#like in my head i quite literally visualize characters being locked in jail while watching everyone else have fun

[emp-blast]

he got banned for typing /gamemode c

[superman86to99]

Superman #84 (December 1993)

Superman takes a short Paris vacation! Like, one day short. What's the worst that could happen?

Oh, man.

So, for the past few issues, we've been hearing about children being abducted in Metropolis. Now we see that they're being kept inside a giant toy house by some creepy bald man in Quasimodo clothes who seems to be obsessed with toys -- a "Man of Toys," if you will. Side note: no wonder the children haven't been found... all the articles about them are just gibberish! (See clip below.)

The kidnapper thinks that these kids' parents don't deserve them, and that they're much better off here, in an underground hideout with a man who threatens to starve them if they don't play with him. (And I do mean literally play, with action figures and stuff.) Meanwhile, as these children cry for help, Superman is having the time of his life. While helping move a stranded ship with some huge-ass chains, Superman spots a sunken galleon with a treasure chest inside and fantasizes about keeping the booty...

...before turning it over to the authorities anyway, the big boy scout. Then, he wakes up Lois at 6 AM and tells her they should go to Paris right now, which usually means your significant other is having a mental breakdown, but in this case they can actually do it. And so, after deciding that he deserves to use his powers for fun every once in a while, Superman and Lois drop everything and fly to France with super-speed for the rest of the day/issue.

Anyway: back to the child abduction! Cat Grant and her son Adam attend a Halloween party at Adam's school, but there's a disturbed weirdo in a hideous costume lurking among the crowd. Yes, I'm talking about Jimmy Olsen in his Turtle Boy suit.

Shortly after that, a guy in a dinosaur costume (see, all the creeps are dressed as reptiles) lures Adam out of the party with the promise of "superb video games." What child could resist that? Of course, that turns out to be the kidnapper and Adam ends up in his hideout along with the rest of the missing children and, worst of all, not a single "Lextendo" console.

The kidnapper gets angry at Adam when he refers to the toys at the hideout as "old-fashioned junk" (he was REALLY looking forward to those video games), and even angrier when Adam tries to free the other kids. Adam is brave and puts up a good fight, but...

And those were Adam Morgan's final words. "Uh-oh."

Next, we have a pretty harrowing scene of Detective Turpin letting Cat know Adam’s body was found, and Jimmy and Perry White taking her to the morgue to identify the body (most people probably wouldn't bring their former boss to something like that, but Perry sadly knows more than most about losing a kid). As for Lois and Clark, they were gone so long that the Daily Planet had time to print a headline about the murders. The issue ends when the lovebirds walk into the office smiling like two people who just spent the night fooling around in Paris... only to feel like jackasses when they find out what happened.

To be continued!

Character-Watch:

And that's it for little Adam Morgan who, unlike the also tragically diseased Jerry White, didn't even get any post-death appearances. Adam went from a little kid scared of Superman, to a huge brat, to a character who was approaching likeability as of last week. That's why I hate it when DC kills off young characters like Adam or Liam Harper: in long-form storytelling, children represent potential. Look at how much Wally West or Dick Grayson evolved over the years compared to their mentors! Sure, there's a huge probability that Adam would have ended up disappearing from comics for 25 years anyway, but who knows, maybe we'd now know him as Teen Gangbuster or something. GangbusTEEN.

This issue also represents a turning point for the kidnapper, who is never named or seen clearly in the story itself but I don't think I'm shocking anyone by spoiling the fact that he's Toyman (it's in the cover, for one thing). In his last two appearances before this storyline, Toyman helped Superman save some kids from Sleez and looked genuinely sad to learn about Superman's death, so this is a pretty dramatic change for the character. We'll find out why he went from big softy to child killer in Superman #85 (but don't get your hopes up).

Plotline-Watch:

The most disturbing part of the issue, all things considered, is still the part where Toyman climbs into a giant crib and hugs a huge stuffed bunny. Look at serial killer Tommy Pickles here:

Don Sparrow says:  “Even with the upgrade, Toyman is still just a man in a suit, a common complaint about Superman’s rogues gallery.” Funny you should say that, because I JUST shared an old Wizard interview in our Twitter in which Dan Jurgens talks about how Doomsday came out of his frustration with the fact that most Superman villains are dudes in suits (plus other interesting tidbits from the era, like how it was actually Roger Stern’s idea to bring back Hank Henshaw, so check out that link!).

