Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

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Okay, the fourth issue starts as only the very best comic book stories do – namely with radioactive toxic poisoning on a city-wide scale. Hell yeah! The city in question is Bludhaven (city motto: ‘Bludhaven – why let Gotham have all the crime?)’ and the toxic poisoning? Why, that arises, obviously enough, from a supervillain society scheme to drop the jolly green chemical waste giant Chemo from a passing jet. Huh. And I can’t even take a Coke™ onto a plane! Just as impressive as this brazen flouting of the air traffic laws for virtually every major world airline (exception: Air Zimbabwe) is Alexander Luthor, who manages to recap his nefarious scheme in a single page (basically: he pretended to be the real Lex Luthor to form the supervillain society, reprogrammed a random observer satellite of Batman’s to spawn OMACs, drove the Spectre mad with, uh, his incessant flouting of DC multiverse trivia and convinced Superboy Prime into moving the centre of the universe. Because, heck, somebody had to get that kid out of the house and give everybody else a crack at the Wii™). He kisses Power Girl in abridged triumph!

Yeah, Arm Tear-Off Boy. You're ruining everything.

Superboy Prime is less concerned with the kissing of Power Girl and more concerned with punching the lights out of his namesake. So I think we all know where his head is at, homoeroticism-wise (moving the centre of the universe, notwithstanding). Off he flies to the Kent farm where he taunts Connor ‘Superboy’ Kent. (“You don’t even have a cape,” he screams at one point. And a fair enough observation, too.) He goes too far, however, when he kicks Krypto the Superdog. Every single Teen Titan ever and a handful of random members of PETA show up to bring his dog-kickin’ butt to justice. His response? To ‘accidentally’ punch the head of Pantha clean, like, off. He claims that he doesn’t know his own strength but, hey, Superboy-Prime? You’ve just been moving planets around to gravitationally adjust the centre of the universe. I think you’ve got some idea of your strength level.

He then goes ballistic (moreso) for a few more pages, tearing arms off, burning things up with heat vision, wearing real fur, etc until finally a handful of Flashes, having had enough of his impromptu trimming of the Teen Titans membership, pick him up and carry him into The Speed Force. Which is either a) an extra-dimensional power source that gives all Flashes their incomprehensible speed or b) a DCU night club owned by Roy Harper. I can never remember which. Either way, the menace is neutralised. Having dispensed with Superboy-Prime, everybody takes a bit of a breather. Just long enough for Alexander Luthor to activate his giant dimensional tuning fork machine and return Earth-Two to existence. “Kick-ass!” says Golden Age Supes, because he’s been too busy looking after Lois to pay attention to the rest of the antics by his ex-roomie nogoodniks in this issue.

MVP: I’m thinking it has to be Superboy-Prime. Dude moved the centre of the DC Universe around and trimmed the Teen Titans to near-manageable levels. In just one issue. Suck on that, Marv Wolfman.

Next Issue: Kryptonians express their grief via fisticuffs. PLUS The ill manners of Hal Jordan

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