On the new Superman movie: Politics, performances and nitpicks

This post will obviously have spoilers for Superman. And, less obviously, for the 2006-2012 comic series The Boys...and maybe the 2003-2007 volume of The Outsiders too...

•Overall? I thought it was quite good. It's definitely the best Superman movie I've ever seen in a theater, and maybe the best Superman movie ever (I should note that I didn't actually sit down and watch the Christopher Reeve movies start to finish until I was an adult, and thus have no real nostalgia for those films, although, yeah, Reeve is a fantastic Superman and Clark Kent). 

I thought this was the first of all the Superman films that felt like it starred the comic book version of the character, rather than some new or different or original movie version of the character, and it is the first movie I've seen that seemed to be set in some recognizable version of a DC Universe. 

I think that bodes well for the future, given that this is the launch of a new (and hopefully improved) DC answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

•The change in approach. I think the most immediately telling difference between James Gunn's Superman and the previous iteration from Zack Snyder's 2013 The Man of Steel and the handful of "DC Extended Universe" films he appeared in is that the Snyder version seemed somewhat insecure and defensive in its very conception. 

That is, when Snyder and his studio bosses set out to make a new film version of Superman, a character universally known by his iconic costume, they seemed somewhat embarrassed by that costume's bright colors and the red trunks being worn over blue tights...or, if not embarrassed, than at least worried that such a character might not be taken seriously enough.

Gunn's Superman, on the other hand, not only has a costume featuring his traditionally bright primary colors, and that not only features the trunks, but he's also accompanied by his flying, super-strong dog with a matching cape.

It reminded me of something from a social media post that's stayed with me over the years. I wish I could remember who said it so I could properly credit them [Update: Kevin Hines informs me that it was Brett White, and he shares a screenshot of the original tweet.] It was in reaction to the fact that DC and/or Warner Bros or whoever were once again publicly hemming and hawing about the difficulty in making a Wonder Woman movie, while Marvel Studios was in the midst of advertising the then-upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy (so this would have been circa 2013 or 2014, I guess). 

The statement was along the lines of, "DC's like 'We're not sure people will get Wonder Woman', while Marvel's like, 'Here's a raccoon with a machine gun.'"

The raccoon with a machine gun film was, of course, directed by James Gunn. 

•The politics I've seen a fair amount of discussion about the politics of the new Superman film reflected on my Bluesky feed, probably a result of the fact that everything I tend to pay attention to online has to do with either comic books or politics. (And I'm not just referring to the silly statement from a particular actor who used to play a TV Superman saying, before he had even seen the movie, that it was somehow wrong or bad that Superman was being depicted as an immigrant...you know, just as he has been for 87 years now.)

Honestly, I think this headline from the Vulture review of the film by Alison Willmore, which I saw here, best captures the political agenda of the film: "Superman Isn't Trying to Be Political. We Just Have Real-Life Supervillains Now."

A relative of mine liked the new Superman film a lot, and, in texting me afterwards, she mentioned two points related to the real world.

First, she said that she got something of an Elon Musk vibe from Lex Luthor. Now, if Luthor reminds you of Musk, or Donald Trump, or any other rich, powerful person making your life worse, well, that's somewhat intentional....at least on the part of DC Comics, if not necessarily James Gunn.

That's because when John Byrne reconceived the entire Superman franchise for DC's emergent post-Crisis continuity in 1986, he purposefully turned Superman's perennial archenemy from a typical supervillain into a rich, powerful businessman/corporate CEO type—a then more relevant, visceral vision of evil than that of a mad scientist or crook in tights. Byrne's new Luthor was the sort of bad guy that hides in plain sight, being more-or-less accepted by society at large while engaged in nefarious acts in secret.

That's just who Luthor is, and has been for some 40 years now.

In the film he is, as expected, also duplicitous and manipulative, driven not only by greed, but also by his envy of Superman and, perhaps, a personal animus against aliens to commit his various bad actions. Again, that's just Lex Luthor being Lex Luthor. 

This particular version is also a pretty bad boss (I liked the bit where he yelled at his employees to clean up a mess he made, and then purposefully knocked over a mug holding pencils like a cat as they did so). And a rather shitty boyfriend. 

Oh, and he also engages the comic book supervillain equivalent version of using bots to help shape public opinion on social media. 

And, as we will learn near the climax, he wants to be a literal king.

If any of that reminds you of the current president, or Elon Musk, or any other real world figure, well, that probably reflects more on that figure's behavior than on any creative decisions Gunn made in his depiction of the Lex Luthor character (I will note a distinction that the above-cited critic, Alison Willmore made between Luthor and our real-world supervillains: Lex Luthor is really smart, while Trump and Musk are famously...not. I would also add that Luthor is, at least in this particular portrayal, also fairly young and rather handsome, and thus makes a poor filmic stand in for the likes of Trump or Musk).

Now, there are two specific points of the film that seem to more directly address real-world events. One I think was probably intentional on Gunn's part, the other is almost certainly a coincidence, and the fact that it's in the film at all is more a matter of unhappy circumstance in the real world than some attempt by Gunn to comment on it. That is, it is, again, more about the us having real supervillains than Gunn trying to make any particular political points.

One major plot point in the film is the invasion of one fictional country by its neighbor, another fictional country. The former, the victim nation, is Jarhanpur, while the latter, the aggressor, is Boravia.

While they both sounded vaguely familiar, I didn't recognize either when I first heard them mentioned, nor did I connect them to any particular DC comics past while I was sitting there in the theater. Looking them up when I got home, I saw that Jarhanpur appeared during Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke's JLA run, being introduced in the "The Golden Perfect" story arc (fom 2002's #62-#64). 

There it was presented as an exotic, fantastical country, but it was, visually, coded to resemble a Middle Eastern, maybe Muslim majority coded country. The people all had brown skin, the buildings had minarets and Plastic Man made joking reference to belly dancers and Ramadan.

As for Boravia, it apparently appeared in a couple of stories in 1939's Superman #2 and 1958's Blackhawk #126. I don't think I've ever read either—I might have read and forgotten the Superman story, while I know I've neve read any Blackhawk comics—but it seems to be, as it sounds, a European country. 

Unlikely neighbors, then. 

Sometime before the film begins, Superman apparently intervened in Boravia's invasion of Jarhanpur, destroying some of Boravia's military hardware and then flying that country's leader into the dessert to essentially threaten him not to try it again.

I immediately took this to be an intentional parallel to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, thanks, I think, to the geography in play (In the movie, Boravia is immediately east of Jarhanpur, with which it shares a border). That and the rationale the president of the aggressor nation gave for the invasion in a press conference, something about liberating its people from their own fascist government.

A few days after I had seen the film, that relative I mentioned above asked if I thought this aspect might have been a nod to the Israel's war on the Palestinian people in the Gaza strip, launched in 2023 in retaliation to the October 7 terror attack by Hamas. She was not the only one to note this possible reading; I've seen social media posts reading the movie that way, with one noting that the film made Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu one of its villains.

Honestly, this reading didn't occur to me at all as I was in the theater, but, after hearing it, I could certainly see it: The apparent desert climate of the two countries, the fact that Jarhanpur's people seemed to be composed mainly of poor brown-skinned people, the fact that Boravia had a professional military with uniforms and tanks and jets and, at the climax, they line up to attack what looks essentially like a bunch of civilians. 

And now that I've picked up some old copies of JLA and see what Jarhanpur looked like in the comics, it certainly seems more like the Middle East than Eastern Europe. (Also, there's the fact that Luthor apparently did a deal with Boravia in which he would get a portion of the conquered land as his own, not unlike Trump expressing his desire for the United States to "own" the Gaza strip once Israel and/or the U.S. managed to quite illegally displace all of the people who live there.)

Was Gunn referencing either—or both—of these conflicts? 

Maybe. 

Given when these particular crises started, he would have certainly had the lead time to work them into his screenplay. 

On the other hand, it could be as simple a matter as Gunn making the rather broad, anodyne and hard to argue with statement that the unprovoked military invasion of a neighboring country is wrong, or, even more broadly, that the strong should not victimize the weak. 

I think, a few years ago, all Americans could agree on that, but, when presented with real world examples like the conflicts mentioned above, Americans have various opinions. One imagines that just like so many Republicans in congress and right-wing influencers are either pro-Russia or, at least, ambivalent to the fate of Ukraine, they would similarly be unmoved by the plight of Jarhanpur if they were serving in the DCU's congress or doing their podcasts there.

The other plot point that is echoing real life? Well, it's not exactly subtle. 

The alien Superman, who illegally "immigrated" to Earth and lived his whole life as an upstanding American citizen and productive member of society, is, at one point, roughed up by a man in a mask working on the behalf of the U.S. government and then whisked from American soil to a "foreign" forever prison without the benefit of any due process, literally being told that, as an "alien", he has no rights. 

