Pre-Crisis Superman Overview

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #411

Superman Story

Notes:

• We see a rough map of the area around Superman's Fortress of Solitude, which could possibly help us pinpoint its location, if we ever need to for some reason
• There's a vault in the Fortress where the secret identities of most of Earth's heroes are revealed

Spoiler: The Fortress is apparently located somewhere in the "Alpharise" area

Feat Catalogue:

• Superman thinks to himself, regarding his Fortress, that "no mortal power can break in"
• Defenses seen include a "vibro-force beam" that shatters a jackhammer, radon gas that smothers the fuse of a pack of dynamite, and a "reversal ray" that turns fire from a cutting torch into frost (all of this was probably unnecessary since none of those would even scratch the door, but I guess it's best to have multiple lines of defense all active)
• Superman and Supergirl dig to the Earth's core to dispose of some bioweapons
• Moves an oil drill underground to cause it to strike boiling water, and worsens the effects with his heat vision, then guides another drill into a bunch of volcanic mud and ash
• Pokes holes in the Fortress door with his fingers (seemingly putting lie to the claim that he needed that diamond to do so, as shown in issue #409. Maybe he's gotten stronger since that story took place?)
• Rips the door off its hinges and flies it back to America
• He build a second door behind the first one as part of a trick
• Builds a "mirage ray" to create an illusion over the new Fortress entrance, making it look like a normal glacier face

Spoiler: Some of the Fortress' defenses

Spoiler: Disposing of bioweapons at the Earth's core

Spoiler: Apparently the Fortress door is now no problem for him

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Supergirl and Superman dig to the Earth's core to dispose of some bioweapons

****

- The Kandorians detected someone trying to break into the Fortress, so they used an experimental "interdimensional warp" to temporarily transport their city into an "invisible zone" dimension

Spoiler: Wonder if this will ever come up again...

Weirdness:

- Superman digs underground to enter and exit his Fortress instead of using the door, even though he could have done so while the guy who bought the land wasn't looking, and made it appear as if he was never there

Superdickery:

• Refers to a group of orca whales as savage killers, and laughs as they break their teeth when trying to bite him
• Sabotages an oil rig to get the guys owning it to stop looking for oil near his Fortress

Spoiler: He says he doesn't want to break the law, but then commits sabotage

Power Tracker:

- As it was the inner door that was stated to be the new one, the door he dug into and ripped apart was the same one we saw being installed in issue #409, so apparently he can break it, so maybe my speculation about just using the diamond for precision cutting was right. Nothing else much to note, so he's still at High Herald Level.

Backup Story

Notes:

• This is a reprint from House of Secrets #61 (originally published in 1963), which features the first appearance of the villain Eclipso, who would actually later go on to become one of the most powerful and dangerous villains in the DC Universe.
• We also see the first appearance of the witch doctor Mophir, who really only appears in this story in the comics, but was adapted to the DCAU as a heroic character, rather than the villain he was here

Spoiler: A rather unassuming first appearance for one of DC's most powerful villains

Feat Catalogue:

• Eclipso creates darkness to blind people trying to stop him
• Uses his darkness powers to cover half of "Solar City", causing the entire city to break apart from the stress of the difference in temperatures
• He is immune to radiation from an atomic pile

Weirdness:

- Apparently, just shading half of a solar-powered city is enough to destroy the entire thing

Superdickery:

• I suppose the fact that Eclipso is the hero, Dr. Bruce Gordon's, alter-ego counts
• He also breaks off the engagement with his fiancee, giving her the impression that he cared more about his work, since he couldn't tell her the truth

Power Tracker:

- Being in a very limited form in this issue, Eclipso as he appeared is probably no more than Low Meta Level (he couldn't break out of a sealed wind tunnel chamber by himself, for example). However, we eventually find out that Eclipso at his true power is Abstract Level.

Second Backup Story

Notes:

• This is another "Untold tales of Clark Kent" story, taking place a while after he graduated from college
• The phrase "Omega Effect" is used in this story, but it has nothing to do with Darkseid, the Source, or the New Gods. Instead, it refers to a time differential between the 3rd and 7th dimensions, causing people from the latter to age prematurely in the former

Spoiler: You were warned about the Omega Effect! No, not that one, the other one...

Feat Catalogue:

- A steamroller is about to crush some people, and despite hesitating for a second, Clark still changes to Superman, leaves the building, and flies outside of the college campus to stop it before it hits them

Weirdness:

• An alien from the 7th dimension (again, the dimensional numbers don't mean anything for powerscaling) decided to visit Earth and disguise herself as a college student, and just happened to go to the same college Clark went to, at the same time
• A planet in the 7th dimension has years 10 times longer than Earth's because it orbits its sun 10 times slower, and this somehow literally affects time and causes its population to age at a different rate than the people of Earth

Spoiler: Another nail in the coffin of VSB "dimensional tiering"

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing really worth noting, so he's still High Herald Level.

Action Comics #412

Overall Notes:

- There's a two-page feature of background info on Superman and his lore included in this issue. A few things to note from it:

• It mentions that Krypton was "a super-sized world"
• It attributes Kryptonian super strength and speed to Earth's lighter gravity, but flight, vision powers, super senses, and invulnerability to Earth's yellow sun
• The Kryptonian power of flight is stated to be anti-gravity based
• It's stated that nothing can even scratch Superman's skin, hair, and nails, except for objects from Krypton
• It's stated that Green Kryptonite kills Kryptonians by blood poisoning
• It was also stated that all Green Kryptonite on Earth was no longer harmful to Superman (probably from a recent story in another title, you can bet this didn't last, though)
• It states that Kryptonite is the only material from Krypton that doesn't become indestructible under a yellow sun
• It's also stated that Kryptonite is immune to heat from friction, so it doesn't burn up when it enters Earth's atmosphere
• It's stated that Superman normally suppresses his super hearing, only choosing to hear sounds in his vicinity unless he is deliberately trying to hear something from farther away, with the exception of Jimmy Olsen's signal watch. He can also tune in on any sound he wants and exclude any other.
• It explains that his shoes "are made of a special resilient plastic which can be harmlessly compressed to wafer-thinness", to explain where they go when he changes outfits.
• It also explains that he uses different voices and handwriting as Clark and Superman

Some of this is, of course, contradicted by various sources, and a lot of it would probably still change after this was written.

Spoiler: Interesting info

Superman Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

• Spins a semi-fossilized man at super speed to remove the rock covering him with centrifugal force without harming him (although being spun at that speed would doubtlessly kill him anyway)...
• Takes himself and two others back through the time barrier to 60 million years ago
• Deciphers an ancient alien language just by listening to it for what couldn't have been more than a few minutes
• Returns to the future with one person

Spoiler: Time travel

Spoiler: Translates an ancient language

Weirdness:

• See the first feat.
• Apparently a super-advanced civilization of humanoids existed on Earth 60 million years ago, and Superman was able to find one of their cities buried beneath Metropolis when he went looking for it (he never bothered to look before?) It was stated they came from another planet and settled on Earth 60 million years ago, so they're probably unrelated to the Xan civilization from issue #343 (which existed on Earth much earlier).
• The ancient alien says that when he returned to the past, the mineral shell containing his past self became empty... which is a weird mechanic to avoid a paradox.
• This ancient civilization died off because they could only eat dinosaur eggs (which are portrayed as far larger than they actually were IRL), and they used a "purifier beam" to sterilize them, but it also doused them in some kind of radiation that caused the people who ate them to mutate into humanoid dinosaurs that destroyed their own civilization

Superdickery:

- Superman suspects that a female scientist is only interested in coming to the past with him because she is romantically attracted to the ancient alien they found

Power Tracker:

- We get some inconsistency regarding the mechanics of time travel here. Superman says he can't save the ancient city because its destruction was destined to happen and he can't change the past, yet he seemingly changed the past by bringing the alien back in time, causing his temporal duplicate in his own time to disappear. Anyway, he's still High Herald Level.

Backup Story

Notes:

- This is another Superman Story

Feat Catalogue:

• Is electrocuted by a falling satellite that has enough electric charge to stir up the water around it like a typhoon, and says that it just tickles
• Intercepts another falling satellite and vaporizes it with heat vision
• Calculates where the falling satellites are coming from in space, and deflects another one into an orbit around the sun, then follows the beam that has been pulling down the asteroids from space back to its source

Spoiler: Deflects a satellite and traces a magnetic beam to its source

Weirdness:

- A NASA scientist developed a "magno-beamer" device in his spare time that could move things in orbit with magnetic force, and his young daughter had a pet monkey that contracted "a fatal tropical fever", so he quarantined the monkey by launching it into space, in order to also serve as an experiment, but the daughter was using the device to try to retrieve him, but accidentally pulling down other satellites. But the monkey's space capsule wasn't adequately shielded against cosmic rays, so they hit him and somehow cured him without harming him. What?

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- No change from High Herald Level.

Second Backup Story

Notes:

- This is another Eclipso story, reprinted from House of Secrets #62 (originally published in 1963). It's a sequel to the last one we covered.

Feat Catalogue:

- Eclipso uses the black diamond to fire "ultra-energy bolts" to blast his way out of an isolation chamber

Spoiler: Why didn't he do this last time, when he was trapped in the wind tunnel?

Weirdness:

• Bruce Gordon and Professor Bennet build a giant submarine with spider legs to go underwater, because they think being far enough underneath the ocean can prevent the Eclipso transformation (it can't).
• Eclipso somehow ground the black diamond that he uses to channel his powers through into dust and hid it inside a pen, then put a chemical catalyst inside a pencil, and when they are mixed together, the diamond somehow reconstitutes itself
• Eclipso says that if he enters the shadow of the moon while in space, beyond the radiation belt, then he will possess Bruce's body permanently - it's not explained why this is

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Again, trapped in this limited form, needing Bruce's body and the diamond, and being vulnerable to light, this version of Eclipso is probably only Low Meta Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #413

Overall Notes:

• A response in the letters column confirms that the writers were wrong when they said that Superman can't break the Fortress door without help
• The letters column also mentions a Golden Age hero known as Quicksilver. This character was later renamed to Max Mercury, as his former name became much more associated with the Marvel character (there is no relation between them, other than them both being speedsters)

Spoiler: Superman doesn't need help to break the Fortress door

Superman Story

Notes:

• References to events in Jimmy Olsen #130, World's Finest #202, and Superman #233 are noted in this issue.
• We see firefighters using asbestos suits. This was actually a real thing, before they realized how dangerous the material was.
• Brainiac and Lex Luthor both appear to die in this issue, but you can bet that doesn't stick
• When doing his voodoo gag, Brainiac invokes the powers of "Lucifer, Mephisto, and Shaitan". As he was just acting in a false identity, he probably has no knowledge of if these beings actually exist, or how to actually summon them.

Feat Catalogue:

• Thinks to himself that, at his normal strength, his fists could "crack a planet like a nut"
• Temporarily deprived of super strength, he spins around at super speed to create a tornado that precisely demolishes some abandoned buildings without hurting anyone or anything else near them
• With his limbs paralyzed and unable to move from his bed, he uses telescopic X-ray vision to see a gold heist being committed across town, and uses heat vision from that distance to melt most of the gold (this is another example of internal heat vision, as he makes it only affect the gold and not his apartment walls or anything else in between)
• Temporarily rendered blind and with his sense of direction and equilibrium scrambled, he uses super ventriloquism for echolocation (an idea suggested by Batman)
• It was implied that one of Superman's robots would have been immune to Brainiac's attempt to control it if its superpowers were not "damaged"
• Superman was able to track the signals from Brainiac's device, which were apparently ultrasonic in nature, and figured out his and Luthor's plan
• Built an android described as a "lifeless collection of chemicals" which could fly, and designed it to burst into flames at a specific moment, in order to trick Brainiac and Luthor into thinking they had killed him
• Built voodoo dolls of Brainiac and Luthor, equipped with "vibro-beams" that nearly shook them apart when they picked them up

Spoiler: Reasonable strength claim, also weird wind feat

Spoiler: Long range, selective HV

Spoiler: It was Batman's idea because bats use echolocation - get it?

Spoiler: Foiling Luthor and Brainiac

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• Brainiac is immune to the toxic fumes from spilled rocket fuel
• Even while completely disassembled, Brainiac's "master control unit" (his head) was equipped with a "tele-mento ray" that allowed him to take control of a deactivated Superman robot, and then made it rebuild him
• He also reprogrammed the robot so its memory circuits would melt if it tried to tell Superman what happened
• Using Kandorian components (Kryptonian in origin so they can affect Superman), Brainiac built a device that allowed him to remotely control Superman and disable his powers

****

- Lex Luthor sees through Brainiac's disguise when he doesn't cough because of the fumes

****

- Kandorian doctors can use an electronic device to remotely control people's bodies. It's said to only be used on "dangerous mental patients", but this is ripe for abuse, and again supports the idea of Kandor being a dystopian police state

Spoiler: Resourceful

Spoiler: I wouldn't want to live in Kandor...

Weirdness:

• The story begins with some people bringing souvenirs relating to Superman to a "mystic's" shop. Said souvenirs include a piece of charcoal ignited by his heat vision, which is still glowing hot, and a piece of ice he created with his freeze breath, which is still solid, even though they would both probably have to be at least days old.
• Superman brings some obsolete rockets to a movie set so the filmmakers can use them as props - but they still have active rocket fuel inside them
• For some reason, Brainiac felt the need to disguise himself as a voodoo practitioner and disguise his new weapon as a voodoo doll
• Part of Superman's plan involved creating fake voodoo dolls of Brainiac and Lex Luthor, in order to make them think they were planning to use them to destroy each other. But Luthor is just a human; Brainiac wouldn't need something like that to kill him.
• Superman placed a lead plate on a specific part of his back to block the signals from the device, but that would have required him knowing exactly which part of his body they were planning to target in advance
• After Brainiac self-destructs and seems to take Luthor with him, the two are still present as white silhouettes (ghosts?) and Luthor even talks in this form. I'm not sure if this is meant to be a narrative device or what.

Superdickery:

- Nearly scrambles Lex Luthor's brains with a "vibro-ray" he built

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level normally. Not sure how much to lower his ranks with his various powers disabled.

Backup Story

Notes:

• Another Eclipso story, reprinted from House of Secrets #65
• The splash page refers to Eclipso as "the most daring character ever created in comics". I'd say there are many better contenders for that title, such as Snowflame.

Feat Catalogue:

• Apparently even an "artificial eclipse" can briefly change Bruce Gordon into Eclipso
• Eclipso has telekinesis now. It says it was due to this guy's machine, but I think it was later retconned as him regaining more of his true powers.
• Uses his TK to steal a nuclear warhead, and uses black light to blind the guards trying to stop him
• Bruce Gordon had a tiny "belt buckle transistor set" that could receive radio broadcasts. This was pretty much sci-fi technology back when this story was published.
• He modifies the device to match the radio frequency used to control a robot
• Eclipso uses energy bolts from his black diamond to cut the wires of grappling hooks that had restrained his helicopter
• He then uses his telekinesis to levitate the rocket out of a river and hide it in a cone of black light, and bring it to a mad scientist's lair
• Eclipso is apparently destroyed by the military, but that was just a projection of him, and he still exists inside Bruce Gordon

Spoiler: New power for Eclipso

Weirdness:

• Now being an infamous supervillain who had caused tons of death and destruction, someone decided it would be a bright idea to make a carnival funhouse attraction themed after Eclipso.
• A mad scientist who never finished college did an experiment that trapped him inside a glowing blob of energy, and yet he was still able to write and mail letters (shown to be by controlling a robot with a radio frequency via telepathic broadcast)
• The guy builds a machine that somehow separates Eclipso from Bruce, and gives him telekinesis
• The scientist's robot is controlled via Morse Code

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Eclipso's telekinesis seems to bump him up here, to the lower end of Mid Meta Level.

Metamorpho Story

Notes:

- From here until issue #418, Metamorpho will be a regular backup feature. He's another fairly relevant DC character, so I'll be covering his stories too.

Feat Catalogue:

• The opening narration says that Metamorpho is able to "will himself into a thousand and one chemical forms". Not sure if this number is meant to be literal or not.
• Metamorpho shapeshifts his hand into a giant form to lift his girlfriend, and then shapeshifts his foot to jump up into a plane. He also shapeshifts one of his arms into a racket to play tennis.
• Metamorpho is trapped in a sudden flood of "two hundred proof acid". It is slowly dissolving him, but he shapeshifts one of his arms to save the two other people in the room by lifting them into the air

Weirdness:

- Early 70s dialogue alert: "Oh Rex, lover, kiss me again in that fab freakish way!"

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- I'd need to see more from Metamorpho in this era to properly place him, but so far, just going by the feats and implications of what I have read so far in the story, I'd put him at Mid Meta Level.

Action Comics #414

Overall Notes:

- The Earth-2 Superman is mentioned in the letters column, with the editors saying that he has made some appearances in the Justice League title recently

Superman Story

Notes:

• Apparently there are Superman movies made even in-universe
• A reference is made to gods of darkness and evil named "Rzyll," "Wfghol", and "Mouhd". I'm pretty sure these names don't appear again or anywhere else.
• The actor Gregory Reed, after having stolen Superman's body with black magic, claims he has "unlimited strength". Obvious hyperbole, but again it's useful to collect such hyperboles.

Spoiler: "Unlimited" strength

Feat Catalogue:

• The opening narration refers to Superman as "the mightiest hero in the galaxy"
• Spots an escaped tiger from the air and intercepts it at super speed before it can attack a guy
• Intercepts a runaway plane flying at 600 mph and uses heat vision to precisely detach two nuclear missiles from its wings without jarring the detonators a "micro-inch" so they won't go off
• Carries the missiles into space where they explode harmlessly
• This is interesting. Apparently Superman has the ability to control and manipulate his own mass, and can make himself super heavy at will. That could be an explanation for his 'immovability' power.
• He implies at the end that, if given the proper instructions by a plastic surgeon, he could perform an operation that normally couldn't be performed

Spoiler: Carefully stopping the missiles

Spoiler: I haven't seen this power explicitly referenced before

Weirdness:

- The actor who plays Superman in the movies hates his role and is jealous of the real thing, so he dresses up in a ridiculous wizard costume and invokes dark magical forces to steal his powers

Spoiler: Gods of evil, or random keystrokes?

Superdickery:

- Punches out a tiger instead of just restraining it

Power Tracker:

- Mid Human Level in Gregory Reed's body, High Herald Level in his own.

Metamorpho Story:

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the last issue

Feat Catalogue:

• Despite continuing to dissolve in the acid, Metamorpho survives for a long time and tries changing his body to different chemical states, but none of them work
• After being given the hint to turn into a base, he becomes sodium hydroxide and neutralizes the acid, then extends his finger and jams the villain's gun
• Seems to recover to full strength very quickly afterwards

Spoiler: It was implied this stuff would be instantly fatal for a human. He was in there for at least several minutes

Spoiler: Finally figures out how to neutralize the acid and escapes, then quickly recovers

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- My guess of Mid Meta Level seems borne out by this showing.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #415

Superman Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

• When his coworkers are trying to break into his office, he changes his clothes at super speed, then flies out of the window and back into the building from another window, all so fast no one can see him
• Superman is stated to have an "uncanny sense of super-smell", tracking the scent of a monster
• Builds a "Kryptonian revitalizer" machine from parts in his Fortress, to attempt to bring a dead man back to life. Even though he's not quite sure he's got the design correct, it seems to work (although the creature it resurrected was never human)
• Defeats the "protoplasmic plague" (see Weirdness section) and freezes its core with his breath, claiming that he created "terrifically hard ice that will never melt"

Spoiler: I think we've seen examples of super-smelling before... hard to keep track, but anyway here's another one

Spoiler: Another device that will probably never be mentioned again when it would come in useful

Spoiler: Defeats the plague and freezes it permanently

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Kryptonians apparently had machines that could resurrect the dead (or at least the newly dead, if their bodies were intact)

Weirdness:

• After Superman kicks a monster out of skyscraper window and it gets back up, he thinks to himself that that fall would have killed anything living - except he knows many living things that would easily survive it, not the least of which being himself
• Superman thinks to himself that he has never taken another person's life. Dude, you totally have.
• When he first confronted the monster, Superman only used a relatively small amount of force on it, described as a kick strong enough to topple a dinosaur, which did knock it back and out of a window. But after meeting the guy who claimed to have created it, he seemingly just takes him at his word that the thing is invincible to all brute force. At least try throwing it into space or something.
• The monster turned out to be an alien scientist from another dimension, who didn't speak to Superman at first because his vocal cords needed to adapt to Earth's atmosphere. But that still doesn't explain why he was going around wrecking cars and terrorizing people.
• The interdimensional scientist created two lifeforms based on humans, but they were unstable and one of them escaped to Earth through a dimensional portal, and, after Superman was tricked into reviving him, he started spreading a "protoplasmic plague" of giant cells that could move and replicate at super speed and threatened to engulf the Earth, and the plague was also sapient and had a hive mind. Huh?

Superdickery:

- It's implied he tried to kill the monster that attacked him after he determined that it wasn't human. So much for a "code against killing".

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Metamorpho Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

• Turns himself into a liquid to travel over a mile deep into the Earth's crust, dives through boiling underground water, and then becomes gas as he continues to descend through the depths of the planet, before reforming
• Shapeshifts one of his ears into a functioning stethoscope
• Converts the molecules of his hands into a "high speed magnesium drill" (the narration claims he does it "instantly")
• There was some kind of dangerous gas in the mine, Metamorpho was seemingly immune to it
• Catches a guy trying to hit him with a pickaxe and transforms his hand into a corkscrew to restrain him, then karate chops him with a hand made of calcium, knocking him out, then transforms his hand to smash through a wall
• Transforms part of his body into hydrogen to ascend through the air while carrying the unconscious guy, and ascends a full mile in moments
• Shapeshifts his hand into a grasping claw to restrain a guy
• Shapeshifts into a monstrous version of the guy he rescued to trick Simon Stagg

Spoiler: Going deep underground

Spoiler: Forms his ear into a stethoscope

Spoiler: More shapeshifting tricks

Spoiler: Returning to the surface

Spoiler: Fools Stagg with shapeshifting

Weirdness:

- See the hydrogen feat. The way it was described makes no sense - half of his body is still heavier than air, and so is the guy he's carrying.

Superdickery:

• Metamorpho at first refuses to save a guy who buried himself as a stunt to help his family financially
• Terrorizes and robs his boss to pay off the debts of the guy (his boss is a dick, but still)

Power Tracker:

- Some nice feats in this issue, but nothing to put him past Mid Meta Level.

Action Comics #416

Superman Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

• Smashes a million - ton iceberg to pieces so it doesn't pose a threat to ships in the area
• Flies into a ship's porthole faster than the eye can see
• Uses "super-suction breath" to draw the air from around a girl's face so she passes out
• Despite the plane he's in being pulled down by a mysterious energy force that his strength can't overcome, he still manages to stop the plane at the last instant
• Uses telescopic vision to reveal an invisible forcefield over an island, and thinks to himself that he could probably break through it, but doing so would kill the girl he had with him as a side effect
• In a flashback as Superboy, reacts "instantly" (according to the narration) to deflect a falling beam in a burning house
• Uses telescopic vision to see a ship under attack from a distance
• Changes from Clark Kent to Superman "within the blink of an eye" and wraps a plane in his cape to protect it from nondescript "energy blasts"
• Within a minute, digs underground through the island and reaches the location of the ship, flies up through the ocean's surface, stops some pirates, and then, with only seconds to spare, and digs back underground and returns to his original location on the island.
• Dodges another energy blast, fired by an alien robot
• Easily defeats the robot, then uses his vision powers to read the information in its memory to find its origin

Spoiler: A peculiar application of super breath

Spoiler: Stops the plane from crashing and senses the forcefield

Spoiler: Protects the plane and stops the pirates

Spoiler: Defeats the alien robot and reads its memory banks

Weirdness:

• A girl who grew up in Smallville apparently became so attached to her doll that she developed a "psychic link" with it, so any damage it would incur would be felt by her as well (like a voodoo doll). When her house burned down, Superboy rescued her, but accidentally crushed the doll's legs, and she had been unable to use her own legs since then.
• The island that Superman and the girl end up landing on is actually an ancient meteor that fell to Earth and... floated in the ocean ever since. The fuck?

Superdickery:

- Despite being in a hurry to get back to the crippled girl, he seems to fool around a lot and waste time when dealing with the pirates, even giving them a chance to shoot him in the face with their ship's gun just to boast to them that it can't hurt him

Power Tracker:

- He had a bit of trouble with the alien robot's tractor beam, but that's unknown alien technology, so not much can really be concluded about it. He defeated the robot and the rest of its tricks pretty casually. Still High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #416 Part 2

Metamorpho Story

Notes:

- This story features a meeting between the US President and an "Asiatic Premier" (the country is not specified). At the time of publication, the President was Richard Nixon, and the wiki speculates that the Premier was the USSR's Leonid Brezhnev, but I don't know if the USSR would be referred to as "Asiatic" back then, also the guy doesn't look much like Brezhnev at all. The narration does refer to the two of them as "the two most important men in the world" later on, though.

Feat Catalogue:

• Shapeshifts his arms into wings (he's not shown flying with them, though)
• Shapeshifts his hand into a hammer - like fist and smashes a wooden bench
• Turns into hydrogen and flies through the air faster than a car
• Turns into a giant pen, attaches himself to a billboard, and writes a message on it
• Blitzes a gunman from several meters away by extending one of his arms and disarming him as he fires his gun

Spoiler: O...kay...

Spoiler: Blitzes and disarms a gunman

Weirdness:

- I'd suggest that it was weird that a random sniper with no stated motivation suddenly showed up and tried to assassinate prominent politicians, but uh... real life is stranger than fiction sometimes.

Superdickery:

- Metamorpho 'proposes' to his girlfriend by just straight up declaring that they're getting married, without even asking her. When she declines (and she didn't even say no, just that she would have to think about it), he immediately concludes that she hates him for being a freak and leaves her to go join the circus. Really.

Power Tracker:

- I'm still putting Metamorpho at Mid Meta Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #417

Superman Story

Notes:

• This is another cover that, I believe, was featured on Superdickery, again for obvious reasons
• This is the first part of a two-part story
• We see the return of Grax, from issue #342. This storyline (which continues into the next issue) is his final appearance.
• We also see the return of the Marauder, from issue #378. This storyline is also his final appearance.
• Superman references Flip Wilson in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

• Lex Luthor, Brainiac, and the Marauder admit that Superman continuously defeats them and that he is too much for them to handle
• Clark Kent's TV news van has a secret trapdoor that he uses to fly to emergencies underground as Superman
• Smashes the ice and melts it with his heat vision, thawing Niagara Falls
• He invented a type of special goggles allowing him to locate the villains' base, by tracking the energy emissions of their devices
• He flew to space to visit the "Phantom Planet" and then back to Earth
• He rescued the "twin worlds of Kotyr" from a meteor storm, smashing meteors at super speed (with afterimages even)

Spoiler: Superman's energy - tracking goggles

Spoiler: Superman saves some planets... then seemingly destroys them

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• Lex Luthor built a secret "Anti-Superman Fortress" in a fake volcano in the Andes, which has a fake door that opens to an airplane hangar, triggered by a "sensor-beam" from his plane. Inside the Fortress, Lex and his allies have gathered an arsenal of "the most devastating super-weapons in the universe".
• Lex also has a handheld "red-sun laser ray" designed for use against Superman
• Lex built a Superman android for him and his allies to test their weapons against. It could fly, but it's unknown what other powers it had, or how durable it was (if it was comparable to Superman's own robots, for example).
• Lex and the others are able to project holograms of themselves from the Fortress to Niagara Falls
• They also use some kind of remote control device to manipulate the electric lights in the windows of buildings in Metropolis to spell out a message
• Lex and the other villains have a "spy scanner" that can observe things in distant space at FTL speeds

****

• Brainiac uses a "hyper-vibro-beam"
• He also uses a "cryogentronic projector beam", which, by just firing at a point on a model of the Earth, is somehow able to freeze Niagara Falls
• The self-destruct device that Brainiac used in issue #413 had a "feedback effect" that reassembled his and Lex's bodies after being disintegrated

****

• The Marauder has a helmet that fires "ultra-energy bolts" (unknown if they are related at all to the same "ultra-energy" that composes Brainiac's forcefield)
• The Marauder uses his helmet on a "weather pattern generator" to instantly create a typhoon (equivalent to a hurricane), although it dissipates after a few minutes, but that's all he needed to precisely move a bunch of freighters in the ocean to spell out a message

****

- Grax throws a "super-gas grenade"

Spoiler: The villains test their weapons against Lex's Superman android

Spoiler: Brainiac freezes Niagara Falls

Spoiler: How Lex and Brainiac survived

Weirdness:

• The scene on the cover represents an actual place in the Anti-Superman Fortress - the "Hall of Hate", where statues of Lois Lane, Batman, and Jimmy Olsen are shown, respectively, being put in an electric chair, in a guillotine, and being hanged.
• A planet was destroyed when its sun exploded, but for some reason "an uncanny side-effect" caused it to instead become an intangible "negative image" of itself, trapped in that state. When Superman visited it, he was lead to believe that it somehow altered his atomic structure, so that whenever he performs a "super-feat", an intangible negative clone of himself is created, which goes on to cause havoc and destruction. The clones can physically damage things, but are intangible to physical attacks.
• Brainiac apparently has an emotional attachment to Earth, for some reason...

Spoiler: Really, it's not the most far-fetched thing that has happened in these comics...

Superdickery:

• The cover implies that Superman joined the 4 villains to kill his friends (which doesn't actually happen, but it's still the implication)
• Superman is unwilling to even entertain the idea that his enemies want to make peace with him, even though other people keep telling him to at least investigate the offer and see what's going on, and only reluctantly agrees when Lois begs him to

Power Tracker:

- The ability to create intangible phantom clones every time he uses his powers could be considered a boost to his power, but the fact that he can't control them (and that their origin is not actually what is being claimed) makes me still say he's High Herald Level.

Metamorpho Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

• Shapeshifts into a clown and a rock star, complete with props
• Transforms his hand into a cobalt mitt to catch some molten material spilling from a scientific device, to save a kid
• Becomes invisible hydrogen gas, and he can also fly and control his flight in this form
• After being hit by a laser that nearly disintegrates his molecules, he manages to pull himself back together after a while, although he is weakened for a time
• Transforms his hands into a gong to break the kid out of hypnosis, managing to reproduce the original brainwashing signal backwards, despite still being weakened from the laser

Spoiler: Some pretty advanced shapeshifting

Spoiler: Reaction and heat resistance

Spoiler: Becomes invisible hydrogen gas

Spoiler: Begins to pull himself together

Spoiler: Precisely replicates a sound backwards

Weirdness:

• Rex calls himself "Chemo" the clown. Maybe he hadn't heard that a supervillain in the DC Universe shares that name.
• Some spies found and hypnotically brainwashed Simon Stagg's nephew to turn him into a sleeper agent, activated with telephone signals. They also had a handheld laser powerful enough to melt a camera and disintegrate Metamorpho's molecules.

Superdickery:

- Metamorpho mocks Simon Stagg when he is distraught over the deaths of his brother and father

Power Tracker:

- The laser thing might seem like a low-end, although he was taken completely by surprise, and we don't know what kind of technology was involved with that particular laser or how powerful it really was. Still, I'm saying Mid Meta Level.

Action Comics #418

Superman Story

Notes:

• Continuation of the story from the previous issue
• A volcanic eruption near a village in "Santa Rosa" is mentioned. There are a lot of real life places with that name, but I'm not about to cross-reference them to find out which ones are the closest to volcanoes or anything.

Feat Catalogue:

• Changes to Superman and flies from Metropolis to "Adam City" in split seconds
• He has a "private network" that can receive distress signals calling Superman from all over the world
• Superman claims that the villains' arsenal of weapons in their Fortress (see previous issue) would be worthless against him
• For some reason, the Marauder's red sun energy shackles disable Superman's strength and flight, but not his vision powers, so he uses X-ray vision to scramble the circuits in the Marauder's helmet
• Figures out how the helmet works and fixes it at super speed, before the phantom doubles can attack him (remember, they also have his same super speed), and then commands them to re-merge with him

Spoiler: He's confident that "the most devastating super-weapons in the universe" can't harm him

Spoiler: That's convenient

Spoiler: Wrecks the Marauder's helmet and fixes it at super speed to stop the phantom doubles

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• Lex Luthor, Brainiac, the Marauder, and Grax each have their own ships, equipped with weapons including energy bolts, vibro-rays, laser beams, and gas
• It turns out the phantom doubles were actually created by the Marauder's "triflector", and he can control them mentally with his helmet.
• The helmet can also tap the power of a distant red sun to create energy constructs that weaken and bind Superman
• He then uses his helmet to create a more mundane "force-field cage" to restrain Luthor
• Brainiac, Grax, and the Marauder's ships are apparently intergalactic in range

Weirdness:

• Apparently, flying at super speed (or flying at all) doesn't count as performing a "super-feat" that will create the doubles. It wasn't actually him that was creating them, but these rules seem arbitrary.
• Superman refers to the villains' Anti-Superman Fortress as "the world's most notorious stronghold of evil", even though it was first shown only in the previous issue and was a complete secret up until then, and still isn't publicly known to the world

Superdickery:

- Smashes the villains' collection of weapons, even though they were meant to be used against the phantom doubles, and he was supposed to not do any 'super-deeds' in fear of creating more doubles.

Power Tracker:

- Pretty good speed feat against the doubles, but then again it wasn't stated that they were directly attacking him when he did it, and they were pretty much non-sentient forces of destruction so maybe they could have stopped him if they actually knew what he was doing? Anyway, he's still High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #418 Part 2

Metamorpho Story

Notes:

- Simon Stagg's estate (or at least, the majority of it) was valued at $80 million. That's over $600 million in today's money. He also left another million to Rex.

Feat Catalogue:

• Goes all the way to Greenland using his powers and no vehicles, making his feet into skates to cross the ice.
• Shapeshifts into a canoe and a paddle
• Walks into a boiling active volcanic vent, saying a normal person would be boiled in a second
• Shapeshifts into gas to escape a giant mutant squid, but it tries to inhale him, so he turns his arm into an iron harpoon to impale it
• Figures out that Simon Stagg faked his death to get the rare material he wanted Metamorpho to retrieve for him
• Transforms his arms into grappling claws to restrain Stagg

Spoiler: Pretty easily defeats a giant mutated squid

Spoiler: Stamina and cold resistance

Weirdness:

- In a place called Kraken Hole, so named because the entrance resembles a giant squid, Metamorpho runs into a real giant squid, which mutated to live off of the heat of the volcano

Superdickery:

• Metamorpho mocks his girlfriend Sapphire when her father appears to die, insinuating that she never really loved him. That's competing with Superman for sheer levels of dickery here.
• Continues to think and say negative things about Simon Stagg after he supposedly died
• Makes a crude, flirtatious comment to Sapphire while she is hearing her father's will read

Power Tracker:

- Still Mid Meta Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #419

Overall Notes:

- As of this issue, the Metamorpho stories are replaced with stories featuring a character known as the Human Target. He's not really a very relevant character, at least IMO, so I won't be covering his stories (apologies to any fans he may have)

Superman Story

Notes:

• This issue features NASA putting a "Large Space Telescope" (LST) into orbit. Oddly, it looks a lot like the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which wouldn't be launched for another 17 years after this comic was published.
• The address for Clark Kent's apartment is given in this issue as "Apartment 3D, 344 Clinton Street"

Spoiler: Comics predicting the future?

