I recently watched the entirety of BBC's "Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares" on Netflix. In every episode scales back, limiting the chefs to smaller menus and simpler ingredients.
I bring this up because I've been putting off writing a review of Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane #16 because I haven't had a lot of free time to write of late. Then, as Gordon Ramsey explained that a good broccoli soup can be made from broccoli, salt, and water, I concluded this story need no embellishment.
One day, Lois gets jealous of Jimmy Olsen's Superman signal watch...
Previously, Superman challenged Batman and Robin to figure out his secret identity, which necessitated his erasing his secret identity from their Batbrains with a Superbraineraser. Despite Superman's cheating and completely missing the point of his own challenge, Batman figured out he was Clark Kent in two days. This made Supes declare he could figure out Batman and Robin's alter egos in the same 48 hour time frame without using his superpowers.
So, what's his plan? To fly after Batman and Robin and learn the location of the Batcave... since apparently the ability to fly is not a "superpower" today.
But Batman is prepared for Superman's liberal interpretation of the rules.
Oh, shit! Batman don't play! This may all be in good fun, but Batman will fucking kill you, Supes!
Completely tapped for ideas, having exhausted all of one, Superman turns to Batman's playbook. The plan to find Superman's true identity kicked off with a public appearance, but the Dynamic Duo is to busy fighting murderous clowns and acid-scarred former district attorneys to waste time opening grocery stores.
But since Superman has no other fresh ideas, he stays up all night building a Batman Museum.
While the mayor and various other Gotham officials arrange a hasty dedication ceremony and rezone the area where Superman dropped the building, the Last Son of Krypton shrinks himself down and goes to visit a bunch of other Kryptonians in Kandor. There, he borrows a Kandorian telepathic hound from a pet store.
Like bloodhounds follow scents, Kandorian telepathic hounds track their game by picking up on brainwaves. So to recap, Superman's plan is to do exactly what Batman did, only find an encephalograph that will run itself so he doesn't have to learn any technological mumbo jumbo.
The better strategy seems to be remaining in their superhero identities all day. If Batman and Robin remain at the ceremony, then go on patrol, and spend the evening in the Batcave defragmenting the Batcomputer's hard drive, Superman will never learn their true identities without snatching the masks off their faces. Of course, Batman has a reason for running away... to totally rub Superman's nose in his own ineptitude.
However, this scene raises so many questions. How close are Gotham City and Metropolis? I'd always assumed they were at least in different states. Looking it up, it appears that they are either on opposite sides of New York City or across Delaware Bay from one another. Either way, it's safe to assume they are at least a few miles apart. Since Kryptonian dogs gain similar superpowers to Kryptonian people when they arrive on Earth, how is it Batman and Robin are able to outrun Superman and the telepathic hound all the way back to Clark Kent's apartment? And how does Superman not recognize that the dog is leading him up his own stairs and into his own apartment until he actually opens the door? And once Superman gets shown up, why not turn it off and continue pursuit since Batman and Robin must be right around the corner?
Apparently, it's because he's plunged into a terrible super-depression.
Recognizing this as a genuine threat to humanity, Batman tells Robin he is concerned about Superman's mental state and tries to call the whole thing off.
The next day, Batman and Robin find a mysterious golden dome in Metropolis. When they approach it, alarms go off. Superman steps out and explains that the alarm system is set to go off anytime anyone wearing a grey body suit with a blue cape and cowl or a red shirt with green panties and a yellow cape approaches. He escorts them inside and shows them a computer from the Bureau of Vital Statistics and explains that it's going through the 1960 Census data and will be able to determine Batman's true identity from that.
Batman and Robin have a brief sideways glance to one another and agree there's no way Superman can figure out their secret identities from census information, but Superman just laughs and warns them not to try to sabotage the computer while he's away on a top secret supermission since he will know if they come anywhere near the building... in their costumes...
Superman has a good gloat about how smart he is and how he's proven himself the equal of the world's greatest detective while Bruce and Dick "Aw, shucks" for all they're worth and curse themselves for falling into the oh-so-clever trap. But when Superman flies away to spin the Earth backwards and undo all the tragedy that's befallen mankind while he hid out waiting to surprise Batman, the Dynamic Duo breaths a sigh of relief that the contest is finally over.
Lots of love to Gregg Schigiel for the Bunny Olsen
My son is a terrible sport. He cheats at every game you play with him and when he can't cheat, he will announce abrupt changes to the rules. While in the midst of a pinfall while wrestling, you will be informed that you get zero points and he gets 5000 because you weren't allowed to use your arms. Footraces hinge not on the first person to arrive at a predetermined destination but on the youngest participant.