That's some evil supervillain shit, obviously, but, given the lead time needed to make a movie of this size and expense, Gunn and his fellow filmmakers had almost certainly written, filmed and had maybe even produced the special effects for those scenes well before masked goons kidnapping immigrants from our streets and putting them in detention facilities or shipping them to foreign countries without any due process was yet a common occurrence in America. (Trump didn't invoke the Alien Enemies Act until March 14 of this year, for example.)

Personally, I think Gunn was just using his imagination to come up with something wicked and un-American to show just how evil Lex Luthor is. He probably wasn't imagining that the Trump administration would be regularly doing that very thing by the time his big, summer film started playing in theaters. 

Finally, one of the two most evil things Luthor does, or threatens to do in this film, includes threatening to "euthanize" the perfectly healthy (if often misbehaving) dog Krypto, making a point of telling a helpless Superman that doing so will probably be quite painful for the dog. Meanwhile, here in the real world, the current secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and thus a person quite high up on the organizational chart when it comes to implementing the policy of snatching up immigrants to send to prisons abroad, is Kristi Noem, a woman who rather famously shot her perfectly healthy dog Cricket to death due to its behavior problems. 

Again, Gunn likely wasn't calling Noem out. He was probably just demonstrating that Luthor is evil. So is Noem.

•David Corenswet I thought David Corenswet did a phenomenal job with what turned out to be a fairly complex job. Rather than a simple dual role, in which he had to play Clark Kent and Superman as two entirely different characters, his Superman was conceived in such a way that there were various layers to the character, and to what degree he was being himself in any particular scene.

I found it interesting that, in this particular outing, both Clark Kent and Superman are sorts of public performances that the real character playing them both, who I guess we can call Kal-El for clarity's sake (even though I don't remember that name being used in the film at all), takes on at different points. 

We only see that real character behind them both, Kal-El, in a few instances. When starting dinner in Lois' apartment, for example, or when he's recovering from his pocket universe ordeal at his parents' farmhouse in Kansas...and, I suppose, occasionally bleeding into his Superman persona, when he's alone with Lois in front of the "interdimensional imp" battle, or gets angry or frustrated while wearing the suit.

I think this is probably most evident during the interview scene, when he says "Miss Lane," and essentially turns his Superman persona on as if he was flipping a switch. Throughout, as he gets frustrated at some of her questioning, we can see his real, Kal-El self keeps intruding on his Superman performance, too.

It's a rather nuanced performance, far more than the just looking handsome and strong and inspirational and nice that one might expect of a Superman actor.

I do sort of regret that we didn't get to see more of Corenswet's Clark Kent performance in the film, but, I suppose, that needed to be sacrificed in order to give us a version of Superman that has already revealed his secret identity to Lois. Still, with such a big and interesting cast in the Daily Planet scenes, it would have been nice to see more of Clark; maybe in a sequel...?

Corenswet, Gunn and company did a good enough job of making Clak and Superman seem like two entiely different people that it was easy to believe that no one made the connection between the two (I know Guy Gardner references the hypno-glasses, a bit of forgotten Superman lore that I've never actually encountered in a comic book, but then do you want to take Guy Gardner's word for anything...?

•Nicholas Hoult Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor was similarly great. It was certainly the best live-action performance of the character that I've ever seen, although I've never seen any of the TV Luthors that weren't animated (I know a lot of folks really like Michael Rosenbaum's Smallville Luthor).

Hoult's Luthor is handsome, quick-witted and charming, and it's easy to see how this Luthor could prove to be charismatic enough to be the leader of a company or sell the U.S. government on his metahuman Planet Watch force (or whatever it was called) or be a popular media figure.

Part of this Luthor's enmity towards Superman seems to be that the hero pulls the world's focus away from Luthor himself, who thinks he should be the center of the world's attention, and Hoult's Luthor is one that we could imagine being that center of attention.

He also, more than any of the previous actors, looks and acts like the Luthor I recognize from the comic books of the last 25 years or so. 

•Luthor is so bald And speaking of Luthor, I don't know exactly how they did it, but man, this Luthor is so bald. Like, there is no hair anywhere on his head at all. There are close-up scenes where, on the big screen, you can see Hoult's head filling that gigantic space, and you can see the little roots of hairs left on his clean-shaven face, but his scalp...? Nothing. I don't know if they used a bald cap or, like, digitally removed any and all hairs on his shaven head in post, but Superman's Lex Luthor is, like, the baldest anyone has ever been in a movie. 

•It needed more purple and greenThere's a brief shot of a flag at the decommissioned army base by "the river" where Luthor keeps one of his pocket universe portals, the place with all the tents (I am 99% sure that those scenes were filmed at a beach in Mentor, Ohio, where I used to live and still work, and that the river in the back ground is actually Lake Erie). That flag is yellow and green, rather than purple and green. For the life of me, I can't imagine why they didn't go with purple and green in that shot.

Similarly, I wish that Luthor's "Raptors" wore purple and green armor, rather than the kind of generic black/metallic coloring they have. Given the deepness of the cuts in the film—the hypno-glasses, Boravia—I have to imagine the filmmakers at last had a conversation about coloring the Raptors purple and green and must have had some reason not to do so. 

•Rachel Brosnahan Rachel Brosnahan is also a particularly strong Lois Lane. She definitely looks the part, and I think she captured the character pretty well. I think because of the fact that we're already past the learning of the secret identity point of the relationship, it frees her up to do more, and be a more active partner in Superman's life, while, at the same time, their relationship is new enough that there is still some drama in it; that is, they haven't yet reached some sort of happily ever after point with one another, where they tend to be in the comics these days, just yet.

I like that we got to see her doing some journalism and we got to see her doing some mild adventuring and we got to see her doing some journalism while doing some adventuring, in that scene at the climax where she's dictating a story while piloting a UFO. That's some quality DCU journalism right there. 

•The origins of Krpto I heard an interview with Gunn on NPR last week where he talked about how this particular portrayal of Krypto was inspired by his own experience with a terribly behaved dog. 

Still, after seeing the film, I wondered if Gunn had ever read Mark Russell's The Superman Stories. Russell, who admitted that he hadn't really paid any attention to actual Superman comics before writing his prose stories, presents a very different vision of a Superdog, but the gag with Russell's is just how terrifying and what a public menace a dog with all of the powers of Superman would actually be. I thought of Russell's Superdog in the scene where we see that Krypto has broken through the glass storefront of a pet store and helped himself to some dog food, which reminded me of Russell's dog's deprivations. 

•Mister Terrific I thought the film made great use of the Mister Terrific character, a really rather minor character in DC Comics history, being a legacy version of an even more minor, footnote of a Golden Age character. He's not a character one might expect to see turn up in a Superman movie, or even a movie dealing with any iteration of a Justice League as opposed to a Justice Society (His appearance in Justice League Unlimited cartoon notwithstanding).

I especially appreciate that they used him instead of Blue Beetle Ted Kord who, given the presence of Guy Gardner and Maxwell Lord, would have been the most obvious candidate for "the smart one" in a "Justice Gang"...especially since Ted came with his own flying vehicle, something so necessary for the film that they had to invent one for Mister Terrific (On the other hand, the old, bad DC Extended Universe produced a Blue Beetle film just two years ago, and, having never seen it, I'm not sure whether or not it had a Ted Kord character in it at all. Anyway, maybe it would have been weird to use another Blue Beetle in this film).

Edi Gathegi's performance as Mister Terrific was, well, terrific. I liked his deadpan delivery, and his ongoing frustrations with his colleague Guy Gardner, Lois and even Superman. His coolness and confidence seemed to be borne of the original conception of the character, as he appeared in that one issue of The Spectre that introduced him, more so than in his later, more popular appearances in various JSA titles. 

Gathegi looked a little smaller and less imposing than I would have imagined Michael Holt to be in real life (same with Hawkgirl, actually), but his costume couldn't have looked any better, seemingly pulled directly out of the comics with only the little Max Lord/"Justice Gang" symbol thingee on the chest added. Even that weird mask seemed to work in live-action.

•Most importantly So the line "I'm goddam Mister Terrific"...inspired by All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder, or nah...? 

•Metamorpho In contrast, I didn't really care for the visual depiction of Metamorpho in the film and, the longer I think about it, I can't help but wonder if he's just a character that doesn't really work in live-action...or, at least, not as well as he does in comics, or the more comic-like medium of animation.

I think actor Anthony Carrigan did a decent enough job in the role, particularly as far as expressing the "freak" nature of the character and Rex Mason's resignation to that nature. He also did a fine job of expressing the rather tough ethical/moral dilemma the film put Rex in, forcing him to decide to inflict violence on a stranger or strangers so that no violence is inflicted upon his own son.

Still, Carrigan is a lot smaller than any of the Metamorphos I've read about, be it Ramona Fradon's original version from the '60s, or Bart Sears' version in Justice League Europe or  and those that followed in various Justice League books or crossovers or anthologies. 

Additionally, the film's version seems to have elaborate scoring or scarring on his face, suggesting the Metamorpho of the 2003-launched The Outsiders (who actually turned out to only be an aspect of Metamorpho, and took the name "Shift", I guess; retroactive spoiler alert!).

