#warworlders

[superman86to99]

The Death and Return of Superman (Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis, 1994)

In 1994, Blizzard Entertainment of Warcraft fame released a video game adaptation of Superman’s most exciting storyline: the one where he makes a porno with Big Barda. Wait, no, “Death of Superman”. Only it’s more like DEATHS of Superman, because I keep dying every five seconds in this game. I never saw past the third stage as a kid but, through the magic of cheating, I’ve just played through the entire game and I’m here to tell you about it.

LEVEL 1: SIEGE OF THE UNDERWORLDERS

Like all the “Death of Superman” collections, this game starts with a mostly unrelated story about the time some ugly mutants living in the sewers caused a massive blackout in Metropolis to try to take over the city.

“Now that we cut off the lights, no one will know we’re ugly!”

It’s up to Superman to solve this crisis via punching. Technically you can also shoot heat vision blasts, but all they do is stun the enemies for like 20 milliseconds, so they're pretty useless. The first level features several Underworlders from the comics as enemies, like Rambeau, another Rambeau who’s red, and several more Rambeaus who were always standing outside of frame in every issue, apparently. (To be fair, the Underworlders were originally created by Dabney Donovan’s cloning experiments at Project Cadmus, so I guess it makes sense that each one would have several spares.)

The hardest enemies in the level, however, are the boulders that occasionally fall on you out of nowhere. They instantly knock Superman down, so they must be full of kryptonite or simply magical. Forget Doomsday, I want Superman to fight the dickhead wizard who keeps teleporting boulders over his head.

Then comes the first boss, Clawster from the Underworlders, who’s a big wuss in this game. The fact that he looks a lot like Doomsday (both are big monsters with bony protrusions all over their bodies) must have been confusing to non-comic book readers. I bet a lot of people thought he was Doomsday’s little brother, thus explaining why Doomsday is so upset at Superman.

I wonder how many kids thought Clawster WAS Doomsday, assumed they'd just beaten the game, and returned it to Blockbuster. Considering how hard this thing is about to get, that might have been for the best.

LEVEL 2: DOOMSDAY IN METROPOLIS

A WLEX presenter informs us that "not even the Justice League” has been able to stop Doomsday’s march to Metropolis. Damn, if even the likes of Blue Beetle, Ice, and Bloodwynd couldn't stop him, this must be a job for Superman.

As the level starts, you're assaulted by Doomsday's classic henchmen: Chainsaw (a punk rocker with a chainsaw) and Molotov (a punk rocker who throws Molotov cocktails). Okay, they're not actually in the comic, but they SHOULD be. They spend the whole level beating the crap out of Superman, making them more powerful and effective than 90% of DC supervillains.

If you somehow manage to get past these superpowered punkers, you finally reach Doomsday, and he's tough as hell. But, if you try hard enough and beat him, you get to... die anyway. This leads to what has to be the saddest "LEVEL COMPLETE" screen in all of gaming:

"GOOD JOB! YOU’RE DEAD!”

LEVEL 3: ASSAULT ON CADMUS

After a beautiful 16-bit rendition of Jon Bogdanove's cover for the first "Death of Superman" collection...

...that WLEX presenter from before tells us that four mysterious Supermen have popped up in Metropolis. We are briefly introduced to each one, and then you get to play as the Cyborg Superman as he barges into Project Cadmus to steal Doomsday's body. These flying levels are my favorite part of the game, because they are very easy, and I’m very lazy.

Unfortunately, you then go into Cadmus and have to fight those stupid flying guards of theirs (the same ones who tried to help Superman during his fight against Doomsday in the comics). They keep shooting lasers at you from above, making it impossible to fight any other enemies while they’re up there, but they’re also hard to reach and will immediately fly back up when you knock them down. Also, there’s a crapload of them, so this gets pretty annoying. I'm surprised Doomsday didn't ragequit the fight halfway through Superman #75.

This level's boss is some weird floating robot that I've never seen in any Superman comics, and I've read like all of them (someone correct me if I'm wrong). They could have used Cadmus’ Guardian, Dubbilex, Director Westfield in a robot armor, or even the Newsboy Legion, but no, they went with this:

On the other hand, that background with all the clones is kinda neat. You can even kill the clones by throwing guards at the wall! The Cyborg's mass-murdering career had to start somewhere.

LEVEL 4: THE LAST SON OF KRYPTON

This is where the developers straight up ran out of ideas and started recycling stuff. The setting for this one is the same as level 2 (only it's night now) and the enemies are once again Chainsaw and Molotov, who are probably just distraught over the death of their good friend and mentor, Doomsday. The only fun part is that, since you're playing as the Eradicator and he has no regard for human life, you can toss these punks off buildings now.

