The Invulnerable Enemy (1957) – Review of a Classic

I only have limited time to write this tonight, but I ought to have enough time left over to make some scans from the comic book as well.

This is a review of one of my childhood favourites, “The Invulnerable Enemy,” and it showcases Superman at his cautious and intelligent best.

I have often thought the title may actually have originated from the viewpoint of his antagonist in this great comic story, for surely Superman himself is “The Invulnerable Enemy.”

My copy of this adventure is in black and white and comes from Giant Superman Album No. 23 (Australia).

Like many good short stories, this one begins with a mystery. (I have always liked mysteries.)

Near Metropolis (please don’t ask me why every off-beat discovery in Superman comics happens “near Metropolis”), some archaeologists find a giant man-figure they take to be an ancient stone statue. They are subsequently amazed to discover the “statue” is actually a petrified man of around ten feet in height.

This petrified man is dressed like an extra from the old “Planet of the Apes” TV series, and at first the men think he must be from an ancient civilisation of planet Earth; but no: they dig a little further and it turns out he arrived long ago in a spaceship, crashed, then became “petrified”.

This being the United States, the first person to have dibs on this momentous discovery is Barnum, a sideshow (“freakshow”) exhibitor. The scientists are nervous, but when Barnum offers half his proceeds to the Daily Planet Fresh Air Fund if Superman will agree to guard the figure, Clark Kent responds favourably.

This story is clever because, not only does the Man of Steel have to contend with the main villain of the piece, he is also up against his arch enemy Luthor, with Luthor being more or less the cause of the “petrified man” becoming a menace in the first place.

It comes about when Luthor realises Superman will be guarding the giant stone man and will effectively be standing on public display – long enough for Luthor to take aim with a rifle and fire a Kryptonite bullet.

This scene has always intrigued me, as I know for a fact that although Green K weakens Superman, it does not affect his usual “invulnerability”… So, the bullet (or anything, really) made of K will weaken him just so long as it is near him — but would it penetrate his body, wounding him fatally? I say thee nay!

I don’t get the chance to be proved right, because Superman takes a bow at the exhibition and the Green K bullet whizzes over his head – and hits the stone man.

Two things happen very quickly: Superman backtracks on the flight of the bullet and grabs Luthor. “Your bow ruined my plan!” snarls Luthor. “What luck you have, Superman!” We (the Man of Steel’s readers) know it is not luck; we know the bad guys always lose in Superman comics – call it Fate, Act of God, or what you will.

The second thing that happens, while our hero is busy with his arch enemy, is that the radioactive K bullet has aroused the dormant life forces in the petrified man – and now he “comes to life,” scaring the living daylights out of everybody and marching off, smashing through the brick wall of the exhibition centre.

Rather than lumbering off into the distance like Frankenstein’s monster or that big angry guy from Incredible Hulk No. 1, the giant man walks through the front window of a jewellery store and starts filling a sack.

So far, so good. He’s off to a predictable start, acting like every other baddie, ie. stealing from a jewellery store. But wait! What exactly is he “stealing”? He is filling the sack with the broken glass from the shop’s window.

The local cops, their gunfire having no effect, attack the big man with a flame thrower! (We need some cops like this in my neighbourhood.) The giant man is affected, yes, but not the way they would like. He “imitates” the fire, breathing flames down upon the policemen, and they run for their lives.

Having dealt with Luthor (but not the menace Luthor has unwittingly unleashed), Superman arrives and puts out a fire started by the giant man’s flame-throwing breath.

The giant has moved on and is now observed smashing the windows of parked cars. He stoops to pick up the broken glass and puts it in his sack! (If you like mysteries, as I do, this is the Superman comic for you.)

Night falls, and Superman catches up with the giant, who has been illuminated by lightning. The giant aims his flame-breath at Superman, but the Man of Steel is amazed to discover his own super-breath cannot blow out the flames! The giant now “imitates” the lightning itself and hurls bolts from his hands. The lightning bolts cause damage that Superman must stay to repair for safety reasons, and the giant man escapes.

