Steve Gerber’s “Phantom Zone” Miniseries

If I had to list who the greatest superhero comics writer of all time is, it’d be a coin-toss between Steve Gerber and Steve Englehart. Gerber died a couple years ago, and every time I think about his undeservedly excruciating and painful death it makes me angry, not just because of the injustice of a great man dying young, but also because we’re forever denied another Gerber story involving the Foolkiller, or Man-Thing, or Howard the Duck, or the Metal Men…or Superman.

Jeanette Kahn once said there are two types of comic book writers: Superman people and Batman people. And while the distinction is hardly clear-cut, especially in the incestuous world of comics, Englehart was more of a Batman guy and Gerber was a Superman guy. Everyone knows about Stainless Steve’s “definitive” Batman run, of course, but Englehart was brought over to DC to do JLA, not Batman, however. His JLA run in 1977 featured Superman as explicitly alien, detached from mankind, something of an authoritarian hardass, an archtraditionalist, a man of great integrity but also pride and swagger. It is extremely difficult to argue that Stainless Steve Englehart liked Superman.

Gerber, on the other hand, was quite clearly a “Superman guy.” In Adventure into Fear #17, Gerber introduced Wundarr, a character that was a Superman-esque pastiche, an innocent that was rocketed from his home planet. Because Wundarr grew up entirely in a rocketship, he was a dangerous, childlike innocent. Gerber liked the character enough that he brought Wundarr over as a supporting cast member when he started writing Marvel Two-In-One. Not only was it a strange act of deconstruction in an era when that was just ahead of its time, it was also a sure sign that Gerber was chomping at the bit to write the Man of Steel.

Gerber’s greatest contribution to Superman was his Phantom Zone miniseries in 1982, one of the most tense Superman stories ever, with an atmosphere of anxiety and fear. It was obviously a story written by a lifelong fan with impeccable continuity and references to Superman’s rich world and past. Gerber’s miniseries is filled with skillful characterization, high-stakes, and dramatic and fearsome villains that are threatening, powerful and unstoppable – it showed how scary it would actually be if criminals like the Zoners were let loose and wild on the Earth while Superman was trapped in the Zone himself. Many people have said this series is what Superman II ought to have been. What’s more, Gerber transformed the Zone from some weird smoke background to an actual surreal and frightening world that makes someone doubt their sanity. It is, in short, my favorite Superman story of all time, the one that made me a fan in the first place after years of being skeptical about the character and his world, and it unquestionably one of the greatest Superman stories of all time.

The Beginning

The story begins with one of Gerber’s favorite plot devices: a regular person with uncontrolled and bizarre visions of a strange other world or society, something he originally used as the hook of Omega the Unknown. This time, it’s Charlie Kweiskill, who as all long-time Superman fans know, was an unjustly imprisoned Phantom Zoner, removed of his memory, who lost his powers due to Gold-K – a guy whose first, last and only appearance was in 1962 and was presumably working at the Planet in the background all that time.

Gerber shows his great gift for characterization with some impressive scenes with Perry White, who pretty much gets all the best lines in the series and is obviously Gerber’s favorite character. One problem with Superman is how, at times, his supporting cast becomes a near-afterthought; more or less every scene with Steve Lombard is more or less the same, for instance: a practical joke that backfires, to the point where writers obviously are phoning it in. In this mini, the Superman supporting cast are an important part of the series and play a role in the resolution.

Through Charlie Kweiskill (actually Quex-Ul) and his dreams, we are introduced to the Phantom Zoners. Sure, we’ve all heard what they’ve done to merit entering the Zone, but Gerber is the first to show us the emotional reality of it all. The forces of General Zod become nightmarish and dreadful. The destruction of Wegethor was shown for the first time from the point of view of its victims, a horrific war crime. Even the previously laughably named Kru-El, the worst of the El line, became a madman with lethal weapons.

Make no bones about it, all the Zoners are there because they deserve it. The are all fearsome sociopaths without redemption. Gerber devotes more than half of his first issue showing the Zoners and their past crimes, which amps up the fear for the series. These are not the easily dispatched laughable clowns they often were in the Silver Age that took them for granted, but nightmares, a fearsome threat, and I am surprised at how seriously Gerber treated all of these characters.

