Reviewing Superman 415, a cameo appearance in Super Powers 5, and related material in Legion of Super-Heroes 18, as well as responding to your feedback!
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SiC 34 — Who Needs Agency Anyway? (10:10:1985)
6 replies on “SiC 34 — Who Needs Agency Anyway? (10:10:1985)”
This is certainly a weird story, vaguely gross in the modern context, and I sort of wonder what was going on behind the scenes here. It feels like it was important to someone in the Superman office that Supergirl did not die a virgin, and also important to someone, maybe or not the same one that she not have had sex outside of marriage.
I also wonder if Red Tornado ever called Kal-el about the Robot exception to his code against killing…
I remember reading “Supergirl: Bride of — X?” when it was published, and not liking it at all. My reaction was probably similar to yours, Jon, as “Who thought this was a good idea?” It seemed to have no real point or purpose. It felt as if someone at DC decided, “Readers seem upset that we killed off Supergirl, and didn’t really give her a proper send-off, so lets have a story where whe falls in love and gets married” but, at this point she was already dead, so the story was kind of a dead-end from some point in her past that didn’t really tie into anything else and would never really go anywhere. It just felt, to me, kind of . . . disrespectful to the character. It left a bad taste for me, but maybe there are those who liked the story.
I’m of the opinion that all the stories being produced at this time were all going to be wiped away after Crisis. And I have to believe that everyone in Dc knew the line was about to be reset so they all wrote stories to fill page quotas.
I remember talking to some fans that thought the story was creepy when it came out.
Let me make this creepier, Salkor “marries” someone who has a mental incapacity. It appears that he took advantage of her condition to be with her instead of keeping his distance. I don’t know, let me know if you agree, that it might not be the innocent love story that it appears to be. Also, how much time passed from the time Salkor rescued her till the day she left? I might have missed it if it did say how long, but it seems like less than a month. Her last message tries to clean up the relationship, but if she still considered him her husband, why did she leave? I’m trying not to be so cynical but I’m not so sure this story would fly in 2022. In Avengers West Coast, Mockingbird had a similar situation when she was kidnapped by the Knightrider of the past and he had her as a lover while she had amnesia. Help me out here, Jon.
Sorry for the separate message, but I couldn’t go back and edit what I wrote. Something you always say about Superman and his no kill rule is that he violates it from time to time. The Bible says “ Thou shall not kill” but the original language translated to Thou shall not Murder. Superman has never pre meditated Murder, but he has killed in defense of others or to stop someone trying to kill him. Man’s law allows for this.
One last thing about the Supergirl tale, did she wake up , ask herself who is this person next to me and leave? It’s almost like she took the walk of shame from his planet.
Hi, Jon! Hope you are well.
I’m glad for the skip week because it allowed me to catch back up. I enjoyed the episode, of course, even if I didn’t care too much for the Superman issue. What a weird choice for a story. I won’t be able to read any more of the Superman issues until the end, as there’s a gap on Infinite. Ah well.
I wish a company had sprung up in the DC Universe whose sole job it was to fix all the holes Superman made in roofs and walls. They coulda cleaned up. 😉
I did want to address the bombshell you dropped in the episode, though. You are an obsessive completionist?? How are we just finding out about this now? I have seen you tweeting about your Superman read-through again recently and hope we get that segment of the podcast next time out. I’m still slowly working my way through the Man of Steel Omnibus Vol. 1 – into the Legends crossovers now. I read these in real time but there’s so much I don’t remember, which makes them almost new reads. Fun.
Oh! Forgot I was going to admit I’ve only see the first episode of Superman and Lois. It’s on my list to get back to, even though I keep falling further behind.