Eclipso: The Darkness Within: The Adventures of Superman Annual #4 (August 1992)

Guy Gardner AND Lobo on the cover of a '90s comic book? This issue must have sold a trillion copies!

The Adventures of Superman Annual #4 (August 1992)
By Robert Loren Fleming, Bob McLeod, Albert De Guzman, and Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
Edited by Dan Thorsland and Mike Carlin

• I've been trying to interpret this cover for three days now. Here's what I've concluded: Superman's right side has been Eclipsed which is why his right arm and right bollock¹ are so massive. Lobo has shoved his hook up his own ass to stimulate his Czarnian prostate because it makes killing feel so much better. With Lobo about to bite into Superman's midsection, this might be the first cover by an artist who understood the true meaning of Lobo's name². Superman has shoved Krypto up his ass to lick his prostate which is why he's currently having a screaming orgasm. He didn't do it in anticipation of this battle; he was just doing it for kicks when he was attacked by Lobo. Guy Gardner, not being the best at smarts, believes a gigantic fireball made out of yellow light will harm Superman and/or Lobo. It's also possible he was so late to the battle that he has yet to get his yellow fireball up his ass so that it massages his prostate while he, oh, I don't know, sucks Lobo's dick? Is that how everybody else sees this cover? Seems pretty logical to me. • This is the final Eclipso: The Darkness Within annual that I have to read unless I find the Green Arrow and The Demon annuals. I know I have The Demon annual with my run of Grant and Semieks series. But was I getting Green Arrow at the time? That doesn't seem possible. The only time I remember purchasing Green Arrow of my own free will³ was when Kevin Smith was writing it. But I wasn't reading most of these other series that I purchased the annuals for so it's weird that I don't have Green Arrow. Maybe I've just always hated him that much and I couldn't bear to spend the money on it. I probably thought, "I could play a full game of Cyberball for two dollars and fifty cents instead!"

I'm going to guess that Lobo was so drunk that he just assumed he was in Antarctica when he visited the Fortress and saw the snow and polar bears.

• You know what? I give up. I always figured Superman's Fortress of Solitude was in the Arctic but enough writers keep putting it in the Antarctic that I'm simply tired of fighting it. I'm glad they finally put it in the Bermuda Triangle. Or wherever the fuck it is now. It's been in so many different places, no wonder no writer can keep it straight.

• When I was a young prepubescent dimwit of moderate energy, I once decided to dig a hole in my backyard. Not a small hole. No, this was going to be the biggest hole anybody had ever seen since the Chicxulub crater was discovered. And since this possibly took place before that was discovered, it was going to simply be the biggest hole. I dug down about two feet but the diameter of the hole was near four feet. It was about that time that I uncovered something that looked a lot like that disgusting L.E.G.I.O.N. member scanning the Antarctic for Superman except that it was brown. I had no idea what it was but when I hit it with my shovel, it split open and oozed what I'm assuming was all of its gooey life essences out into the dirt. I had no idea what it was and didn't even consider it was something living, some kind of pupa or chrysalis. But when I saw it rupture and spill vital fluids across the dirt, I freaked out. I threw down my shovel and ran inside the house to hide from, well, I don't know what I was hiding from. I was just completely creeped out. The hole remain undug for several years. I believe, at some point, long after the unheimlich of the incident had faded from my blood, my friends and I used the crater as a battle place for some kind of Warhammer game that wasn't exactly Warhammer but I can't remember what it was.

• Apparently as a young boy, "running inside the house to hide" was my go-to move. I also used to go out in the driveway late at night and shine a flashlight into the starry sky until I was sure that aliens had noticed me and were homing in on my location. I'd become a living goosebump and run inside to hide from the aliens. If they came knocking, they could take my mother. I'd be safe under my Scooby Doo blanket!

• In this comic book, we learn nothing. I was going to say one of two things but since you can't be sure which it is (among, I'm sure, an infinite amount of interpretations being that human beings are infinitely stupid and also finitely smart), you effectively learn nothing. Those two things that totally don't matter are this: Alfred totally wasn't in the SAS at all and he's a huge fucking liar and massive scaredy cat; or Alfred has an infinite amount of patience with Batman's wards and willingly indulges their stupid pranks to make them feel good.

I guess the fact that Alfred doesn't instantly kill Dick here isn't really proof that Alfred wasn't SAS. I guess.

• After Alfred shits his pants and/or puts away the blade that was mere seconds from going through Dick's eye and piercing his brain, he calls Dick a "scamp". That sounds like a slur for circus people!

• Nightwing's searching for Superman in the Batcave but Alfred is all, "No Superman here, according to the Batcave Sensors which, as you know, are especially dialed in to detect Superman so Batman can kill him." The fact that Nightwing looks for Superman in the Batcave after Superman's turned evil says a lot about the tenuous relationship between Clark and Bruce. Or Nightwing just figured that Superman had to hide from the sun as Eclipso so why not the Batcave? It's dark and full of people who would beat his ass when they discovered he was there. He might be a great trapeze artist with a stylish mullet and ponytail but he's a shit detective.

• Have you ever spent a few hours fantasizing about seeing Crimson Fox and Black Canary wrestle in shit? If so, you're in lucky, baby!

The guy with the waggly nose that's always sniffing out mysteries can't smell that the mud they're wrestling in is shit.

