It’s October! That’s the month that has Halloween in it. Halloween is about ghosts and stuff. You know who sometimes has to deal with ghosts and stuff? Superman. Let’s go.
“The Ghosts That Haunted Superman”
SUMMARY
Issue: Superman #214, February, 1969
Superman is in a dark cavern deep below the surface of the Earth, gathering rare elements for the Metropolis Geological Institute. A feeling comes over him that he’s not alone. He turns and sees…
the spectral form of a foe who should be dead. The Composite Superman, who dresses like half Superman and half Batman, but who has far more powers than even that duo.
A brief fight ensues, but the hero can only pass through the incorporeal enemy. Composite Superman has no problem using his powers to conjure some kryptonite and increase gravity so that Superman is pinned to the cavern floor. “I’m about to put an end to your existence, Superman” the ghostly villain says. “The prospect of dying terrifies you, doesn’t it? Perhaps if you plead for mercy…”
But Superman refuses to surrender, and once he says so the apparition disappears. Superman is left only with his weakness from kryptonite exposure to prove it ever happened.
The next day, Clark is going about his business in the Daily Planet offices when the ghostly form of another villain, Metallo, approaches Lois. Clark warns the ghost to stay away from her, but Lois doesn’t see anything. The ghost fades away and Clark leaves, but Lois reasons that he could have been seeing something that she can’t because he has super-senses, reawakening her occasional belief that Clark may secretly be Superman. So, when Clark is sent to interview a movie star, Lois tags along claiming she wants to get the “woman’s angle” on the story. This is the very thing she used to be punished with, but now she’s using it to keep an eye on Clark, in case he slips up and reveals his secret identity.
During the interview, Clark sees the Metallo ghost floats by the window. He makes an excuse to duck out then gets into his costume and looks for the ghost. Suddenly, an ethereal vortex opens up and brings him to some kind of otherworldly location. And to make matters worse, in this place the ghost can physically grapple with Superman. Since Metallo has kryptonite, the fight goes poorly for the hero and soon the ghost is demanding that Superman kneel and beg for mercy.
Superman remains defiant and is suddenly sent back to Earth. The ghost is nowhere to be seen.
Later, Clark and Lois are walking down the street and are spotted by some gangster hitman who wants to put an end to crime reporter Lois Lane. He manages to successfully shoot her, even with Clark standing right there, which would have made him an extremely noteworthy assassin if he had been using a regular gun. Instead, he is using a “special gun” that encases Lois in some kind of plastic capsule and sends her flying up up and away toward space, to suffocate and freeze to death.
Naturally, Clark is immediately Supermanning after Lois, but his rescue is interrupted by a third dead supervillain ghost…
…Zha-Vam, a powerful champion created by the gods in an attempt to humble Superman (it didn’t work out for them). Superman tries to ignore the ghost so he can rescue Lois, but Zha-Vam won’t allow it. Superman reaches his breaking point and shouts “Just what do you want? Either kill me – if you can— or get off Earth!”
Following the pattern, the ghost disappears when Superman refuses to give up.
Superman reaches Lois, worried he may be too late, but she reveals that as soon as she was in actual danger of freezing, fresh warm air appeared inside the capsule. This confirms Superman’s hypothesis: whoever is messing with them doesn’t actually want to hurt anyone. He calls out for whomever it is to reveal themselves.
The culprit is Nador, is a very powerful young alien shapechanger who can duplicate anyone, powers included. He has been trying to make Superman beg for mercy so he can earn a place in a group called the Omega Commandos, but Superman is simply too resolute.
Superman forgives Nador and accompanies him back to his homeworld, which impresses the Omegas so much that Nador gets to join after all.
SUPERMAN VS BIGOTS?
My usual series of Superman articles on the Avocado is Superman vs Bigots, but I’m not always in the headspace to deal with that kind of content, so I’ve taken this “Hallowe’en” thing as an excuse to do this story instead just for fun (and will probably do it annually from now on, if I remember).
This story has nothing to do with the never-ending battle against racism or fascism, but there is a message tacked on about judging people by their appearance. Nador’s alien species seems to have beauty standards similar to those on Earth, so the Omega Commandos think Nador is goofy-looking. They don’t want someone goofy-looking around. This is why they send him to make Superman beg for his life, intended it as an impossible quest that would keep him out of the group.
In the end though, they are so impressed that Nador got Superman to come to them that that they don’t care about his appearance anymore. Now if only every goofy-looking individual could impress them, they’d be over their prejudices.
SUPERMAN VS HALLOWEEN
I admit that, aside from being about an ostensible haunting, this is not the most Halloween-y of Superman stories I could have picked for this. As my close friends will attest (with an exhausted tone in their voice, I assume), I have opinions about the difference between any old horror-themed story and a specifically “Halloween” story. But the story never claims to be a Halloween story, so I can’t fault it for that. That said, Nador’s disguises are, in a way, him “dressing up” as the dead to do a prank. That’s pretty Halloween. If only scenes in Metropolis had been a bit more autumnal, just to set the mood.
These ghosts are not quite spooky enough to be proper Halloween fodder. They, being based on dead supervillains, look mostly like glowing green supervillains. A more Halloween-focused story would give them visible skulls or something to really make ’em creepy. Still, I bet it was fun for the kids of the era to see glimpses of old dead supervillains from stories they may never have read. I would’ve loved it. I suppose it is also a rarity now for a superhero to even have three classic villains who have remained dead. Gotta keep those trademarked characters alive.
I find it interesting that in this era the character and stories treated ghosts as fictional. That was something that was not 100% consistent over the first few decades of Superman, but actually was pretty close. Scientific explanations like the one in this issue were far more common than actual spirits. It was only once the DC Universe became more of an intertwined thing, various franchises owned by the same company having to share one world, that we needed to say that ghosts are real in Superman so that they can also be real in whatever the other books have going on.
OTHER STUFF
- So who the heck are these Omega Commandos anyway? They seem to be super-powered children. They call themselves “commandos” but they’re described as “an exclusive interplanetary club” and say that Nador’s abilities “would be an asset to our functions at solar social events!” So is it just some social club with a silly militaristic name? If so, it’s weird they send Nador out to fight Superman for his test. Also, their rules for membership are essentially those of the Legion of Superheroes, which I believe was also introduced as a “club” when it first appeared. I guess clubs are just something that appealed to the kids in the audience. The Omega Commandos are a weird group. Let’s get them in a movie.
- The Lois side of this issue doesn’t amount to much. She’s never even given the traditional gaslighting explanation for everything so she can go back to assuming she was wrong about the secret identity for a while. And the hitman who almost killed her just escaped unnoticed. Perhaps Lois and Clark just assumed that whole thing was part of Nador’s pranks.
- The actor that Lois and Clark interview is named Rock Salton and he boringly describes how he has been acting since he was nine and his whole family back to the 17th Century were actors. He has a sister who is a model named Candy Salton. Possibly all of this is a reference to something contemporary kids would find funny. I don’t know it.
- All these villains asking Superman to kneel before them and none of them is Zod.
- I’m going to try to do a proper Superman vs Bigots next month. For now, here’s this, in case anyone is looking for a very specific tattoo of that classic Superman quote:
