Worst Moment in Comics
Adventures of Superman #597
Story title: “Rubber Crutch”
Writer: Joe Casey
Artist: Derec Aucoin
Synopsis:
The Joker, having broken out of Arkham Asylum as usual, is on a
spree to “jokerize” various other villains in the DCU, which in this
case is that he’s using a specialized formula to turn them
white-faced with a wide grin running far to both ends of their
faces. Here, in Superman's end of the Joker: Last Laugh crossover, the subjects of this
silly experiment/prank is none other than presidential incumbent Lex
Luthor and his two bodyguards, Hope and Mercy, who end up sounding
like comedians, and Lex decides to launch an early re-election
campaign, and worse still, he tries to start nuclear warfare by
causing rockets to go off. Vice president Pete Ross takes over and
tries to solve the whole Joker crisis on his part, while Superman
jumps into action to stop the launched rockets before they can do
any damage on the globe. Eventually, everything is under control,
and Luthor and his bodyguards are cured of their Jokerizing intake.
Comment:
The cover contains the caption, "Why
is
this man smiling?" A better question than that might be, "why is this reader not?"
Simply put, because it is groaningly lame, unfunny, and as part of a
crossover storyline (I hesistate to say "event"), it couldn't be
more rushed in being written out by any of the writers involved, or
the editors who foisted it upon the audience.
Joe Casey’s writing has run hot-and-cold in whatever I’ve read from
him. Some things, such as Cable,
were nothing special. Other things, such as his other work on this
title before and after this crossover, were better and more
involving. This story falls into the former category, and while he
may be doing his best at trying to make it entertaining, thanks to
the cheap sales gimmick heaped upon him here, he fails on almost
every level.
Lex Luthor, alas, just isn’t funny, nor are his two bodyguards (and
oh wow, more female henchpersons. Just the kind of cliché I tire
of). And it makes no sense as to why he’d want to organize early
elections and then ruin his chances for that if he’s then going to
go nutso with a bunch of nuclear rockets. Part of the problem with
this issue is that it could contain political undertones, something
the industry seems to have lost its mind on as of recent. Most
curious, however, is how it reminded me of Superman 4: The Quest for Peace, which pretty much
put the cap on the movie franchise back in its time, and was very
scattershot in its would-be script, which this issue is almost like
as well.
Other than that, it’s not entirely Casey’s fault for this story
being so bad, nor any other writer unfortunate enough to have their
book's flow interrupted by Joker:
Last Laugh. The lucky thing is that DC since then seems to
have realized that they embarrassed themselves here, the success or
not of the crossover notwithstanding, and while they launched a
pretty bad (and overrated) miniseries in 2004 called Identity Crisis, they at least
refrained from publication wide crossovers, excluding the Batbooks,
which, sadly, have still suffered from them since then.
Simply put, the Man of Steel deserves much better than this tripe,
and maybe some people are right when they say that Luthor has become
less effective as a villain now that he’s become president in the
DCU. Which is a pity if so, because there are some really genuine
possibilities surrounding his position there. Though it would all
depend on if DC’s writers used those possibilities carefully, of
course.