Superman #77 (March 1993)

And thus we bid adieu to Superman. Forever.

If you weren't reading comic books in 1993, you have no clue how sad we all were that we were going to be losing Superman forever. Every essay I wrote in college revolved around the Death of Superman and what it meant for every American from here on out. Didn't I? Maybe I just mentioned it once in one of my memoir papers entitled "Within the Dream of the Sleeping Red King". Also my friend Brent assures me that I was nearly inconsolable that my nephew would grow up in a world without a Superman. Maybe I said that because I was feeling so sentimental about my one year old nephew but I surely didn't say that because I gave a fuck about Superman, as evidenced by the fact that I own, pre-New-52, about a dozen Superman comic books. That's not counting nearly the entire run of DC Comics Presents because I didn't collect that for Superman! I collected it for the guest stars and, only discovering it after the fact, Ambush Bug. What I'm trying to say is we weren't a cynical lot of bitter bastards! We took DC at their word that they were killing Superman and that everything would be different after that! It was a sad and terrible time.

Also, I might have had several concussions from downhill biking accidents between 1993 and now which have muddied my memories of the time. It's possible I'm getting the death of Disco confused with the death of Superman.

Before I begin discussing this issue, just a quick update on my Infinite Jest read. One of the things I always do when I'm trying to understand a text is figure out why the book was called what it was called and why the characters are named the way they are. And while Infinite Jest was obviously a reference to Yorick from Hamlet, I wasn't sure why it was chosen as the name of the text and James Incandenza's name for his ultimately deadly Entertainment. I had been discussing it with the Non-Certified Spouse over dinner a day or two ago and later that night, the book simply explained it pretty fucking matter-of-factly to me. The father of Hal Incandenza (if, at railroad spike, we were forced to choose a protagonist among the many characters, it would certainly be Hal. But without a threat of hearing the squeak, I'm choosing to believe this text is anti-protagonist), who de-mapped himself by putting his head in a microwave oven, created his deadly entertainment to try to make his child, whom he saw suffering more and more from anhedonia and disassociation from the world and others, happy. The entertainment, or Hal's father, was the jester, Yorick, full of infinite jest, trying to pull his son out of his spiraling depression and separation from the world. So while I've been meaning to dive back into the world of Shakespeare (being that I've lugged that six pound book of the collected works of Shakespeare around my entire life, having purchased it in college), I sort of have to probably read Hamlet next. Mostly because of Infinite Jest but also because of Station Eleven which I should re-watch around the same time (and, probably, read the actual book).

I've also been reading Stephard Bachking's The Long Walk which I haven't read since 1986 or so. The only things I remember (or think I remember since I haven't gotten to them in this re-read yet) are when the main character Ray needs to take a crap under the threat of being shot if he takes too long and how he goes fucking nuts at the end of the story (probably not a spoiler for the movie because they'll probably change 85% of the book). But what keeps going through my head as I read it this time is this: "Is this Stephen King's more vulgar and dumbed down version of "Night-Sea Journey" by John Barth?" My current hypothesis is "I'm pretty fucking sure it is" but you'll have to wait for my full review on Goodreads when I finish it. By the way, I highly recommend "Night-Sea Journey" and most of the rest of John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse. I say "most of the rest" because I know not everybody enjoys the kind of tangled stories that I enjoy. It's not like I go around recommending Gertrude Stein to anybody else no matter how much I adore her. I am acquainted with the limits of status quo brains for their entertainments.

And then I opened this comic book to the first page and, by golly, even at 53, I have discovered I can spontaneously ejaculate!

Enough about my literary inclinations; here's some man nipples and a mention of my ejaculate!

