World’s Finest #263 (1980)
by Danny O’Neil & Rich Buckler
cover by Ross Andru
Four years after their last story, Danny O’Neil writes the ending for the Super-Sons serial. It’s also the last story he writes for World’s Finest, moving to Marvel to work as an editor after this.
We begin with the Super-Sons defeating Doctor Sivana. By this point in time DC had acquired the rights to Captain Marvel, who in fact was having his own serial on World’s Finest.
Superman and Batman are watching over their sons, proud of them even if they don’t exist.
Wait, WHAT!?
That’s right: this story reveals that the Super-Sons are actually only a simulation on a computer… ON PAGE TWO.
As if THAT wasn’t weird enough already… the Super-Sons realize they’re not real!!!
Not weird enough for you? Superman Junior’s attempt to escape the simulation overloads the system…
…which, combined with Superman dumping radioactive waste on his house (???)…
…ends up MAKING THE SUPER-SONS REAL.
Yeah, uhm, I never thought I would ever say this but… I completely agree with Superman Junior.
Okay the premise is insane, but see what a difference having a writer who is not out of his mind can make.
Because the moment the Juniors leave the Fortress of Solitude, they come across an Arctic explorer who has gone nuts… and they save him and his team.
The Juniors JUST became real and they ALREADY did more heroic stuff than the entire Haney run COMBINED.
Don’t worry, though: it’s still a very dumb story.
This is not helped by Superman Junior being physically identical to his father. Because my first thought seeing this guy would be “wait, aren’t you a bit too old to be Superman’s son?”.
Batman doesn’t have a regular love interest at this point, so he just meets his son directly.
Batman giving us an accurate representation of what I feel like after finishing every Super-Sons review.
While this is going on, Superman is busy stopping an earthquake in the Arctic, in Metropolis and in Gotham City.
These are exactly the places where the Super-Sons went. Superman doesn’t take much to figure out the explanation.
So everything the Super-Sons touch becomes a disaster, uh?
Sounds legit.
Naturally the only solution is for the Super-Sons to kill themselves.
Superman sure has a thing against artificial beings, right?
He used to rationalize killing Bizarros all the time because “they’re not really alive”, and now this.
The Super-Sons are CLEARLY sentient, what does it matter if they were created by a computer?
The way to prove they’re not real is that they can’t say who their mothers ARE, because their identities were never revealed in the Haney run.
Also: you don’t care about who is the mother of your son? AT ALL?
Now his relationship with Silver Age Lois is beginning to make sense.
And then the Super-Sons KILL THEMSELVES.
You guys don’t seem all that heartbroken about it.
And that’s how the Super-Sons end… with THIS panel, which I think says everything about the entire series.
Historical significance: 0/10
I would have loved to see a follow-up where Superman explains all this to Lois.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
These two have way, WAY too much time on their hands.
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
It’s competent, and while having the sons indistinguishable from the fathers forces you to read a couple panels twice, it’s not badly drawn. The twist is WAY ahead of its time, and Batman’s moody reaction is fitting. Is… is this actually a GOOD story!?!?
Well I wouldn’t go THAT far. Superman is uncharacteristically cruel, the “science” is beyond laughable, and the ending is SUCH a downer that I can’t even celebrate getting rid of these idiots.
My biggest question, though, is… WHY does this story exist!? The Super-Sons stopped having stories four years earlier and O’Neil is leaving the company! Did he really need to tell THIS story before leaving?
Well… I have a theory of sorts. While far from his worst job at DC (looking at you Mod Wonder Woman!), his World’s Finest stories tended to be quite forgettable… the fact that I’ve skipped nearly all of them should tell you something.
But he DID inherit the main serial, which WAS the Super-Sons back when he started.
So my theory is that he refused to continue it because it was too stupid, to the point that O’Neil wanted to write off the ENTIRE series. He couldn’t do that while continue working (Bob Haney was still writing other serials on World’s Finest)… but since he was going to leave anyway, he dropped a final bomb!
Did Superman really need Batman? They really, REALLY need better hobbies
We’re very nearly at the end of the World’s Finest retrospective. The series will last until 1986, but to be honest everything after this point is rather boring so I couldn’t find anything to say about the following stories… but I will still cover an absolutely insane 1983 issue and the very final one.
Before that, let’s suffer with the Super-Sons one last time with THE SON AWARDS.