Episode 167 - Legends of Dead Earth: Superman with Cly Forsyth
Case and Jmike continue their journey through Legends of the Dead Earth with guest Cly from Point in Progress! This time, they’re looking at 1996’s Superman Annual #8, “The League of Supermen,” a far-future story where Superman’s legacy lives on through a team of heroes who each inherit only one of his powers... and all the complications that come with it.
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Men of Steel Full Episode
Originally aired: July 31, 2026
Edited by Sophia Ricciardi
Scored by Gen Moonen
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⏱️ YouTube Chapters
00:54 Welcome and Guest Intro
02:44 Legends of Dead Earth
03:37 Jmike Recaps
09:37 The League of Supermen
10:10 The Cover and Art Team
14:33 A Great Premise in One Issue
16:03 The League in Action
19:39 Superpowers as Disabilities
22:18 Meeting the New Recruits
25:05 Heat and the Team’s Drawbacks
28:02 The Superman Hologram
30:31 The History of the League
32:23 Speed and Tempest
37:26 The Training Mission Turns Real
41:21 Superman Crosses a Line
42:38 Can They Trust Superman?
45:17 Assaulting the Superman Facility
49:29 Superman’s Final Test
52:41 The Death of Superman
53:18 The Story’s Final Lesson
57:20 Why the One-Shot Works
01:00:23 Heat, Sleep Deprivation, and Representation
01:02:56 Final Thoughts and Rankings
01:11:15 Disability Representation
01:12:38 Cly’s Plugs
01:14:01 Jmike and Case’s Plugs
01:17:03 Patreon Shout-Outs
01:18:24 Trade School
01:21:16 Next Time: Bizarro
01:21:44 Credits
01:22:04 Digging for Kryptonite Promo
Transcription
00:00
Case
And speed comes in having just, like, hacked their database by way by wearing the speed suit. So she's like, I was able to try a thousand codes in a minute because I was wearing the suit. But I'm. I'm really hurting because, like, I'm really drained from wearing the suit for so long.
00:14
Jmike
I can almost guarantee that the password was Superman.
00:21
Cly
Yeah.
00:22
Case
No, the password was martha.
00:25
Cly
Oh, God.
00:54
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm Case Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, Jmike Folson.
01:02
Jmike
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show.
01:05
Case
Welcome back to the show. We are resurrecting a theme that we have been running with for the last couple weeks now. Resurrecting is the wrong term because it's just still alive. It's just still going. I don't know. I was trying to make this work for what we're talking about here, because today we are continuing our conversation about the Legends of Dead Earth. And specifically, we're talking about the 1996 Superman Annual, which is subtitled the League of Supermen. And to have a conversation about the League of Supermen, we're joined by Cly.
01:40
Cly
Hi, everybody. I'm so glad to be here talking about super men, plural, with these lovely folks.
01:49
Case
Yeah, Cly, thanks so much for coming on. You've been on another pass, but why don't you tell the folks at home where people can find you and what you're from?
01:57
Cly
Yeah. Hi, I'm Cly. You can find me most places at Clyclone or ClycloneMc, depending on the platform. I don't know. I gave up on brand consistency. It's fine. But you can find me on our YouTube channel. Point in progress. I host a podcast called DC Graduates, where we go through all the animated DC films and we've got a lot of other things cooking in the pipeline. So excited to get back to film. Throwing all my creative energy into that.
02:32
Case
Yeah, it's a totally fun channel I've been on, talking about either the Death or the Return. I forget which. Cause I watch both for the purpose of the conversation.
02:40
Cly
Yeah, I don't know. I have a spreadsheet somewhere I could tell you.
02:44
Case
I think it was the Return, which is in keeping for the conversation today. But so for our listeners at home, we are continuing our conversation about the Legends of Dead Earth, which was an event from 1996, where all the annuals in DC Comics were set in this whole period, far in the future. And so there's these weird perspectives of things. And as a result It's a bunch of annuals that I think are pretty accessible because they're kind of intended to be, like, totally standalone one shots and so Sly. Did you have any idea what I was talking about when I pitched this to you?
03:15
Cly
No clue. We had just wrapped another recording together, and you were like, hey, I'm working on this project for the podcast. Do you want to read one of these two annuals? And you pitched them both to me, and I said, sure, I'll read one of them. Throw it at me. And that's about all I knew going into it.
03:37
Case
All right, perfect. So, J. Mike, I think this is time that we do everyone's favorite segment within the show, which is J. Mike tries to explain what we're about to talk about.
03:50
Jmike
Badly. You forgot the badly part.
03:52
Case
I am not trying to say badly. Awkwardly, maybe. I don't think I've ever said badly about.
03:59
Jmike
I'm saying badly. But anyway, far off in the distant future. I think we said it was like, 3200 years from now. At one point, far away from the distant future, Earth is dead. In this particular issue, they said robotic beings had captured the essence of Superman and traveled with it to. With the humans who left Earth to another planet. And they had basically genetically altered a few people with the essence of Superman. But there's a gimmick. Everyone has one power of his. So, like, I think it starts off with one guy has. He has the heat vision, but the drawback is he has to release the heat that builds up in his body, like, every 15 minutes or so.
04:46
Jmike
Next has, like, his flying ability, but he can't really, like, not fly because if he stands still too long, he'll, like, float off into space. The next guy has, like, his X ray vision, which works when he's on a mission, but after the mission's over, he's kind of blind, so he has to wear, like, lead line glasses. Another guy has his invulnerability, but, like, he can't feel anything. And the other guy has the superhuman strength, but he can't hold anything without crushing it. And so they're basically the beginner version of the League of Superman. And as the story progresses, two more people come along. Two recruits come along, and the girl has super speed, but she has to wear a suit for it. And I forget what her. Her drawback is or the drawback for the speed. I don't remember the drawback for speed.
05:41
Case
Yeah, but because they're artificial, they don't have the same drawbacks the way the. So what you're referring to is that the members of the League of Supermen each are infused with the DNA of Superman. But because they're humans, their human body can only tolerate one superpower. And the ones who get these modifications have like some sort of weird drawback depending on which type that you've referred to. The two recruits haven't had the genetic modification yet, so they're wearing artificial suits to simulate superpowers. And so like the speedster, like yes, she'll get really tired after a while. Like that's a point that they make. There are drawbacks, but they're. The drawbacks aren't the same as. Yeah, as the built in powers.
06:23
Cly
Yeah.
06:24
Case
So yeah, it's a speedster and then the other one, which you can.
06:26
Cly
Yeah, the other guy. Yeah.
06:29
Jmike
Oh, the Super.
06:29
Cly
Sorry, continue.
06:30
Jmike
Yeah, but like, so they incorporate them into the group. They come to find out there's a plot against them after Super. The. Oh, also forgot to mention, actually the AI version of Superman is there with them. He's basically a hologram who gives him orders and tells him stuff to do and how to go about doing things. He comes up with this bright idea for this super weapon he made called the Gauntlet, which is basically like this plasma web that surrounds the Earth to prevent it from outer space attacks. But they notice that he's kind of like not all there most of the time. He's kind of very cold and calculated with his interactions with him.
07:06
Jmike
After a point and they just, they come out, are warned about an attack on the Gauntlet exterior locations on Earth or on that Earth or like the generator, the geothermal processing plant is under attack or this bomb or something's going to happen to it. And while they're solving all the problems with it, they come to find out that Superman himself had ordered the attack or on it. And so they sit down and think, they're like, this can't be Superman. Superman would never do this. And they're like, well this is very out of character. So they question about it and he's like, you know, back on Earth we had a saying where, you know, in order to make an omelet you had to crack a few eggs. Hahaha. They're like, oh, this is very unsuperman. Ish, something's wrong. So they decided to take.
07:51
Jmike
Shut him down for the good of everybody. And he sets them up with different trials to get through. They all. Well, most of them make it through. Some of them sacrifice themselves in order to let Everyone else go through. And by the time they make it, Superman, he's like, oh, surprise, you did it. And I want to thank you for shutting me down because I noticed that I was starting to lose my humanity and I couldn't have that. And there's nothing more important than being human than humanity. So he basically tells them that he's shutting him. He wasn't allowed to shut himself down, so he had to figure out a way to have them shut him down for him. And he was like, there wasn't any real danger with the atrocities that were happening.
08:34
Jmike
I had calculated it so, like, everyone would be safe anyway. And the big gauntlet thing was basically a weather satellite system that I put into orbit. But I wanted you guys to realize that what you're doing is very important to the survival of humanity. And with that, he kind of like fades off into the ether. And they afterwards have a big press conference where they're like, superman, sacrifice everything to make sure everyone will be okay. And from now on, we're going to live up to that legacy and there will be no more artificial Superman. We're going to use our natural abilities to save everyone.
