DC Comics Presents #53: Superman in the House of Mystery (January 1983)

Aside from Superman and Cain, this cover looks like something I once drew in 1st Grade that wound up in a local art exhibit at the Triton Museum.

I've discussed this fabled art gallery work of mine before but I don't think I've ever posted a picture of it. That's because it's huge and I can't scan it. I would take a photo of it and then post it but after sitting on top of my bookcase for years, I finally packed it away somewhere and I don't remember where. So you'll just have to take my word for it that it was as awesome as this cover.

The inker on this issue is Tony DeZuniga, co-creator of Jonah Hex. He's got a lot more to his bio that's possibly more important to other people but the only thing I care about is his help in creating the best character in the DC Universe after Etrigan and Lobo. Don't assume those will be my top three character picks any other time than the immediate present as I write this because I'm sure tomorrow I'll remember Ambush Bug and 2-6-8-1-7-9-5. But right at this moment, I can only remember Lobo, Etrigan, and Jonah Hex.

The story begins on Halloween night and, I'm assuming, ends in the arrest of Cain and his name added to a registry.

"*CH* This is dispatch. There's a man in a brown suit hiding in a tree at 54 Elm Street watching lone children as they trick or treat. Can we get ten squad cars out there? Over and out. *CH*"

I don't think I'd be as creeped out if Cain were just standing behind the tree. But the way he's forced himself into the crook of the branches to kneel in the tree so close to the ground that his head would be higher if he were merely standing by it makes me positive that he's up to no good. And by "up to no good", I mean "pedophilia". But then again, he's got the Mark of Cain so nobody can harm him. After living for thousands of years with no serious repercussions to any of your actions, you probably become a wicked, sordid little tree pervert. Thanks a lot, God! "What's a good punishment for the first murderer to deter others from murdering?" You asked Yourself. "Maybe cursing the murderer with the inability to be harmed by anybody while he wanders the world forever!" You answered Yourself. How do people justify believing in You?!

The kid without any friends whose parents don't give a shit about rings the doorbell of some old lady who thinks she's funny.

The emergency was Little Ricky just realized he could buy beer.

Dan Mishkin doesn't waste anybody's time trying to make the reader wonder what the fuck is going on. On the same page where Little Ricky's pubes grow out, the shadow of Mr. Mxyzptlk can be seen hovering over the yard. I wonder how the House of Mystery will help Superman get Mxy to say his name backwards?

At the same time, Lois Lane throws a "Come As Somebody Famous" costume party. Over half the guests, including Clark, decided "famous" meant "super hero." There's a Wonder Girl and a Supergirl and a Flash and a Wonder Woman and Clark came as Green Lantern. Jimmy Olsen has come as Thor but I don't think that counts in this situation. Steve Lombard, the sportscaster and Lois Lane pussy chaser, came as Hercules so he could bully everybody else at the party. Nobody came as the wife and children he murdered. Not Steve! Hercules!

Before Steve Lombard can completely humiliate Clark in front of Lois, Superman crashes through the window!

I opted for buying beer as Ricky's sudden emergency over banging Lois because that seemed weird. Dan Mishkin felt differently.

For once, Lois insists on Superman telling her why he needs to save her life instead of implicitly trusting him. Clark tries to figure out who this imposter is by using his x-ray vision. Writers really loved his x-ray vision in the '80s, didn't they? Probably in the '60s and '70s too! Before Superman can take Lois against her will, Mxyzptlk turns Jimmy Olsen into the actual Thor.

And so Jimmy lost all of his family money when Marvel sued the shit out of him.

Jimmy's change into Thor causes lunkhead Steve Lombard to suspect that the Superman who just flew Lois out the window isn't really Superman but a magical duplicate. He may be right but he's only right because only an idiot would make a leap in logic that terrible. Clark uses his heat vision to make his fake Green Lantern ring glow so that it looks like he's been turned into the actual Green Lantern as well. You'd think it would melt but then you're probably young and don't remember a time when toys were actually made out of diecast metal instead of cheap plastic. Steve suggests Clark use the ring to go after the obviously fake Superman and Clark's all, "Okay! I'll try! But I'll probably fuck it up because I'm such a timid, stupid klutz!" Then he flies out the window after Ricky and Lois.

How did Ricky even know where Lois Lane lived? How did he know, as Superman, he should go grab her? Does Lois get into so much trouble in Metropolis and need saving by Superman so often that even little Ricky knows they're probably fucking? I'm sure Myxzptlk put all of that information into Ricky's head just to cause chaos for Superman.

Ricky flies Lois to the House of Mystery where Cain sits around telling stories to all the children he captured while hiding in trees on various Halloweens. Mr. Mxyzptlk shows up as well to tell everybody that he's planning a big Halloween trick on Superman and he needs all of their help. All the kids eagerly go along because Superman is a total square. Cain and Lois have no ability to stop the imp before he turns all of the kids into realistic versions of their Halloween costumes: ghosts, vampires, werewolves, witches, and, being the '80s, probably a few tramps, gypsies, and cheerleaders.

Superman uses his super-smelling power to trace Lois to the House of Mystery.

Lois thought Ricky was the actual Superman which is why she flooded her undergarments with her distinctive love lube.