As Charlie Kweiskill is plagued by the images he sees, we see the Zoners observing the real world, hidden, using their combined mental power to manipulate him into collecting electronics for them. There have been many times we’ve seen the Zoners hidden and surrounding the world, but their invisible malevolent presence is, here, actually very suspenseful and dangerous.

The Phantom Zone Unleashed

When Superman goes to investigate, the Zoners’ plan is unleashed: Charlie, under mind control, sends himself and Superman into the Phantom Zone, and the Zoners break out!

The Zoners don’t just go on a rampage, however. Their strikes are tactical and planned, the acts of people with vicious cunning and plenty of time on their hands to contemplate revenge. The Zoners throw the JLA sattelite into orbit, destroy and loot Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, and steal Green Lantern’s power battery. The Zoners even smash sattelites to trigger a nuclear attack of the world powers on each other – quite possibly worst case scenario.

Supergirl shows up to stop ’em, but the combined power of four Zoners smack the tar out of her. She’s actually going to be thrown into the Kandorian incinerator, the one place where Kryptonian matter can be destroyed. And worst of all, Superman can only watch helplessly, unable to prevent this savagery and mayhem. This story has something very rare in a Superman tale: a real feeling of danger so great one wonders how even Superman can possibly get out of it all.

Meanwhile, Perry White actually does some detective work together with Batman, investigating the disappearance of Charlie Kweiskill…

Superman in the Phantom Zone

One very heroic choice the series took is to not emphasize on Superman, who the story doesn’t even really get around to focusing on until the third issue of the miniseries. It goes to show one of Denny O’Neil’s bit of advice for comics scripters: if you’re going to be a slacker, forget your hero and focus all your industriousness on your villains.

When we finally return to Superman and Quex-Ul in the Phantom Zone, Superman finds that everything he does as a wraith could be an illusion, and we therefore begin the major part of this phase of the story: Superman doubting his sanity in a brainbending, horrific landscape where Superman has none of his powers. This is one of the best gifts that Gerber gave the Superman mythos that made it much stronger for those after him: the Phantom Zone isn’t just some weird mist nothing, but something far more fascinating.

In one surreal moment, he’s confronted by women with masks. They reveal their masks to show what both Superman and Quex-Ul are most afraid of. It’s like the Phantom Zone is one-part LSD trip, another part shamanistic journey, and another part Island from The Prisoner. It’s easy to see why being in there would make someone absolutely crackers.

One of the reoccurring critiques of the series, usually put forward by people that have never read the miniseries but have heard about it, is that the miniseries made the Zone something of a weird spiritual concept. To that I’d respond by saying that the miniseries worked because Gerber didn’t contradict anything about the Zone, he only expanded and showed a side to it that we had never seen before. It’s all enormously powerful alien cosmic forces. The Zone is no more supernatural than Galactus.

Eventually, Quex-Ul recovers his memory of his Kryptonian heritage, and we learn something even more shocking: the Zone has native inhabitants! One of them is a hideously disfigured Kryptonian sorcerer, who reveals some of the most interesting information passed on about the series. We actually get some more information about the Zone itself: the Phantom Zone is actually sentient, a manifestation of a cosmically powered entity called the Aethyr!

Finally, the story ends with what may be the most frightening cliffhanger ever. Supergirl discovers the true extent of the Zoners’ plans: with Green Lantern’s power battery, they mean to suck the entire planet Earth into the Phantom Zone!

Now that is just plain scary. I can only imagine how dramatic it must have been to people reading the comics at the time, who now have to wait a whole 30 days!

The Zoners on a Rampage

The Zoners of course, live it up in terrifying ways. In one creepy scene, Faora murders a man that watches her bathe. At a rock concert, two Zoners with pyrokinetic abilities that were former jewel thieves set fire to a concert, as they both nihilistically contemplate death. The characterization of these is both chilling and compelling.