09:09
Case
Reverse that.
09:11
Jmike
Huh?
09:12
Case
Reverse that. It's not that they're no more artificial. It's that they're no longer going to infuse humans with superpowers. So they're going to use artificial methods to replicate superpowers.
09:22
Cly
It was the same thing in those closest.
09:24
Case
I know. I'm just. The wording was reversed.
09:27
Cly
Pedantic semantics.
09:30
Case
Is it pedantry when we're talking about the opposite point?
09:35
Cly
I don't know. We're having a great time.
09:37
Case
Yeah, no, it's. It's all good. No, no, you're. You got it. Like, you know, again, these are one shot annuals. So it's, you know, the story is pretty concise. Yeah. Like, it. This is a really eye catching concept of a story. Like, I, I saw this cover and I was like, I have to buy this book because it was really cool just to see a bunch of supermen with cool powers and a weird mixed group doing all kinds of cool stuff. So, yeah, J, Mike, you got the story. That's exactly right.
10:08
Jmike
Yes, I did the thing.
10:10
Case
You did the thing. Yeah. So let's talk about this issue here before we get too far in. I want to talk about the COVID and then I want to talk about the credits page of this book. We have had this conversation about annuals recently because we've been talking about annuals. One of the things about Annuals from either publisher, but especially D.C. in this time, is that there's two ways for it to go. Either it's the cream of the crop doing a story that they just want to tell and that they don't normally get a chance to, or it is a weird mix of people. And when you look at the COVID and the. And the credits page, there are so many pencils and so many anchors on this team. And I like.
10:51
Jmike
It's.
10:51
Case
It's a lot of names. And then the only name that I really recognize is Jerry Ordway, who did the COVID which I want to call out. He also did the Adventures of Superman cover, and I think maybe he did. He might have done a bunch of these covers because he also, I think, did the man of Steel cover.
11:08
Jmike
Are we detecting consistency maybe now?
11:11
Case
Now that I'm saying that, I'm now wondering if he did all of them.
11:14
Jmike
Because, like, some of these annual issues we've gone through have been. There's a whole spectrum of. Hey, this is pretty interesting to. Hey, that's very out there. Okay.
11:27
Case
He did. He did the action comics one, too, which we haven't talked about yet. So he actually did all the Superman covers. I doubt he did Superboy and Supergirl, but it doesn't look like it. But at least for the actual Superman books, because there were four of them at the time, he did all the covers. So that's a pretty cool detail right there. And speaks to, like. Jerry Ordway is an amazing pencilr. We haven't talked about him a lot, even though he was the main penciler for a good chunk of the trailer triangle era on. On Superman. But we have talked about him when we talked about the power of Shazam. J. Mike, if you remember when we talked about power of Shazam Volume 1 with. With JD like, he was the writer and artist on that entire series.
12:08
Jmike
Okay.
12:10
Case
And particularly that. That watercolored first, like, graphic novel, like, story that. That happened in there. The actual origin story for Shazam or for Captain Marvel, in that he did. He did all that. He did the water coloring for that, too. So.
12:23
Jmike
Just.
12:24
Case
Just a fantastic artist. I. I love his work. And you can see just how a master of his craft is. He is when you look at this cover, because it's so striking with. With this team here.
12:36
Cly
I really like the play of shadows in the COVID I think it creates such a striking, like, I can see why you walked by this and picked it up, because it's so intriguing. You see all the Superman. You see them with. Exhibiting their one power. And the. The bomb generator thing immediately catching your eye and. And the sense of, like, what. What is going on here?
13:02
Jmike
What.
13:02
Cly
What's the urgency? Like, you want to pick it up and figure out what's going on?
13:07
Case
Yeah, yeah. Just does a great job of like, hinting at, like, the. The twist of the book, you know, like. Because when you first look at it, if you don't know that, it's like they're each restricted to one power. It's like, here's a bunch of guys dressed up as Superman. Like. Cause they're wearing the full Superman costume. There's no, like, modification to it, but it shows off each of their powers so well. And, you know, once. Once you know the context, you're like, this is like, just incredible economy of storytelling. You know, it's such like, here. Here's the team in one shot, and they. You can tell what they all do, and it's really cool.
13:39
Jmike
But.
13:40
Case
But then we get into the actual book, and I think that the art team is doing fine with. With this book. Like, there. There's no spot where I'm like, this is, you know, atrociously bad. Like, there's some spot where this doesn't feel like the A team, but it's definitely, you know, it. It's definitely a mixed bag of. Of art. Like, none. None that I would, like, I say is bad, but it's inconsistent. And because there's multiple people involved and there's just, like, you know, weird proportions and stuff like. Like that going on. And it's. It's just interesting going into this one, because I think the. The premise is the strongest part about this issue. And then the execution is truncated by virtue of the fact that it's annual rereading. This one, I was, like, very frustrated that it was one issue.
14:33
Jmike
Really?
14:35
Case
Well, because it's. It's such a. Like, I. I.
14:40
Jmike
The.
14:41
Case
I will talk about the beats. Like, I. I just kept on thinking, like, man, they. They cover so much ground so quickly in this thing. When this idea of a team where everyone has one power could breathe. And frankly, this idea is. Was allowed to breathe because there's a comic that has this exact premise that came out, like, 10 years later, which is Dynamo 5, where a Superman analog goes around and has sex with a lot of women and then has a bunch of bastards. And then when he dies, all of their kids or all of his kids, like, come out of hiding to take up the role. And each one has one superpower that's interesting. And The Team Dynamo 5 is. Each one has one power of Captain Dynamo. And so like. And that was a pretty cool book. Also a cool book.
15:29
Case
However, that was a stronger premise than its execution because I think like the idea of just like a team where everyone has one superpower of Superman is such a cool premise.
15:42
Cly
Yeah, for sure. What plot points would you have liked to see them explore more if they had more time with them?
15:51
Case
I mean, the big thing is just like the downfall of Superman.
15:54
Cly
Okay.
15:55
Case
Yeah, like, I, I would have rather spent more time in like with them sort of like coming to the realization that Superman is going crazy. But let's talk about the beats.
16:03
Cly
Let's.
16:03
Case
Let's talk about the beats. See if that really needs that breathing room or if it just works fine as it is, as this one little like self contained kind of story. Yeah. So. So we open the story and there's a little bit of a prologue. Not prologue, like a little bit of a exposition dump saying that like, this is one of the many worlds that have gone off since Earth has fallen. It's a utopia. Except every now and then in this paradise, there are snakes and we see an explosion. And then we get another good shot. Like a full page spread of the League of Superman in action.
16:38
Case
And like the COVID we get each one of them using their one power really well and sort of, you know, they're all like shouting out each other's code names and making sure that we have like a good sense of like, here's all the deal with the team. Like, he. That was a good, that was a good call. That's. That, that's right. Pounder Shield. Get over there. You know, like all this stuff. Like, it's very Jim Shooter with like the like. Yeah, you have to like say everyone's codename. Like, you can't, you have to do that. It's called.
17:08
Cly
People can reference it moving forward. You're like, oh yeah, that's Flyboy, obviously.
17:15
Jmike
Right.
17:15
Case
But yeah, so they're investigating like a terrorist operation. There's robots, there's a bomb, there's traps and everything. And you know, we get to see each of them doing like cool stuff with their powers. We get see through, you know, seeing all the depth charges that are activated by the motion. We get Pounder grabbing the roof. This is one of the spots where, yes, he's the super strong guy, but also he is so fucking big when he holds up that, when he's holding up that roof, that it's where the art Is like, man, this is the 90s.
17:46
Cly
Hell, yeah. I will say, I know this is a Superman podcast, and I'm going to go off on a tangent that's not related to the Superman aspect of this book. But I thought the narrative premise was so interesting of, you know, earth is dead. We killed it, we've gone off, we found another planet, We've reinvented what we think society is. And part of that is, you know, this hologram of Superman and the drone bots that carried him with us. I recently just finished the Wayfarer series by Becky Chambers, which includes basically the same idea. Humans killed the planet, they went off in a spaceship to find something else, and then developed, like, a culture and community around living on that.
18:40
Cly
And I think exploring that theme of, like, what does society look like when we're the ones who get to kind of build it from the ground up? And to tell that story revolving around the mythos of the ideals of Superman, you know, truth, justice, better tomorrow. What does that actually mean? So far removed from Superman actually being a person? Anybody knows? I think that's just such a fascinating premise, and I really enjoyed getting to, like, live in that world and see how it plays out for real.
19:17
Case
You know who would do an amazing job with this book? Like, not. Not that this is a bad issue. It's just. It's. It's one issue doing it. Like, can you imagine Grant Morrison being given this plot? Like, a society built around Superman? Like, Jesus, they would have, like, so much fun with this whole premise.
