Superman #46

Muhammad Ali has really let himself go.

In search of Hordr_root, Clark Kent has traveled to the jeweled city of America: Oakland! But he had to steal a ride on top of an airplane. Luckily Pa Kent is dead so he can't be extremely disappointed in his son's actions. This method of travel also makes it hard for Jimmy Olsen and his hacker friend Condesa to track him down. But since Condesa can speak with machines, she decides to ask some airport cameras to help her. She speaks to them in binary that isn't gibberish the way everybody else thinks just stringing random ones and zeros together makes coherent binary. I bet the computers they type their scripts on hate them for it. How would they like it if DC printed up their checks with just a random string of letters where their name should be? I mean, that's what words are, right?! A bunch of letters strung together. So why not just write out "weioonczfsdfojap" and accept that shit as literate writing?

In binary, Condesa says "SUPES" and then the camera says "OK" and then the camera says "FOUND" and then sends pictures of Superman to Condesa's phone. The only other time somebody used binary correctly in The New 52 was Van Jensen in Green Lantern Corps #33. So now Condesa and Jimmy can legally obtain airfare to Oakland so that they can remind Superman that everybody hates him and that maybe he should get back to defeating Hordr_root. For some reason.

Superman is busy having fun beating up D-list gods in Mythbrawl. Of course he is! The fans of Mythbrawl actually like him and cheer him on which makes them one million more times more likeable than everybody else in the DC Universe. Why can't Earth-You just be composed of Mythbrawl fans? They don't hate Superman just because he's an alien from another planet stealing journalism jobs from dimwitted Americans who still believe in the power of newspaper reporting. They really should murder that belief. Journalists simply write about shit that will get eyeballs on adverts. They don't care about ferreting out the truth anymore. Actually, they're a lot more like ferrets now than they ever were! Easily distracted and piling up tons of shit in the corner.

Human time bomb? What does that even mean? I think I gave Mythbrawl fans too much credit earlier.

Superman wins a fight against Crow and even thought they're scripted like professional wrestling, they're still quite dangerous (like professional wrestling!). Superman exits the ring with a bruise on his cheek which Shahrazad heals by telling him a story about himself. That's the best new power I've seen in a long time in comic books! And Gene Luen Yang takes a moment to flesh out why everybody suddenly hates Superman.

Or sort of tries to. I'd have liked this story to have presented a definitive reason for why everybody suddenly hates Superman. I'm still waiting on a convincing argument as to why everybody turned on him. I suppose, in the end, it's going to wind up being mass mind-control.

It kind of sounds like Shahrazad is saying that people began to hate Superman because he lost his powers. Is that a reasonable enough explanation for me? I don't know. It almost makes sense. Suppose a rather healthy percentage of the population hated Superman for various reasons: bitterness, jealousy, xenophobia, to be cool. But maybe they kept their mouths shut because Superman was so popular and powerful. Perhaps they kept their hate in check out of fear. But upon hearing that he'd lost his powers and that he was a nerdy reporter named Clark Kent, suddenly they become boastful loudmouths decrying Superman for whatever reasons they can think of. Other people who didn't care one way or the other get swept up in the belief that Superman is dangerous and that his hiding among them was devious and manipulative. An anti-Superman movement begins and like all movements supported by hatred, the voices within it drowned out voices of support. Hell, most supporters wouldn't organize in any way and so it would look like most people now hate Superman. It still rings weak and false to me but perhaps I can try to maintain a certain respect for the premise just so that I stop bitching and moaning about this story arc already. Plus I'm enjoying this story better than most of the Superman stories previously printed in this comic or Action Comics. I think Howard Porter's art has something to do with my suddenly generous qualities.

Jimmy and Condesa have arrived in Oakland and Jimmy has a flashback to when he and Clark were just beginning to become friends. It's a seven panel mini-Superman story and it nails Superman better than 90% of Superman stories written since The New 52 began.

Speaking of good Superman stories, it looks like this Monday's Supergirl episode is going to use one of Superman's finest moments recently. Now that she's used her Exploding Vagina Power on the show, she's lost her power in the same way Superman began to lose his powers after using his new FWASH power. She's going to pull the "You don't want to shoot me and wind up getting more time when you're arrested because shooting me is stupid nonsense" speech to a crook that Superman used earlier this year when he had no powers. I also realized a few weeks ago that the deli they're constantly going to in the show is called Noonan's. Although it's not as sleazy as it could be. I really hope they introduce some guy named Baytor who works the bar there.

