SiC 32 — What’s One More Victory? (09:26:1985)

Wow! This is an extremely rare case of your covering two comics from the end of Superman’s Silver/Bronze Age continuity, both of which I’ve never read (or, as far as I can recall, even seen). That definitely made this an interesting listen for me. I certainly agree that the World’s Finest story, “The Search” seems a less engaging story. I wonder if knowing that the series had not much longer to go played into that.
“May the Best World Win” in Action had a “throwback” feel to me, almost as if it were a Silver Age story that someone pulled out of a drawer. I enjoyed it, and I guessed that Superman was letting Rad Zonon win, but making it close enough not to be obvious. I assumed that this was either because Zonon was dying or was fighting for the honor of his home planet, which Superman was less interested in. When you talked about the “counter Krypton” planet of Ostok, my first thought was, why didn’t Jor-El send Kal-El there, since it would probably have been similar in environment and, maybe, culture, to Krypton? Given the fate of Ostok, it’s good that he didn’t, and maybe, genius that he was, he’d already realized what would happen to Ostok.
The Myxzptlk story, “Tomorrow is Cancelled” also felt kind of like a “throwback” to the Silver Age, and I’m a little sad that Mxyzptlk’s son, Kytszbtn, was never developed further, but I guess there wasn’t enough time left in that continuity. As for the “Kltpzyxm” cigar, I assume that Clark, at super-speed, got one of Perry White’s cigars and altered it to use in sending the imp back home.

Hello again, Jon.

First of all, it’s so cool that you were able to reconnect after all these years. You sound giddily happy and I love it.

I had mentioned in my retweet that I was afraid World’s Finest would be the issue you disliked, as that’s still the only one I can read on Infinite. I was right too, but here’s where we’re going to disagree again, because I actually liked the issue. I agree that it’s weird, but it was trying to do something and it was interesting, something WFC hasn’t been for a few issues now. I like this Giffen art much better than the Creeper DCCP story, helped along by Karl Kesel, no doubt. I feel like I might have read this one back in the day, because it seemed vaguely familiar.

As for the Action Comics issue, I enjoyed hearing your description of the stories as usual.

I also loved the Blue Beetle series. The cover to the first issue is still one of my favorites and I can take myself back to finding it on the spinner rack at the drugstore when it came out.

My post-Crisis Superman read-through is almost through the Feb. 1987 cover-dated issues, just Action Comics left to go. It is a slow read-through, to be sure.

Congratulations on being halfway through this podcast. It does make me happy that we will have it for another 9 months. And with that, I look forward to the first one of the second half!