The House speaks to Superman as he arrives, telling him that Lois is indeed inside and that if he doesn't find her in one hour, she'll be trapped in the House forever! Superman, having never heard of the House of Mystery, figures finding her will be a piece of cake. One hour to search every room in one house? He could do that in 30 seconds! But he begins to suspect it might not be so easy when his x-ray vision doesn't work and when a tentacled monster tries to eat him in the first room he searches. I would have said it tries to fuck him but I'm trying to write a little classier after I had to type "Lois's love lube."

While searching the house, Superman kills a kid by carelessly using his super powers.

To hide his crime, Supes carries the kid into the previous room and feeds it to the tentacle monster.

Superman goes through a few more trials before he utterly fails to find Lois. That's when Mr. Mxyzptlk reveals himself and Superman is all, "Oh man! You sure got me good! What a great prank, Mxy!" And Cain is all, "But dude! He just killed your girlfriend!" And Supes is all, "No he didn't. He doesn't kill. He just loves to be a gigantic pain in my ass." Which is when Mr. Mxyzptlk reveals to everybody how to send him back to the 5th Dimension by pointing out that Superman won't get him to say his name backwards so he's stuck with him forever this time. But Little Ricky comes up with a plan! Superman helped him get laid for the first time this Halloween night so he wants to repay him. Cain's been getting Mxy's name wrong all night and every time, Mxy says, "My name isn't X, it's Mxyzptlk!" So Billy is all, "Hey, Cain! Call him by his name backwards and he'll wind up saying it!" And Cain somehow knows how to say "Mxyzptlk" backwards off the cuff which is more impressive than anything Superman did this entire comic!

Lois is only just realizing she fucked a little kid.

DC Comics Presents #53: Superman in the House of Mystery Rating: B. A decent Mxyzptlk comic with a nice, though short, visit to the House of Mystery. I don't know why so many kids in Halloween costumes have become trapped in the House of Mystery unless Cain really is hiding up trees and ambushing lone trick or treaters just to have people to tell stories to. I didn't mention the Atari Force insert because "ATARI" in the comic book means "Atari Technology And Research Institute". Which means it means "Atari Technology And Research Institute Technology And Research Institute". Which means it means "Atari Technology and Research Institute Technology And Research Institute Technology And Research Institute". Which means it means you get the point. Plus the comics were packaged with Atari 2600 game cartridges. I don't think I ever owned any because most of my Atari cartridges were just the chips which I had to stick into a green chip holder which you plugged into the machine because my mother liberated them from her job at Signetics. I don't think she stole them; I think they just sometimes got stuck to her clothing and she accidentally brought them home.

By the way, if anybody bought a sandalwood box full of 2600 chips at a garage sale in Santa Clara, I want my fucking Atari games back. My mom had no right to sell them to you!

DC Comics Presents #58: Superman and Robin the Teen Wonder and the Elongated Man (June 1983)

I've never seen the phrase "triple-threat" used so incorrectly.

Gil Kane drew the cover of this issue just in case you were wondering, like me, "Who decided to draw Ralph Dibny like a fancy boy desperate to play with the older, more rough and tumble boys?" If you were thinking that like I was, were you also thinking this (like I was!): "I wonder where on Ralph's spiraling torso his balls are?"

What I'm trying to ask is, "Are you like me? Or am I desperately alone in this cold and uncaring universe?" I used to think the universe was described as cold and uncaring because rocks and space and the majority of things in the universe are cold and uncaring. Stars, if I'm doing the pretend math in my head correctly (it's pretend because making up numbers by pure guessing isn't actually math), make up just 0.000000000000000003% of the universe. So it's cold! And it's uncaring only because we, as sentient beings, love to project our own sentience onto every other thing in the universe, like stars and Ralph Dibny's balls. And right up until the last decade or so, I would have characterized the universe differently because we live among other sentient creatures who are often warm and caring. But then I learned most of them are not those things at all and they're more like asteroids and infinite expanses of cold vacuum and the majority of planets. They're also like the end of most living creatures where the defecation happens. Why do you think so many people are so cold and uncaring? It's probably because they've never read a book or enjoyed poetry or experienced and connected with another sentient beings most intimate artistic creation. They're just superficial dickfucks who have only ever pursued sex, money, and power. Man, those people suck so much I can't even think of an artistic way to express how much I think they suck. All I can do is envision a dirty, hairy ape squatting over a Van Gogh and spraying a terribly soft shit across it. That's what I see when I see those kinds of people. Sadly, those kinds of people now make up 99.999999999999999997% of all sentient beings in the universe.

Hopefully this comic book will make me feel better about the living wet shits populating the world around me because it's about Superman, Robin, and Elongated Man! They're like three of the most upbeat personalities in the DC Universe! If they can't make me see the wonder and joy of existence, my next comic book might as well be a loaded gun!

I don't know what their original crime was but they just asked a teenaged boy to touch them.

It's good to see Batman has taught Robin to kick his adversaries directly in the dick. Superman, on the other hand, goes straight for the heart. Probably to make their heart go into arrhythmia so the criminal panics and thinks they're having a heart attack as opposed to actually stopping their heart and killing them. Do you think Superman uses his x-ray vision to make sure a normal human being doesn't have any heart problems before he punches them in the heart unlike Batman who just shrugs and thinks, "If they didn't want to get punched into a heart attack, they shouldn't have decided to be poor and desperate and turn to crime. I didn't kill them; poor health and life decisions killed them."