Superman is going to have a three-way with a fox woman and a ghost.

After Superman and Haemosu strike out with Apolaki's exes, they run into Jimmy and Condesa on the street. They don't seem to care about Hordr_root anymore because Jimmy wants to start a blog about Superman so that a handful of people can stumble upon it and read the "truth" about Superman. Oh yeah. Like people are going to believe some seemingly nutty unpopular blog over other outlets that everybody believes in and loves because they see how many other people believe them and loves them. Jimmy is going to have to figure out how to get popular if he's going to want anybody to realize he's telling the most truthful truth on the internet. And once he figures that out, I hope he emails me how he managed it.

Jimmy finds out Superman is fighting for money and becomes judgmental and self-righteous and pouty because suddenly Superman isn't acting the way he believes Superman should act. Why should Superman? Everybody in the world turned out to be a major dick. At least he's enjoying his life now with his new wrestling buddies.

Superman continues his investigation into the disappearance of Apolaki which ties directly into whatever Hordr_root was after. It seems they were trying to steal his power with the Quarmers so that they could clone him. They haven't quite perfected the process but they have enough of his power to create Sand Superman. This isn't the first time Sand Superman has appeared in the DC Universe. Here's a little history on him from a Wikipedia article seemingly written in ESL (this quote I'm using not so much as some of the other parts of the entry):

Back in 1971, DC heralded a big change coming to the Superman comics, and it was Denny O'Neil who would be penning the newest chapter in the Man of Steel's history. The idea was to strip Superman of some of his power, humanizing him in the process and allowing for a new level of "realistic" (relatively speaking) storytelling. His story, which kicked off with "Kryptonite Nevermore" but has been nicknamed "The Sandman Superman Saga," is about to be published as a hardcover edition by DC. The result of the fight between Superman and Quarmer implies that the Man of Steel was devoid of a half of his power, but later writers would gradually reintroduce Superman's Silver Age powers.

This is one of the things I keep going on about with the writing of Superman. His career is like a sine wave constantly moving from super powerful to regular powerful (or worse!). So back in 1971, Sandman Superman was the cause of the loss of Superman's power. But then he was eventually given back his old powers. He would go on to far lower power levels once again sometime after Crisis, I think. And then back up again. And then back down. And so on. When The New 52 began, his power levels were at peak levels. I remember one Scott Lobdell panel where he dripped one bead of sweat (his first ever!) by bench pressing the weight of six Earths. And then about three and half years into The New 52, it was time for Superman to lose his powers again. I guess the Denny O'Neil Sand Superman story needed to be told again as well.

At 100%, Sand Superman gets colorized.

I think this qualifies as Superman being a danger to the world. Fucking Batman! He's always being proven correct! Especially since too many writers have been allowing Superman to be manipulated by mind-control or infected by dangerous Doomsday diseases. Now he's just given all of his powers to an angry sand version of himself!

Just as Sand Superman is about to try and fry Superman with his heat vision (wouldn't it fuse his eyeballs into lenses? Which would only make him see more clearly, I guess!), Jimmy Olsen strides into metal-arm woman's secret Coit Tower headquarters and takes both lasers to the chest. He drops down dead! But only after telling Superman, "I told you so!" Also he might not be dead because he's Superman's Pal! You can't just go around killing Superman's Pals!

Hordr_root appears on a monitor and challenges Superman to come fight him at his secret Quarmer base full of Quarmers Quarming up a storm. But first he should probably bury Jimmy Olsen.

Superman #46 Rating: +1 Ranking. I'm finally enjoying a Superman comic book! Even if he's mostly powerless right now. And even though they're, sort of, retelling the Sand Superman story which was first told right around the time I was born. And even though they're killing off Jimmy Olsen. Well, actually, that's not really a bad thing. He did admit to liking Aquaman at the beginning of this comic book. Maybe Jimmy Olsen will come back as four Jimmy Olsens! One will wear a leather cape and tell everybody to stop calling him Jimmy Boy! And one will be a half-robot Jimmy Olsen! And one will be a black Jimmy Olsen who builds railroads. And one of them will wear a ski mask and enter the local squash league under the name of The Eradicator!