Spoiler: Clark Kent is Superman.

filed under Categories byrne reboot 5 Comments

So another big change in John Byrne’s 1986 rebooting of the Superman franchise was the retooling of the whole “secret identity” thing. As laid out in the preview article from Amazing Heroes #96, Byrne’s idea was that the default thinking in-universe would be that Superman didn’t have another identity aside from being Superman:


The comments continue, bringing up the fact that since Batman and Green Lantern and so on wear masks, they’re obviously hiding who they are. But since Superman’s face is just out there, he’s obviously not hiding anything and surely isn’t roaming the streets with slicked back hair and big ol’ glasses perched on his nose.

This concept was so ingrained in me when it was first expressed in this way during this time, that it caused the occasional hitch in reading older Superman stories. Not, like, a big one, just a thought in the back of my head when I’d look at some Silver Age story and the idea of Superman also leading a secret life is just casually mentioned by someone…I’d be all “man, why should that even be public knowledge that exists!” It’s a security risk, to be sure. (And this doesn’t even touch upon Lois and Lana’s constant attempts to uncover the truth.)

That idea, that people assume Superman is just Superman and not secretly living as a normal human, is as far as I can recall mostly intact to this day. Yes, there have been no less than two major storylines in recent years about Clark being exposed as Superman, but it was more a “oh wait Superman is also Just Some Guy!?!?” versus “oh so that’s his secret I.D.!”

Byrne puts some real effort into establishing this new status quo for our hero’s double identity. I’m sure there are more examples than just the ones I’m mentioning here today, but I’m just going to keep it down to three specific issues.

First is Man of Steel #5, the pentultimate issue of the initial Byrne mini-series introducing the revamped Superman. It’s the issue where Superman first meets an adversary who’s just about as strong as him, giving him a physical challenge he hasn’t had before. To wit:


Now, Bizarro himself is (say it with me) an imperfect duplicate of the Man of Tomorrow, created by Luthor’s attempts at cloning him, and this creature appears to have some vague recollection of Superman’s memories. And that’s why, after stealing some clothes, he shows up dressed as both Supes and Clark:


…which makes Superman recognize his secret identity is in jeopardy. This problem is easily solved, however, with some judicious use of heat vision:


…and that’s that. While the concept of folks knowing he has a secret identity is gone, that doesn’t mean the threat of its exposure has gone away in this new version of character.

Now the story everyone (or, well, certain values of “everyone”) thinks of when it comes to the post-reboot I.D. status is the one in Byrne’s second issue of the ongoing Superman series, which has this provocative cover:


Hoo boy, this should be good, right? The upshot of the story is that a connection is noticed between Clark and Superman, and Lex and his underlings gather enormous amounts of data on the two to find an explanation.


Which all reminds me of Lana Lang’s Superboy Identity Detection Kit:


…which you can read a little more about here.

Anyway, I feel like all the info they gathered would make the conclusion self-evident, but a button is pressed, hamsters run on wheels, and so forth…


…and when the answer comes:


…all are shocked and amazed (though c’mon, “never would have occurred to you?”)…


But Lex ain’t havin’ it:


Thus it is established that Luthor can’t even comprehend someone like Superman would have a secret identity, that the very idea of hiding one’s power is ridiculous. The conniving and clever Luthor of the Silver Age might have at least considered it, but the very idea just bounced off the mind of this more…thuggish interpretation of Superman’s genius adversary.

There’s one more story that, I think, belongs in the New Secret Identity Canon, and that’s Action Comics #597. This is a little later than the other stories, from 1988, and it’s during the “team-up” era of this series. It puports to be a “team-up” between Lois and Lana, and the two do meet, but it’s more about Lois trying to determine the exact relationship between Kent and the Kryptonian.