Don again: “The entire Superman storyline of this issue feels like filler. Diving for buried treasure and soaring off to Paris -- it all feels like wasted time next to the Adam storyline.” I have a theory that the entire ship sequence is there as an excuse to put Superman in those big chains and make that Spawn joke (which I didn’t get until now, since I’ve always read this issue in Spanish).

Superman says that pulling that big ship was "a little easier than expected" -- that's either another hint that there's something going on with Superman's powers since he came back, or a subtle dig at the state of American ship manufacturing.

Another adorable "window tap" scene for the books, and this is the sexiest one so far. Is it me or has Jurgens started copying more than just Teri Hatcher's hairdo from Lois & Clark? (For anyone who thinks Lois has gotten implants, I refer you to this clip.)

While in Paris, Lois asks Clark if he's ever wondered what would happen if his rocket had landed in other countries. Don: “Clark’s conversation with Lois sounds like a bunch of concepts for Elseworlds stories. We eventually would see a Russian Superman, and a British Superman, but not yet the French Superman. (Hire us, DC!)” Yep, got my French Superman pitch ready, Jim Lee. Or just let us do Russian Superman again, since Red Son wasn’t even the first time you published that idea.

Don once more: “Another thing that makes no sense about the ‘new’ Toyman is his resentment of technological toys—when in previous appearances he himself had deadly high-tech toys to vex Superman over the years.” I especially resent his hatred of video game consoles. Incidentally, I wonder what types of games are available for Adam’s beloved Lextendo. Star Lex 64? Mega Man Lex? Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles & Lex?

No one is more upset at Lois and Clark for going AWOL than Whit. NO ONE. He's so furious that his usually grey mustache turned black.

Patreon-Watch:

As always, shout out to our patrons, Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Samuel Doran, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush and Raphael Fischer! Last month’s exclusive Patreon article was about the recently unearthed sequel to Superman 64 for the PlayStation, featuring Metallo, Parasite, and Lois looking even hotter than in this issue:

Hot damn. Find out more at https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99!

And believe it or not, Don Sparrow has even more to say about this issue. Read his section after the jump:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

I should start off my section with a big caveat:  I flat out hate this issue. There were several weird decisions made in the post-Death-and-Return era (most of them along the same lines of making the Superman titles more grim-and-gritty), and this story was one of the worst of them.  My theory is that, despite the praise and record-breaking sales of the Death and Return storyline, the Superman creative team felt pressure to have more extreme storylines, perhaps in response to the wildly successful Image books coming out at the time.  Between this story, and the upcoming “Spilled Blood” storyline, the Super books take a hard—but temporary--turn into more violent and upsetting storytelling—even though these stories are by the same writers as the previous few years. While death has always been a part of comics, and Superman comics was no exception, there is a jarring glibness and unfeeling toward the way violence is handled in these pages that is quite different from the stories that preceded it.  It’s made all the more jarring by the fact that well-established personalities suddenly veer wildly out of character, Toyman chief among them.  

We start with the cover, and while it is technically well-drawn (by the familiar team of Jurgens and Breeding) it’s also a very upsetting visual.  I think they should have gone with the pieta type pose with Adam and Superman, OR the scary badass bowie-knife Toyman (who apparently has a Cheshire cat smile now) but not both.  But the cover is a good hint at the tonal dissonance of the comic within.

We open with a splash of the now-extreme 90s looking Toyman, with his serial killer shaved head and spooky cloak, ignoring the pleas of hungry kids he has locked up in a tiny jail cell for days at a time (if that sentence doesn’t ring alarm bells for how wrong this is for a Superman story, I don’t know what will). For much of the issue Toyman’s eyes are obscured by glare on his lenses, further de-humanizing a character who was once one of Superman’s more empathetic bad guys.

We cut to Superman tugboating a huge tanker with giant chains and it’s a cool visual (one repeated in the Batman V Superman film).  It feels especially out of place to focus on, given how upsetting this issue is otherwise, but throughout the whole comic, Lois is drawn smoking hot, especially on the two page spread on pages 9-10.

The scenes depicting the actual murder, while still wildly out of place in a Superman comic, are well done, and give a real sense of darkness and menace, which I suppose is the intent.  Perhaps my least favourite visual is the Big Bird stuffie, silently bearing witness to what’s about to occur.