• If any superhero team ever needed a sexual harassment in the work place seminar, it's Justice League Europe. And I don't just meant the guys! The way Crimson Fox, Catherine Cobert, and Sue Dibny treated Captain Atom like a prime hunk of fat cock was just as hot and sexy⁴ as when Wally and Ralph did treated Power Girl like a sentient pair of tits.

• Booster Gold manages to locate Superman using a computer all by himself without any help at all, probably, from Skeets and an earpiece.

• For some reason, Wildebeest is hanging out with Booster, Fire, Ice, and Bloodwynd. I really don't fucking care to know why. I'm more interested in why Fire has blonde hair.

It's easy enough to answer: it's a coloring mistake. Her hair is green in every other panel. Boo. I want in-continuity reasons!

• If you're wondering where Blue Beetle is, he was kidnapped by Bruce Gordon and taken to the Ozymandias's Band of Geniuses Building a Massive Alien Octopus and Light Gun to Shoot the Moon Island.

• Aquaman makes an appearance riding a Killer Whale and completely failing like always. He didn't get an annual because he sucks jellyfish dick⁵ and nobody would have purchased it in much the same way that I refused to purchase the Green Arrow annual.

• Everybody gathers on the side of the volcano where they've discovered Superman is hiding. Yes, even Aquaman. How's he going to help? I know, that's not fair. I could be asking the same question about Ice or Crimson Fox or Elongated Man or Black Canary. Not only are they going to battle Superman, they're going to do it inside of an active volcano. Is that why the cover depicts Guy and Lobo battling Superman? Because everybody else dies in the volcano in the first chapter?

• Guy Gardner makes his debut appearance (since undergoing his transformation in his three issue prestige format series) and really princesses it up. As if a white gloves, a pair of jeans, and cowboy boots are the hottest look of the year.

I've never seen Hal Jordan preen this badly and Hal loves to preen.

• Preen. Preeeeeeeen. Preeen. Preen. Sounds weird.

• I'm missing the next twenty pages of the comic book because I tore them out and replaced them with my own drawings of Guy Gardner and Lobo sucking and fucking each other like crazy. It's actually pretty romantic stuff. I like a little bit of sweetness and story to my hand-drawn pornography.

• Later we'll discover that Bloodwynd is really J'onn J'onzz in disguise. I'm not sure that was always supposed to be the plan or, if it was, nobody told Robert Loren Fleming because Bloodwynd tackles the volcano like a champ who isn't at all a Martian.

Wait. Did we also discover, later later, that Bloodwynd really did exist? But this version was J'onn, right? Fuck comic book continuity is so confusing.

• Lobo immediately gets his ass beat by Eclipso Superman because in 1992, the main way to show that somebody was really powerful was to have them defeat the Main Man. Every writer wanted to do a story where the hero they were writing defeats Lobo to show that they could best the absolute best. Which wound up making Lobo a huge punching bag who didn't seem capable of beating everybody. Also he was ass-raped in Hitman by Bueno Excellente which seemed, up, excessive?

• Metamorpho causes the volcano to erupt which ejects Superman and everybody else into the air. But it's moments too late as the sun just sets as Superman takes to the air. It seems the Earth is about to lose everything to Eclipso. And all because Superman gave himself to Eclipso to save the population of one small town. That would, of course, immediately be enslaved by Eclipso when Eclipso used Superman to take over the world. You know, Batman wouldn't have been so stupid. I mean, sure, Batman Eclipsed himself on purpose to defeat Eclipsed Joker. But he knew they'd wind up in a stalemate and the morning sun would interrupt their fight and save them both. Because he's no Superman⁶.

• All of the heroes who gathered at the volcano to stand around uselessly as the heroes with powers tried to stop Superman wind up being needed to save the villagers of the island escape the lava from the volcano which the heroes caused to erupt. They bring them to the ocean where there aren't enough boats for everybody so Aquaman brings in some whales leading to Nightwing saying the rarest statement in the history of DC Comics.

But I mean, did he? Really?

• Having a character exclaim that Aquaman saved the day makes it feel like Aquaman must not have actually saved the day or else why would readers need a massive shot of Nightwing enthusiastically stating it? This feels like Batman got Nightwing alone for a moment early in the morning and said, "If you get the chance, really play up Aquaman's part in the heroics. I feel like he's starting to think he's just as useless as we all know he is."

• Eclipso Superman beats the shit out of everybody for a few minutes until Guy Gardner, having raced to the sun and back in, presumably, sixteen minutes, brings back a big scoop of solar matter to dump in Superman's face. Then he tackles him into the volcano where Superman finally returns to normal and where Guy's boots, jeans, and white gloves don't burn off of his body. I guess the Sinestro ring is as good at protecting its host as the Green Lantern rings.

• All of the heroes and villains who have been Eclipsed are gathering at the crater in Arizona. Pantha is one of them which explains why Wildebeest was being babysat by Bloodwynd. I forgot exactly what happened during the Titans Annual because I re-read it a few years ago when I was re-reading the Titans series.

• Dick and Superman track down all of the missing scientists except Dick leaves Superman t find them himself because he has to go fight the Eclipsed Titans in a crater. So Superman goes on his own and walks into a trap! But it's just a trap for Eclipso in that Superman gets blasted with sunlight as he walks in on the scientists. But that's where this issue ends. As if readers are going to be all, "Oh no! Superman walked into a trap! He's done for!" He's fine! Just a little more powered up, probably!