Passing a drive-in movie theatre, the giant observes a scene from a movie (I’m picking it as “4D Man”) in which a scientist makes himself “transparent,” ie. solid objects pass through him as if he were a phantom. The giant “imitates” this ability and of course Superman cannot even touch him now. “It’s like trying to catch smoke,” thinks Superman.

The giant leaves the city limits and the Man of Steel lets things lie for now. Next day, Perry White assigns his two top reporters to finding out why the creature wants glass. Somewhat insensitive to Kent’s self-esteem, Perry tells Kent: “He’s dangerous, so you stay with Lois Lane, Clark.”

Hmm, OK, Perry. There is a dangerous monster loose, so Clark should stick by Lois for safety… These crazy newspaper editors! (Or have I misinterpreted him?)

Clark and Lois find themselves in a pinch as the giant man confronts them on the city limits, but all the giant does is snatch Clark’s spectacles, taking the glass lenses from them.

The giant moves on, and when Clark switches to Superman, Lois tells him what we have all been thinking: “He doesn’t really mean to harm people in his queer search for glass!”

The giant “imitates” Superman’s x-ray vision to try to shatter a glass statue, but the Man of Steel stops the glass falling into the street where it may hurt someone. The giant next “imitates” the sun itself and radiates heat to melt the glass from the windows of office buildings. Superman flies off and sets up a trick that he hopes will stun the giant, giving him enough time to investigate a super-hunch. (The solution to the mystery is near.)

His trick works, and a small bomb knocks the giant cold. (Get it? Cold.)

The Man of Steel takes off for the North Atlantic. “That worthless glass he gathered may be the clue to what he is REALLY seeking in this hot SUMMER! Not glass…”

The spaceman comes to, and finds Superman has delivered to him a full-sized iceberg, and his joy is immediate and apparent. The giant smashes into the ice and sits amongst it, turning frosty white in the process. Now he and Superman begin to communicate telepathically. “Before, my brain was stupefied by the heat,” explains the spaceman.

The ten-foot man is from a distant planet, a world of ice, where the inhabitants thrive in a sub-zero climate. An explorer, he crash-landed on Earth, which he found to be unbearably hot. The heat overcame him, making his body rigid. “I see,” Superman muses, “It’s the exact opposite of how extreme cold makes Earth people FREEZE STIFF!”

Superman quickly deduces that the “powerful rays” of the K were absorbed by the giant, shocking him back to life. For his part, the giant explains his confused mind’s mistake in thinking glass was the ice he craved.

In the best traditions of an unwitting villain and a compassionate hero, the giant is very apologetic for his crazed deeds, but Superman will hear none of it: “You meant no harm in your blundering!” (“Blundering”? Er, sneaky little dig slipped in there, Superman.)

Anyway, the baddie turns out to be not only good, but intelligent, and he and Superman part as friends. Superman builds the spaceman a new spaceship made of blocks of ice carved with his own super-strength, but the giant is sceptical: “Er – but this ship has no rocket motor!”

Superman tells the giant (and quite modestly so, I think), “I’ll just HURL it!” He literally throws the ice-ship back to the giant’s own ice-world.

The final panel of the story shows Clark checking up on his friend with telescopic vision. The giant is once again happy and healthy on his home world. And this is a nice twist, really, in a story that started out as a mystery, and reduced Luthor’s appearance to something of a cameo. Yet, without Luthor’s villainy, there would have been no happy ending here, no stone man brought to life and no space explorer returned joyfully to his home world. Luthor’s purpose was merely to introduce the Man of Steel to the Man of Stone.

The Invulnerable Enemy

Story: Otto Binder

Pencils: Wayne Boring

Inks: Stan Kaye

From:

Action Comics #226 (1957)

Giant Superman Album No. 23 (1974)