2 replies on “SiC 60 — The Last Team-Up (06:05:1986)”
This was truly a bizarre story, perhaps meant as a “last Superman story”, or just a “Hey, it’s the last issue of this series and we don’t know for sure what’s coming after all the dust settles, so do whatever you feel like” story. I didn’t like it when it was published, and I don’t much like it now, but you did excellent work in covering it.
The final fate of Mon-El is really up in the air at the end of it, but I like to think that, somehow, he got back into some version of the Phantom Zone (maybe in a “pocket universe”?) so he could make it to the 30th Century to join the Legion.
On the subject of Mon-El, you wondered, at one point, if the first Mon-El story was already planned and the Phantom Zone connection was added to it to make use of the Phantom Zone, a new idea at the time. I don’t know about “planned”, but the first Mon-El story was based on an earlier Superman story which introduced a hero named Halk Kar, who, in a typical comic book mix-up, was initially believed to be Superman’s big brother, but really wasn’t. The Mon-El story took that earlier story and adapted it to Superboy, a practice that was not uncommon in the Silver Age. Take that for what it’s worth.
Yeah, I remember the Halk Kar story. But the Phantom Zone connection at the end of the Mon-El story seems to happen so soon on the heels of the Phantom Zone’s introduction that there wouldn’t have been time for a writer to read the one issue and react to it. Like they had to be planned in the writing studio before either was published.
2 replies on “SiC 60 — The Last Team-Up (06:05:1986)”
This was truly a bizarre story, perhaps meant as a “last Superman story”, or just a “Hey, it’s the last issue of this series and we don’t know for sure what’s coming after all the dust settles, so do whatever you feel like” story. I didn’t like it when it was published, and I don’t much like it now, but you did excellent work in covering it.
The final fate of Mon-El is really up in the air at the end of it, but I like to think that, somehow, he got back into some version of the Phantom Zone (maybe in a “pocket universe”?) so he could make it to the 30th Century to join the Legion.
On the subject of Mon-El, you wondered, at one point, if the first Mon-El story was already planned and the Phantom Zone connection was added to it to make use of the Phantom Zone, a new idea at the time. I don’t know about “planned”, but the first Mon-El story was based on an earlier Superman story which introduced a hero named Halk Kar, who, in a typical comic book mix-up, was initially believed to be Superman’s big brother, but really wasn’t. The Mon-El story took that earlier story and adapted it to Superboy, a practice that was not uncommon in the Silver Age. Take that for what it’s worth.
Yeah, I remember the Halk Kar story. But the Phantom Zone connection at the end of the Mon-El story seems to happen so soon on the heels of the Phantom Zone’s introduction that there wouldn’t have been time for a writer to read the one issue and react to it. Like they had to be planned in the writing studio before either was published.