Over the last few decades, comic book movies have reached heights of storytelling and spectacle that readers could never have DREAMED of. But for every triumphant high—Black Panther, Superman, Spider-Man 2—there have always been a good number of stinkers… some bad enough to become punchlines or talking points, but most mediocre and ultimately forgotten…
Until they end up here.
The Discount Spinner Rack is where you’ll find the worst, the weirdest, and the most puzzling of comic book movie misfires. We’ll take a look at the things that actually work and the parts that absolutely don’t, and decide whether it’s worth your time and your dime. In the end, movies will be marked down on a scale from $1.00 (a surprise gem) to $0.05 (better used for kindling). For this Halloween’s torturous twirl of the Rack, we’ll be digging up one of the oldest superhero films ever made, as the gallant Man of Steel comes face to face with a creeping dread from the depths of the Earth in Superman and the Mole Men!
Horror is always a product of its time.
As a genre, horror filters the anxieties and attitudes of the culture that produces it through a prism that turns it into something heightened, fantastic, and easier to face. Frankenstein is about the deeply rooted Victorian fear that science and technology would supplant God and the natural world. Dracula is about the deeply racist and xenophobic fear of swarthy foreigners immigrating to Britain and seducing all the white women. King Kong is about… er, that is, The Creature From the Black Lagoon is about…
… Look, a LOT of these are just straight-up racism disguised as monster movies, alright?
Now, the 1950s were an interesting time for horror. It was just after World War II, and the invention of the atomic bomb had come to be regarded as both the vanguard of a new scientific age, and a potential harbinger for the doom of all mankind. So the horror yarns of the day were largely science fiction stories: tales of new and dangerous frontiers of knowledge being discovered and explored (usually involving either aliens or radiation of some kind), only to yield some terrifying and destructive outcome: giant ants, or flying saucers, or possibly an attack from a 50 foot tall woman.
While most of popular culture saw the forward march of technological progress as a GOOD thing, that lingering little hint of anxiety crept in around the edges, pondering what happened when humanity stumbled across new discoveries it was never meant to know.
Of course, these sorts of existential questions and eerie technological terrors were usually consigned to the B-movie tier of film productions, and the movie we’ll be discussing today is no different. But what makes this one interesting is WHO just so happens to be facing up to the horrors of the new scientific frontier…!
Yes, it’s SUPERMAN! Strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! SUPERMAN! Who can change the course of mighty rivers! Bend steel in his bare hands! And who, disguised as Clark Kent—mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper—fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way!1Fun fact: the original copy for this introduction, which originated in the 1940 Superman radio drama, ONLY declared that Superman fought a never-ending battle “for truth and justice”. “The American way” was then tacked onto this introduction after the U.S. entered World War II, as a transparent act of propaganda messaging… which is why I’m glad that the CURRENT iteration of this credo swaps “the American way” for “a better tomorrow”. Remember, kids: nationalism is never the answer!
By 1951, Superman was already a household name—not just the star of several wildly successful comic magazines, but also a radio show that lasted for nearly a decade, twelve iconic animated shorts from Fleischer Studios2… Well, okay, more like seven or eight iconic shorts, and then a handful of straight-up racist war propaganda cartoons…, and two cheaply-produced (but massively popular) Columbia film serials. But the times were a-changing, and to keep up with them, Superman was going to have to make the leap to an entirely new media frontier to stay relevant:
TELEVISION!
Television had existed in crude, experimental forms as far back as the 1920s, but in the post-war 1940s it had seen widespread commercial adoption across the United States as the newest and most convenient form of mass entertainment. You didn’t have to go out to a theater… you didn’t have to visualize the stories yourself from just the audio… you could simply turn on the T.V. and have a little miniature movie piped right into your living room3Albeit with plenty of commercial breaks, because putting on a show costs money, and you couldn’t directly monetize television broadcasts back in the day. No one was buying tickets, y’know?!
And Robert Maxwell, producer of the phenomenally successful Adventures of Superman radio show4A series which famously introduced the characters of Jimmy Olsen and Perry White, and also officially introduced Kryptonite to the mythos… even though Jerry Siegel had actually come up with the idea first in an unpublished comic story from 1940, in which he referred to it as “K-Metal”. That story, incidentally, was rejected by editorial because it ended with Clark revealing his secret identity to Lois Lane. In 1940!!!, seemed to realize that the writing was on the wall—because in the early 1950s, he began work on developing The Adventures of Superman as a television series.