Dibny just punches the guy in the heart because he's copying Superman. Sue loves when Ralph pretends to be Superman in the bedroom so he's learning as much as he can on this adventure. Mostly Sue loves Ralph pretending to be Superman because Superman doesn't have stretching powers and it forces Ralph to not do weird shit during sex, like putting his nose up her asshole while they kiss.

The issue begins with a dad abusing his son.

I'll only forgive this father if he thinks he's taking his kid to see a sex show and/or elephants shitting.

Turns out I can't forgive the father because he believes a "real show" is comprised of clowns, lions, and monkeys. I suppose that line-up doesn't rule out a terrific show but I highly doubt this circus feeds clowns to the lions while the monkeys throw shit at the audience. If that was the show the dad was talking about, he and his son are about to be sorely disappointed as it turns out the Elongated Man and Robin have taken over the circus for a charity event. It's either for Retired Circus Performers or Circus Kids with PTSD from Seeing Their Parents Murdered During a Performance.

The performance is disturbing enough that I'm not willing to scan any of the panels lest I be accused of running an erotic site for NAMBLA members. Just know that Robin swings from and bounces all over Ralph's body while Ralph grins disturbingly.

"Why can't my boy share my enthusiasm for my erotic club that somehow isn't explicitly illegal?"

For some reason, Clark Kent covers the circus's charity event as the anchorman for WGBS news. Maybe he suspects Lex Luthor's behind the event trying to fund some anti-Superman waste of everybody's time. I often comment how Batman could use therapy but never mention Lex's dire need for it. That's probably because he's an evil super villain and everybody simply assumes that all evil super villains could use therapy. But specifically Lex since he bases all of his schemes over destroying a made-up rival. I say "made-up" because you know Clark Kent doesn't spend any actual time thinking about Lex personally. And I don't mean that in a Don Draper in an elevator saying, "I don't think about you at all," kind of way because it's obvious all Don Draper does is think about his young up and coming competition. Clark would forget about Lex in a matter of minutes if Lex just stopped being a kryptonite pain in his ass.

What I can only assume are three men dressed as NAMBLA mascots interrupt Clark Kent's news report.

These are the guys who plead for Robin to touch them so I'm simply assuming they're with NAMBLA.

For the younger generations, "chump" was basically the "cunt" of the '50s. I know this comic book is from 1983 but it was written by a man born in 1952 and I'm assuming Mike W. Barr, being a comic book writer, suffers from some form of arrested development so he probably, at 30, still thought of "chump" as pretty rebellious.

Instead of punching Clark's stupid lights out, the NAMBLA mascots run right through him (because they're intangible). It's 1983 so that's probably not a crime although I'd say it's not just physical assault but sexual assault as well. If anybody ever actually gains the power to phase right through shit, I am stating right here and now that they do not have my consent to enter and pass through my body, no matter how much time it saves them getting to Point B.

There's an advert for Dungeons & Dragons in this comic book because they knew Satanists were really into comic books.

Look at this table full of nerds! I mean budding Satanists!

If I were a weird online incel weirdo, I'd probably scream about how woke this scene depicting kids playing role playing games was. But I'm actually an old person who was playing table top role playing games at the time this advert came out and our table was almost always 50% girls and 50% boys. Weird, hunh? Although by high school, our gaming group was exclusively boys but that's because women mature faster and the girls who used to play with us were out getting laid and going to parties while we were role playing doing those things with other guys.

Clark, being super smart, certainly realizes he should just step on this guy's feet to immobilize him since his feet must be tangible to be able to produce friction with the ground to propel himself forward!

Maybe Clark's even smarter than that and has decided, if this guy's intangible, how much chaos can he cause? Just let him run around not being able to touch anything until his little criminal mind gets tired and bored. What a stupid super power. Unless you're main goal is to completely aggravate your sibling on a road trip, not being able to touch somebody doesn't seem like it'll allow you to accomplish much.

The Intangibles rush through the side of the tent and begin scaring the horses pulling the cages containing the wild animals. A tiger gets loose and an elephant stampedes. So I guess they can cause chaos but to what end? To steal the proceeds from the charity event, one of them will have to become tangible long enough for Robin to get his head in a scissor lock with his crotch mashed against the guy's face. Then the father of the son who hates him will stand up and applaud and everybody around him will be all, "Why's he got that huge wet spot on the inseam of his pants?"

Robin takes out the tiger with sleeping gas while Ralph attempts to stop the elephant. But Superman gets there first.

I probably would have stopped it in one of the many other ways that wasn't "grab it by its dick."

Elongated Man doesn't seem too upset that Superman jerked off an elephant to save the day while Ralph humiliated himself by rubber banding his body around a bunch of posts for no reason.

The elephant wasn't upset either.

Superman's next move is to use his x-ray vision on the Intangibles which feels redundant and unscientific even if it isn't. Can x-ray vision help him see fog better? Not see in and through the fog better! But to help him see the fog better. How would his x-ray vision help when looking into an insubstantial person? I need these questions answered before I can continue to enjoy this comic book! It was fine when Superman pulled the elephant's penis and then the elephant grinned from flappy ear to flappy ear. That's understandable! But what use is using x-ray vision on an intangible person?!

But what did you expect it to reveal?! I'm beginning to see why Lex Luthor hates this stupid fucking jackass.

