We are almost at the end of the Superman retrospective. While Crisis On Infinite Earths is inching closer, Marv Wolfman introduces some concepts that most people associate with the 1986 relaunch by John Byrne.
Action Comics #543 (1983)
by Marv Wolfman & Curt Swan
cover by Ed Hannigan
And no, I’m not talking about multiple Superman showing up at once like they will after his “death”.
Starting from this issue, Vandal Savage becomes a Superman villain for a while.
As a reminder, he’s from Earth-Two so not a whole lot of people in Superman’s world should know who he is.
As an immortal, he gathered so much money that he’s able to create a new corporation he names Abraxas.
He builds his own squadron of Superman robots (!!!)…
…and, more importantly, begins to use influence public opinion to his advantage.
Vandal Savage even plays to the public by revealing he’s from another Earth AND that he was a bad guy there.
Superman shows up to stop his scheme…
…but here’s the catch: Vandal Savage hasn’t done anything illegal on THIS Earth yet, so the law is on his side!
And that was Vandal’s intent all along: make the public take HIS side.
That’s right. The whole “I’m no longer a supervillain but an evil billionaire who uses the law against Superman” thing that will be central to the post-Crisis Lex Luthor?
VANDAL SAVAGE did it first!!!
In Action comics #544, Superman stops a supervillain who turns out was working legitimately… for Vandal Savage.
If this isn’t exactly Luthor’s post-Crisis attitude, I don’t know what is.
You would think this would call for a proper re-examination of Superman’s career and a lot of focus on the new unique dynamics created by this new enemy.
But if my retrospective has proven one thing, is that pre-Crisis Superman was INCREDIBLY resistant to ANY change.
So the Vandal Savage gets kind of lost: first Superman deals with the last Lexor story, then an invasion by the new Brainiac, then a bunch of completely unrelated stories AND the creation of the Unknown Heroes… and only on Action Comics #552 we see Vandal Savage again.
He’s not even the main focus of the story, even if he’s ultimately the bad guy behind the main plot… he doesn’t even MEET Superman here!
This plot comes to conclusion in Action Comics #553, where we learn that Vandal’s big plan was… having Superman cover the planet in super-plants.
Although I’m not entirely sure this make any sense with his re-introduction.
What was even the point of manipulating public opinion if you were just going to regress society to pre-historic times?
The reason why this is connected to the Forgotten Heroes is that they are being assembled by The Immortal Man, who has now become Vandal Savage’s nemesis.
This has BARELY anything to do with Superman. I don’t know if Wolfman intended this to be a backdoor pilot for a Forgotten Heroes series that never materialized, or if he just wanted to do something with characters that would be obliterated by Crisis.
I think the former is more likely: Crisis took A LOT of preparation, but this came out a year earlier.
Vandal Savage still plays up his benefactor image, but I feel that at this point we have lost the plot because he REALLY doesn’t need public opinion on this.
I guess he’s doing just to be a dick. Which admittedly is a very Vandal Savage thing, but still.
Superman manages to thwart Savage’s plan without even meeting him.
The following issue is a completely unrelated Supergirl team-up against Parasite.
Action Comics #556 (1983)
by Marv Wolfman & Curt Swan
cover by Eduardo Barreto
A staggering THIRTEEN MONTHS after introducing a new status quo for Vandal Savage, the series finally finds the time to complete his storyline.
After doing basically nothing with it the whole time.
It’s been SO long, in fact, that the story opens by repeating the scenes from the previous year.
This takes up the first FIVE PAGES of the book.
All of Savage’s schemes have actually managed to get public opinion against Superman, to the point that even Lois Lane doubts him.
At this point, Clark Kent was in a relationship with Lana Lang… who STILL can’t tell him and Superman apart.
This is yet another repeated failure of the pre-Crisis Superman. They tried over and over again to develop Clark Kent as a person, but he’s forever trapped in the same cycle.
Vandal Savage believes Superman just relies on brute strength and never on his brains.
I’m perfectly fine with the villain having a completely wrong impression on the hero, but… he’s not entirely wrong about Superman in the previous couple of years.
And now we reach Vandal Savage’s master plan.
Phase 1) create Superman robots
Phase 2) make the public distrust Superman
Phase 3) mess up his super-hearing to make him dangerous
Phase 4) have his own robots be the ones to finally control Superman
Superman is innocent in THIS particular instance, but… I’ve been reviewing his shenanigans for the past six years.
This arrest has been a loooooooooong time coming.
If this were the Marvel Universe, his lawyer would definitely be either Daredevil or She-Hulk.
Who would be Superman’s lawyer at DC Comics?
I don’t think there’s any superhero lawyer until one of the Manhunters… would he have gone to the the Atom’s wife if the story went to the trial?
Oddly enough, Superman WAS a citizen at this time: pre-Crisis, he was granted citizenship on all countries.
I particularly like the angle about Superman being called out on his insistence that Savage is a criminal when he has no proof.
He does confide in Batman. There’s some suggestion that Superman is about to solve the situation by methods he wouldn’t normally consider, something that I find laughable as we’ll soon see.
This is also the very first time Superman meets the second Robin, Jason Todd.
We’re probably meant to believe Superman is going to physically hurt Vandal Savage.
But instead, he just listens to Savage summarizing all of his plans.
There’s something very interesting beneath all this, just waiting to be explored.
This could be the basis of a fight for the soul of Metropolis and the world, placing two completely opposite worldviews in contrast. Who’s right, the one who believes mankind is ultimately good or the one with no morals who just wants to exploit everyone?
But no, let’s have the bad guy defeat himself because LIKE AN IDIOT he gave away all of his secrets.
And this is the LAST appearance of Vandal Savage before Crisis On Infinite Earths!
Talk about going out with a whimper.
Historical significance: 3/10
The template for post-Crisis Lex Luthor, and the first time Superman meets Jason Todd.
Silver Age-ness: 5/10
Vandal Savage is a super-genius in almost all of his incarnations, but creating Superman robots and time portals tends to be outside of his reach. Although he does employ scientists here.
Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
This one almost, ALMOST worked. But as you’re probably tired of me saying, pre-Crisis Superman was invulnerable to any amount of change.
Vandal Savage COULD have taken Lex Luthor’s place even before the Byrne relaunch, as all the elements are there. It could even work slightly better, as the fact that he’s thousands of years old justifies why he’s so good at twisting public opinion. Although the fact that he’s from another Earth is utterly superfluous and very distracting the few times it’s brought up.
So why DIDN’T it work? I believe there are fundamentally two reasons.
A big one is just how much time passes between the setup and the resolution: a whole year doing nothing with the concept is just inexcusable. I can understand why it wasn’t immediate… Superman’s 45th anniversary was in the way… but skipping more than two issues is absurd.
Even the whole Forgotten Heroes arc feels utterly disconnected from everything else.
The second reason is that while the series TRIES to attempt more complex themes and characterization… at the end it doesn’t have the courage to do anything significant.
And that was the last “proper” part of the retrospective.
Next time I will have a look at the last pre-Crisis issues of Superman and Action Comics… well, sort of.
You probably already know that Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow? was the last storyline before the post-Crisis run, but… what happened in the issues immediately preceding the Alan Moore stories?