It's terribly annoying and everyone in the family has at one point or another told him, "I don't want to play with you. You are not any fun."
Of course, we can say this because my son is a six-year-old boy with the average size and strength of a six-year-old boy. Were he an alien with the strength to push the Earth out of orbit and the ability to shoot heat rays and radiation from his eyes, we'd probably change our attitudes.
A recurring theme in World's Finest stories is Superman deciding it would be fun to challenge Batman to some kind of contest or to pit himself against some other renowned figure and prove himself an equal. Unfortunately, any time Superman gets even a hint that he might lose--just like my son--he either changes the rules or pouts until he gets his way. And worse, he doesn't recognize the hollowness of the resultant victory.
Take for example World's Finest Comics #149's "The Game of Secret Identities."
While the flier proved to be a false alarm, Superman explains to Batman and Robin that he's worried maybe someone could see through his true identity if they tried hard enough. He wants Batman, as the world's greatest detective, to see if he can figure out his alter ego.
The only problem is that Batman and Robin already know Superman is Clark Kent... but they don't have to! Superman--passively making it clear he's already decided Bruce Wayne is going to take him up on the offer--has brought along his Selective Amnesia-Inducer.
What do you expect our sad Kryptonian friend up there to do as soon as he leaves the Selective Amnesia-Induction Center? I'm guessing it won't be too long before he calls his buddy Khal-Kar to suggest they grab a few Kryptonian ales or go see the new Lyla Lerrol flick, gets into an argument with the Widow Kar, and learns that his best friend suffered a tragic death that he knew nothing about. Yes. That's a much better outcome.
Batman and Robin agree to the Kryptonian mindwipe and set about trying to learn Superman's secret identity the very next day. At a media event, they hide an encephalograph in a news van and scan Superman's brain, figuring his brainwaves will be different from those of a human. But they get no reading whatsoever.
Instead, he's decided to make it a game of Show Up Batman! All he's proving is that if Lex Luthor loudly declares, "I am going to figure out Superman's secret identity through intense scrutiny and advanced technology," Superman has a few tricks up his sleeve. But unless he intends to allow his Superman Robots to take over all his superheroic duties moving forward, the entire exercise is pointless.
Batman, however, is nothing if not resourceful. He trails the Superman Robot back to the Fortress of Solitude and manages to break in only to find that Superman, who'd been hiding out there until the robot warned him Batman was coming, had removed all evidence that revealed his secret identity.
That's when Batman pulls a little "Fuck you" of his own. He deactivates all the Superman Robots before leaving the Fortress of Solitude, forcing Superman to make an actual appearance at another media event the next day. There, Batman finally gets the unique brainwave scan he wanted and is able to track Superman back to an apartment building in Metropolis.
Despite the answer being pretty obvious, Batman goes ahead with the experiment and while Superman masks his brainwave patterns for a while, his interest in hearing Batman say nice things about him during the slideshow overwhelms his cautiousness and exposes him.
Having been found out within 48 hours despite not really playing fairly, Superman listens to his wounded ego and declares he can learn Batman and Robin's true identities without using his superpowers. His plan? To use superpowers, of course... but that'll have to wait for Part Two...
In my last post, I noted that Superman considered the story of World's Finest #87 to be the "strangest adventure" he'd ever had with Batman and Robin. After all, it's not every day that Superman loses his powers or some other hero close to him gains superpowers.
No, maybe not every day, but it is close...
It should also be noted that these examples are only taken from issues of World's Finest Comics collected in the first two Showcase trades, a span of 75 issues from #71-145. There are many more stories of this type that take place before and after and in Superman or Action Comics.
Also, to qualify, an example had to be taken from a story where Superman losing his powers was a central part of the plot. Scenes where a thug tosses a chunk of kryptonite and knocks out Superman for two panels were unacceptable.
Two of the most common plots for Superman stories of the Silver Age were "Superman loses his powers" and "Someone else gets Superman-like powers." So when Superman introduces the story of "The Reversed Heroes" in World's Finest Comics #87 as "the strangest adventure Batman, Robin, and I ever had," you can't help but expect a little more than a story where Superman loses his powers and Batman gets them...
... especially since that was the exact plot of "The Super Bat-Man" from World's Finest Comics #77 published less than a year before.
That's not to say "The Reversed Superheroes" didn't offer a unique take on the trope. What sets it apart from all the other times that Superman loses his superpowers is that instead of focusing on how he could save the day despite his disadvantage, Supes decided to get all emo and cry about how much he missed his powers.
