Somebody’s First Comic Book: Superman (1939 Series) #204

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TITLE: The Case of the Lethal Letters & The Fortress of Fear

CREDITS:
Writer: Cary Bates
Penciller: Ross Andru & Al Plastino
Inker: Mike Esposito & Al Plastino
Editor: Mort Weisinger
Cover Artist: Neal Adams
Publisher: DC Comics

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE: It’s Superman – strange visitor from another planet, and all that. And “LL” – well, I suppose they mean death because he pissed off Lex Luthor again, right?

IMPRESSIONS: In “The Case of the Lethal Letters,” we see Clark Kent on TV being interviewed by some ambush reporter who is claiming that the Daily Planet is only successful because it manages to get a lot of news about Superman. Geez, how do you think they pull that off? But suddenly, the reporter gives a brainwashed message from some villain promising to bring disaster to people important to Superman if he doesn’t retire. They go after another TV reporter, Lana Lang, first. (I vaguely remember her – she’s from Smallville, right? Clark’s girlfriend from high school?) Then, after he doesn’t quite have what it takes to save her, he starts to worry about his old girlfriend Lori Lemaris, the mermaid, and his current squeeze Lois Lane.

Okay, so evidently Superman is a pimp. But only with girls whose initials are “LL.”

The reveal of the villain is kind of cheesy, and the plan to take him out is incredibly poorly thought-out. It’s almost like someone drew the cover first then had to come up with a story to justify it.

There seems to be a second story here, “The Duplicate Superman,” but this old copy of the comic only has the first page of that one – two Supermen shaking hands – before there are a bunch of missing pages. Darn cheap bins.

The third story is “The Fortress of Fear.” Superman heads to his mysterious fortress, hidden away from the world, and decides to relax with a game of chess against a supercomputer. (Exactly why Superman chooses to house that computer in a giant robot that can hurl life-size chess pieces around is completely unclear.) After the robot goes berserk and starts hurling around life-sized chess pieces (who knew?), we see some scientists from a place called Kandor trying to warn him about some undefined danger. He starts to fight pretty much everything in his fortress of rest and relaxation, which seems to be populated entirely by things that can kill everybody else on the planet, before he finally figures out what the problem is. The Kandor guys never show up again.

This one is weak. There’s a basic understanding here just because it’s Superman, and everybody knows who Superman is, but both of the complete stories in this incomplete copy of the comic book seem to be predicated on a lot of knowledge of backstory, stuff that Joe Average has never heard of. Why all these “LL” girls are in love with Superman, what Kandor is and why the caption refers to it as being “bottled,” and why Superman decides to build a vacation resort full of deathtraps. Hard to really recommend this one.

GRADE: C+