Endless Mike
Illustrious
Action Comics #411
Superman Story
Notes:
Feat Catalogue:
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
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:
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:
Feat Catalogue:
Weirdness:
- Apparently, just shading half of a solar-powered city is enough to destroy the entire thing
Superdickery:
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:
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:
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:
Some of this is, of course, contradicted by various sources, and a lot of it would probably still change after this was written.
Superman Story
Notes:
Feat Catalogue:
Weirdness:
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:
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
Weirdness:
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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.