Superman does try to destroy the Intangible Man's foot with his heat vision which, as I pointed out earlier, was a good idea. But even that doesn't do anything. That must mean these Intangible men are simply projections of light with some super ventriloquism added! It's all a big illusion. Ralph Dibny wiggles his nose at them so he's probably beginning to suspect the truth. Robin hasn't been seen since he put the tigers to sleep and Superman beat off the elephant. I'm not suggesting Robin's doing anything untoward but if he reappears with tiger semen stains on his outfit, I won't be surprised.

Meanwhile, a tangible man in an intangible man's outfit fiddles with some doohickeys in a van nearby, recording all of Superman's attempts to use his super visions: x-ray, microscopic, telescopic, and heat. I guess it's common knowledge that he has those abilities because the guy's van's computer seems set up simply to tick off every time Superman uses one. Eventually Superman decides that throwing his "indestructible cape" over the intangible person should do the trick because he's the dumbest fucking asshole I've ever seen. God, no wonder Lex Luthor hates him. It's like when I see high school friends posting on Facebook and it makes me want to destroy them completely! Not just because they post the dumbest alt-reality shit but because they're so confident in their idiocy! No wonder these dumb jerks call so many people elitist. I guess if I were a stupid fuck who believed all the dumb shit in the world and somebody was all, "You're dumb," I'd think they were being elitist too! Nobody wants to do any rigorous self-examination just to come up with the realization that they're as stupid as everybody says they are.

A guy I knew back in the old neighborhood growing up posted recently, "But us conspiracy 'theorists' are nuts...crazy...out of our minds, right?!?!" He then followed his statement up with the craziest fucking video as evidence that his beliefs weren't crazy. I saw that post and instantly shaved my head and began wearing only purple and green outfits.

Seeing Superman fail with his cape, Robin decides maybe he'll have better luck than Superman at catching an uncatchable person.

Batman's not even here. Just call it a fucking rope, you kiss ass.

What do you think turns an ordinary rope into a Batrope? It must be made of bats, right?

After the Intangibles disappear, Superman, Robin, and Ralph try to figure out what just happened. Superman somehow gleans that they got him to use all of his vision powers but can't figure out how that could be meaningful. I figure it's so meaningless that if I were Superman the thought never even would have occurred to me! But he's hanging out with some great detectives so he's really trying to pull his weight here. Ralph realizes that the Intangibles didn't sink into the ground which doesn't make any sense because if they were intangible and didn't have any mass, why would they sink? Maybe he's just dumbing down the whole science of friction for Superman. It's easier to be all "How did their feet touch the ground if they weren't corporeal?" than to be all "How could they propel themselves forward if they had no surface area to push against the surface area of the ground?" See? Even I'm dumbing it down for Superman although mostly because I don't know how to realistically explain the science of movement and mass and insubstantiality! I think it has something to do with one of Newton's half-dozen laws.

Being that Superman and his detective friends won't be figuring out what happened any time soon, the comic book shifts to the perspective of the Intangible Men who explain everything as concisely as possible.

I don't understand the power of harnessing visual powers to somehow make his intangibility real but I do understand workers being taken advantage of by corporations! Go Frank!

Superman still has one vision power that the intangibles didn't get their grubby Hollywood mitts on: super-vision! I guess that vision allows him to see radiation and, luckily for Supers (unluckily for everybody at the circus that day), the Intangible projections left behind a whole mess of radiation! Does that explain how the projections could project through the walls of the circus tent? Or did the Intangibles set up projectors all over the circus in preparation for the event? That would be my guess because then Ralph and Dick's eventual realization that some Hollywood types were behind the chaos would make sense because they could have conducted interviews with the performers about any strange people they saw before the show which would have led them to discovering holographic projectors set up everywhere which would have led them to tracing the serial numbers on the projectors which would have given them the credit cards used to buy the equipment which would have led them to the business that purchased the equipment which would have led them to Frank's hideout in Hollywood. Instead, they figured it out like this:

Only a truly stupid deduction like this and the assumption that they must go to California to investigate could make me ignore filling this caption with sexual comments about the way Ralph's riding Robin and Superman.

Meanwhile in California which is where anybody who can do special effects lives, the Intangible Man decides to steal the third movie in a popular movie franchise. Usually that wouldn't be enough of a reason to whip out your cop gun and shoot the guy stealing the film but the director just told everybody, loudly and clearly, that he was carrying the only print of the film! Also I was just joking about that thing where a cop wouldn't shoot somebody for stealing a film. Fucking cops only know how to shoot shit. They can't actually solve crimes so they try to stop crime by showing repeatedly that they'll shoot anybody they want to. That's somehow supposed to make people feel safer. Usually it only makes racists feel safer because they assume cops won't shoot white people for no reason. But they're wrong. Cops will shoot anybody for no reason! They just can't get enough of it!

Now the Intangible Man will be charged with the murder of the two people the cop shot because District Attorneys are as corrupt as cops. They have to be or the cops won't testify for them!

See that? Somehow the harnessed powers of x-ray vision, telescopic vision, microscopic vision, and heat vision have come together to allow a man to be partly intangible and partly tangible at the same time! This comic book came out in 1984. Why haven't the kids who read this then and grew up to be scientists because of it invented this technology? I bet they have but the government covered it up. Or the tech industry disrupted it when some loser with no ideas but could charm the money out of rich idiots was all, "Forget intangibility. Don't you think people would rather be completely tangible for only a small monthly subscription fee?!"