Now… back in 1951, television development wasn’t quite the same as it is now. Maxwell wasn’t developing his show at a network; he was developing it with production house Motion Pictures for Television for first-run syndication—meaning that they would have to put up the money to make the series first and then sell the show to whatever networks or affiliates wanted to run it. And that meant that they couldn’t really MAKE a show unless they could convince potential buyers and/or sponsors that it was going to be a success beforehand. So how do you do that, if you can’t, say, run a pilot episode on T.V. since you don’t have a network to show it on?
Well, you make a MOVIE as a trial balloon!
Teaming with California-based B-movie production company Lippert Pictures, Maxwell and his DC Comics liason Whitney Ellsworth5A legendary figure in the industry, who was a major editorial force at DC Comics in the earliest years of Superman and Batman’s success, and also wrote the Batman newspaper strips for years. He was DC Comics’ primary contact with film productions in the early days, and became a producer on the eventual Adventures of Superman TV show. whipped up a script and got to work. While the Kirk Alyn Superman theatrical serials had only been released a few years earlier and been tremendous successes, the filmmakers opted to cast a new Lois Lane and Clark Kent for the film… and they found their new Superman in the form of George Reeves.
Now, Reeves (actually George Bessolo—Reeves was a stage name) was a bit of a frustrated actor. While he had appeared in Gone With the Wind and a litany of B-pictures since the late ‘1930s, his career had been seriously disrupted by his service in the US Army Air Forces during World War II. Initially, he was reluctant to take on the role of Superman because of the perceived stigma of working on television (a “lesser” medium where he feared his work would go unseen)… but there were bills to pay, so before long he found himself clad in a sloppily-padded grey-and-brown6The filmmakers went with grey-and-brown because the contrast between the dark and light parts of the costume stood out more clearly on black-and-white film than a red-and-blue suit would’ve. This is also the reason that the famous shower murder scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho used chocolate syrup to simulate blood going down the drain; it just looked darker on monochromatic film! leotard with a sagging cape sewn onto the collar.
He would go on to be the definitive Superman for an entire generation of young fans… and a life snuffed out far too soon by tragedy. But that’s maybe a story we shouldn’t get into here.
The movie was shot in just a little more than twelve days at RKO-Pathé Studios in July, 1951. Director Lee Sholem—known apocryphally as “’Roll ‘Em’ Sholem”—was a speedy, efficient director used to working in television and the B-movies, with 1,300 credits to his name over a forty year career. The shoot apparently went so well that, even though the movie wasn’t scheduled to release until November, Motion Pictures for Television committed to shoot an entire SEASON of the series in August and September! … And then the show sat on a shelf for an entire year until Kelloggs finally agreed to sponsor it in 1952.
But when the series finally hit the airwaves, it hit BIG. Adventures of Superman was a bonafide hit and a cultural sensation—yet another medium that the Man of Steel conquered seemingly with ease, introducing yet another generation of children to the exploits of Clark Kent, Lois Lane (Phyllis Coates in season one, then Noel Neill7The actress who’d originally played Lois way back in the 15-chapter Superman movie serial from 1948 and its sequel, Atom Man vs. Superman! for the rest of the series), Jimmy Olsen (Jack Larson)8A character made SO popular and beloved by Larson’s portrayal on the series that he received his own SOLO comic book in 1954: “Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen”, a comic which was zany and goofy when it started… and eventually got taken over by Jack Kirby, who used the book as a launching pad for his expansive Fourth World mythology, introducing the New Gods and Darkseid to the DC Universe! Which is a bit of trivia I still find hard to fathom., and Perry White (John Hamilton). It was SO big, that George Reeves even booked an appearance—as Superman, naturally—on the most successful television series airing at the time: the I Love Lucy show!
But what about the movie? The T.V. show may have been a big deal, but was there anything worthwhile to be gleaned from this low-budget B-movie—a cheap kiddie creature-feature with silly costumes and a glorified circus strongman as its protagonist? Well, while its production values may be low and its aims may be humble, Superman and the Mole Men does exactly what good B-movies did best: reflect the anxieties and obsessions of a culture right back at them.
And this is a movie that was produced by a culture BRIMMING with a marrow-deep fear of the unknown… the different… the other.