The Ranking!
That's the end of The Darkness Within annuals! Only one book left: Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2! This annual was really good because Lobo and Guy Gardner and Lobo and Lobo and Guy Gardner and — you won't believe this one — Phase's ass. Hoo boy! What an ass! It may have excited me more than Lobo and Guy Gardner beating the shit out of Superman.


__________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Bollock not depicted. But, believe me, it's fucking huge.
² In the Czarnian language, Lobo means "One who devours your entrails and thoroughly enjoys it."
³ No, nobody forced me to purchase it without my consent. I added that condition because reading The New 52 Green Arrow wasn't my free will; it was just a necessary part of the project to read all of The New 52 books every month.
⁴ I mean despicable. I meant to say despicable!
⁵ They must have dicks, right? Big stinging danglers!
⁶ Meaning he's smart. Like how when I said Superman was no Batman, that meant Superman was dumb.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Wonder Woman Annual #3 (August 1992)

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Wonder Woman Annual #3 (August 1992)
By William Messner-Loebs, John Dennis, Dave Johnson, Ande Parks, Clem Robins, and Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Joe Quesada and Kevin Nowlan
Edited by Frank Pittarese and Dan Thorsland

• Let's get back to bullet points, shall we? This is like The Matrix but for nerds. Hmm. There's something wrong with that statement but I just can't identify quite what it is.

• Eclipso currently sits on his bone throne in a crater in the moon. Do you think the creators of this series meant for that to be so sexual? Did I invent that his throne was made of bone just to create the image of a penis in a moon hole? It's hard to say when about 66% of every thought I have is a delusion created by my brain to make the world more entertaining for myself.

• According to my blog's tags, this is the first comic book I've reviewed by William Messner-Loebs.

• The cover of this comic book turned my pants into a bone throne. In a mere matter of seconds, it will also look like a triple wax carwash down there. I think I have a thing for feral women.

• This issue begins by firing all circuits on my male gaze just to have my horned-up levels' legs kicked out from under it by reading the caption.

Too bad I'm not into necrofellatio. Is it weird that I began that sentence with "too bad"?

• The person making that terrible assumption about Wonder Woman is, surprisingly¹, an on-the-scene local news reporter. The reporter is a woman so she's apparently never heard of the Girl Code. I also have never heard any of the Girl Code because when I ask about it, they usually just say, "Ewww!" But I think there's something there about hyping each other up and not assuming that they've died and then broadcasting their humiliating failure to the entire world².

• As she broadcasts, Cassie continues to pull down her knickers and shit all over the Girl Code.

"Being that Wonder Woman can't fly, she had to walk instead of fly, which she can't do, fly, I mean. She sucks at flying. Just the worst. Probably dead because she can't fly."

• Some guy named The White Magician shows up and, well, even in 1992, I'd maybe have thought twice about that name. He wears white and has white hair but he also has what is colloquially thought of as "white" skin so, you know, maybe that name is saying more than you actually want it to say? Because "white", especially in 1992, was the society accepted neutral position³ which meant if the person's "race"⁴ wasn't mentioned, one would assume "white". If you have to go above and beyond to express your "whiteness" or your "Defender of Western Civilization" status⁵, you're probably making a bigger statement than just the color of your costume and hair.

The White Magician's power is literally making people choke on their own shit.

• The White Magician spends a full page or more invoking all sorts of DC magics that I've never heard of before. Zatanna could have saved the day with a couple of backwards words. Madame Xanadu could have wrapped this shit up by manipulating a bunch of actual heroes in no time at all. But this guy is doing the equivalent of a Great White guitar solo in a small club.

Love bites! Love bleeds! Oh fuck! Oh shit! Why's my dick burning?!

• While White Magician fucks around with the dark arts for the benefit of the news crew, Wonder Woman climbs up a building and tries to hug the terrorist into surrender. You know how she does. She's all, "Look, you're being a toxic male. Maybe get therapy?" And he's all, "I'd rather turn on a machine that removes the friction between air molecules, murder the HR rep of the job that fired me, take a woman and her small child hostage, and blame everybody who doesn't have a metagene for my failures!" And Wonder Woman is all, "Okay, but maybe don't do that?" And his gun is all, "Bratratrat!"

• Wonder Woman takes a few shots to the wrist bracelets and everybody around her is all, "He's a lone gunman! Being a white man, he's the only one responsible for his actions! He doesn't represent his entire race in the same way society demands anybody of a minority group represents the entire group!" Except it couldn't be that explicit, right? Because this is 1992 and according to Comics Gaters, comics only went woke in this millennium. Right?

I guess white supremacists in 1992 could easily overlook a blatant allegory simply by saying, "Well, I don't have a metagene so this guy obviously doesn't represent my idiotic way of thinking!"

• The main problem with this guy is that his metagene has yet to be activated. So he's just a mediocre white dude. But he knows he's better than other people because he's white. I mean because he has a metagene!

• I had to check the cover of this issue again because I got the odd feeling that I was reading a Bloodlines annual and not an Eclipso annual. I guess this is just foreshadowing for next year's big annual crossover event. Maybe this guy becomes Gunfire or Dildosniffer. Were those Bloodlines characters? If they were, I know one of them was written by Warren Ellis.