I'm not one of those people who desperately need to figure out if somebody is trans or not; accepting a person as they present themselves is (and should be!) the be all and end all of how we interact with each other. But (oh no! He said but!), that being said, Lex Luthor is a fictional comic book character (whom I should be able to speculate on wildly) who just had his mind transplanted inside a cloned body. Lex presents himself as male because that's what he is. My hypothesis is that the clone his brain was put into was female that has had top surgery (and possibly bottom surgery but that's not my fucking business. Besides, he's fucking a mass of shifting, sexless cells, so he can basically be packing anything down there and Supergirl can just make whatever genitals will most please Lex (even a toaster, I guess?)) and is taking hormones to maintain his presented masculine traits. Why would I even consider this? Well, the luscious nipples and fabulous hair were my first clue but men often have amazing nipples and hair as well so it didn't have me wondering at all. Wondering about my sexuality, sure! But not about Lex's gender. What made me suspect Luthor's brain was placed inside a woman's body was this:

Look at those dainty feet! And the limberness!

I'm more than certain that Dan Jurgens can draw feet reasonably well so this has to be purposeful! And those delicate, scrumptious feet aren't a mistake because they exist in more than one panel.

They're so cute and delicate!

Sure, maybe Lex just has tiny feet. Maybe Dan Jurgens was having a weird foot day. But it's also possible Lex Luthor II's brain was placed in a female body. Or a cloned body drawn by Rob Liefeld.

Even weirder than Lex's miniscule little lady feet though is Lois's choice of outfit.

Is this Lois Lane or David Byrne?

Lois has dropped by to tell Lex that Cadmus has Superman's body, as if he didn't already know. He acts as if he didn't already know but that's because he's a manipulative little prick who can never give the slightest hint about his hand to anybody at the poker table. Lois, also a manipulative little bitch, pretends she's going to publish a story about it but she really just wants Lex Luthor to destroy Cadmus. She's afraid printing the story would kill one or both of the Kents. Ha ha! If only she knew her previous story has already done that!

I don't know whose toes I'd suck first!

Pa Kent doesn't die which is probably good because I laughed at him face down on the cover of Superman The Man of Steel #21 so many times that people might suspect I'd feel bad. I can't have people suspecting things that aren't possible so I'm glad Jonathan has pulled through. Although it was weird that Pa didn't respond to any of the medical treatment for his cardiac arrest until they ripped his shirt open to expose his old man nipples and then he jolted awake with a "Clark!" That's just an observation. I'm not suggesting anything untoward or kinky.

Later in the women's locker room at LexCorps, Sasha, the martial arts trainer from earlier who knocked Lex off his tiny feet, has a mysterious encounter with a mysterious person who can't be Lex Luthor because Dan Jurgens totally sets it up to be Lex Luthor.

You can tell I really wanted to concentrate on the dialogue in this encounter because I left out the previous panel where Sasha is topless.

No men around LexCorps? So, like, if Lex had to clone a body for his brain, it would probably have to be female? And, if this is Lex, just like a villainous piece of shit Republican, he's all, "Being that I'm a male brain inside a female body, I have a right to be in either changing room and I'm going to use that fact for nefarious purposes! Ah ha ha ha ha!" But that's just dumb speculation because this obviously isn't Lex killing Sasha. This murderer being revealed as Lex has as much chance as the island on Lost having been purgatory!

Oh, what the hell! Here's Sasha's tits!

Also, Lex admits to killing Sasha before the end of the comic book so I guess the island in Lost was purgatory! I mean, at least until the writers decided it wasn't because too many people guessed that it was. Just like when everybody guessed Monarch was Captain Atom so DC decided Monarch was actually Hawk! So dumb!

Also also, Pa dies at the end. And it's way less funny than when he died in the field on that cover. Ha ha! That looked so silly!

Also also also, Supergirl retrieves Superman's body and she, Lex, and Lois return him to his crypt inside a new coffin, probably created by Lex to suck out the last of Supe's powers or some other weird shit.

Also also also also, some good news: I don't think I have any more Superman comic books to read! Yay! The bad news? I'm going to be reading more Gerard Jones' comic books soon. Boo! Hiss! Just to clarify, I'm booing and hissing because he's a convicted sex pest and not because he's a terrible writer. His comics are always top notch! Now if I were booing and hissing about Scott Lobdell, it would be because his writing was terrible and not because he's been convicted of being a sex pest. I'm not saying he is one! But I'm also saying you can't prove a negative. So, you know. Shrug!