19:34
Jmike
Please don't give him any more ideas.
19:39
Case
So anyway, there's. There is a bomb that they have to. To identify and then take out. They send S.H.I.E.L.D. Who is their invulnerable member, to do the. The soldier jumping on the grenade situation.
19:53
Cly
The Captain America move.
19:55
Case
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so he.
19:59
Cly
He.
19:59
Case
He suppresses it. And everyone's like, nice work, SHIELD you okay? Didn't feel a thing. I never do. And then we see them, like, climbing up out of this whole situation, and there's, like, a handler team that arrives on the scene. And this is where we get the first, like, bit about the issues. The I never do part is honestly the first line where you're like, oh, this kind of sucks. Having superpowers.
20:22
Cly
It's setting up. What does it mean to have super abilities? And to have all of these characters functionally be disabled and move throughout the world as disabled individuals while also being super highly powered in one specific skill set is something they don't interrogate. But they could have but exactly the 90s.
20:48
Case
This is such a cool fucking idea. Like I like this issue stuck with me so hard because it was such a, like the idea of the guy who is super strong can't not crush anything to the point that he has to be hand fed like a baby.
21:05
Jmike
Yeah.
21:05
Cly
Yeah.
21:06
Case
Like that is so fucking cool. Like superpowers as a disability is just like this amazing idea. And I really adore how this issue like approaches it. You know, we get see through like freaking out and honestly yelling at the support crew. Like they're like, you know, they take offense at how like they say no need to get so abusive. But like see through. Everything he looks at is just. He's looking through, he's seeing lines, he's seeing the outlines of things and then like their internals. And so they have to put lead glasses on him so he's blind if he's not in mission mode. And Pounder when he is like leave the poor guy alone. He like accidentally breaks the thing because he's so. He's so strong. They have to just like sit him down and like feed him a water bottle and like.
21:53
Case
And they're on their way back to this like big Superman facility. But like we're starting to get the vibe that they all need the support personnel. Like the league has a team and.
22:03
Cly
Like Flyboy has to literally be like held down so he doesn't just float off like that. That panel in particular was like, oh wow. Like they're the art at least is really getting into this.
22:18
Case
Yeah. So they go back to their base of operations and it is a Superman adorned building. Like they, this is the infrastructure. Like they are like they are a big part of the running of the system. Like Superman is deeply integrated into like the society as a whole. It's not just like some sort of like outside force. And right when they get back it's like, by the way, here are the rookies.
22:43
Cly
Here's the fngs. Have fun. Training mission. Let's go.
22:47
Case
I find their jackets incredible. I really wish. Those training uniforms are great. I love those.
22:54
Cly
That would make a killer like obscure cosplay or Halloween costume or something.
23:01
Case
Oh God. Can you imagine like just a bunch of Superman cosplayers just getting together but secretly being the League of Superman because they wanted to be.
23:10
Cly
That'd be awesome.
23:11
Case
So their code names don't get dropped until the end of the book, but it's Speed and Tempest is their code names.
23:19
Cly
Tempest is the coolest shit name.
23:22
Case
It's A good. It's a good fucking. You know what? He actually makes super breath, like, be, like. Wouldn't be that bad a power, actually, even though it's, like, consistently considered, like, the dumbest superpower.
23:31
Cly
And if he breathes too hard, his legs collapse.
23:33
Case
Yeah, well, yes. Yes. Can you imagine what the actual drawback would be if he had the power, though, as opposed to just, like, the machine? Like, just like, oh, it's too strong breathing.
23:45
Cly
Yeah, yeah. Like a freaking iron lung machine or something, probably.
23:53
Case
Yeah. Or like an oxygen tube or something like. Or, yeah, like, something, like, fed into his nose so that he can breathe out. Like, he can't breathe with his mouth at all or something like that. Yeah. I mean, we can imagine the speed ones. There's a billion drawbacks to super speed, like just aging too fast with friction or. Or anything like that.
24:10
Jmike
Yeah.
24:11
Cly
Have you all played Dispatch?
24:13
Jmike
Yep. I was just about to say that.
24:20
Case
I have not, so I just live with that.
24:22
Cly
Shout out to my favorite podcaster, Myanna Barron, got writing credits and voiced one of the roles in that. It was very fun.
24:31
Case
Yeah, I know. I've heard. I need to play it.
24:33
Jmike
Really?
24:34
Cly
Do you have an excuse?
24:37
Case
Yeah, it's true. I just had a child. At the point when this episode is dropping, it's going to be a little bit of time. But when this episode is recording, I am three weeks into being dad times two. So that's all fun.
24:53
Jmike
Give yourself some time to, in a moment of silence, go do your thing and play Dispatch, and then come back and be like, oh, I get it. But.
25:05
Case
So the new recruits are introduced to Heat, who is the leader of the team. We learn, and he's like, excuse me for a moment. And he opens up a window and just shoots a beam of heat outside, which, you know, he reveals that he absorbs solar radiation, just like Superman, and expresses it as heat beams. But unlike Superman, he has nothing that can, like, store that energy particularly well. It doesn't. Like, he just keeps on absorbing energy, and if he doesn't vent every 15 minutes or so, he'd burn up from the inside, which I, in my head, rewrote to be two hours for some reason, because that made more sense to me in life, because I can't imagine. He says that he can't get through a night's sleep because of his powers.
25:52
Case
And in, like, I can't actually imagine a person surviving only being able to go 15 minutes.
25:58
Cly
You can't is the answer.
26:00
Case
Right.
26:01
Cly
But when your internal organs start to heat up, I think you're Going to wake up and shoot a female every 15 minutes.
26:09
Jmike
Right.
26:10
Case
So this is one of those parts where I'm like, man, every 15 minutes. Every 15 minutes. You're the leader.
26:16
Cly
Yeah.
26:17
Jmike
I wonder if he has those Cyclops glasses.
26:20
Case
Well, no, that's the thing. Like he, like.
26:25
Cly
He.
26:26
Case
Yeah, he has to shoot out the heat beams. Even if he had a thing to do it, he'd have to actually like, actively do so he doesn't sleep. That's his soup. Like, that's his drawback. The heat, like they have an event part is just like the, the catalyst. The real thing is that he is sleep deprived like crazy.
26:42
Cly
Yeah, these powers suck.
26:44
Case
He has newborn situation.
26:49
Cly
Exactly.
26:50
Case
And maybe that's why the two hours came to me, because, like, it's a two hour cycle for feeding.
26:53
Cly
Yeah, but he's in a newborn situation would be reasonable. That would be livable. But if you want to really sink into the horrors of what it means to be a superpowered individual and artificially like DNA crafted, super powered individual, it's kind of horrific. And, you know, I love that.
27:16
Case
Yeah. So then we get a nice page where each panel is each member of the. Each other member of the team, the core five, and we see each of their. Their drawbacks. So like we said, see through everything he sees is just, you know, outlines and skeletons. Flyboy, if he is not consciously moving in a direction with will just float wherever, you know, wherever. Pounder is so strong that he crushes everything and so he has to be hand fed like a baby. And then SHIELD this is the obvious one for an invulnerable person. Can't feel. They do make the point though that he has to be led around like an old man because he might damage stuff just by bumping into it. I imagine that he, like, even with that, he still has more autonomy than like Pounder does, frankly.
28:02
Case
But the invulnerable, to the point where you can't feel anything is a pretty common trope for that specific superpower. But then the recruits are led into the room where they get to meet the boss and J Mike, as you mentioned, we get the hologram of Superman. And I like this for a few reasons. I like that it's like the hologram of Jor El. Superman has become his father in this particular aspect. I like that this is tied into like these annuals came out only two years after the death and return cycle of Superman. So like, they are leaning in hard to the whole, like doomsday story. Like they recount Superman's adventures at one point, and it's like, yeah, he died and he came back and, you know, we have his essence on file now and all this shit. So they're really leaning into that.
28:52
Case
It's mullet Superman for that fact. Just to point out that you know exactly when this story happened. It's in that little narrow window of time, but. But we get this, like, enthusiastic Superman who's like, yeah, it's great having new members, especially in the time of the Gauntlet, because we're creating space lasers.
29:09
Cly
I do love how in this whole scene where you're getting to meet the holographic Superman, they're kind of seeding what he's powered by all the, like, green imagery in the background. All the green technology and all the green and. Oh, yeah, I started to wonder, I wonder what's. What's powering this hologram.
29:35
Case
That's a really good call. Like, the. The text bubbles are all green. All the screens are green. I hadn't got that. That's a fantastic detail. Thank you for. For calling attention to that.
29:44
Cly
Hell yeah. My comms degree paid off in one specific instance.
