The King of Villains
More than anyone else, during his tenure on Superman in the late 1970s, Martin Pasko was all about the villains. Ex-letterhack Pasko worked to revamp Superman’s Rogues Gallery in interesting ways. Pasko brought Metallo out of Golden Age obscurity to become a deadly new menace, the “Killer with a Kryptonite Heart,” and he brought back the unmemorable space pirate Amalak and turned him into a dangerous foe willing to kill himself to convince Superman he committed murder. Not only did he reboot foes, but Pasko created a few as well: the Atomic Skull and the Master Jailer. Pasko even took some of Superman’s “funny” menaces like Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bizarro and gave them real human emotions: Mr. Mxzptlk under Pasko went from a comical imp to a devious little egomaniac, and Bizarro became what he was in his first appearance, a sympathetic and tragic monster.
By far the most successful revival of a Superman Rogue by Pasko had to have been the sudden and surprise murder of the “Jester” Toyman by the original, a shocker that ranks among the most memorable Superman moments of all time.
In all fairness, not every villain revamp or new foe that Pasko did was as interesting as the rest. Who today remembers the second Blackrock, Peg-Leg Portia and the Earth-1 muck monster version of Solomon Grundy? But in general, Pasko was successful in revitalizing Superman’s enemies despite never really using the biggies like Brainiac and Lex Luthor that much, and according to Pasko, during his three years on the book sales increased on Superman three times from the previous writer (hey, how’s that taste, Gerry Conway?).
Kobra, the Most Dangerous Man Alive
So, it should come as no surprise that “Pesky” Pasko brought Kobra over to fight Superman, especially since Martin Pasko also was the sole writer on Kobra’s short lived title. Kobra is everything a good villain ought to be: a powerful, threatening supergenius leader of an Indian end-of-the-world snake cult, Fu Manchu by way of David Koresh. Kobra was a world-class megalomaniac with superscientific devices, Yogic and martial arts training, and an army of fanatical suicide-henchmen with slick, cool looking snake duds.
In Kobra, the story began as a modern-day take on the Corsican Twins, with a pair of Siamese Twins seperated at birth. One was raised by the Kobra cult and became a Martial Arts master and criminal mastermind, whereas the other became an ordinary college kid. The two were linked by a telepathic rapport, and when one was injured, the other felt it, and if one was to die, the other would too…the single most clever part of the entire series, as Kobra could never outright kill his ordinary brother.
Marty Pasko was always a big believer in the philosophy that the best type of heroes aren’t super-competent or all powerful and ready for anything, but rather ordinary people caught up in dangerous events, as in most of Hitchcock’s films. The Corsican Twin brother of Kobra sure falls into this category: he’s an everyman that stumbles into a dangerous world.
There are, naturally, some complications. For instance, Kobra and his brother have both been in love with the same woman.
Whatever else you can say, Martin Pasko definitely didn’t waste the opportunity the concept presented. He had underworld types mistake the “good” brother for Kobra because the two look alike, and created scenarios where the two brothers had to protect each other despite mutual self-loathing. There was even an especially cool moment where Kobra took control of his brother’s body through their link, to enable him to bypass the laser generator using his Yogic flexibility.
Eventually, Kobra’s solo title became a meeting place for heroes that wouldn’t overshadow him, which allowed Pasko to show off his love for continuity. Heroes that Kobra fought included obscuros like Jonny Domino, Len Wein’s hard-luck private dick, and Randu Singh from the Demon.
(Incidentally, in the Demon backup in Action Comics Weekly, it was stated that Randu Singh was blinded by demons. Untrue…Kobra was responsible. Another precious, precious No-Prize denied me!)
The last issue of Kobra was only printed after the title had been canceled, in DC Comics Special Series #1, a dollar comic best described as the Island of Misfit Comics, a book padded out by unused or scrapped stories, essentially the DC equivalent of Marvel Premiere.
Kobra periodically emerged after that, notably in Aquaman #60 (yes, really!) where, perhaps because the writer felt that Kobra vs. Aquaman was a colossal mismatch, made Green Lantern guest-star.