Superman #77 Rating: C. So, in the end, Superman died forever and we never saw the likes of him again. At least for about seven months or so. During those months, I bought a lot of Magic the Gathering cards to salve my emotional turmoil and often wept for my poor nephew's non-Superman future! So sad! Then when Superman returned, my main reaction was, "Thank God they didn't bring Jason Todd back! I hope he stays dead forever!" But you know how that ended too: me buying even more Magic the Gathering cards to salve my emotional turmoil and constantly weeping for my poor nephew's non-non-Jason Todd future. Stupid Judd Winick!

Superman #76 (February 1993)

I do not like this cover but I can't explain why.

It's times like these when I wish I'd done more work throughout my life coming to terms with my emotions and exploring my feelings more deeply because then maybe I'd know why this cover depresses the shit out of me. Don't get me wrong! I know it's not the sentiment that's depressing me! I'm not a pussy and nobody has the right to bully me and call me a pussy because I'm an adult and not in junior high anymore so don't even think the cover made me feel actual emotions like a junior high school kid who deserves to get thrown in a trash can after school as he scuttles from wall to wall trying not to be seen. It depresses me because it's, like, bad. But I don't know why. If only I were as good at expressing things as David Foster Wallace who might be one of the first novelists I've read in my fifty plus years of reading who makes me see exactly what he's describing and in a way where he's not even trying or smacking you in the face with your own science textbook while trying to find the stankiest trash can in the quad. But then again, look at what happened to Wallace! He hung himself from his back deck! Is that what happens to people who have looked inward so deeply that they can easily express their perceptions and feelings of the world in such a casual and illuminating way? No thanks! I don't even have a back deck! What am I going to do? Hang myself off the rickety stairs leading up to my front door? They barely hold me while I'm carefully ascending or descending them! They'll definitely collapse in a spray of splinters, moss, and probably termites if I drop my fat, pussy, still-not-over-Pig body from the bannister!

I've never been to a Funeral for a Friend before. Not that friends of mine haven't died. I've just never been to a friend's funeral for complex reasons that probably have nothing at all to do with the way I've called my feelings pussies and shoved into mind trash cans. I have been to family funerals though and let me tell you, those are not a good time. Are they supposed to be a good time? At my grandmother's funeral, one of her sister's kids got up to speak and all she kept talking about was how she hounded my grandmother on her death bed about Jesus and making sure that Ann, my grandmother, had accepted Jesus before she died and then happily declaring before everybody gathered that my scared, dying grandmother who was probably sick of being browbeaten by this Jesus lover had finally accepted Jesus as her lord and savior before dying and how that was supposed to make us all feel better. I should have gotten up and rescinded all of that with actual facts about my grandmother, like how she distanced herself from the church because she couldn't understand the casual antisemitism, as if she was supposed to just go along with everybody else's hatred of Jewish people because of the historical fact that Jesus was crucified by, well, you know, his own people? I mean, who else would have crucified him? Oh, sure, the Romans did but as a Catholic, you can't go around hating Romans because they crucified Jesus! Plus that one guy washed his hands of it or something so that probably explains why the Romans couldn't be blamed, right? It was also at my grandmother's funeral where the priest presiding over the ceremony (is a funeral a ceremony?) didn't know shit about my grandmother so began with, "I Googled Ann's name to see what her name meant," and then went on as if he knew her because he now knew that Ann meant, I don't know, merciful or something. Fuck that guy and fuck Connie. I think it was Connie who said the Jesus stuff. Fuck if I can remember my 2nd cousins!

The saddest funeral I have ever been to was my grandfather's funeral because his little brother, the last living one of my grandfather's siblings, was sitting at the viewing in the front weeping and there wasn't a trash can in sight so I couldn't do anything about it. Actually, what I did about it was go up front, sit by him, put my arm around him, and cried with him. I would use my grandfather's brother's name here but I don't know how to fucking spell it! Melio, maybe? I don't know! I only ever just said it growing up! In that moment, I might have been sadder than Pig made me. But definitely not sadder than the end of Guardians of the Galaxy just a week after my cat and soulmate and familiar and best friend had died, my boy whom I often called my Raccoon Boy. And then when Rocket is so sad and needs to be comforted and I'm crying now but I didn't cry in the theater and it wasn't until we left Laurelhurst and we crossed the street on the way back to the car and I just fucking exploded and was weeping and wailing and I scared the absolute shit out of the Non-Certified Spouse because I'm not generally such a pussy.