• The White Magician's spell of bowel-cleansing fear takes place just as Wonder Woman's de-escalating the situation. It affects everybody on top of the skyscraper: the killer, Wonder Woman, and the two hostages. Wonder Woman's big fear is disappointing her mother and the Gods. I would have guessed it would have been Batman.

• The killer, Roger or Robert or whatever, dies from choking on his own shit while Wonder Woman and the hostages just get a little collateral shit swallowing. But I have to think part of the reason Wonder Woman failed was because she was calling him by the wrong name while trying to calm him down.

Whoops!

• Even though The White Magician fucked everything up and his costume isn't anywhere as spectacular as The White Rabbit's, Wonder Woman still accepts an invitation to his mansion for dinner. As a way to apologize to her for completely fucking up the rescue, of course. Not as a way to get into her biker shorts. Not that she's currently wearing biker shorts. But she does go to the dinner in her star-spangled onesie.

• The White Magician's dinner conversation makes me think that perhaps my earlier discussion around his name was way more astute than even I would have guessed.

First he starts the edgelord shit with all the "Oh, I imagine you'll be offended by just about everything, no?"


And then he, um, just gets right to the KKK point.

• The hostage from earlier was a Black woman. Diana was insistent she was the real hero because she threw off the fear spell to save Diana from falling off the building while Diana hung by her foot holding the young girl who first fell off the building. The White Magician wouldn't even acknowledge this fact and now we see why. Obviously a Black woman couldn't be the hero! The look Diana gives this guy says it all.

• Wonder Woman, while pointing out how seriously pathetic white supremacists are, pulls the old Don Draper in the elevator meme exactly two decades before Don Draper does it.

Although Don Draper is lying in that scene and I've got a feeling Wonder Woman seriously means it.

• 24 pages in and not a whiff of Eclipso.

Speaking of whiffs . . . yes please!

• It turns out the local reporter Cassie and the White Magician are fucking. It also turns out Wonder Woman likes watching them fuck.

• Okay, so maybe they don't actually fuck on panel while Wonder Woman watches. But you don't think this is the reaction of somebody who loves the cuck chair?

Messner-Loebs staying true to Wonder Woman's origins as a horny little Amazon.

• Ultimately, I have no fucking clue why Wonder Woman went to dinner at the White Magician's home. I mean, the only conclusion I can make is that she was horny after her close call with death and he was offering. Perhaps when she was blasted by his Spell of Terror and she inundated with feelings of self-loathing, she needed a good fuck to get her confidence back. And the White Magician, while racist, is good looking enough. Also he has a penis⁶.

• The reason Cassie was calling Wonder Woman politically correct is that Wonder Woman admitted that justice, in the parlance of Titus Pullo, makes her wetter than October.

• The White Magician gives Diana a circlet with a Black Diamond on it. She demures but quickly accepts because she's super fucking horny and I can't believe I don't remember this comic book! How did I not start reading Wonder Woman after this?! I should have assumed half of each issue was just Diana trying to get laid.

• Wonder Woman slips into some kind of hypnotic fantasy after donning the Black Diamond. She believes that she has taken the White Magician to Paradise Island and he's brought in developers and horny men. When she confronts him, he goes all Twitter Incel on her.

If that doesn't get her to Eclipse, I don't want to think how far he'll have to go.

• The White Magician isn't working with Eclipso. He just wants Wonder Woman possessed with Eclipso's power so that he can bind her and drain her of the power. Wonder Woman winds up bound by tentacles in the garden with resting Eclipso face.

• Oh, also? It doesn't take. Eclipsed Wonder Woman escapes to either kill the White Magician or eagerly sit in the cuck chair.

• PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE BE CUCK CHAIR!

Okay. Close enough!

• I don't want people to think I'm into women in hardly any clothes choking other women in even less clothes. I mean, I guess I am because that panel was hot. But I'm not so into it that I actively look for it! What kind of sicko porn search terms do you think I like?! If one of your guesses was "Penguin Costume With Butt Access", congratulations. I guess?

• Wonder Woman lets Cassie go and then fails to kill the White Magician as he slips into another dimension just as she goes for the kill shot. Eclipso, now in total control, decides he got his revenge by trashing the White Magician's house because Wonder Woman is free to fly off to the moon at the end.

• Fly? I thought she couldn't fly? I guess she's more Eclipso than Diana now.

The Ranking
Goddamn! This issue was actually kind of fun. And confusing. I think maybe it contained a lot of actual lore and characters from the 1992 regular series. Or maybe it didn't and this was just a short little story about a horny woman, a racist illusionist, and the God of Vengeance? It's weird because I hate annuals but, I mean, this one was enjoyable! I bet it was because I went back to using bullet points! Yeah, I probably enjoyed it because of the thing I did and not because of the art the artists did! Whew. I feel better now! Go me! __________________________________________________________________________________
¹ Not actually surprising.
² At least the part of the world that receives broadcasts from WTBN.
³ I'm not saying it was correct. I was just media-biased shorthand accepted by a white supremacist society
⁴ In quotes because "white" and "black" are not exactly the most scientific way to determine a person's race. Unless you're a Nazi scientist or somebody's Republican uncle.
⁵ Looking at you, high school friend Soy Rakelson, who disappeared from Social Media in 2016 after Trump won the election because you knew your "Defenses of Western Civilization" were no longer sustainable with your "morality". I mean in your eyes. Everybody else already knew they weren't sustainable and wondered why you kept insisting on debating obviously (to everybody but you, apparently) racist shit. Especially when your closing argument for every debate was, "Where's your faith?" Oh? Sorry I argued facts and logic while you were gummed up in religious dogma while concentrating on attempting to trap us with pre-approved C.S. Lewis logic traps.
⁶ I'm assuming.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Action Comics Annual #4 (July 1992)