So it was pretty much inevitable that Kobra would eventually fight DC’s big gun, Superman, especially when Pasko, desperately in need of villains, tapped his old creation to fight Superman.
Superman #327
The comic begins with Clark Kent returning to his apartment and finding weirdo cultists in snakeskin costumes robbing him. Apparently, to his great shock, Kobra knows who Superman is! Kobra was pursuing an object lost from a UFO in Superman’s possession from the previous issue, which he took to his apartment (presumably to decorate his coffee table).
This is pretty much the one thing most people remember about this story: yeah, Kobra actually knows Superman’s secret identity! And it’s worth pointing out that he never unlearned it: he was never exposed to Amnesium, hypnotized, or received a trusty serial-style blow to the head. Kobra may even still know!
Meanwhile, Kobra was able to make his escape from Superman, with the ripped-off gadget in tow.
Kobra drops a bombshell: he used the teleportation device he snatched from Superman to bring Ma and Pa Kent from a week before they died, and unless Superman does what he says, then Kobra will kill them!
Kobra demands Superman pick up SAND for him! Sand that Kobra himself placed all over the city. Naturally, Superman does what the bad guy says, but in the end he reveals it was all an elaborate ruse, he snuck his Earth-parents away to safety:
Though here’s an impossibly inconsequential little science-nit from a guy with a Geology background: sand is an aggregate that is principally Silicon Dioxide, or SiO2, whereas Silicone, also called polysiloxanes, are flexible organic-inorganic polymers with a silicon-oxygen “backbone,” a material best known as a component in breast implants. I know what he means, but after all, sulfides and sulfates are not the same thing either.
Aftermath
This story had all the ingredients of something awesome, but I have to admit I was disappointed. A very, very nasty bad guy finds out Superman’s secret identity and captures his parents to make sure Superman does his bidding. So he makes Superman get him sand, so he can use it to recreate a nerve gas? Why not just have Superman pick up your dry cleaning and go for a Starbucks run while you’re at it, eh, Kobra? And if Kobra had the know-how to use his alien teleportation gadget to pull Martha and Jonathan Kent through time, why couldn’t he have just done the same for the nerve gas?
The idea of Kobra bringing Jonathan and Martha Kent to the future to be hostage was an interesting one, and something designed as the kind of very nasty psych-out a baddie like Kobra would be skilled at. But nothing really interesting is done with that development. Sure, there was this intriguing panel, where Superman has a real emotional reaction to Kobra’s ploy. But it just sits there at the end and isn’t a part of the story.
Because Kobra knows who Superman really is, and because he kidnapped Ma and Pa Kent, that makes it personal. That would really make a future battle between the two all the more dramatic and may have been a prelude on the part of Pasko to make Kobra a Superman foe. This whole story feels like a prelude, an introduction, to a story that Martin Pasko never got to tell, as Marty was unceremoniously removed from Superman a few issues later and replaced by Jeanette Kahn with “cool” Marvel guy Len Wein, so therefore this story has the feel of a non-sequitur. Martin Pasko incidentally, was one of the first writers to use Marvel-style subplots and long-term planning as a part of the Superman book.
If there’s any lesson we can take from this story, it may be that Ma and Pa Kent are too significant to the mythos to just have dead before it even began. People will think of elaborate ways to use them. The restoration of Ma and Pa Kent after Crisis is the one universally praised elements of most post-1985 interpretations of Superman.
Incidentally, Superman #327 had a backup story, a dusted off Kurt Schaffenberger 17-pager…but I’ve never cared about Schaffenberger, so why break an old habit? But it does show how fat comics were at the absolute height of the excessive DC Explosion bubble.
Confessions Of A Superman Fan 
I remember this, and was looking forward to more with Kobra, who I always felt should have been a top tier DC villain and their answer to Hydra. Shame it was never realized. Len Wein was all right but Pesky was a real DC guy and I was always liked real DC guys writing best.
