Like It's 1999

The last year of the 90's kicks off with a milestone 750th issue of Action Comics, but not much really happens in it.  It does have a striking cover not typical of this period though.

Action Comics #750

For the first and last time, Superman encounters a villain named Crazytop, who baits the Man of Steel into the street for a fight by destroying property and taking hostages.  Crazytop takes Superman by surprise by revealing a chunk of Kryptonite in his chest, but it turns out to be synthetic and only has a momentary effect on Superman.

Although she was already seen at work at LexCom in the one millionth issues last month, Lois starts her first day at her new job this issue.  Unfortunately, the former Daily Planet staff find out that their new jobs are merely to transcribe news from other sources.  If that wasn't enough to keep her out of action, Lex Luthor arranges for Lois to be stuck in an elevator so she can't get out to report on Superman's fight with Crazytop.  Luthor watches the fight from his floor, where he orchestrated the whole thing.

Lucy and Ron tell Ron's parents they're going to have a baby and they take it surprisingly well, but Lucy dreads having to tell her own parents that she's pregnant.  Former Daily Planet editor Perry White joins the faculty of Metropolis University.  Dirk Armgstrong and his daughter Ashbury have a meeting at their school where her he finds out her absences may prevent her from graduating.  He's not pleased with her boyfriend, Scorn, but he drives them both home to have a long talk.

That night, Superman has a nightmare that he's unable to stop a crashing train, but when he wakes up there has been a real train crash.

Like Adventures of Superman #550, this was a double-sized issue, but it lacked a cover enhancement like we'd been accustomed to seeing in prior milestone issues.  The extra pages are devoted to advancing the current soap-opera-like stories, but nothing eventful happens which is exactly how I remember 1999.

Superman: The Man of Steel #85

Regular artist Jon Bogdanove takes over the writing for this issue, which from the homage on the cover is in the vein of Jack Kirby's 70's run on Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen.  Still in hiding, Morgan Edge hire Simyan and Mokkari to make him a team of super-humanoids to rival the gods of New Genesis, but the two mad scientists can't abandon their old habits and they want to make monsters instead.  The resulting chaos forces Morgan Edge to abandon his headquarters before Superman finds them, and he relocates to a former GBS corporate retreat now called Mutant Island.

Lois gets called into Simone's office for wasting time pursuing the monster story as a reporter rather than staying in the office and doing it the Lexcom way by just re-writing the news from questionable sources just to be the first to publish it online.  It's remarkable how prescient this commentary would be on the future state of media consumption.

Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #12

Clark Kent has another precognitive dream that Superman is fighting a lightning creature, and when he wakes up he responds to an alarm at S.T.A.R. Labs due to a lightning-powered villain named Stryke.  After Stryke attacks LexCom, Lois disobeys her employer and investigates to find out that Styrke was an experiment of former S.T.A.R. Labs Director Westfield.  Just as Maggie Sawyer and the S.C.U. are about to apprehend Stryke, however, they're interrupted by agents from the Department of Extranormal Operations and Stryke escapes.  Lois suspects the D.E.O., the fake Kryptonite, and Luthor are all somehow connected.  Although Lois hates how her job at LexCom prevents her from being a real journalist, when Clark's book deal gets cancelled she's stuck as their family's sole breadwinner.  

Lucy and Ron announce her pregnancy to her parents, but they don't take it nearly as well as Ron's parents did.  Sam Lane gets violent and practically throws Ron out of the house, while her mother wants to force her to discretely give the baby up for adoption.  Lucy is upset because she had told Lois that she was disclosing it to her parents that night but her sister wasn't there to help her.

Superman #141 

There's another break-in at S.T.A.R. Labs and a new hero who calls himself Outburst tries to stop the burglars.  Superman responds to the alarm, but the intruders still get away with what they came for: the disc of Superman's DNA (from back in the Legacy of Superman #1, 1993).  The burglars deliver the disc to Lex Luthor, who wants to use it to create perfectly synthesized Kryptonite.

Outburst desperately wants to become Superman's sidekick, but Superman doesn't trust him.  Fleeing the scene of the crime to Suicide Slum, we discover his identity is Mitch Anderson, the teenager whose family Superman had saved from Doomsday back in Superman #74.  Writer Dan Jurgens is really going back to the period following Superman's death to pick up old story lines, but it seems a little lazy for a forgotten civilian character to resurface out of nowhere with new powers.  It's not revealed yet how Mitch suddenly has these powers, but we'll see more of him during the upcoming "Supermen of America" story line.

On the last page, there's a meltdown at a nuclear power pant to be continued in the next issue.