When the report of a superpowered bad guy robbing a Metropolis bank comes into the Daily Planet, Clark Kent suspects someone is faking. But when the thief rips the vault out of the ground and flies away with it, Superman has to accept that it's real. He followed the criminal back to his hideout, where he learns the man's story.
Forget how he got his powers. Perhaps my favorite part of this story is the bad guy's awesome supervillain name: Elton Craig! How much to you want to bet Bill Finger had a neighbor named Craig Elton who kept throwing away his garbage in Finger's trash cans or left his Christmas lights up into April and this was the writer's tiny slice of revenge?
Years earlier, Elton Craig devised a series of crimes he wanted to pull off, but realized he'd need kryptonite to remove Superman from the picture. So he got a job as an astronomer so he could find every meteorite that fell to the Earth and go see if it was kryptonite. One day, however, he found not only the kryptonite he needed, but something even better.
The box is full of pills that Jor-El invented on Krypton, knowing that when he and his family arrived on Earth, they would have superpowers, which they could lose and would, therefore, need to replace--obviously--via magical pills. Unfortunately, in all the chaos of Krypton blowing up, he forgot to toss the box into baby Kal-El's rocket ship.
With the kryptonite on the box keeping Superman immobilized and powerless, Elton Craig flies away, leaving the pills that give him superpowers on the table. I guess since he didn't have any pockets in his Elton Craig supersuit, he didn't have much choice.
Powerless due to the kryptonite, Superman, who is powerless due to the kryptonite, uses his heat vision to melt through a water pipe in the ceiling and create a gushing leak that washes all the kryptonite off the box... and presumably into a puddle on the floor where he is lying. Our hero leaps to his feet and pops one of his dad's super restorative super pills, but that only makes things worse.
While he waits for Batman and Robin to make the drive up from Gotham City to the hovel outside town where he's squatting, Superman passes the time by struggling to pick up heavy stuff and hurting himself.
Yes, Superman, that's why we normals don't go jamming pins into our fingers. Is this supposed to indicate that Superman normally passes time by poking himself with sharp objects and never realized that was out of the ordinary? Or is he trying to cope with the pain of losing his precious superpowers by cutting himself, but Elton Craig hasn't bothered to have any knives or razors around?
When Batman and Robin arrive, they pop Jor-El's pills and taunt Superman with a rousing game of "flying catch the vault Elton Craig stole earlier." Superman reminds them that a supervillain is terrorizing Metropolis, so they take off after Elton Craig, dragging Superman between them.
Superman is essentially Marvin the Paranoid Android at this point. "Woe is me. I can't fly... and I won't be able to fly for hours. However shall I cope?"
And why did Batman and Robin bother to bring him along? Is it to help identify Elton Craig? Because I'm thinking if you see a supervillain tearing apart Metropolis, it's a safe bet he's Elton Craig. And even if he's not, you should probably stop him anyway.
In fact, when they find Elton Craig robbing a jewelry store, Batman and Robin have to drop Superman safely outside the danger zone lest he be hurt. Of course, when they're distracted by a falling monument and have to let Elton Craig get away, Superman leaps into action with about as much success as you'd expect.
Then Superman becomes Lois Lane to Batman and Robin's Superman, stupidly stumbling into trouble and helping supervillains to get away by serving as a distraction.
After the Dynamic Duo save Superman at the expense of losing Elton Craig, they all agree the best course of action is to find the bad guy's new hideout. However, just as they are about to undertake this mission, a thunderstorm rolls in and lightning strikes the zoo, simultaneously releasing all the animals in a massive stampede. Since only superpowered Batman and Robin can handle that problem, Superman has to find the secret lair of Elton Craig on his own.
What the...? Seriously? Superman, have you ever noticed how Batman drives around in a Batmobile? He doesn't just run all over Gotham City. Furthermore, you have no idea where Elton Craig's hideout is. You just accepted the responsibility for finding it and took off in whatever direction you were facing like Forrest Gump, hoping maybe you'd trip over it.
Meanwhile, Batman and Robin get addicted to the thrill of superpowers.
While they feed themselves to wild animals and court lightning strikes to their chests, Superman finds Elton Craig's hideout and decides to explore it on his own.
And that works about as well as you'd expect.
Then Elton Craig shoots him.
But, of course, while Superman may be powerless, his costume is still invulnerable and stops the bullet, just in time for Elton Craig's powers to wear off and Superman's to return.
