Filler

It's not uncommon before a reboot or a regime change to see guest creators fill in for a few issues, or to see departing creators wrap up their story lines.  This phenomenon was noticeable towards the end of the Pre-Crisis era and will be seen again when the Post-Crisis era ends.  With the 2nd Act of Post-Crisis Superman coming to a close in a few months, I get the sense that the editors were filling in the schedule with unpublished stories and guest creators in between the last two major arcs of this era, "The One Man JLA" and "Strange Visitor."  This month we get a couple issues by former Milestone writer John Rozum which read like they could have been kept in reserve for a fill-in month such as this.

Superman: The Man of Tomorrow #14

Louise Simonson writes the second-to-last issue of the series, continued from her book last month.  Riot continues to burgle the city and his multiple copies of himself make him a challenge for Superman to catch them all.  Riot crashes a party at LexCom, where he bumps into his uncle who recognizes him.  Lois talks to his uncle, who finally gives us an origin story for this villain.  His nephew had borrowed a temporal phase shifter from him, which successfully split him into copies of himself but also accidentally deformed him.  Lois finds out Riot's personality is due to sleep deprivation and Riot is just trying to rejoin his clones so he can get some rest.  The new metahuman members of the S.C.U. try to help Superman stop Riot, but Lois convinces Superman to let Riot get away.  Now possessing a phase-shift integrator, Riot joins his selves back into one and finally goes to sleep again.  This explanation for Riot's origin and powers doesn't quite mesh with what we've seen previously, where impact splits him into multiples that he can join together again at will.  But at least now he won't be seen again for several years.

Action Comics #756

A never-was villain calling himself Diode the Invincible decide to comes out of retirement for once last shot at making a name for himself.  He orders some things from the internet to create his armor and weapons, and then decides to rob a bank in a random small town, Bloomfield.  Unfortunately for him, a new breed of super villains calling themselves the Doomslayers are cutting a path of carnage through the Midwest and hit Bloomfield at the same time.  The Doomslayers mercilessly kill for fun, take no prisoners, and leave no survivors, so of course they attract the attention of Superman.  When Superman arrives on the scene, he mistakes Diode for one of the Doomslayers, but when Diode sees the brutally of the Doomslayers he decides he no longer wants to be a super villain anymore and helps the Man of Steel defeat them.  Diode is mistaken for a hero by the press, and after getting the attention he sought, he announces his retirement.

Superman: The Man of Steel #91

John Rozum reunites with the artist from the X-Files, Charlie Adlard, years before he would be known for his art on the Walking Dead.  Both of Rozum's self-contained stories focus on Superman through the eyes of villains.

A paranoid board game designer is trying to keep his new game a secret so nobody else can steal his idea before he pitches it.  He thinks even Superman is trying to spy on him, so he starts to keep his plans in a lead-lined box and wears a lead and tinfoil-lined hat just in case Superman has mind-reading powers nobody knows about.  By coincidence, Superman bumps into him while stopping a fleeing criminal, his briefcase is knocked out of his hand, and his papers fall out and scatter on the ground.  Trying to help, Superman sorts his plans back in order at super speed, but the paranoiac thinks that was just a clever trap to steal his plans. 

When he pitches his game, the idea is rejected for the practical reason that people aren't buying board games anymore.  But he thinks Superman was responsible for his rejection, now convinced that his "Invasion Earth" game is Superman's real plan all along.  He eventually goes so crazy he has to be committed and he tries to throw his psychiatrist out a window.  Superman recounts the whole story to Lois as he types it up for the Daily Planet, bothered that his mere appearance seemed to have driven somebody over the edge.

The publishing schedule had shifted in the last year due to the inclusion of Superman: The Man of Tomorrow and occasional one-shots, so while the first chapter of a 4-part story started at the end of this month, I'll cover the whole arc together next time.