The Intangibles somehow decide they're now worth 25 million dollars after stealing a film they can't release or sell because everybody knows it's been stolen and the slippers Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz (which, you know, also can't be sold since they were so publicly stolen by these idiots). But their goal doesn't seem to be making money; it just seems to be in possessing items worth the most money ever stolen by any gang ever. Apparently they're just playing Grand Theft Auto but in real life (real life in this comic book, I mean).

How does that help, Robin? Do you understand time zones at all?!

I'm glad to see Robin kneeling on Superman's back instead of straddling it. When I say that, I'm speaking of my brain. My penis isn't glad to see it at all. Also I'm assuming Robin is the 19 year old teen wonder because I wouldn't want it to be weird. Although it's already weird (and completely fantastical) that I'd be interested in a twink like Robin. Have you not read all of my Justice League America reviews? I'm obviously into Ice Maiden and her constant under boob shots.

Superman scans all the Hollywood studios with his super-vision looking for the radiation signature left behind at the circus until he finds it all over a small studio in the Hollywood hills.

Ew. There's only one thing I can think of that Robin's using as a seat belt.

Superman breaks through the wall of the studio with his invulnerable body and Robin's face. Surprised, Frank pulls a gun plugged into a computer on Superman. Superman's all, "Ha ha! Give it your best shot!" And Frank is all, "Pyu! Pyu!" And Superman is all, "Oh fuck! I've made a huge mistake!" Frank thought the gun would make Superman intangible but instead it just fucked up his eyesight a little bit. Superman acted like it was the end of the world but I guess when you're used to 20/20 vision, suddenly seeing everything distorted can be a really slight irritation. At the very least, it causes enough of a distraction for Frank to get away.

Except Frank doesn't try to get away. He just watches Superman stumble around while thinking, "Well! That takes care of that!" Ralph and Robin also don't try to subdue the guy with the gun. Instead they follow Superman as he stumbles around the room. Is nobody going to take any of this seriously?

Um. What's with the glove? What does he plan on doing to these two?

Superman flies up into the atmosphere while Robin tries to kick a known intangible person in the dick. Seriously. That's twice in one comic book where Robin immediately begins the fight by going for some guy's junk. Superman doesn't have a clear idea how he's going to fix his vision. Maybe getting close to the sun and super healing? Anyway, before he can deal with his eyesight, he happens upon a plane that's going to crash due to damage to one of its wings. But Superman, having learned a few things about erotic massage from dating Lana, quickly fixes the plane without any need from his fucked up eyes.

Oh yeah. That's the stuff!

Superman flies up near the sun to stare into it and cure his fucked up eyes. Don't ask me how long it takes for Superman to get to the sun and back for two main reasons: this is a comic book and I'm an idiot. The only numbers I can come up with are "at least 16 minutes" and "probably four months." Neither of those numbers seem great for Robin and Ralph's survival against the show-biz folks. I guess they're dead, especially since there's only like two pages left in this story. I imagine one page shows Ralph and Robin being murdered and the final page shows Superman crying over their beaten and bloodied bodies.

Robin stole that breeze line from Superman!

In case you thought I was exaggerating about Superman staring directly into the sun from a few feet away, that caption should convince you to trust everything I say in these blogs. Like how Superman pulled an elephant's dick until it came and Robin wrapped Ralph's dick around himself for safety reasons.

Superman shows up just in time to take the credit for catching these guys even though Robin and Ralph have it all sorted. Then Robin makes a bad pun and Superman says, "How does Batman stand you?" And then Superman and Ralph laugh while Robin cries.

DC Comics Presents #58: Superman and Robin the Teen Wonder and the Elongated Man Rating: C. It was pretty fucking stupid. But it was entertainingly stupid which, really, is all I ask for from a comic book. Unless it's written by a British writer from the 1980s and then I expect my mind to be blown. The best part about this issue was the next issue blurb!

Ambush Bug! I have that issue somewhere!

DC Comics Presents #97: Superman & The Final Chapter of The Phantom Zone Criminals (September 1986)

Superman's looking down at his cock. What's happening to it?!

Aside from Superman's cock, you might also be wondering what happened to issues #1-96. Well, I gave most of them away to a friend about twelve years ago. A couple of months ago, he gave me a few that he picked up somewhere and he thought I'd like. Well, hells yeah! I did previously own them, you know! DC Comics Presents (and notice, you pedantic twats, the title uses the term "DC Comics" which I'm completely okay with but some people think it's like saying PIN Number or ATM mouth (I know I've used that joke before! It's one of my favorites!)) was the first comic book series that I began collecting in a serious manner when I first began collecting comic books way back in '84 or '85 or whatever. Yes, the series did end quite soon after I started collecting. But the fun was in searching for back issues! The series was weird and varied enough that it kept my interest the entire time. Plus it had all of Ambush Bug's first appearances! I mean his first and subsequent appearances before he had his own mini-series (again, directed at the pedantic twats). I didn't give my whole collection to my friend; I kept some back for my collection. Like Issue #26 with the first appearance of Wolfman's Teen Titans insert. And the Swamp Thing issue written by Alan Moore. And all the Ambush Bug appearances! So I'll be reading those as I stumble upon them in my short boxes.