Finally, he looked weird wearing what looked like baggy shorts to, I suppose, protect his modesty. If they didn't want to go with the form-fitting briefs with an "M" on the belt buckle, they could have at least got him some better fitting trunks, akin to those Corenswet's Superman rocked.

Some of the demonstrations of his powers looked kind of cool (growing Kryptonite out of his hand, forming that big hammer in the climax), but others just looked...weird and indecipherable as when he was flying in a half-gaseous state, or when he had tentacles. Again, I think he mainly just isn't a comic book character that translates all that well to live action. 

•Green Lantern Speaking of, do Green Lanterns just not work in live action? Nathan Fillion is pretty great as Guy, and as glad as I was that they chose to use that particular Lantern (certainly the best one to choose when it comes to contrasting against Superman's personality or brand of heroics) his powers looked a bit weird and fake to me whenever he used them. His constructs looked more like cheap plastic than hard light. (I thought his powers looked far better when seen from a great distance, as when he and the J.G. are fighting the "imp" in the background, and all we see of Green Lantern are some green flashes, beams and giant baseball bat).

Also, Guy seemed to be able to fly without any sort of aura around him, which isn't how I thought their rings worked, but whatever, I suppose that varies from artists to artist. 

Anyway, after this and 2011's Green Lantern, which I don't recall really selling Green Lantern constructs terribly effectively either, I'm left wondering if, like Metamorpho, those characters' powers are ill-suited to being depicted in live action.

•Maybe Neil DeGrasse Tyson will weigh in You know the bit where Superman, Krypto, Joey and Metamorpho are all being dragged toward the black hole in the pocket universe, and Superman uses his super-breath to push them away from it? Would that really work?

I'm asking, as I have no idea. 

It felt a little dubious, though, and I woulda preferred if Metamorpho turning into a rocket would have been all that was necessary to free them, as that seems a bit more cut and dry and, well, um "believable" (You know, in a scene involving a flying dog in a cape and a guy who can turn himself into a rocket).

•Another deep cut? I like that they included a scene involving what was essentially the old Daily Planet flying newsroom, when Perry orders the staff onto Mister Terrific's ship, where they can finish up the Luthor expose while flying through the air, as the city is imperiled by the dimensional breach.

•But enough about DC Comics I wonder if the Ultraman reveal has any impact on The Boys, either the show, which has yet to wrap up, or the comic book which, while years old at this point, is probably going to still keep being new for some readers...many of whom, in the future, will likely have seen Superman before reading. 

I thought the reveal of what Ultraman looked like under his mask was spectacularly obvious, based on his costume alone (so I've been expecting it for months now) and, wow, they sure telegraphed it by the scene relatively early in the film where the Fortress opened up to allow Luthor, Ultraman and The Engineer entrance. 

Anyway, that Ultraman costume looked a fair bit like Black Noir's comic book costume and, if you've already read The Boys, then you know the way in which Ultraman's relationship to Superman is similar to Black Noir's relationship to Homelander, The Boys' version of Superman. 

I've never watched the TV show, but, from what I've heard, the showrunners were planning on going in a different direction at the end than Garth Ennis and company did in the comic (it sounds awfully different in general, really), and thus I imagine that one particular reveal will play out different. 

For the folks making the show and the audience enjoying it, I hope that's the case at this point; it would be too bad if the new Superman movie inadvertently spoiled the ends of The Boys TV show.

•The fates of the non-Luthor villains Finally, while I'm not entirely sure how it could have been done differently, I was a bit disappointed that both Ultraman and the Boravian leader seemingly died at the end of the film.

This is, of course, in large part because of how sour the ending of the Man of Steel was, in which Superman took the life of his opponent, perhaps the most un-Supermanly thing he could have done in a film. 

Gunn certainly seemed to telegraph early and often that that's not his Superman, as he not only spent a lot of time saving people and even checking on them to make sure they were alright, but he also took pains to save a random barking dog and a squirrel, and expressed frustration with the Justice Gang for killing a giant monster threatening the city, rather than finding a non-lethal solution to the problem. And, of course, the motivation for some of Superman's actions in the movie are his concerns for a dog, Krypto.

The point was hard to miss: Superman not only cares about human life, he cares about all life. 

So while the killing off of Ultraman is somewhat ambiguous, with Superman kinda sorta knocking him into a black hole and not saving him, it still seemed somewhat out-of-character for this Superman. I kind of wish either Superman managed to save him and turn him into a friend off-screen, and we got a shot of a happy Ultraman in the Fortress at the end, or, even more simply, they had given Lex a line or two in which he states that Ultraman technically isn't even alive, but is some sort of biological automaton or something. 

That said, if a future movie has Ultraman come out of a blackhole with chalk-white skin, wearing a homemade Superman costume and talking backwards, well then, I'm totally fine with it.

As for the Boravian leader, Hawkgirl seemingly drops him to his death, a moment meant to draw another sharp contrast between Superman and the Justice Gang's brand of justice. It seems awfully harsh—especially if we're meant to see him as a stand-in for Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu—and given what a big deal Superman's intervention in Boravia's invasion plan was in the world of the movie, well, the assassination of its leader seems like a much, much bigger deal, no? 

Given that Gunn thinks it's important to explain why Krypto is such a poorly behaved dog during that surprise cameo at the end—surely Superman could properly train a dog—his lack of explanation regarding the deaths of Ultraman and, maybe, that of the Boravian leader felt a bit jarring. 

Credit where credit is due: Who created who in Superman

•Superman and Lois Lane were created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938's Action Comics #1.

•Lex Luthor was created by Siegel and Shuster in 1940's Action Comics #23...althgough this earliest iteration, a typical criminal scientist type, went only by "Luthor" and had a full head of hair. His signature baldness seems to have originated from an artistic mistake in the Superman daily comic strip, and in 1960 Siegel added the loss of his hair into Luthor's backstory in Adventure Comics #271 with artist Al Plastino. It was in that same year that Luthor finally got the first name Lex, 20 years after his introduction. The businessman/corporate CEO version of the character was an innovation of John Byrne's post-Crisis 1986 reboot of the franchise, which began in The Man of Steel. Following Byrne, the character is usually depicted as a synthesis of mad scientist, supervillain and businessman. 

•Krypto was created by Otto Binder, Curt Swan and Sy Barry in 1955's Adventure Comis #210.

•The original Green Lantern was created by Martin Nodell and Bill Finger in 1940's All-American Comics #16, although the name and concept was refigured by John Broome, Gil Kane and Julius Schwartz and applied to new character Hal Jordan in 1959's Showcase #22. The Guy Gardner character was introduced by Broome and Kane in 1968's Green Lantern #59...although it's Steve Englehart and Joe Staton's 1985 version of the character from the pages of Green Lantern, further popularized by his appearances in various Justice League-related titles, that has become the dominant one...and informed the Superman film. (Staton seems to have originated the signature hairstyle, although artist Kevin Maguire exaggerated and perfected it.)

•The original Hawkgirl was created by Gardner Fox, Dennis Neville and Sheldon Moldoff in 1941's All Star Comics #5, in which supporting character Shiera Sanders first donned her own version of Hawkman's costume. While the film never gives its Hawkgirl's real name, the latest Hawkgirl is the Kendra Saunders version of the character, which was apparently created by writers James Robinson and David Goyer and first drawn by artists Scott Benefiel and Mark Popst in 1999's JSA Secret Files & Origins #1. 

•The original Mister Terrific was created by Charles Reizenstein and Hal Sharp in 1942's Sensation Comics #1. The second version of the character, Michael Holt, was created by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake in 1997's Spectre #54 (And you can read more about that issue in my previous post). I can't figure out who designed his costume and T-Spheres, though, both of which made their first published appearance in 1999's JSA Secret Files & Origins #1, drawn by an artist credited only as "Grey."

•"Rex" is, of course, Rex Mason, better known as Metamorpho, The Element Man. He was created by Bob Haney and Ramona Fradon in 1965's The Brave and The Bold #57. His girlfriend Sapphire Stagg makes an unnamed cameo in the film, and there's a sign for her father Simon Stagg's business briefly visible at one point.

•The Engineer was created by disgraced writer Warren Ellis and artist Bryan Hitch in 1999's The Authority.

•The creation of Perry White is a bit complicated, given that he was not original to the Superman comics but was instead created for the Adventures of Superman radio serial in 1940. The character's creation is credited to George Ludlam (the radio folks contributed a lot to the Superman mythos that was then integrated into the comics) and he was played by Julian Noa, who probably deserves some credit, too. Siegel and artist Wayne Boring then introduced White into the comics, in 1940's Superman #7. 

•Jimmy Olsen has a similarly convoluted creation story. He too was introduced in the Adventures of Superman radio show, and producer Bob Maxwell gets credit for his creation, although surely the show's writer or writers and voice actor deserve some credit too, right? He was introduced into the comics by Siegel and Shuster in 1941's Superman #13, although the character wouldn't really seem to become himself until actor Jack Larson's portrayal of him on the 1952 Adventures of Superman TV show popularized him. He then got his own title Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen in 1954, and editor Mort Weisinger refocused the character in outlandish, comedic stories, often involving unlikely transformations.