In short, Lois visits Smallville, bumps into Superman and Lana, Lois wonders why Supes is in town (and also there were lots of wild cosmic things goin’ on here that I won’t get into), and begins to put some pieces together:


But before Superman can answer, in come Ma and Pa Kent to help, with a wild story they probably manage to sell by being Kindly Old Farmers an’ all:


Needless to say, finding out Superman and Clark were basically raised together as “brothers” really pisses off Lois, thinking the two of them were playing some kind of game with her re: Clark getting all the good Superman stories for the Daily Planet an’ such, and she just wants nothing to do with either of them.

I mentioned on Bluesky that the current paradigm in Superman media is for Lois to find out relatively quickly that Clark and Supes are the same. Or rather, after getting a bit of pushback there, that Lois knows Clark is Superman, and that Superman is honest with her about it. It feels…right, that this should be so, to be frank, and the convolutions the Kents go through to cover their son’s secret in that issue of Action, from a perspective three-something decades later, feels so unnecessary and almost…hostile toward Lois.

Okay, the Silver Age stories in which Superman continually gaslights Lois about his I.D. seem borderline abusive at times. But with the post-reboot stories, with marginally more realistic characterizations and behaviors, Superman clamping down at this point is almost worse. And Lois’s response to this new cover story is absolutely understandable.

Now eventually Superman does come clean:


…but that’s a tale for another time.

“EEEYAAAHHHH!”

filed under Categories supergirl, superman 14 Comments

So I talked about the “Supergirl’s Husband” story last time, about how it wasn’t as bad as I’d recalled it being. I mean, it’s not the greatest Superman story ever told but as a weirdo hybrid of modern storytelling demands and the Bronze/Silver Age milieu in which the Super-books still existed, it remains a fascinating example of where this particular franchise stood in those about-to-be-rebooted-away days.

The previous issue, however…


…well, it’s not awful throughout, but it ends on a really sour note that affects my opinion of the whole thing.

The most notable happening in this comic is the elaborate-if-easily-foiled-by-opening-a-door computerized contraption that uses its mid-1980s A.I. to generate believable Clark dialog while occasionally telling you it’s totally fine to eat fugu liver:


This is what I mean by the Superman books still being under the long shadow of the Silver Age. The wild elements and behaviors from that period continue on, even as the genre “matures,” with plot points like “Superman’s out-there ways of protecting his secret I.D. from Lois” sitting side-by-side with attempts at more modern storytelling sensibilities.

(I recently noted online that Superman media adaptations have increasingly done away with the idea of Superman trying to withhold his secret from Lois, possibly a reflection of the fact this is no longer a thing in the comics, or more likely just out of the feeling that aspect of the relationship is outdated.)

Another element of “modernization” bringing Superman comics in parity with 1960s Marvel is some of the overly-chummy captions, that “greetings fellow kids” really, really hard:


A total slam on Bulgaria completely out of nowhere, C’mon Julie.

And I just have to bring this up, as one of the alien antagonists for this story has an annoying speech pattern, one not shared by his fellow alien from the same species that’s his partner in crime. So the dude deliberately choose to talk like this:


“I have it with me…in this file I do have it!” “As we planned! Planned it we did!” AUGH SHUT UP ALREADY

Speaking of those guys, the story generally revolves around them (representatives of the Superman Revenge Squad) invading New Krypton (the planet upon which the formerly shrunken Bottle City of Kandor was expanded) and causing some havoc. But the early parts of the issue are more explicit tie-ins to Crisis on Infinite Earths, opening with Superman’s grief over the death of his cousin Supergirl, and proceeding to fly around a bit with the Superboy of Earth Prime:


Wait, that comes later. This story features the character in more innocent times:


…before he’s whisked away yet again by a mysterious cosmic vortex that…was there an explanation for that? I seem to remember it happening in the series and folks were all “where did that come from?” and it’s been so long since I last reread it I can’t remember if there is a reason for those. If you can enlighten me, feel free.


This comic concludes with Superman bringing Supergirl’s body to her parents on New Krypton, wrapped up in her cape. And I suppose Superman did a good job of wrapping, or Zor-El is in complete denial, because he says, well….