If you haven't understood by now that I'm mocking the idea of calling people who feel emotions a pussy than maybe you shouldn't read anymore of my stuff. Or just throw me in a trash can, I guess.

Oh, I also think my mom punched my sister at my grandmother's funeral but fuck if I know for sure because I generally just try to stay out of their shit. I think my grandmother might have died in the same room as them while they were screaming at each other and they may have blamed each other for my grandmother basically "Noping" out of their fucking shit way grander than I've ever managed.

Everybody is here? This is everybody?! What the fuck?

Supergirl had way more people at her funeral. Is that because she was more popular than Superman or did Crisis on Infinite Earths actually decimate that much of the DC Universe?! It's actually kind of sad that so few heroes managed to make it to this memorial. My favorite part of this panel is Aquaman's legs sticking out from under the Daily Planet logo. If I saw Aquaman trying to hide from the rain, I might think twice about standing in it. How fucked up is this rain if Aquaman — who's only known for two big things: loving water and molesting fish — won't let it touch him?

The second page destroys my whole Aquaman theory almost immediately because this comic book is like comic book fans on the Internet: neither one wants to see me have fun.

Here's Aquaman saying the most boring and expected thing. No wonder everybody hates him and the people who don't hate him are lying because they secretly hate them but have decided being a contrarian is the meat of their personality.

Can you imagine having the Wisdom of Solomon and yet everybody still argues with you and questions your opinions? It's kind of how like my friend Bob who always said I was the smartest person he knew grew up to be a huge Christian and devout Trumper (mostly because he was blown up in Iraq and found solace in the unthinking, virtue-signaling lifestyle of "patriotic Christians") ignoring me now as an adult every time I tried to point out how the man he seemed to worship was actually a huge know-nothing ignorant moronic demagogue. Captain Marvel's situation is exactly like that! Not that I'm claiming to be the smartest person! I'm just claiming that the guy whom I once dared to eat tape who then complained after eating it that it was "stuck in his throat" and I was all "of course it is; it's tape!" thought I was smarter than he was. That's not a huge bar to leap is what I mean.

While the heroes gather on top of the Daily Planet to remember their friend while people down below think, "Why are they gathering at the Daily Planet to honor Superman? What's Superman's connection to the Daily Planet? Maybe Superman worked there in his secret identity?!", the coolest kid in the world has traveled to Metropolis to apologize to whomever he can because he thinks it's his fault that Superman died. Why? Did this skateboarding, heavy metal loving, mom bitching at, school hating, long-haired lover create Doomsday? Was this kid so cool that he jerked off on a rock and the rock got pregnant and it gave birth to Doomsday?! Am I even close to figuring out Doomsday's origin here?

The coolest kid in the world travels to Metropolis for a press conference called by a woman who wants to report that she was Superman's wife!

Wait. So that woman is Mrs. Superman? I'm confused. Also, did I miss the issue where Lois's head was transplanted onto the frame of an ex-football player?

Is what Lois doing here an example of dramatic irony? If so, it's not as good as that moment in Les Misérables where the innkeeper is scavenging the dead after the battle and he's all, "God in His heaven, he don't interfere. Because he's as dead as these stiffs at my feet!" Except we, the audience, know Marius, the stiff he's currently stealing the watch off of, isn't dead at all! I'm an atheist because however the universe came into being, it definitely wasn't some magic creature made in our image but that's still an awesome line because I love literature and musicals and the human mind and feeling feelings and philosophy and Sailor Moon and all of those other things that caused me to see the inside of several trash cans over my lifetime.