I'm sure Superman's mouth is full of milk and not Billy Batson's spunk.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Action Comics Annual #4 (July 1992)
By Dan Vado, Chris Wozniak, Karl Altstaetter, Karl Kesel, Trevor Scott, Steve Mitchell, Albert De Guzman, and Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
Edited by Dan Thorsland and Mike Carlin

The Cover
Being an art critic is so far beyond my capabilities that I'm completely stymied by the color palette. I guess there's an abundance of purple to indicate the Eclipso possession. But why the lime green background? Maybe they're fighting in a jelly mold? I do appreciate how Superman's muscles were drawn thick with sexy veins while Billy Batson retains his "I'm from a totally different comic book company universe and actually a child in a thick, veiny man's body" flat, clear, animation-style facial features. At least the sticky white residue in Superman's mouth has kept me from pondering how he's been Eclipsed being that he's full of sunlight and Eclipso's one weakness is sunlight and also he's full of somebody's semen. Not Billy's because that would be too wrong to even consider. I guess Superman's possession was pre-explained earlier when Eclipso pointed out how his power is magical in nature and we all know how susceptible Superman is to magic for some reason. Maybe they didn't have magic on Krypton? Man. Imagine a world without close-up magicians approaching your table during dinner? What a dream!

The Story So Far
A bunch of loser super heroes have been Eclipsed because they're losers. Yes, I know Wally West was Eclipsed. The king of losers. I didn't even like Barry Allen but Wally? What a piece of shit. All of you assholes who just love Wally West to death are fucking wrong. I mean, sure, I never read Flash so it's possible I'm wrong. Not likely but possible! I only know Wally West from Justice League Europe and that guy was a fucking idiotic sex pest who shouldn't have been allowed around women. The fact Power Girl never ripped his balls off is testament to how much power the Comics Code Authority had.

Also some people have started to go missing without being Eclipsed and we have to assume that Bruce Gordon has gone Ozymandias style. Bruce Gordon is missing and so is Blue Beetle. My guess is he's grabbing up all the heroes capable of making a gigantic fake sun to shine into the crater on the moon since the real sun isn't cutting the mustard. Stupid sun. Can't even shine into a fucking crater on the side of the moon that bare asses itself to it at least once a month. I don't know how space works so I'm assuming that's how often that happens.

The Story
Since Bruce, Mona, and Blue Beetle are all missing or Eclipsed, Superman and Fire's butt have gone to recruit Mona's dad for some reason. I guess he's also a solar scientist? Is that how Bruce and Mona met? Do I even care?

Even Mona's dad doesn't give a shit and it's his world that's in danger.

Every time I type "Mona's dad", I can't help thinking "Anna Madrigal". Stupid brain! You're a man and a girl!

Superman decides to leave this man alone which is great because who the fuck is he? Why is he suddenly a character in this story?! I barely know why Mona and Bruce Gordon are in this story let alone Anna Madrigal! I mean Mona's dad! Does he piss sunshine? Does he fart solar radiation? One fact about him: he's clinically depressed. At first I thought Booster was just exaggerating but Chris Wozniak made sure to draw a bottle of pills in the background of one panel. Plus that shot of him lying in bed with his knee up and his arm thrown over his face? Classic depression pose!

Booster talks like a eugenicist and Booster is from DC's future so, um, guess what, everybody? The racists apparently won!

I don't know if Booster means "them" as in academics or as in people with no powers or what but since Booster Gold is a working class guy whose whole schtick is based on stealing his gear, I suspect it's both? He's what rich racist elite Republicans would call a "real American". Which totally explains why he's also a sexist creep (as seen in the Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Justice League America Annual and pretty much every other Justice League America issue).

Superman's plan to save Mona and the people of Crater Bay (who were all Eclipsed in whatever series the last Superman annual was in. Man of Steel? Superman? Adventures of Superman?) is to give himself to Eclipso in exchange for freeing the regular people who always let Booster Gold down. Then it's up to the Justice League to stop Superman from doing whatever Eclipso wants to do with him. It seems like a bad plan in a number of ways but the worst way is that Superman must not remember the current roster of Justice League America. Who the fuck's going to stop him? Ice? Fire? Bloodwynd? Blue Beetle? Booster Gold? Doesn't he remember these are the people who couldn't even stop Doomsday from killing him? Oh wait. I guess he hasn't learned that lesson yet.

Obviously the plan would be to call Batman and borrow his Kryptonite. But since that plan is too obviously obvious, I guess they'll drag Billy Batson out of class and remind him that he's an alternate member of the League.

Did Wozniak model this shot of Superman off the Thanksgiving Day Parade float of Supes?

I'm never going to get through a full annual if I keep scrutinizing every panel but I'm glad I am because I just noticed this tiny figure of Booster Gold in the background. You know how Booster Gold usually has no indication of genitalia? Well, well, my friends. Discover the truth!

