When dealing with imaginary stories, one sure fire way to tell that a character closely associated with truth, justice and the American way has turned evil is to add pin-stripes to his suit!



Nothing says gangster like those pin-stripes.

I love how even on a date, Lex never loses the purple and green motif.



It seems to be working for him, however, so who am I to poke fun.

Ask, and thou shall receive.


Yes!  That is Jonathan and Martha Kent, evil criminals on the run!

Who knew that the imaginary story we recently read was the second half of a two-parter, with this part even better than the previous?

That's the one thing I love about the width and breadth of Superman stories...however crazy you can imagine a story, there's probably a published one out there that comes pretty darn close.

What possible reason could there be that Superman just happens to have punch-card profiles of every eligible bachelor in Metropolis? After all, it's not like he even has any formidable female rogues, where a precaution like this would actually make sense.

Who watches the watchmen, indeed!

One of the staples that I love about reading Silver and Bronze Age comic books are the overcomplicated solutions or convoluted ruses that our heroes have to go through in order to not let anyone catch on to their secret identities. As soon as I think I've read it all, I find one even more ludicrous than that last.

Which leads me to today's post. Now, normally I like to keep things to just one panel per day, but occasionally exceptions must be made and today is one of those exceptions.

To set the stage, Clark Kent is filming a commercial for a watch company who has somehow managed to get Superman to take part as well. How are Clark and Superman both going to appear in the commercial with the secret identity still in effect?

Watch, and be amazed.


After throwing the watch in the air, Clark does a relatively standard move by doing the quick change at super speed. But that still leaves a Clark-less presence in front of the camera.

Now worries, as Superman has a plan...


He peels off a life size promotional cardboard cutout from the side of the news van, and turns it around to expose the 3-D picture he previously planted on the back side!


Before anyone is the wiser, he plants the 3-D cutout in Clark's place. So how is this going to fool anyone?

Well the 3-D side of the cutout has two offsetting images that will appear three dimensional to anyone wearing 3-D glasses.


Now all we have to hope for is that everyone on site remembered to wear their 3-D glasses today.

Or...you could take the initiative and outfit everyone's glasses with 3-D lenses ahead of time!


After that, it's just a simple matter of catching the watch you previously tossed into the air as Superman while your fancy cardboard cutout fools all of the people filming the commercial!


God I love these books.

What could it possibly be?

And why are you wearing the Trickster's clothes?

So last weekend, the world's greatest comic book store was having one of their semi-regular auctions, this one dealing with a whole lot of Silver Age books. I was able to pick up about 40 books for a little over 3 bucks a piece, filling in a bunch of holes in my collection.

While looking through my new found treasures, I came a across a character I was unfamiliar with.

One thought immediately sprung to mind...is this the first Silver Age appearance of The Flaming C?


He's obviously had some lasik surgery since his debut, and learned about the finer art of Jai Alai, but no...it's just another crime fighting robot from the 27th century, who goes by the name of Captain Incredible, wreaking havoc in our time period.

So let's see, if I do my math right, that puts this panel square in 1984!

It's actually been 42 years, and I'm still waiting for NASA to open up a greasy spoon on the Sea Of Tranquility.

The things us guys will do to make time with the ladies...


I wonder how many times Clark went Jitterbugging in his zoot suit after they became a couple. I'm willing to bet it's somewhere close to zero. Unless it was a cover for them to write an expose on Intergang's iron-clad grip on the underworld jitterbug criminal scene, because that obviously wouldn't count.

For those times when you need to be extra careful about your secret identity, nothing beats wearing a rubber mask of your secret identity, over your super hero costume, over your actual face.

The recent addition of the Subway Famous Fans advertising insert in this past week's comics got me thinking about some similar moves in the past. One of my favorites is when Superman has to team up with two schoolkids using a TRS-80 computer to help bring down Major Disaster!

Now, for all you kids spoiled with terabyte drives and cloud computing, there used to be a time when you stored your data on a cassette tape! Talk about blazing fast.

How fast, you ask?


Fast enough to show up Superman (for at least as long as TRS was paying the advertising bills).

So I've been reading Superman comic books monthly since 1992, and have been avidly collecting his back issues for the past 14 years or so, but every once in a while I come across something I've never heard about before in the Superman mythos.

Something like Hideout X-1!


That's right, it's a secret conference room hidden inside the Daily Planet globe. Apparently, it's a meeting place for Superman and Batman to get together every once in a while?

In this particular story, Superman is double-crossing a thief by pretending that this is a good place to hole up and wait for the heat to die down, knowing full well that Batman is due to show up soon!

So has Hideout X-1 ever shown up again?

A quick, cursory google search came up empty, but someone out there knows for sure one way or the other.

Superman is taking this Sunday off, so filling in for him on his never-ending quest to battle dinosaurs is some sort of amalgam of Krypto and Streaky!

After yesterday's bit of silliness, here's a panel from the story where Superman really met Sgt. Rock.


Barking orders to a grunt...that's more like it!

Yes, that's Sgt. Rock throwing garbage at Superman while being nagged by Lois Lane! I think it's the Peeping Tom, however, that adds just the right amount of WTF to this panel.

This whole story is actually filled with panels as crazy as this one, so make sure you come back on Sunday and I'll feature another.

The best way to shut down a runaway Superman robot is to give it a double wet willy!


I'm surprised the Prankster never thought of that.

It's an effective take down, I guess, if not entirely chivalric.

(psst...it was just a Superman robot, so no harm done. Superman would never treat a woman like that...not when he can program a robot to do it for him.)