Feat Catalogue:

• After changing to Superman, uses his breath to freeze his Clark Kent clothes so they stay solid, to make it look like Clark is still standing there when seen from a distance
• Breathes in the flames from a tank of burning rocket fuel to put out the fire
• This is very weird (see the Weirdness section for the full explanation). A gun powered by Superman's ambient power is not only capable of blowing holes through buildings, but also seems to cause a police car to become transparent and vanish.
• A blast from the same gun hits Superman and bounces off of him (destroying a building as it ricochets), with him saying it doesn't even itch. Another blast also bounces off afterwards.
• Uses some super speed stunts to pin a guy to the wall
• Uses his vision powers to determine that the LST was bathing the Metropolis area in a strange energy, but his invulnerability protected him from it

Spoiler: Inhales burning rocket fuel

Spoiler: The gun makes a police car vanish

Spoiler: The same gun bounces off him

Weirdness:

• A random criminal fishes a pair of boots and a gun out of the Metropolis River, only to find out that they are glowing. He figures they may have been contaminated by the river water, but thinks to himself that it doesn't seem harmful and decides to wear the boots anyway. Potential Darwin Award winner right there.
• Clark Kent and other reporters are actually flown into space by NASA to cover the activation of the telescope
• Funny dialogue: "A few feet closer... and we'd be dead! And so will everyone else on this base, unless I can strip to Superman!"
• Realizing that he can't touch the ground without causing a disaster, he keeps himself levitated a fraction of an inch above the ground by exhaling air from his nose with his super breath... instead of just hovering with his flight ability for some reason. He later does that very thing, so why the nose stunt beforehand?
• The premise of the issue: A weird phenomenon in space (cosmic dust on the lens of the space telescope) causes it to change reflected light into an unknown energy that changes the properties of the ground around Metropolis, so every time Superman touches the ground (or anything connected to the ground), strange white spheres float up from underground, exploding with the force of grenades and damaging everything in the area. It also somehow empowers a pair of boots and a gun, allowing their user to draw Superman's deflected power from the Earth and fire it from the gun. Huh!?

Spoiler: This is bizarre, even for this comic

Superdickery:

- Breaks down a door in order to stop a robbery - the door belonging to the guy who was being robbed. He then wrecks the guy's floor and puts holes in the walls. He's never shown fixing any of this damage either, or even saying that he will.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change him from High Herald Level.

Action Comics #420

Superman Story

Notes:

• A location named "Roditin" in India is mentioned. As far as I can tell, this place is fictional, unless it's just commonly spelled some other way.
• This issue features the debut of the recurring character Johnny Nevada, a talk show host based on Johnny Carson.

Feat Catalogue:

• A video recording shows Superman stopping a tsunami by temporarily creating an updraft to stall the water, then digging a trench and using super pressure to harden the sand around it into glass at super speed, so the water doesn't make it far past the coast
• Uses super breath to inhale clouds of pollution from factories in Metropolis in order to hide his change from Clark Kent to Superman
• Uses his senses and intelligence to figure out how an alien device works to create living images, then creates a plastic lens with multiple prisms to counteract it

Spoiler: Interesting way to stop a tsunami

Spoiler: Figures out how to counter alien reality warping technology

Weirdness:

• An alien minstrel/musician who uses a reality-warping instrument that brings his songs to life decides to visit Earth and create villains for Superman to fight, just to entertain himself.
• Superman mentions how he transported Henry Kissinger to Atlantis to begin diplomatic relations with Aquaman. If I may be allowed to editorialize, both Superman and Aquaman should have left that bastard at the bottom of the sea. Seriously, fuck that guy.
• Despite not knowing that Clark Kent and Superman are the same person, the Clark Kent duplicate the alien creates also has Superman's costume and powers, and flies into space.

Superdickery:

- Upon finding a copy of Clark Kent who seems to be in mortal danger, Superman ignores his pleas for help and decides to investigate where he came from instead

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, still.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #421

Superman Story

Notes:

- First appearance of Horatio Strong, aka Captain Strong, a slightly more serious expy of Popeye the Sailor. He's a human who eats an alien plant (a stand-in for spinach) that temporarily imbues him with superhuman physical abilities comparable to Superman (which, of course, makes him much weaker than the original Popeye). Of course, the downside is that the plant also is addictive and makes him kind of crazy.

Feat Catalogue:

• Reads a fax from across the room in an instant
• Hooks 3 Coast Guard ships with a large chain and pulls them out of a whirlpool that was sucking them in to the bottom of the sea, and was too strong for them to escape on their own.
• Flies around at super speed to create a tornado above the whirlpool that cancels it out... somehow
• Uses precise super breath to push a cab driver's foot down on the accelerator and make the car speed out of control
• Intercepts Captain Strong and catches a punch from him before he can kill a guy.
• Steals the plant from Captain Strong before he has a chance to eat it (although the latter was running out of power at this point)

Spoiler: I'm pretty sure this isn't meteorologically sound

Spoiler: The full Superman vs. Captain Strong fight

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• Captain Strong easily rescues a kid from being buried under debris that was described as weighing a ton.
• He casually lifts and tosses a phone booth, with someone in it.
• He breaks his way into a skyscraper, presumably defeating all of its security, and smashes the desk of the company president.
• Punches Superman, and the latter thinks to himself that he is just as strong as him
• He can fly by using his arms to move air currents and 'swim' through the sky (which would take some major speed)
• Counters another of Superman's attacks
• Despite starting to run out of power due to having no more of the alien plant, he swims through the sky fast enough that Superman has trouble catching up to him
• He also created the whirlpool from earlier with his strength
• Dives to the bottom of the sea, gets some of the plant, and returns to the surface in "a moment"

Weirdness:

• It's basically Popeye in a Superman comic.
• Superman says that there are "100 billion star-suns in our galaxy". Roughly accurate numbers (especially considering the knowledge at the time of publication), but a weird way to phrase it.

Spoiler: Potentially useful information on the Pre-Crisis DC Milky Way

Superdickery:

• A kid nearly dies when playing in a dangerous place, pretending to be Batman. Can this be blamed on the Caped Crusader himself? Probably not. But it's worth noting.
• The cover shows Captain Strong picking up a phone booth while Superman is changing into his costume in it. That probably also counts. But in the comic proper, he actually does this to a Superman imposter who is changing out of costume.
• Clark Kent makes a taxi he's riding in crash just as a distraction to change to Superman without being seen
• Due to the influence of the alien plant (Sauncha), Captain Strong wrecks a bunch of property, tries to kill a guy, and fights Superman, even intending to kill him

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level. I suppose Captain Strong should be around the same, although with the major weakness that his powers are temporary and he can suffer from withdrawal if he runs out of Sauncha.

Green Arrow Story

Notes:

- Yeah, Green Arrow is appearing in this title now as well. He's obviously a popular and relevant character, so I'll be covering his adventures too.

Feat Catalogue:

• Fires an arrow across a street with enough accuracy to hit right above the window of a burning building, and with enough strength to carry a nylon cord that he uses as a zipline, riding on his bow across the street and into the window.
• Uses a combination of a net arrow and a boomerang arrow to anchor the net on both sides of the street, covering its entire width, in order to form a safety net for people to jump onto from the burning building
• Carries around an arrow with an electronic bug on it, but can also detach the bug and use it separately
• Throws a "siren shaft" arrow through a narrow grating from below, which plays a loud police siren sound to trick a criminal
• After the criminal already has his gun out and aimed, but before he can pull the trigger, Ollie takes an arrow out of his quiver, nocks it, and fires it, hitting the guy in the shoulder and making him drop the gun
• Knocks the guy out with a flying kick

Spoiler: This is pretty impressive

Spoiler: But not as impressive as this

Weirdness:

- Perhaps all the different specialized trick arrows he has could be considered weird, but I have a feeling I'll get very used to those as I read more of his stories.

Superdickery:

• Acts pretty forward with Black Canary, although she doesn't seem to mind so much
• He has a huge ego and cares more about his own glory than helping his girlfriend

Power Tracker:

- Despite it being such a short story, Oliver's feats here made a pretty good impression. I'd rank him from Mid - High Street Level so far.

Action Comics #422

Superman Story

Notes:

• This story includes a television show called "The Runaway" as a plot point, which is a reference to the 1963 show The Fugitive.
• The original Star Trek series is mentioned in this episode, notably with someone saying that the character of Mr. Spock became more popular than Captain Kirk (although I'm not sure if that was actually true during the original run of TOS...)

Feat Catalogue:

• Rescues a crashing helicopter by turning its blades at super speed to start them up again
• Reacts "instantly", according to the narration, and uses heat vision to short-circuit a microphone, giving the person holding it a slight electric shock in order to distract him so he can get away to change to Superman
• Stops a speeding subway train (described as weighing hundreds of tons) with one foot - without damaging it or the tracks, somehow
• Is unaffected by a strange blob of living white blood cells cells that was shown to dissolve everything else it touched (cars, buildings, etc.)
• Beats down the blob with rapid punches and tosses it into orbit
• Intercepts another one of the blobs and also throws it into orbit
• Searched the galaxy for a "rare alien herb" to cure a boy's strange disease

Spoiler: More powerful than a locomotive... and able to stop one without damaging it

Spoiler: Fights the white blood cell blobs

Spoiler: Searched the galaxy for a cure to the disease

Weirdness:

• Some kid was born with a rare disease that meant he had to stay quarantined for all of his life, and he only had TV to keep him company, so he somehow lost the ability to tell the difference between fiction and reality. But it turns out that the way his disease works is - get this - if his blood is exposed to open air, it creates giant self-replicating blobs of white blood cells that move on their own and attack and dissolve any matter they touch.
• The cover shows a boy watching Superman on TV and thinking that he's not real, but in the actual story it's the opposite - he used to think Superman wasn't real until he saw him for real out of the window, and as a result he started believing that everything on TV was real.

Spoiler: WHITE BLOOD CELLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! [/MORBO]

Superdickery:

- Gives his fellow reporter an electric shock just as a distraction

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level, but let's talk about that "searching the galaxy" feat. It was in the very last issue (written by the same writer) that they emphasized that there were 100 billion stars in the galaxy, but they used that to say that they would probably never find the origin planet of the Sauncha plant. Yet in this one, he somehow searches throughout the galaxy to find a cure for a disease, which you would think would actually be harder than finding the Sauncha's origin (in the latter case you already know what you're looking for, but in this case you have to test and experiment with everything you find to see if it is really a cure or not). It's not very consistent. But as for how this ranks as a speed feat, obviously the high-end interpretation that he searched every planet in the entire galaxy in a timeframe of at most a month or so would be pretty insane, but the fact is that we simply don't know how many planets and star systems he searched, what tools and instruments he used to search them and help find the cure, and how long it took him to find it, etc. For a super low-end interpretation, he could have just flown to a few advanced alien civilizations that he already knew about and just asked their doctors, who already would have the knowledge of the herb. So it's quite ambiguous.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #423

Superman Story

Notes:

- Despite what my notes on issue #419 said, there is a special feature in this issue showing a photo of several astronomers reading Action Comics #419, and saying that the Large Space Telescope featured in it was actually built by them. But I couldn't find an article on it on Wikipedia.

Feat Catalogue:

• In various flashbacks, we see Superman ripping open a suit of armor Lex Luthor is wearing, and also a ray gun Luthor uses bounces off of him
• Uses x-ray vision to see "Luthor" robbing a bank next door
• Acts as a target for the military's experimental artillery, analyzing data on it faster than any instrument could

Spoiler: Tests military equipment

Spoiler: Defeats Luthor

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• Lex Luthor's brainwaves when thinking of a plan to defeat Superman cause a "mento-graph" to pick up a spike that far exceeds the power of the rest of the combined brainwaves of Metropolis, and the scientist reading it says he didn't think such a burst of mental energy was possible.
• Someone impersonating Lex Luthor says that a previous weapon he used blasted an armored car into a pile of rust. This may or may not be true.
• Luthor has a gun on a vehicle that fires his "Hammer of Hate" so fast that it hits Superman only a microsecond after it was launched, which is some pretty insane speed
• As for the hammer itself, somehow it works by absorbing Lex's own hatred for Superman, and then mentally transferring it to him, making him hate Luthor just as much as Luthor used to hate him
• Used a "teleportation-seat" to instantly travel miles away.
• Uses it again to teleport to a scientific institute
• He also built a glove with a weapon that was apparently designed to work on Superman, but since he dodged it, we never found out any more details about how it worked

Spoiler: Lex's brainwaves are over 9000!

Spoiler: Probably not Luthor's best plan ever:

Spoiler: More of his teleporter

Weirdness:

• A random scientist invents a "mento-graph" that can detect the brainwaves of everyone in Metropolis, and even somehow derive power from them
• Clark Kent, Jimmy Olsen, and Lois Lane, now being TV reporters, are sent to an acting school to learn to better present themselves on camera. The teacher makes them act like animals for some reason (a rabbit, a snake, and a dog).
• Luthor's plan in this issue involves creating an invention that transfers his own hatred to Superman, making him hate Luthor as much as Luthor hated him. In fact, it drives him into a murderous rage at the mere thought of him. This seems like a counterproductive plan to me, as Superman might easily end up killing him for real.
• Superman somehow figures out how to cure himself of the hate by transferring it into the mento-graph machine
• Despite Clark Kent ranting about Luthor on live TV after being affected by the hate hammer, Lex never puts the pieces together than he is Superman

Superdickery:

• I think this cover might have been featured on the original Superdickery website
• In a flashback, we see Superman knock Luthor on the head so hard that his body is forced down into the ground (into what looks like concrete, even) up to his knees. How that didn't kill him, I have no idea.
• Under the influence of the Hate Hammer, threatens to tear Luthor limb from limb, and actually tries to do so, although it was just a decoy
• Stages a hoax that he murdered an innocent scientist, in order to trick Luthor (making the public think that he did it as well)

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level. We see another example of the inconsistency of his resistance to mental/psychic attacks - sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. Lex's invention affecting his mind is perhaps a good feat for Lex, too.

Action Comics #424

Superman Story

Notes:

• It's interesting that the villain in this issue is actually Grodd, a Flash villain who first debuted in 1959. I'd like to see more of Superman fighting other heroes' villains.
• "The Planet of the Apes movie" is mentioned in this story, although at the time this was published, multiple movies in the franchise had been released
• Gorilla City is claimed to be within the borders of both the Congo and Sudan
• A response in the letters column says that, as part of his disguise, Superman deliberately slumps slightly in order to appear shorter as Clark Kent

Feat Catalogue:

• Flies around at super speed to create a whirlpool to try to trap Grodd
• Deliberately slows his heart to a near-stop to fake his death
• Figures out that Grodd managed to take over Solovar's mind
• Ambushes and knocks out Solovar (who had been possessed by Grodd)
• Grodd's telepathy was apparently only powerful enough to make Superman weaker, not to outright defeat him by controlling or shutting down his mind, showing some good telepathic resistance
• Flies the unconscious bodies of Grodd and Solovar back to Gorilla City in Africa
• Repairs the damage done to the UN building

Spoiler: Defeats Grodd/Solovar

Spoiler: Fixing the UN building

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• Solovar constantly maintains the forcefield that keeps Gorilla City invisible to the outside world with his mental powers
• Despite being forced to walk continuously on a treadmill since he was last captured by the Flash, in order to keep him exhausted, Grodd mustered enough mental power to break out of his cage and short out Solovar's shield
• Grodd also has a "mind-transfer device" that allows him to take over the minds of others
• The narration says that Solovar "materializes" on the stairway in the UN building. I don't know if this means that he teleported or not.
• Grodd teleports outside of the UN building
• Grodd slams the ground next to the building so hard that it causes the entire building to shake and start to collapse, to the point that everyone inside thinks it's an earthquake. The entire entrance to the building soon collapses. He's a lot stronger than a normal gorilla, it seems.
• Using his telepathic powers to weaken Superman's will, he makes him unable to use his full strength against him, allowing him to shrug off one of his punches, then picks him up and throws him into the harbor, impacting into the water so hard that the waves generated nearly capsize multiple large boats
• Grodd, having experience fighting the Flash, stops Superman's whirlpool trick by stomping hard on the water, causing the water column to collapse around them
• Grodd also seems to somehow be able to control/create a whirlpool himself (telekinesis?) as he defeats Superman, with the help of his telepathy keeping him weak
• The doctors in Gorilla City switch Grodd and Solovar's minds back to their correct bodies within an hour. They then imprison Grodd in a cell where he is both constantly restrained and hypnotized.
• Solovar helps Superman repair the UN building with telekinesis
• It's revealed that Grodd was only able to overcome Solovar and possess his body by taking him by surprise when his guard was down

Spoiler: Grodd stages his escape

Spoiler: Teleportation and strength

Spoiler: Full fight with Superman

Weirdness:

• The idea of Grodd, Solovar, and Gorilla City will probably seem very weird to anyone not already familiar with it from the Flash mythos. It's definitely a concept that only could have come about in the Silver Age.
• Superman says that the only logical explanation for Solovar defeating Grodd so easily was that the latter had taken over the former's body. He turned out to be right, but I think that line of deduction is rather flawed...

