TFMSR 023: Superman #162 …

Welcome to Superman Month here on Tales from My Spinner Rack! 85 years ago, the dream of two Cleveland teenagers hit the newsstands for the very first time, kickstarting the entire comic book industry. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1, cover-dated June 1938. This is Part 4—the final installment—of our “Super-Month” posts!

Superman #162, July 1963. Cover by Kurt Schaffenberger. Art in this post TM and © DC.

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Once upon a time …

Of all the Mort Weisinger-edited “Imaginary Stories” that appeared in the Superman Family of titles, this issue—Superman #162, cover-dated July 1963, but most likely appearing on newsstands in May of that year—is the most fairy-tale like, to me at least. The story, written by Leo Dorfman (who wrote the 1968 Action Comics Virus X tale, “The Leper from Krypton,” mentioned last time) and drawn by both Kurt Schaffenberger (doing the Lois Lane and Lana Lang art) and regular Super-artist Curt Swan, both inked by George Klein, hypothesizes—on an imaginary basis, of course—what would happen if their were TWO Supermen.

The people of Kandor, the city captured and shrunk by that arch-fiend, Brainiac (known not only for his evil nature, but also his lousy fashion sense; who wears pink and green together?) are pissed. Superman has failed to restore their city to normal size, something he promised to do eons ago, or at least since Brainiac first appeared in 1958 in Action Comics #242, which was only five real-time years ago. (Maybe time moves differently in Kandor … you know, like “Time in a Bottle,” which is undoubtedly the Kandorian national anthem. Coincidentally, Action #242 is regarded as the second book of the Silver Age for Superman, so there you have it.) The Kandorians also remind Superman that he hasn’t made any headway on some of the other things he promised to do: Find an antidote to Green Kryptonite (let alone Red, Blue, Yellow, White, Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Neapolitan), and wipe out crime and evil. Luckily, Superman has an experimental Brain-Evolution Machine gathering dust in the Fortress of Solitude, which will increase his “mental power a hundredfold” and help him cope with these tasks. Supergirl volunteers to step into the dangerous machine—which is powered by all kinds of versions of Kryptonite (like those mentioned above), but Superman insists, “the risk must be mine.” He urges his young cousin to turn it up to maximum power (11 on a scale of 1 to 10, no doubt), and one giant “POWWWW” later, TWO Supermen emerge from the destroyed machine with matching outfits, one all-red, the other all-blue. Superman-Red and Superman-Blue have been born!

They promptly create New Krypton and enlarge the bottle city of Kandor, thus crossing off one major entry on their Super to-do list. The super-powered Kandorians forge their new planet into a replica of their old one, you know, the one that blew up and caused Jor-El and Lara to send their only begotten son in a spaceship to planet Earth, thus making him the last living survivor of Krypton … until his dog and his cousin and a Phantom Zone filled with exiled criminals, and a whole shrunken city filled with should-be-dead Kryptonians showed up, the latter in a giant, empty water jug in Brainiac’s spaceship. Superman-Red reminds them that if they stay in the same yellow-sun solar system as Earth, they will always be super-powered, thus not living their own, true Kryptonian lives, which they could be doing without super-powers in a red-sun system. So the Kandor council meets to decide the fate of New Krypton, super-powered or not, and in a debate that took a lot less time to resolve than the debt ceiling here on Earth, the people of New Krypton decide to permanently move their planet to a red-sun solar system, which shall have personal repercussions for our color-coordinated Supermen before this issue is over.

In Part II of this Super-Epic, titled “The Anti-Evil Ray!,” that whole pesky evil eradication thing is next on the list. But before they can solve that, Atlantis calls! Lori Lemaris, the mermaid college student who was Superman’s first post-Smallville girlfriend, gets in touch asking for a favor: “Hey, can you maybe create a planet for us Atlantians like you did for the Kandorians?” No problemo! The Super-minds of the Super-bros come up with a spiffy new waterpark planet for Atlantis and a no-muss, no-fuss manner of transporting all the mermaids and mermen to it.

