Endless Mike
Preeminent
Action Comics #475
Overall Notes:
- The Superman movie contest is again promoted on the cover
Superman Story
Notes:
Feat Catalogue:
- Dodges an attack from Karb-Brak and catches him with his cape like a matador
Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):
****
Weirdness:
Superdickery:
- Vartox deliberately triggers Karb-Brak's allergy and gets him to attack Superman, in order to restore Vartox's own power.
Power Tracker:
- Still High Herald Level. Karb-Brak seems to be similar. We'll have to see about Vartox, since he is shown to have been significantly weakened compared to how he was before.
Backup Story
Notes:
Feat Catalogue:
Weirdness:
- I suppose it's par for the course, but even normal people just take it for granted that merpeople exist in this world
Superdickery:
Power Tracker:
- I guess Lori's telepathy and swimming abilities would make her Low Meta Level... maybe?
Action Comics #476
Superman Story
Notes:
Feat Catalogue:
Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):
****
Weirdness:
Superdickery:
Power Tracker:
- Still High Herald Level for both Superman and Karb-Brak. Vartox, at full power, might be Transcendent Level.
Overall Notes:
- The Superman movie contest is again promoted on the cover
Superman Story
Notes:
- First part of a multi-part story
- This issue not only features the return of Karb-Brak, but also Vartox, a character who was first introduced in Superman #281, a few years earlier. See the Weirdness section for more details on him.
- The distance between Valeron and Earth is stated here to be trillions of light-years, although in real life, the galaxy in which Valeron is supposed to be located is only a little over 31 million light-years away.
Feat Catalogue:
- Dodges an attack from Karb-Brak and catches him with his cape like a matador
Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):
- Vartox paralyzes two criminals with a "hyper-static beam" from his forehead
- Tanks a "Z-charge" attack that could have stopped an army
- Uses his powers to suspend the two criminals in the air upside-down
- Uses his "hyper-vision" in combination with his "scanscope" device to view Superman on Earth from trillions of light-years away
- Flies to Earth, in what couldn't have been more than a day or two at most (he did all of these feats while significantly weakened from his normal power level)
****
- The ambient heat of Karb-Brak's body is compared to "an atomic furnace"
- Hits Superman, knocking him back and hurting him
- While Superman is dazed, escapes from the area, so far that Superman can't locate him with his vision powers
- Tracks Superman back to the Galaxy Building and attacks him in his Clark Kent identity
Weirdness:
- Two alien criminals were watching the 1920s - 30s gangster era of Earth's past and so decided to dress up and model their crimes on their own planet after that.
- Vartox is an odd one. His deal is that he's a superhero from the planet Valeron, in the Sombrero Galaxy (believe it or not, that's a real place), and often serves as a rival to Superman. His ill-defined "hyper-powers" allow him to basically do whatever the plot requires with no real consistency (my personal theory is that the writers created him when they heard complaints about Superman coming up with random new powers, as if to say "look, here's a guy who really does spontaneously pull new powers out of his ass"). But the weirdest thing about him has to be his appearance, which was based on Sean Connery's character in the 1974 film Zardoz. That's... one strange choice of aesthetic inspiration.
Superdickery:
- Vartox deliberately triggers Karb-Brak's allergy and gets him to attack Superman, in order to restore Vartox's own power.
Power Tracker:
- Still High Herald Level. Karb-Brak seems to be similar. We'll have to see about Vartox, since he is shown to have been significantly weakened compared to how he was before.
Backup Story
Notes:
- This story focuses on Lori Lemaris. We haven't seen her for a while.
- This story clarifies that Aquaman is from the Atlantean city of Poseidonis, which is recognized by the UN, but Lori's city, Tritonis, is not.
Feat Catalogue:
- Lori reads the minds of her 3 kidnappers and finds that one of them is lacking enough in conviction to be influenced by a telepathic suggestion, which she uses to make him turn on his allies
- Somehow remotely activates a radio and sends a broadcast over it with her telepathy (huh?)
- Telepathically summons some sea creatures to help her escape
Weirdness:
- I suppose it's par for the course, but even normal people just take it for granted that merpeople exist in this world
Superdickery:
Power Tracker:
- I guess Lori's telepathy and swimming abilities would make her Low Meta Level... maybe?
Action Comics #476
Superman Story
Notes:
- Continuation of the story from the previous issue
- This is another double - length story to finish the story arc
- There's a Hostess Twinkies ad in this comic, featuring Wonder Woman
- It's stated again (twice) that Vartox's home planet of Valeron is trillions of light-years from Earth
Feat Catalogue:
- While being attacked by Karb-Brak, uses invisible heat vision to overload and destroy all of the lights in the room so no one can see what's happening
- Uses super breath to pull a cloud of smoke around himself and Karb-Brak, in order to protect his secret identity
- Punches Karb-Brak away
- Used the supercomputer in his Fortress to determine that no other superpowered beings living on Earth had been in Metropolis for the past 48 hours
- Kicks Vartox in the stomach and knocks the wind out of him
- When Vartox is distracted, elbows him and breaks out of his energy rope
Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):
- Superman thinks to himself that Karb-Brak has had his powers restored and is as tough as he is
- Karb-Brak fights evenly with Superman and only loses because his allergy overtakes him in the middle of the fight and puts him into a coma
- Uses his "power of molecular transformation" to project a 3D image of Vartox in mid-air
****
- Vartox saves a falling helicopter by catching it in an energy net projected from his fingers
- Uses his powers to fix a parachute torn apart by a helicopter's blades
- Uses his "power of mento-projection" to project an image of his thoughts to Superman and Karb-Brak
- Uses "super - hypnotic control" to make Karb-Brak believe the same delusion he is under
- Superman thinks to himself that Vartox is potentially mightier than he is, not being susceptible to Kryptonite or magic
- Sends Superman flying with a "remote control punch" (not sure how that works)
- He has also been a hero for longer than Superman has and has more experience
- Creates an "energy rope" and ties up Superman with it
- Vartox flies Karb-Brak back to his homeworld in Andromeda (since he's fully cured now) on the way back to his own homeworld of Valeron
Weirdness:
- Lois gets some kind of premonition at the thought of Superman fighting Vartox, and the editor's note says that's because Vartox once calculated that if that were to happen, Lois would die. So she has ESP now too?
- Apparently the "energy toxins" that caused Karb-Brak's allergy also contained the "vital elements" needed to revitalize Vartox and return him to his full power. But they also messed with his mind and caused him to believe that it was Superman who came to Earth to trigger Karb-Brak's allergy.
- In order to cure Vartox's insanity, Lois dresses up as his wife and pretends to be married to Superman, which shocks him out of it
Superdickery:
- Vartox, temporarily insane, tries to kick Superman off of Earth
- Superman's solution for curing Vartox is to show him an illusion of his dead wife being unfaithful to him to shock him back to reality
Power Tracker:
- Still High Herald Level for both Superman and Karb-Brak. Vartox, at full power, might be Transcendent Level.