(Actually, you could probably do this while playing as Superman too, I just didn't think to try it.)

Oh yeah, the Eradicator’s special move is kinda cool too. Specials are limited attacks that get rid of all enemies on screen. Superman punches the ground at super-speed and the Cyborg just throws some bomb, while the Eradicator does THIS and apparently scares everyone around him to death:

This level's boss is... Steel? Presumably the idea is to recreate the Eradicator/Steel fight from Man of Steel #24, but without the context, it looks like they just ran into each other on the street and started fighting.

After you beat him, Steel is all like “no, no, fighting is bad” and the Eradicator agrees, even saying they should "watch over Metropolis" together. That lasts like two seconds, because then this happens:

I didn’t cut anything, that’s the entire sequence. I'm glad the death of millions of people was depicted with such nuance and sensitivity.

And then... a lot more stuff happens, but this post is getting too long and I don’t wanna flood everyone’s dashboards, so click “keep reading” to keep reading (ALSO, NOTE: The next parts include some GIFs with flashing lights.)

LEVEL 5: AMBUSH AT COAST CITY

In this level you play as the Eradicator again as he flies through the ruins of Coast City, fighting the robot orbs from the Cadmus level, for some reason. Is the U.S. government lending their top secret technology to alien invaders?

Lending credence to this theory is the fact that you later fight Cadmus’ freaking flying guards again, only this time they're called "Warworlders". They’re just as annoying, though. (See if you can spot the cameos by Hal Jordan’s middle school teacher and second cousin below!)

That bug-like enemy up there is also recycled, in this case from the Underworld level... but that actually makes sense. See, that particular character first appeared in the comics as a Warworld alien who stayed on Earth after the botched invasion in "Panic in the Sky!", then he and his pals hooked up with the Underworlders, united in their ugliness. So maybe the ones in this level are his relatives who came to Earth because they missed him?

The level's boss is the Cyborg, and it's another "win to lose" situation: after winning, the Eradicator does a cool pose and stays like that for a long time, giving the Cyborg plenty of time to get up again and shoot him.

I could see Superboy losing a fight that way, but you'd think a 200,000 year old artificial intelligence from ancient Krypton would know better. Speaking of which...

LEVEL 6: THE METROPOLIS KID

At last, some variety! You finally get to play as Superboy... in the same city level as before, against the same punkers. It's not the EXACT same level, though: this time it's just a short portion of the city on a loop, like in a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

But then, halfway through the stage, Superboy declares that "the streets of Metropolis are safe" and heads to Coast City, and it's literally just level 5 again, with the same re-recycled enemies and the same boss, the Cyborg. Guess what happens when you beat him.

Okay, this time I can buy it. Dumbass kid.

In a cutscene, the Cyborg explains his plan to blow up Metropolis next, so Superboy decides to escape Coast/Engine City to warn everyone. What follows is another short flying sequence, but at least this time they bothered to change the orb enemies into some vaguely Brainiac-looking things (that I forgot to took a screenshot of, and I can’t be arsed right now).

LEVEL 7: STEEL REIGN

A fifth Superman has appeared! And he doesn’t believe in haircuts.

But the level is actually about Steel, because oh right, he's also in this game. We’re told that the Man in Black, Superboy, and Steel have flown to Engine City to stop the Cyborg, and then you take control of the latter as he goes around the giant engine fighting the annoying Cadmus guards and an ALL-NEW* enemy called “Warbot” (*actually a color swap of another enemy we'd already seen).

Even Steel's special move is recycled: it's Superman's ground-punching move again, but with a hammer. After thirteen damn minutes (or that's how long it took me) of fighting the same four enemies over and over, the level just ends without a boss, because the developers are as tired of this as you are. Or they couldn’t think of any characters to fight. My suggestion: Jeb Friedman. Everything else would be worth it if this game allowed you to hit Jeb in the face with a hammer.

LEVEL 8: METROPOLIS: GROUND ZERO

The Cyborg shoots a missile at Metropolis, and Superboy must stop it! Fortunately, it's a flying level, so it's extremely easy. And short, too. I beat this one in almost exactly one minute. The difficulty in this game is so well balanced.

Who would have guessed that this dramatic scene from the comic would end up being the closest thing this game has to a bonus stage?

LEVEL 9: THE ENGINE CORE

A floating (not flying) level about Steel going into Engine City's core, where he must avoid some kryptonite-flavored Cheeto balls...

...and destroy these eggs that inexplicably look like the original Eradicator artifact. I guess the developers saw it on the comic, liked the design, and didn’t bother looking up what it was, or whether it had evolved into any characters who also appear in this game.