29:52
Case
But. So everyone's like, hey, this whole Gauntlet thing sounds pretty weird, right? And then, like, he's like, it's Superman. He's got a good reason.
29:59
Cly
It's fine we blindly trusting him. It's Superman. He can do no wrong. He's perfect.
30:07
Case
I mean, that's, you know, like, that's the. That's the challenge right there. And he's like, now let's go so I can find a window, otherwise I might embarrass myself. And they leave and they. They're like, there's something that they don't catch about the computer generated light. Something cold laying it on thick for the audience there.
30:30
Cly
Oh, yeah.
30:31
Case
Then they put on meta ray bans or. Or not meta ravens, meta quests, so that they can just watch VR displays of everything. And we get a history dump of all the info, which all of these books do. And, like, again, this was like, super recent. So maybe it's just a primer for anyone who's, like, not caught up on Superman at this point. But we get a lot of info about the Superman dying at Doomsday's hand and then being resurrected. And then it jumps to, and when Earth died, by the way, we had his computer files on hand. So this particular world was able to fashion the League of Superman. And I thought, I think this is a really cool idea. Like the human volunteers Each being able to be given one superpower is really cool.
31:14
Case
I find that the prototype team that they show that have. It's hard to really identify only one. One's flying, so that one's like a flyer. But then we've got one who's like, half steel, and then, like, one that looks like it's a cat person. Like, I don't. I don't know what all their powers are, but it's. It's a cool look and, you know, it's fun from a design standpoint just to be like, here's some variations on the Superman costume. Like, I'm always here for variations. They don't always work, but, like, I'm always here to see them.
31:43
Cly
Yeah, no, I really enjoyed the. The, like, original five or whatever, really getting to see who they are and trying to guess what powers they might have had. And I would love a spin off of these five. Tell me more about them.
31:59
Case
Yeah. Tempest continues to ask, like, hey, this whole, like, laser guns in space thing, like, this seems weird, and it's just like. It's a little weird. Yeah, but it's Superman. He's, you know, he's been different recently, but it's fine. He's Superman.
32:13
Cly
Everything's fine.
32:16
Jmike
There's never been an evil Superman before who would do something like that. Right.
32:23
Case
So we pick up an hour later, and I like the little detail that heat, like, fires off a heat beam at the start of the story and the check in with the rookies. And so Speed has been equipped with a suit that will, like, super. Like, super accentuate her, like, muscle reactions to things to simulate super speed. And she's got a glucose feed, and I thought that was a really cool detail. So they just. Here's a backpack full of sugar that's.
32:49
Cly
Just gonna keep you going. Yeah, I mean, they're, like, sending electronic signals into her muscles to, like, stimulate her muscles. Like, you need some sort of energy, but it's just like, Sugar backpack.
33:02
Case
Yeah, Sugar backpack. Meanwhile, Tempest, it has simulated super breath by way of, like, a. A collar that, like, augments the pressure of the air that he's blowing out. But the downside is if he inhales, it works both ways. So he has to, like, control his breath and, like, really try to breathe through his nose. Otherwise he'll, like, collapse his lungs.
33:24
Jmike
That sucks.
33:26
Case
But in terms of downsides, like, that's pretty minor. Like, that, like, this is a.
33:31
Cly
That's not waking up every 15 minutes. So you don't.
33:34
Jmike
Yeah, exactly. Well, it only works if he has Suit on too. Right. So if he does.
33:40
Cly
For the reckies. Yeah.
33:41
Case
Right. But they make super breath actually work pretty well. And this is an era, so this is 90s Superman, which is coming off of the tail end of the man of Steel John Byrne relaunch. And they kind of got rid of the chill portion of the super breath. They just made it like you can blow really hard and push stuff. But they got rid of the whole it freezes things part, which. Which is really just like a kid's understanding of, like, how physics work. Like, you blow on soup and all of a sudden it's cold. And that's why Superman blows on stuff and it becomes really cold. And they've tried to, like, explain how it works beyond just that component. Honestly, just being able to blow shit really hard and like push, like big metal, you know, thick, like machines out of the way.
34:25
Case
Because he's so goddamn strong with his breath is a really cool power.
34:29
Cly
Yeah. The way he likes, manipulates the environment in multiple situations. The way, like, the breath interacts with the world around him really does make a compelling case for why this is actually a viable superpower.
34:44
Case
Yeah, this is very similar to a thing. I have said a lot about Ultra Boy from the Legion of Superheroes, who. His deal is that he has all the powers of Superman but can only use one at a time. I have said, like, this is such a cool character. The fact that he has never been like, the star of his own book outside of, like, random miniseries that are like, you know, two Legion of Superheroes. Like, it's such a cool suite of abilities that, like, why don't we just like, focus? Like every power of Superman's so cool. Like, I, I mean, just we're not that far removed from like, the founding 5x men when we get down to it. You know, like, Cyclops is the. The energy blast. Like Iceman's, the. The Freeze Breath Angels, the Flight, you know, like, we're talking about.
35:31
Case
You could argue Beast is a super strength in that scenario. Like the. The breakdown of those powers and really exploring what those powers do is. Is a really interesting and cool aspect of. Of superhero fiction. You know, like, I, like, I always say that the Flash is like a subset of Superman because, like, fundamentally the power is so invincible that you might as well like, that. That's the real story. And like, how can we do cool things with super speed? Like, I. I love that the Flash is. We're going to take one of. One of Superman's powers and we're going to draw out as many sort of like physics based solutions that you can do with this one superpower. And I think that this is such a cool exploration of it where you're like.
36:13
Case
And again, this is just the fact that it's one issue. I wish we could spend more time with this. Like these powers are so cool by themselves and they get overlooked because they're normally part of Superman suite of abilities. And they lose like, they lose sight of those powers or those individual powers in favor of. He can do all these things and some of them are bigger ticket items that are never really in a, a bad thing to have. You know, he doesn't have the downsides of like Pounder, for example, with his super strength.
36:47
Cly
Yeah. It's so interesting to take one power and really interrogate like, what are the tertiary implications you can do with this? How does that interact with the world around us? Like you were saying, like, how does physics interact with super speed and like lightning power and all that stuff? It's a really interesting way to explore a trope of the genre of superhero media. And yeah, this is so cool. And you've won me over to wanting more of this. Somebody give us the full series.
37:26
Case
Yeah, it just, it's very cool stuff to like, really explore. Like what a person who has to spend their time thinking about that one power as opposed to Superman being like, well, I can do all this is really cool. Immediately there's another like, thing. They're, they're like, all right kids, school's over. Let's see what you can do in the real world. And there's a power station issue that they're supposed to check out. A, A what is this whole situation? It.
37:50
Cly
The training mission for, you know.
37:52
Case
Yeah, it starts off as a training mission, but then it turns real as this like, power facility fires up and it causes this like, seismic activity booting.
38:00
Cly
Up on its own and like affecting the seismology around. And like earthquakes or volcanoes are going off and there's a tsunami or whatever.
38:12
Case
We have Superman be shown to activate it, which is just for us, the audience to be like completely on this. Like to be on the side of like, yeah, Superman's gone crazy when it actually happens. Like, they just make it explicit. Like, yeah, Superman's doing the. And he activates this thing and it causes a like seismic activity and it causes the tidal wave. And Flyboy takes out Tempest and Tempest disperses the tidal wave with his super breath. And that's really cool. And then Pounder jumps in and like moves into Position to, like, protect everything. And Speed builds up a barrier super fast using her super speed. It's. It's all really cool uses of their individual powers. Like, it. It is. It's just like, I. I think they're like. It's like the legion of superheroes, where, like, each member is supposed to have one superpower.
38:59
Case
Like, it's kind of fun just being like, you've got one power. Like, what can you do with that one power? And, like. Like you said, interrogate and really, like, explore it all.
39:07
Cly
Yeah. When you have the chance to pare down into a single ability, instead of having, you know, the world's greatest hero who can do it all, you have to really think about how can they interact with a team, how can they work together, and what else could you do with this power that you wouldn't normally see? Like you said, Speed's literally, like, hand by hand, carrying these rocks to build up a barrier. And the way they did her text box through that and the, like, remnants of her on that panel is just so cool.
39:44
Jmike
Yeah.
39:45
Case
Yeah. As she's running, there's, like, the whole sentence takes up the whole. The whole bottom portion of the page. But it's just like, one bubble is no second bubble sooner said than done. And, like, you see her, like, after images all over the place doing this.
40:00
Jmike
It.
40:01
Case
It's really cool. I like her speed suit, by the way. Like, I think it's a really cool exoskeleton design from a comic book. Do you guys remember the show Mantis? It was with what's his face?
40:14
Cly
The.
40:14
Case
The actor who was the voice actor for Jean Jones in jlu?
