Since I spent the first part of the review of this reprint book, "The Secret Lives of Superman", extolling the virtues of its lead story, I thought I’d better touch upon a couple of the other fine features in this veritable treasure trove of “Gee… weren’t comics lame back then!” This will inevitably distract us from how many lame comics there are being published today, and we can all laugh our superior little laughs and get back to reading newly-minted turds like The Dark Knight Strikes Again.

In “From Riches to Rags”, Superman takes on the roles from a children’s rhyme, “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, etc.” for a reason that is just too freaking ridiculous to explain. I think writer Leo Dorfman had a payment to make to his bookie. That is to say—it obviously got him the paycheck, but Shakespeare it ain’t.

One scene has a crowd cheering as bulldozers raze a set of slums on Metropolis’ wrong side of the tracks, an act Superman helped encourage. Hooray! Now all those panhandlers will have to move to San Francisco!

Another shows an American Indian tribe led by nubile young Princess Pale Flower (and pale she is, being colored in this re-print only 1/4 shade darker than Clark Kent himself), who are set upon by some Big City crooks out to steal their ceremonial pole (ahem). Once Supes foils the thieves (wearing a borrowed “Indian war bonnet”), the local sheriff is heard to exclaim, “Thanks, Superman. We’ll see that these varmints end up in the calaboose!” Yeah… I had to look that one up too, and let me assure you it has nothing to do with that one “Jail Bitch” video you keep almost renting, but can’t because your boyfriend isn’t into that stuff. But I digress.

Another story was also sort of a disappointment in that it didn’t contain nearly the amount of homoerotic fantasy I always look for in a comic. “The Super-Cop of Metropolis” sees Superman inadvertently putting all the city’s boys in blue in their sick beds through some bizarre chemical chain reaction, and then has to fill in for them while they recover.

Providing more proof that recycled lame ideas are still lame a decade or so later, the end of this story almost exactly mimics the end of another one in this same book. In both, Superman pretends to act a part (he was a genie in the other one), and reveals his plan at the end once the true villain is caught, then catches his confession on a hidden tape player, while Perry White takes off his accomplice’s disguise. In next issue: Superman vs. the Supreme Court in “Entrapment!”

The collection ends with a story by one-time wunderkind Jim Shooter. The beginning of “Who Stole My Superpowers?” shows The Flash waking up with a staggering case of amnesia. Elsewhere, a blonde guy in a Superman uniform wakes up in a pasture. Each of them figures they must be the hero they’re dressed as, despite the fact that “Superman” isn’t blonde and can’t fly, and “Flash” makes rubble out of an abandoned building (maybe left over from that earlier slum demolition project?) when trying to vibrate through it.

The whole time, the narration makes it clear that the guy dressed as Flash is Superman and vice versa, so the only question is… why the fashion swap, boys? Get your gym bags mixed up after your Cardio Kickboxing class at Crunch? No? Oh, just another space-borne alien plant spore infected with kryptonite headed toward Earth? Not again!

Yep, the boys gotta go up into space and defeat the big space seed, and instead of putting Flash in one of the many space suits or vehicles the JLA must have at their disposal, Superman has the fantastic idea of switching uniforms! Supes’ indestructible get up, combined with Flash’s super-speed aura, would protect Flash from the perils of space travel, so that all he’d need would be an oxygen mask. And a lobotomy apparently! I guess Superman forgot that Flash's uniform would have burned right off him on the way up, not to mention that it'd be impossible for Flash to hold on to Superman’s back during the escape-velocity flight without super-strength. Look out below, Barry!

The plant and its threat really end up being just an afterthought in this story about why these guys were dressed as one another (an odd thing to pin the plot on since it happens every Halloween in the Castro), which really takes up most of the tale. Good thing, too, since the trip into space was really just the “suspension of disbelief” prelude to the “suspension of everything you know and hold dear about reality” ending of Superman actually stopping the Earth’s orbit around the sun briefly so that the alien seed misses it and fries up in the sun. I suppose Shooter missed the unit in physics about intertia, or else this story would have ended up looking more like “The Day After Tomorrow.”

I love these DC Digests, and “The Secret Lives of Superman” collection is perfect example of why. Think too much, and you’ve missed the point of the fun of these stories. All that said, who among us comic fans don’t cringe when we read these crackerjack tales of identity swaps? I mean, folks don’t look down on Harper’s magazine just because Maxim is on the racks, too, right? Right?

Kyle Minor, a nearly eight year resident of San Francisco, has never done anything that might have landed him in the calaboose, but will admit to using a hidden tape recorder to spy on his little sister. He eagerly awaits a chance to swap outfits with Superman, though, if only to see what’s really in the pocket of that cape.

Images and characters copyright 1980 by DC Comics. Review copyright 2004 by Kyle Minor.

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