Superdickery:

• Damages part of the UN building as an excuse to get away from Lois and change to Superman (the building was already falling apart, though)
• Fakes his death as part of a plan to trick Grodd, in the process making Lois incredibly depressed

Spoiler: HAHA, you thought I was dead!

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level normally, Grodd's telepathic attack probably weakened him to somewhere around Mid Meta Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #424 Part 2

Green Arrow Story

Notes:

- Green Arrow changes into his costume in a phone booth in this issue, claiming he got the idea from hearing that Superman did it, although he doesn't know if that's actually true or just a rumor

Feat Catalogue:

• Intercepts and cuts a criminal's rope harness with an arrow, described as "faster than thought". Not sure what that's supposed to mean, but it sounds like a hyperbole. Still impressive, though.
• Catches another criminal with a "suction-shaft" arrow in "the next instant"
• Runs outside and changes to his costume in a phone booth, then runs back in the building, in "moments"
• Uses a retractable rope arrow that automatically reels him up to the top of a lamppost
• Fires two arrows at once to take out the two rear tires of a moving car (and they were implied to be "puncture-proof", as well). He also uses the bow - as - zipline trick to reach the car from the top of the lamppost.
• Uses an "acetylene arrow" to burn through a locked metal cabinet door

Spoiler: Faster than thought! - Really?

Spoiler: Fairly quick costume change

Spoiler: Escaping from a crowd

Spoiler: Stopping a car

Spoiler: He seems to have an arrow for everything

Weirdness:

• A cop accidentally smashes a door into Green Arrow, allowing the criminals he was after to escape. Kind of funny, actually.
• Ollie randomly stumbles upon a candy shop that just happens to be a front for the criminals he was fighting the previous night, and decides to use his job as a PR man to promote it.
• Some criminals manage to escape from Green Arrow by throwing chocolate fudge on the ground in front of a large crowd, saying it's free, so they will run for it and get in his way. Ignoring for the moment how silly this is, why would people want fudge that was thrown on the ground? (Maybe it was wrapped in paper or plastic...)

Spoiler: This could be the page image for TVTropes' "Police are Useless" trope

Superdickery:

- Instead of giving his reward money for catching the jewel thieves to a charity, he gives it to the woman who hired him as a PR agent in his secret identity, so she can pay him.

Power Tracker:

- I'm still going with Mid-High Street Level, although a few more of those blatantly superhuman archery feats might be enough to push him up to solid High Street Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #425

Superman Story

Notes:

- The extinct Moa bird (specifically the North Island Giant Moa) is an important plot point in this story, although it is referred to in the comic as Dinornis Maximus, rather than its correct scientific name, Dinornis novaezealandiae. The name could have changed since this comic was published.

Feat Catalogue:

• A car he's in falls into a lake, and he uses super breath to keep the lake water from entering the car, maintaining a bubble of air inside it.
• Uses microscopic vision to view a microbe multiplied 100,000 times.
• Flies out of a laboratory in Metropolis to the site of the car wreck outside of the city, finds fragments of an eggshell in the wreck underwater, and returns, all in around 3 seconds.
• Uses super speed and telescopic vision to search every square inch of Metropolis (timeframe unknown, but the narration says it's "astonishingly swift")
• After deciding to search beyond Metropolis, he finds the Moa "scant moments later"
• Is taken by surprise, but unharmed, by a barrage of sharp feather projectiles with enough force to "perforate a bull elephant"
• While pursuing the Moa through the air at faster than supersonic speeds, he is still using telescopic vision to monitor the hunter back in Metropolis, and determines that his condition is getting worse the further away the Moa gets from him.
• Identifies a rare flower from a telepathic image and finds its exact position on Earth
• Flies "faster than a spark", overtaking the supersonic bird and pulling it along behind him in his wake. At this speed, he reaches New Zealand (from somewhere outside of Metropolis) "mere eyeblinks later"
• Uses X-ray vision to identify some gasses as being 'unlike any others on Earth'
• Flies several thousand miles back to Metropolis in "a few moments"

Spoiler: I believe this is the first time we've been given a number for his vision's magnification, of course this isn't his maximum

Spoiler: Super speed searching

Weirdness:

• A hunter who shoots a Moa attacking him concludes that it must have been the last one alive, even though if one existed, it's possible it had parents or siblings that were still around...
• After accidentally killing the last Moa, the hunter finds its egg, which was exposed to strange gasses. These gasses somehow give the egg the ability to drain energy from the hunter as he stays near it, making the guy sickly and weak and causing him to slowly die, even after the egg hatches. It also causes him to start releasing a weird microbe, which is also found on the eggshell. Also, this somehow gives the Moa superpowers, including:

• Making it grow at an accelerated rate (doubling its size in hours)
• Giving it the ability to fire its feathers like projectiles
• Flight, by moving its feet at super speed to push the air around it (faster than a supersonic jet)
• Super strong, sharp, and deadly claws
• The ability to transmit telepathic messages.
• The ability to shed its legs and instantly regrow a new pair
• The ability to read minds and extract information from them, also weakening the person's life force

Also, as soon as it reaches its hatching place, the life drain just stops for some reason.

Spoiler: You won't convince me the writer of this story wasn't on drugs

Superdickery:

- Superman builds a fence around the Moa's home to make it a preserve, but it's never stated or implied that the bird's weird powers wore off, so he seemingly just let a potentially dangerous superpowered creature free to cause any havoc it wants (that fence won't stop it from flying out).

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Atom Story

Notes:

- Apparently at this point in time, Ray Palmer and Jean Loring also have the Clark Kent/Lois Lane dynamic going, where she doesn't know his superhero identity, although Ray says he's going to tell her "soon".

Feat Catalogue:

• Beats up some thugs in HtH without using his powers (although they were taken by surprise)
• Determines the reason why he was changing size uncontrollably, and uses it to his advantage

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- As before, I'll put the Atom at Mid-Meta Level.

Action Comics #426

Superman Story

Notes:

• This is the first time the villain Terra-Man has appeared in this title, although it's not his first appearance overall. He's - get this - a Wild West style cowboy from the future who uses super technology. Very weird.
• A narration caption in this issue states that S.T.A.R. Laboratories stands for Scientific and Technological Advanced Research.

Feat Catalogue:

• Saves a crashing jet liner
• Uses microscopic vision to find a trail of lunar dust leading to some missing moon rocks
• Grabs Terra-Man and flies away with him so fast that his disguise disintegrates from air friction, revealing his normal costume underneath it
• Escapes from Terra-Man's scarf trap by relaxing his muscles and slipping out
• Kicks one of his boots at Terra-Man, knocking his gun out of his hand
• Reacts, according to the narration, "with reflexes faster than the mortal mind can comprehend" to throw away Terra-Man's gun, sending it all the way to the Earth's core

Spoiler: Defeating Terra-Man

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• Terra-Man uses an "invisible trail-beam" to cause some moon rocks to fly out of a case at S.T.A.R. labs, burst through the ceiling, and fly through the air at supersonic speed, wrecking a jet plane and then landing on a specific spot on the ground.
• Apparently he has enhanced vision, as it's noted that his eyes spot Superman approaching from a far distance
• Escapes from Superman's grip and kicks him with "energized spurs" on his feet, which Superman says "pack quite a wallop"
• Terra-Man can also fly
• Throws a scarf at Superman that increases in size and starts to strangle him, and he says that Superman's super strength won't help him escape from it
• Terra-Man claims that if his bomb had successfully gone off, Superman's atoms would be scattered all over the solar system

Spoiler: Terra-Man has some tricks up his sleeve

Weirdness:

- Terra-Man's plan involved starting a cult that believed the moon is evil, and all moon rocks on Earth must be destroyed. This was part of his plan to get them to use a "cosmic cauldron" to destroy some moon rocks, so their debris, containing a special type of "lunar particle", would energize his gun to become a bomb that could hurt Superman. What.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Two things to note here. Firstly, the implication that Terra-Man's gun-bomb could hurt/kill Superman, and apparently scatter his atoms all across the solar system, but it was weak enough that going off in the Earth's core rendered it harmless. The most reasonable interpretation here, IMO, is that the bomb used some sort of technobabble hax that could bypass his invulnerability, as Terra-Man's whole shtick is 'arbitrarily powerful future technology that might as well be magic'. This is further supported by the fact that Terra-Man was planning for the bomb to go off and kill Superman while he was right next to him, and he obviously believed he would survive (although he may have had some kind of forcefield or other defensive technology to protect himself). There's also the part about Superman reacting with reflexes "faster than the mortal mind can comprehend". At low-end, that could just mean faster than a mortal can track/react to, but the use of the word "comprehend" could also lead to the interpretation that it's faster than any speed or timeframe that could even be mathematically understood by a mortal, which would effectively make it infinitely fast. Obviously this is a very dubious interpretation. Anyway, Superman is still High Herald Level.

Green Arrow Story

Notes:

- Star Trek is mentioned in this story

Feat Catalogue:

• By shooting rope arrows onto buildings and swinging from them, Spider-Man style, Green Arrow is able to travel to a specific building in Star City, getting there ahead of a truck that was already closer to the building than he was.
• He also has an arrow with a device that can detect electronic bugs
• Using the same method of travel, reaches another part of the city in minutes
• Breaks through a ceiling window and fires an arrow while falling that precisely hits and destroys a telephone while a guy is using it
• Casually defeats a pair of thugs in HtH
• Fires an arrow from a moving car, taking into account speed and wind direction, so it flies 4 city blocks and precisely lands, carrying a piece of paper with a message, in the exact spot he aimed at.
• Ollie has a university education in economics
• He invented a new type of arrow with a clamp device on it (it wasn't really explained what it did, though)

Spoiler: Outraces a truck through the city

Spoiler: More rope-swinging travel

Spoiler: Easily beats some goons

Spoiler: Nice shot

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- For a street level character, Green Arrow is a beast, and his feats continue to impress me. I'd still say Mid-High Street Level, but a few more showings like this and I'll gladly move him up to solid High Street.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #427

Superman Story

Notes:

• In this story, we see Superman fly to "Nix Olympica" on Mars. This was before it was named Olympus Mons. A narrative caption mentions that its height was measured by the Mariner 9 probe, although in the comic it doesn't look anything like it does in real life. It's also portrayed as still being active and having a boiling lava lake in its crater.
• Mars' core is described as gaseous in this issue. It's not, it's solid.

Feat Catalogue:

• Changes to Superman and flies out of his news van in "an instant"
• Uses microscopic vision to find a trail of smoky particles left by the creature (Wade Bartox) he is looking for
• Flies from Earth to Mars, tracking the creature
• Is dragged under a lake of lava on Mars by the creature, but isn't harmed by this, and kicks it away
• Despite having most of his powers telepathically/magically disabled, his invulnerability still works, as he is unharmed from being pulled into the core of Mars.
• Superman is able to overcome the magical mental block placed on him by the creature and fire his heat vision (apparently at full power, generating enough "super-heat" to ignite an entire sun, raising the core temperature of Mars by millions of degrees), causing Olympus Mons to erupt and blast them out of Mars at super speed
• As the creature turns back to his human self, Superman reacts fast enough to wrap him in his cape and protect him from the eruption and the Martian atmosphere, and carry him back to Earth before he is seriously hurt

Spoiler: Chases Bartox to Mars and fights him

Weirdness:

• The premise of this story: Sometime in the late 21st century, a kid is kidnapped and brainwashed to be an assassin using psychic powers that are slowly given to him with technology, but he is also able to track his own bloodline back to the past and send a telepathic beam to his ancestor. The beam allows him to possess his ancestor's body and access his childhood memories, then transform him into an imaginary monster the guy was afraid of as a kid, and since he imagined it having magic powers, it got legit magic when he transformed, and it is also immortal and comparable to Superman in speed and strength. Then it flies to Mars. It also has magical psychic powers that turn Superman into a cyclops, merging his two eyes into one, and disabling the part of his brain that controls his super powers. All of this was to stop his ancestor from having children with his future wife and thus prevent his own birth, so he couldn't carry out the assassination. (Totally ignoring the issue of the paradox this would create). Also, it seems like this plot was created like a mad lib.
• The abbreviation "ESPr" is used to refer to "extra-sensory projection", the ability to project thoughts to others (in this case, even back through time)
• Superman somehow concludes that since the transformed Wade Bartox has magical powers, that means he can't die, even after being vaporized into nothingness. And he turns out to be right.
• The cover shows Superman praising the would-be future assassin as a hero, despite him being retconned out of existence, but in the actual comic he doesn't even find out that the guy ever existed in the first place

Spoiler: But then you never would have been able to change the past in the first place...

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- The heat vision feat is interesting. Apparently it was "full power", although I have seen better HV feats in other comics (mostly ones I haven't yet covered). Notable that it was only from one eye instead of two. The power to "ignite an entire sun" and raise the core temperature of Mars by millions of degrees sounds impressive, but you'd figure Mars would have been destroyed by that, but we have enough precedent for HV having power on that level to handwave that to an extent. Still, it is one of the more impressive HV feats we have seen so far in this thread. Overall, he's still High Herald Level.

Atom Story

Notes:

- It's shown in the beginning that the Atom was working with the JLA at this point in time

Feat Catalogue:

• Decreases his size and mass so that he can glide through the air and control his flight path to an extent
• Does his trademark trick of traveling through telephone wires
• Saves a guy from a bomb disguised as a watch, and escapes the explosion, using its force to propel him upwards to the roof of a building
• Reacts to Chronos' gimmick clock weapon and rides the projectile like a surfboard
• Hits Chronos and then shrinks and uses his scientific knowledge to sabotage his technology, rewiring it so that the lever control will cause his own gadgets to self-destruct
• Knocks out Chronos and captures him

Spoiler: The Atom's most iconic move

Spoiler: The Atom vs. Chronos

Weirdness:

- Chronos has a projectile launcher shaped like a miniature grandfather clock, and a flying machine shaped like a giant sundial. He really goes for those clock gimmicks.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Mid Meta Level still seems about right for the Atom.

Action Comics #428

Overall Notes:

- There's a feature in this issue about how the town of Metropolis, Illinois, was building a Superman - themed recreation center, with support from DC.

Superman Story:

Notes:

- A response in the letters column states that in issue #424, Superman defeated Grodd the second time because he took him by surprise and blitzed him before he could use his telepathy

Feat Catalogue:

• According to the narration, he flies "faster than thought itself" to the ocean near Newfoundland to find an iceberg of the proper size, then flies it back to Metropolis and melts it with heat vision to put out some burning buildings
• Measures Jimmy Olsen's pulse in the manner of a lie detector, to confirm he's telling the truth
• Uses internal heat vision to melt certain switches in an elevator control panel and make the door open
• Melts an avalanche with heat vision (although wouldn't that just turn it into a flood?)
• Not quite sure about this feat, but Superman is unaffected by Lex's satellite that brainwashes the rest of the Earth's population. Lex made himself and his assistant exempt from the effects, so he may have deliberately made Superman exempt as well, although if he actually had the ability to mess with Superman's memory directly, he probably would have, so this is likely a mental resistance feat.
• Tricks Lex Luthor into revealing his plan
• Flies from the Metropolis prison to orbit in "mere heartbeats" and kicks Lex's satellite into the sun
• Says he will build a replacement satellite for the TV station

Spoiler: Using his super senses like a lie detector

Spoiler: Precise use of internal HV

Spoiler: Tricks Lex and kicks his satellite into the sun

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor builds a satellite that brainwashes the entire population of Earth into having false memories that Superman disappeared 10 years ago, and every time they see him or read about him in the present, they see illusions of something else instead. Lex also somehow made himself and his assistant immune to the effect.

Spoiler: Lex's newest invention

Weirdness:

• The splash page for this one is... uh... well, it features "the twin sky-towers of Metropolis both wildly ablaze", in a scene reminiscent of something that would later happen in real life... kind of creepy if you ask me.
• There's a rather racist depiction of a native African worshipping an "invisible jungle god" called "Ugga"
• Superman somehow determines that Lex Luthor is behind the hypnosis, saying he's the only person he knows who is "diabolical and genius enough to mass-hypnotize billions of people"
• Clark Kent actually takes off his suit to reveal his Superman costume live on TV, in order to test if the hypnosis is working. People who are watching just see him stripping to his undergarments.
• In order to trick Lex Luthor, Superman disguises himself as another prisoner who is sent to his cell, and pretends not to recognize Lex's existence. Except the prison warden who sent him there was also in on it, somehow. How did he convince the warden to play along if no one recognized his existence as Superman?

Spoiler: This was published in 1973. Weird coincidence.

Superdickery:

- Vandalizes an elevator and never fixes it

Power Tracker:

- "Faster than thought itself" seems like a hyperbole, unless they were talking about human nerve impulses or something. Anyway, he's still High Herald Level.

Green Arrow Story

Notes:

- This story features a businessman named Trump. Probably unrelated to a certain RL person with that name, as he wasn't really famous back then. Although I suppose it might have been a reference to his father, Fred Trump.

Feat Catalogue:

• Defeats a pool hall full of criminals, with the narration saying that time seems to slow down and his reflexes heighten when he's in danger. He uses an arrow to deflect a billiard ball and uses another one to pin a guy to the wall by his shirt without hurting him, ending the whole fight in under 30 seconds
• Uses a bolo-arrow to tie up a guy's feet
• Fires a retractable rope - arrow so that he can swing from it to intercept a motorcycle, knock Black Canary off of it, drive it in a different direction, and jump off of it just before it hits a wall, getting over to the other side of the wall ahead of the explosion from the bomb in the vehicle
• After being taken by surprise by Black Canary's first attack, he counters her second one and subdues her

Spoiler: More of Ollie's skills

Spoiler: He saved her life, so I'm not counting this as dickery

Spoiler: Seems like a healthy relationship...