The coolest kid in the world runs into the lamest kid in the world (Jimmy Olsen) and they decided to go get something to eat at Bibbo's Bar and talk about Superman and, I'm guessing, possible blow jobs in the back room. Jimmy Olsen is gay, right? Isn't that why he became the Elastic Lad? Wasn't that an allegory of being "not straight"? Especially since he became Elastic Lad whenever he drank semen.

What's that? It was a serum and not semen? Are you sure? I'm pretty sure it was semen.

Later at Clark Kent's apartment, the "How Do We Convince the World Clark Kent is Dead Without a Body Gang" meet to discuss options.

My guess is the plan will be "Call Batman and have him figure it out."

The heroes have not gathered in Metropolis for a wake; they've come to answer letters sent to Superman every Christmas by kids who understand writing to Santa Claus is a huge waste of time. Apparently the main Post Office in Metropolis has a huge room devoted merely to storing letters to Superman, mostly because Superman only reads them once a year on Christmas Eve. Presumably these aren't just Christmas letters though and they build up all year and the employees at the post office fucking hate Superman. You can tell because they just toss the letters on the floor.

Why is Guy here? Can he even read?

Guy cynically assumes that every letter is going to ask for something and Wonder Woman is all, "Guy! Many unfortunate souls find themselves without hope or power to affect their situations. Superman realized he can't be a beacon of hope without helping those he's shone his light upon." Or some shit. But then Nightwing and Aquaman open up and read the first two letters and Guy is all, "In your face, Wonder Woman!"

Unfortunately, Guy reads a letter when a dying woman wants to once again see her son estranged for 30 years and Guy is all, "Fuck! Why couldn't I get the space debris kid?!"

The rest of the issue is a montage of the heroes doing good things for people to prove they're actually heroes and not just authoritarian fascists who beat the shit out jay walkers and shoplifters. Plus Wonder Woman helps get the cool kid's dad back in the picture and Flash and Green Lantern rebuild their house. My brain tells me this is an uplifting story but my heart has been yawning for the last ten minutes. Is this what a World Without A Superman is like? Super boring?!

The only exciting part of the issue is the end when we see Cadmus has decided to get into graverobbing to steal Superman's body. Christ, that Westfield is super horny for dead aliens.

Superman #76 Rating: C. My favorite part of this comic is the bit that wasn't expressly stated. In the montage part where all the heroes are helping out and answering letters to Superman and just generally doing good work, Batman is nowhere to be seen. Of course he wouldn't waste his time with this sentimental bullshit! Mostly because his whole thing is based on sentimental bullshit and also insanity. You can't be a grown man running around in kid pajamas trying to end crime because you're super sad about the death of your parents and think people are going to see it as grim and dark when it's just sad and sentimental and fucking insane. I swear to God Alfred might be the worst character in the entire DC Universe. How many years did he simply not get poor Bruce some therapy?! Did he have too much British stiff upper lip to allow Bruce to work through his feelings in an appropriate manner?! With therapy, Bruce might have been able to see his life more clearly and understand that he isn't stopping the death of somebody else's parents by donning the mask; he's actually causing more kids to lose their parents when he breaks all their limbs because they were so desperate in their poverty to work for The Joker or The Riddler or The Penguin and then almost certainly died of shock and sepsis later after Batman had long stopped thinking about them and then, technically, could go on believing he doesn't kill. Although after watching The Sopranos, I suspect therapy wouldn't have necessarily stopped the violence.

Superman #74 (December 1992)

Concentrating all their firepower on his crotch? No wonder this fucker killed Superman!

I used the word "crotch" for Doomsday's naughty place because nobody actually knows what's going on down there. Does Doomsday even have genitalia? If so, is it more sensitive than the rest of his body? Is it just a huge bone spur? Maybe it takes the strength of somebody like Superman for Doomsday to feel anything down below and he's getting off on finally feeling something in his sexy spot. It's like how I imagine Lois Lane has to wear a Kryptonite retainer when she's blowing Superman just so he feels something. Plus the Kryptonite makes it so that when he comes in her mouth, he doesn't blow her head off of her neck. I bet Superman has a sex room in the Fortress of Solitude where the sexy lighting is just a miniature red sun. I'm assuming that most invulnerable superheroes have a nervous system to match so that they don't feel the pain of every super-powered punch to their invulnerable and undamaged face. That makes the most sense and the main evidence is when Superman gets hit super-duper duper-super hard, he usually says something like, "Whoa! I actually felt that!" Which means he definitely isn't feeling anything when Lois slides a finger up his butthole. I mean, as if she could slide a finger up there! She'd need a nuclear powered jackhammer to untighten that sphincter.