Booster Gold has a massive schlong.

Booster Gold, Fire, and Ice decide they'd better find a way to defeat Superman before he gets himself Eclipsed for the good of a few dozen yokels (and Mona). Clark's an idiot! He might be able to negotiate a deal to save a few people for a little while. But at what cost? No, his best bet is to stay unEclipsed and help Crater Bay by defeating Eclipso. Why's he acting so dumb?!

Look, that was a rhetorical question. I know why he's acting so dumb: Dan Vado is writing this.

We, the readers, being smarter than Booster Gold, Fire, and Ice combined, know that they should contact Batman and get his help. Instead, they decide to ask Hairy Lex Luthor for some advice. He and his team have developed a Solar Trap based on Bruce Gordon's solar work. But he's not sure it will work because, um, Dan Vado is writing this, I guess? Is this the the short period of time when Lex Luthor was trying to act humble because he was supposed to be his own Australian son and he didn't want anybody realizing it by whipping out his brain-dick every time he was asked to help solve a problem? Now he's all, "Man, having hair really mellows a guy out! I'm barely angry anymore! Chicks want to fuck me and I can finally masturbate again without fear that my bionic hand will rip my manhood off!" I suppose Angry Lex could have built a solar trap that definitely works but Angry Lex was also always stressed out and screaming at people. Chill Lex can barely fucking care because he's thinking about all the puss that's going to be on his face later.

Ice contacted my dick. Did that joke work? Did it make sense? Fuck it, I'm with Chill Lex now. Who cares if shit works when you've got puss on your face!

And what I mean by puss on my face is, um, cookie crumbs. They're fucking everywhere! I probably shouldn't have learned to eat cookies from Cookie Monster.

Night falls on Crater Bay and Superman heads over to throw his (and everybody on Earth's) life away. Superman doesn't even make sure Eclipso lets the hostages go before he picks up the Black Diamond and tries to get angry. What the fuck? The whole point is to save people? Why would Eclipso let them go if Superman becomes Eclipsed first? Like I said, Clark's an idiot.

It's possible Superman's learned enough about the Black Diamond to get mad at Eclipso so that when he turns, he'll have to beat the shit out of Eclipso before Eclipso can manipulate him. But probably not because I've still got a whole pile of The Darkness Within annuals to get through. And the last Superman one has Superman Eclipsed on the cover fighting Guy Gardner and Lobo at the same time. I know! I came directly into my pants when I saw that!

Superman becomes Eclipsed but we never find out what made him so angry because Eclipso just starts manipulating him immediately. Did Dan Vado not read his editorial notes for the story? It's probably because . . . no, no. You know what? Dan Vado founded the Alternative Press Expo so I'm going to give him a free pass on this. It was probably editorial's fault anyway. I'm sure Vado was all, "Yeah but in all the other stories, the character had to enact vengeance on the thing that made them mad before Eclipso could properly control them?" And Editorial was all, "Shut up, Dan Vado. Did you read the Flash Annual? He didn't enact vengeance on anybody, did he?" And Dan Vado was all, "I don't know because I didn't read it. It hasn't been published yet. Nobody sent me the script." And Editorial was all, "You think you're so smart, don't you, Dan Vado? Well just make Superman angry and Eclipsed and we'll worry about any inconsistencies!"

Also, I'm only on page 17 so any "inconsistencies" will probably be explained away and I'll feel stupid for making this stink. Anyway, did I mention that even though Chris Wozniak has been drawing a fucking awful Superman, he does a cute Ice?

You know I think she's cute because I bypassed a dozen panels of Fire's ass to scan this panel.

It's possible Ice is cute here because the inker has changed between the terrible Superman panels and this panel. It's hard to tell because what the fuck do I know about how an inker's style changes a penciller's style?! I told you right at the beginning that I'm not an art critic! Besides, there are like eighteen inkers credited for this thing!

Meanwhile, during a scene that I'm positive was going to end in Lex Luthor and Professor Emil Hamilton fucking, Bruce Gordon's Ozymandias Plan claims two more victims. You know, the two who were definitely about to fuck: Emil and Lex.

Back in Crater Bay, Captain Marvel arrives to scold Superman and also hit him a lot. "Hey man! Golly Gee Whiz, dude! Why you being so gosh-darned mean?" They beat each other senseless for many, many pages. Neither one seems to have the upper hand even if Captain Marvel's power stems from magic and, well, that's Superman's main weakness! I guess the magic that makes Billy strong and invincible doesn't mean the strength itself is magical. At one point during the fight, I'm convinced that Captain Marvel is just Martian Manhunter disguised as Captain Marvel because, um, why would fire hurt Captain Marvel?

Is he just pretending the flames hurt so the reader feels a little bit of drama and tension during this pretty spectacularly boring battle?

The only reason I knew this couldn't be Martian Manhunter is because Martian Manhunter is pretending to be Bloodwynd right now. He's too busy to pretend to be other people.

By page 35, I begin wishing instead of discussing the story, I just went through and scanned pictures of Ice and Fire's asses. Because, oh boy, are there a lot of panels highlighting them!

I've got a pretty good idea for a coffee table book!

Yeah. I stopped caring about the story and just began scanning butts. Fucking sue me.