The edges of the panels on get more slashy and off-kilter (to me, looking very much like the layouts more typically seen in Image comics of the day) and I suppose I appreciate the restraint of how little Dan Jurgens shows of the death of a child, showing only a bloody slash on a black background.  This is still a pretty baroque image for a Superman comic, but certainly less violent than it could be, given what is happening.

Cat Grant’s silent horror is well staged, and powerful in its way.   Lastly, Clark Kent bending in sorrow and regret is a powerful image.

While this issue is handled marginally better, and more maturely than other comics on the shelf at this time, I still believe it is one of the biggest mistakes of the era.  Giving a long-established character an unceremonious death for shock value is gross on its own, but making it a child definitely crosses a line for me.  Making it worse is that, while the Toyman is a criminal and a killer, he has shown in past issues (a similar kidnapping storyline involving Sleez) that he genuinely cares for the well-being of children.  So for a long-time reader, this also felt like a betrayal of a long-established, fully developed character.   Adding to the ugliness of this is that Adam dies heroically, trying to free the children who have been caged, unfed, for days, but even in that regard, he fails.  The headline at the end of the issue confirms all the children are dead.  Adam’s death did not buy the other kids enough time to get away. It was all for nothing. Had Adam died, but the other children lived, maybe this issue wouldn’t leave quite as bad a taste. [Max: It’s weird because it’s all told in a way where it’s told in a way where it would make sense, narratively and within the story universe, that the other kids survived, but then it’s almost casually revealed that nope, they died too. A scene of one of the kids relaying Adam’s heroism to Cat in a future issue would have gone a long way.]

Superman doesn’t come off well in these pages, either.  It’s honestly the type of story they should just stay away from, because the more you think about all the calamity that is going on around the clock, the less defensible the whole Clark Kent persona becomes. Superman carving out time to romance his fiancée directly led to the preventable deaths of innocent children—how do you come back from that?

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

I’m always looking for hints that perhaps Jimmy or Perry know Superman’s secret identity deep down, and Jimmy’s anger at Lois and Clark on their return to the Daily Planet offices would seem to give that theory some credence, as he’s as angry at them as if he knew Clark really were Superman.  Either that, or he’s ticked that it fell to him, and none of them to escort Cat into the morgue. [Max: Has this issue finally converted you to the “Jimmy is terrible” side now, Don?]

I don’t think I’m the only one who disliked the new Toyman—SPOILERS BE HERE: years later, in Action Comics #865, Geoff Johns retconned this whole story, reverting Schott into the criminal who over-relates to kids, rather than the child-killer of this story.  Apparently the infantile Schott, who speaks to “Mother” a la Norman Bates, is a robot so lifelike it fools even Superman, and the “Mother” he’s constantly replying to was the real Winslow Schott trying to recall the malfunctioning robot. [Max: That’s one Geoff Johns retcon I really didn’t mind, even if it felt kind of derivative of his similar “all the Brainiacs are robots made by the real Brainiac” reveal.]

[douxreviews]

The Umbrella Academy - ‘The White Violin’ Review

When it's all said and done, The Umbrella Academy's season finale does what finales typically aim to achieve. That is, for the most part it credibly brings an end to the arcs of Season 1 while setting up and leaving room for intrigue over the murky elements of the upcoming Season 2.

Smack-dab in the center of the finale's conflict is Vanya, who has decided in a matter of seconds that the only road left for her to take is to destroy literally anything and anyone in her way from here on out. Which is...hasty. Evidently, Luther being the only sibling to all but turn on Vanya in the last episode has led Vanya to concur that everyone is now her enemy, which only feels like one of the laziest narrative routes this series has taken yet. For one thing, it's fairly clear that Vanya could see through the isolation chamber that Allison, Klaus and Diego were very much against Luther's decision to lock her up, so right now, Luther should be the only one on the receiving end of her anger. Perhaps it could be argued that Vanya harbors resentment for her other siblings for their neglect of her when they were kids, but because the child actress for Vanya in these kinds of flashback sequences doesn't do much expression-wise besides maintaining deadpan at its finest, it's difficult for a viewer then to get inside this character's head and obtain a read on how they're feeling.

If I may indulge in 'spit-balling' for a moment, a far more interesting climax this finale could have taken is to show Vanya purely going after Luther, bent on rightful retribution. Therefore, the remaining siblings are left to consider whether to let Vanya exact her anger, or insert themselves into the conflict to save Luther and risk being at the mercy of Vanya too. In this scenario, the apocalypse is averted, but the Hargreeves' cohesive image of their family is now what's being put at risk.