Feat Catalogue (non-Green Arrow):

- Black Canary judo flips Green Arrow

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

• Signs Black Canary up to do a promotion for a motorcycle without asking her permission first
• Threatens to break every bone in an informant's body
• Black Canary gets angry at Green Arrow and attacks him for saving her life

Power Tracker:

- Well, I said I would do it if he had another good showing, and this is one. I now rate Green Arrow as High Street Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #429

Superman Story

Notes:

• According to the cover, Kal-El was born on Krypton in the 35th day of the month of Erox in the Kryptonian year 9998
• Among the people who are shown to know Superman's secret identity in this issue are Supergirl, Batman, the Flash (Barry Allen), and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)

Feat Catalogue:

• Excavates an ancient city buried underneath volcanic lava at super speed. This is also a feat of precision as such archaeology requires that everything be kept as intact as possible.
• Flies at lightspeed back to work in Metropolis
• Uses X-ray vision to read his file in a filing cabinet at his place of work (which, I'll remind you, is now the Galaxy Building instead of the Daily Planet, as he was bought out by Morgan Edge to become a TV reporter)
• Races with the Flash (although it's implied to be more of a casual conversation at super speed than a serious race)
• In the Fortress of Solitude, he has a thought - controlled device that writes in a giant diary with a giant pen
• Again reads his file, this time from outside of the building

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Flash (Barry Allen) is shown racing with Superman (although it's implied to be more of a casual conversation at super speed than a serious race)

Spoiler: Super-Archaeology!

Spoiler: Racing with the Flash

Spoiler: He can't do anything small, can he?

Weirdness:

• Superman has a giant diary in his Fortress, which he writes on using a giant, thought - controlled, mechanical pen. Because just writing in a normal book would be too boring.
• The word "telepath" is used as a verb at one point
• This story implies that Earth's sun used to be red a billion years ago, which is not true in real life. Although, this was stated in the context of a story that Superman made up, so that doesn't mean it's necessarily true in-universe, either.
• In the story he makes up, he uses "growth - stimulating x-ray beams" from his eyes to cause a bunch of plants to grow to giant size at an accelerated rate. There's no evidence that he actually has this power.
• The premise of this episode is that, by some strange fluke, Superman's diary in the Fortress of Solitude becomes linked to a ticker tape machine at his workplace, and transmits everything he writes there. A guy who worked there manages to decode the Kryptonian language and, instead of revealing any of his secrets, just translates it all into English and puts it in a filing cabinet... for some reason.
• The file also includes an obituary for Clark Kent, even though he hasn't died yet, and such a thing obviously wouldn't be written in his diary. This is never explained... so I guess the guy transcribing the diary just made it up or something. The hell?

Spoiler: Okay... that solves that, then

Superdickery:

- Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) suggests that Clark should just give up being a superhero and become a reporter full-time. Why? I don't know, maybe he wants more glory for himself.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing here to change him from High Herald Level

Action Comics #430

Superman Story

Notes:

• First part of a two - part story, continued next issue
• The opening narration claims that Superman is "the most famous man on Earth". Even if we ignore any potential rivals for that title, does he really count as "famous" if only a handful of people know who he really is?
• The address of Clark Kent's apartment is given as 344 Clinton Street.
• It's also stated that Metropolis has a population of 10 million, as of this issue.
• At one point, a message on a TV screen announces "We will control all you see and hear for the next few moments". This is probably a reference to the original Outer Limits TV series, which had a similar catchphrase.

Feat Catalogue:

• Despite having his powers "neutralized" (kind of a misnomer, as they still seemed to work, just at a weakened level), he dives into a smokestack, flies out of a furnace, and then traps an animated smoke hand inside by tying up the smokestack (don't ask). His powers also seem to return to full strength almost immediately afterwards.
• Scans his entire apartment with X-ray vision, but is only unable to identify the villain because he's a perfect shapeshifter that can mimic the internal structure of a human body as well.

Spoiler: Weakened Superman vs. animated smoke

Weirdness:

• The villain in this issue is known for setting off minor earthquakes at night (testing a device), so he has been oh - so - imaginatively labeled "The Quakerer".
• The villain apparently has a way to 'treat objects to neutralize Superman's powers'. The closest we get to an explanation for this is that he's from the future.
• Apparently in just 40,000 years, normal Earth chameleons will evolve to have human size and intelligence and perfect shapeshifting, and a bunch of other powers, and then go to war against humans

Spoiler: Everyone talks about zombie or robot apocalypses... no one ever suspects the chameleons

Superdickery:

• Violates the privacy of every other tenant of his apartment building by constantly scanning them with X-ray vision
• After narrowing down the suspects to 4 tenants of the apartment, he tricks them into a bus that is actually a time machine and brings them back to prehistoric times to try to root out the villain's identity (likely traumatizing the others for life in the process)
• He also blatantly lies about not knowing how they got there, as he's there too in his Clark Kent identity.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level normally, maybe Mid Meta Level when weakened by the Quakerer's future technology?

Atom Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

• Flies on wind currents and then uses momentum from a tilt-a-whirl ride to precisely land on a specific person's jacket in a large crowd
• KO's a guy by jumping at him from a very short distance while still at small size, then does the same to another guy before either of them can react
• Despite lowering both his size and mass to imitate an action figure, he is only annoyed and not actually hurt by a little kid throwing him around and slamming him headfirst onto a table.

Weirdness:

- The villains in this issue were a pair of spies who were smuggling information written in miniature on superhero action figures that were given out as prizes in snack boxes. Seems like there would be many easier and less convoluted ways to send information.

Superdickery:

- Ray Palmer mocks Jean Loring's young nephew (a kid who is probably less than 10 years old) by calling him a crybaby in order to get him to go on a haunted house ride to distract him

Power Tracker:

- Still putting the Atom at Mid Meta Level for now

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #431

Superman Story

Notes:

• Clark Kent willingly reveals his secret identity to his neighbors in this issue, of course it is undone via plot device by the end of the story
• Interestingly, Superman says that "the stresses of ultra-fast time travel" have a deleterious effect on most living beings, but he is used to it, so it doesn't affect him

Feat Catalogue:

• It's confirmed here that the time machine bus first seen in the previous issue was built by Superman
• Resists various transformations and transmutations by the villain - they are affecting him (as we've seen that his future technology can 'neutralize his powers' in the previous issue), but he is still able to fight back
• Uses hypnotic windshield wipers (what) to make everyone on the bus forget his secret identity, and Batman helps too for some reason

Spoiler: Not as stylish as a Deloreon, but it gets the job done

Spoiler: Fights the 420th century chameleon who can neutralize his powers and wins

Weirdness:

• Spelling error - the word "kidnapped" is spelled "kidnaped" at one point in this story
• Using hypnotic windshield wipers and Batman's help instead of just his standard hypnotic powers

Spoiler: I... guess?

Superdickery:

• Falls for the villain's trick and attacks an innocent guy who the villain transformed to look like his monster form, despite the guy's protestations that he was innocent
• Erases the memories of a bunch of people who learned his secret identity, with help from Batman

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level normally, possibly Mid - High Meta Level or so when weakened by the chameleon's technology and powers

Green Arrow Story

Notes:

- Some dialogue here indicates that Green Arrow is not particularly fond of Hawkman, for some reason

Feat Catalogue:

• Green Arrow has to spend a lot of money on plaster compound to repair his apartment walls, because when he gets angry he often ends up punching through them, without even meaning to.
• Jumps into traffic, latches onto a moving truck, and uses his arrows to swing Spider-Man style from car to car to chase down an escaping sports car
• Easily defeats two henchmen and pins them both to the wall with handcuff arrows
• Fires 2 steel-bladed arrows at once, precisely enough to hit the moving blades of a helicopter, and with enough power to shatter them and crash the copter
• Is shown to have a knockout gas arrow, which he threatens to use but doesn't

Spoiler: Casual displays of unrestrained strength

Spoiler: Arrow-Man, Arrow-Man, does whatever an arrow can...

Spoiler: Takes out two thugs and a helicopter

Weirdness:

- The pickpocket who robbed Ollie in his civilian identity was caught, but he saw him reclaim the money in his Green Arrow identity, so this guy now possibly knows his secret identity, and this is never brought up as a potential concern.

Superdickery:

• Gets pickpocketed on a subway because he was distracted by ogling a pretty girl
• Insults the priceless work of art he saved from the thieves to the face of the guy who wanted it back

Power Tracker:

- Ollie continues to impress me. High Street Level, and that helicopter feat is quite nice.

Action Comics #432

Superman Story

Notes:

• First appearance of the second Toyman (Jack Nimball). He's somehow more of a loser than even the first one.
• The opening narration refers to the original Toyman as "Superman's most maniacal foe" - a fairly hot take if I've ever heard one
• Clark Kent is shown starring as himself in a commercial for an airline... for some reason
• An editor's note mentions the original Toyman's first appearance in issue #64, back in 1943, even though that was later retconned as happening to a different version of Superman in a different universe... but was then un-retconned when all of their histories merged together, so whatever.
• The original Toyman was apparently released from jail and is retired from crime now
• This story features an experimental car called the "X555", apparently the fastest in the world. This vehicle is fictional - at the time this story was published, the land speed record was held by the Blue Flame rocket-powered car.
• A fictional species of tree called a "Pink Hanixus" also features in this issue. Another thing that I had to look up in order to see if it was real or not.

Feat Catalogue:

• Grabs all of the Toyman's explosive bubble gum animals (don't ask) in a split second before they can hit the ground
• Flies into space "moments later" and uses the explosive gimmick animals to destroy some old satellites that NASA wanted him to get rid of
• Uses heat vision to vaporize the poison cotton candy strangling the original Toyman, without harming him

Spoiler: Taking care of Toyman II's explosives

Spoiler: Defeats Toyman II

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The new Toyman demonstrates equipment including:

• A one-seat rocket plane, with some kind of energy ray on the front
• A "Laser reducer-rifle" that can shrink a 747 airliner to the size and weight of a toy (and does the same to a military submarine, a solar - powered train, and a space rocket launching a satellite). It also has an enlarging setting, but it's not clear if it only works on things that were shrunken first. Notably it also works on Superman, although he planned for it to be used on him in this case.
• Bubble gum that he can instantly blow up into the shape of animals, that also double as powerful explosives as soon as they touch any inanimate object. Just a few of them were considered enough to completely destroy a town.
• A gun that fires poisonous cotton candy that sticks to and suffocates its victims

****

• The original Toyman deduces the new Toyman's next target and sets up a trap for him
• He can fly with the help of a personal helicopter - like device
• He also tricks and defeats the new Toyman with a suction cup arrow (Green Arrow should sue)
• His rocket - powered pogo stick can keep up with the second Toyman's plane

Spoiler: Respect your elders in crime

Weirdness:

- Both Toymen and their gags and gimmicks, also the original (Winslow Schott) was actually working with Superman the whole time

Superdickery:

• Superman defeats the new Toyman by bending him into the shape of a ball and dribbling him on the grass like a basketball. Pretty sure that would cripple him for life, if not kill him.
• Part of his plan involves letting a rocket be stolen as it is launching a satellite. The fuel for those things is expensive...

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to really note here to change him from High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #433

Superman Story

Notes:

• The Statue of Liberty, and what is presumably New York Harbor, are shown on the cover, even though the scene depicted on the cover takes place in Metropolis, not NYC.
• At this point, Kryptonite still isn't supposed to exist anywhere on Earth, having all been removed in a previous story in the Superman title
• Various historical events mentioned in this story include Charles Lindbergh making his transatlantic flight in 1927, Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds radio drama causing a panic (although that was severely exaggerated by the media), the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the 1963 assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, the 1929 stock market crash, D-Day, the launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik, and the first moon walk.
• There is an advertisement in this issue, offering a reprinted recreation of Action Comics #1, while noting that an original issue was recently sold for $1800.00 (around 11.5 thousand dollars in today's money)

Feat Catalogue:

• Uses arctic breath to freeze a lake in order to prevent the President (presumably of the US)'s car from sinking.
• Uses heat vision to melt some falling glass from a skyscraper, then gather it at super speed, and uses his breath to freeze it into a glass globe before any of it hits the ground
• Using the infrared spectrum of his vision, he can see people who were made invisible to everyone else via psychic powers
• The villain says that the reason the mental energy he absorbed from his test subjects (see below) was so much more powerful than he expected was because one of them was actually Superman, who has a "super-brain".
• Superman then says that the power the test subjects were given was "hyped-up a thousand-fold" by his own super-brain.
• Despite being paralyzed by an illusory cage of Kryptonite that he is made to believe is real due to his foes' psychic powers, Superman is still able to use his telescopic vision to see the surface of the moon and tell that its chemical composition has changed. He can later see that the moon was given an atmosphere and life. He can also detect the overload of psychic energy in the moon and realizes that it is in danger of exploding from it.
• The excess mental energy extracted from Superman, combined with that of 3 other people (although it's implied to be mostly his), is apparently enough to shatter the moon, and later the Earth as well. A high-end interpretation would imply this means that he could blow up the Earth and moon by simply thinking too hard, but I wouldn't blame you for finding that dubious.
• Overcomes the psychic illusory Kryptonite (he says it seemed to fade away after a while, so he got used to it or something? It's not exactly clear)

Spoiler: Superman's 'super-brain' has a lot of untapped power

Spoiler: Uses super senses while weakened by illusory Kryptonite

Spoiler: Manages to shrug off the effect of the illusory Kryptonite

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The villain of this issue is another of those random mad scientists who develops crazy technology, including:

• A "mento-extractor", disguised as a fountain pen, which can shoot invisible rays that give people psychic powers, that include things like telepathy, flight, invisibility, psychic attacks that can KO Superman (although see the Weirdness section for a possible explanation of that), an infallible tracking sense that can lead them to any one of them, etc. It can also siphon excess psychic energy from their brains, regardless of distance, and allow the villain to control them for the rest of their lives.
• A giant "mento-power cannon", a much larger version of the previous device, which he claims is "infinitely more powerful". He has one of his test subjects channel their mental powers through it to fire a beam of psychic energy at the moon, which he says will "chemically activate the lunar soil for farming". This seems to work. He then has one of them use the device to create an atmosphere for the moon, and the third to create life there, including plants and what appear to be lizards. However, the excess of "mento-power" threatens to destroy the moon. When his plan was foiled, he attempted to use the cannon to "annihilate Superman with an overwhelming blast" of psychic power, but the cannon overheated and exploded when he tried it (it's unclear whether it would have been effective otherwise)

Spoiler: Another crazy device invented by some rando

Spoiler: This guy supposedly has benign motives but is still acting like a supervillain...

Weirdness:

• This story uses the old myth that humans only ever use a small portion of their brains, and if they could use 100%, they would have superhuman intelligence, or some kind of supernatural powers. In reality, this isn't true.
• The villain actually used his mento-extractor on Clark Kent when he graduated from college, not knowing he was Superman. Hence, Superman's own excess mental energy was being siphoned off to give the group a portion of their powers, which could explain how one of them was able to knock him out with his telepathy, and another one was able to paralyze him with illusory Kryptonite.
• The villain's motivation is that he's upset because every great scientific discovery he made was coincidentally made on the same day as other, more historically important events, so therefore he never got on the front page of the newspaper. But some of the things he discovered (including a way to predict earthquakes) would be really important and useful, and his name would be prominent in textbooks and schools if he did all of that stuff.
• As Clark Kent was one of the people affected by the mento-extractor, he should technically be able to perform all of the same psychic feats as the other 3, but I'm betting this will never be brought up again.

Superdickery:

- Froze the entire lake to perform the first feat for some reason, instead of just the minimum area necessary to save the car. A lot of fish and other animals probably died from that.

Power Tracker:

- A bit of an odd one, as I'm not sure about the exact implications of all of this latent psychic power he is shown to have in this issue. I'll still stay High Herald Level for now.

Atom Story

Notes:

- The opening narration states that Ray Palmer is 6 feet tall (at his normal height)

Feat Catalogue:

• Easily recovers from a "vibration blast" from an alien insect, then defeats the thing pretty easily (being careful not to kill it), although it turns out that it wasn't actually hostile in the first place.
• After working in his lab for a few minutes, he manages to figure out what made the insect creature grow, and how to reverse it and send it back to its home dimension

Spoiler: The Atom vs the alien ant

Spoiler: Solves the ant problem

Weirdness:

• One of Ray Palmer's students is shown conducting an experiment to prove that "fluorescent light has a small but measurable mass". This is incorrect - light has no mass.
• Said experiment somehow caused an intelligent insect - like creature from a subatomic world to enlarge to a human scale, and it can fire "vibrations" (that look like lightning bolts) from its antennae.

Superdickery:

- Automatically assumes the insect is hostile and beats it up (although, to be fair, its idea of a friendly greeting was a vibration blast that knocked the Atom on his ass)

Power Tracker:

- Still going with Mid Meta Level for the Atom.

Action Comics #434

Superman Story

Notes:

• The Kryptonian villains in this issue previously appeared in Superboy #100
• This story is continued in the next issue

Feat Catalogue:

• Superman apparently foiled a skyjacking over Israel, halted an avalanche in the Swiss Alps, and tugged a sinking freighter back to port in the South Pacific, all in the span of one hour.
• Hears a bank robbery victim screaming from elsewhere in Metropolis and flies off to help
• No-sells an energy beam that melted through a bank wall, and then overpowers it with his heat vision
• Destroys the garbage tank truck (see the Weirdness section) with a kick, being careful enough to leave the driver unharmed
• Thinks to himself that he has "sloshed acid like mouthwash" and "chewed solid granite like bubble gum"
• Thinks to himself that no gas on Earth should affect him due to his invulnerability. Unfortunately for him, this time he's dealing with a gas from Krypton.

