Superman Red/Superman Blue

Superman Red/Superman Blue regular edition

The saga of Superman's new costume and powers enters a new phase that has come to define the entire period for some people.  In Superman Red/Superman Blue, Superman is split into two differently colored Supermen.  The premise was taken from an "imaginary" Silver Age story from 1963, but the modern execution of this story line doesn't really feel that much more sophisticated despite being 35 years later.

Superman Red/Superman Blue #1 was released as a regular edition and also in a collector's edition with a 3-D cover and a reprint of a 3-D Superman comic from 1953.  The interior story was still 2-D, but this gimmick allowed them to polybag the issue with 3-D glasses.  The end result was that collector's like me ended up with 3 copies: the regular edition, an unopened, bagged collector's edition, and an opened reading copy of the collector's edition.

Superman: The Man of Steel #76

This issue is mostly following Jimmy Olsen, Scorn, Misa, and Ashbury on Jimmy's bike through the Zoomway.  Misa gives Ashbury a visor that allows her to see, but the catch is she can't wear them for more than 15 minutes a day without suffering brain damage.

The Jack Kirby villains Mokkari and Simyan create a new monster that they send to attack Jimmy and his gang.  The monster follows them to Metropolis, where Superman helps them defeat it.  Morgan Edge likes what he sees and recruits the pair of villains.

This cover is an homage to the original cover for Superman: The Man of Steel #1.

Superman Red/Superman Blue #1

Superman Red/Superman Blue 3-D edition

The story itself was just as disappointing as discovering that the interior was not in 3-D.  In a bizarre Christmas tale, the Toyman escapes from prison and goes door to door soliciting used toys for a supposed toy drive.  Ashbury generously gives the Toyman a handful of her old toys, inadvertently giving him the statue of Cyborg Superman she kept from a few issues ago.  Thus, we end up with the supervillain team-up nobody demanded, Toyman and the Cyborg.  Cyborg captures Superman and Toyman captures Lois.  While trying to destroy Superman, the Cyborg accidentally and inexplicably splits him into two different Superman.  Somehow, neither Superman is aware of the existence of the other one, so Superman Red defeats the Cyborg and Superman Blue defeats the Toyman.  Both Supermen change into Clark Kent and go to the Daily Planet to meet up with Lois in the next issue.

Jimmy Olsen decides to stay on the road instead of going back to GBS.  He takes Misa to his apartment to pick up some belongings, but finds it's been ransacked by Intergang.  Fortunately (or unfortunately?), he discovers they didn't take the one possession he was looking for, the Medallion of the Damned.  He gets back on his bike with Misa and they drive off, not noticing a blue monkey stowing away on the back.

A new villain named Gustav Milan captures and tortures Scorn, but it turns out it's really just Lex Luthor operating under a new identity.

One-shots like this one would become more frequent in the next few years.  Following the Millennium Giants, we would see a 60th anniversary special, Superman Forever, Superman: Save the Planet, Supermen of America, and Superman: King of the World.  All of these would include various gimmicks, like enhanced covers.  There would be another Superman 3-D special (not part of the triangle numbering) at the end of this year, but there wouldn't be another 3D Superman comic until Action Comics #851 in 2007, followed by Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3-D in 2008.

Superman #132

As one Clark Kent arrives on the roof of the Daily Planet, another walks in on the ground floor.  They each take different elevators and are never seen by the same people at the same time.  Superman Red leaves Lois to go to a JLA meeting, and then of course she wonders how he got back so fast when another Clark Kent shows up.  When she asks about the JLA, Superman Blue remembers he forgot about the meeting and immediately goes to the Watchtower only to find out from his fellow league members that he just left.  The JLA didn't seem too concerned that Superman's costume color had changed and that Superman Red seemed uncharacteristically cocky.  When Superman Red gets back to Lois, she starts to realize that Clark really doesn't remember what they were just talking about.  Finally on the last page the two Clarks meet face to face.  This story line has already descended into identical twin tropes and it's painful to see the supporting cast forced to play along in this farce.

While Jimmy and Misa search for the missing Scorn, their friend is being tortured by Lex Luthor in a hidden lab.  Luthor realizes that Scorn won't cooperate even to save his own life, and that kidnapping Ashbury will be the key to getting information from Scorn.

Adventures of Superman #555

Superman Red and Superman Blue start a fight that ends in an explosion in which they both vanish.  They both reappear when Lois gets home to their apartment that evening.

Jimmy and Misa find the lab where Lex Luthor has been holding Scorn and they break him free.  A team called the Black Crucible follows Jimmy there to try to steal the Medallion of the Damned.
 
Lex Luthor watches from a safe distance on a video screen and then goes to the nursery to take care of his daughter, Lena.  Her mother, the Contessa, is still being kept in an induced coma and her doctor speculates that the she would have to be super-human to awaken again, as the reader sees the Contessa's eye open.

Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #10

At the Kent's apartment, Lois doesn't know which of the Supermen is really her husband and makes them both sleep on the couch.  Both Supermen go to the Fortress of Solitude to see if any of the tech there can help them merge back together.  At the Fortress, they find Superman's stalker Obsession has been secretly living there since her last disappearance.  To make things worse, Maxima followed the two Supermen to the Fortress and jealously starts a fight with her perceived rival.  Maxima uses her mind powers to make Obsession leave the scene and forget about the Fortress, and then the Supermen neutralize Maxima's powers with a device from S.T.A.R. Labs and take her to Belle Reeve prison.

There was no issue of Action Comics this month but there was an issue of Superman: The Man of Tomorrow.  With more frequent one-shots like Superman Red/Superman Blue taking up slots in the publishing schedule, Superman: The Man of Tomorrow would be published even less regularly and only a few more issues would be released over the next couple years until it was eventually cancelled.