I was going to start reading these comics straight through before writing about them to speed up the process but I've found it's not possible. Because I begin reading and then I stumble upon some action or image that I just have to comment on. Like this:

Maxima's an alien from Almerac so it would be ignorant of me to assume that her crotch shouldn't hang down that far.

Ice convinces Maxima to take Blue Beetle to the hospital instead of stopping Doomsday from killing hundreds of more people on his rampage toward Metropolis. Ice assures Maxima that she'll stop Doomsday herself and Maxima somehow doesn't shit her intestines out of her asshole laughing. I suppose in comic book terms, there's not much difference between Maxima trying to stop Doomsday and Ice trying to stop Doomsday. We, the reader, know he's bound to kill Superman so why would any of us believe Maxima's mind forcefields would work to contain Doomsday any better than Ice's ice cubes? Maybe Doomsday's weakness is cold and he's immune to mind powers because he's just a mindless killing machine. Maxima carries Blue Beetle off while everybody else lies around dying, I guess?

You should realize you're not much of a superhero when you're the only one lying around unconscious who anybody is actually worried about.

While Maxima runs off with Blue Beetle and her huge crotch, Ice follows Doomsday's trail of disaster in the hopes that she'll stop him. She really is the most optimistic hero on the team. I also want to call her perky but that might be because I can't stop thinking about her breasts hanging out from under her quarter-top. The underboob costume might be the sexiest super hero costume of the '90s and it's on what often feels like the most prudishly written character. Maybe that's also why she's so sexy! Also maybe she's sexy because I know she gets to look at Guy Gardner's hog. Fucking lucky.

While on the trail of Doomsday (and Booster, I guess? Apparently he's still battling him), Ice comes upon the coolest kid in the world.

Skateboarding without a helmet while also chewing gum?! Fuck yeah!

This kid whose home life sucks who also thinks school sucks but proclaims he loves Fridays because he's the most boring cool guy of the '90s wears a "Meta Death" t-shirt. The shirt alone proves why Artificial Intelligence sucks. Because if AI came up with that shirt (assuming it somehow figured out how to do actual writing because the prompt was so fucking laborious you might as well have drawn the stupid picture yourself anyway, you talentless prick (Who am I insulting?! I guess everybody who uses AI!)), I wouldn't give a shit. But knowing that an actual person was all, "What's a good fake metal band name that sort of sounds like an actual metal band name? Metal Death? No! I know! META DEATH!" Hmm, now that I typed that out, maybe the kid's shirt was actually supposed to say "Metal Death" but the "L" was hidden by his jacket. Also maybe this is where Scott Snyder got the idea for the Meta-Gene actually being the "FUCK YEAH METAL GENE!"

Also this kid isn't the coolest kid in the world at all! I was duped!

He's the biggest dick in the world! I bet he listens to Joe Rogan and has framed pictures of Jordan Peterson in his locker at school. When he called his home a "war zone", he meant the zone where he conducts war against his mother who obviously cares about him (more evidence of her love appears in some non-scanned panels I didn't have room for because we've got a really juicy one of Ice's crotch coming up!). Calling his home a war zone was also foreshadowing for Doomsday bringing his war and Ice's crotch to this kid's kitchen.

Well, she almost stopped him!

