Today in Comics History, August 27: Sometimes flickering sometimes bright / Sometimes burning up the night / Hair today and gone tomorrow

On this day (mumble mumble) years ago, an accidental laboratory fire and a rescue by Superboy leaves the teenage Lex Luthor bald and vowing revenge for every single one of his lost follicles!


from Super DC Calendar 1976 (DC, 1975), letters by Ben Oda
Perhsp you can recall the early, happy carefree days of Superboys's Pal, Boy Luthor, the Boy Who was Boy Pals with Superboy! And his luxurious head of...brown hair?


from "How Luthor Met Superboy!" in Adventure Comics #271 (DC, April 1960), script by Jerry Siegel, pencils by Al Plastino
"My hair! My beautiful head of comics' Lex's hair!"

Today in Comics History, June 16, 9998K: Oh, we can't have nice things

On this day in the Kryptonian year 9,998: Krypton goes kaplooie! I wouldn't use that phrasing around Superman, though.


from Super DC Calendar 1976 (DC, 1975), letters by Ben Oda

The Fall of Metropolis: Apocalypse Literature and Man of Steel

Below you'll find an image from the current movie Man of Steel, and below that, a photograph taken the day of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City.




I saw Man of Steel in the theatre today...or more accurately, about three-quarters of it. The memories that the first image above brought to my mind of the events of the second disturbed me to such a great degree that, for the first time in my life, I left a film before it had ended. (And I sat through Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes in its entirety, folks.)