40:18
Cly
Oh, I fucking love that guy. I can never remember his name.
40:22
Case
Carl Lumbley is the actor. But so it has a very similar design to the exoskeleton that he wore in that Mantis.
40:28
Jmike
The.
40:28
Case
The premise was it's a scientist who was. Who was paralyzed who developed an exoskeleton that allowed him to walk and gave him superpowers. And so he became a superhero. But the. The. The design is very similar to Mantis, where you. It's the. It's like this, like, wetsuit kind of thing within, like, accoutrement, like, kind of, like, bolted all over to sort of be where your muscular musculature and so forth is. And I. I like it. It looks like a. It looks like a suit that is designed to augment a person in some.
40:57
Cly
Way.
41:00
Case
And isn't just, like, here's robot arms.
41:02
Cly
Yeah, it definitely looked really cool. And the way you could see the, like, nodes of the, like, suits, electrons or whatever, firing into the. The muscles. And you see that whole, like, web of, like, fake nerves or whatever is really cool.
41:21
Jmike
Yeah.
41:21
Case
So the rest of the team shuts down this whole thing, and it's like, all right, we got the situation Hand. Everything's under control. And he's like, not everything. And they go and they confront Superman about it, and he's like, hey, you turn this on preempt, like, preemptively, like, prematurely, like, this caused a tidal wave and also a lava flow. This would have been a problem. And he's. And he's like, we can't tolerate delays. The gauntlet project is vital, but the danger to civilians. There was a popular saying on old earth, Mr. Fontaine, perhaps you should consider its application in this sentence. If you want to make an omelet, you have to make. You have to break some eggs.
41:56
Jmike
As.
41:57
Case
As we had pointed out before. And that's supposed to be this, like, really ominous line. And. And this is just the spot where I'm like, this is moving very quickly because We're. We're exactly 26 pages in the. The next scene. They're all in civilian clothes hanging out, and Speed comes in having just, like, hacked their database by way by wearing the speed suit. So she's like, I was able to try a thousand codes in a minute because I was wearing the suit. But I'm really hurting because, like, I'm really drained from wearing the suit for so long.
42:27
Jmike
I can almost guarantee that the password was Superman.
42:34
Cly
Yeah.
42:35
Case
No, the password was Martha.
42:38
Cly
Oh, God. But, yeah, now we have, like, firmly entered Act 2. Like, this is the problem. Here's how we're dealing with it. What are we going to do? Is Superman fallible? Like, do we trust this hologram? Generation of code? Like, can we believe in him the way we've believed in Superman? The reason we're here, They've all committed to this cause and given up their body and basically their livelihood for this ideal of Superman. And now they're confronted with the question of, like, is this, like, code? Is this hologram fallible? Like, is he right? Is he correct? Is what. Can we support this? Basically?
43:29
Case
Yeah. Yeah. Because Speed comes in and is like, hey, I hacked the system, and here's the thing. The gauntlet program isn't defending us from outer space. The laser guns are all going to be phasing our planet. So it's all about taking out dissidents. So it's like Project Insight from, like, Winter Soldier.
43:47
Cly
Yep. Yeah. Exactly. Project Insight. That's what I was thinking of.
43:52
Jmike
They get it from here.
43:54
Case
I. I maybe. Are Marcus and McFeely, like, big fans of obscure Superman annuals from the 90s? Maybe?
44:03
Cly
I hope so.
44:04
Jmike
That.
44:04
Case
That would be a really fun situation. But. But here's just another thing. It's. It's moving so fast. Like, the, like, they have this whole conversation being like, can we trust Superman? And, like, you know, like, the fact that it's a new recruit that, like, brings the info, like, and they're like. Most of them are like, yeah, we can trust them, but SHIELD Doesn't. SHIELD Is like, we can't trust Superman. He's wearing a kind of. Do you remember the 90s look for the Prankster, the Flash villain?
44:29
Jmike
Yes.
44:30
Case
It's like his shirt is basically that look like he's wearing that outfit. It's this weird, stripey look with, like, a vest kind of design. But everyone else is immediately on board. And I remember in my head that this was, like, more of a split between the team. It's really just SHIELD that they throw him in. And then the rest of the team is like, man, we can't trust Superman. We gotta go fucking do it. And again, it's just really fast, like, because they immediately are like, oh, we got the information that Superman might be kind of a douchebag. Probably should deal with that as opposed to doing more investigations or anything like that, which fair. The circum. Like, the circumstances that they're presented with are really urgent and dire, but, like, is just. Man, this is a breakneck issue.
45:14
Cly
Yeah. It escalated quickly.
45:17
Case
Yes. So they rush off to go and deal with Superman, and the facility that they're in starts locking them off because they're being observed, as invaders. And they're like, we have to get to the. The rare element that's powering the Superman hologram, which is kryptonite.
45:40
Cly
But, yeah, they're. They're essentially acting as insurgents in the building. It's trying to counteract their measures to get to the core of Superman.
45:51
Jmike
Yeah.
45:52
Case
So they start going in, see through, tries to get, like, Show Pounder, where the weakest point in, like, one of the blast doors that closes on them is. And then he gets blasted with a stun beam. They go into, like, the substructure of the building, where they, like, get flooded out and they're losing people. Like, Flyboy is lost in this one. Pounder gets knocked out after pounding his way through a door, but taking, like. It was, like, an electrified door. So it's, like, shocking him this whole time. When they actually get to the hologram of Superman, sonics go up. It's really messing with them. Here's a weird spot, which is that they find the containment structure for the Kryptonite that is powering it. And he's like, my beams aren't going to be able to burn through it fast enough.
46:33
Case
And speed is like, well, what if I rub my hands on it at super speed to create friction? Surely that will be sufficient. And then Tempest blows at it, and it, like, knocks it all, and that gives. It makes it open, and so heat's able to blast it. Here's my thought. Why is speed, super speed, Friction, More power. Like, hotter than heat beams.
46:54
Cly
That's a great question.
46:55
Jmike
Because comic books, Case.
46:58
Cly
Because comic books, I kind of feel.
47:00
Case
Like it should be reversed. Heat melts it, and then she should take it away or rip it out or something. But I mean, it's a team move. Like, it's all fine. She's using friction to create heat from super speed. That's a classic super speed power. Like that. That's all fine. Tempest gets a part of it because he blows on it. It's really hot now. Blow on it is his thing. And then they melt the Kryptonite, which I kind of wish affected the actual League members. Like, this would be another spot where, like, it would beneficial for the ones who are not genetically modified to have their. Not genetically modified powers here. Because, like, the Kryptonite shit, like, the Kryptonite effectively is just a battery here. Like, it could have been anything. Like, it's.
47:43
Case
It's kind of nice that it's Kryptonite from a Lore standpoint, but they don't do anything with it. Like, it. Like I said, it could just be any power source.
47:52
Cly
Yeah, I think that, like, well, first of all, they don't have the time to do anything with it. But also, like, right. What. What percentage of their DNA has been fragmented and, like, encoded with Superman's? Is it enough to have any sort of intolerance to Kryptonite? I don't know. Like, what. What is a Kryptonite allergy look like when you have such a distilled amount of Kryptonian DNA in your system? That would be a fascinating question to get answer to, but I. I'm a nerd.
48:27
Case
Yeah, it looks like nothing like it. It looks like it doesn't do anything to these guys, which is all well and good, but again, it's like, it's kind of a Chekhov's gun that doesn't really do much. Like, it never fires. Like, the fact that it's Kryptonite, not just like some other power source, is, like, again, it's. It's fun from a Lore standpoint, if this was. If I was writing this, I would absolutely use Kryptonite as the power source, no matter. Like, no matter what. Like, there's no scenario where I would.
48:54
Cly
It's degrading. The, The. The message of Superman, what it's doing to him as he's losing his touch with humanity and recognizing that about himself makes for an interesting idea. Like, this is a Superman that is projected and powered by Kryptonite, and it's degrading him and his ideals and what it means to have a connection with humanity. And that makes for an interesting narrative. But we don't really go further than that.
49:29
Jmike
Right.
49:29
Case
So they destroy the Kryptonite. The hologram of Superman says, congratulations, you guys figured this out.
49:35
Cly
You passed my test.
49:37
Case
I actually wasn't going crazy, but I was afraid I might, and so I made sure you guys thought I was going crazy before it got too important. And this is. This is fine. Like, the. The idea that they put safeguards in place to prevent Superman from being, like, infected with the virus or something that would cause him to self destruct or do anything like that is fine. Like the. The I. I like this idea that he has to pretend to be crazy before he actually goes crazy. Like, I think is a cool take on the story because it's a pretty classic trope of, like, the. The AI goes insane, right?
50:10
Cly
Yeah.
