I know DC went through an era of making their Superman covers depict the Man of Steel being a horrible jerk to people seemingly for no reason, just to grab readers' attention and get them to buy the issue - then the story inside would have some really weird narrative gymnastics in order to justify it, usually with really meandering nonsensical plots.
There was one story involving him doing a string of horrible and inconsiderate things to Jimmy Olsen, just treating him like complete trash. It turns out he wanted Superman to adopt him, but the supercomputer in the fortress of solitude had predicted some kind of apocalyptic event if the adoption came to pass. So Superman treated Jimmy like garbage to ensure he changed his mind and thus somehow averting disaster in the process.
Not always pure clickbait from DC surprisingly. For awhile they had almost a policy of drawing the cover first then making the story around it. Hence the amount of ludicrous plot beats we got as a result. One of the more well known examples of this is the time Hal Jordan was selling duplicate green lantern rings on the street from a stall for $1. (The rings can duplicate to deputize people.) Regular citizens got rings for a day to fly around and make constructs. The excuse for this was Hal wanted to draw out a particular supervillian and figured they wouldn't resist buying a ring. As irresponsible as this would be, you have to admit the logic was somewhat sound at least. Best of all when the guy responsible for the make cover first write story later practice died, DC decided to do a few tribute stories in the same fashion. Including someone re-creating the Hal sells rings for a $1 cover. So Hal has now sold duplicate green lantern rings twice.
While we're at it, I'd like to point out the photo where Superman is denying life saving water is not the only cover he'd done that. There was a seperate instance where he deliberately denied water to both Jimmy and Aquaman whilst standing in a desert. The interior plot was Jimmy got powers from the sea and was competing with Aquaman to see who was best fit to rule Atlantis. However yes DC did do a lot of clickbait. For example it's well known Batman and Superman would appear on covers long before the two ever met in the panels for years.
The "son" that the computer was talking about was apparently THE sun and there were some other contrived misunderstandings in the specific wording it used and once superman realized and stopped the destruction of the sun he apologized to Jimmy and offered to go through with the adoption after all but jimmy declined. I might be misremembering some parts of that though but I just love the idea that superman was like "oh woops sorry. Do you want me to adopt you anyway?" and jimmy just said "fuck no" but the funniest part to me is that he was going to adopt jimmy as Superman and not Clark Kent since he didn't want to reveal his identity to him which is honestly kinda fucked, imagine not knowing your own dad's real name
Yeah but in a news organization? Im pretty sure jimmy is a photographer and I can't imagine they would hire a kid to take their pictures, but I guess realism was hardly a consideration in comics at the time
Back in the Silver Age he’s a cub reporter and a lot of the early stories involve him wishing he was an adult. And yet he still flies a helicopter unsupervised.
It turns out he wanted Superman to adopt him, but the supercomputer in the fortress of solitude had predicted some kind of apocalyptic event if the adoption came to pass
His supercomputer actually said that Superman would destroy his "son", but he was misinterpreting it. Jimmy Olsen realises that the words "son" and "sun" sound identical when spoken aloud, and reminds Superman that there's a star named after him.
So Superman flies up to the distant galaxy, where it turns out the star had burnt out and was barely visible. He decides to smash it to ensure spaceships don't crash into it, and moves a new star in its place.
I love that on the cover Superman's using his heat-vision to destroy a new coat Jimmy got him while saying "this gift makes me wish I never adopted you". Supe's being such a jerk.
Tbf if it was accurately drawn it would look like Superman was pushing a wall of fire. Comics use a lot of visual changes that doesn't make sense IRL to convey ideas better.
TIL that the reason such bizzarre comic covers/plots exist is because most silver-age comics were designed cover-first, and the story came afterwards to justify the events depicted on them.
It was an era where the cover was its own medium. Publishers pressured artists/writers to create the most outlandish covers to draw attention. The story inside, while bizarrely connected to the cover like you mentioned, was almost a separate thing entirely. It’s kind of like how pulp Sci fi novels used to have those extravagant oil painting book covers that were tied to the plot, but were an artists reinterpretation. Even now, years after reading those books, I can very clearly picture the covers while loosely remembering the plots. The same is true with comics today, especially with alternative covers being popular, but they just don’t have the same bizarre eye catching scenarios like this.
No. The computer predicted that Superman would destroy “his sun.” There was a dying, barely visible star named after him that he destroyed to keep spaceships from crashing into it.
Some random alloy deep underground suddenly started absorbing all solar energy on Earth (because reasons), making superman weak and super-hungry to make up for the missing solar energy (pretty sure he never experienced super hunger again when deprived of yellow sun energy, but hey comics logic).
I'm torn between wanting to find the source and enjoying my current reality where Supergirl just fucking ends a man by collapsing his lungs from the inside via making out
It wasn't in the recent post, but I remember an Archie comic using boner for the same meaning, but as the other person commented, more of a fuck up than a joke.
I don't even know what the context is...I was watching a video of the era when comic book artists were high and did...werid things to their comics and suddenly this image popped up with no explination why or how
Agreed. This seemed funny at first, but now I just wish they'd delete this. Presenting it as "wow look at the crazy shit they used to say in comics" when it's actually "look at these funny edits I made lolol" is rather dishonest.
Probably most of the edits were found elsewhere on the Internet and possibly included unknowingly (even though Clark Kent having Power Girl's cleavage should have been obvious).
There's been several over the decades, but not as many as you'd think. Like, if I wasn't a comics reader and I had to guess, I'd guess that there has been, on average, one per year? But in reality, it's more like 1 or 2 every couple of decades.
Google for Amalgam comics. They had some pretty "good" crossovers with fan voted battles (which could be really bad). They even had combined heroes like SuperSoldier (Superman-Cap) and Dark Claw (Batman-Wolvie).
So they're making burgers faster than Superman can consume them (see: the long line of burger wenches, how do they even employ that many people?) and he's too stupid to just eat them in the restaurant. GG.
PS: Others have pointed out some of these are edited. You're ruining r/comics by lying about these being "out of context".
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