IN THIS ISSUE: Turtlenecks and rednecks! SPOOOOOOOKY!
So this movie, like all great Superman stories, opens in rural Texas. Turns out an oil company in the teeny town of Silsby has drilled the deepest oil well in the world—32,740 feet down (more than six miles)9For the record, the ACTUAL deepest well in the world to date was the Z-44 Chayvo Well in eastern Russia, which reached a depth of 40,604 feet in 2012. Of course, there’s no indication on the Guinness Book of World Records page to suggest that they found anything OTHER than oil down there…! Apparently there wasn’t much else going on in 1951, because this is a big enough story for the Metropolis Daily Planet10… Which, mind you, is most likely all the way in New York, Delaware, Illinois, or Ohio, depending on your reckoning… to send out not one, but TWO reporters—Clark Kent and Lois Lane—to cover this incredible development. Joke’s on them, though… ‘cause by the time the duo actually make it OUT to Silsby, it turns out the mine’s foreman, Bill Corrigan11Not to be confused with Billy Corgan, lead singer of The Smashing Pumpkins… (Walter Reed) is shutting the whole operation down, and burying parts and equipment that haven’t been used yet. When pressed about it, Corrigan is jumpy and evasive; something sinister may be afoot…
Thankfully we don’t have to wait too long to find out. That night, at the drill site, the metal cap on the dismantled oil well POPS open, and from the dark depths of the Earth emerges… THE MOLE MEN!!!
And… well, they’re something. Two little people, dressed in full body fuzzy pajamas with turtlenecks, wearing big, bulbous bald caps, pointed fuzzy eyebrows, and jowl fur, in addition to crepe hair on their hands. We later learn that the footy jumpsuits are actually supposed to be thick, head-to-toe FUR COVERINGS—like, BODY fur, not clothing—to suggest that they’re more animalistic and mole-like (despite the fact that we can clearly see them wearing little black shoes with hard soles in some shots). They pull themselves out of the well and start creeeeeeeeeeeping forward, hunched over and bobbing their heads around like pigeons as they look furtively around.
It’s not exactly HORRIFYING.
(For the record, I tried my best to pinpoint the actual actors who PLAYED the Mole Men; they’re uncredited in the movie, and the information available is somewhat contradictory. According to the Superman Homepage, Billy Curtis plays Mole Man #1, John T. Bambury is Mole Man #2, Jerry Maren12The longest surviving Munchkin from the 1938 Wizard of Oz, who sadly passed away in 2018. is Mole Man #3, and Tony Boris is Mole Man #4. But Wikipedia AND IMDb claim the fourth Mole Man is actually Johnny Roventini, a famous advertising spokesman for Phillip Morris cigarettes. Personally, I side with the Homepage on this, because I am 90% certain that the fourth Mole Man is a literal child, and this Tony Boris guy doesn’t have any other credits to his name—suggesting that he might have been the kid of someone in the production.)
So these curious mole fellows shuffle over to the guard station, where the world’s oldest security guard is chowing down on some oranges and paging through “Drill” magazine (which, given the context, may not NECESSARILY be a porno mag). Shortly thereafter, Clark and Lois swing by to do some investigating, only to find the security guard dead in his shack, the oranges scattered all over the floor (in a very Godfather-esq manner). Initially they just believe he suffered a run-of-the-mill heart attack… but when Lois is SHOCKED by the sight of the Mole Men peering through the window at her, the truth becomes all too clear:
He was FRIGHTENED to death!
It’s at this point that the foreman spills his guts to Kent about why they shut down the drill. Seems that, once they surpassed the 32,000 foot mark, the drill punched through to EMPTY SPACE… and the dirt samples that were being brought back up were teeming with microscopic life-forms, the like of which shouldn’t have been possible so far down. Worse, the dirt was GLOWING; the farther down the samples were taken, the more brightly they shined when examined in the dark. Unsure if the glow is radiation or mere chemical phosphorescence, both Kent and Corrigan are horrified to discover that the ORANGES are now glowing, too… suggesting that the Mole Men might just be radioactive!
So, just to take stock: it turns out, the world is actually hollow. And there’s LIFE more than six miles under the surface—COMPLEX life, of at least human-ish scale—which may or may not also be intrinsically radioactive.
… We’re lucky these guys didn’t accidentally wake up Godzilla.