And we close ther issue with a nice, tasteful scream of anguish…


…accompanied by the almost certainly deliberately Vonnegutian “So it goes….!” which, I mean, c’mon, there’s a reason it’s used in Slaughterhouse-Five, I don’t think that’s quite earned here. Unless it’s some form of metacommentary on Crisis‘s then-ongoing slaughter of parallel universes and the countless lives therein, in which case, Elliot S! Maggin, I salute you.

But despite that, that final panel is…urgh. Kinda gross, to be honest, with that terrible cry across the top of the image. Better to have just shown the exterior in silence, I think, but forty years on may be a bit too late to do a little armchair editing.

The whole comic very much feels like “we’d better address what’s happening in the DC Universe at large” in a book that had largely charted its own course without many interactions outside its specific character franchise. That, of course, was a common element across most of DC’s superhero line, one that I think was hoped to change with the New, Fresh Start afforded by Crisis.

Following the Crisis tie-ins the Superman line mostly went back to business as usual, until the conclusions afforded to the main ongoing titles written by Alan Moore and Steve Gerber. Then along came the Byrne reboot, which I’ll be getting back to here shortly.

The verdict’s in!

filed under Categories supergirl, superman 4 Comments

I did get around to rereading this “Supergirl’s Secret Husband” issue of Superman, which I remembered as bad…


…but it turned out to be…okay-ish? Not as bad as I’d remembered, given I probably haven’t read it since around the time it was released. I still have my copy of it, bought new off the stands, and still in nice shape, which sort of surprised me, but then again I only read it once or twice so it’s not like it experienced a lot of wear.

This is marked on the cover as Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, and…well, it’s more of one than some other similarly-marked books from the time. In this ish, we find out that, during a bout of amnesia and being stranding on an alien world, Supergirl met and fell in love with a resident there, Salkor. You can see Salkor below:

I’m not going into every detail here, but in short Supergirl regains her memories and returns to Earth, and…well, I’ll let here tell it via post-death hologram message:


So anyway, this “Hokku” she’s talking about is a device that she’d kept with her, one that retained her memories and such and Salkor wanted it back. But Superman was all “she’s my cousin, I’m keeping it” and thus the conflict proceeded until a giant robot thing shows up and they must unite to…well, you know.

Then at the end the Hokku displays a hologram of Supergirl as per the above scan and sets everything right, except the fact that she didn’t try to get back to Salkor after regaining her memory or even asking Supes “hey, turns out I’m married, help me contact my husband, right?”

But as egregious additions to the Superman mythos go, it’s not as bad as some things. Given the proximity to the eventual slate-cleaning by John Byrne ‘n’ pals with the Superman reboot, there’s not much opportunity to refer to this marriage or to even bring back Salkor for a guest spot (“Appearing in this issue: Supergirl’s Widower!”), so the impact is relatively nil. It’s almost…Silver Age-y in its presentation, outside the more modern Big Event Tie-in elements, which is sort of fitting given that Crisis, and the Byrne reboot, put a pretty solid cap on that era’s influence on Superman. Not that Silver Age stuff doesn’t get reinserted into newer stories, but it’s usually more a nostalgic reworking than just a natural expression of Superman comics’ DNA.

So this comic is fine, when all is said and done. Not a prime example of Superman comicking, but certainly a passable example of the end-of-days weirdness for the Super-books prior to their relaunch.

But the previous issue, #414, which is another Crisis tie-in…well, I may have been remembering the wrong Superman comic as the “bad” one all these years. But I’ll get to that next time.

A brief reminder.

filed under Categories Uncategorized 2 Comments

Some comment spam has been getting past the filters lately, and I’ve been taking care of it as soon as I’m able. Please just ignore them in the meantime. Thanks!

One of them looks almost like “UPS,” a vastly untapped subject for comics.

filed under Categories peanuts 7 Comments

So online pal dwinn74 brought this panel to my attention on Bluesky:


…which of course reminded me of this old post of mine from 2007, featuring the “beatiful gory layout” panel from the Peanuts strip.