50:11
Case
But in this case, it's one where the AI is aware that it has the potential to go insane eventually. And it's like, well, I better take myself out now before.
50:20
Cly
Before we get any further, man. So he doesn't want to hurt humanity.
50:24
Case
Yeah, right. And he reveals that all of the disasters that he was, like, associated with were actually, like, no. Like, that tidal wave wasn't actually going to hit any coastline. Like, I already had figured that out. Like, the lava flow was already going to be diverted by the actual, like, flow of, like, flow of the natural topography. All these things weren't going to happen. And the gauntlet is just a weather control system. It had no lasers actually built into it.
50:48
Cly
Which is all well and good, and I understand why that is the message of this Superman, but it did lead me to question, how did the League, the supermen, plural, not recognize that as they were calculating? And I think I just have to chalk it up to the heat of the moment. You see disaster, you solve problem. But if it was like, specifically engineered so that the tidal wave would dissolve before it got anywhere close to the coastline, like, would you not recognize that.
51:30
Case
Head cannon? If we really want to give a headcanon is that Superman controls all their data that they were getting. Like, he also controlled all the data that the gauntlet was a nefarious thing with lasers. So he could have potentially been changed the data to be like, this is a dire emergency. It's going to hit the, you know, put up. He could have put out a false beacon. Just saying this is gonna hit.
51:51
Cly
Yeah.
51:51
Case
You know, even if they like stopped and looked at the actual, like, trajectory of the tidal wave, they may have seen that it wasn't going to hit. But all he needed to do was like, make them think it was. But he gives this whole speech about how he was starting to feel the disassociation that centuries of being just a hologram has caused him to lose touch with his humanity. And that the most important thing is to have that human touch. And so as he passes away, he gives this sort of like, sentiment to them that the, that being human is the important part of the Superman equation. That it's the man part, not the super, that's important here. Now why they come to this conclusion, I don't necessarily know because, like, I don't see how them having physical superpowers makes any sort of difference.
52:41
Case
But they gather the world to mourn the loss of Superman for real this time.
52:49
Jmike
For real this time? Yeah, for real.
52:52
Cly
Superman on Funeral Part 3, right?
52:56
Case
And he gives this whole speech about Superman and so forth, which everyone is very trusting of the League of Superman, where they're like, yeah, we just killed your messiah that our entire society is built around. Because we say for a fact, we say that he wanted it this way, right?
53:12
Cly
Just trust me, bro. This is actually what he wanted.
53:18
Case
But they say they rededicate their self to the spirit of Superman and with that they're going to stop infusing superpowers into people and they're just going to keep using the artificial ones and that. I, I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment, but I do think that this isn't the story that teaches them that lesson.
53:38
Cly
Right? Like, you could interrogate like the eugenics of it all and like the DNA altering and what that means for the course of humanity or whatever. We don't have time to do that in a 40 page issue. But like, that is something that they could have interrogated and be like, okay, what is this actually doing to us? Is the disabling experience of holding these powers worth the honor of being this superheroed, super powered being? Like, what does that mean for the future of humanity? At what point does everybody have an aspect of Superman's powers and that's just how they exist as a society. This is not the book where they would interrogate that. No, they're just going, yay, humanity. We're gonna do the thing the way you want it. Yeah.
54:33
Case
And, like, looking at it, like, looking back, one, having the Kryptonite actually affect them would be a big start to that whole story. Like, if the Kryptonite was preventing them from actually, like, doing the thing and it was only the people with artificial powers that were able to do, that would be a good start right there.
54:48
Jmike
But.
54:48
Case
But two, if there were more that felt that they had given up so much for Superman that they couldn't turn their back on him. Like, if the. If the schism between them wasn't just SHIELD saying, like, yeah, I believe in Superman. Everyone else doesn't, you guys. If it had been like, most of the group and like, maybe just heat or something like that, like, stood against Superman or, you know, something to that degree, maybe. Maybe that would be more of a lesson to it all. Like, where the. The. The fact that they were these isolated entities that had handlers and all that, you know. You know, could have spoke to how, like, you know, how they had lost touch with. With society by virtue of being these, like, celebrities that, you know, it's.
55:34
Case
It makes me think of, you know, like, the whole, like, celebrity rule, which is, like, whenever someone becomes famous, they, like, stop progressing in terms of their ability to understand technology.
55:42
Jmike
Yeah.
55:44
Case
So. So that's why, like, Eminem has just like, a shitload of, like, DVD porn, because, like, the Internet does. Just doesn't really exist for him. Like, it's just one of those things where, like, yeah, you could have had a few people be like, I. I don't understand what it's like to be human anymore because I have superpowers. And, like, I just.
56:03
Jmike
This.
56:04
Cly
This delirium of. I've committed myself to this cause I've given up all of my independence. I have to rely so heavily on these handlers and these people around me. This is my mission. This is my goal. Like, how can I betray my core directive of I am a Superman and this is what I do, and this is the man I will blindly follow. No Matter what, we don't stop to consider how they actually feel about losing their messiah, about losing this guiding force that's shaped the biggest decision of their lives. They've given up literally everything for.
56:52
Case
Yeah, yeah, exactly like this is like every one of these, like legends of that are stories that we've talked about have been like so much story crammed into, you know, in this case, 39 pages. Like, this is such a great example of like the compression doing a fine job with it, but for what it is. But you can just see how like if there was breathing room for the story. There's so much to fucking explore. There's so to dig into.
57:20
Cly
Yeah. I will say I love a one shot. I love a self contained story. I love annual. I love just like jumping into the world and a writer having a story to tell and then telling exactly that story and not expanding it further and just sticking to that. And what I love about that is because that fosters so much community of us having this discussion being like, okay, but what if they did this, what could be the implications if this had been different? And the conversations around that is one of the things I value most about consuming stories in my life. And so I love that this exists exactly as it does.
58:09
Cly
But also now I have so many more ideas of how it could have gone because we've spent so much time talking about how awesome this world is and I want to see more from it.
58:21
Case
This has been the problem with a bunch of these where it's just like, wow, that was a lot of story. And just in just 40 pages. And I like these worlds that they present. Like, these are really cool settings, like all these Legend of Dead Earth stories. But this one is the one that I keep coming back to in my head being like, there's so much space that they could have, you know, just like delved into. And you know, because like this being like, I know I'm making a lot of illusions, but like referencing like the first season of of Invincible where we know like the first episode, they establish what the big twist of the story is.
58:56
Case
And then we spend most of the season just living in a world where we're aware of the twist and that suspense, you know, like, can you imagine, like open the story and like establish that Superman's starting to go crazy and spend several issues or several episodes with them starting to come to that conclusion and having to like, face the idea that like the society that is built around Superman might have, you.
59:24
Cly
Know,.
59:26
Case
Have to give up on, like, their entire faith structure.
59:29
Cly
Have you read, however you would describe it, the Justice League Red going on right now?
59:35
Case
No, I haven't.
59:36
Cly
Okay. I feel like it's. I don't know if I'm super up to date, but I feel like that's following a similar idea with what they're doing with Red Tornado and that.
59:46
Jmike
Yeah.
59:48
Case
I will have to check that out.
59:49
Cly
I don't know if it's good per se, but it's interesting. I'm still following it.
59:55
Jmike
Okay.
59:57
Case
Yeah. I unfortunately had to put away my box at my comic shop. When I did some hard math on my finances and was like, with baby number two coming, I was like, I can't keep doing this. I need to. I needed that.
01:00:11
Cly
I will say it's not something I think you would invest in getting physically. I have a digital subscription, and that's how I'm enjoying it.
01:00:22
Jmike
Yeah.
01:00:23
Case
I want to note that it is still. It's still Heat. That is the spokesperson for this team, a person who has, as far as we can tell, not slept this entire story. Yeah.
01:00:33
Cly
Yeah. They get a certain point of chronic sleep deprivation. You just hit semifunctional and pray.
01:00:43
Jmike
Yeah.
01:00:43
Case
Oh, it's like. It's like this one Tech Week I had when I was working in theater, where I was so burned out because I was doing video work for them, but I was also the assistant stage manager for the actual show. And so as soon as, like, rehearsal ended, I was just, like, rendering video, like, all night. And I got to a point where I was like, oh, sleep doesn't. I don't need sleep anymore. I just have coffee. And, like, I had, like. Like, regular. I had regular, like, injections of coffee, and if I didn't have those, I would, like, crash. But, like, it was, like, a solid, like, four days where I just, like, straight up didn't sleep.
01:01:16
Jmike
Interesting.
01:01:17
Cly
I had one term in college where I had somewhere to be from 4:30am to 8pm an entire term.
01:01:30
Case
That'll do it. That. That'll drive you crazy.
01:01:32
Jmike
Yeah.
