The Mummy Strikes and Other Tales

This month, Superman fought a mummy, the mob, and an alien invasion.

Superman #5

The Mummy Strikes was originally a classic 1943 animated Superman cartoon, and while this issue features a mummy it's not a re-telling or modernization.  It opens with Superman having a flashback to his fight alongside Wonder Woman during the Legends crossover, unrelated to the rest of the present story but a plot line which would develop for the next year.  Superman flies to South America to see if Lois needs rescuing from her latest story, an expedition into ancient ruins that seem to be covering up modern-looking technology.  A mummy comes to life and attacks them, but it is not what it seems.

Before the History Channel had become saturated with ancient astronaut theories, this story probably seemed more original.  It's still an interesting read, although I can't help but think the title and the cover came first and the story second.

Adventures of Superman #428

Daily Planet editor Perry White vows to put a crime boss behind bars, but his gang-troubled son gets kidnapped to extort him to shelve the story.  Superman saves Perry's son but can't save him from his destructive path.  In this issue we first meet Jose Delgado, who would become Gangbuster, and Superman's other pal, Bibbo Bibbowski. 

Marv Wolfman's Superman is very much in the spirit of Siegel and Shuster's original vision.  He single-handedly disables the Quraqui military.  He scares mobsters with questionable tactics, such as flying them to the top of the Daily Planet building and pretending to leave them there, or setting another one's clothes on fire.

Hawkman #10

Before we get to this month's Hawkman team-up in Action Comics, we'll read the story leading into in this month's issue of Hawkman.  Hawkman and Hawkwoman (Katar Hol and Shayera) send out a distress signal to Superman before they take on the leader of an invading force from their home planet, Thanagar.  They end up defeating him just before Superman arrives on the last page.

Action Comics #588

Picking up right where the previous issue left off, Superman discovers he's too late to help the hawks in their fight on earth, but they still need his help against an incoming Thanagarian invasion from space.  The invasion is stopped, but on the last page Hawkman's spaceship is hurling straight into the sun while Superman is left stranded in space unconscious.  Hawkman's story continues in his own series (but not in this blog), and Superman's cliffhanger will continue in the next issue of Action Comics, guest starring the Green Lantern Corps.

As a continuation from another series, Superman feels like a guest-star in his own book.  Still, the crossover and cliffhanger are a welcome change of pace from the previous stand-alone tales.  We do get post-Crisis Superman's first venture into space in this issue, but it avoids mentioning any of the new post-Crisis rules, like him still needing to breathe oxygen.  There's also something charming about seeing post-Crisis Hawkman closer to the Silver Age version, before the character was about to become overly complicated.  It's unintentional, but since this Hawkman bears little resemblance to what the character would be for much of the post-Crisis era, it makes this feel more like a pre-Crisis book than a post-Crisis one.