Yango isn’t going to go down as one of the most famous Superman supporting cast members, but he’s still technically out there, a part of the franchise, so I get to talk about him. He was a biker, a member of a group called the Outsiders, who first appeared in Jack Kirby’s run on Jimmy Olsen’s book. But I’m not here to talk about that run. I wanna talk about the time Yango and the Outsiders found religion.

This was after Kirby’s time with the character had ended, and it happened over in Lois’s book. It’s a weird issue, part of the story that revealed there was a real Morgan Edge and that the evil one was just a clone, so that we could still have the character around. Also, Lois’s sister is becoming an adrenaline junkie or something. That’s not important. What’s important is the reveal that the Outsiders just stopped deciding to be a biker gang and started a little farming community.

We’re not explicitly told why they do this. They try to make it sound like they’ve grown up, basically. One of them says “We left the world of violence, wars, greed, and fear– for the good earth. We grow our own food. We make out own clothes.”

The baddies come along (former Outsiders hired by the evil clone Edge) and try to fight the Outsiders, but all they get in response is turned cheeks and welcomes. Unable to fight against that, they run away and the comic gives us a quote from the Book of Proverbs! I’ve read a lot of Superman comics and I can’t think of another that just drops a Bible quote in a narrative caption like that. And they really do defeat the baddies that easily too. Edge had also tried to frame the Outsiders for being a “murder cult” by throwing some clonal “dead bodies” onto their land, but Superman shows up the very second the authorities find the bodies and confirms they’re not real. The Outsiders aren’t a murder cult, just a regular cult. All that’s on the same page as the Proverbs quote. The issue resolves so quickly, it’s strange.

I don’t really have any deeper thoughts beyond “This is weird, even for a Superman comic.” Yango would appear in the “Post-Crisis” continuity, but he and the Outsiders were back to their starting point as bikers. Their brush with religiosity is a thing of the past. Unless I get to do anything about it, Yango will probably only ever appear in things directly trying to homage Kirby.