Not Particular Fun Fact: this is the first comic book I've reviewed written by Steve Gerber. Also the first one drawn by Rick Veitch! What a fucking team up! It's probably the only reason DC allowed a pre-Crisis story to worm its way back into their monthly books. Plus it was the last issue of the series. The editors were probably all, "Fuck it! We can't be bothered to care anymore! Print whatever script and art we already have lying around. Even if Superman is getting his dick sucked by ghost on the cover and Mr. Mxyzptlk becomes God! We're outta here!"

The issue begins by showing how well Jor-el sleeps at night now that he realizes Krypton is about to blow at any time.

I guess Kryptonians never invented Xanax.

That panel is Jor-el relaxing. As soon as he gets out of bed, he spirals into an existential crisis about he and Lara having brought their son Kal-el into a doomed world. His hands shake as he stares at his wife and drinks cup after cup of Folgers-el coffee. He's desperate to save his child and he knows of only one possible way: a theoretical other dimension! He's built a thing that, if the other dimension exists, it will transport things to that dimension. I don't know how you build a thing that opens a portal to another world when you're not even sure the other world exists yet. But, hey, this Krypton! And it's a comic book! And I'm probably supposed to be 11 years old when reading this so that it fires my imagination instead of 53 and so world weary that I'm not even sure wonder ever existed.

Why is Jor-el so concerned about his hands?

Jor-el's theory is correct but there's no way he can send his baby into that hellscape! Time to work on Plan B: Shoot My Baby Into Uncharted Space.

As Jor-el flits about the Phantom Zone feeling separate from his physical being, he senses another presence, a lone voice that can barely comprehend the idea of another mind. But it speaks English. I mean Kryptonian. Oh shit. Am I one of those guys now? Who can't just allow for easy communication between exponentially different species and races to facilitate the story being told because nobody needs to read five million sci-fi and fantasy stories that all spend five hundred pages establishing how the different beings can communicate with each other? No, of course I'm not! I'm just a cynical bastard who looks for any reason to complain about the comic book I'm currently reading. I really don't mind shrugging and thinking, "I guess it's some kind of empathic telepathy that facilitates communication! Or a fish that disproves the existence of God!"

From my blog entries, you probably think I'm a nightmare while watching movies and television. Far from it! Being a literature major, I long ago decided I needed entertainment of which I wasn't critical. So television and movies get such a pass from me that I often love terrible shows and films. Unless one of them pulls something so fucking stupid that I can never forgive it, like Independence Day ending with that bullshit about how the entire world can now enjoy the greatest holiday in the world because it's an American holiday! Fuck off with that patriotic claptrap, Independence Day. And while you're fucking off, please take Armageddon with you. And the television show Heroes!

You'd think I could come up with some more timely movies and television shows I hate but I'm fucking old, man. You think I keep up with the current pop culture?! To me, it's still the turn of the millennium and I've just watched Ghost World, Moulin Rouge, American Movie, and Dancer in the Dark!

Here we discover the Phantom Zone is not a place; it is a person. Perhaps even a god. Or, you know, the God.

I say "the God" not as a believer but as a respectful atheist who understands that reading something from Western Literature that hints at a supreme being is hinting at a quite specific supreme being. It makes for way easier allegory than something like Hinduism where we'd have to determine which god this is and why being that god is important to the story and where did all the fucking butter go again?!

Just to make it clear even though the comic book page I scanned makes it extremely clear already, the Phantom Zone is explicitly a person and not a place. It begins thinking with "Punctured! Opened! Something enters the self!" So Gerber's idea is that The Phantom Zone is a being. That'll probably come in handy to remember as shit gets weirder and weirder.

I should also make clear that Jor-el is not communicating with the Phantom Zone though he does hear voices while inside of it. Is he hearing an echo of the Zone's thoughts? Or do the other souls or spirits which reside inside of it still manifest an echo of their personalities as well? Oh, am I assuming too much? Read on, sirs and madams! Read on!

Jor-el discovers that he can still view his dimension though he can't return because a wire on his experimental machine came loose from the car battery he was using to power it. So he finds he can exist either inside the Zone or as a ghost in his own dimension. Which means, as we see in the following couple of panels, that the Zone can watch and observe our dimension as well, from beyond or beside or, you know, above it all.

The Zone also knows Jor-el's wants and desires and prayers.

Jor-el's ghostly hand passes through Lara's sleeping body and she starts awake as if having heard him. Could those past the veil of their world still reach the dreams of the living? It seems so because Lara rushes over to Jor-el's machine, re-hooks the wire, and opens the passage back. Jor-el returns and the Phantom Zone is relieved. It desires solitude.

After being thoroughly slapped by his wife, Jor-el admits that maybe his theory of parallel dimensions needs a little more proof and a lot less, "Hey! I just imagined something that might be real! I won't do any math or science on it, though. I'll just build a hoopty-ass doorway to the dimension I've just decided must be there!" I know Jor-el is a scientist and he probably has done some scientific work that brought him to the theory instead of thinking up the theory and then working backwards to prove that it's true. He's not like all the fucking morons who claim they have more common sense than intelligent people and who have no actual idea what the term "theory" means in science. Too many fucking choads think a theory is just stating your opinion on an observation. Like seeing a light in the night sky move and thinking, "My theory is that's a UFO and that's as valid a theory as anybody else standing nearby because they can't prove it's not!" Maybe learn what the word hypothesis means for a start, dumb dumbs.

