This Week in Comics — 2013/01/09

I have not been read­ing most of the new DC 52 uni­verse, espe­cial­ly the Super­man titles, but I at least try to keep up in case some­thing shows up that I should be aware of.

Well, that paid off this week.

Action Comics #16: “The Second Death of Superman”

I’m not exact­ly sure what is hap­pen­ing here: chaot­ic is hard­ly a descrip­tion for what is going on, but at some lev­el it appears some­one has bro­ken time so that things are hap­pen­ing out of time and across time, cul­mi­nat­ing with the return the crea­ture who killed Super­man in a famous sto­ry­line sev­er­al years ago and the return of the Cri­sis of Infi­nite Worlds. Oh, and the found­ing three adult mem­bers of the Legion of Super-Heroes just showed up, trav­el­ing from a future where they were outlawed.

If that last part sounds famil­iar, it should: the Legion had been out­lawed in the past, through the machi­na­tions of the super-hyp­no­tist Uni­ver­so. In fact, even the future time has bro­ken, and the Legion them­selves unknow­ing­ly help Uni­ver­so attain pow­er before they are out­lawed and they have to return to the present to pre­vent the changes in the future.

Uni­ver­so: After all, a hyp­not­ic dis­guise is child’s play, no more than a mere mod­icum of skill, even in front of a mass audi­ence. How­ev­er, hyp­not­i­cal­ly induc­ing a pow­er­ful telepath to think she scanned your mind … now that requires sub­tle­ty.

As this sequence is not in the reg­u­lar Legion title, I must assume that these events are part of the chaot­ic time­line and not set in the cur­rent continuity.

Mars Attacks Popeye

IDW is pub­lish­ing a num­ber of comics based on “Mars Attacks”, the ear­ly trad­ing card set and the lat­er inter­est and movie sur­round­ing it. Among the one-shot comics include crossovers with Judge Dredd, Ghost­busters and Popeye.

In “Mars Attacks Pop­eye”, the invad­ing horde of Mar­tians are met by the Sea Hag, who hyp­no­tizes them all to do her bid­ding, which, being the destruc­tion of the town of Sweet­haven and Pop­eye, is quite to their lik­ing. How­ev­er, even the sci­en­tif­ic might of the Mar­t­ian invaders is no match for the spinach-pow­ered fists of Pop­eye and his father Poopdeck Pappy.