01:01:34
Cly
I really pared back down after that one. But once you reach that point of. I am so locked in, I am the most productive I have ever been in my life. I am just going. I am living on caffeine and junk food, and it's fine. I think that's where Heat's at.
01:01:53
Jmike
Yeah.
01:01:54
Case
One thing I do want to call out, though, is that Heat is a black man, and I really enjoy that. This is a fairly, like, ethnically diverse, like, Heat and Pounder are the two, like, two Very front and center characters, and it's nice having, like, the lead guy be like a dude, you know, like that. That just doesn't look very much like Superman. Like, I think that's really good.
01:02:15
Cly
Yeah. I also, when we're looking at the panel of the original team, I did have some questions on, you know, how we often represent black men as the, like, strong and vulnerable types. And so to have most of the story following a black man that does not have sort of like an invulnerable invincible type power, I thought was really interesting.
01:02:45
Jmike
Yeah.
01:02:46
Case
Yeah. He's particularly. He's burning up inside.
01:02:49
Jmike
Yeah.
01:02:50
Cly
Yeah.
01:02:50
Jmike
With no sleep.
01:02:56
Cly
But.
01:02:56
Case
But. Yeah. So that's the League of Superman. It's Again, it's so. It's so tight.
01:03:00
Cly
If.
01:03:00
Case
If anyone wants to see this decompressed again. The comic I referenced before is Dynamo 5. I like the comic, but it is not perfect like, it. It also is a bigger idea than I think that the story is able to capture. But this, it's. It's such a good hook.
01:03:17
Cly
Yeah.
01:03:18
Case
Like, each individual. Each individual powers of Superman on a team. Like, that's so cool.
01:03:23
Jmike
Yeah. It always reminds me, like you said, the kid from Legion of Superheroes, and that's all I always think of when I. When I think of this trope.
01:03:32
Case
But that's also really cool and under. Underexplored, I think. And I like that. I like the. The idea of the Superman going mad being.
01:03:40
Cly
Or.
01:03:41
Case
Or rather the Superman understanding that there was the potential for him to go mad and, like, choosing to end it beforehand. Like, that's a very Supermanly kind of thing to do.
01:03:50
Cly
Yeah. You know, it was really interesting for the 90s to explore the whole idea of death with dignity.
01:04:01
Case
It's a very Kevorkian kind of thing right there.
01:04:05
Cly
But, you know, if they could do it with anybody, it's Superman, I guess.
01:04:11
Case
Yeah, but. But again, like, that. That's the League of Superman, which I. I think is just a very interesting entry in this. This whole franchise. J. Mike, now that we are several deep, how is this one stacking up in your. In your rankings?
01:04:28
Jmike
I mean, it was good, but it's not as good as the demand of Steel one where they find him on the. Yeah, yeah. That one was still my tops. And then Supergirls right underneath that one just because of how unique it was. This one's kind of like mid tier, like right underneath Superboy.
01:04:48
Case
Yeah. I think this and the Superboy ones are both, like, really strong pitches.
01:04:53
Cly
Yeah. Strong concept, but not as much execution.
01:04:58
Case
Super Boy, like, Super Boy is fine, but, like, it's. It's also, like, a lot of story in one issue.
01:05:03
Jmike
I mean, it had some really cool designs, though, for some of their outfits, that world building. But, yeah, this was. I think it was the man. It was the man of Steel one, right?
01:05:13
Case
Yeah, it was the Kirkusiak one. Yeah.
01:05:16
Jmike
That one's my favorite music.
01:05:18
Case
I don't know how to pronounce it. And Jay listened to me, and I was like, I still don't know.
01:05:27
Cly
But yeah.
01:05:27
Case
All right. We still got one more of the actual Superman family issues to talk about, so I'm looking forward to that one, but it's the Bizarro issue, so we'll see how that. Responses. Sly, what are your responses to all this? I mean, we've talked about the issue, but the premise and so forth. Would you want to check out the other issues in the Superman family of the Legends of Dead Earth? What are your general thoughts?
01:05:53
Cly
Yeah, no, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a really cool concept. I would love to see more of these issues, knowing where I'm at in my life. I probably won't, and I'll just listen to you lovely folks talk about them instead. But I thought this was really cool concept, and I love that you're going back and exploring this as a series and really examining these annuals as interesting pieces of a storytelling medium. I think it was really fun. I had a great time. You know, I'm going to be thinking about this story for a while and all of its implications. So, yeah, I'm really excited to hear what y' all think about the other ones.
01:06:35
Case
Awesome. Awesome. Well, so I feel like that's. I feel like we've talked as much as we can about this issue because, like, it's. It's a very dense story, like, in terms of. Or very brisk story. Like it. I. I mean, the.
01:06:52
Cly
The.
01:06:52
Jmike
The.
01:06:53
Case
They get back from a mission immediately. Here's the rookies. Oh, rookies. We're going out to another mission. We're like, there. There's no downtime, aside from the scene where they're, like, hanging out, which is when someone goes and immediately hacks into the systems, and then they continue moving on. This is the Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark of comics in terms of just, like, we're going to just have action beat. Action beat. Action beat.
01:07:18
Cly
Yeah. We're not getting a beach episode.
01:07:21
Case
No, absolutely not.
01:07:23
Jmike
We're not sleeping.
01:07:24
Cly
We're not sleeping at all.
01:07:28
Case
But. But, man, it's a really fun story. I highly encourage people to check it out if they have the means to. It's not available on the DC app, so us talking about all these is sort of its own funky thing, but still, like, it's really cool. I think that the ideas are really cool. It's very brisk. But that's a strength as well, because if anyone wants to check it out, like, they can check it out and be caught up in 20 minutes. And you're good on that.
01:08:00
Cly
Yeah. The accessibility of it, setting up exactly where we are in the world, setting up what it means to be Superman and what their point of reference is for their reverence of this character, and then immediately jumping in with a fresh team that nobody knows previously. And you really have to learn these characters as you go along. It creates such an easy read. You can pick this up, you can read it in one sitting and move on with your life. I did not. I said this down, I think two or three times, just because there was so much that I was thinking about in terms of the implications of what it means to exist in this world. And I want to just sit with it a little bit more, which I had the opportunity to do, but you can just. It's a quick read.
01:08:51
Cly
It's not going to take you very long. And so just getting through it and experiencing the story, it was really fun.
01:08:59
Jmike
Yeah.
01:09:00
Case
You know, art's a little inconsistent. Like, especially when, like, there's, like, certain, like, throwaway panels with some people, you're like, what is that hairline right there? Or shit like that.
01:09:10
Cly
I feel like. I feel like that every time I read annual. Like, there's always some little inconsistencies here and there, like, too many cooks in the kitchen kind of thing.
01:09:22
Case
Yeah. But that said, it's a fun book, and I think people should check it out and have a good time with it. I would agree with J. Mike's sort of assessment that this is more in the middle tier in terms of the actual effectiveness of the story. But it's a really good hook. It's a fun story. It's a quick story, but the ideas are really cool. And just. We'll sit with you for a little while. Just because the idea of. Of just outfitting people with individual powers is. Is cool. And a Superman that's going crazy is cool. And a society built with Superman as their. As their savior is cool. Like, you know, we don't see very much of the. Of the world outside of the League of Superman. Like, it's very much from their perspective.
01:10:07
Cly
Yeah. You have no Idea what a civilian in this world feels like.
01:10:12
Case
The most we get is the rookies, you know, like that.
01:10:14
Cly
Yeah. The. And they've already, you know, partially committed themselves.
01:10:18
Case
They have drank the Kool Aid. Yeah. Like, give me them super powers. You got anyone? You got anyone's superpowers.
01:10:28
Cly
Exactly.
01:10:32
Case
And it's also cool just to be like, here's the downsides of some of those powers. Like, you know, invulnerability is one that we always, like, can think about because it's such an easy one in our head to go to where it's just like, oh, I guess you couldn't feel anything.
01:10:42
Jmike
But.
01:10:43
Case
But all the other powers like flight, who would ever think about that being like, oh, I guess you could just fly away if you weren't paying attention.
01:10:51
Jmike
Yeah.
01:10:53
Cly
For a medium that so often has a history of completely ignoring or refusing to interact with or writing out any sort of hint of disability.
01:11:06
Case
Yeah.
01:11:07
Cly
It's nice to see characters actually have to deal with the ramifications of their powers is.
01:11:15
Case
For real. Like, especially see through SHIELD And Pounder, who. Who are all treated as invalids when they're not in. In use. Like, that's a really cool thing to talk about. Like, again, these ideas are really. Are really big and really exciting ones to see on print. So Sly. Thank you for coming on and chatting with us about this one. I'm. I'm really, you know, frankly, because I know you have hearing issues. Like, I know this is like, a really, like, the disability aspect must speak out to you in certain ways. And, like, I'm really glad to have you for this one.