Before Clark and Corrigan can grab the sheriff and try to track down the possibly-radioactive hobgoblins, however, sh*t immediately goes sideways when the townsfolk end up sighting the Mole Men and IMMEDIATELY form a gun-toting posse—led by the local reactionary hate-monger Luke Benson (Jeff Corey). And making matters worse, the Mole Dudes have decided to pull a Frankenstein and innocently play a game of catch with an adorable little moppet… but before they can throw her into a lake or vaporize her or anything, the mother finds them and shrieks to high Heaven, alerting the mob.
It doesn’t look great for the Mole Bros. They may have inadvertently irradiated a small child and her mother, and they’re being hunted by a vicious mob that now believes that their children are in danger (and who DON’T realize that their quarry may be a radioactive hazard to themselves and to the town). Clark tries his best to talk the drunken hicks down, but someone already brought a pack of hunting dogs to the party, and now they’re baying for blood. (The hicks, not the dogs.)13One of the frothing townspeople even rips a barber pole down from a brick wall to use as a club!
Innocent lives are in danger! This looks like a job… for SUPERMAN!
Supes catches up with the bloodthirsty bumpkins at the nearby reservoir, where they’ve cornered the Mole Men on a bridge overlooking the dam. Superman lands behind them, and calmly explains that they shouldn’t hurt the little fellows because a.) they haven’t done the townsfolk any harm, and b.) they might just be radioactive—so shooting them where they could easily FALL INTO THE TOWN RESERVOIR and poison the entire local water supply would be, uh, a little rash.
Benson, the spokesperson of the group, responds to these reasonable points with HOT LEAD—emptying two revolvers at Superman’s chest with nary a warning or a moment’s hesitation. Which, naturally, accomplishes jack sh*t.
When that has no effect, the snarling ringleader tries to pistol-whip the demonstrably-bulletproof Man of Steel with the butt of his gun… but he receives a solid sock to the jaw for his troubles. Benson, it seems, isn’t exactly all that bright.
… Unfortunately, the distraction gives one of the riflemen a chance to get a bead on the Mole Men, and he FIRES, nailing one of the duo in the gut. The poor creature lets out a horrific shriek as its companion hits the deck in terror, and then the stricken Mole Man falls… leading to one of the most spectacular sequences in B-movie history:
So Superman catches the injured Mr. Mole, and flies him off to the local hospital in Silsby (quickly switching back to Clark Kent once he’s there). The hospital superintendent is apoplectic that the doctor on duty admitted the furry li’l mutant, practically frothing at the mouth and calling the wounded being a “monstrosity”… but Clark is able to convince the doc to remove the bullet from the Mole Man’s chest from behind lead X-ray screens. After the operation, the doctor wonders at the fact that the Mole Man’s anatomy is virtually identical to a human’s, save for the superficial details of big heads and the fur covering… and here we reach the movie’s core message.
The Mole Men are basically just people. Different-looking people, who don’t communicate the same way that we do and don’t have the same culture as us… but still just people. So this is fundamentally a movie about bigotry, and how some people respond to anyone they see as different from them with irrational hatred and fear. That club- and gun-wielding posse isn’t just any old torch-wielding band of villagers from a monster movie… they’re a lynch mob.
But hey—while Clark and the doctor are making this discovery at the hospital… just how are things going for the OTHER Mole Man, who escaped at the dam?
Yeah… for several minutes, we see the mob and their baying bloodhounds chasing down the remaining Mole Man (the one I’m pretty sure is played by a kid) across the desert terrain in a harrowing pursuit—eventually cornering the panicking little guy in an abandoned shack, and then SETTING FIRE to it. After several moments of sheer terror (that are genuinely affecting to watch because, again, I’M PRETTY SURE THAT’S A CHILD), the chrome-domed munchkin pulls up the floorboards and manages to slip out from UNDER the shack, unseen by his vicious pursuers.
Having just barely avoided the dogs, the flames, and the bullets of the surface world, Mole Man Jr. rushes back to the oil well and dives right back in, seemingly making good his escape from the violent bigotry of mankind. But then later in the film… under the glow of a full moon obscured by the billowing clouds… the fugitive Mole Boy emerges from the black tunnel again—but this time accompanied by TWO MORE Mole Misters, one of whom is lugging along a giant honkin’ laser cannon!!!14Which, incidentally, was made from a commercially available vacuum cleaner from the time.