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• A Kryptonian criminal uses a portable "memory-extinguisher" device to hypnotize Lois into forgetting she met them
• The Kryptonian knockout gas they use also has the ability to give Superman accurate visions of what they want him to see
• They manage to implant the subconscious suggestion into his mind to destroy the world

Spoiler: The villains' plan seems to have succeeded...

Weirdness:

• There's a criminal who used a garbage truck that transformed into a tank, and converted garbage into "energized ammunition for a lethal ray-beam", which he used to rob a bank.
• When the criminal brings out a new weapon, which he claims could kill Superman, the latter decides to try to shield himself with his cape, even though I'm pretty sure we've established that the cape is less indestructible than he is. And if the weapon used one of the typical things that is effective against Superman (Kryptonite, red sun radiation, etc.) the cape wouldn't do anything to help anyway.
• Steve Lombard pranks Clark Kent by... putting a machine gun on his desk, which has the ability to sense his body heat and respond by shooting out multicolored lights? Huh?
• The main villains of this issue are a pair of escaped Phantom Zone criminals whose plan is to use a Kryptonian poison to give Superman a toothache, then pose as dentists and brainwash him.
• Superman even thinks to himself that he doubts any dentist could help him, but he decides to try what he believes to be just a random dentist anyway, even though if it were just a normal human dentist, he would be risking his secret identity when the drill broke on his teeth or something...

Spoiler: If you can invent stuff like this, you can probably find better ways to make money than robbing banks...

Superdickery:

- Perhaps a slightly sexist thought: "Uh-oh! The unmistakable sound of a woman in distress!" - he feels the need to specify it's a woman why? Meh, it's not too bad.

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level, despite the well-established vulnerability to Kryptonian materials.

Green Arrow Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

• Perceives that two criminals are wearing rubber face masks, despite the masks being so good that no one else in the room can tell
• Says that he swung across a bank lobby from the other side of the room "before anyone could blink an eye" (I might have considered this hyperbole if it wasn't for his other speed feats we've seen so far)
• Two criminals are holding a man at gunpoint, with one of their guns right up against his back. Somehow, Green Arrow fires two arrows from across the room so fast that both of them stick in the criminals' gun barrels and jam them, before either of them can even react to pull the triggers on their guns.
• Figures out what happened to Zatanna, and devises a plan to shock her back to reality, which works

Spoiler: Speedblitzes two gunmen

Feat Catalogue (non-Green Arrow):

• Black Canary is stated to be a judo expert. Zatanna later states that she is actually the best judo expert that she knows.
• Black Canary kicks down a door so hard it breaks in half

****

• Zatanna used a spell to give herself Black Canary's fighting skills, but it accidentally also gives her her personality too
• Zatanna transmutes a criminal into a wolf, then changes him back

Spoiler: Casual strength feat for Black Canary

Weirdness:

• Zatanna botches a magic spell she used to give herself Black Canary's fighting skills, and accidentally gives her Dinah's personality as well, thus making her think she's in love with Ollie.
• An editor's note in this issue directly insults the writer, calling one of his plot points contrived

Spoiler: Luckily this type of thing doesn't seem to happen that often

Superdickery:

• Ollie refers to Zatanna's powers as "hokey magic", despite knowing that they work
• Despite knowing that she had accidentally brainwashed herself and embarrassed him, Zatanna still kisses Green Arrow afterwards, even though she knows he's taken
• Ollie enjoys the kiss, and tries to hide it from Dinah. Real healthy relationship, there.

Power Tracker:

- The gun feat lends further support to my placement of Green Arrow as High Street Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #435

Superman Story

Notes:

• Continuation of the story from the previous issue
• This cover was featured on Superdickery, for obvious reasons
• At one point, Superman thinks to himself that he's a threat to 3 billion people, although the world population in 1974, when this comic was published, was closer to 4 billion.

Feat Catalogue:

• Builds a giant metal tuning fork and plants it into the earth in Siberia
• Flies through it, creating a "super-sonic boom" which generates "a monstrous sound-wave powerful enough to crack the Earth wide open"
• Manages to periodically resist the brainwashing and come to his senses, so he can stop his own attempts to destroy the Earth.
• Pulls the tuning fork out of the ground and throws it into space, saving the planet (from his own actions)
• Within seconds, closes the fissure in the Earth and fixes the landscape
• Somehow obtains "psionic torpedoes" and intends to ram himself into the Earth while wearing them, detonating them to destroy the planet. It's unclear if he built these weapons himself or got them from somewhere else.
• Resists the mental command at the last instant and stops the bombs from detonating
• (Seemingly) Flies to Alpha Centauri and back to retrieve a "planet - eating astro - germ"
• Breaks open the alien "prism-cage" built to contain the creature
• Somehow created a fake version of the astro-germ to fool the villains
• After discovering the "energy implant" in his mouth, he uses microscopic vision to analyze its Kryptonian circuitry and figures out how it works
• Another application of Superman's mental energy, apparently the accumulated mental power from his feats of willpower in resisting the brainwashing was intended to power a device that could teleport the Earth an interstellar distance, into orbit around a red sun.
• While being bombarded by the "cosmic power - grip" of Dr. Xadu and Zeda, he grabs a rock, and uses super fast hand motions to charge it with positive static electricity, then throws it at the two, which somehow causes their energy powers to short-circuit and knock them out.
• Imprisons Dr. Xadu and Zeda in separate cells in two separate galaxies (probably both in red star systems), then returns to Earth

Spoiler: The first weird attempt to destroy the world

Spoiler: Stops himself in time and fixes the damage

Spoiler: Stops himself again

Spoiler: He probably did have to go to Alpha Centauri (or use super vision) to see what the real one looked like in order to make a fake

Spoiler: Analyzes the device and figures out the villains' plot

Spoiler: This is the closest we've seen to 'making up new powers on the fly' in a while

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• This was shown in the last issue, but apparently Dr. Xadu and Xeda have a "cosmic power - grip", some kind of energy field that forms between their hands, that allows them to view things remotely and replay events from the past, among other uses
• The two of them use some kind of energy blast to disintegrate the (fake) alien germ
• Their actual plan was to give Superman an "energy implant" that would store up power from the feats of willpower he used to resist the mental commands to destroy the Earth. This was designed to store up enough energy to power their "planet transporter", which would teleport the Earth an interstellar distance into orbit around a red sun
• Using their cosmic power - grip, they create a combined blast intense enough to stun Superman. They state it's not enough to move a planet, though, which seems odd (especially since they have their own Kryptonian powers as well, which they could use to do that). Maybe it has some kind of specific Kryptonite/red sun - like effect on Superman?

Weirdness:

• A lot of the methods he uses to attempt to destroy the world are unnecessarily convoluted, when he could just punch it to pieces, vaporize it with heat vision, or toss it into the sun. But that's likely both because his own subconscious was struggling against the mental commands, so he was choosing methods that he would be able to stop in time during the periods when he regained his senses, and because Dr. Xadu and Zeda actually wanted it to happen this way to carry out their plan.
• At one point, Zeda tells Superman "why, you no-good, flaming, Kryptonian" - weird insult, as she's Kryptonian too.
• That second - to - last feat for Superman with the rock makes no sense at all.

Superdickery:

• The entire premise of this issue is that he is brainwashed by a subconscious suggestion to destroy the Earth, which is very dickish out of context
• He thinks to himself that he is the only one "mighty enough" to carry out this task... even though there are plenty of other characters on DC Earth at this point who could do the same thing, so that's pretty arrogant

Spoiler: Classic Superdickery

Power Tracker:

- I guess it's a low-end that the blasts from Dr. Xadu and Zeda's "cosmic power - grip" could have killed him, but were also stated to not be powerful enough to move a planet (although, in context, this referred to moving the Earth over interstellar distances into orbit of another star), but both of them were also Kryptonians who could have moved the Earth physically too if they needed to, so this doesn't make much sense. The part about his mental energy being strong enough to teleport the Earth like that is also interesting, but I don't see a reason to change him from High Herald Level.

Atom Story

Notes:

- Ray Palmer plans to propose to Jean Loring, confess his secret identity to her, retire from being the Atom, and become rich patenting his shrinking technology. I could tell immediately, without even reading the rest of the story, that this wasn't going to go as planned.

Feat Catalogue:

• Rides on the back of a bird, then jumps off and glides on air currents to land on a specific building below
• Even in his miniature size, he is able to run from a restaurant to a courthouse pretty quickly
• Uses the "Justice League signal - device" on his belt to track a criminal's radio
• Uses the same device to transmit static interference into the guy's headphones, temporarily stunning him, then KOs him with a kick to the forehead.
• Trips up a bunch of gangsters by throwing bottles of pills on the ground

Spoiler: Making creative use of his JLA radio

Weirdness:

- I think the CCA still prohibited depictions of drugs at this point, but this story apparently got around that somehow

Spoiler: Flipping the bird at the Comics Code Authority

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing really to change my assessment of the Atom as Mid Meta Level.

Action Comics #436

Superman story

Notes:

• The opening narration says that Superman has "power to rival that of the gods" - I suppose this is actually a sensible claim, since there are quite a few gods in the DCU who are roughly equal to or weaker than him. Of course, there are many who are stronger as well...
• This story is a follow up to Superman #265 (still might get to that title eventually...)
• Perry keeps the last unused cigar at the end of this issue. The wiki notes that they actually paid attention to this bit of continuity and had him use it in a story published 8 year later in the Superman title.

Feat Catalogue:

• Flies into the Galaxy building at speeds faster than the eye can see, so no one can see that he entered Clark Kent's office
• He apparently just returned home from the Sirius star system, but it took longer than he expected because "space-warps" kept throwing him off-course, so he just barely makes it in time for work.
• No-sells an energy blast from a super - science tank that was specially built to be effective against him. It's not elaborated as to what kind of technology it used, but its defenses seemed to work when he attacked it later.
• Digs underground, breaks into a nuclear power facility, and channels "enough nuclear power to light up a city" through his body

Spoiler: Sirius is only 8.6 light-years away from Earth, so I have to wonder what is causing all of those space warps...

Spoiler: Weird way to stop the tank, but it worked

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Perry White wins his third Pulitzer Prize. Yes, that's a feat.

Weirdness:

• In the aforementioned Superman #265 (which I have not read), apparently Perry White helped Superman free a group of aliens from a tyrannical leader. The premise of this issue is that the aliens decide to return to Earth and thank Perry by giving him a box of cigars that, when smoked, temporarily imbue him with super powers.
• Another random criminal scientist uses an underground drill tank with anti-Superman measures built in for petty robbery...
• Said tank was apparently being remotely powered by a nuclear reactor, beaming the energy to it wirelessly in some way... so Superman decided to absorb the reactor's power (instead of just shutting it off), which shut off the tank.
• Perry's cigars apparently work by granting him any power he wishes for - he first manifested Superman's powers because that's what he was familiar with and wanted to have, but later he wishes to know where the cigars came from, and receives a vision of it. If these aliens could create these reality-warping devices that were so powerful, why did they need Superman and Perry to save them earlier?

Spoiler: Would you risk lung cancer for temporary superpowers?

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- We have Superman being temporarily stymied by a tank using unknown technology that was specifically created to defend against him, although no details on how it worked. Still High Herald Level.

Green Arrow Story

Notes:

• The opening narration refers to Green Arrow as "the world's greatest archer"
• There is an ad in this issue for reprinted editions of several classic comics, including Detective Comics #27, which the ad claims is "The first time Batman ever appeared in a comic". However, readers of my thread will know that he appeared before that in an ad in Action Comics #12.
• An editor's note refers to the events of Green Lantern #86, which I have not read

Feat Catalogue:

• Recovers quickly from being KO'd by Speedy, and easily dispatches the two thugs sent to get rid of him, commenting that his former sidekick is much more formidable than both of the thugs combined.
• Faster than the eye can track (or a gunman can react), grabs two arrows and fires them simultaneously, plugging the guy's gun and pinning him to the wall by his coat, without actually hurting him.
• Knocks out another thug with one of his boxing glove arrows (one of his sillier trademark gadgets, but you can't deny their effectiveness)

Spoiler: Quickly recovers from being knocked out

Spoiler: Another one of these impressive archery feats

Feat Catalogue (non-Green Arrow):

• The JLA has an orbiting satellite from which they monitor the Earth
• Speedy KO's Green Arrow with a single punch to the face. He was completely unprepared and not expecting it, though
• Speedy then helps Green Arrow take out some more thugs

Spoiler: That had to hurt

Weirdness:

- Since this was the 70s, the band featured is a hippie - style band, with accompanying fashion and dialogue. "Man, dig that applause! Those cats liked us!", for example.

Superdickery:

• Upon seeing his former sidekick performing in a rock band, Ollie breaks into his dressing room and searches it, figuring he won't mind.
• Speedy punches out Green Arrow (it was part of a ruse to fool some criminals, but he still legitimately hit him when he wasn't expecting it)

Power Tracker:

- Green Arrow's performance is again consistent with High Street Level. I'd need to see more from Speedy though, but based on just this story I'd tentatively say he's Mid Street Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #437

Overall Notes:

- This is a special giant issue containing a large collection of stories, but we'll only be covering two of them, since the other ones only involve (IMO) fairly irrelevant characters. If anyone reading this is a fan of the Sea Devils, Matt Savage Trail Boss, or Doll Man, my apologies.

Superman Story

Notes:

• This is actually a team-up/crossover story featuring Superman, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Green Arrow, and the Flash (Barry Allen). So this will be sort of like a Justice League story, even if it's not in that title.
• Apparently Green Arrow doesn't know Superman's secret identity, at least not at this point, as when he is told to contact Superman, he thinks to himself that he should contact Clark Kent because he knows how to get in contact with him.
• A flight by plane from Star City to Metropolis is shown to take a little over an hour, although that time also includes going to the airport, buying the plane ticket, waiting for the plane to arrive, boarding, unboarding, and traveling to the Galaxy Communications Building, so probably significantly less than an hour. This could be helpful for establishing the distance between the two cities, if such information is ever needed.
• This story references Superman #270, a story featuring a "Viking from Valhalla". Can't wait to read that one.
• For some reason, the top of one of the pages of this issue is cut off, and the same error is present on every other scan I can find. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to have cut off that much, and probably nothing too important.
• The villain in this issue previously appeared in World's Finest #210. This is his only other appearance, besides collections, handbooks, and such.
• The door to Superman's Fortress of Solitude is referred to as indestructible by the narration. Just collecting these hyperboles.

Feat Catalogue:

• Lifts and braces the Galaxy Communications Building (a rather large skyscraper) when he believes the ground underneath it is starting to collapse, due to a magical illusion
• Flies Green Arrow from Metropolis to Northern Maine
• Flies Green Arrow and the villain, Effron the Sorcerer, from Northern Maine to the Fortress of Solitude, then flies Effron back
• Within his Fortress, Superman has at least one of the Legion of Super Heroes' time bubbles, which can travel through time and space
• Takes a thousand super speed punches from the Flash to the chin and then hits him back, sending him flying
• Apparently the molecules of Superman's indestructible body are too dense for the Flash to vibrate through
• Green Lantern's hammer construct shatters when it strikes Superman's body, something Hal says has never happened before
• Dodges and punches away Green Lantern's rapidfire "concentrated energy bombs", and tanks some of them, although they seem to slow him down a bit
• Effron absorbs the excess energy released by the battles between Superman and the Flash and Green Lantern, converting it into magical energy to power himself up, but it also causes magic to spread over the world, having such effects as giving Lois Lane fire manipulation powers, creating a Fountain of Youth that returns an old man to being young again, and making people appear from thin air.
• Despite being weakened by GL's Kryptonite radiation, Superman thinks fast and uses the yellow symbol on his cape to cover Hal's ring, stopping it due to the yellow weakness, and then knocks him out
• Effron claims that with Superman's help, he can conquer the galaxy, the universe, and all time and space. Probably just typical villain arrogance, though.
• With Green Arrow's help, tricks Effron into revealing where he hid Valhalla (30,000 years in the future)
• After saving the village of Valhalla, which Effron was holding hostage, Superman uses a device to trap him in an "eternal trance" in the Fortress of Solitude.
• Somehow used vague "Kryptonian science" to make Kandor look like Valhalla, or even possibly physically transmute it (it's not really clear)
• He also used said vague "Kryptonian science" to reverse the effects of the magic that pervaded the Earth

Spoiler: Superman vs. Flash

Spoiler: Superman vs. Green Lantern

Spoiler: Effron is tricked, defeated, and imprisoned

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• The opening narration says that Green Arrow practices his archery every day, and is the best in the world at it. While practicing, he scores 12 consecutive bullseyes on a target, and only misses his 13th shot because he is distracted by a sudden and painful telepathic message.
• "Within moments" of receiving the message, according to the narration, Ollie travels from his practice archery range to a phone booth in a busy street corner. Distance should probably be at least a dozen meters, assuming the archery range is inside a nearby building.
• Swings on ropes from arrows down from the top of a skyscraper to street level as fast as gravity can take him, and lands safely.
• With Superman's help, tricks Effron into revealing where he hid Valhalla (30,000 years in the future)

****

• The Flash hits Superman with a thousand punches at super speed, and they hurt him (although see the second entry in the Weirdness section)
• Takes a punch on the jaw from Superman, which sends him flying
• Reacts to a rush by Superman and attempts to vibrate himself intangible, but it doesn't work on Superman's molecules
• Recovers from being knocked out by Superman striking his neck, seemingly no worse for wear, in what appears to be no more than a few minutes

****

• Green Lantern figures he can defeat Superman by bombarding him with "concentrated energy bombs" until he is knocked out. Apparently these would have been at least somewhat effective, as Superman saw the need to dodge and deflect them, and doing so seemed to take some effort on his part.
• Uses his ring to emit Green Kryptonite radiation

Weirdness:

• This was shown in the previous Superman story that was referenced, but apparently Valhalla in the DCU exists in Northern Maine, and is a hidden valley populated by immortal Vikings powered by a magical "eternal flame".
• While forced into a fight with the Flash, Superman thinks to himself that normally the Flash's punches wouldn't even tickle him, "but this is no ordinary fight". I'm not sure what this is implying - it could be that Effron has used his magic to make Superman more vulnerable, or that the Flash is using some special application of his powers... I'm not sure that most of his complex Speedforce abilities were all that well-defined in this era.