I agree that Kobra had amazing potential, which was mostly realized in his own series. He had great potential to be a top tier bad guy, and some amazing stories have been told with him, including the aforementioned DC Super Special #1 with Batman and the very cool spy-themed Kobra arc in Geoff Johns’s run on JSA.
Just to add I know Kobra was just one guy but he had all his Kobra goons similar to Hydra.
I was always disappointed that Kobra became more of a Batman foe than a Superman foe. Batman, incidentally, appeared in the same issue of Aquaman as Green Lantern and Kobra, as that tale took place after Jason’s murder.
I THINK Batman called a JLA meeting to discuss Kobra’s threat, and only GL and Aquaman appeared. Kobra took on the Outsiders in a mult-part tale around ’85 and also fought the Wally West Flash Post-Crisis. It IS too bad he and Superman never met face-to-face again.
Thanks, Julian, for a great look back at a Bronze Age classic. I fondly remember picking this one up in the Summer of ’79, along with a candy bar and a couple packs of “Moonraker” trading cards.
Kobra was a fascinating character, but I never really got into the saga as it came to involve so many DC titles and distribution in my area was spotty at best. It struck me at the time that he was DC’s answer to Dr Doom; a match for many if not most of the heroes, he got away at the end of all his stories and seemed to be building up to something big and nasty, something that eventually would involve the whole DC pantheon. Not sure if that ever happened.
I have to disagree that the survival of Ma and Pa was a “universally praised” element of post-Crisis Superman. Initially I was as pleased as anyone to see them alive, since after all they’re nice folks, but in time they became a liability in my eyes as Superman went running home to them whenever he had trouble or needed help figuring out the difference between right and wrong. In the same way I think it was a mistake to have him taking orders from Daddy Jor-El in the movies, I think having the Kents around into Superman’s adulthood had the ultimate effect of letting him put off growing up indefinitely.
This is the first time I’ve seen Frank Chiaramonte’s inks over Swan in a long while. I have to say the passage of time hasn’t improved my opinion.
We’ve had this conversation before and I always correct you on this every time!
The Kents were really not used the way you’re describing after a certain point at all.
They didn’t function as mentor figures beyond the first initial years of their resurrection and slid into more comfortable roles as supporting cast. The Kents did not become someone to run home to for advice.
Also, I reject the premise of the argument: even if the Kents did become someone that Superman turned to for advice (and they didn’t), what’s necessarily wrong with a hero that sometimes seeks direction and guidance from trusted people within his life where he can let his hair down with? I think that shows a degree of humanity, because we’re all dependent on others.
(It’s not as tragic as Clark Kent as a lonely orphan. That’s the one objection to the Kents’ survival I can understand, because some of the “Private Life of Clark Kents” were really moving for that reason and stories that emphasize Superman’s loneliness, a factor that makes him sympathetic, aren’t as possible with a hefty supporting cast aware of his identity.)
However, the fact that THIS line of reasoning is used to oppose the Kents, over and over, is something I find very telling.
Personally, I attribute the resistance to the Kents’ survival (among a certain subgroup of fans) as a kneejerk reaction to the idea that Superman could have a human vulnerability at an emotional level, and that’s not cool at all psychologically speaking: certain people deal with anxieties and vulnerability about themselves by projecting into always-certain, never-wavering father figures.
And perhaps that’s fine and not even as psychologically deviant as I’m making it out to be, but that’s not what most people want out of fictional characters and fictional stories. So there are a minority of people go ballistic when, say, it’s admitted that Tony Stark or Hal Jordan might be an alcoholic.
(They’re also people that tend to not “get” why Spider-Man is so popular.)
I, too, want to thank you, Mr. Perez, for covering one of my favourite Bronze-Age tales.
I’m not much for the Bronze Age. To me, most DC titles stopped in 1968, with their characters “frozen” in place at that time. Superman and Action Comics are two ready exceptions. Probably because Julius Schwartz had taken over the titles, and he still ran things with an iron hand.
The thing was, most of the Bronze-Age Superman plots were fairly unmemorable. It was the small touches that usually made the stories such a treat for me. You mentioned some of them, in the shadings that Pasko gave to certain characters. Likewise, Elliott Maggin brought a depth to Luthor and Krypto that gave them a reality—at least, as real as anything can feel in the DC universe.