The Ranking!
Luthor and Hamilton's solar trap works but overheats almost immediately. So everybody in Crater Bay is saved but Superman manages to get away. And Mona is nowhere to be found. On the plus side, did you see all of those butts? I'm sure there's a moon joke to be made here but I'm way too horny to think of it. I think I just figured out what's in Superman's mouth on the cover. It's my own dried semen from 34 years ago!

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Superman Annual #4 (June 1992)

All the cool kids are getting Eclipsed.

Eclipso: The Darkness Within: Superman Annual #4 (June 1992)
By Dan Vado, Scott Benefiel, Trevor Scott, Albert De Guzman, and Matt Hollingsworth
Cover by Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti
Edited by Dan Thorsland and Mike Carlin

The Cover!
I'm trying not to focus on Lois Lane's boob but as you can see by the way I began by mentioning Lois Lane's boob, I've already lost the battle. The male gaze more effectively possesses the mind of a man than one of Eclipso's Black Diamonds. At least I'm able to embrace it whereas many angry men want to believe the modern world will crucify them if they acknowledge their own lust and horniness. And judging by Lois's line of sight, she's currently captured by the Female Gaze as she stares straight down Superman's cock outline in his tight spandex Kryptonian briefs. Or is that still the male gaze since a male, Joe Quesada, drew this and thought, "If I were Lois Lane, I'd be thinking about sucking off Superman's steel beam right now." Which is less "horny" and more "gross" because he just drew Lois beating the shit out of Superman and he thinks she's thinking about fucking him right after? No wait. I'm thinking he's thinking that which means I'm more gross than horny. Whoops! Maybe I should stop exposing my true inner self on the Internet by writing pretend comic book reviews? Naw. What else am I going to do with the rest of my life which turned out to be way, way longer than I originally thought it would be. It's like, "Enough already!", amirite?

One more question about the cover which will probably be answered when I read the comic book so just regard most of this as a psychic form of physical masturbation. I'm asking the question for my own pleasure, I mean. "Why is Lois Lane beating up Superman after becoming Eclipsed?" It's been established that after a person is possessed by Eclipso, the God of Vengeance, they must destroy the thing that made them so angry. So what did Superman do to Lois? Not washing dishes, my man? Poor quality control in the bedroom? Did she find his Kryptonian Playboys and the red sun fleshlight in his Fortress of Solitude's Fortress of Solitude (the bathroom)? Boy howdy do I hope these questions are answered in this comic book and that the answer is that last one I suggested!

The Story So Far
Eclipso continues to sit on his moon toilet talking to Valor while his Black Diamonds scattered all over the Earth do all of the work. He doesn't have much more of a plan than "I hope some super heroes get really angry after finding and picking up one of the thousand shards of my original Black Diamond prison!" Currently he has control of Valor, Starman, The Creeper, and maybe Star Sapphire and Hal Jordan? I read that Annual so long ago that I can't remember who was still possessed when it ended.

No.

The Story!
Superman has failed to locate Eclipso because, well, he's not Batman and did Batman do it in Detective Comics? No, he fucking didn't. Although Superman, being able to fly into space and think about flying into space and having the moon be a territory within his reach that he must think about on occasion, should think, "Where would I put my base of operations if I were a being whose entire identity was based around how the moon blocks out the sun?" It's not like it's the most complicated riddle in the world. So instead of searching for Eclipso so he can attack him at the source, Superman flies around Metropolis looking for a couple of Black Diamonds that may or may not be there. Somehow he lucks onto the one person in the city who has a Black Diamond sitting in their pocket. Not because the guy is angry and smashing downtown Metropolis but because he's holding a gun to a woman's head and ranting like a paranoid schizophrenic. Superman doesn't know the guy has a Black Diamond but Bruce Gordon runs up, panting and sweating from his long sprint from Gotham, to tell Superman that the man has a Black Diamond. Bruce Gordon knows because he's got a device that can find Black Diamonds when they're in use or when the plot needs him to know where they are.

Why am I suddenly thinking about my first junior high school crush?

Bruce Gordon believes this man having the Black Diamond was an intricate trap by Eclipso to catch Superman. That's even more paranoid thinking than the guy holding the woman hostage screaming about needing a ship to go into space and fight an alien demon. Mostly because that guy's talking about Eclipso which is actually happening and Bruce Gordon's theory relies on the Black Diamonds having way more control over their own destiny than "being found in a gutter" or whatever. I guess once a person is possessed they become Eclipso on Earth which means he can use them to sort of get Superman's attention and then he can try to shove the Black Diamond up Superman's ass or however he means to possess him. So, okay, now that I've given it a little more thought, maybe Bruce Gordon isn't totally nuts. Also he's the foremost expert on Eclipso so maybe I should be trusting the experts, even if they're a fictional comic book character currently being written by Dan Vado. I should but it's hard. Where did I leave my hammer?

Superman beats up another of Eclipso's manifestations while Bruce Gordon bathes it in sunlight. Afterward, he questions the man who brought the Black Diamond to his city.

There you go! He's on the moon! Go get his ass!

Crater Bay? Was that a popular location in the DC Universe in 1992? Or is this just a city used in this story as a clue to Eclipso's location? Whatever its origin, Lois Lane is on the case! She's off to investigate the strange goings on in Crater Bay. I bet she runs into a bunch of fish looking motherfuckers who drive her insane.