Now, dwinn74 doesn’t recall from what online source he borrowed this particular scan, but I’m also borrowing it to discuss here. Unlike the “gory layout” panel, Charles Schulz showed a little more restraint in titling the various comics on displayed there on the rack to presumably reduce some visual clutter and focus the image.

Like that 2007 post, I’m going to go through and note which of these titles were actually used or not by actual publishers.

SLAM: “Slam” got used the lot as part of titles, but the 1978 mag (not familiar with it, I presume it’s a knock-off of MAD or National Lampoon) and the 2016 Boom! Studios comic used just that word for the title. That there wasn’t an ongoing Slam Bradley with that title is a real shame.

BANG: A 2020 series from Dark Horse (with an additional exclamation point) ran five issues, and there were a couple titles from previous years and other countries with that name. And as with “Slam,” “Bang” gets used a lot as a part of other titles. In fact, please enjoy some covers for Slam Bang Comics.

POW: In the U.S. there’s another one of those MAD knock-offs with the name from 1966. It gets used overseas a couple of times as well, and as part of longer titles (my favorite being Pow! and Wham! from England).

CRA: this title was cut off by the edge of the panel, and I presume it’s “Crazy” or “Crazed” or something. “Crazy” has been used as a title multiple times, most famously by Marvel.

Now, looking at the rack in my 2007 post, you can kind of gather Schulz’s opinion on what was available on comic racks at the time (Kill and Stab on a shelf emblazoned with “For the Kiddies”). With that in mind, there’s a non-zero chance ol’ Sparky meant “Crap.”


Hey, you never know.

YIPE: nope, not used for a comic far as I can see. “Yikes” was used a couple of times, which is close but no E.C. Segar.

OH!: It surprised me, but “Oh” (without an exclamation post) was used a few times. This Canadian comic seemed to use it the longest. “Oh” was used several times as parts of titles, probably most notably in the manga series Oh My Goddess (AKA “Ah My Goddess,” I suppose).

Now to the last two:


…which obviously were titles used on comic books, and around the time this was published, Tip Top and Nancy were featuring Peanuts stories. So Mr. Schulz was doing a little cross-promotion then.

• • •

A note to my regular readers: Superman talk will resume shortly here, I just haven’t had the proper time to generate a proper post in my continuing discussion of the reboot/pre-Crisis stuff. Thanks for your patience.

Just another miscellaneous Monday.

filed under Categories cheese dip, obituary, pal plugging, retailing 4 Comments

It’s another miscellaneous post, as I’m too scatterbrained right now to focus on a single topic, so bear with me until I can get my head on straight again.

• • •

First off, I wanted to plug my pals over there at Vintage Video, the podcast what is plowing its way through all of 1980s major film releases with observations, analyses and trivia imparted in an easy-going and humorous manner, with only the occasional F-bomb. I’ve added a link to the sidebar there that will take you to their site and their archive of over 400 episodes, not even counting the bonus ones you’d get via their Patreon.

Oh, and have I been on this podcast, you may be asking? Why yes, I have, this very episode right here where we discuss the Heavy Metal animated film (and I wrote about the experience here). …And will I be making another appearance on there in the near future? You’ll just have to wait and see!

But, despite my appearing on the show, I hope you check out this podcast. It really is one of my favorites.

• • •

So a couple of days ago over on the Blueskies I talked about how well the Doom one-shot was selling for me:


I’m posting the Adi Granov cover variant here because that’s the one I specifically got the most requests for, and who could blame folks for wanting it?

I implied that it was more of that dreaded speculation that was firing up demand for the book. I was asked why they wanted it, and my assumption was that it wasn’t for any specific reason, just that it was in short supply and that was enough to attract folks with dollar signs in their eyes. I’ve seen it happen plenty of times before. (Frankly, if there was a reason, I would’ve said it was the shots of Dr. Doom’s unmasked face, which they seemed to be more free about showing than in the past.)