In the meantime, Superman and Quex-Ul are prisoners of Aethyr, the mind at the heart of the zone, who confronts them with a terrible fate: the total loss of identity, which would dissolve and merge with the Aethyr forever. The Aethyr plays games with Superman and Quex-Ul, even restoring Quex-Ul’s powers. With them in hand, Quex-Ul realizes Superman can’t escape the identity and purpose-sucking void of the Aethyr, and instead, for one last time, uses the powers he always wanted back and sacrifices himself.

Now this took me by surprise. The first time I read this comic I expected Quex-Ul to do something that would totally free Superman from the Zone the way underestimated, scrappy mortals are prone to do in stories of this type. Quex-Ul’s self-sacrifice, which in many ways was pretty meaningless, casts a pall on the entire story, the kind of uncomfortable and not-easy resolution that is Gerber’s trademark. Like Phillip K. Dick, every time I read a Gerber story I tell myself it’ll be the last one. It never is, of course.

With a lunge of rage, Superman pounces out through the Zone. Together with Supergirl and Green Lantern, he wrecks the Phantom Zone projector designed to take in the whole earth. Superman attacks General Zod, enraged by the death of Quex-Ul, and beats Zod incredibly badly. With a character with as much self control as Superman, it’s something of a shock to see him lose his temper – though he’s certainly entitled to it.

The ensuing battle is colossally nasty – Faora is even burned badly by Supergirl’s heat-vision, something I’m surprised made it through the Comics Code Authority. Whatever teeth that unnecessary body might have ever had, of course, was totally sucked out by the White Queen’s bondage outfit on the cover of Uncanny X-Men way back in 1978.

Here’s a hilarious postscript from an interview with Gerber in the Superman Companion:

Bwahahahahahaha! Beautiful. Chew on that, fascists!

The Art of Gene “The Dean” Colan

I love Curt Swan, but if he had done this mini in his wholesome All-American style, it wouldn’t have been as effective or interesting as the misty, spooky and spectral art of Gene Colan, best known for work in horror comics like Tomb of Dracula. Gene Colan circa 1982 was viewed as an over-the-hill artist with his best work behind him, and in fact, in many interviews, Jim Shooter says he gave Gene work just for old times’ sake. But here, he was the right artist for the right project, and while his inks were at times scratchy and sketchy, it lent a surreal touch.

Just look at what was on the stands in 1982: George Perez in Teen Titans. Giffen in Legion of Superheroes. And then you had the rise of John Byrne as the decade’s superstar artist, what Neal Adams was to the 1970s. Superman comics, done by the same guy that did ’em in 1962, looked old-fashioned and tired. There was no noticeable decrease in quality in Curt Swan’s art as much as there had been, say, Jim Aparo, but there was a real longing for something new. I’ve often said that part of the reason Garcia-Lopez’s art was so well received was not just that he was good, but that he wasn’t Curt Swan. And the Phantom Zone miniseries had a very different artist, which made it feel fresher than it ought.

Aftermath

One can only read a story like this that is perfectly in keeping with the past, and then look back on what came before and say…”Oh! So that’s what those Silver Age guys meant to do!” It’s a serious, dramatic story, a “big” one with a huge scale that does honor and respect to the great and storied history of Superman. My overview barely captured some of the best moments: one of my favorites was Nam-Ek’s encounter with Wonder Woman, and how he was terrified of being in her presence with his rondor-horn ugliness. There was also a creepy Kryptonian prophet, that eventually took a pair of nihilistic thieves with him via Kryptonite poisoning, an ending worthy of an EC Tales from the Crypt comic, where murders always got their comeuppance.

There are even hints that Gerber could have played an even bigger role in the Superman story. In 1985, he and Frank Miller created a pitch for a Superman reboot. Gerber would have emphasized Superman’s role as a force for social justice, for instance.

At times it’s incredibly frustrating to read Superman comics before Julie Schwartz started editing them. With all due respect to Nightwing, I can’t read 90% of the Silver Age. I just can’t stand it. The stakes are small, the villains aren’t real threats, and often they just consist of games Superman plays with his supporting cast. In that respect, Phantom Zone honors what came before by surpassing it.

Final score? 10 out of 10. A must-read for any classic Superman fan.