•Eve Tessmacher and Otis were both created by director Richard Donner and writer Mario Puzo for the 1978 film Superman, and they were played by Valerie Perrine and Ned Beatty, respectively. 

•Steve Lombard was created by Carey Bates and Curt Swan in 1973's Superman #264.

•Cat Grant was created by Marv Wolfman and Jerry Ordway in 1987's The Adventures of Superman #424.

•"Troupe" is Ron Troupe, and he was created by Jerry Ordway and Tom Grummet in 1991's The Adventures of Superman #480.

•Superman's biological parents Jor-El and Lara were introduced by Siegel and Shuster in the Superman newspaper comic strip in 1939.

•The Kents had another slow-rolling creation, evolving over the years and across media. Superman's first appearance mentioned only that he was found as a baby by "a passing motorist." Siegel and Shuster introduced his adoptive parents in 1939's Superman #1, naming only Mrs. Kent as "Mary." Their names and the specifics of their finding and adopting the baby Superman changed a lot in the Golden Age, depending on the medium, and their part in the Superman story remains fairly fluid, with different comic takes and different mass media adaptations differing in the specifics of Superman being found...and whether one or both of the Kents are still alive or if they have passed away.

•Maxwell Lord was created by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire in 1987's Justice League #1.

Finally, this one gets a mild spoiler warning, although I am assuming anyone who sees the film will figure it out almost as soon as he appears on screen, if not before, as I had...

•"Ultraman" is the name of Superman's evil opposite doppelganger from Earth-3 and was created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky in 1964's Justice League of America #29. The version who appears in the new film is an imperfect clone of Superman made by Lex Luthor, and this backstory somewhat resembles that of John Byrne's 1986, post-Crisis origins of long-time Superman enemy Bizarro from the pages of 1986's The Man of Steel #5. (The original Bizarro, for what it's worth, was created by Otto Binder and George Papp for 1958's Superboy #68.)

The origins of Mister Terrific Michael Holt

There's no indication on the cover of 1997's The Spectre #54, which was produced by the great Richard Corben, but this issue in writer John Ostrander and artist Tom Mandrake's series would feature the introduction of a new, legacy version of minor Golden Age character Mister Terrific, as well as featuring appearances from various Justice League and Justice Society characters, making it a particularly superhero-heavy issue. The covers of the series, which are typically great, don't always comment directly on the contents within, and this is a pretty good example...although there is a zombie in the issue. 

The story opens with a man standing on a bridge above a train track, sadly regarding a framed headshot of a smiling woman, signed "Love Always, Paula." He lets it drop onto a train below, and is then interrupted by a couple of little kids, one of them holding a gun that looks comically huge in his little hands. 

"Okay, fool-- Give us all your monies if you wanta live!" the boy says, and the man responds. "But what if I don't care if I live?"

Enter Jim Corrigan, from out of nowhere, with harsh words for the kid. The frightened child fires several shots into Corrigan's chest, to no effect (He is, of course, already dead, and has been so for decades). Corrigan's voice changes to a spookier one, rendered by letterer Todd Klein in a jagged dialogue balloon tinted green at the edges, and the font of the lettering gets similarly rough and jagged. Corrigan then transforms into The Spectre, and the children flee in panic.

Once they're alone, The Spectre tells Michael Holt, for of course that's who this man is, that he was drawn there by his thoughts: "Self murder is still murder. And murder is the province of The Spectre."

Holt explains his thoughts, revealing a bit about his background, vague though it is at this point: 

My wife is dead. Car accident tore her out of my life with no warning. All the things I've done with my life--the money I've made, the achievements in sports and science-- --They're nothing without her. I don't know why I should live.

The Spectre shifts back to his Corrigan form and begins to tell Holt of his old friend Terry Sloane, a man who similarly had money and brains, but found himself bored...and was once a victim to kids who tried to rob him, seeking to imitate the heroes of their day, the gangsters of the 1940s.

Sloane's response was to demonstrate to kids that gangsters aren't anyone to look up to or imitate, and he did so by making himself into something far cooler: A superhero, who regularly took down gangsters and revealed them to be the losers they were.

Here artist Mandrake devotes a half a page to the Golden Age Mister Terrific, smiling broadly as he beats up a trio of armed gangster types, a couple of kids in the background cheering him on. 

The Spectre then goes on to tell the story of Mister Terrific's last adventure, somewhat based on 1979's Justice League of America #171-172, by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin, although one need not have any familiarity with those comics to follow this, which obviously needed to be altered to fit into the post-Crisis continuity, anyway (Here, for example, the characters share a single Earth rather than hailing from two parallel ones, and a problematic character like The Huntress is absent, though Power Girl is still there).

During The Spectre's story, Mister Terrific is murdered aboard the JLA satellite, apparently by The Flash Jay Garrick...who was actually possessed by a villain named The Spirit King. In the aftermath, as the JSA pursued the villain to Earth, Garrick went looking for The Spectre, and the two heroes catch up with the villain in Doctor Fate's tower in Salem, where  The Spirit King has now taken control of Fate and defeated and captured the other heroes (Green Lantern Alan Scott, Hawkman and Power Girl, if you're interested).

When The Spectre and Flash arrive, they find themselves in a trap set by The Spirit King, who, being a ghost, is untouchable by either The Flash or Spectre ("You have no power over me, Spectre!" the villain gloats. "Your authority ends at the grave! And I have stepped beyond it!").

It gets worse. The Spirit King has apparently made a deal with the demon Shaitan, acting as a portal for the evil entity to cross over onto Earth. And then the corpse of Mister Terrific joins the battle, shambling towards The Flash. So there's the zombie that Corben's cover seems to promise. (It's unclear to me just how it is that Sloane's corpse became quite so skeletal and desiccated in the short time since he had apparently died, but whatever, Mandrake draws a great zombie).

Ultimately the day is saved when the ghost of Mister Terrific appears, and, being a ghost, is able to lay his hands—and, more importantly, his fists—on his fellow ghost The Spirit King. He punches him into the portal Shaitan was attempting to come through, which The Spectre seals, saving the JSA and, perhaps, the whole world. 

After a few words with his teammates, the ghost of Mister Terrific fades away, leaving the glowing words of his slogan, "Fair Play" hanging in the air.

The story told, Holt wonders why exactly The Spectre told it to him.

The Spectre answers, with a bit of a speech that would prove transformative for Michael Holt and, indirectly, the future JSA and the DC Universe as a whole. He switches back to Corrigan mid-way through, which is why the language shifts accordingly: 

A void exists and needs to be filled.

No one can ever be replaced. Not your wife, not Terry Sloane, but their passing leaves a void that needs to be filled.

You feel the void your wife has left...

Mr. Terrific filled a purpose and that purpose isn't filled by Superman or Batman or even The Spectre.

He worked at the street level. He reached kids that might have otherwise gone bad. Replaced "gangsta" role models with one that stressed "Fair Play."

There is a need to for that kinda hero today, get me? Maybe, if you fill a void that's out there, you can ease the one that's inside you.

You game? 

Indeed, Holt is. 

The scene shifts to a basketball court, where the kids who tried to rob Holt in the opening scene are reporting back to some obviously older (and far taller) young men, who are belittling their failure to bring back any money, and threatening them with a beating.

And then Holt shows up, now wearing a big pair of sunglasses and a leather jacket with the words "Fair Play" emblazoned on the back, the logo mirroring the one that the original Mister Terrific wore on his torso. He sure threw that costume together pretty quickly!

He confidently introduces himself with a seemingly new too-cool-for-school personality: "You can just call me Mr. Terrific--cause that's what I am." He's also carrying a basketball. After he easily beats up the two armed bad guys ("I'm not afraid to die, so I'm not afraid of you!" he says to one, who points a gun at the back of his head), he shoots the basketball from afar, and of course he makes the shot, complete with a "SWISH!" sound effect. 

Then The Spectre arrives, sweeping up the older kids in his cloak and promising to punish them now for murders they may commit in the future, at which point Holt gets in his face, saying he'll take responsibility for them, and citing "Fair Play" to the Spectre. 

The Spectre concedes the point and flies away, thinking to himself about how the confrontation was a ruse, that the kids "needed to see their hero seemingly strong enough to face down even The Spectre...it will build your reputation and burnish a legend."

It's a pretty great comic, as are most issues of Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre series, and, if you can find it in a back issue bin or if you read it online from Kindle, it's a pretty good starting point for getting into the book (Like too much of that volume of The Spectre, it's never been collected). 

Leaning towards horror and constantly dabbling with moral quandaries, this series was one of handful from the '90s that seemed to straddle the DC Universe and the sort of content from the Vertigo imprint, although this issue felt a little special in just how full of superheroes it was, the colorful, muscular figures rendered in Mandrake's spooky, sketchy style.

