Action Comics #314 (1964)
by Ed Hamilton & Al Plastino
cover by Curt Swan
I was under the impression that I already reviewed this one, but I guess that after years the dumbest Silver Age stories start to blend into each other.
The story begins with Superman being summoned by the Justice League.
Which is missing Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman because… well the story doesn’t say it now, but it’ll be hilarious later.
The JLA discovered a tape from Jor-El sent together with his son’s rocket, and the comic needs to find SOME reason why Superman hasn’t found it in decades.
The limitless technological prowess of Krypton was unable to figure out a way to secure that recording inside the rocket without injuring the passenger, so the best solution was to tying it to the outside. Because I guess they never quite managed to invent duct tape.
Sounds legit.
Jor-El’s recap of Superman’s origin now includes him asking a supercomputer if there would have been enough time to build rockets for every Kryptonian.
This is simultaneously a good addition to the lore, explaining why more people didn’t escape, and a bad addition, because why would Kryptonian leaders not believe Jor-El if the computers they trust SO much say he’s right?
This is the framing device for the actual story: what would have happened if Superman was sent to a DIFFERENT planet?
That is SUCH a great idea for a story! DC Comics has A LOT of very interesting planets.
What if Superman was sent to one of the many, MANY Legion planets where everyone has powers? The retcon about most of them being descendent from Earth is decades away!
Or maybe send him to a planet where he DOESN’T look like a member of the same species! How different would Superman be if he LOOKED alien to the people he’s protecting?
Or maybe send him to Brainiac’s planet! Would he prevent his future enemy from existing, or would HE become the villain?
Instead, the story decides to create all the planets we’ll explore.
Surely, SURELY the comic will find anything interesting to do with these planets, right?
Well, the first one is a planet of giants…
…so Superman puts up a costume that looks a lot like Atom’s and becomes a superhero.
Let me remind you that he is THE ONLY PERSON ON THIS PLANET of this size, and he STILL needs to protect his secret identity.
But Superman escaped this possibility because Jor-El would prefer his son to get laid.
The second planet is an underwater world, which would allow him to act like Superman with ease.
But Jor-El wanted to spare his only child the terrible pain of growing up to be Silver Age Aquaman.
Next up, what if Superman grew up on a planet where guns have not been invented yet?
Jor-El is kind of xenophobic in this one.
Staying on the theme of planets where Superman won’t have powers, we have one where a satellite creates eternal night. I’m going to make 3 assumptions about this.
First, that this “satellite” is actually and ENORMOUS space station, otherwise it couldn’t possibly create THAT much shadow.
Second, that this planet is tidally locked; only one hemisphere is facing the sun at all times, and on the other one it’s always night anyway.
Third, that this part is going to suck like the others.
“I shall become a diro” doesn’t quite have the same punch of “I shall become a bat”, doesn’t it?
If Grant Morrison hasn’t found a way to reference this planet, I will be disappointed.
All the planets so far have had somewhat believable explanations why Superman wasn’t sent there.
The local population is too different or too primitive, or the planet is too dark.
So the choice is going to be between two planets that are nearly identical, except one has a yellow sun and the other a red sun.
You would think that choosing the planet where his son would become a god would be a no-brainer.
Silver Age Superman came to Earth older than he typically does in most other eras and adaptations, being already able to speak, so the woman’s reaction makes sense.
The man immediately deducing that the kid comes from an advanced civilization because he speaks a foreign language and not, you know, LANDING ON A SPACE ROCKET, not so much.
As a reminder, Jor-El is not looking at alternate universes here: his computer is giving him a probabilistic estimation based on what it knows about those planets.
So either on this planet EVERYONE is a super-scientist, or the computer is just making stuff up.
Which is honestly the most realistic part of this entire story.
As you have seen, the story is contriving ways in which Superman can take up identities that are incredibly similar to members of the Justice League.
When it comes to replicating the Flash, a character defined by a superpower that SUPERMAN ALREADY HAS, it makes up a new origin story on the fly.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to say that something on this planet blocks his OTHER powers???
To recap, Jor-El did not send his son to this planet because he assumed that, should he develop superpowers unrelated to his Kryptonian heritage, he would be too incompetent to use them.
Thanks Aquaman, this was such a complicated story that we really needed this final recap.
And that’s why Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman are not here… the story couldn’t figure out a way to give Superman their powers.
Because that’s somehow hard to do with GREEN LANTERN???
Historical significance: 0/10
Mercifully forgotten.
Silver Age-ness: 60/10
Each origin is crazier than the last!!!
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
Talk about COMPLETELY dropping the ball. As mentioned the premise is FASCINATING… and the comic ends up doing nothing interesting with it.
“What if Superman grew up to resemble a different Justice League hero?” has been done again in 1999. This time, they DID explore what would have happened if he became a Green Lantern or if he landed on Mars.
I’m pretty sure “What if Superman became a Green Lantern?” had been done before.
To this day I don’t think anyone has had the courage to do a story where Superman becomes Wonder Woman.
Even though DC Comics HAS made gender-bent alternate versions of Wonder Woman.
What else was in Action Comics #314?
A Supergirl story that I really SHOULD have included in her retrospective, about her biological mother getting sick.
I see that Kryptonian science has not advanced much from the times when their computers hallucinated origin stories.
The story does establish that Supergirl was named after the ancient Kryptonian goddess of beauty.
I get the feeling that this has been referenced once or twice.
Pretty sure that her first pet being this six-legged weirdo has not.
I never ceased to be amazed by the insane evolution of Krypton where you have people, dogs and monkeys that are indistinguishable from humans… and all sorts of crazy-looking animals.
I didn’t include this story in the retrospective because it’s mostly a recap of previous Supergirl stories. But it also has her mother snapping in a way you rarely see in the Silver Age.
And if Supergirl’s biological father comes off as a bit insensitive here… her adoptive parents are just downright cruel.
Because instead of TELLING THEIR DAUGHTER TO VISIT HER SICK MOTHER, they gaslight her into believing she’s not wanted anymore!!!
At this point in Supergirl’s series, she has technology that allows people to leave Kandor permanently… if someone else takes their place.
So her adoptive parents eventually accept to take the place of her biological ones.
And because the Silver Age never found a coincidence too forced to be shoehorned into a story… “by an amazing coincidence”, the Danvers find a Kandorian who looks exactly like their daughter’s adoptive daughter.
Supergirl was HIGHLY serialized, so the story continues in Action Comics #315.
Where the Danvers lose ANOTHER adoptive daughter…
…and the adoptive mother randomly gets poisoned into becoming evil.
It doesn’t make sense in context either.
And the storyline ends in Adventure Comics #316, with Supergirl’s father using a supercomputer to show his daughter that she would suffer a terrible fate if the status quo is not restored.
He’s Jor-El’s brother alright.
You know maybe the fact that the Kryptonian civilization ceased to exist isn’t such a bad thing.