Action Comics #800

This was a big month with extra-sized books nearly every week.  Action Comics reaches the 800th issue milestone, a new creative team starts on the main Superman series, and the story from Superman: The Man of Steel wraps up in a special issue.

Action Comics #800

In a double-sized issue filled with guest artists, we get another retelling of Clark Kent's life before becoming Superman.  In between, we get glimpses into the impact Superman has had ordinary people, like a child aspiring to fly, a woman going through physical therapy, or a police officer.  Because the main story is about Clark, Superman hardly appears except in a few pages in the stories about other people.  Some of these stories are in plain black and white with no coloring whatsoever, although some of them are in full color for no apparent reason.

Ed McGuiness draws a few uncolored pages about a boy who grows up to become a Blackhawk pilot.  The Blackhaw fighter jets would be seen regularly in the coming months, although none of their pilots would be identifiable.  Without any color, the casual reader probably wouldn't even know what the planes are here.  Alex Ross paints a famous homage to Action Comics #1 which appears on the first page, these days it would've just been one of multiple variant covers.

Like Adventures of Superman #600 a year earlier, this is just a self-contained issue that doesn't kick off any larger story or anything.  It probably would be better remembered today if it had.  The long-awaited confrontation between Superman and Zod would have to wait until next issue.

Superman vs Darkseid: Apokolips Now! #1

Superman assembles his allies Superboy, the Eradicator, and the two Supergirls currently active in Peter David's Supergirl series at the time (but not the Supergirl appearing in Superman).  This would sadly be the only appearance of this Kara outside of Supergirl's series that would end the following month.

Team Superman attacks Apokolips to get John Henry Irons back from Darkseid.  He forbids Natasha from helping them save her uncle, but she forges her own armor and follows them anyway.  In hand-to-hand combat, Superman beats Darkseid so brutally that his eyes swell shut and he can no longer use his omega beams.  Defeated, Darkseid offers Superman anything he asks, but all he wants is John Henry.  Superman tells Darkseid he will keep his defeat a secret between them as long as the evil god never threatens Earth again.  As promised, Darkseid releases John Henry's body, as dead as it was when he was found on the moon during the Imperiex War.  Natasha gives her uncle a blood transfusion and he recovers back at home, but his career as Steel appears to be over.

Despite the cancellation of Superman: The Man of Steel last month, Mark Schultz gets to wrap up his story lines in this special one-shot.  For some reason the powers that be seemed to really want to end this series abruptly, so the last four issues worth of story were compressed into two double-sized issues.

Adventures of Superman #613

Master con artist Funky Flashman opens a new store in Metropolis that sells cheap, unlicensed Superman merchandise.  Lois Lane is disgusted by the idea, but while supposedly interviewing him for a story, she gives him the idea to capitalize on the images of not just superheroes, but also supervillains.  Flashman jumps at the idea, but once his merchandise goes on sale he gets a visit from Captain Cold who isn't pleased to see somebody else profiting off his likeness.  If this plot seems familiar, nearly the exact same thing happened back in Action Comics #714, when the Joker also threatened threatened a merchandiser for exploiting his image.

For Valentine's Day, Lois and Clark playfully re-enact the scene of her first Superman interview, reminiscent of the scene from 1978's Superman: The Movie.  Also, in a secret research facility, Lois discovers that the villain Major Victory is suffering from a mysterious "anti-chromatic" syndrome, which we'll see more of in the coming months.  This was really the only regular-sized issue this month.

Superman #190

A maintenance robot malfunctions and starts to think that it's a police officer.  This runaway robot also seems to think a certain boy will grow up to invent technology that will turn men into machines, and Superman has to stop it from administering its version of justice.

Lois gets ready to go to accept an award at the Metro Gala while her husband is constantly distracted by one crisis after another.  But he still hears her speech with super hearing and makes it in time for the end.  The Futuresmiths take the new Supergirl, Cir-El, to Metropolis, where they promise to introduce her to Superman soon.  

This was the first issue on this series by the new creative team, Steven T. Seagle and Scott McDaniel.  A variant edition of this issue includes the prologue reprinted from last month's Superman: The 10 Cent Adventure.