Now, of course, the issue is best known for introducing the new Mister Terrific, who would, a few years later, join the new JSA team and become a DCU mainstay, even headlining his own short-lived solo title in 2011 as part of DC's "New 52" initiative. 

As you can see in the images above, the character bears relatively little resemblance to the more familiar version from the 1999-2006 JSA series, though. Obviously, that's visual, as he would adopt the distinctive black T-shaped mask, the black, white and red costume and the hovering robot "T-Spheres" later, as his background in science and athletics would be fleshed out to the point where we learn he was an Olympic athlete and genius-level intellect (one of the smartest people in the world, actually). Oh and, perhaps oddly given that he was introduced in an issue of The Spectre where the embodiment of the Wrath of God told him a story about ghosts, zombies and demons, we would eventually learn that he is an atheist. 

He also seems to have drifted pretty far from the initial point of inspiration, that of being a street-level hero focused on being a role model for young people and steering them away from the potential appeal of a life of crime. Of course, that was likely a side-effect of being on the JSA, a team book in which the threats were naturally bigger, more global and less grounded than street crime, as they had to be significant enough to require the attention of a large team of very powerful characters including the android Hourman from the 853rd Century and a Dr. Fate. 

After his introduction in The Spectre #54, the new Mister Terrific next appeared in 1998's The Spectre #62, the last issue of the series. In this issue, Corrigan/The Spectre buries Corrigan's bones and holds a funeral for himself, one attended by characters from throughout the series, and throughout the DC Universe (and, in a few cases, just beyond, like Swamp Thing). At the end, the green cloak of The Spectre floats up into the sky, leaving the naked Corrigan on Earth...at least until a bright light from the sky envelopes him and he disappears.

Mister Terrific's role is quite small. He arrives wearing the same simple costume Mandrake gave his in his first appearance, although at this point he seems to have added gloves with a yellow "T" on them.

"Who are you? Black Lighting?" one attendee asks him when he walks up. 

Later, when Corrigan's surviving JSA allies—Jay Garrick, Alan Scott, Ted Knight and Ted Grant—arrive, Wildcat puts his hands on his hips and asks Holt, "So--yer the new Mr. Terrific, eh?"

"You got a problem with that?" Hold replies. 

Wildcat punches him on the arm: "Nope. Glad to see it. Just do th' name justice, okay? Terry was a friend o' mine."

This new Mister Terrific would, obviously, end up spending a lot of time with Wildcat, Garrick and Scott in the future.

His next appearance was in the pages of 1999's JSA Secret Files & Origins #1. He doesn't appear in any of the special issue's comics stories—he wasn't initially a member of the team, which was being written at the outset by James Robinson and David Goyer, and pencilled by Steven Sadowski. Instead, he appears in one of the profile pages, which, in these specials, would feature an illustration of the character and a few paragraphs of text about the character in question, functioning a little like the old Who's Who pages.

Here, he's drawn by an artist credited as "Grey" and inked by Vince Russel. This is the first published appearance of what would become his standard and best-known costume, the one he'd wear throughout the pages of JSA and the series that followed it, Justice Society of America (And the one that appears in the new Superman movie). The image also shows the first appearance of the "T-Spheres."

Though Grey is the first person to draw it, I'm not sure if they get credit for the design or not; in fact, I'm not sure who designed it (Do let me know if you know). 

The profile on this page, written by Holt's co-creator John Ostrander, fleshes out his past accomplishments, noting that he was "an Olympic decathlon gold medal winner" and that he "created his own cyberwear company which he ultimately sold to the Waynetech Corporation."

It also notes that he "fights in the inner-city for the minds and hearts of the kids there." "The modern Mr. Terrific fights the new 'gangstas' with skill, intelligence, and by just being so damn cool," Ostrander writes. (Interestingly, Ostrander refers to Holt's late wife as "Angela," although we saw the name "Paula" written on her picture in his first appearance).

As for the JSA title proper, Mister Terrific first appears in the fifth issue, written by Robinson and Goyer and penciled by guest artist Derec Aucoin, where he meets Sandy Hawkins and the android Hourman at Tylerco. It's revealed there that he acts as a consultant for Tylerco, and in return they fund a youth center Holt had started. He is, by this point, wearing the costume from Secret Files & Origins.

He then shows up in issue #11, at which point Geoff Johns has replaced Robinson and Goyer's co-writer, and this issue features breakdowns and inks by Michael Bair and pencils and inks by someone credited simply as "Buzz." 

Here Mister Terrific has his T-Spheres for the first time in a story and he talks about his ability to be completely "invisible" to security technology, which made it easy enough for him to break into the Kobra base that the JSA was in the process of infiltrating when they met him.

"We'll have time for intros and initiation parties later," Hawkins tells him and, from this point on, Mister Terrific will be a member of the JSA. 

In his initial appearance in the pages of Ostrander and Mandrakes Spectre, both The Spirit King and the original Mister Terrific talk about coming into their own only once they had died, something that Corrigan seems to meditate on a bit, wondering if he too only really started to make a positive impact on the world once he had died.

Although Jay Garrick assures Terry Sloane's ghost that he was always a valuable member of the team when he was alive, it would seem that Sloane really did have the biggest impact on the DC Universe and the DC comics line after he died: As the inspiration for his far more prominent namesake. 

A Month of Wednesdays: June 2025

BOUGHT: 

Nancy Wears Hats (Fantagraphics Books) Better writers and smarter comics readers than I have extolled the virtues of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy comic strip over the years, and so I doubt there's anything I can say about this new collection that's all that worthwhile. 

Suffice it to say that this nice big collection includes over 300 strips from 1949-1950, when the strip was in its prime. I feel like I've seen a fair amount of these strips before, either in other collections I've read or from social media accounts like this one, although there were also a fair amount of strips that were new to me.

Bushmiller's Nancy is, of course, pure, unadulterated comics in perhaps their most perfect form. They're a pleasure to read, and an education for anyone who wants to make comics. I therefore can't recommend this collection—or any of Bushmiller's Nancy, really—highly enough. 

The collection, featuring raised words and art on the cover and nice overall design work by Kayla E., also includes a short, unsigned, three-paragraph prose afterword. Entitled "Ernie & Nancy", the last paragraph lists the character and comic strip's accomplishments, noting that one of Bushmiller's Nancy strips remains the picture that The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language uses next to the definition for "comic strip" and quoting an un-cited Wally Wood that "It's easier to read a Nancy comic than it is to not read one." The piece cheekily ends with this last line: "Who's lit now, Sluggo?"

BORROWED:

Batman/Superman: World's Finest Vol. 6: IMPossible (DC Comics) The latest volume of Mark Waid and Dan Mora's World's Finest picks up right where the last one left off—Mr. Mxyptlk and Bat-Mite have appeared in the Batcave, fleeing an army of villainous "mites" led by a mysterious bad guy, a threat dangerous enough that it has already killed one mite (Green-Mite, who, unable to choose between Green Arrow and Green Lantern, patterned himself off of both).

The arc, "IMPossible", fills most of the trade, accounting for four of the five issues collected within. The story is actually fairly simple. The mysterious bad guy, alternately referred to as "Doom Mite" and "the Imp Killer," hails from the sixth dimension, and he has come to our heroes' fourth dimension, seeking to find its greatest champion and then fight him (or her), rather than taking the time to conquer the whole dimension.

To do determine Earths greatest hero, he's unleashed the various villain mites to team up with their counterparts and attack their archenemies, so that, for example, Sinestro and Sin-Mite team-up against Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Abra Kadabra and his mite tackle Flash Barry Allen, and so on.

Before long, Metropolis is full of superheroes, supervillains and villainous mites, and Batman, Superman, Robin and their new allies Mxyptlk and Bat-Mite wade into battle. I hesitate to say too much more about the plot, as it is full of some really fun, fairly crazy surprises, but I will note that a quite unexpected champion is finally chosen, Batman, Superman and Bat-Mite spend a significant part of the story trapped in the second dimension and then journeying through the dimensions to get back to the fight and, of course, the sixth-dimensional threat is eventually vanquished.

As per usual for this series, there are a lot of guest-stars, and not merely among the various Justice Leaguers and villains in the Metropolis battle royale (Probably my favorite in this story? Prince Ra-Man, who certainly wasn't anyone I was expecting to see here). 

Mora draws the majority of "IMPossible," and it, of course, looks great. His approach to the various imps and mites is interesting, as he draws them all with their usual otherworldly proportions, but he also renders them quite realistically, so that, say, Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite look like their usual selves...but also about as realistic as possible, giving them a slightly unsettling look (I think it's the texture of Bat-Mite's gigantic eyeballs that really gets me). 

The design for the sixth-dimensional villain is interesting too, as he looks both goofy and scary at the same time, the ratio between the goofiness or the scariness changing depending on the scene and, seemingly, the level of threat he poses in itl

Mora does get a little relief from artist Travis Mercer, who draws Superman and Batman when they are trapped in different dimensions, and the fact that they suddenly look so different than when Mora is drawing them is thus naturally excused by the weird circumstances they are in (Interestingly, in the second dimension, the heroes and Bat-Mite take on the appearances they had in old cartoons, with Bat-Mite wearing the costume he did in The New Adventures of Batman and sporting the green skin he had in that late seventies show).