However, Chad, the person who had asked me about the speculation in the first place, found the actual reason…apparently there’s a tribute to the late rapper MF DOOM, utilizing one of his lyrics. Well, his fans found out, and showed up a week late to get the comic because retailers aren’t ordering piles of titles to sit around for eventual sale, they ideally order to sell out or close to the initial week.

You can read all about these latest comics market shenanigans in this Comic Book Resources article. ANd I’m sure we’ll get a second printing in six to eight weeks or so, just in time for the MF DOOM fans to be no longer interested, but I’m sure I can still move copies to the regular comic fans. Ah well, What Can You Do?

• • •

A sad farewell to Tom Luth, the long-running, and recently retired, colorist for Sergio Aragones’ Groo the Wanderer. Mark Evanier wrote a bit about his colleague, as did Sergio. The man did amazing work, somehow keeping up with Sergio’s highly detailed artwork, month after month, decade after decade.

So long, Tom.

In which I bother noted comics people online.

filed under Categories hulk, superman 9 Comments

So, a couple of follow-ups:

First, in regards to Amadeus Cho’s explanation for the Hulk avoiding death tolls in his rampages, I said I wasn’t sure if that was per an editorial edict or not. Turns out over on Bluesky, the fella what wrote that comic, Greg Pak, straightened things out saying that it was all him making that decision, not anyone higher up.

Granted, I’m sure the Marvel high muckety-mucks were glad to have something to point to and say “see, our hero who is in Avengers movies and makes us lots of money is not a killer.” And frankly, I’m glad of it too. It’s fun to see Hulk smash up buildings and punch tanks, it’s not quite as much innocently-violent fun (usually) to think about him murdering people in the process. Just one of those “willing suspension of disbelief” deals.

I did just reread the Garth Ennis/John McCrea Hulk Smash two-parter from 2001:


…and in the series, Hulk fights the army, natch, and it is very heavily implied that several soldiers are killed in the process.Tanks are smashed, planes are blown up real good, and you do see men scrambling out of hatches or parachuting to safety. However, deaths are implied in dialog, but there is perhaps enough wiggle room to claim that soldiers have survived but are out of the battle.

Chris K noted the 2001 Startling Series: Banner series by Brian Azzarello and Richard Corben:


This was an out-of-continuity story that, I have to admit, I haven’t read probably since it was released, but it does tell the story of a Hulk who does leave a body count in its wake. As I recall, it’s dark and a little depressing, so if you had a killin’ Hulk on a regular basis, that may be what it’d feel like.

• • •

Again on the Bluesky, I quote-posted famed comics writer Kurt Busiek, because he was talking how DC Comics missed an opportunity by not going wild with out-there storylines right before Crisis on Infinite Earths swept threw and reset everything.

He mentioned as an example of DC kinda/sorta half-heartedly doing that sort of thing was “Supergirl [getting] married in a story no one remembers.” Well, I remember it, because I bought that very issue new off the shelf back in late ’85:


Now this was by Cary Bates, Curt Swan and Al Williamson, and I haven’t read it in forever, but my memory is that it was…not good. I mean, nothing wrong with that creative team, of course, but the story itself seemed misguided and, well, weird.

As per this Wednesday post, I’ve been reading a lot of late-era pre-Crisis/pre-Byrne reboot Superman comics. I keep avoiding this particular issue as I recall not liking it, but talking about it this much may have be revisiting it sooner rather than later. Anyway, I did hit on kind of a similar point in that past post, which I mentioned to Mr. Busiek, about Steve Lombard’s progress as a character this late in the game was curtailed by Crisis and the reboot.

Busiek’s response was that around this period, DC was producing Superman story inventory for overseas publication, and then trying to use them up in the U.S. comics, so that actual permanent continuity changes were tricky to pull off. Now, I know DC did release stories in other countries that were eventually reprinted here, such as every issue of the Superman Special, as well as the proto-graphic novel Superman Spectacular.