One thing I like to point out to the common sense is better than intelligence crowd is that common sense would have you believe the sun revolves around the Earth. It's what we observe with no indication of anything else. The Earth revolving and changing our point of view? The Earth orbiting the sun? All nonsense because common sense indicates no sense of movement. People think the world and our observations of it are simple. They're not. They're complex. Common sense is simple. And often wrong.

One man's prison is another God's heaven.

The perspective changes as a year or more passes. The executioner of Krypton begins narrating the tale long after Jor-el's trip into Mr. Phantom Zone. He wields the Phantom Zone portal as his executioner's axe. To free up space on Krypton, criminals now just get sent to The Phantom Zone to serve out their sentences. I don't know how they get any specific person back once they go in, or how the executioner isn't overrun by convicts every time he opens the door. I guess Jor-el perfected it to zap people in while instantaneously closing the portal behind them. And they probably have some kind of bracelets identifying them so they can be pulled out. What the reader isn't privy to is the political atmosphere that allowed all of this to take place. It was probably in decades of old pre-Crisis comic books that I never read.

The main goal of this part of the story is to allow the executioner to drop a whole lot of names of people he's literally dropped into the Phantom Zone: Jax-ur, Va-kox, Xadu, Faora, Nam-ek, Kru-el, and everybody's favorite, General Zod. A whole cast of malevolent baddies thrown into the safest place on (or near or around or within or just out of phase with) Krypton! Jor-el knew the planet was going to blow up at any time so instead of throwing all the good people into the zone to figure out how to escape later, he rescues all the bad ones! He was so traumatized by his trip within Mr. Zone that he felt living within the Zone was worse than blowing up with Krypton.

And how did all this affect The Phantom Zone? Well, It was beginning to go a little bit nuts.

So death was Its beginning! Gerber's about to get cosmic on our asses!

The Phantom Zone reminisces on Its origin, long forgotten and only now reminded of it by the individual sentients being forced into It. The Phantom Zone's beginning was death. The death of billions and billions of mortal creatures across the universe. Their rage and fear continued to exist long after death, like particles creating a cloud. They merged and formed into a single being whose one ambition was to escape this universe where death is so prevalent: The Phantom Zone. It's also possible to think of The Phantom Zone as heaven and the billions of dead simply souls passing on to heaven where they lose their individuality and become part of the Self. But as there is no real indication of the Self being separate from the Phantom Zone, and even evidence that They are the same, like the language the Self uses when people enter the Phantom Zone such as "the Self is pierced" and "something enters the Self", I'm going to acknowledge they are one and the same. Any theologian probably wouldn't argue the idea anyway. How would you separate God from Heaven? And if souls wind up in the arms of God or in Heaven, why distinguish these as separate things?

The Phantom Zone did not create the universe. It explains the formation of the universe in its origin story and only partway through, after life has arisen on planets all across the universe, and only after that life begins to understand and fear the death of ego, does The Phantom Zone become. It is the merger of the dead looking for existence beyond death that creates the afterlife. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Or a tautology. One of those! And then the mass of dead simply become the afterlife itself. It is merely a place apart from change. A place safe from death. It is eternal stasis.

Except now living beings who retain their ego have figured out how to enter heaven and their individuality disturbs the fucking shit out of the Phantom Zone! Usually the dead lose themselves in the merge with the Phantom Zone; the living merge differently with It. And these living beings, like Zod here, are arrogant, strong-willed bastards!

Oh yeah. If you wanted more allegory, The Phantom Zone is shaped like an apple.

The criminals inside the Phantom Zone discover they can influence people on the outside, as Jor-el did when he woke his wife the time he was trapped within it. So while trapped in a world where they feel nothing and live for eternity, they're also privy to everything happening outside the Zone. Like ghosts or loved ones or . . . angels! Bad angels, of course! Jor-el, almost manipulated by the criminals to free them, consults with the other leaders of Krypton and they decide for everybody's safety to send the Phantom Zone Projector into space so that it could never be used to free the criminals. I guess they also decided crime was over? And the criminals that were only condemned for fifteen or thirty orbits around their red sun had their sentences changed to life sentences? Jor-el points out that it would have been safer to keep the Projector on Krypton where it will definitely be destroyed soon instead of sending it safely into space to be found and used by aliens in the future. But all the other leaders get upset at him and call him a downer and some of them wish Kryptonian cancer on his baby. Probably, I mean. Maybe I've been too online lately!

A Kryptonian named Thul-kar, leader of a Kryptonian death cult, discovers his cult have done their duty as they know Krypton has nearly no time left. Using magic instead of technology, Thul-kar finds his way into the Phantom Zone to preserve the teachings of Juru mysticism. The next day, Krypton explodes!

But not before Baby Kal-el follows the Phantom Zone Projector into deep space as the Zoned criminals watch on and celebrate Krytpon's destruction.

Time passes differently within the Phantom Zone. Or maybe it just feels longer because it's so boring. Eventually, many years later ("An eternity," says the narrator but I don't buy it), Thul-kar has befriended the Phantom Zone. He calls It "Aethyr". Thul-kar is the only individual within the Zone who Aethyr doesn't believe wants to leave and Thul-kar uses that to his advantage by befriending It. All the other criminals continue to try and escape with seemingly no notice that they're trapped inside of God. Aethyr seems to be against their leaving. Perhaps the eons spent as a "Self" have conditioned It to think of every being within It as part of Itself, even if these particular ones have not completely merged with It. Perhaps It is loathe to lose any single part that comprises the Whole. They were once Other; many years later, They are Self.

