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Superman in Crisis

SiC 09 — Bomb Threats and You (03:14:1985)

This week, I’m reviewing Superman 408 (1:23)! There’s also a Superboy cameo in Legion of Super-Heroes 11 (23:18), and I respond to your feedback (29:30)!

One reply on “SiC 09 — Bomb Threats and You (03:14:1985)”

Superman #408, as you noted, was quite unusual with two stories each dealing with the idea of possibly self-destructive civilizations. I wonder if editor Julius Schwartz had suggested similar ideas to two different writers specifically for this issue, or if they were story scripts that had been sitting in a drawer in the DC offices and were put together into a “filler” issue. It’s hard to tell because the stories during this period of the Superman title were often “done in ones”, without any strong connection to those in preceding or succeeding issues. Certainly, the threat of nuclear destruction was much on people’s minds at the time. I was a high school teacher at the time, and I often had students come into my class after their Social Studies class, completely anxious that, at any moment, the USSR was going to start lobbing nukes at us at any moment. Sometimes, I had to spend almost half a period calming them down.
In “The Day the Earth Died!”, it was good to see Lori Lemaris again, even if it was a very brief appearance. I have a soft spot for her, partly because it’s often possible to get a spit-take from a non-comic reader by mentioning “Superman’s mermaid girlfriend”. (The Silver Age, baby! Once it’s in your head and your heart, it never goes away.)

The “Warship” story felt, for me, as if it could have been cribbed from a “Star Trek” script, to the extent that it could have involved almost any character, not specifically Superman (other than “fixing” the orbit of Neptune).

The mention of Paul Kupperberg’s unpublished scripts made me go look that up on Amazon, and I’m going to get the Kindle edition for a bit of fun reading, so, thanks for fellow listener, TJ Walsh, for that tip.

Finally, thanks to Russell Bragg for the explosive laugh that burst out of me at his mention of Perry White’s “special cigars”. I well remember that story, but “special cigars” put a possible marijuana image into my head.

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