For all the big, crazy twists and turns, Waid does an admirable job with all of the characters, accentuating the differences between Mxy and Bat-Mite's relationships to their heroes (Mxy lives to vex Superman, while Bat-Mite worships Batman and tries to help him) and the imps' relationship to one another (Mxy finds Bat-Mite extremely irritating). 

Most remarkably, Waid tells a compelling story about Batman's stories "growing up", the shift between the silliness of the Silver Age and the more serious Broze Age (which I guess is when World's Finest is actually set? All available clues suggest it is sometime after 1978 but sometime before 1984, our time) and Batman and Bat-Mite coming to a sort of understanding regarding the fact that their relationship needs to evolve. 

So it's a lot of fun, probably the most fun story arc in the series so far, but it's not just fun. It's really, really great superhero universe comics. 

The fifth issue in the collection is a story entitled "Death In Paradise," and is drawn by Gleb Melnikov. Seemingly set somewhere in the past—like, further in the past than other World's Finest stories, based on Robin's costume and apparent age—it features Batman, Robin and Superman being invited to Themyscira to help the Amazons solve a seemingly impossible locked door murder. 

The solution ends up involving the Well of Souls, an innovation from the George Perez Wonder Woman and a pair of villains, one of Wonder Woman's oldest adversaries, and his sister, appearing here for the first time. 

I feel like the Wonder Woman-ness of the story is mostly relegated to her milieu, and her relationship with the title characters doesn't come into play much, although there's a neat scene near the end of "The Trinity" all working together, and a bit of an aside about the three of them meeting for coffee soon. 

There's also a very charming panel in which Robin is shown a kanga, and says, "Yes, please" as soon as an Amazon asks him if he would like to ride one...so soon, in fact, that letterer Dave Sharpe places Robin's word balloon so it overlaps with that of the Amazon. 

Melnikov's style is a departure from Mora's, but not too sharp of one. His Superman and Batman are both thick and bulky without quite looking over-muscled (Do note that Melnikov gives Batman his standard bat-symbol, rather than the Batman '89 one that Mora always gives him for some reason). The same goes for Wonder Woman, who looks far bigger than an evil goddess who appears and some of the other Amazons. His Robin seems particularly small and youthful, even cute (His costume includes a pair of longer black shorts, and his cape is scalloped into different lengths, giving it a more bird-like appearances). 

It's not as great as "IMPossible," of course, but then Waid often has short, one-issue "cool down" stories between his arcs, of which this is apparently one. Like all of his other World's Finest stories, it's fun, fairly light-hearted and as much a celebration of the characters involved as an exploration of them.  

It Rhymes With Takei (Top Shelf Productions) When I read George Takei's 2019 graphic novel memoir They Called Us Enemy, which I had reviewed for The Comics Journal, I was kind of intrigued by a fairly short passage in it about his TV career. As I wrote about it on EDILW shortly after, "the glimpses we see of what it must have been like to be a young, gay, Asian man trying to get roles back then sounds like pretty fertile ground for a memoir, too."

I assume I'm not the only one that had that reaction, as now, six years later, Takei and the same creative team who helped turn his memories into that first book are back with a new work, It Rhymes With Takei, a memoir that covers just that subject and period of Takei's life.

But not just that. At some 330 pages, it is essentially Takei's biography, covering his entire life, but organized around the throughline of Takei's sexuality, his life and career in the closet and the eventual, gradual process of coming out, first to his family (which, in at least one instance, didn't go too well) and then, given his relative celebrity, to the whole world.

Takei is currently 88 years old and was born in 1937. He had a pretty good reason to keep his sexuality a secret for as long as he did. He developed a passion for theater in college that lead to his pursuit of a career in acting, and he had seen what happened to a favorite actor of his, Tab Hunter, when the press discovered that Hunter was gay. 

And then, of course, there was the fact that being gay was, to a certain degree, literally illegal when Takei was a young man, with police raids of gay bars an ever-present fear for him when he would occasionally decide to visit one, often against his better judgement.

While Takei's fraught relationship with his own sexuality is the organizing principle of the book, It RhymesWith Takei essentially covers his entire life (the time in the concentration camp as a child is mentioned but not dwelled on, of course, given that there's a whole graphic novel about that). So readers will learn a bit about his childhood, his education, a formative trip abroad to study Shakespeare, his early work in Hollywood, his early theater career, his big break in Stark Trek, his activism, his off and on work in politics, a relatively short stint working on transit in California and his post-Star Trek life as a minor celebrity, seemingly forever tied in the public imagination to that one particulary gig. 

Several relationships of several sorts are covered, from a furtive hookup in college, to a creative relationship that included a romantic element, to a bad relationship in the 1980s, to his finally meeting Brad Altman, the man who would eventually become his long-time partner and then, when gay marriage was finally legalized, his husband. 

As American culture seems to gradually relax a bit towards expressions of gay life in the 1980s (at least compared to the decades previous), Takei doesn't exactly come out, but he does start to seem less paranoid about people finding out that he might be gay, including becoming visibly active fighting AIDS and even eventually joining a gay running group in Los Angeles, where he is immediately recognized (This, by the way, is where he would meet Brad). 

In 2005, he finally made the decision to come out, a carefully planned-out event, in which he submitted to an interview with a hand-picked journalist for Frontiers magazine. (Though the cover had a headline reading "Exclusive: George Takei Comes Out," it was Margaret Cho whose image was on the cover). 

I don't know what impact doing so actually had on his career at that point; I'm not really a television watcher, nor do I know anything about New York or Los Angeles live theater, so I can't tell you if he got more or less roles after that, but I suspect his roles increased. Or, at the very least, his visibility certainly seems to have increased, as once he came out, he was able to embrace acts of activism in a big way in TV interviews and on social media, which is mainly where I know him from (Well that, his appearance in Kevin Keller #6, which I doubt he would have made were he still closeted. Oh, and, of course, I know him as one of the creators of They Called Us Enemy).

Takei has lived a pretty amazing life, and though he is probably forever going to be best known for his appearances on the Star Trek show and its movies, he accomplished a lot, and moved in powerful circles, having met governors, presidents and prime ministers.

Mostly by an accident of his birth, his lifetime lined up pretty neatly with the history of the gay movement in 20th and 21st century America, and it's remarkable how much history he therefore saw and lived through, from seeing press attacks on Tab Hunter, clandestine hook-ups and secret gay bars, to the increasing visibility of gay men as human beings during the AIDs crisis, to events he witnessed from afar (like Stonewall, the assassination of Harvey Milk, Ellen DeGeneres coming out), to the state by state fights for gay marriage (which in part prompted his own coming out), to the Supreme Court ruling in favor of gay marriage in 2015. And, of course, in his career, he went from desperately hiding his sexuality to becoming a gay icon.

Now I'm not—or, perhaps I should say, I wasn't—a George Takei fan. I have, perhaps rather remarkably, never actually seen anything he's ever appeared in, be it Star Trek, or one of his film roles or any of his many television appearances (with the exception of Rodan and Godzilla Raids Again, which he did some voice work on; Rodan actually appears in one panel of the book). And as a Gen X straight white guy, my own life has very little resemblance to his. 

I say that just to note that I still found It Rhymes With Takei a fascinating read, an extremely compelling telling of a fascinating life, and the delineation of a rather hopeful historical arc experienced by a particular American minority. 

Somewhat unfortunately, there's no backmatter in the book explaining exactly how it was made. As you can see by the cover, Takei gets top billing, his name above the title while his co-creators have their last names stacked up in the lower lefthand corner. 

On the title page, the credits read:

Written By

George Takei

Art By

Harmony Becker

Adapted By
Steven Scott & Justine Eisinger

Presumably Scott and Eisinger turned Takei's story into a comic script of some sort, and perhaps did some form of breakdowns, but it's not entirely clear how exactly the book got made, which is something that is probably of greater interest to comics folks than the average reader. 

Becker's art is here presented in full color, in contrast with They Called Us Enemy, and much of it seems rather heavily referenced, especially later in the book as Takei's media appearances become more frequent, and the words of various politicians and other media personalities are quoted, giving many panels the look and feel of a Tom Tomorrow strip, albeit with thinner lines. 

For the most part the art is more serviceable than noteworthy, a quite effective vehicle for telling Takei's story. 

I'd highly recommend it as the story of an extraordinary American life...as well as the story of a celebrity who, chances are, you may know pretty well and the story of a gay man in America who happened to live through many tumultuous years and a lot of changes for the better, changes that seem to have been very gradual and slow, and then to have happened all at once. 

Komi Can't Communicate Vol. 34 (Viz Media) This volume is dominated by a cultural festival, in which Komi's class—which this time she leads as class representative—decides to do a ramen stand. This proves more difficult than expected, thanks to some regulations on the preparation of food and, especially, the various conflicting personalities and communication disorders of the class, like that of new character and prickly perfectionist Shota Kori. 

