By Cary Bates, Alex Saviuk & Vince Colletta (DC/London Editions)
ISBN: 0-86173-042-9
The Superman album clearly made some impact in Britain (or at least the editors thought it would) and a second volume – also sporting a lushly airbrushed Alan Craddock cover – was produced. Also celebrating the sharp, plot-driven costumed dramas which predominated in the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC universe, this cosmic mystery revenge saga ideally shows how old stories could and should be reinvigorated rather than overwritten…
‘Superman Meets the Zod Squad’ was created by cobbling together Action Comics #548-549 (October and November 1983) into one improbable saga of cosmic vengeance as a race of primordial reivers discovered the remains of Argo City and realised that there was at least one Kryptonian left in the cosmos…
Superman’s cousin Kara Zor-El had been born on a city-sized fragment of Krypton, hurled intact into space when the planet exploded. Eventually Argo City turned to Kryptonite like the rest of the detonated world’s debris, and her dying parents, observing Earth through their scopes, sent their daughter to safety as they perished. Landing on Earth, she met the Man of Steel who created for her the identities of Linda Lee and Supergirl, hiding her from the world whilst she learned about her new home and to use astounding abilities in secrecy and safety.
The aliens were Vrangs – savage slavers who had conquered Krypton in ages past: brutally using the primitive populace to mine minerals too toxic for the aliens to handle. The planet’s greatest hero was Val-Lor who died instigating the rebellion which drove the Vrang from Krypton and prompted the birth and rise of the super-scientific civilisation.
All Kryptonians developed an inbred hatred of the Vrang, and when Phantom Zone prisoners Jax-Ur, Professor Va-Kox, Faora Hu-Ul and General Dru-Zod observed their ancestral oppressors from the stark and silent realm of nullity that had been their drearily, unchanging, timeless jail since before Krypton perished, they swore to destroy them.
If their ‘Escape from the Phantom Zone!’ also allowed the Kryptonian outcasts to kill the hated son of the discoverer of the eerie dimension of stultifying intangibility so much the better…
Using the psycho-active properties of Jewel Kryptonite – a post-cataclysm isotope of the very element so poisonous to Vrangs – a quartet of Zoners perpetrate a mass break-out and head to Earth for vengeance… but who is their primary target?
Not long after, Clark Kent, still blithely unaware of his peril, is investigating a new citizens’ defence group that has sprung up in Metropolis in response to a city-wide rash of petty crimes. Even as Zod, Faora, Tyb-Ol and Murkk infiltrate human society and bide their time, the Man of Steel and Lois are most concerned with how the grassroots White Wildcats can afford to police their neighbourhoods with jet-packs and martial arts skills unknown on Earth…
Uncovering militarist order-freak Zod behind the scheme, Superman is astounded when the Kryptonian criminals surrender, offering a truce until their ancient common foes are defeated.
…And that’s when the Vrang teleport the Man of Steel into their ship, exultant that they now possess the mightiest slave in existence. Moreover, there are four more potentially priceless victims hurtling up to attack them, utterly unaware in their blind rage and hatred that the Vrangs have weapon even Kryptonians cannot survive…
This clever, compulsive thriller of cross, double and even triple-cross is a fabulously intoxicating, tension-drenched treat from scripter Cary Bates and illustrated by Alex Saviuk & Colletta that still blends human foible with notions of honour, and shows that even the most reprehensible villains understand the value of sacrifice and the principle of something worth dying for…
Superman has proven to be all things to all fans over his decades of existence, and with the character again undergoing another radical overhaul, these timeless tales of charm and joy and wholesome wit are more necessary than ever: not just as a reminder of great tales of the past but as an all-ages primer of the wonders still to come…
© 1982 DC Comics Inc. This edition © 1982 London Editions Magazines (formerly Egmont Publishing). All Rights Reserved.