Now with that new item off their to-do list, the Super-team supreme concentrate on creating their “Anti-Evil Ray,” which they put in satellites orbiting the Earth. Everyday criminals all around the globe quickly reform; even Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro see the light, as do Luthor and Brainiac, who was just about to invade Earth with the help of the Superman Revenge Squad (yes, it’s a thing) and a race of remote-controlled robots!

Luthor is so overcome with gratitude, he creates a super-serum that cures every known disease … even baldness! Luthor has hair again! (He kinda looks like Perry White, to be honest.) Even the Phantom Zone criminals—freed by Supergirl—are cured of their evil tendencies, and Mr. Mxyzptlk shows up, also reformed. Is this a great world, or what?

In Part III of the story, titled “The End of Superman’s Career!,” Supergirl decides she would rather lead a powerless life on New Krypton, so the Legion of Super-Heroes bring a space ark from the future to help her get to the new planet. Superman-Red and Superman-Blue have solved all the vexing problems on Earth. What happens now? Sitting down together, the twins discuss their love lives, and who they’d most like to settle down with. As it turns out Superman-Red loves Lois Lane, and Superman-Blue loves Lana Lang, so … problem solved! Throw in Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane—Lois’s sister—and there’s a triple wedding! Superman-Red and Lois embark to New Krypton to raise their non-super babies (a boy and a girl), but they take Super-Horse with them, since he’s not from Krypton and his super-powers may come in handy. (Okay … ? ) Superman-Blue and Lana stay on Earth and also raise their boy and girl babies, with Big Blue dedicating his life to research and science. Jimmy Olsen muses in the final panel, “I guess both couples have found the happiness they were looking for,” to which Lucy responds, “Hm! I wonder.” You were always a buzz-kill, Lucy.

I loved this story as a kid and I still love it now, almost exactly 60 years later. It was, for an “Imaginary Novel” (ohhh … fancy!), a surprisingly positive one. In a few short months, the 1960s would take a horrible turn for the worse when JFK was assassinated, and a story like this kind of summed up the promise of the presidential “Camelot” we all thought would last a lot longer. DC had a habit at the time—especially in the Superman books—of showing negative things happening to its heroes on the covers, so something so unremittingly positive like this story was like a breath of fresh air, despite Lucy’s “Debbie Downer” closing line. I think over the years, fandom’s fondness for “The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue” has only grown … I know it has for me.

Superman-Red and Superman-Blue reappeared in 1982 in a one-shot publication originally created for the German comics market. Written by Bob Rozakis and illustrated by Adrian Gonzales and Vince Colletta, Superman is split into two by Red Kryptonite while fighting Lex Luthor and Terra-Man. The story was published in the U.S. as Superman Spectacular, with no number, and kind of looks like something you’d find in a Wal-Mart (or at that time, K-Mart, I guess).

Thirty-five years after the original story, Superman-Red and Superman-Blue sort of return, when writer Dan Jurgens and artist Ron Frenz create a new Superman for the late-‘90s in Superman (vol. 2) #123. It seems that Superman has temporarily developed energy-based powers and has to don a new containment suit to keep the energy intact. In a one-shot special published in 1998, Cyborg Superman and Toyman manage to split Superman in two, thus recreating the classic Superman-Red, Superman-Blue duo, albeit with a 1990s twist. The new costume and split personality (one was smart and thoughtful, the other brash and action-oriented) lasted a few issues before good old Supes was back to normal. While it was a fun, well-drawn story arc, it didn’t match the original, nor had the charm of Dorfman’s story and Swan and Schaffenberger’s pristine art, truly one of the great Silver Age Superman tales, imaginary or not!

Thank you for joining us for Superman Month, which included Superman Day on June 12th, a day of remembrance that is celebrated every year (who knew?). Here’s to the next 85 years, although maybe 15 is a better goal for me, personally.

Next time: July 2, 1963 … a date which shall live in fandom(y). Supposedly on this storied day BOTH Avengers #1 and X-Men #1 debuted right alongside each other, at the height of the Marvel Age of Comics. I remember the day they both came home with me in our next installment of Tales from My Spinner Rack!