Doomsday smashes up the family's car and Meta Death is all, "That guy rocks harder than Axl Rose shitting into a tube attached to Robert Plant's asshole!" I disagree with that because now that I've typed it, I kind of want to see a comic book splash page of that. Maybe even a video. Are Plant and Rose down on their luck right now? Could we get a GoFundMe together for them contingent on filming the shitting into each other's anuses video? The video could be called "Fertilizing the Garden"! Maybe have a hot woman in an Alice in Wonderland get-up holding the tube and saying things like, "Curiouser and curiouser!" Also you'd be able to see her nipples poking through her top. What's the woman from the Blues Traveler video, "Runaround", doing? She's probably still hot, right? I'm sure I'd think so because I seem to like the way women I've had crushes on my whole life are aging with me. Winona Ryder. Christina Applegate. Stacie Mistysyn.

Anyway, Booster Gold tosses a tube full of shit into the bushes as he and Superman arrive on the scene from whatever the fuck they were doing while Doomsday was throwing Ice through the wall. Meta Death's mom is all, "That Superman easily took a punch from the fat guy in the body bag!" And Meta Death is all, "Who cares? Superman sucks. He's a bigger potato than that Ross from Friends."

Do we ever find out Doomsday's real name? Or did Booster just happen to guess it correctly? Or maybe Skeets fed him the information from the future?

Doomsday kicks Superman through Meta Death's "war zone", completely collapsing it. Superman is all, "Unbelievable! I don't know if I've ever been hit that hard!" Well, you still haven't, Supes, because he kicked you. Is that me being too pedantic just to be a dick? Probably. Remember, I'm the idiot who immediately thought Meta Death was super cool when he was obviously, on a quick re-assessment, the worst person in the world.

While Superman catches his breath, Doomsday decides to kill Booster Gold and Ice.

I know he's not really dead. Stupid force field saved his stupid spud butt.


What a dumb spud! Just lying on the counter waiting to get her back broken!

Just before Doomsday kills the mom and her baby, Superman begins wailing on Doomsday with his fists. He could have grabbed him by one of his loose pipes and dragged him into space but he's probably still reeling from that kid calling him a spud. What a classic insult!

The rest of the Justice League arrive to re-enact the cover where they're all shooting him in the crotch but it doesn't help. All it does is free up Doomsday's other arm and destroy some of the body bag he's wearing so that eager readers can finally get a look at his face! And his left nipple!

I would have made his nipple a bone spur.

Do all sentient beings in the DC Universe have nipples? Seems a bit far-fetched. Or maybe it's far-fetched to expect them to have only two nipples. Doomsday's upper torso should be riddled with nipples and bone spurs. At least I know they'll never show what's going on between his legs so I'm free to imagine it's either a massive bone spur or a clanking, crashing clam-like opening full of teeth and razors. You know, depending on his gender. I shouldn't presume to understand his alien anatomy. For all I know, he's just got a second, smaller face down there.

Doomsday continues to beat the shit out of Booster Gold so hard and with such specific moves that I think I've figured out where he's from.

Doomsday's from Philadelphia, isn't he?

No alien from another world is going to drag some chump over to a car that he shouldn't recognize just to slam his head in the door. This guy's definitely from Philly. Maybe Boston.

For a creature who's faster than The Flash (I'm not buying it) and strong enough to surprise Superman, there's no way Booster Gold's head wouldn't have just come completely off when slammed in the car door. Maybe his goggles offered just enough protection to keep his head barely on his body.

The house explodes just as the mother mentions a gas line which keeps me from writing three paragraphs about why the house exploded just because Superman crashed through it. The family is caught in the middle of the fire but Superman gives chase to Doomsday who has decided he's hurt enough people here. Superman hears the kid calling but realizes he can't go back to help; he needs to stop Doomsday before he can kill more people. Also that kid called him a spud; does he expect Superman to give a shit about him or his family now? Fuck that kid!

Superman #74 Rating: B. I probably could have given this comic book an A because I did enjoy it. But then Booster Gold said Doomsday was faster than The Flash and even my ability to process and accept comic book logic couldn't make that statement compute. I suppose I could give Booster the benefit of the doubt and say he had such a massive head injury by the time he yelled that that he wasn't processing reality too accurately. But I don't give benefits of the doubt which is why writers like Cullen Bunn and Mark Millar despise me! Which is sad because all I ever wanted was my father's love. I mean the love of writers who remind me of my father.

I mean the love of people who were formerly the world's youngest hypnotist!