The Grand Comics Database is usually pretty good in noting when a comic is reprinted from another source. But I can’t find any of the late pre-Crisis era Superman and Action books noted as initially coming from an overseas publisher, while the examples above do. Doesn’t mean they don’t, I just can’t find info confirming it. It would be interesting if that were the case, so I’ll have to look further into it.

As opposed to a “Power Action Computer Kick.”

filed under Categories pal plugging, superman 18 Comments

Okay, first off, before I get into the rest of the post, I want to get this link in here because I was dumb and forgot last time. Old pal Mark, co-creator of Fake AP Stylebook on what used to be Twitter, and co-editor of the spinoff book Write More Good, can use your help.

Mark is currently in an uncomfortable living situation and needs some funds to rehouse himself. He’s reached his stated financial goal, but he can use more scratch just in case, you know? Please contribute if you can:

Thanks for anything you can do.

• • •

Not that I don’t have enough physical comics piled up to read, after being behind for the last several years, I’ve been using the DC Comics digital comics app to look at some old stories I may have missed, and revisit some books that I gave up to the shop/don’t feel like digging out of my boxes at home.

Since I’ve been on an Armored Lex kick lately, I reread this three-parter, probably for the first time since it appeared in print back in 1985:


That’s the middle chapter of a story that ran in Superman #410, #412 and #413 (#411 was a surprise issue celebrating Superman’s editor Julius Schwartz), written by Cary Bates, illustrated by Curt Swan and Al Williamson, covers (which I liked!) by Klaus Janson.

I’ve written before about different inkers’ effects on Swan’s pencils, but I was struck by the expressiveness in the faces here in this particular sequence of panels from #412:


Isn’t that nice? Those are some good looks from Superman that you don’t normally see.

But what I wanted to mention for sure here was…well, let me give you a brief set-up. The story is about Clark reporting on an event Superman was involved in, only it turns out Superman imagined said event and it makes it look like Clark fabricated the whole thing. Clark is fired, and his reputation is shot so he can’t get another reporting job.

Obviously this is a plot by You-Know-Who, but Clark is left adrift in the meantime. As such, he pays a visit to another former Daily Planet/WGBS employee, Steve Lombard, who is currently running a sporting goods store. As you recall, Steve was the one continually pulling pranks on Clark in an attempt to pick on him (pranks that usually backfired due to Clark using some super power or ‘nother).

Now, the digital archive is incompelete for the Super-books, and my own memory of the stories from the time is a little spotty, so I don’t recall the circumstances of Steve losing his job, or on what terms he and Clark were on. But in this particular issue, we see the characters reunite:


…and Steve’s tomfoolery aside, it looks like the two get along just fine. They are genuinely pleased to see each other, and in fact Steve gives Clark a part-time job.

I thought this was a nice bit of character growth for Steve after, what, a decade or so of him being a pain in Clark’s rear? It feels like some of his arrogance has worn away, laughingly admitting his own foolishness in the panels above. It’s a real shame this is butting right up against the Byrne reboot, which would wipe this all away, as I would have liked to have seen more of this mildly less-obnoxious Steve Lombard. Ah well.

• • •

And here, since this seem relevant to the recent Superhero Violence post from the other day, is a panel found by Bluesky pal WormDrivePRO. From Spectacular Spider-Man #118 (1986) by Peter David, Mike Zeck and Bob McLeod, comes this inversion of the “Abandoned Building Battleground” trope:


Huh, just like Thom H. said!

WormDrivePRO is a good follow if you like nice big scans of curated comic panels. It’s a fun feed that I recommend!

“Hulk commit involuntary manslaughter!”

filed under Categories hulk, marvel, wolverine 26 Comments

So there’s been some discourse online about editorial denial about specific events/characterizations both explicit and otherwise heavily implied in recent X-Men comics, specifically regarding Jean Grey, Wolverine, and Cyclops. I haven’t read an X-book in probably a decade-and-a-half, so I can’t speak to specifics, but it’s pretty clear the creative teams had one intention with the characters’ particular romantic triangle, and the highers-up are giving the ol’ “noooope” to the whole deal.