Now, by this time, the bloodthirsty mob had already turned up at the hospital to finish the job of killing the wounded one, but they were ultimately turned away by Superman (see Favorite Bits, below). So Supes is standing guard at the front of the hospital, alone, when the heavily-armed Moloids arrive in search of their fallen companion (how they knew that he would be in the hospital… or even what a hospital IS… is never explained). As they approach him, cannon at the ready, he bends down and tries his best to communicate that he means them no harm—and the young Mole makes some hand gestures to his crew, suggesting that he recognizes Supes as the guy who caught his partner15I guess Mole People, despite having the technology to build a chest-mounted laser gun, don’t have a spoken language? But they’re also not telepathic, because he had to use the hand gestures to communicate with his buddies. I may be overthinking this…. Superman, now certain that an understanding has been reached, backs into the hospital to retrieve their injured comrade. Things are going great!
… And then f$#@ing BENSON rounds the corner and tries to shoot the Mole Men from behind with a shotgun!
He draws a bead on the diminutive hairy chaps—but the moment they hear him cock his gun, they whirl ‘round and FIRE… a glowy little orb-beam that causes Benson to scream in pain and flatten against the wall, without visibly damaging him or his clothes. I guess it’s an… agony-beam?
Luckily for the craven hate-monger, Superman comes out the front door of the hospital at that very moment, carrying the injured Mole Man—and, after quickly handing off the vulnerable Mole, he LEAPS in front of the tennis-ball beam… saving Benson from the apparently gnarly muscle cramps the weapon was causing him.
Completely unfazed by the energy beam, Superman calmly gestures to the defensive rescuers that they can leave, and that no one will harm them. Thankfully he gets through, and the Mole Men relent, shutting down their beam. Benson, seemingly realizing how much of a colossal sh*theel he’s been this whole time, walks contritely up to the Man of Steel and thanks him for saving his life.
Superman, refusing to spare a glance at the grizzled bigot, sternly declares, “It’s more than you deserve, Benson.”
STONE. COLD.
So Supes takes the wounded Mole Man back into his arms and escorts the rescue party back through the town personally. On one hand, it’s a bizarre parade of oddballs: a large man in a circus suit with a cape tucked into the neck, and four little people in bald caps and fuzzy sweatsuits. But the way Superman is carrying the injured one, and the way the rest of the Mole People are gathered close around the Man of Steel, no longer wary of their surroundings but looking up to him expectantly… there’s something PATERNAL about it.
And that’s kind of the clever thing about this movie. Normally, I’d argue that infantilizing the othered, native culture of a newly discovered world would be a condescending at best, and deeply problematic at worst. But this is a movie written and intended for KIDS. Superman was created as a children’s fantasy hero, so the filmmakers rightly assumed that children would be the main audience… and as such, they deliberately frame the othered, endangered “monsters” of the film AS children, so that the audience can more easily relate to them. So they’re small. They’re curious. They’re innocent. And because of that, when they’re confronted with the violence and intolerance of a world they fundamentally do not understand, the children in the audience can empathize with them.
And as such, when Superman shows up and makes everything better again… there’s a fatherly element to it. He’s the Ultimate Dad in the ’50s mold, here to stop the fighting and clarify the moral lessons to be learned. You could read this dynamic as authoritarian and patriarchal… but I think here, it succeeds as instead being aspirational. Superman, like any good dad, is serving as a role model for the kids in the audience—teaching them to be more understanding, open-minded, and tolerant. It’s Superman at his best.
Superman helps the Mole Men back down into the abandoned oil derrick; once they’re well on their way home, who should drive up but Lois and the foreman, Corrigan. Seems Corrigan finally got his hands on a Geiger counter and tested the exposed mother and daughter; as it turns out, the spooky glow WAS just phosphorescence—the Mole Men were never a threat to anyone! So it looks like all’s well that ends well…
… until they hear the unearthly HUMMMM of the Mole Men’s laser cannon from beneath the cap of the oil well! Superman gets the others to safety, and—
As the drill site transforms into a billowing tower of flames, Superman and the others watch from the sidelines, and Lois solemnly remarks, “… It’s almost as if they were saying, ‘you live your lives, and we’ll live ours.'”
Hmm.