There's also some more advancement in Manbagi's unlikely romance with the shy soccer star Wakai (which makes me really nervous, I have to admit, due to how one-sided it seems to be as it develops, and I wish it got a little more attention, as it seems more dramatic than the cultural festival stuff), plus an over-the-top celebration of Komi passing her exams hosted by Rami and an unlikely discussion (complete with bets) regarding what kisses taste like (not spicy shrimp, apparently).

Night Drive (Fantagraphics Books) Richard Sala died in 2020, and this latest publication of the unique stylist's work contains generous supplementary material that gives additional insight into his career, personal life and death...all of which had always been a complete mystery to me, a fan who didn't upon his work after seeing some pages that captured his unusual mixture of the horror genre, sex appeal and an indie artistic aesthetic until the early 21st century. (He apparently died from a heart attack, at the age of 65, which likely meant a few more decades worth of work from him would remain unrealized.)

The title of the book comes from Sala's self-published 1984 anthology comic, a 30-page black and white book that included some 14 distinct stories, some of which are extremely short, only a page or two or three (I had to keep consulting Night Drive's table of contents to see when one story ended and another began). 

Many of these are quite simple in construction and read as dream-like poems paired with illustrations, in Sala's earlier, thinner-lined, more wiggly style; if you look at the cover above, for example, you can see clearly see the later Sala in it, but his art style is obviously not yet as refined as it would become.

This reprint of Night Drive is, of course, the heart of the book, a typically beautifully designed oversized (8.8-inch x 11.3-inch) hardcover from Sala's regular publisher, Fantagraphics.

The original Night Drive's title page includes a quote from writer Jorge Luis Borges: "The solution to the mystery is always inferior to the mystery itself," which serves as a sort of master key to unlocking so much of Sala's work, from these first short illustration and narrative mash-ups to his later graphic novels, which seem organized around the idea expressed in that quote, always bearing an air of mystery and filled with plot points that are rarely explained, his stories often being more suggested than delineated. 

The most famous inclusion in Night Drive is undoubtedly its longest story, the seven-page "Invisible Hands" which, in addition to featuring instances of what would become Sala hallmarks—colorful supervillains, animal masks, a beautiful woman, gunplay—is an early example of his sort of unexplained mystery story, full of genre-inspired imagery and events.

It also, rather famously, lead to an animated adaptation on MTV's 1991 Liquid Television, an anthology show I watched as a teenager, although I never connected that particular feature with the Sala of Peculia, Maniac Killer Strikes Again and his various works of the 2000s, wherein I first encountered his work. 

In addition to including the original (and apparently never before reprinted) Night Drive, this book includes about a dozen pages of similar short comics from the same time that were either intended for the original comic or a never produced follow-up (grouped here under "Outtakes") and a four-page collaboration between Sala and writer "Mark Burbey" for 1988 comic Street Music. 

Aside from the comics content, the book also includes a prose remembrance by Sala's friend (and occasional interviewer) Dana Marie Andra (who also wrote under the penname Mark Burbey), heavily illustrated by Sala's covers for Horror Show and Street Music and a handmade Christmas card; a section reprinting Q-and-A style interviews from The Comic Book Journal and Comic Book Bin and a blog post of Sala's about Night Drive and the "Invisible Hands" adaptation; and, finally, an afterword by Daniel Clowes. 

Although the Sala comics in Night Drive aren't his best nor most sophisticated work, they're important previews of what is to come, reading retroactively like an intriguing map of a magnificent career in comics and illustration that would flow from them. It's fascinating to see how much of Sala's style and interests were present here at the very beginning of his publishing career, and how they contain what is often more important in Sala's comics than the exact lines drawn or words written, the mood and spirit of his peculiar aesthetic.

I especially enjoyed all of the prose stuff about Sala, given how little I actually knew about him. Sala was about a generation older than me, and reading about his influences, I see I had very little firsthand experience with the works that informed his: Typical "monster kid" stuff, 1960s genre TV, Frank Frazetta, Jack Kirby, Hammer films, 1970s horror comics, Fantomas, German expressionist films, a wide variety of prose literature. This probably goes a long way toward explaining the fact that, in addition to appreciating his specific art style and the moody, mysterious, Lynchian vibe of his work, I often felt things in it rather than actually recognizing them. (Reviewing all the mentions that he or others made of his various influences in the prose pieces here, I think the only places a Venn diagram of them overlaps with my own pop culture diet is probably the writing of H.P. Lovecraft and the art of Jack Kirby).

Night Drive probably isn't the best place to start with Sala's work, but for his many fans, it's an extraordinarily rewarding read. 

Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku (Marvel Entertainment) As I've mentioned in previous posts discussing Star Wars comics, the time period of the franchise I generally find most interesting is that set after Return of the Jedi, as that was, at one point, the end of the "official" story of the original films' heroes and their conflict with the villains of the Empire, opening up the possibility of more imaginative adventures completely unmoored from the emergent continuity. Unlike other periods of Star Wars comics, those set post-Jedi didn't have to end at a certain place or keep things from changing too much.

That was certainly the case with those first Marvel Star Wars comics, which moved past the Rebellion Vs. Empire storyline pretty quickly after the release of Jedi (I reviewed collections of Marvel's post-Jedi issues in this post and this one). And it was, to a certain degree, the same with the Dark Horse comics of the 1990s, although as time went on, more and more of the official Star Wars story got filled in by the increasing number of novels and other "Extended Universe" media (I've been trying to read those via Marvel's Epic Collections, but they are proving harder to find than I'd like; I reviewed the first collection here and the second here). 

By the 21st century, it seemed that the novels, comics and video games had mapped out much of the rest of the lives of Luke, Leia, Han and company, and various creators turned their sites on the ancient past and far-flung future of the Star Wars galaxy. So while the 2015 slate cleansing of the "Extended Universe" continuity that accompanied the release of new film The Force Awakens did strike me as rather unfortunate (there were so many comics and novels at that point, I could probably have spent the rest of my life trying to catch up on what I had missed), it did at least offer a somewhat intriguing opportunity. 

That is, if nothing else, the post-Jedi future was once again wide open, and the original Star Wars heroes were again available for brand-new, not-yet-chronicled adventures, right? 

Well, sort of. 

The downside of Star Wars getting a Crisis on Infinite Earths-like continuity reboot that relegated all of the non-film stuff into a new, non-canonical "Legends" status was that the post-Jedi period now had an end point it had to line-up with, that of the status quo presented in The Force Awakens (Even if it did leave a few decades in which new stories could be told). And while there were certainly admirable aspects of the new trilogy, it was, overall, disappointingly familiar (I wrote at the time of The Force Awakens' release that it felt as much like a remake as a sequel), and at its core it presented the very same Rebels vs. Empire conflict as the original trilogy, rendering Jedi not so much an exclamation point as a comma, and our heroes (well, Leia at least) stuck fighting the exact same damn conflict for decades.

This is all a very long way of saying that I was excited—even if it's a somewhat reserved sort of excitement—for Marvel's Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku, an almost 300-page trade paperback collecting a series of miniseries from last year set in the still relatively little-explored post-Jedi, pre-Force Awakens period in which Luke, Leia, Han and company are still important players. This, after all, was the new, new, new post-Jedi version of Star Wars, and the first time since regaining the license that Marvel would be producing new comics not closely tied to the events of one of the trilogy of film trilogies.

I'm sorry to confess that I found it somewhat disappointing, especially because it was written by Alex Segura, a comics pro whom I like a lot and who, being a comics person-turned-novelist whose resume includes some Star Wars prose work, sure seems like an ideal candidate to produce new Star Wars comics. 

I'm not entirely sure how to diagnose my disappointment, I'm afraid, so bear with me here as this portion of the post meanders a bit.

Is it the specific construction of the book, which reads less like a new Star Wars film in comics form (as my favorite Star Wars comics generally have) than a Star Wars novel or TV series in comics form? (And hell, perhaps the novel or the TV series are the predominant media for Star Wars stories at this point).

Is it the breaking up of the band, so that our heroes are rarely together in this storyline, with only Leia and Luke present throughout, though usually doing their own things? (Lando comes and goes, and Han, who leaves with Chewbacca and the droids on the first page, doesn't return until very late in the book.)

Is it the failure to live up to its title, which promises to tell the story of the battle that littered new trilogy hero Rey's desert planet with the Imperial wreckage she's seen exploring in The Force Awakens...? (The battle will eventually be fought, but not until the last pages of the collection, some ten issues or so worth of comics into this storyline.)

Or is it, as I suspect, the need to connect to the other post-Jedi, pre-Force Awakens novels and TV shows, of which there are apparently enough to dictate the comings-and-goings of various characters? (I was interested enough in this new post-Jedi continuity that I read Chuck Wendig's Aftermath trilogy of novels when they were originally released between 2015 and 2017, which went a ways towards setting up The First Order incarnation of the Empire, and apparently committed Han and Chewie to Kashyyk at a certain time, which is why I guess they are absent throughout so much of Battle of Jakku.)

