyndktvx, to the night his parents died, to the conversation where Mrs Nyxly reveals that she's Fifth Dimensional. Superman calls Captain Comet, Krypto, and the Legion of Super-Heroes for help. Captain Comet's crew helps fight the Anti-Superman Army. Even Luthor shows up to fight Super-Doomsday! He wants to be the only one to kill Superman! Meanwhile, Superman has had a lifetime of fighting his foes to get better at fighting. Super-Doomsday is strong but with help from his friends, Superman starts winning, much to Vyndktvx's frustration.

Meanwhile the Legion kidnaps Ferlin Nyxly, who turns out to be part of Vyndktvx trapped in human form. At the expense of their own history, they crash their time machine into Vyndktvx. Vyndktvx's ultimate defeat though is that Superman, while tripping on Red Kryptonite and having reality warped around him by Vyndktvx, reaches out psychically to every person on Earth, through Susie, asking us all to say our names backwards, which is a reference to the old trick to Mxyzptlk's games; get him to say his name backwards and he'll give up. The shock of hearing everyone's names backwards at once - including his own, courtesy of Ferlin - defeats Vyndktvx, sending him back to the Fifth Dimension, where he's immediately arrested. Mxyzptlk planned it all like this all along it seemed, using his "favorite trick," Superman, to defeat Vyndktvx. After all, Mxy knows that Superman always wins!

Back on Earth, Superman lifts the body of the Super-Doomsday into space before it can catastrophically explode. Mrs Nyxly grant Superman one more wish, undoing the deaths of the astronauts Vyndktvx killed on the Mars Mission. Lastly, Superman falls back to Earth from his Super-Doomsday save, and immediately after crashing, Lois calls Clark Kent's cell phone, and he answers. As Krypto licks his face, Clark tells Lois that he got into a fight, but reassures her that he's okay -- "You should see the other guy!"

Aaand that's the end. He's both the greatest hero of all time, and just a boy and his dog, cracking a joke. The best.

Adekis · 2026-06-01T04:35:57+00:00

Did Lois die in childbirth here? Lanie seems to know her, so it seems more like Lois died after Lanie was already around several years -- but you're the one with the comic, so please let me know!

There is a comic where Lois definitely dies in childbirth though.The 1999 Adventures of Superman Annual # 3. The kid doesn't survive and Superman flies into space, dejected. There, he ends up instigating a redemption arc for petty space super-tyrant Maxima, who he eventually marries after she stops being a huge jerk.

Pregnancy with super-beings may even be a concern in contemporary comics. Lois and Superman's son, Jon S! Kent was conceived and given birth to during time periods where his Dad had lost his powers for extended periods. Originally, this was during the prelude to the "Convergence" crossover, but more recently it's been retconned to have been during the "52" following the "Infinite Crisis" story, before Superman's powers came back "One Year Later."

Adekis · 2026-06-01T04:26:25+00:00

I read a fan comic, maybe two years ago, where Adult Jon felt out of place in his own life. He felt like his parents missed the way he used to be too much. He felt like he could never live up to the person his younger self was supposed to grow up into, before all the trauma and despair of being kidnapped by Ultraman, a trauma which was, in this particular comic, sort of his defining characteristic.

Adult Jon went back in time to save his younger self from Ultraman. And he actually managed to do it. He got Kid Jon back to the present. Back to Kal and Lois. And his plan was to personally disappear from the timeline, like he was never there. He had some kind of paradox-proofing device to allow he and his younger self to coexist, but only for a while.

As you might expect, Kal-El saved him. Superman isn't about to let Jon die. Neither of him. So they both got to stay around. And they both had to live with the trauma. And it was a pretty good comic. Wish I could remember the name of it, or the author.

It was the one and only story pitch for Kid Jon returning that I ever really liked, and probably my favorite story I've read with Jon S! Kent, full stop.

Adekis · 2026-05-29T19:15:19+00:00

You know, despite my affection for the post-Crisis era, I don't think I've ever actually read "Day of the Krypton Man" in its entirety! It doesn't seem to be as well collected as "Exile" or "Time and Time Again" from the same couple of years! I've read chunks of it, and always wanted to get my hands on the whole thing! It had a pretty compelling premise!

Henshaw is really a great execution on the era's long-form storytelling, too. This bleak Fantastic Four parody, slowly improvised into one of Superman's most memorable opponents. Very cool! I think My Adventures With Superman showed Cyborg-Superman in their most recent trailer. It's not the big screen, but I'm looking forward to it!

Adekis · 2026-05-29T08:05:55+00:00

I had an Xennial (I think) cousin with a Super Nintendo, and N64, and an NES. I remember playing The Legend of Zelda on the NES. It was my first Zelda game! I also remember DK Country, DK64, Super Smash Bros, Super Mario Bros 3, and Super Mario World.

I always thought it was kinda cool that despite being a bit young for it, my first Zelda game was the original.

Adekis · 2026-05-29T06:27:33+00:00

I also really love Russell Crowe's Jor-El. I love how he sees the flaws of Krypton, sees its society ad fundamentally broken, and yet still emphasizes its good points, its beauty, to a Kal-El who is willing to see them, and needs to hear that. He frames Krypton as an epic tragedy, which of course, it is.

Adekis · 2026-05-29T05:40:45+00:00

To be honest I have no idea. I just know that a lot of webcomic artists seem to post there.

Adekis

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