On one hand, this reads as a strongly anti-imperialist message. The Mole Men are depicted as a newly-discovered native race, and this action is essentially them protecting their domain from incursions by a demonstrably violent and technologically sophisticated empire. That’s great! F%$# empires. Happy ending all around!
… Buuuuuut… on the other hand, the movie does lean into a racialized reading of the Mole Men as “others“. The harassment and violence they face has clear parallels to the oppression of black people in America. AND this movie was made in 1951. So by reaffirming a clear, uncrossable barrier between white rural America and the Mole Men… is this movie subtly advocating for segregation?!?
UGH… I think I’m overthinking this.
IS IT WORTH YOUR DIME?: So… this movie is not very creepy, nor kooky, mysterious, OR spooky. It’s not exactly action-packed, either. But it does feel like its heart is in the right place, and it’s a charmingly goofy attempt at B-movie horror for a young and undiscerning audience. You could do worse!
DISCOUNT PRICE: $0.50
FAVORITE BITS:
- George Reeves’ Tousled Hair: So one of the details that’s easy to overlook when it comes to depicting Superman is his hair. That slicked back mane with the S-curl is so iconic that many filmmakers make it as invulnerable as the Man of Steel himself—with Supes getting into fights or digging through the Earth with nary a strand falling out of place. So that makes it all the more satisfying when George Reeves’ heavily-gelled hair IMMEDIATELY gets jarred out of place after one of his landings. Honestly, it gives him more of a rough-and-tumble look, as if he’s lost his composure and has to get his hand dirty…!
- The Winks to the Audience: Reeves may have been reluctant to take the part, but he’s COMMITTED to it, and his performance as Superman is played 100% straight. But throughout the movie, Supes keeps making this obvious, winking statements about his double identity (LOIS: “So then, you know about Superman?”; CLARK: “… If I don’t, who should?”) that aren’t meant for the characters in the scene, or for himself… they’re meant for US, the audience. It’s a cute carry-over from the comics and the Fleischer cartoons, where Clark would often wink to the audience after making some reference to his double life; it’s just funny to remember that there was ALWAYS a playful, self-reflexive side to superheroes, well before the likes of Deadpool got the credit for it.
- Lois Lane? Present.: So, you may have noticed that I haven’t said very much about Lois Lane in this review. Unfortunately, there’s a reason for it: Lois is barely a CHARACTER in this flick. She’s essentially an outlet for expository dialogue, and a convenient damsel to endanger with the threat of mob violence. But Phyllis Coates nevertheless brings a ton of brassy energy to the film, and her rapport with Reeves’ Clark has just the right competitive energy to get her to read as his equal (even if she never gets to do much about it). She’s a solid Lois Lane!
- It’s Always the Costumes, Innit?: So, I WAS going to focus on how there’s this noticeably short padded vest under Reeves’ Superman costume, which you can see the seam of through the shirt and makes it look like he’s wearing a crop-top half the time… but the costume detail that kinda caught my fancy in this movie actually has to do with CLARK KENT. Because for whatever reason… Clark is wearing a pinkie ring.
Not a chunky one or anything… nothing attention-grabbing… just a simple metal band. And as soon as I saw it, I immediately began to fixate on the why of it. Was it a deliberate costuming choice? Did they think Clark Kent was the kinda guy who’d wear a pinkie ring? Was it a choice on Reeves’ part? Or was that just Reeves’ own personal ring, and he just didn’t take it off before shooting? It’s SUCH an odd choice…! - Superman vs. the Townies: So there’s a big confrontation in front of the hospital that I didn’t really get into much. The mob shows up, guns at the ready, and heads for the door, only to be greeted by Superman. He tries to talk them down, but someone in the crowd fires, nearly hitting Lois (who’s standing besides Supes). Superman tells her to get inside and stay away from the front of the building, before declaring: “Obviously you can’t be trusted with guns… so I’m going to take them away from you!” He then strides into the crowd and proceeds to single-handedly take down all the rowdy rednecks, and it is GLORIOUS. We only get to see a few seconds of it, but we see Reeves himself throwing punches, and actually PICK A MAN UP and FLING him at his buddies. It’s a thing of beauty.
NEXT ISSUE: Next time, we’ll be getting back on track with the final installment of the Batman Knock-Off Trilogy with 1996’s The Phantom! I swear to God, I’ll have this thing done before the end of the year! I just have a lot on my plate—I gotta work for a living, y’know?