This put me in mind of other editorial decrees that seemed…oiut of place to me. This was a discussion on Bluesky, which started with my post here, and I fully acknowledge the contributions others made there with their replies in informing my blog entry here.

I’m going to address the second example I gave there first, in that it’s stated that the Hulk has never purposefully killed. Okay, I don’t know for sure that this was an editorial demand, but here in Incredible Hulk #110 (November 2007) by Greg Pak, Carlo Pagulayan and Jeffrey Huet, Hulk’s Really Smart Pal Amadeus Cho explains what’s going on:


He continues:

“How many times have you fought the military? How many tanks and helicopters have you smashed?

“And not a single soldier has died.

“Yesterday you brought down the Sentry’s Eyrie. You smashed the top of the Baxter Building.

“You pulverized all these heroes…

“…And yet you haven’t killed a single soul.”

Hulk brings up some examples where he has killed, but Cho counters these were instances of self-defense against other killers, as opposed to slaughter of innocents during mindless rampages. Basically, so long as the normal Bruce Banner/Hulk dynamic is in place, Banner is somehow running numbers/probabilities in the background, exerting some subtle influence to prevent Hulk from murdering people.

There is the caveat that Cho slips in there about “as long as your brain hasn’t been tampered with,” allowing for an “out” for examples of Hulk killing, like, say, during instances of Banner being entirely subsumed by the Hulk’s personality, or removed entirely.

This is all fine with me, to be honest. It feels counterintuitive, that there were no casualties during one of Hulk’s destructive rampages, but This Is Superhero Comics. This isn’t any worse or stranger than super-battles always demolishing abandoned buildings, for example, or like the Flash clearing the area of civilians before the rest of the Justice League fights the Shaggy Man or whatever. It’s not as much fun if you realize thousands of people got slaughtered because the Avengers didn’t get to the scene on time.

For some reason this puts me in mind of the events from Miracleman #15 (the Eclipse Comics numbering, from 1988) by Alan Moore and John Totleben. This is like the exact opposite of the “thank goodness these buildings are empty!” kind of explanation for why every superhero battle isn’t the equivalent of multiple 9/11s. In this issue, Miracleman has his final(?) battle with former sidekick-turned-evil Kid Miracleman, and it’s just mayhem and slaughter all over the place, and it’s not all done by the bad guy:


It works here in context because the superbeings have been presented as above normal human concerns, uncaring about mortal lives, and that when these “gods” battle it’s humanity that pays the price. It’s a theme of the book.

The theme of the Hulk is “man vs. himself,” Banner having to cope with the monster that lives within in. The additional guilt of “and that monster kills a lot of people” would have made it an entirely different book.

Another thing this all brings to mind is Wolverine, where, as I recall, an edict was put down by then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter that the ol’ Canucklehead has never killed anyone. You know, despite this happening in X-Men #133 (May 1980) by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin:


…which was later retroactively explained that these guys Wolverine was fighting were just “injured” and came back as cyborgs or whatnot. Look, I’m not a big X-Men reader, I don’t know the details, but this clearly is a case of obvious intent being subverted by editorial edict. I mean, I get it, the X-Men are heroes, you don’t want ’em killing folks left and right, but this was clearly to show how dangerous Wolverine could be when not kept in check. It’s characterization, it’s a plot element adding tension to the proceedings. It’s a reminder that he’s not just a tough-talking bloke that hangs out at the X-Mansion, he is literally One Savage Dude.

Anyway, you can get into a whole thing just on X-Men comics alone. Jean Grey had to die because as Dark Phoenix she killed millions of beings, that sort of business. She got better, obviously, and I’m pretty sure they’re less shy about letting Wolvie off baddies now.

Should note that Amadeus Cho, in that Incredible Hulk #110 I excerpted above, goes on to tell Hulk that Captain America probably killed a few Nazis during WWII, because, well, it was WWII. Hate to tell you this Mr. Cho, but Cap did a little more than that:


I mean, holy crap. Though to be fair, maybe Bucky did ’em all in.