Superdickery:

• Green Arrow flirts with Lois Lane, despite knowing who she is and that she and Superman have a thing
• Superman lifts the Galaxy Communications Building, doubtless severing its electrical wiring and plumbing, while under an illusion, but he doesn't even bother to fix it afterwards.
• When forced into a fight with Green Lantern, Superman doesn't even try to explain what's going on and just threatens to beat him up. Later on, he thinks to himself that he can't tell him the real story, but never explains why.
• As mentioned, Superman used "Kryptonian science" to remove the excess magical energy flowing over the Earth. But that would have included turning the guy affected by the Fountain of Youth old again, and making a magically - created woman disappear (which would be killing her if she counted as an independent, living being).
• The "eternal trance" he imprisoned Effron in is pretty horrifying, if you think about it.

Power Tracker:

- Quite a bit to comment on this time. Based on their performances against Superman, Barry and Hal should also probably be placed at High Herald Level. Green Arrow, consistent with what we've seen of him before, would be High Street Level. The interesting thing here to me is that the side effect of the energy released by Superman's fights, when transformed into magic, was enough to create random magical effects all over the world. Obviously there's no real way to quantify this, but it does seem to suggest those fights were releasing a lot of power, especially since it was also implied that Effron was absorbing as much of the energy directly as he could, and the magic
spilling out all over the world was just the excess that he couldn't directly absorb.

Adam Strange Story

Notes:

• If you're not familiar with him, Adam Strange is one of DC's sci-fi/adventure style heroes, who first appeared in 1958. I'm covering this story because he and his mythology are still fairly relevant to the modern DCU, often appearing and being referenced in crossovers (although I've rarely seen Adam himself used in vs matches).
• This story is reprinted from Mystery in Space #85 from 1963, and it was actually written by Gardner Fox, the original creator of the Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate, and many other heroes who first appeared in the Golden Age. He was also the one who created the JSA and JLA, and introduced a multiverse to DC. One of the greats.

Feat Catalogue:

• On the opening splash page, Superman says that the Zeta Beam that Adam Strange uses to travel 25 trillion miles (around 4.25 light-years) from Earth to Rann is instantaneous, which makes Adam even faster than him. Although, technically, Superman can travel back in time, so he's still faster.
• After his rocket pack runs out of fuel while he's still a mile away from the island where he's supposed to catch the Zeta Beam, he falls in the ocean and swims to shore, and makes it in time. It's not made clear how much time he had overall, though, but there were 10 seconds left when he reached the shore of the island.
• When his and Alanna's rocket packs go haywire, they release enough thrust to burn the ground and damage a city, as well as propel the two of them into the stratosphere, heading for space
• Adam figures out how to break out of a paralysis ray, since it only affects his outer body
• He and Alanna are also apparently resistant enough to survive high up enough in the atmosphere where sound can't travel effectively, at least temporarily
• He also calculated the exact trajectory for them to land safely in a lake, rather than hitting the ground
• Pretty easily lifts a large metallic device
• Finds an ancient robot's weak spot and disables it

Spoiler: Zeta beams are instantaneous

Spoiler: Those rocket packs are a lot more powerful than their size suggests

Spoiler: Intelligence and precision maneuvering

Spoiler: Defeats the ancient robot

Feat Catalogue (non - Adam Strange):

- The Rannians apparently have the technology to control the weather on their planet, but choose not to do so for cultural reasons.

Weirdness:

• The term "star-sun" is once again used to describe a star other than our sun. Apparently that was just a popular term back then.
• Back during the planet Rann's equivalent of the Bronze Age, there was a mad scientist who created a super powerful and deadly giant robot that could fire a paralysis beam. Yeah.
• Somehow, rain (or just water in general) undoes the effect of the robot's paralysis beam.

Superdickery:

- Accuses his girlfriend and her father of being villains and calls them guilty for accidentally creating an alloy that made machines go haywire. He was being facetious, but still.

Power Tracker:

- I'd need to see more from Adam Strange to assign him a solid tier (for example, in this story we didn't get to see what any of his alien weapons could do), but for now I'll provisionally put him at Mid Street Level.

Action Comics #438

Overall Notes:

• A response in the letters column states that the real world, where the writers, editors, and readers live, is considered "Earth Zero", where the DC characters are just fictional. I think later on they would do more metafictional stuff with this concept, like making Earth Zero actually another fictional Earth that interacted with the rest of the multiverse.
• Another response in the letters column has a reader pointing out that, during Dr. Xadu's original appearance in the Superboy title, his wife was called Erndine, not Zeda as she was in Action #435, but the editor replies that she just had multiple aliases.

Superman Story

Notes:

• I believe this is another cover that was featured on Superdickery
• At one point, a bystander refers to Lois' monstrous form as a "female hulk". She-Hulk over in Marvel wouldn't debut for around 5 more years, but it was probably meant as a reference to the original Hulk, who had been around for over 12 years at this point.
• For some reason, some of the pages in this copy of the story I have are pre-colored inked versions of the final pages, which are also present.
• The narration states in this issue that Metropolis is home to 8 million people. That's 2 million lower than the number stated in issue #430, but they could have been using different definitions of what counts as the city boundaries.

Feat Catalogue:

• Flies out of a wrecked taxicab "too fast for even the sharpest eye to detect" (probably just means base human eyes, though)
• Stops a train by tying his cape to the train tracks, which works somehow...
• Seems to have some kind of danger sense, as he can tell he is being watched, without referring to any of his other senses
• Types a bunch of his work assignments on his typewriter at super speed, but gets distracted and melts the typewriter with friction from his typing speed
• He says that he got the space jewel he gave Lois from the "Andromeda Constellation", possibly meaning the galaxy.
• Uses his infrared vision to track a trail of radiation from the space jewel
• Once again, uses his Deus Ex Machina understanding of "advanced Kryptonian science" to build a device to cure the common cold with a quick ray beam, and this also reverses Lois' condition, since she was only susceptible to it in the first place since her immune system was weakened.

Spoiler: You'd figure the tracks would break...

Spoiler: Danger sense?

Spoiler: Tracking a faint radiation trail with his infrared vision

Spoiler: Another device we'll likely never see again, despite how much it could help humanity...

Weirdness:

• A jewel from outer space turns Lois Lane into a super powerful, feral monster, who also has the ability to shrink and re-enlarge herself at super speed.
• After tracking the necklace to a woman who picked it up and was still wearing it, Superman just let her keep it, even though it didn't belong to her, and was still potentially dangerous and worth investigating.
• He decides to lure the monstrous Lois out by pretending to have turned into a monster himself, and it actually seems to work

Superdickery:

• Clark gives Lois a gemstone from outer space that turns her into a monster. He didn't know that would happen, but should have at least done thorough testing first to make sure it was safe. He said he thought it was harmless but he never tested what effect it could have on humans. He also later finds out that it emits a trail of radiation, so he should probably have noticed that before giving it to her, too.
• Superman says that he has accidentally melted 3 typewriters just this year by typing too fast when he has been distracted. I'm pretty sure the company pays for those.
• As part of his ruse to pretend to transform into a monster, he breaks his office window and jumps down into the street, scaring everyone around into thinking there was a monster Superman on the loose.
• Casually invented a cure for the common cold, but will probably never use it for anything other than his own immediate benefit
• He seems to have left the alien jewel with the woman who found it at the end of the story, even though he knows it can turn people into dangerous monsters if they so much as have a cold.

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level. Not sure about what level the monster Lois would be, since the cover was pretty deceptive as Superman was never actually in danger from her, he just let her hit him because he couldn't bring himself to fight back against her.

Atom Story

Notes:

- This is the first part of a multi-part story

Feat Catalogue:

• Defeats a burglar trying to break into his laboratory and steal his scientific secrets
• Is able to react and think while traveling through a telephone wire "at telephonic speed", indicating relativistic thought speed/reactions.
• Manages to get his belt controls working and enlarge himself in time to escape the trap
• Defeats the scientist who tried to capture him by shrinking and entering his knockout gas pen weapon, causing it to backfire in his face

Spoiler: Some quite fast reactions and thought speed

Spoiler: Defeats the rival scientist

Weirdness:

• A scientist who was working on the same shrinking experiments as Ray Palmer failed, and as a side effect, is now slowly shrinking to nothingness.
• The only reason the Atom was in danger in this story is because his enlarging controls were on the fritz - if they had been working properly, he could have easily escaped

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Still going with Mid Meta Level for the Atom.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #439

Superman Story

Notes:

• Captain Strong, the Popeye expy introduced in issue #421, proved so popular with readers that they decided to bring him back for this issue, and this wouldn't be his last appearance, either.
• This story also features the debut of Olivia Tallow, Captain Strong's girlfriend (based on Olive Oyl). It also introduces Carnox, who is a villain based on Bluto.
• Clark Kent says that he has a collection of opera records that he needs to catalogue, but it's unclear whether this is true or just part of a deception to hide his secret identity

Feat Catalogue:

• In their second fight, now that Superman knows not to underestimate him, he blitzes Carnox and defeats him with a single punch, knocking him far out to sea
• Flies Carnox a million years into the past to return him to his own time, then returns to the present

Spoiler: Defeats Carnox now that he's prepared for him

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• Without the Sauncha plant to power him up, Captain Strong is still tough enough to be punched 30 feet, through a window on his houseboat, and onto a dock, without being knocked unconscious or really even hurt that much
• Clark Kent comments that, even without the Sauncha, Captain Strong is "stronger than most men"
• Lifts a guy off the ground with one hand, by the back of his shirt, and punches him out

****

• Carnox drags Superman underwater, and then no - sells a punch that was described as being able to cave in a steel vault, and then punches Superman up and out of the water, breaking through Captain Strong's houseboat, then pulls the wreckage of the boat to the bottom of the sea
• Upon first mutating, Carnox says his strength has increased a hundredfold, and demonstrates it by casually lifting a huge boulder over his head with one hand

Weirdness:

• Despite having sworn off eating Sauncha (the alien seaweed that gave him superpowers but made him crazy), Captain Strong still keeps a pouch of it hidden on his houseboat, in order to 'keep his will power strong so he won't give in to it'. Kind of odd.
• Carnox, despite visually being based on Bluto, is apparently a caveman found frozen in an unknown liquid ice from a million years ago. But he's actually an alien who landed on Earth and was infected with a disease that made him gigantic and super strong, but mute and dying. So he froze himself with his alien technology, and when he was defrosted in contemporary times, he realized that getting close to the Sauncha started to cure him, so that's why he was after it.
• Clark Kent convinces Captain Strong to temporarily move into his apartment, so Superman can keep an eye on him if Carnox shows up again, because the apartment is "on his regular patrol route". Not suspicious at all...
• Hardly the worst offense in these comics when it comes to depicting prehistory, but the "cavemen" from 1 million years ago were portrayed as large, brutish humans wearing cloth skins, when in reality they would have been smaller, more hairy and ape-like, and probably didn't wear clothes.

Spoiler: We're in the Bronze Age, but this is such a Silver Age plot...

Superdickery:

• After the scientists at S.T.A.R. Labs tell Superman about how they discovered Carnox and he escaped, Superman just storms off, refusing to tell them anything about how he had already encountered him or where he might be.
• Makes Captain Strong, his guest in his apartment, sleep on the sofa

Power Tracker:

- His first "loss" to Carnox can be attributed to greatly underestimating him, as he defeated him easily in their second encounter. Still High Herald Level.

Atom Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the previous issue

Feat Catalogue:

• When Adrian tries to step on him, he avoids it by shrinking to microscopic size "at atomic speed". Not sure what that means exactly, possibly relativistic?
• The Atom has a back - up control for his size changing powers in his gloves, in case the one on his belt can't be used for some reason. Unfortunately, it is acting up and fails to work.
• He also has control devices in his gloves to alter his weight without altering his size, and these do work.
• Apparently the Atom's belt can only enlarge him, and not anyone else, although it can shrink other people
• It seems Adrian wasn't fully 2 - dimensional, as the Atom was able to shrink so small that he became wide in comparison, and he KO's him with an attack.
• Ray Palmer apparently found a way to stop Adrian from shrinking further, saving his life.

Spoiler: Shrinking at "atomic speed":

Spoiler: Backup controls for his size changing in his gloves

Spoiler: Defeats Myles Adrian

Weirdness:

- Dr. Myles Adrian has seemingly developed the ability to contract his body into two dimensions and become completely flat, as another result of his failed experiment. Also, this gives him "2-D vision", making everything appear super wide to him, so he can see the Atom even at small sizes

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- One could make the leap that, since Adrian was stated to become 2 - dimensional, and would thus have 0 width, the way the Atom defeated him would mean he can shrink beyond infinity and the definition of dimensions, but that would be silly, IMO. Still Mid Meta Level.

Action Comics #440

Superman Story

Notes:

• The opening narration refers to Superman as "the greatest hero in the galaxy", which is a superlative I don't think we've seen used before
• Bruce Wayne apparently owns 6% of the Galaxy Broadcasting Corporation, which technically makes him Clark Kent's boss.

Feat Catalogue:

• Despite being depowered by red sun blasts described as "solar flares", he survives their intense heat and also being blasted through a wall (although his indestructible clothes might have helped him there)
• Still mostly depowered, outmaneuvers the flying enemy in power armor and tricks him into colliding into a wall, knocking himself out.
• Stops the criminals' tank, and carries it back to police HQ.
• Superman was said to have stopped the criminals' "weather controller" and "illusion caster" machines.
• Flies to the asteroid belt and smashes two asteroids together, then fuses them with heat vision. He plans to hollow them out to form a "space ark" to take some of Earth's population to a new planet Krypton he will create.
• Brings the asteroid ark to Earth, having hollowed it out like he planned, and filled it with all of the Crime Syndicate's scientific equipment.
• Flies the asteroid ark into space, accelerating it to Earth's escape velocity, but then brings it back again.
• Figures out that the illusions created by the brainwashing device were false and tricks the criminals who used it on him

Spoiler: Fights the red - sun powered "defender":

Spoiler: Messing with asteroids and tricking the criminals

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• Scientists working for the "Crime Syndicate" invent a suit of power armor that can fly and shoot red sun - powered solar flares. Superman is taken by surprise since he doesn't know what they are before they hit him.
• They also invented a "weather controller" and an "illusion caster"
• Their newest invention is a "brain-beam" designed to attack Superman's reasoning ability, and it seems to work, at least at first
• We see some more of their inventions, including a "sonic cannon" and a "nuclear energy nullifier", a plane with some kind of tractor beam to capture an airliner, a device that causes jewelry to fly into the air and phase through the ceiling of a building so they can steal it, etc.

Spoiler: The criminal "brain-beam" in action:

Weirdness:

• Despite being able to invent all of this ridiculous sci-fi technology, the criminals again use it for petty theft instead of just selling and patenting it and making way more money. With Lex Luthor it's understandable (he has a personal grudge against Superman), but these guys? There is literally no reason for them to be doing things this way if they just want money.
• Bruce Wayne makes a cameo despite having absolutely nothing to do with the story. Seeing him appear early on, you'd figure that he'd become Batman to help Superman with something later in the issue, but no.

Superdickery:

• Gets back at Steve Lombard by deliberately tripping him with a roll of camera film
• Implies that if he hadn't figured out the illusions of his parents were fake, he might have just abandoned Earth because they told him to

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level normally, maybe Low - Mid Meta Level when temporarily depowered by the red sun weapons. Regarding his performance against the mind beam, it was able to successfully create illusions for him, and compel him to act in certain ways, but when he figured out it wasn't really his parents talking to him, he was seemingly able to shrug off its influence completely.

Green Arrow Story

Notes:

• Krypto the Superdog is the guest star in this story
• This is the first part of a multi-part story

Feat Catalogue:

• Green Arrow is seen using a jetpack to fly
• Quickly defeats 3 thugs in close quarters with his bow and arrows, although he underestimates one of them, who isn't knocked out like he thought he would be, allowing him to get the drop on him
• Outmaneuvers, overpowers, and defeats the third thug, who had abnormally high (possibly even superhuman) strength and toughness
• Breaks the fourth wall to advertise the next issue

Spoiler: Has a bit of trouble here, but wins

Weirdness:

• It's never explained where he got that jetpack from
• Ollie breaking the 4th wall at the end, that was unexpected
• Krypto has apparently lost his memories, but I guess we'll find out how that happened in the continuation of the story

Spoiler: According to some people, this would make Ollie 'metafictionally aware and outerversal' or some such nonsense

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Green Arrow is still High Street Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #441

Superman Story

Notes:

• This cover was featured on Superdickery, for obvious reasons
• Central City is apparently 1000 miles away from Metropolis
• Lois Lane apparently wrote and published a book called "The Fabulous World of Krypton", all about the planet before it was destroyed.

