3 replies on “SiC 48 — Could It Be … Satan?! (02:13:1986)”
You know I’m a big fan of Elliot S! Maggin’s novel,Miracle Monday, so you know I was interested in a story in which Superman is pitted against the devil, or at least a devil, but this story doesn’t really hold up against the novel. I think the length of a comic book story doesn’t work for something that requires the scope of Superman fighting a supernatural/spiritual level of evil.
I’m glad Future Jon corrected Past Jon about there not being suggestions in earlier stories that Perry White was having memory problems. As soon as I heard you say that it wasn’t mentioned in stories, I thought, “Wait a minute! There was that story in Action Comics where Perry took his grandkids to see a magic show and they ended up in India! I’m sure this was mentioned in that story!” Thank you for helping me avoid turning into “Well, Actually” Man.
Myself, I don’t need any apology for the supposed “delay” in this episode. It’s your podcast, and your schedule, and real life takes precedence, and you shouldn’t have to apologize when you’re giving people some fun listening FOR FREE!
I really need to re-read Miracle Monday. It’s been years. Well…decades. Which feels weird to type.
Anyway, this issue reminds me of the second (?) season episode of Quantum Leap where Sam dealt directly with the devil. The show would be somewhat broad by saying it was god or fate or whatever, but that one episode had the devil take a direct approach and then they made it really vague at the end, but it had the same energy as this one.
But I agree with Dave. This was a high concept story stuck into a Bronze Age, one and done bag. It sounded good and I like Maggin both personally and as a writer but this needed more room to breathe.
Hey, Jon!
Hello and happy March. I hope you made it through the storm that hit Indiana yesterday as I type this. We left school almost 2 hours early because of it, which allowed me to read a few more comics.
I wasn’t able to read along with this issue again, but your recap filled me in well. Two things jumped out. The first was the meta aspect of Maggin included his Superman novel in the download. I don’t think of 80s comics as being that meta, but I know that’s inaccurate. The other thing was Superman dealing with a devil. That made me think of The Devil Nezha in the recent Batman/Superman: World’s Finest comic, which I highly recommend to everyone.
Your Superman read-through continues to inform as well. I was still out of comics in 1993 and didn’t realize they had disappeared from the stands for a while. I think I mentioned before that I got back into comics in early 1994 and I was all in on the Super-titles at that point.
Okay, I have another episode to listen to so I’ll wrap it up here and talk to you soon.
3 replies on “SiC 48 — Could It Be … Satan?! (02:13:1986)”
You know I’m a big fan of Elliot S! Maggin’s novel,Miracle Monday, so you know I was interested in a story in which Superman is pitted against the devil, or at least a devil, but this story doesn’t really hold up against the novel. I think the length of a comic book story doesn’t work for something that requires the scope of Superman fighting a supernatural/spiritual level of evil.
I’m glad Future Jon corrected Past Jon about there not being suggestions in earlier stories that Perry White was having memory problems. As soon as I heard you say that it wasn’t mentioned in stories, I thought, “Wait a minute! There was that story in Action Comics where Perry took his grandkids to see a magic show and they ended up in India! I’m sure this was mentioned in that story!” Thank you for helping me avoid turning into “Well, Actually” Man.
Myself, I don’t need any apology for the supposed “delay” in this episode. It’s your podcast, and your schedule, and real life takes precedence, and you shouldn’t have to apologize when you’re giving people some fun listening FOR FREE!
I really need to re-read Miracle Monday. It’s been years. Well…decades. Which feels weird to type.
Anyway, this issue reminds me of the second (?) season episode of Quantum Leap where Sam dealt directly with the devil. The show would be somewhat broad by saying it was god or fate or whatever, but that one episode had the devil take a direct approach and then they made it really vague at the end, but it had the same energy as this one.
But I agree with Dave. This was a high concept story stuck into a Bronze Age, one and done bag. It sounded good and I like Maggin both personally and as a writer but this needed more room to breathe.
Hey, Jon!
Hello and happy March. I hope you made it through the storm that hit Indiana yesterday as I type this. We left school almost 2 hours early because of it, which allowed me to read a few more comics.
I wasn’t able to read along with this issue again, but your recap filled me in well. Two things jumped out. The first was the meta aspect of Maggin included his Superman novel in the download. I don’t think of 80s comics as being that meta, but I know that’s inaccurate. The other thing was Superman dealing with a devil. That made me think of The Devil Nezha in the recent Batman/Superman: World’s Finest comic, which I highly recommend to everyone.
Your Superman read-through continues to inform as well. I was still out of comics in 1993 and didn’t realize they had disappeared from the stands for a while. I think I mentioned before that I got back into comics in early 1994 and I was all in on the Super-titles at that point.
Okay, I have another episode to listen to so I’ll wrap it up here and talk to you soon.