Like you, I was underwhelmed by the “world-shaking” confrontation between Superman and Kobra. But what made this issue sing for me was the inclusion of the Kents. For one thing, Pasko cleared up a problem—with the simplest of explanations—that had been confounding DC for years.
When DC “youthenised” Jonathan and Martha Kent, in “The Fantastic Faces”, from Superboy # 145 (Mar., 1968), it created a problem that should have been foreseen.
Rejuvenating the Boy of Steel’s foster-parents created the awkward situation of the later Superboy tales featuring the Kents in their 40’s; the earlier Superboy tales featuring the Kents in their 60’s; and the Superbaby stories featuring the Kents in their 50’s. Any readers who came along after the Kents were made younger would be confused by any Superbaby stories that came after, because it would appear that the Kents were older when Clark was a baby than they were when he was a teen. At first, DC handled that situation with footnotes. But evenutally, it just went with showing the Kents as being young during Superbaby’s time, as well. (Something which always stuck in my craw.)
But the big problem was the matter of “The Last Days of Ma and Pa Kent”, from Superman # 161 (May, 1963). That story told of how Superboy’s foster-parents died, and of course, being before the “big change”, they were the old sixty-something Kents. Super-fans with long memories wrote in, asking how this could be—since their rejuvenation was touted as being permanent.
DC muffed it badly. First, it told the readers that the effects of the Caribbean fever plague had undone their rejuvenation. BUT, cried the readers, the first couple of pages of that story occurred before the Kents got sick, so how do you explain why they were old there?
Then DC got sneaky. It reprinted the tale in [Giant Annual] Superboy # 165 (May-Jun., 1970), and re-coloured the Kents’ hair brown and deleted their glasses, to try to pass them off as the later young Kents. But since they didn’t retouch their bodies, which were still stocky, it looked for all the world like the sixtyish Ma and Pa Kent had just dyed their hair and gotten contact lenses.
The fans didn’t buy that either, so DC just threw its hands up and ignored it.
It fell upon Martin Pasko, in Superman # 327, to provide the solution that was right in front of DC’s face the whole time—on page 10, when he had the Man of Steel reflect:
“They died over a decade ago! And part of me has grieved ever since! It was a terrible blow–because I expected them to live much longer! They had been rejuvenated by an alien youth serum . . . but shortly before I turned 18, they began to age again–proving the effects of the serum had been only temporary!”
Accompanying that are a couple of panels which show Jonathan and Martha seeing and feeling the signs of the youth serum wearing off. (Hence, Pa Kent’s last line in Superman # 327: “We’re old again, Martha . . . we have to get used to these things all over!”)
That alone would have made the issue for me. But what really resonated was that last page—the poignancy of Superman being “reunited” with his dead foster-parents. To have them right there, but to be unable to touch them or speak to them or even them be aware that he was there. It stirs the reader’s empathy, makes him actually feel Superman’s grief and sense of loss from the Kents’ deaths.
Like Nightwing, I feel that having the Kents remain alive in the post-Crisis Superman mythos was a mistake. First, for the same reason that Nightwing provided: the various stories of when Superboy became Superman notwithstanding, the deaths of the Kents truly demarked the moment when Clark Kent became an adult. It diminishes that by having him be able to run to mommy and daddy whenever things get tough to bear or to ask them for their advice. It’s as ridiculous as when the thirty-something Adam Cartwright used to turn to his father, Ben, and say “What do we do now, Paw?”
Second, the deaths of the Kents is one of the great levellers of Superman’s life—the cruel, stark lesson that not even Superman can fix everything. It informs him—and the readers—that, for all of his great powers, Superman can fail. Even when it involves the things most dear to him.
That aside though, Mr. Perez, I think your analysis of Superman # 327 was spot-on, and it was a pleasure to read.
I don’t think we’ve actually met but thanks! Yeah, Pasko was a continuity guy, a fan himself.
“I’m not much for the Bronze Age.”