At any rate, the true star of this comics narrative is Grand Moff Ubrik Adelhard, whom I at first took to be a character original to these comics, but a quick consultation of Wookieepedia just now reveals that he actually debuted ten years ago in a mobile game. (I didn't look up every single character as they appeared in this comic, although I did feel compelled to do so; that's because pretty much all of them are introduced as if a reader should already be familiar with them, despite the fact that outside of Rae Sloane, who I recognized from her role in Aftermath, and the characters from the first trilogy of films, I didn't know any of these people.)

In the wake of news of the Emperor's death, Adelhard locks down his sector of the galaxy, initially denying the death of the Emperor, Big Lie-style. He has a small circle of allies that includes a punctilious female imperial officer, a big, masked Vader-esque lieutenant dressed all and black and an apparent Force witch of some kind, who hails from a group called "The Acolytes of the Beyond." 

This quartet and their agents and allies will spend the entire series betraying one another, and much of the plotting will revolve around their machinations and their jockeying with one another, all as Adelhard jockeys for a place within the emerging structure of the post-Palpatine Empire.

Adelhard builds alliances with unlikely actors throughout the series, including the gangster-like spice runners lead by a lady wearing the same full-head masked helmet that Keri Russel's character wore in Rise of Skywalker (I think this lady is maybe meant to be Russel's character's mom?). But after one defeat and/or one betrayal too many, he ends up going completely rogue, targeting both the remnants of the Empire and the emerging Republic in the titular battle, nihilistically hoping to kill off everybody. 

As for that battle, I must confess I don't quit get it. 

It's supposedly a final showdown between the two sides of the Galactic civil war, and meant to be final in a way that I guess the Battle of Endor wasn't, although it's not really clear why that's the case, or why the Empire and the Rebels/Republic amass all their forces there in the first place. 

Like, I don't always get the way that Star Wars applies various military concepts or story tropes to outer space...battles between armadas of spaceships don't really need to be anchored to particular planets, do they? (As I always understood the Battle of Endor and the Battle of Yavin, those basically happened where they did because, in the first case, the Empire lured the Rebels there with a cover story of a not-yet-operational Death Star and, in the second, because that's where the Rebel base was and the Empire came there to zap them with their first Death Star, right?) (Note: I also didn't understand the fact that a map to Luke's location was a story point in the last trilogy; like, why would you have a two-dimensional map of outer space with a trail marked on it rather than just, like, a set of coordinates...?)

Leading up to it, however, is a whole lot of standing on bridges and in conference rooms, talking politics and battle plans, on both sides. 

As I said, much of the attention is paid to Adelhard and his contentious inner circle, but we also see a lot of Leia and Mon Mothma doing the same (Leia, about halfway through the book, will start showing a belly, and in her few action scenes, she's quite visibly pregnant. The scripts don't really acknowledge this in any way until she finally gives birth at the end of the book, though, at which point the whole cast of heroes from the original films finally reunite around her and the baby on the penultimate page.) 

There seem to be four primary artists involved—Leonard Kirk, Jethro Morales, Luke Ross, Stefano Raffaele—but none of the art really sings. Given how established the galactic setting is at this point, and how much of this particular series is set aboard Star Destroyers, there's not a whole lot for the artists to actually invent, and they are mostly employed drawing familiar Star Wars corridors, conference rooms, ships, armor and costumes. 

The likenesses tend to vary depending on the artist, and thus the scene but, again, Luke and Leia are really the only characters played by familiar actors who appear throughout the series. When Han does return later, apparently after his Kashyyk adventure, he sports a beard.

There are a few scenes where Luke ignites his light saber and Stormtroopers shoot blasters where it really feels like Star Wars, and there's a scene where a big, goofy-looking monster appears to chase Luke and his pilot partner a bit, where I actually sighed in relief and thought, "Finally," but, for the most part, this, I am sorry to say, felt more like a bloodless exercise in continuity dot-connecting than an attempt to capture the various virtues of the films in the comics medium.

I want to read new comics featuring the heroes of Star Wars, and while I assumed this post-Jedi story would give its creators the opportunity to tell a new and exciting story with those heroes, that's not how it turned out. I'd prefer more big, goofy alien monsters, and less Republic or Imperial politics, I guess. 

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead Vol. 17 (Viz) I admit I am far from an expert on the zombie genre, which has so exploded in the past 20 years or so it seems way too big for a more casual fan to keep up with, so I'm honestly not sure: Has anyone done zombies in space before...?

Haro Aso and Kotaro Takata get there in this seventeenth volume of their life-affirming zombie apocalypse comedy. It seems like an odd direction for the book to take at this point, as the world is now some months (maybe even years?) into a zombie apocalypse, and I confess some skepticism when I saw the cover, and the title of this story ("Outer Space of the Dead") and flipped through to see rockets and our heroes in space suits.

But the creators make it work. One of the increasingly few remaining items on our protagonists' collective bucket list of things to do before becoming zombies is "Experience zero gravity," and I wonder to what degree crossing off the items on that list influences the stories Aso and Takata decide to tell. 

At the volume's opening, our heroes are lounging on a beach, but after an extremely loud boom and a horde of zombies following it, they find themselves at headquarters of Star W, a private space exploration company that has been prepping an unmanned rocket for a test launch throughout what Shizuka calls "the pandemic." 

With electricity provided by windmills, plenty of astronaut food to live on, and a high barb-wired fence to keep the zombies out, charismatic Star W founder Hirotaka Ukaji and his employees have kept busy pursuing his dream of "Japan's first civilian-led... ...manned flight to outer space! And launched from Japanese soil to boot!"

Our heroes are present for the test flight, but as the countdown begins, things go wrong, as they so often do in zombie narratives. A section of the fence collapses and zombies swarm. Akira and his freinds have a plan to save Star W's many employees, and it involves luring all of the zombies beneath the rocket's thrusters, where they will be incinerated during the launch, but there's a catch they don't think of until it's almost too late: What happens to them when the rocket blasts off?  

The solution, of course, is to board the rocket, which they do with Mr. Ukaji. That presents a whole new set of problems of course, including one that doesn't seem to make any sense, which I spoiled a few paragraphs ago, I guess: There are, somehow, zombies in space, despite how far removed the people at the International Space Station were from whatever caused the infection on Earth.

Or were they? There's an intriguing cliffhanger ending, one that ties into the few hints we've gotten so far about what set off Zom 100's zombie plague. Also intriguing? When our heroes reach space, they see an awful lot of lights still burning on earth, giving them some way to gauge how well civilization outside of Japan seems to be faring. At the very least, humanity seems to have managed to keep the lights on while the zombie pandemic rages. 

REVIEWED:

Don't Cause Trouble (Henry Holt and Company) Is Arree Chung's fictionalized memoir about growing up Chinese-American with a two very idiosyncratic parents and trying to be cool American Born Chinese meets Big Nate...? Personally, I've never gone in for those sorts of "it's X meets X" descriptions of comics or movies or whatever, as they often seem a little too pat, and they tend to do a disservice to all of the works involved, but I have to confess I thought of both of those very different comics while reading Don't Cause Trouble. Chung's book deals with some of the themes that American Born Chinese does, although it's more about being an outsider in general than being Chinese-American specifically, while the big-headed grade-schooler characters and the style in which they are drawn reminded me a bit of Lincoln Pierce's popular comic. It's really funny, and I enjoyed it a lot. More here. 

Godzilla: Skate or Die (IDW Publishing) There's a fantastic page-turning experience near the climax of this rather unique Godzilla comic.

In the last panel on a righthand page, a scientist is theorizing about an alien doohickey that fell to earth and seems to be attracting and enraging giant monsters Godzilla and Varan, who spend most of the book battling one another. The scientist says the thing's influence is spreading and that "Godzilla, Varan...they could just be the beginning...."

Then, when the reader turns the page, they are confronted with an awesome two-page splash depicting ten more Toho monsters, all rendered in bright pink, while the scientist and other characters appear small along the bottom of the page, the scientist declaring, "These pulses could awaken every kaiju on the planet!"

And thus, the fate of the world is at stake in this book, although our heroic skaters' main concern is much smaller: Saving their beloved skate park. 

Writer/artist Louie Joyce's Godzilla comic is at once completely atypical and faithful to the basic Godzilla narrative, which always revolves around human beings and their problems as related to the giant monster/s, but here the human beings involved aren't the usual scientists, reporters and military types, but rather a group of Australian skaters. It's fun stuff, and another good argument for IDW and/or Toho allowing various creators with their own distinct styles to essentially go nuts with the long-lived IP. More here. 

Reel Life (Graphix/Scholastic) Cartoonist Kane Lynch's graphic novel follows sixth-grader Galen as he faces a series of dramatic alterations to his family life, which seem to begin when his dad cheats on his mom. To help process these changes, Galen and his best friend, who make movies in their spare time, attempt to make a documentary about his parents' divorce. More here.