Thul-kar has built a cube with his magic and he shows it to Aethyr who hates it. Aethyr, a being of the Cosmos, knows only spheres and circles. When It lashes out at the cube, Thul-kar traps some of Its power within and creates a living world: Bizarro world. Being Bizarro World, the day of its creation is the day of its destruction.

Bizarro is a better father than mine!

The implosion of Thul-kar's little Bizarro World creation (which through magic and the power of Aethyr manifested the real Bizarro World in the actual universe; and due to the time dilation between dimensions, the real universe Bizarro World has a decently long life) creates a white hole where Bizarro World had been. A white hole is obviously the opposite of a black hole: it spews energy and matter into the universe rather than sucking it up. Due to Bizarro World's connection with the Phantom Zone, the energy being shot out into the universe is made up of the Phantom Zone. Aethyr realizes that without somehow transmuting Itself into matter again, It and all the beings that make up the Self will disperse and cease to exist. Thul-kar's escape plan has worked far better than any of the other criminal dullards from Krypton.

Aethyr, still thinking Thul-kar is a friend, asks him for help. Aethyr needs a way to transmute Itself into a corporeal being before the Self is terminated. God and Heaven must not die!

I suspect I know why this story wasn't published until after Crisis when it couldn't matter anymore.

Thul-kar knows a little imp that could help Aethyr survive: Mxyzptlk. He contacts him by speaking to him the way the ghost-like entities speak to people in the real world. But since Mxyzptlk is super-dimensional, he actually hears Thul-kar and agrees to merge with Aethyr to help It survive. He only does this because he's in prison in the 5th Dimension for bigamy. Seriously.

Mr. Mxyzptlk has the square root of -1 problems and the b ain't imaginary.

I don't know what that caption means either. Get off my fucking back. This is free, you know!

You might be thinking, "Don't these DC Comics Presents issues always feature Superman? Is showing him in a rocket in one panel all we're going to get?" Of course not! Steve Gerber realizes that his script is almost over and he's yet to shove Superman into it so out of nowhere, we discover that Mr. Mxyzptlk wasn't just recruited to make sure The Phantom Zone survives re-entering the universe; he's also been hired to make sure Superman doesn't interrupt. I don't know why Superman would interrupt. He isn't paying particularly close attention to anything except his news anchor co-host Lana Lang. Mxyzptlk, while in his null-void prison, admits to himself that the only reason he hadn't killed Superman was because he was following the rules of the 5th Dimension, "Mischief not Mayhem." But now that his people have turned on him and taken his child away from him, he decides the next time he gets the chance, he's just going to kill Superman. And Thul-kar gives him that chance just seconds later!

Mxyzptlk gets Superman's attention by dropping Bizarro's head into the news studio. Then he smashes Superman over the head with Argo City, nearly killing him since Argo City was still sitting on top of Kryptonian rock. You know, Kryptonite!

That should keep Supes out of the way for a bit!

Now the streets of Metropolis are full of Kryptonite and corpses. But Superman can't help clean it up so he flies off to pass out on the moon for a day or two.

Unfortunately, this is where the story begins to fall apart. Gerber may have wanted to tell a bigger story than he had pages for so once he introduces Superman, the story just sprints to the end. But first, with Superman out of the way, Mr. Mxyzptlk goes to perform the act he was rescued to perform.

While Mxyzptlk works, the criminals escape the Zone to wreak havoc on Earth.

Superman puts up a bit of a fight against the criminals but they're not destroyed until a new God comes along and imprisons them back in itself.

Don't worry! Crisis made sure Mr. Mxyzptlk as God was removed from canon. Or never actually part of it since this story was published post-Crisis.

Luckily for Superman, Mr. Mxyzptlk doesn't want to fuck with him anymore. He's got new God-things to do, like torture Zod and Faora or the entire population of the 5th Dimension. He's got grudges to keep and vengeance to pursue. He disappears leaving Superman to utter his concluding line, the worst part of this entire comic book: "He gets the last laugh after all!" Also when he says that line, Washington, DC is burning down behind him. So I guess that's another good reason this story was never published and nobody has to deal with the horrible aftermath of the story. Metropolis alone is so fucked with Kryptonite and Kryptonian corpses, Clark Kent is going to have to move back to his parents' house in Smallville.

DC Comics Presents #97: Superman & The Final Chapter of The Phantom Zone Criminals Rating: A. This is the kind of fucked up shit Superman books should be about! People whine about Superman being so powerful that he basically never feels threatened. But how about making him feel utterly confounded for several issues? It's possible Superman even shit his pants on the final page when he realized Mr. Mxyzptlk, who was already all-powerful but could only do pranks, had become a God who was ready to do some wickedly Old Testament shit to a bunch of people but chose to let Supes off the hook for once. Superman just faced something he definitely couldn't have handled; hell, he never even figured out what the fuck was happening. Bizarro's head dropped on his desk. Zod and all the other Kryptonian criminals terrorized Earth. Mxyzptlk became a God. And the whole time, Superman mostly just almost died from Kryptonite poisoning on the moon after being hit in the face with Argo City. What a day!

This is the face of a man who definitely just shit his pants.