The boss is a big Cyborg face that shoots out pool balls. He's way easier than "a big Cyborg face that shoots out pool balls" sounds. (Seriously, Doomsday on level 2 gave me a lot more trouble than this guy, the next to last boss.)

And once you beat him, we finally get to...

LEVEL 10: THE RETURN OF SUPERMAN

The final level! And guess what: you get to fight the Cadmus flyboys again. At least the moment when the Eradicator restores Superman's powers is pretty well done, and perhaps even more elegantly told than in the comic.

The boss, for the fourth time in this game, is the Cyborg, except now he can use his special move and take a quarter of your energy without any way to avoid it. The special move makes it more challenging, but as far as final bosses go, this is pretty lazy. They could have given him the kryptonite hose from the comic, or added Mongul to the fight, or something. I have to admit that uppercutting this guy so hard that he explodes is pretty satisfying, though.

And that's it! The game ends with the same speech Superman gives at the end of the Death/Return saga:

(Little did he know that "what comes next" would be Superman 64.)

Anyway, Death and Return of Superman isn't a bad game. The graphics are very cool, and this is definitely the most faithful adaptation of this storyline in any medium. I'm grateful that they didn't make up a story involving, say, Lex Luthor's piss jar or something. The problem is that it's insanely repetitive and gets so tedious that I'm convinced most kids, like me, never even got to play as all the characters. This could have been solved with a fighting mode where you could just pick any of the characters from the start, including Chainsaw and Molotov, of course. And Jeb, just so I could pick him and let the other characters punch him over and over. Man, fuck that guy.

[superman86to99]

Superman #67 (May 1992)

Superman vs. a cloud of black stuff that turns people into skeletons, OR Superman vs. his worst nightmare: a thing he can’t punch! The cloud descends into Metropolis out of the blue and starts killing people, rudely ruining Clark Kent and Lois Lane’s movie date. Superman is like “Hey, get out of my town, jackass,” but can’t prevent the death cloud from eating some construction workers and blowing up a bus (full of orphans, I assume). The cloud then sets its sights on Superman, which looks pretty unpleasant:

Superman survives by escaping into the sewers, where he runs into some nasty alien dudes -- turns out they’re some of the Warworld warriors that Brainiac sent to Earth during “Panic in the Sky,” who are now stuck in our planet since their boss got defeated. The Warworlders are also scared shitless of the cloud and tell Superman where it came from: it’s called the Swarm, and it’s a mechanism Warworld uses to “clean” the planets they conquer by eating up all organic matter and destroying all buildings. Which begs question of why, in Don Sparrow’s words, “Brainiac didn't START with the Swarm, then move on Earth with the weapons of Warworld”? Probably because they just like fighting. I mean, they are called “Warworlders.”

Anyway, the Warworlders explain that Brainiac sent the Swarm to Earth right before getting defeated, just to be a dick. While Superman tries to save as many people as possible from getting skeleton’d, good samaritan Lex Luthor II studies the signal that calls the Swarm to Earth and eventually manages to replicate it in one of his satellites, sending the death cloud into space. Hooray for Metropolis’ true hero, LLII! (Superman doesn’t seem so cheerful, for some reason.)

Lex even goes on TV to explain how he saved the day and to let everyone know how awesome and not evil he is. A member of Team Luthor then brings him the original device that called the Swarm to Earth and asks if they should throw it out, but Lex goes “Haha, of course not! I might need it later for some evilness.”

Plotline-Watch:

So, yeah, that was the metallic sphere that we saw Brainiac ejecting from Warworld at the end of “Panic.”  As you can see, it definitely didn’t have Doomsday inside of it, like people speculated back in the day. I can’t remember if Lex will do anything with the Swarm now that he can control it, but I’m guessing nope.

The most important part of this issue: we learn that Clark’s first childhood movie was To Kill a Mockingbird, and that he was a weird kid who liked Atticus Finch better than El Zorro. Finch’s sense of justice and morality clearly made a great impression on young Clark -- good thing he didn’t start with the pseudo-prequel, or Superman would use a lot more n-words today. I’m serious when I say this scene is important, by the way. You’ll see what I mean later on.

As seen in Action #676, Supergirl is now with (and also “with”) Luthor, but she can’t come to help against the Swarm because she’s currently unconscious as Dr. Happersen performs some tests on her. Lex is very particular about the artificial beings from other dimensions that he sleeps with, I guess.

Some Warworlders get killed by the Swarm, but others live on to pester Superman in the future. And they’ll get reinforcements. Early in the issue, a couple of drunks loitering in the sewers are spooked by the Warworlders and one says to the other: “You think maybe it’s them weird muthas?” I believe he’s talking about the failed Cadmus experiments that live in the sewers -- those guys will hook up with the Warworlders soon, united in their ugliness.