EDIT: I just realized that this story is actually a precursor to another issue of World's Finest that I reviewed two years ago. At the time, however, I didn't find the name "Elton Craig" as amusing, probably because he was just a crook named Elton Craig and wasn't using it as a superhero name.
If the limits of your knowledge of the story of the Man in the Iron Mask end with Leonardo DiCaprio and Gérard Depardieu, you might be surprised to learn that Alexandre Dumas's fictional story is based on the true legend of a mysterious French prisoner whose identity remained unknown even after his death. Historians have several theories as to who the man may have been, ranging from a traitorous general to an Italian diplomat to the illegitimate half-brother to King Louis XIV.
But those historians can have all the theories they want. Dr. Carter Nichols has something better:
Batman, Superman, Robin, and a time machine!
Really, given this possibility, why are there any mysteries left in the universe? What became of the lost colony of Roanoke? What happened to Amelia Earhart? Was the universe birthed of a big bang or did God say, "Let there be light" and will it into being? What prompted single-celled organisms to evolve into multi-celled ones? Who better to figure out such things than the world's greatest detective, his acrobatic teenage sidekick, and an invincible, superpowered alien with jouralism training?
Technically, Clark is right that Dr. Nichols has sent Batman and Robin into the past before--in fact, just three issues before this, he sent them to Baghdad in 955 A.D. where they met Ali Baba and Aladdin. However, Nichols had no idea that's what he was doing.
As far as he was concerned, Dr. Nichols sent Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson a thousand years into the past. Now, as brilliant as the plan of sending Batman and Robin hurtling backward in time might be, the idea of sending a millionaire playboy and the teenager who lives with him is equally insipid. That would be like ignoring a team of astronauts and sending Paris Hilton and Justin Beiber to explore Mars.
Dr. Nichols adds Clark Kent to the mission--because "Paris Hilton, Justin Beiber, and Anderson Cooper: Mars Explorers" makes so much more sense--and sends the trio back to 1696, where they immediately cross paths with the Three Musketeers and D'Artagnan.
What's most interesting about Batman and Superman's insistence that they be sent back in time as their alter egos, is that they shed those alter egos almost immediately upon arrival. The purpose Batman's cowl is twofold. First, it protects his identity, and, second, it strikes fear into the hearts of the cowardly and superstitious criminals of Gotham City who wonder whether he might be some kind of supernatural half-man, half-bat. But by putting it on in 17th century France, it undermines both purposes.
First, by venturing into the past as Bruce Wayne, then interacting with historical figures such as Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan and King Louis XIV as Batman, a suspicious coincidence arises. It's difficult enough to explain why it is that Bruce Wayne always disappears whenever Batman shows up in 1955 Gotham City, but at least they both live there and have a reason to be there. How are they supposed to explain that Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, and Clark Kent all just happened to disappear around the same time that Batman, Robin, and Superman broke through a temporal barrier in the exact same time and place?
Second, as quickly as he dons his trusty tights and cowl, Batman then takes on the persona of Armand d'Athos, putting a wide-brimmed musketeer hat that covers his bat ears and kills any chance of anyone mistaking him for a human-bat hybrid.
Meanwhile, Superman poses as Porthos and the three storm the castle of Pignerol where the Man in the Iron Mask is being held.
But when the rescue operation goes sour, Superman reminds us, it wasn't a rescue operation in the first place.
The prisoner is taken to the Bastille and Superman follows to protect him while Batman and Robin run to get the king, who... is supposed to care for some reason or other...
Unfortunately, Batman chooses the event of meeting the King of France as an opportune moment to lose the musketeer outfit, and King Louis reacts as one might when seeing two masked men leap onto your tenth story balcony--one of whom might be an ungodly bat-man genetic amalgam--by charging at them, sword drawn.
So while Batman undresses, shaves, and impersonates Le Roi Soleil, who he, in turn, dresses up in his Batman costume, word gets to the Bastille that the king is coming. This prompts an execution order since if the king finds out about the Man in the Iron Mask... he'll... care for some reason or other...
Superman, not content to let Batman have all the stripping and impersonating fun, protects the prisoner the best way he can.
When the king arrives, it's revealed that the Man in the Iron Mask was innocent and was framed for crimes committed by the jailer who was trying to kill him... though no evidence is really presented and no explanation for why he was convicted in the first place is given. Instead, King Louis accepts the word of Batman, who he initially thought was an assassin until he was knocked unconscious then woke up wearing tights and a satin bat mask inside a prison.
But that's to be expected. He had Superman there to back him up, and they are the two most respected superheroes in the world... or at least will be 250 years later!