In general terms, I am, actually – I think it was an improvement over the Silver Age (most of which I find unreadable), the beginnings of the things that really made DC “work,” characterization, tighter continuity, and worldbuilding by crossing over one thing to another. Obviously it’s debatable when that sort of Marvel stuff started at DC, but at least by what we call the Bronze Age it was full-flower.
I didn’t mean that as a slam against Len Wein, a writer that I have almost near-universally admired, and I even liked his Superman as much as Pasko’s, mostly because of his gift for clean, correct plots.
Hi, Julian,
Like any egomaniac writer (lol), I’m grateful for your attention to my past work, but I have to take vigorous exception to the following: “…according to Pasko, during his three years on the book sales increased on Superman three times from the previous writer (hey, how’s that taste, Gerry Conway?).”
I’ve never made such a boast, because it’s not true, but even if I were tacky enough to do so, I certainly would never aim it at Gerry, who is a dear friend of many decades and whose work on Superman, contemporaneous with mine, I admired greatly, as I’ve said in many interviews I’ve given. I have absolutely NO idea, from factual or even anecdotal accounts, of what the sales of “my’ SUPERMAN were compared to Gerry’s.
What I have said is that I was told — specifically, by Mike Gold, who was, at the time, DC’s publicist and supposedly privy to sales figures — that SUPERMAN’s sales increased during my tenure on the book, to close to double those of ACTION COMICS. I, as writer, was the only Creative on the team who differed from ACTION’s (ACTION was also regularly pencilled by Curt Swan and inked by Frank Chiaramonte, and even the lettering and coloring — by Ben Oda and Jerry Serpe, respectively, though I’m not 100% sure because I don’t think those disciplines were being credited then and, in any event, I don’t have the books in front of me as I type this — was fairly consistent from issue to issue).
From that, it was concluded that there was evidence that the then-burgeoning direct-sales market mattered, because my approach was more “fan friendly” than that of the ACTION scripting — meaning, I placed more emphasis on running plotlines and continuity, and strived for characterizations that the editor initially balked at, claiming them “too sophisticated” for the readership. The old conventional wisdom was that the kind of stuff I was doing was actually UNcommercial, given the then-prevailing idea that dedicated fans were only a small and inconsequential percentage of the readership, and that most readers were casual and irregular buyers of the product who didn’t want to “work” at following the story, didn’t know what had happened in the previous issue or cared, and wanted everything made as as simple and self-explanatory as possible.
I’ve never meant to tell this anecdote as anything other than an illustration of how story values started to shift to accommodate a changing readership. I’ve never intended it as a boast or for self-promotional purposes, which is why I’ve always scrupulously avoided talking much about ACTION’s content when telling it. While I understand you meant no harm, and an honest mistake is an honest mistake, I felt I had a moral obligation to weigh in here, since I’d never want any comment I make anywhere to be used as a club to hurt some other writer’s reputation. Thanks for letting me go on the record with this, and thanks for the entertaining read.
Best,
Martin Pasko
Mr. Pasko! It’s awesome to see you respond to my post. You probably don’t remember me, but back in 2007 I believe we exchanged messages. I was a bit more of a hothead back in those days.
I appreciate your correction and it is duly noted. I was just having a fun-spirited poke at Conway.
“From that, it was concluded that there was evidence that the then-burgeoning direct-sales market mattered, because my approach was more “fan friendly” than that of the ACTION scripting — meaning, I placed more emphasis on running plotlines and continuity, and strived for characterizations that the editor initially balked at, claiming them “too sophisticated” for the readership. ”
THIS. This was why I’m a big fan of yours.
Incidentally, since I have your attention, did you have anything planned for a confrontation between Kobra and Superman?
Julian, I’m going to respond to your comments here rather than reply to your reply, because WordPress insists on making each reply smaller than what came before, to the point where you need a microscope to read anything. I’m working on fixing that, but haven’t figured it out yet.
You’re probably right about that. Time tends to cloud the memory, and I tend not to re-read stories from this era. It’s also possible I’m including non-canonical influences like the contemporary “Lois and Clark” TV show, which featured the Kents prominently.