01:11:48
Cly
Yeah, no, I was really excited to join. There was so much in here. I was really surprised to see, you know, based on when this was written and the culture of comics at the time, there was a lot of nuggets of really interesting story in this. And so, you know, I always love seeing disability representation. It's something that in the comic space specifically, we see so little of, and when we do, it is, like, completely ignored. Like, have we ever talked about what it means for Cyborg to be have a limb difference? No, he's just, you know, cool, super badass and shit. So to really get to dive into that in this story and all of the world has been really fun. So thanks for having me on.
01:12:38
Case
Yeah, I'm really glad that were able to make this one happen. So. Yeah. Thank you for coming on. Where can people find you and follow you?
01:12:47
Cly
That's a great question. I have no idea when this is coming out, but you can pop over to YouTube.com ointinprogress and follow along there and hopefully there will be things up by the time you're hearing this. We got lots of things in the works and not a lot of things actively being posted. So, you know, we're in a kind of transitional planning phase right now, which is tough when I'm out here doing all these cool things advertising us. But I promise there's lots of cool things in the pipeline and I'm really excited for them to get their time in the light.
01:13:27
Case
Awesome. Yeah, everyone should check that out. Like I said, I've been on and jmec, you should slash the chat off mic and see if there's anything you can do. Twisting J Mike's arm and also forcing crossovers. But yeah, again, thank you for coming on and it was just wonderful chatting with you. So I hope people check out point in progress and yeah, that would be awesome because you're cool. J Mike, where can people find you and follow you?
01:14:01
Jmike
The pressure. Well, you can mostly find me mostly on Discord over on the co.cpov discord. You should totally come in and chat with us.
01:14:08
Cly
Oh, whenever you feel like, you say hi to me.
01:14:11
Case
Yeah, we're all on the CPOV Discord.
01:14:14
Jmike
And if you just so happen to be over on Blue Sky. Yeah, you can find me over J5 Blue. J5 Blue Sky Social. I'm kind of there. I'm trying to get better at this thing called social media, which I've been on for, like, since it got invented. I'm not great, but I'm trying. But mostly over on Discord. That's where I'm usually like, perusing and hiding in the shadows.
01:14:35
Case
Since it got invented. Since it got invented.
01:14:38
Jmike
Yeah. I've been on everything and I've never seen 2026.
01:14:43
Case
I'm haven't been good at it, Case Social media. I joined Facebook in 2004.
01:14:49
Jmike
Same when it was in Fight only. Yeah. Right.
01:14:54
Case
So social media has been around for 22 years.
01:14:57
Jmike
Yeah. You're just.
01:15:00
Case
Just wrapping your head around it.
01:15:03
Cly
Yeah. I got on Twitter in 2011 and we don't want to talk about how old I was. It's fine. Everything's fine.
01:15:15
Case
Well, as the old man on the call, I. Everything makes me feel old.
01:15:20
Jmike
MySpace.
01:15:22
Case
MySpace and aim. Aim. Well, aim. We talk about every episode because for those of you who want to find and follow me, you can find me on the certain POV Discord, which we are all a part of. It is a great time. You can find a link in our show notes or on our website certainpov.com it is a great time. Again, come interact with us. If discord is not your vibe, I totally understand. You can find me on most social media platforms at Case Aiken, except for Instagram, where you can find me at quetzalcoatl5 because I am holding on to my AIM screen name from high school because I was pretentious as fuck then and I'm not giving it up. And that was quetzalcoatl 5. Q U E T Z A L C o a T L5 so you can find me there.
01:16:16
Case
It's a great old time.
01:16:17
Cly
You can.
01:16:17
Case
You can find us all over the interwebs, especially@certainpov.com or on our YouTube channel, which is the Certain POV Media YouTube account. So if you go to YouTube.com certainpovmedia you can find us. You can also find us at Patreon, where there are tons of awesome people who are supporting us and that's really cool. We have been doing this for a long time and it's nice that we get some support because we really appreciate the people who have been tuning in and we're trying to put out a good product. So if you want to be like the cool people who joined us at the executive producer tier, you can get a shout out at every episode. And even if you don't like the free tier, we do essays every single week related to nerdy topics that you can check out.
01:17:03
Case
But the executive producer tier is where it's at because those people get shout outs at the end of every episode. And that includes Micah McCaw, Carter Hallett, Sean Muir, Lee, Gregor Memento Young, Logan Crowley, Joe Master, Piero, Casey and Nancy Aiken, Adam Sampter and Keith Letinen. Those are the awesome people who are part of the executive producer tier for our Patreon. If you want to be like them, we'd highly appreciate it. Again, I just had my second child. I'm just gonna throw that one out there. Like it's hard to keep doing this. I'm going crazy right now. But would very much appreciate people joining in even at the free tier. We'd very much appreciate it just because we're trying to put out cool stuff.
01:17:45
Case
And the Patreon is honestly where we're testing out most of the ideas that we have before they make it into the podcast properly. So that is a cool place to check out. Again, patreon.com certainpovmedia is where you can find the Patreon. It is a great time. I really love it. I love doing the weekly essays both on nerdy topics and on DD topics. It's a really cool time. It's cathartic for me, so I hope you check that out. Otherwise you should check out certainpov.com where we have tons of great shows that are coming out on the regular we have plugged Legion of Superheroes a lot recently.
01:18:24
Case
So like while I will mention Long Lived Legion, I'm going to plug the main thing that we've been really pushing recently, which is Trade School, which is our new program that we've been doing where guests come on and talk for five to 15 minutes about a comic book trade paperback that they love. If you have a comic book that you really care about and want to talk about why you love it, please let me know because we are taking submissions for this and if you are just looking for reading suggestions, check out this podcast. The podcast is literally people talking about the comics that mean the most to them that are collected in some way that you're able to find them. So check out Trade School. It's available on the YouTube channel or on its own RSS feed.
01:19:06
Case
It is a really great collection of people talking about their passion for comics and each issue is rather each episode is just a wonderful example of this comic meant something to a person and you should consider taking a look at it.
01:19:25
Cly
And hopefully I will get around to recording the episodes for the stack of comics I have sitting waiting for me to talk about.
01:19:33
Case
Yes, hopefully Sly will be on maybe even before this episode drops. But at the moment, Sly has not given me an episode yet. But anyone is welcome to give an episode. Just reach out to me. You can DM me on Discord or any of the other social media platforms or you can email me@case.aikenmail.com because I know how email addresses work and you are. Yeah, just no one has doubled up yet like Watchmen is spoken for. Everything else is fair game. Go for it. Let me, let me know. But, but yeah, whatever comic you want to talk about, I'd love to hear about why you're passionate about it. So that's trade school. You should check it out. It has been going strong. We, we've had some really cool guests recently.
01:20:18
Case
We just Minsky, who is the Superman editor for DC Comics do an episode on Zero Hour. So that's a really cool one. But yeah, were trying to get all kinds of people just talking about it and it doesn't matter who you are, if you're just a person who listened to this episode out of the blue and you've never done a podcast before and has no social media presence. We still want to hear why a comic was important to you. So reach out to me. I would love to hear about it and yeah, again, five to 15 minutes. You might change a person's life by introducing them to a book that really matters to them. So please reach out. And if you don't want to reach out, you just want a reading suggestion. Check out the podcast. It's really cool.
01:20:58
Case
Like everyone is doing a great job of doing really concise explanations of why these comics matter to them and I highly think that this is awesome. Like of course I do. I'm the person producing it.
01:21:11
Cly
But but I'll say it's awesome. I have nothing to do with it yet.
01:21:16
Case
Exactly. Exactly. Otherwise you should circle back to our next episode. We have almost finished up the Superman Family of the Legends of Dead Earth. Next time we will be talking about the Action Comics issue, which is the Bizarro issue. But until then, I hope you have a great week and stay Super.
01:21:44
Jmike
Men of Steel is a certain POV production. Our hosts are J. Mike Folson and Case Aiken. The show is edited by Sophia Ricciardi. Our logo is by Chris Bautista and episode art is by Case Aiken. Our theme is by Jen Muniz.
01:22:04
Case
Digging for Kryptonite is a weekly podcast series hosted by yours truly, Anthony Desiotto, examining Superman's vast mythology across time and media. If you have a favorite story, creator or adaptation, chances are we've covered it over the past 200 plus episodes. I've interviewed creators including Mark Waid, Dan Jurgens, Jeph Loeb, Joe Kelly, and many more. Whether you're a lifelong Superman fan like me or you're new to the character, we have you covered. Subscribe to Digging for Kryptonite wherever you get podcasts. And remember, it's about what you do. It's about action. CPOV certainpov.com.