No, wait, she's actually investigating a possible case of corporate corruption and illegal dumping of toxic chemicals. She also outs herself as a white supremacist.

What else could she mean by "one of the last bastions of real America"?

So fucking sick of this "common sense" idea that "the real America" lies in the exact place and time after the indigenous peoples have been run off, killed, and exiled but before the Civil Rights act and brown foreigners began coming to share the American dream. As if rural means anything at all. Or fucking "Heartland". Don't fucking mistake the metaphorical, bullshit meaning of that word for the literal reason it was coined: the area known as the heartland is simply center mass in the country. I wish the ass were thought of as the central component of the human body so we could just start calling the flyover states the Assland. Not that I think the people living there are ass (I mean, sure, some of them (maybe a lot of them!)) but it's better to be the butt of a joke than be raised up on some kind of white supremacist pedestal because of the word heart coinciding with a place where a bunch of dumb people think mostly white people reside. I lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, for a few years and if it weren't for the humidity and the Huskers fans, I might still live there yet. Summer lightning storms? Yes please. Lightning bugs?! Hallelujah! Blizzards that trap you at your married friends' house so that their four year old son could tell you about how, when he was in his mommy's tummy, he wanted to be a girl? Fantastic! His father's look every single day after that as he tried to process it? Priceless!

Lois Lane finds her reception in Crater Bay to be slightly chillier than she's normally received even in places that don't want journalists poking around.

Then why is he fucking running the inn?!

The angry old man is actually Eclipsed Starman in disguise because Starman can apparently change shape which is why Eclipso's so happy to have him. Now this is an obvious Superman trap! I knew trusting the expert was the right thing to do even if I really, really, really, really didn't want to and also because I despise him and his stupid Commissioner Batman name.

Eclipso, pissed off at everything (which is why he wants to destroy everything. He kind of has to because everything is what made him so mad), monologues a little more information about his plans (unless it's not a monologue when you're kind of talking to the alien in a coma and/or trance floating nearby). Crater Bay is the headquarters for his secret possessing Superman headquarters. The people of Crater Bay network with other possessed people around the world to distribute Black Diamonds to where Eclipso can manipulate leaders, heroes, and even the economy (probably. Maybe he doesn't care about money so much). See? The name of the town is a clue to is location! What an idiot. If I lived in a crater on the moon, I would name my Earth city base of operations, Venusville. It's like how my banking password is "IVENEVERSUCKEDADICKBEFORE".

An Eclipso monster confronts Superman, Bruce Gordon, and Mona (and Mona's amazing ass) on the road to Crater Bay and Superman has to smash the creature into a greenhouse that uses solar power to heat the place. It destroys the creature whose soul goes screaming to the moon.

So let me get this straight: any power generated from the sun can destroy Eclipso. Solar Lance toys. A flashlight powered by solar energy. Batteries charged by solar panels. If this is the case, can't anything destroy Eclipso since the source of all power on Earth — all of it! — comes from the sun? Couldn't Superman just smash a tree into Eclipso? Throw coal at him? How many degrees of separation must there be between "direct solar energy" and pretty much anything on Earth before it has no effect on Eclipso? Isn't he just basically safe from, um, rocks?

The fight destroys Gordon's Black Diamond Detector and almost destroys his Solar Flashlight. That just means it broke but he fixed it but it's also probably down to a negligible charge. Superman will probably have to defeat Eclipsed Lois Lane by spunking on her. "Gordon! Mona! Hold Lois down so I can titty fuck her! My semen's loaded with yellow sun juice and a facial seems like just the cure!"

The developer whose wife is being held hostage by Eclipso so that he'll help lure Superman into town spends all night trying to get Lois angry so she'll turn be Eclipsed. He spills two cups of coffee on her and tries to put his hands on her to sop up the spilled beverage but none of it gets her needle moving. No, to get her angry, things have to be personal.

Oh, of course! Condescension's the thing! That's so Lois.

So Superman kills Lois and saves the day. Next annual!

The Ranking!
Okay, maybe Lois Lane wasn't killed. Who can tell? Somebody would have to finish reading this comic book and did you know? It's 60 pages long! DC knows the kind of stupid dumb idiots who read comic books, right? They expect us to read sixty whole pages in one sitting?! Fucking hell. It's just too much. I can't do it. I won't do it! Unless the next page I read expresses how Woke Lois Lane is, I'm just not going to continue and assume she died. Or should I assume she was cured by that facial idea? Hmm. I wonder if I can commission Scott Benefiel to draw that scene so I can staple it into my Annual?

Yield means Yield, you cretin!

Okay fine! I'll finish! I hope Lois goes off on how terrible Reagan was after she's cured!

The story simply ends when the sun rises. Superman does the thing where he distracts the vampires and/or trolls and/or Eclipsos so that they lose track of time and get destroyed by the rising sun. But Mona winds up Eclipsed and hides in the houses in Crater Bay with all the rest of the Eclipsed inhabitants. Superman decides he'll have to come back with some "Marvel"ous help to save the residents later. He still doesn't even contemplate checking out the moon. Maybe he's decided that guy who wasn't actually crazy was crazy in just that one small detail of Eclipso living on the moon?

For some reason, I didn't find this issue as good as Detective Comics Annual #5. Come to think of it, I haven't read any comic book as good as that one. And yet why am I having trouble remembering any of it?