The point, I suppose, is that on the occasions it did happen, it made a big impression on me. Like Superman’s one measly porn film with Big Barda or his one little experiment with executing his enemies, the impression left was disproportionately large.
I’d agree with that, but keep in mind the Superman I grew up with was based on an earlier model of literary hero; one where a prerequisite of manhood is breaking ties to the father, often through death. Mind you, I’m not saying many great heroes haven’t had living fathers, but Superman was based on that tradition of a hero who has to rely on himself; who has to find strength from within rather than borrowing it from an authority figure and who has to learn for himself — sometimes at great cost — the correct path to take. One of the recurring themes in the mythos is that Jor-El really does know the answer to everything; he is essentially infallible. But alas, he is also quite dead, and so of no help. To a lesser extent this is true for Pa Kent as well; they are perfect father figures, and they can’t help.
There’s a huge element of tragedy, loss and loneliness in the pre-Crisis mythos that I found compelling and which I feel was too glibly jettisoned in the reboot, to be replaced by stuff I personally found a lot more pedestrian and flat.
That’s a cute piece of armchair psychoanalysis, but I’m not looking for a Superman who has no insecurities or doubt; after all a man with his power who doesn’t stop to question himself is more villain than hero. (However I do think a superhero by definition should know the difference between right and wrong.) For me, though, the old Superman — who had his anxieties and self-doubt with no means to allay them, save activity — was replaced by one who has them too easily allayed by a slice of rhubarb pie and a game of fetch with the family dog.
To turn it around for a moment, let’s suppose Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben hadn’t died, and Spider-Man was motivated not by guilt but by some more upbeat, altruistic notion, with Ben always there to put his arm around Pete and offer advice whenever he got in over his head. Would that kind of Spider-Man have appealed to you as much as the one you got? Pre-Crisis Superman may not be the hand-wringing bundle of anxieties Pete is, but in his own way he was as tragic, as lonely and as prone to self-pity, and none of that would have worked with the “easy out” of a Daddy to run to.
The “living Kents” thing was motivated, obviously, by the decision to make post-Crisis Superman an Earthman who just happens to have come from off-planet, as opposed to an alien who can never fit in here. And since I consider that revamp a mistake, it’s only natural I pick on the Kents for it, though as I say I like them as characters, even in modern continuity.
Back to that again, are we? I fully accept Tony Stark as an alcoholic; after reading “Essential Iron Man Volume 1” it’s a wonder I’m not one as well. But the trouble with grafting that stuff on to Hal is that he was never up to that point shown as a playboy, a party dude or anything less than a straight-laced, by-the-book test pilot turned galactic cop. Doubtless that description is anathema to you, but it’s who he was, so sticking in “oh, and we forgot to mention it for 30 years, but he was always a drunk, too” is as wrong as retconning in an affair between Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborne, for instance. It might help you tell your story, but it’s cheating, and it’s wrong.
I agree with what you say about Superman’s parents dying meaning he was a lot less lonely, and in many ways Superman’s crushing loneliness as a survivor is what makes him sympathetic. If Superman came to earth as a tourist, the entire Superman story would become a little sinister. That’s the single strongest argument for leaving the Kents dead, and one I can agree with.
The “it means he’d have to turn to a father figure for guidance!” argument for the Kents being dead is a line of argument that I don’t quite accept, and I don’t think it comes from a good place. Not just because that’s not really what the Kents were used for, but even if it was, so what? I don’t see how a hero would be diminished by taking supporting cast into his confidence and sharing his problems with them and receive guidance in return. A big problem with classic-era Superman is that, apart from Batman, he never had anybody he took into his confidence, so he essentially didn’t really have anybody to let his hair down with, nobody he wasn’t at least slightly play acting with.
Finally, as I said in this article, the Kents are such an important part of the Superman story that to leave them dead “closes a door.” People want to read about them and writers want to write about them and they’ll find a way to do it, the way Pasko did here. This story would not have worked in the same way if Kobra captured Lois or Jimmy.
