SiC 43 — Post-Crisis (12:26:1985)

Wow! You’re through a full year of this podcast series, with six months left. I, for one, will be sad to see this end, but I will savor the upcoming episodes.
I don’t recall reading this particular story at the time it came out, and I’m sort of glad I didn’t, because I’m generally not so much a fan of Superman going up against a supernatural opponent. His “science fiction” origins and powers rarely seem to fit well (to me, at least) in stories of the supernatural. I also didn’t like his letting Catiff go in the end. I realize that was a valid story choice, but I just didn’t like it. Again, though, that’s just one man’s opinion.
On a technical note, as I listened to this episode, it sounded to me as if there was running water in the background. I can’t imagine that was really the case, but maybe something going on with your microphone or settings? Or maybe I was hallucinating. Did anyone else hear it?

And so we move into that nebulous “post-Crisis, but not really post-Crisis” era that existed until the Man of Steel miniseries came along. I think this demonstrates how new and unprecedented this kind of world-changing reboot thing was at the time. These days, I suspect it would be carefully planned so that the new continuity would start up, company-wide, as soon as the Crisis miniseries was over. But this was still pretty new in 1985, so we got this brief period of transition. It will be interesting to see what it’s like.

Giffen’s art style really worked well for this story, as he makes Caitiff look truly monstrous and inhuman. It’s too bad that there weren’t more stories about him, since this story hints at some interesting history. The details about scientists having dissected his children, for instance, and the rest of his race having been hunted down. It feels like there’s a whole backstory there that we only get a tiny glimpse of. It’s too bad that we didn’t really get to see any of it.

I can’t support Superman’s decision to let Caitiff go, however. Much as he tries to claim that he is preying only on those who are about to die anyway, that seems like a dubious claim, considering that the only killing that we actually see in the story is of a man who was recovering. We can sort of understand Superman’s feeling a kinship for Caitiff as the last of his kind, especially as they kind of linked minds earlier, but it feels rather questionable to me.

Surprisingly enough, I had run into the word “caitiff” before somewhere, although I can’t quite remember where. I only had a fairly vague idea of what it meant, just that if was an insult without knowing the exact definition. It’s an interesting word for Giffen to pull out here. It’s always a challenge to come up with names for fantasy characters, so why not use a real, but obscure, word from history?

Have a happy new year, and best of luck at your new school. Until next time!