Feat Catalogue:

• Stands in the middle of a tornado with 500 mph winds (much faster than tornadoes in RL) and inhales the whole thing, then flies up past the stratosphere and releases it harmlessly
• Uses telescopic vision to see a cloud creating giant hailstones before they fall
• Stops the massive hailstorm that would have leveled a town by precisely knocking hailstones into each other so they all break up into small enough fragments to be harmless
• Superman and the Flash trick the Weather Wizard by disguising themselves as each other
• The Weather Wizard tells the Flash that he can't outrun Superman... I'm not sure if there were previous encounters in this continuity that supported or contradicted this, though

Spoiler: Inhales and stops a tornado

Spoiler: Seems unnecessarily complicated, but quite impressive

Spoiler: Superman is faster than the Flash? Maybe...

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Flash deflects a bunch of bullets by spinning at super speed, and creates a gust of wind while doing so to knock over some criminals

****

• The Weather Wizard created the super tornado and the giant hailstorm, by using "meteorological pellets" created with his mad scientist skills, and precisely predicted how, when, and where the wind would carry them to set them off. He did this while only using the resources he had in jail, BTW.
• Also while in jail, he developed a brainwashing technique based on "bouncing electronic brain-waves off the ionosphere" to hypnotize a meteorologist in Metropolis, 1000 miles away, into predicting those weather events, and sent his name, as part of the subconscious transmission, in order to lure Superman and the Flash to him.
• He was able to figure out how to duplicate the Kryptonian phenomena of "black lightning", which was dangerous to Superman (since it was Kryptonian) and could send him into a murderous frenzy against the Flash
• Superman and the Flash trick the Weather Wizard by disguising themselves as each other

Spoiler: I assume he also was careful to make the richochets not kill anyone

Spoiler: Weather Wizard is giving Lex Luthor a run for his money when it comes to science feats done in jail

Weirdness:

- Krypton had "black lightning" that could turn anyone it hit into a psychopathic killer, compelled to murder the nearest person when it hit them. Just by reading about it (from a second - hand account written by Lois Lane, even), the Weather Wizard was able to modify his weather wand to generate it.

Superdickery:

- The cover (although it doesn't resemble anything that actually happens in the comic)

Power Tracker:

- The way he dealt with the hailstorm was interesting, I'm not sure how much speed that would require but the processing and reaction/thought speed to coordinate all of that would need to be insane. Still, it would have been a lot simpler to just blow the storm away with super breath, or melt the hailstones with heat vision, though. As for the Superman/Flash speed comparison, I'll wait to cover more direct contests between them before I can decide if the Weather Wizard was right or not. Also, High Herald Level.

Green Arrow Story

Notes:

• Conclusion of the story from the previous issue
• An editor's note says that the reason Krypto lost his memory will be revealed "in a forthcoming Superman story". I'm not sure if that means in Action Comics or in the Superman title, though.

Feat Catalogue:

• Despite there being a smokescreen, he precisely fires an arrow from 6 stories up on the roof of a building down into the street to cut the chains of a guy's handcuffs without hurting him.
• Had an arrow with knockout gas in it.

Spoiler: A very impressive shot

Feat Catalogue (non - Green Arrow):

- The narration says that if Krypto had been a normal dog, Black Canary's karate chop would have broken his neck

Weirdness:

- The villain here is using more weird super-technology, obtained from "an elite corps of foreign geniuses", including an "aging ray" that turns Green Arrow and Black Canary into senior citizens. The effect is later reversed, of course.

Spoiler: There has got to be a better way to use this stuff than for petty crime...

Superdickery:

• See Black Canary's feat. She was under an illusion but still, that's animal abuse.
• Ollie being sexist towards Dinah: "Can always count on a woman to hold up the works! It took you all of forty-five seconds to change costume!"

Power Tracker:

- Not that much for Green Arrow himself here, but the one notable feat he has in this story is nice. Nothing to change him from High Street Level.

Action Comics #442

Superman Story

Notes:

• This story features the TV host Johnny Nevada, who we have seen before in this title. He is a parody of Johnny Carson.
• A narrative caption claims that Superman is "the most celebrated person on Earth".
• This story features the first comic appearance of Professor Jasper Pepperwinkle, a character who was originally created for the Superman radio show

Feat Catalogue:

• Scans the sky over Metropolis with telescopic vision and quickly determines that there are no aircraft flying within 100 miles
• Hears a distant gunshot over the sound of a much louder and closer sonic boom, and identifies it as being from a .44 magnum
• Is able to track the gunshot's vibrations to its origin point
• While sitting in a room in the Galaxy Broadcasting building, he was constantly using his super senses to scan the police headquarters across town to find any developments in the case they were investigating
• Hears the click of a specific gun's trigger from across the city, and flies there to intercept the bullet before it hits the target only a few meters away.

Spoiler: I could calc this, but it would hardly be impressive compared to many of his other speed feats

Weirdness:

• Professor Pepperwinkle invents a device to simulate sonic booms for no apparent reason
• Superman comes up with a weird plan of pretending to exchange identities with Johnny Nevada in order to find out where a group of criminals are holding him, instead of just scanning the city with his super senses or something.

Superdickery:

- Breaks into a vagrant's shelter, wrecking it, and terrifying the guy, and doesn't even bother to apologize when he realizes it wasn't the guy he was after. And then has the nerve to call him a bum.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Atom Story

Notes:

• This story again uses the historical event of the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast by Orson Welles, supposedly causing a panic, which was highly exaggerated in the media.
• In 1938, we see a movie theater playing Lost Horizon
• The time travel in this story seems to work on a predestination paradox method - the Atom goes back in time to find a missing page in a guy's diary, but it turns out that the guy threw the page out himself after writing it because he was embarrassed that he believed he saw a Martian (the Atom, who had gone back in time).

Feat Catalogue:

• Avoids being hit by a shotgun blast, although the shooter could have just missed
• Gets trapped in a popcorn popper and avoids the boiling oil by surfing on a popcorn kernel, and using its popping to propel him out safely
• Shrinks to microscopic size, but keeps his full mass, adding it to that of a swung cane to make it more effective

Spoiler: Controlling his size and mass independently

Feat Catalogue (non-Atom):

- Ray Palmer's scientist mentor, Professor Alpheus V. Hyatt, has invented a "time pool" that Ray uses to travel through time as the Atom.

Spoiler: Using the time pool

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

• The Atom decides to go back in time and interfere with history just to find a missing document to help the case his lawyer wife is working on. Although see the Notes section for why he didn't actually change history.
• Decides to take advantage of the radio - induced panic by pretending to be a Martian invader while fighting some criminals

Power Tracker:

- Getting tagged by one of the criminals he was fighting is kind of a low-end, but everyone has them. Still Mid Meta Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #443

Overall Notes:

• This is a giant 100 - page issue, featuring multiple stories, but I'll only be covering 3 of them due to relevance. Again, apologies to any fans of the Sea Devils, Matt Savage Trail Boss, or the Black Pirate
• A response in the letters column says that, in issue #439, Superman may have known how to speak the same alien language as Carnox, and also that he was able to determine his age with more accuracy than S.T.A.R. labs did using radiocarbon dating.
• Another response in the letters column admits to a reader (who cited several examples from Golden Age Action Comics) that Superman sometimes does kill humans, or at least he did back then.

Superman Story

Notes:

• Star Trek is referenced in this story
• Zazzala the Queen Bee, a villain who first appeared in JLA #23 in 1963, is the main villain here, appearing for the first time in this title
• The narration refers to Brainiac as "Superman's most powerful nemesis". Not sure if that's true even at this point (I mean technically it would be Mr. Mxyzptlk, wouldn't it?)
• Other villains appearing in this story include Clayface (whom the narration claims "has the power to take on both the image and the powers of anything he imitates"), the Harpy (a Black Canary villain), Merlyn the archer (a Green Arrow villain), Ocean Master (an Aquaman villain), Sinestro, Chronos (we've seen him previously in one of the Atom stories), and Gorilla Grodd.
• Other heroes that cameo in this story include Red Tornado and Elongated Man
• Grodd references his previous encounter with Superman in Action Comics #424
• One of the Oan Guardians of the Universe appears on a monitor screen in this issue
• John Chancellor is referenced in this story, as a newsman working with NBC

Spoiler: Superman's most powerful nemesis? Probably not...

Feat Catalogue:

• Defeats a bunch of the Queen Bee's flying minions
• According to Zazzala, Superman is the most dangerous member of the JLA.
• Times hitting a switch on his watch down to the exact instant the Queen Bee sends a mental order for her drones to vanish
• This was to allow his "radar-monitor" in the Fortress to track the telepathic signal to its origin point in orbit of Earth
• Melts Sinestro's ring with heat vision (this could be potentially a very impressive feat, considering how durable those rings are sometimes shown to be)
• The Harpy's bird claws are cut when they attempt to grab Superman's hair
• Makes the claim that there isn't a power in the universe that can keep him from rescuing his JLA colleagues, although Grodd disagrees
• Superman disagrees with Grodd's disagreement, and easily throws off both him and Clayface, whom Zazzala said were the two most powerful criminals she could find
• In a flashback, we see how he heard the radio signal from Batman's JLA communicator, and used telescopic vision to see him, Aquaman, and the Atom captured by the Queen Bee
• Uses a "Kandorian brain-wave machine" to reverse the attitude of everyone on Earth towards Clark Kent and Superman.
• Apparently Brainiac had to use up all of his energy on his "meson effect" to paralyze Superman
• Unharmed by being shot to the core of the sun by Green Lantern
• Uses the Kandorian device again to undo its effects

Spoiler: Tracking the villains to their base

Spoiler: Melts Sinestro's ring

Spoiler: Using the Kryptonian super-science brainwashing machine

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

• Grodd and Sinestro collaborate to sabotage Hal Jordan's ring into releasing a strange kind of radiation that causes both his and the Flash's powers to go out of control, stranding them deep in space before capturing them
• Zazzala's minions are able to counter the Red Tornado's spin by flying around him in the opposite direction, and she is able to tie the Elongated Man into knots and incapacitate him with her wand
• After most of the JLA have been captured, she uses her wand to 'blast their minds' and put them into suspended animation.
• Zazzala says that Brainiac is the most brilliant of the villains she has gathered
• The JLA has a teleporter that can target coordinates thousands of miles away in space
• Brainiac fires an "ultra-carbolium beam" at Superman, but he uses the JLA's teleporter to leave before it hits him, so we don't see what it would have actually done to him
• The narration also refers to Brainiac as "the most evil, complicated computer in the galaxy"
• Zazzala's "energy rod" is able to slow Superman down enough for Clayface and Grodd to grab him
• Brainiac has to build up power to use "the meson effect", which he describes as "a power Superman does not even know exists in the universe". It seems to completely paralyze him, making him unable to move unless he is exposed to heat as great as the core of the sun.
• Despite being incapacitated by a sonic weapon and about to be knocked unconscious, Batman had the presence of mind to send a distress signal to the JLA before passing out
• Zazzala was somehow able to break Sinestro out of the Guardians' prison on the planet Oa.
• After eliminating Lex Luthor, Terra-Man, and any of the Phantom Zone Kryptonians as possible threats, Superman figure that Brainiac must be the one that Zazzala has recruited to go after him.
• A short and interrupted burst of Superman's heat vision is enough to weaken the cocoon Zazzala has trapped the Flash in enough for him to vibrate free of it and escape. He then proceeds to free the other captured JLA members before she can react.
• The narration refers to the JLA as "the most formidable group of enemies imaginable." Seems fairly hyperbolic to me, though
• Batman punches out Sinestro, although the latter's ring had been destroyed at this point
• The Flash defeats Grodd
• Hal Jordan stops Clayface
• Green Arrow beats Merlyn by... shooting the Red Tornado from his bow at him like an arrow? WTF?
• The Atom defeats Ocean Master
• Aquaman punches out Chronos
• Black Canary defeats the Harpy
• Apparently Zazzala's energy - rod had brainwashed the other villains into helping her, and it was also capable of erasing Superman's secret identity from their minds
• Hal uses his ring to fling the paralyzed Superman into the core of the sun, undoing the meson effect that Brainiac had paralyzed him with

Spoiler: Queen Bee and the others capture the JLA

Spoiler: Her powers can stagger Superman a bit

Spoiler: Brainiac paralzyes Superman with his "meson effect"

Spoiler: Barry escapes and frees the rest of the JLA

Spoiler: The JLA mops up the villains, and Hal frees Superman

Weirdness:

• The premise of this story starts with the roles of Superman and Clark Kent being switched, and everyone treating them like the other one. There is a reason for this, but they don't reveal it until later.
• Zazzala employs winged "bee-men" to break into and rob a bank.
• See the Green Arrow/Red Tornado feat

Superdickery:

• Temporarily mass-brainwashes the entire world
• Also temporarily brainwashes some reporters to hate Steve Lombard, just as a prank

Power Tracker:

- Superman is still High Herald Level here, and I'd assign a similar level to some of the other heroes and villains in this story (Flash, GL, Brainiac, etc.) Not sure about Zazzala, as I'd have to see more of her, but she made a fairly impressive showing here.

Adam Strange Story

Notes:

• Reprinted from Mystery in Space #87, from 1963, another issue written by the great Gardner Fox (RIP).
• The opening narration refers to the Zeta Beam as a "teleportational ray"
• The JLA villain Kanjar Ro is mentioned, but not seen, in this story
• The hyper-evolved Adam Strange refers to himself as "Homo Superior" - I'm not sure if that term had yet been used for mutants in Marvel by the time this story was published (the X-Men debuted only 2 months before the original publication of this story)
• At the end of this story, Adam Strange brings back a rock from Rann that was affected by the "sky-radiations", which serves as a lead - in to the plot of the following story.

Feat Catalogue:

• Is smart enough to double - check Sardath's calculations on his null Zeta-Beam, before he is artificially evolved (although they both overlook the eventual side effect)
• The super-smart evolved Adam Strange discovers a chemical formula for immortality
• He develops a device to counter dangerous radiation frequencies that are menacing people on Rann
• He also says he can improve the Zeta Beam to instantaneously teleport any person or object anywhere in the universe
• After returning to his normal self, he still figures out a way to stop the dangerous radiation (although it required shutting down the advanced computer his evolved self had built)

Spoiler: Too bad we never saw this accomplished

Feat Catalogue (non - Adam Strange):

- Sardath is able to invent a "null-Zeta Beam" that "suspends the fading out of the Zeta Beam radiation" in Adam Strange's body, allowing him to stay on Rann for longer periods before being sent back to Earth, although it has an unexpected side effect.

Weirdness:

• Sardath's null Zeta-Beam had the side effect of mutating Adam Strange by 'affecting the evolutionary factors in his body', causing his brain to grow gigantic and more powerful, supposedly evolving to that of a 'future man'. Time to bring out Morbo again.
• The strange "sky-radiations" that were damaging Rann were caused by the super - powerful brainwaves of the evolved Adam Strange, and they manifested as patterns in the sky looking identical to his brainwaves on a electrical readout screen.

Superdickery:

• When he becomes super-evolved, Adam Strange quickly turns into a completely arrogant jerk
• Alanna reverses the null Zeta-Beam to bring Adam Strange back to normal, but the problem was that she did this before he could use the device he built to solve the disaster on Rann. She's convinced he can fix it as his normal self, but she still endangered a lot of her own people. Also, it was emphasized that the super-evolved Adam Strange was quite literally a completely different person, so by doing this, she may have effectively 'killed' him. Even if he was a jerk, he didn't deserve that, especially since he was trying to actually help people.

Spoiler: Yes, being smarter than you DOES mean that I have to rub it in your face

Power Tracker:

- I see nothing to change base Adam Strange from Mid Street Level, as I placed him before. In his super-evolved form, I'd maybe put him at High Meta Level, due to the danger and power caused by the sky-radiations that were a result of his brainwaves.

Hawkman Story

Notes:

• This was reprinted from Mystery in Space #87, the same issue that the previous Adam Strange story was reprinted from, and in fact serves as sort of a sequel to it, also being written by Gardner Fox
• Adam Strange himself guest stars in this story, in his civilian form

Feat Catalogue:

• Hawkman and Hawkgirl store their costumes in medallions they wear, which can expand or contract due to the use of alien technology
• They are able to counter the effect of an antigravity ray by flapping their wings super fast to fly downwards
• Hawkman can communicate with birds and give them detailed instructions to follow
• He uses a blowgun to pin a guy against the wall with darts, piercing his clothes without harming him
• The two have "special contact lenses" from Thanagar that allow them to examine objects microscopically, and detect unusual energies and radiation around them
• Hawkman dodges a "heat beam" fired at him from close range. No real way to measure the speed of the beam or tell if it wasn't aimdodging, though.
• Hawkman and Hawkgirl can fly into orbit to reach their spaceship

Spoiler: Communicating with birds

Spoiler: Defeats a mind-enhanced criminal

Spoiler: Flying into space

Weirdness:

• The rock that Adam Strange brought back from Rann in the last issue was effected by the "sky-radiations" (which, you remember, were actually the result of the super - evolved Adam Strange's brainwaves). This somehow gave it the property to temporarily imbue an average human with super intelligence when he spent time close to it.
• Hawkman and Hawkgirl just happen to have some "Australian boomerangs" in the back of their car, which they decide to use as weapons

Spoiler: Okay, sure... not the strangest thing we've seen happen

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Based solely on the showings in this story, I'd tentatively put both Hawkman and Hawkgirl at Low - Mid Meta Level.