The Man of Steel #2
Released July 3, 1986
John Byrne – Writer & Penciller
Dick Giordano – Inker
Tom Ziuko – Colorist
John Costanza – Letterer
Andy Helfer – Editor
This comic is the most Christopher Reeve Superman comic in existence.
By his own admission, Byrne grew up as a fan of THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN TV show, yet it’s impossible to read this and not feel the influence of the 1978 Richard Donner movie. Though Lois Lane is the focal character driving this issue, it’s chock full of Superman doing good deeds and thwarting bewildered criminals all over Metropolis.
Scenes like this pretty clearly take inspiration from moments in the first film in the tone of Superman stopping a would-be burglar from scaling a building and asking, “Hey there, something wrong with the elevators?”
If you’ve seen the movie, it’s pretty much impossible to read Superman’s dialogue to this would-be purse snatcher and not hear Christopher Reeve’s polite voice.
I like his solution to restraining the crook until the police can come, and his polite way of reprimanding her about the volume level on her boombox feels like pure Reeve.
I love when writers do this take on Superman – the sort of self-aware boy scout with a hint of snark. Stoic Superman gets boring fast, but “polite but firm?” I will lap that up every time and this issue is full of it. My memory is that Byrne doesn’t go to this well often afterwards, but for now it’s fun to see a Superman enjoying his powers and having fun with people’s bewildered reactions to him.
More comics should be fun like this. (And this issue also is our introduction to the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit, who quickly become known to us as the division that handles most of the superhuman crime.)
But as the cover indicates, the real star of the issue is Lois Lane and how Superman’s first public appearances in costume send her on a mad chase through Metropolis, determined to get an interview with him. Of course, she always arrives just a tad too late to find him. Byrne drives this home with a page that very economically gets across how many close calls Lois has over the course of the week.
On a side note – geez was this a crazy week for Metropolis or what? Imagine all the terrible things that would have happened if Superman hadn’t picked this week to go public.
At one point, we see Lois frustrated that the other papers in Metropolis have picked up on and are using her “Superman” moniker for this new arrival. This confirms for us that while reporters don’t actually write their own headlines, she must have referred to him as a “mysterious superman” within the body of her story.
If I’m not mistaken this also makes for the first time in comics continuity where Lois Lane names Superman. In all prior instances, Superman arrives in Metropolis using the name and frequently has been going by some version of that nom de voyage since he was Superboy. Of course the VERY first time in the mythos we saw Lois establish his name was in the Reeve film, so add one more detail to the list of ways Richard Donner and screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz (or possibly Robert Benton and David Newman) influenced the Superman comics.
We also get a small tease of Lex Luthor, concealed here in silhouette as he has a minion extend his invitation to Lois. It’s clear that even this early on, there’s no love lost between Lois and the other LL. It’s always good to see Lois blow Luthor off.
You might have noticed that Lois has black hair on the cover, but she’s a brunette on all of these interior pages. In the first printing of this miniseries Lois had black hair. That became brunette for some reason when the main titles relaunched after this. I assume the later printings fixed the color for consistency.
After always arriving too late to catch Superman, Lois ends up attracting Superman’s attention when her car ends up in the water. Fortunately, Superman hears her cries for help and promptly rescues her. He even takes her home and doesn’t even have to look up the address. (Stalking your crush much, Clark?)
In another scene reminiscent of the Donner film, Lois persuades him to stay for an interview. Once again, it’s like your brain automatically hears the voices of Kidder and Reeve in this exchange.
On his way out, Superman drops two tidbits of information: that he doesn’t think anything he’s told her will be very useful (more on that in a second) and that he couldn’t help but notice she had an aqualung under her car seat BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE DID.
That’s our Lois, willing to risk drowning for the sake of a story, but at least using some kind of precautions. Barbara Walters wouldn’t have been that tenacious, I can tell you that.
We don’t have to wait long to find out what Superman meant with his other parting shot, as Lois arrives at the Daily Planet with her exclusive interview, only to be told by Perry White (who, like Jimmy Olsen also makes his Post-Crisis debut in this issue) that she’s too late. She was beaten to the Superman exclusive by Perry’s latest hire – Clark Kent!
Hi, I hate this part.
Clark essentially writing stories about himself is a huge breach of journalistic ethics. I don’t think it’s ever been acknowledged within the mythos until last year’s James Gunn SUPERMAN film, but it’s something that no reputable journalist should do. We had a lot of conversations about this as the staff of SUPERMAN & LOIS and even before the Gunn movie, I’d heard a number of notable Superman writers and artists call this out. You can’t police every writer working on the character, but I remember at least one, possible two of those writers taking some solace in the fact that at least they never wrote Clark covering himself as the story.
Yes, I know it’s a comic book, and yes, we all wink at this and move on, same as we do with Spider-Man “posing” for Peter Parker, but it still kind of sucks that Clark didn’t really earn the story that got him his job. This version of Clark is supposed to be a very good journalist, so it would have been a great idea to see him prove that with a different story.
I know, I know. Repeat to yourself “It’s just a comic. I should really just relax.”
The other reason for Clark to “beat” Lois here is to give a reason for Lois’s antagonism towards Clark. Because this version of Clark is going to be “the real guy” (as opposed to a nerded-up performance functioning as a disguise), Lois’s rejection of him can’t be because he’s an unworthy dweeb. Thus, now it’s a professional rivalry that will keep them at arms length from each other.
Remember, this is 40 years ago. Superman and Lois hadn’t even been engaged in actual continuity before and there was a sense that their relationship probably wouldn’t be allowed to evolve to that point in mainline continuity. The idea that they were firmly “endgame” simply didn’t exist. Comics most frequently stayed trapped in a status quo that never was allowed to go too far. When you can’t tell the end of that story, you’re going to slow-roll the beginning as long as possible. Gotta draw out that sexual tension before putting the characters together and breaking them up.
Today, you’d likely approach the relationship in a very different way because you’re writing Superman and Lois Lane in a world where Lois is the victor in any battle over Superman’s affections. This has been true since at least 35 years ago when they got engaged and she learned his secret. They’ve been married for in main continuity 30 years (barring one hiccup in New 52 continuity.)
Lois Lane won. Period. Lana Lana? Lori Lemaris? Cat Grant? They’re always gonna be also-rans. The road always is going to lead to Lois. That doesn’t mean in any reboot you can’t get any fun out of either of them playing the field. If you’re doing a restart in a medium where you need to generate a LOT of stories, then you almost certainly want to take your time and use all the prior love interests in stories leading up to the eventual pairing. But comics being what they are now, you’re not going to be able to do that for long before people get impatient for the Clark/Lois pairing.
And when you’re dealing in a franchise that gets only a very few at-bats – like a feature film franchise – it’s much more likely that Clark/Lois is going to cut to the chase right away. The last two movie franchises are evidence of this, as both of them dispensed right away with the idea that Lois isn’t in on the secret.
Lois always wondering if Clark and Superman were the same person used to be the tension that drove so many stories and the last three live action incarnations haven’t even bothered with it. That shows you how far the mythos have evolved on-screen. To more than one generation – Lois knowing his secret IS the status quo.
All of this to say that I get why Byrne gave their relationship a different sort of spin from the start. It’s completely defensible then and now to make them intense professional rivals. It’s just a shame that the wedge issue here makes Clark look like a terrible journalist.
Leave a Reply