By the way, the critique that the Kents were brought back because of a desire to make Superman more of an earthling is perhaps a bit out of date, considering that the Byrne reboot was done away with years ago, yet Ma Kent is still alive. And even before the Byrne “Clark is the real guy” stuff was done away with, versions of Superman have been made that made him aware and proud of his Kryptonian heritage, but also have the Kents around (e.g. the Dini animated series).
As for Uncle Ben, I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think that’s equivalent. The role of Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man origin is to die and fill Peter with guilt and responsibility. That’s not quite the same situation as the Kents, who have a different purpose.
As for Hal, the retcon wasn’t that he’d been a raging boozehound “all along.” Not a single panel of a single comic from 1960 to today was undone or rewritten. The retcon was that he’d had problems before we’d seen him as a GL. This was consistent with traits we already know about Hal Jordan: he was totally fearless.
Suicide rates, alcoholism, depression and other psychological problems are incredibly high among people in high-stress, low-safety “right stuff” professions that require men and women to reduce their ability to experience fear: soldiers, policemen, and firefighters (and maybe test pilots).
Yeah, I know, I use that example over and over, but there’s a reason why.
By the way, for the record, I really don’t have a problem with the idea that Gwen Stacy had an affair with Norman Osborn back in the day, either. There are certainly gaps in continuity where that could have happened, particularly when Gwen was a part of the exchange program in London. And Gwen Stacy was always shown as an easily molded person, and it’s totally believable she’d fall under the spell of a sociopathically charming, mature, magnetic and tigerish figure like Norman Osborn (until she got to know him). The secret twins thing was way too much to swallow, but a brief affair? Yeah, that could have happened.
Incidentally, the criticisms of the “Sins Past” story are another example of critiques that I don’t think come from a very good place. There was a lot of yelling about how Gwen “was a slut now.” Which is a very ugly, ugly way to think.
Probably not, but that’s largely because it had been done so many times already that it would have been hard to generate interest, let alone suspense. “Look, the Kents are somehow alive again and trapped in a bubble!” is a great hook to sell issues, in a way that “Lois is trapped in a bubble…again!” is not.
But having said that, in the panel you include here even Superman isn’t saying, “No! Don’t kill my parents!” since he knows as we do that they’re doomed anyway. Instead he blurts out, “But that will change my personal history!” Which taken out of context here is a pretty cold remark, although it does pretty much sum up the real issue: their deaths at the hands of Kobra will screw up Superman’s timeline and maybe even kill him (who knows), but ultimately it won’t make that much difference to Jonathan and Martha one way or the other.
Sorry, it should have read, “The Kents were brought back because of a desire to make Superman more of an earthling AND to kill Pa later in accordance with the Gospel according to Dick Donner.”
BTW, I don’t have a big problem with “Sins Past” since as you know I don’t give a rat’s patootie about Spider-Man post-Ditko: to me it’s all apocrypha after issue #38. I just picked an example I thought you might care about.
Pa Kent dead according to the gospel of Dick Donner? Maybe. But consider:
As our good friend the Commander said above…the idea of Kal-El’s earth-parents dying and Superman was unable to prevent it, so Superman learns a crucial lesson in humility despite all his powers? Whenever it came from, it’s not the worst idea in the world. I don’t think it’s necessary for both parents to necessarily die.
And I always loved Modern-Day Ma Kent much more: she was a blue-jeans wearing, gutsy, cool old lady as opposed to the home-maker non-entity of the past. If one Kent had to die it might as well have been Pa.
Also: don’t get me wrong, “Sins Past” was pure buffalo-chips from the beginning. The Secret Twins were absolutely outrageous.
I’m completely with Nightwing on this matter. I never have liked the Kents being alive into Superman’s manhood; to me it kept him a child forever. Turgenev said a boy does not become a man until he loses his father, and while that doesn’t reply to real people, for the literary construct known as “characters” and especially heroic characters, I feel it’s important that they are on their own. Plus I feel the lesson that even with his powers he could not save them is essential.
the Kents never were dead in the comics
they always existed in Superboy comics