Showcase Presents: Superman Part 2

This is the second of numerous posts on Showcase Presents: Superman. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed the stories.

Now, this won't be like most comic blogs with scanned pictures posted throughout. Mostly because I don't have a scanner, but the stories should speak for themselves, but also because I want to go through the whole book in the next few weeks, and I want non-comics readers to enjoy the kookiness that us comics readers understand from the Silver Age. While I may mock these stories, I am not making anything up, this is all straight from the comics! While I may mock, I love these stories and the character of Superman. This is great stuff! The cover scans are from The Grand Comics Database.

Action Comics #242

"The Super-Duel in Space!" This is the first appearance of one of Superman's most powerful enemies, Brainiac. The whole story starts with Clark Kent and Lois Lane blasting off into space ("where the stars shine in daytime!") on a rocket for a newspaper story. As soon as they are up there a flying saucer attacks them. Clark knows he needs to change into Superman to save the rocket, so he pretends that Clark freaks out, puts on a spacesuit and DIVES BACK TO EARTH! No one seems to care that Clark should be dead. Oh the naivete of space in the '50s.

Anyway, it turns out that Brainiac is stealing all of the cities of Earth, shrinking them, and putting them in jars. All so he can repopulate his home planet, who's population was wiped out by a plague. Superman follows Brainiac until he lands on a "planetoid" and then rips apart an asteroid to smash him. Unfortunately, his ultra-force shield protects him.

Superman is finally able to get onto the ship and shrink himself down when he finds a lost city from Krypton! Kandor! He gets the help of his fellow Kryptonians, and re-embiggens the Earth planets. Finally, he is able to re-embiggen himself, leaving the embiggening ray out of juice. So, he is forced to keep Kandor in a bottle in his Fortress of Solitude. Poor Kandorians.

Superman #123

"The Girl of Steel!" Boy, first we get the first appearances of Brainiac and Kandor, and now we get the first appearance of Supergirl! Well...sorta. Let me explain. You see, our good friend Jimmy Olsen gets his hands on a Magic Totem, giving him three wishes. Jimmy, being the lovable kiss-ass that he is, decides to spend his wishes trying to do something nice for his main man Superman.

As these things usually go, the wishes tend to backfire. The first wish, of course, is for Superman to have a female companion with powers equal to Superman's. They become instant companions, working together to save lives, etc, etc. But soon Superman realizes that Supergirl is inexperienced and he is forced to come to the rescue every time she screws up. Soon, Superman calls her out and gives her a lecture, so to prove herself to him, she rescues him from kryptonite. This kills her. Yes, kills her. She's gone, the real Supergirl, who is still alive, I think, shows up much later.

After writing a story about the Magic Totem, which Jimmy publishes in The Daily Planet, thieves break into Jimmy's apartment and then wish for Superman to lose his powers. Poor stupid Jimmy. Superman loses his powers so he and Jimmy must come up with ways to prove he still has his powers. First, they use a giant magnet to deflect bullets shot at him (I saw Mythbusters, this doesn't work). Then, they attach Superman to a glass pole which Jimmy holds to make it look like Superman is flying (since when did Jimmy get super powers?!). They use an acetylene torch as heat vision, massive bellows as super-breath, and an "electronic computer" to quickly solve complex calculations. Finally, the crooks being tricked, Superman steals the Totem back and GIVES IT BACK TO JIMMY. Ah, so that's where Jimmy gets his stupidity.

Finally, Jimmy wishes Superman can go back in time to visit Krypton before it was destroyed. He is a phantom however, and cannot interact with anyone. Superman and Jimmy soon realize at the same time that Jimmy wished for "Superman to mate his parents on Krypton" not meet. Oops. And...ewww. Moving on. Superman's folks are treated as criminals (they were underground secret agents) and are shot into space. Superman flies after them and becomes solid when he leaves Krypton. He then saves them from Kil-lor (best name ever) and convinces Jor-El and Lara to hook up! Great and icky, all at the same time! He is then able to return to the future.

Whew, that was a lot! We'll hit more bizarre Superman stories next week!