Joe Casey's Adventures of Superman #621-23: Superfiction, Part 3

"The Mack Minute" / "Mighty Bubbles" / "Bittersweet"

The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #621-23 (Dec. 2003–Feb. 2004)

Writer: Joe Casey
Art:  Derec Aucoin
Colors: Tanya & Richard Horie
Associate Editor: Lysa Hawkins
Editor: Eddie Berganza 

Joe Casey's run on Adventures of Superman comes to an end with three final issues. The first two (#621-22) make up one story. All the children in Metropolis five and under turn into insects at the same time that Supeman has to contend with an attitudinal new vigilante in Metropolis, the Minuteman (because he defeats bad guys in under sixty seconds). These things turned out to be linked (the fact that the Minuteman is the mail cart guy at the Daily Planet is just a gigantic coincidence, though): the Minuteman is training for the arrival of the Anti-Angelica, insect creatures from another dimension. The Anti-Angelica cannot breed in their home dimension, so after they get married, they travel to another dimension and, as they say, "we can become parents. We borrow... and we breed..."

from The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #621

To be honest, it doesn't really work. It might be the very weakest of all the non-crossover stories by Joe Casey. First, there's the big coincidence of the mail guy being the Minuteman, and then once the Anti-Angelica show up, what Superman does is kind of lame. He accidentally gets sucked into the Anti-Angelica honeymoon suite, where he does (very easily) free the kids, and then accidentally gets sent by the Minuteman to the Anti-Angelica dimension. There, he talks to them for a minute, and then just... goes back home, trading places with the Minuteman, who is sealed in the Anti-Angelica dimension. Like, he doesn't even do anything, and I don't really get what the point of it all is supposed to be. No one does anything clever or particularly inspirational, we don't learn anything about Superman or his beliefs, despite some banal ruminations on the final page. I don't know that any of the post–Ending Battle stories worked for me 100%, but this one worked least of all.

The final issue of Casey's run is "Bittersweet" (#623)... and it's bittersweet. (Unlike every other non-crossover story in his run, it actually has been collected in English before, in a 75th-anniversay collection of standalones with the unwieldy title of Superman: The Man of Steel: Believe; I think it was meant to tie into the Man of Steel film.) In this issue, Clark and Lois go flying together while they have A Talk. Their sometimes rocky marriage has been a consistent but also inconsistent background element of Casey's run: they have endured multiple separations but also reaffirmed their love for each other.

from The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #623

Here, they talk about their relationship, but occasionally pause as Superman narrates an old adventure for Lois, so we get a series of synopses, ranging from one to three pages each, of exciting adventures that happened elsewhere. A lot of them have a whiff of bullshit about them: these are the wacky kinds of adventures Superman would have in the Silver Age, not the more "realistic" ones of the post-Crisis era. For example: Superman helping Santa when all the reindeer are sick with a viral infection, someone remote controlling a ghost quarterback, Superman up against the entire (mind-controlled) JLA, the Earth turning into a single-cell organism, and so on. I've seen this kind of thing done well elsewhere-- I feel like this a trope of final issues, though now of course I can't think of any examples-- but I don't feel like these ones entirely work. They're all... too easy? too boring? too distant? I dunno. I know I've seen this kind of montage/snippet adventure done well, and I expected something more interesting here.

What does work is the conversation between Lois and Clark. Clark acknowledges that "We haven't seen much of each other..." because he's been so busy, and in a particularly neat bit, they reflect on the beginning of their relationship sitting atop the house of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings gave Lois the name "Superman" when she first reported on him. She acknowledges how that shows her uncertainty about him; Clark's rejoinder that "They called his philosophy 'realism'... which is probably the furthest thing from describing me..." feels a little bit like a metatextual jab at those who want to downplay the character's more fantastic elements. Lois acknowledges that their marriage will never be typical: "I get selfish, too... having to share you with the rest of the world, but I know how important you are... what you mean to people..." It's a good portrayal of the Lois/Clark relationship and its complications; it's great being married to Superman, but it will never be easy.

from The Adventures of Superman vol. 1 #623

The last few pages of the comic intercuts panels of ordinary people doing good, but with the Superman symbol prominent in some way: a fireman wearing a Superman t-shirt beneath his jacket, an EMT wearing a Superman cap in the cold, a doctor with a Superman tattoo on his arm... It's a decent pay-off of some of the stuff set up in #610 about Superman's relationship to ordinary people. Even if he's off in space instead of helping the "little guy," he still helps ordinary people through the virtue of the example he sets, helping us help each other.

It ends with an affirmation of Lois and Clark's marriage as Superman flies off into the sunset. The issue as a whole might be a little rocky, but its closing moments certainly nail it.

That's my last issue... but I'm not done! Come back next week for my overall reflections on the entire Joe Casey Adventures of Superman experience!

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