Action Comics #300

Action Comics #300 (1963)
by Ed Hamilton & Al Plastino
cover by Curt Swan

What if we had a story where Superman is not super?

Also: technically there is no human on the cover.

We begin with the “Superman Revenge Squad” attacking Earth. Despite being a recurrent threat in the Superman books I’ve barely ever talked about them… because quite frankly they’re little more than a plot device.
They’re a bland assembly of uninspired space criminals who hate Superman. That’s about the extent of their characterization.

Case in point, their ONLY role in this story is to lead Superman into the far future.
He doesn’t run into the Iron Curtain Of Time for a very simple reason: Adventure Comics #318 won’t be written for another year, so the Time Trapper has not been created yet.

The SRS brought Superman here because in the future the Sun will become red, therefore taking away Superman’s powers.
The Sun WILL indeed become red… in about FIVE BILLION years, not just a million, so there are only 4 possible explanations, in order from least to most likely:
1) Superman is VERY wrong in his estimation of how much he traveled into the future
2) stars in the DC universe work differently
3) someone will mess with the Sun in the future
4) they didn’t think or care about this

Say goodbye to the Superman Revenge Squad, because they no longer play into this!
See why I said they’re more plot devices than characters?

Of course this scenario has little in common with the actual evolution of the Sun.
It treats the Sun going red as getting simply hotter, which IS true… but it will also become SIGNIFICANTLY bigger. We haven’t figured out the details yet, but when this happens it looks like there will be just two outcomes:
A) Earth is swallowed by the Sun
B) Earth survives as a molten, atmosphere-less husk just outside the Sun

Which makes me wonder: what did they pave the roads to Metropolis with, Inertron???

Jokes aside, this is a VERY effective scenario highlighting Superman’s loneliness and hopelessness.

Superman learns what happened by finding a telepathic helmet in a museum, because why not.
I appreciate that Hamilton chose the seemingly random year of 824,057 AD; typically these kind of stories tend to pick either a round number or just adding zeros to the time of publishing.
In the hands of most other writers, this would have been the year 999,999 AD or 1,1963,000 AD.

Even that far into the future they are STILL worshipping Superman!!!

So Earth is just evacuated. Kind of surprising that it took them THIS LONG.

Superman finds Mr. Mxyzptlk there, and tries to return home by saying his own name backwards.
The heat must be affecting him, because this trick would only work if Superman was currently in the Fifth Dimension… it wouldn’t send him from Earth into the Fifth Dimension!!!

Both Mxy and Perry White don’t know what he’s talking about.

You might have guessed that these are robots.
The reason for it is that at some point they were created to march in a parade to commemorate Superman. I almost get it for Supergirl and for Superman’s friends… but is recreating two of his worst enemies really the best way to honor his memory???

Also: once humanity leaves Earth forever, they leave behind the replicas of four humans: Perry White, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen.
Which means that, should any alien visit this “memorial”, they would be convinced that the representation of what humanity contributed to the universe are going to be a newspaper publisher, a supervillain, an insane stalker and a complete idiot.
Sounds depressingly legit.

Wouldn’t YOU want to destroy the Earth if THIS was the way its inhabitants presented themselves to alien civilizations?

Superman’s last chance is to reach the Fortress of Solitude. He’s already lonely enough to accept the company of the Perry White robot.

The future has some strange creatures, like those Foreshadowing Balloons that won’t play a role in the resolution.

They manage to reach Smallville ON FOOT. It’s a little easier in the 60s, when Smallville had not yet been established as being in Kansas.

Good news: Superman won’t starve to death.

Bad news: EVERYTHING ELSE.

Despite being a 14 page story, Hamilton still manages to find time to let it breathe and bring some emotional weight to what Superman is feeling.

It also sells that while this might technically still be Earth, it’s basically an alien planet now.

We’ve seen many times that the Silver Age Superman didn’t think twice about ending the life of a sentient artificial being. But it seems his attachment to Robot Perry is enough to avoid his destruction.

If you were wondering how Superman could grow a beard on the cover.

Even Atlantis has been abandoned. Superman sure is taking a weird place: Metropolis is most likely in the East Coast already, and the Fortress of Solitude is in the Arctic… is Atlantis THAT far up north in the Atlantic Ocean?

Luckily Superman won’t have to take the whole journey, thanks to the Foreshadowing Balloons.

Without his powers, even getting inside the Fortress of Solitude is a hard task.

Ironically, the fact that Superman eventually will restore Kandor to its original size is what will doom him to remain here until he dies.

Or maybe not.

This point really confuses me. Superman picks up a piece of Red Kryptonite to use on himself; hopefully he’s not referring to the time Red Kryptonite turned Krypto into a female dog who gave birth.

For a moment I thought Superman was going to use Red K to shrink himself.
Which wouldn’t work anyway, given that in pre-Crisis times Red Kryptonite did NOT affect Kryptonians under red suns.
But then he shrinks himself by using a shrinking ray laying around… so what was even the point of bringing up Red Kryptonite?

What I expected: Superman using the rocket to go into a solar system with a yellow star, recover his powers and go back to the 20th century.
What actually happens: he uses the ship as a time machine.

Seriously, why did he need Red Kryptonite AND the shrinking ray?

And so we end the story with Superman reflecting on whether this was only a possible future.

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 Historical significance: 4/10
While I don’t think this has direct impact in pre-Crisis comics, the premise of Superman being trapped in a deserted planet with no powers will be used many times, both in comics and adaptations.
Most notably in the episode “Hereafter Part 2” in the Justice League cartoon, where Superman is sent into the far future by Vandal Savage (it also fixes the idea of the Sun going too soon: it was caused by Vandal Savage messing with a superweapon).

It’s also quite probably my absolute favorite Vandal Savage story: he plays both the villain and the co-protagonist of the second part, because before Superman is transported there Savage is the last man on Earth and he goes through an interesting character arc.
As if that wasn’t cool enough already, it ALSO has my favorite Vandal Savage quote.

Silver Age-ness: 4/10
Lower than you’d expect. We have robots of Superman’s friends a million years into the future and Red Kryptonite, but there’s a deliberate attempt to be as realistic as the setting allows AND we even get a bit of introspection.

Does it stand the test of time? 9/10
Jokes aside, this is still a very solid story. I think that to do the story today you would only need two changes: remove or at least reduce the presence of Robot Perry (his presence detracts a bit from Superman’s isolation), and be clearer with the ending.
But other than, it sells very well how desperate the situation is, how determined and resourceful Superman is to survive the adventure without powers, and the exploration of this alien-looking Earth is fascinating. A classic for good reason.

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Interesting letters: adding to my confusion, THE FIRST LETTER published in the issue reinforces the fact that Red Kryptonite does NOT affect non-powered Kryptonians.

I find it reassuring that even in 1963 readers had enough of doppelgangers.

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What else was in Action Comics #300?

A Supergirl story that begins with her dreaming of riding Comet. I should point out that, at this point, she KNOWS he’s not actually a horse but a centaur turned into a horse.
So clearly there is no dirty subtext of any kind about her being a cowgirl that I could joke about, no sir.

Always shocking to remember that Supergirl stories had continuity, a rarity in the Superman books.

Despite his amnesia, Comet has a few adventures until Supergirl finds him.

The reason why I can confidently say she knows his origin at this point is that when Comet comes up with a fairy tale to tell a frightened child… because of course being spoken to telepathically by a flying horse would calm anyone… is actually his real origin story, even if Comet doesn’t remember it precisely.

It also has potentially the weirdest Comet mission, WHICH IS SAYING SOMETHING.