Lana & Pete: The New Adventures of Congressman continues. Pete Ross is visited by the shady Sons of Liberty (the guys bankrolling Agent Liberty), who unsuccessfully try to sweet talk him into voting against a gun control law. Meanwhile, Lana Lang gets a fancy new job... but we see at the end of the issue that the guy who hired her is Judge Kramer from the Sons. Hmmmm.

Don Sparrow says: “It's interesting that the reach of the Sons of Liberty goes all the way to employment agencies, where we get a glimpse of what must be the REAL source of political power: Ziggy, watching his machinations from the 1984-like viewscreen/ordinary-looking calendar on page 14. Ziggy's depravity seems to know no bounds, as he forces his agent to use a mug that reminds her that she is indeed Overworked and Underpaid.”

Blast you, Ziggy! Read more insights and commentary from Don below the cut:

Art-Watch (by donsparrow):

Brainiac's backup plan is here!  And no one will remember this in 9 issues or so! One of the most troubling issues of this era begins with a pretty eye-bragging cover, Metropolis in ruins, as a distraught Superman fights the shadow demons from the movie Ghost.

Inside the issue we see the totally black swarm laying waste to an entire planet.  In the devastation, which is scary and well-drawn, we see the problem I have with this issue--this threat is way, way too deadly--unbeatably so. [Max: Agreed, but on the other hand: Dan Jurgens drawing cosmic stuff! Any excuse to show that is good for me.]

Back in Metropolis, a couple of sewer-dwelling rummies run across a contingent of Warworlders, who, despite their goofy look, are quite intimidating on a full splash page 4. [Max: Hey, where’s Klawster? Did he spend the whole issue standing behind that fat guy?]

More signs of the times:  Lois and Clark take in a Cameron Crowe movie (back when those were really good) and there's a lot to like here.  In the first place, the jackets, and Lois' wind-blown hair do a nice job of indicating cooler Spring weather (an ominous calendar tells us it's April later in the issue), and their exchange about the first films they ever saw is almost more interesting to me than the main plotline.  We get some insight into Lois' less-than-perfect relationship with her gung-ho father, and an important distinction between law and order man Clark Kent and vigilante Bruce Wayne. Rather than see swash-bucking, cave dwelling outlaw Zorro, a young Clark chose to see Gregory Peck in To Kill A Mockingbird, as Atticus Finch, a man who chooses to "believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system", which explains a lot about Clark.  This conversation will become quite important to Lois and Clark in months to come, and it's nice to see these smaller, tender moments.  As I re-read these issues, it really is the romance between these two people that ages the best.

PANEL OF THE WEEK: Back to the artwork, we get a great panel of Superman leaping into action to combat the bee-swarm like black cloud over Metropolis at the top of page 8, and the great background, along with the energetic swooping pose make it our panel of the week. 

Another great shot is Superman speeding to attempt (and fail) to save the high steel worker in the middle panel of page 9 (that drawing was later used in house subscription ads, so it's extra familiar to me).

The inverted panels on page 11 as the Swarm envelops Superman are effectively weird, and seem painful.  It's also interesting to see Superman's determination turn to outright grit on page 17, as Supes looks pretty intense.      

Try as he might, Superman is unable to really make a dent, or any sort of progress with the Swarm, and for that reason, it's a troubling issue.   The panels documenting Superman's attempts at both stopping the Swarm, and lessening its damage, with Lex's voiceover are very well done, and serve to cement Lex Jr. in people's minds as a savior of the city.  We share Superman's lack of satisfaction at the story's conclusion, when the threat is taken care of, but Superman had almost nothing to do with the solution.  It's equally troubling that the means for saving the city was mechanical, and therefore, in my mind, fallible--what happens when the satellite runs out of fuel, or goes near another inhabited planet?  To my knowledge, the Swarm never returned, which is one more plotline dangling tantalizingly, waiting for DC Comics to let me unravel... 

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

I'm grateful for the updates on Pete and Lana, and it's interesting to see the pieces come together, as we see Pete meeting with Haldeman--I mean Harriman, who we've up to now only seen dealing with Agent Liberty.  I like the real world observation that red state Kansas would likely not favor a gun control bill, but can see why Pete would stick to his gu--principles--when wanting to adhere to the wishes of his deceased predecessor.

Oh no!  Lana is working for the scientist guy from Terminator 2! 

I feel like the Super-team has been making an effort to increase Lana Lang's sex appeal over the last few issues.  Aside from documenting what I assume to be her lost virginity, in this issue she celebrates a job interview by stripping her clothes on page 14 (and likely changing into the business suit she's seen wearing on page 22). [Max: I don’t know why those panels were necessary, but my young self appreciated them very much.]

The microphone guy has a point.