The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue
The greatest Superman story of all time!
Introduction
With a new Superman movie imminent, I figured now was the time to take a break from my Justice League of America recaps and instead do a Bottle City of Kandor-sized recap of the greatest Superman story of all time, Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman1 The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue.
This is an imaginary story (yes, yes, Alan Moore, aren’t they all?) in three parts from Superman 162 in 1963, that I first discovered via a teeny-tiny 1981 reprint collection.
Enjoy!
Part I - The Titanic Twins
After being publicly humiliated in his Clark Kent identity at the Daily Planet, Superman is summoned to the Fortress of Solitude by denizens of the bottle city of Kandor, who ruthlessly mock him for being the worst kind of superhero, just utterly useless in every way and a pitiful joke, and never mind the previous 161 issues of this comic book. Suitably chastened, Superman pokes his fool melon into a ‘brain-evolution machine’ he’d been working on, which immediately explodes, converting him into two (2) versions of himself, inexplicably separated by hue. These twins - Superman-Red and Superman-Blue - are each one hundred times smarter than the original Supes, which enables them to immediately build a gun that expands Kandor to normal size, before reverse-exploding Krypton so they also all have a planet to live on. Science, baby!
Fun With Comics!
MVP
It’s This Unnamed Publisher of the Daily Planet. Now, this is how you motivate your employees - by publicly announcing their salary increases (or otherwise). FFS, even Jimmy got a raise, Clark!
Top Panel
If Krypton’s explosion turned the planet into millions of shards of deadly kryptonite, then why not simply reverse the polarity of that explosion and unexplode the kryptonite back into the planet? Obvious, in retrospect. Boy, that single version of Superman must feel like an absolute knucklehead.
Fine, stay tuned, paid subscribers…