Showcase Presents Superman, Volume 2 by Jerry Siegel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the second in DC's Silver Age Black and White Superman reprints. It collects Action Comics Issues 258-275 and Superman #134-144, a period stretching from November 1959-May 1961

There's no big over-arching plot. What you do have, for the most part, are some of the Silver Age's goofiest superhero adventures. One story is "The Super-Clown of Metropolis," in which Superman has to try to get a dying wealthy man to laugh for that man to leave his money to charity. In many ways, I think that could describe this era of Superman.

Superman is Superman. He knows what he's about. He knows evil has to be fought and disasters have to be averted but he's having the time of his life doing it. This is Superman who will take advantage of the fact that Clark Kent went to a party dressed as a devil to just mess with some criminals heads. This is Superman who gets tired of Mr. Mxzyptlk messing around with his life and so he flies to the fifth dimension to mess around with the inter dimensional imp. Both the Golden Age and modern Superman are above that sort of thing, but this is a job for Silver Age Superman!

The book also has several stories featuring Bizarro World and they are mostly fantastic and goofy in their own right.

This isn't to say that the book is all laughs and chuckles. Superman meets his underseas Mermaid girlfriend again and loses her in a way that makes you think he was lucky not to marry her. He also fakes his own disappearance in an elaborate attempt to make Lois happy so that she'll marry the nice guy who is trying to pursue him rather than continuing to fawn over Superman.

Though, for more serious moments, "Superman's Return to Krypton is a classic of Superman travelling back in time, landing on doomed Krypton, and trying in vain to save, and really falling in love in a doomed romance. It's tragic, sad, and beautiful that few things in the Silver Age are. This is followed by "The Old Man of Metropolis," which finds Superman awakening in a world where he's old and life has passed him by and his decisions have left him alone and Lois miserable. It's an obvious dream, but one that makes Superman think about all the decisions he made.

The book does have its weak points. There are way too many stories that end in, "It was all a dream..." The fact that Superman is not only Superman but has an army of Superpowered robots willing to his bidding and an entire city in a bottle full of advanced Kryptonians who can help leads to some lazy resolutions. And there are a few stories that cross the line from charmingly silly to just plain stupid.

Still, this is a nice book if you have a warm spot in your heart for Silver Age silliness because at the end of the day, there is no silver age silliness quite like Superman Silver Age silliness.



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