Once Vanya kills Pogo and Mom, and destroys the academy, the siblings regroup and plan their next course of action. It's a little odd that this series never condemns Luther for his decision last episode to send Vanya directly to jail without passing Go, as the others seem oddly content now with letting Luther's impulsive ways slide, and instead willing to go along with the groupthink notion. For a while here, much of the episode then begins to feel like the manual arrangement of chess board pieces, in order to push everyone into where they're supposed to be for the final battle; Luther, Diego, Klaus, and Allison escape Commission agents, Vanya prepares for her concert where she intends to amplify her expelled tremors through her violin and wreak havoc, and The Handler gets Hazel and Cha-Cha back on the same page so they can keep eyes on Vanya to ensure the apocalypse plays out as it's supposed to.

My favorite development of the finale is found in the conclusion to Diego's quest for vengeance. While battling Cha-Cha, and knowing that she was the one that pulled the trigger on Patch, Diego decides that taking another life out of retribution wouldn't have been the right way to honor Patch, someone that abided strictly by law and order, and lets Cha-Cha go. Thus, it sets in motion now a refined way for Diego to get past his obstacles come Season 2; without relying so heavily on a solution that involves fatally stabbing the obstacle before you, I'm left intrigued as to what kind of individual Diego will grow into in the future.

In a turn of events that would probably leave even Neil deGrasse Tyson at a loss for words, Allison is able to end it all by sedating Vanya with a gunshot right beside her ear. But the combination of the bullet and Vanya's tremors results in a sonicboom of some sorts that destroys the moon, and causes it to rain down on Earth. So in the end, the apocalypse still occurs, full-circle. I actually see this as a quite ominous visualization of the notion that time is a fixed constant, and that the most drastic of events are destined to play out no matter how much you muck around in the space-time continuum. Earth is supposedly doomed, but Five believes so long as they are alive and given time to think, the siblings can still avert the disaster, and projects himself, Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus and Vanya back in time to an unknown date. Additionally, Hazel shoots The Handler and also uses a briefcase to transport him and Agnes away to an unknown date, so it looks like, for now anyway, Hazel's gotten the escape from his dreadful line of work that he's wanted.

Season 1 has certainly left us with a few things to mull over until Season 2 hits Netflix. For one thing, Sir Reginald in fact is extraterrestrial in origin, as the episode's prelude would have us believe. Ben has made some progress transcending the barriers between the worlds of the living, and the deceased, so I have personal hopes to see additional interactions between Ben and the other siblings. There's been a hefty amount too of conjecture over just how much we will see of the de-aged siblings in Season 2, seeing that somehow, Five transporting everybody into the past has also begun to affect their physical appearances. I suspect though that we won't have to worry about never seeing the older actors again on the show, as I seriously can't imagine the showrunners would be silly enough to forsake seven performers with amazing rapport next season just to keep the ball rolling with a fifteen-second cliffhanger. Fingers crossed though that Five isn't slowly devolved into just a plot device that can get the team out of any pinch.

I stand by what I said back in my review of the pilot, that The Umbrella Academy Season 1 is primarily a character-driven series, and even if its narrative and plot points can strike me as out-of-touch and peculiar, it absolutely is worth it to keep coming back episode after episode to watch these misfits interact with each other, and I will be doing so once again with Season 2. By this point, I'm more up-to-date with the happenings of the comics but seeing how much elbow room Season 1 had without strictly sticking to the source material, I'd say it's more anyone's guess as to what's in store in Season 2.

Name That Tune:

Another of my absolute favorites from this series' playlist - Hazy Shade of Winter, sung by none other than Gerard Way again - plays through the Season 1 credits. It's also worth it to check out the original sung by Simon and Garfunkel, but Way's cover has this almost-explosive aura to it that is just fine if fast-paced rock is more your thing.

Hargreeves Humor:

Mother: " Excuse me, it's my son Kenny's birthday today, and, uh, wouldn't your son be happier playing with kids his own age? Assuming it's okay with your two dads." Five: "I would rather chew off my own foot."

(Later, after Commission agents appear.)

Luther: "Who the hell are these guys?" Klaus: "Maybe they're here for Kenny's birthday!"

Luther: "Is there any way to silence that voice in your head that screams out to be the center of attention?" Klaus: "You know, I liked you a lot better before you got laid."

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Aaron Studer loves spending his time reading, writing and defending the existence of cryptids because they can’t do it themselves.