There’s been a lot of confusing decisions made in the publishing history of Superman. At some point during the era we now call the “Silver Age” of comics, it was decided that the stories that occurred in the “Golden Age” no longer applied to the “real” history of Superman. But rather than say they never happened at all, it was decided they happened to the alternate universe Superman of Earth-2. Flashforward a couple more decades and they decided that the Silver Age stuff was getting too cumbersome as well, and that included not only the Silver Age “Earth-1” Superman, but the Earth-2 stuff as well. They did a big reality-rewrite called the Crisis that changed everything around and set things up the way they wanted them now. Similar events have happened since and it’s all needlessly complicated.

One of the ways that this screwed over Superman is that it took away a lot of his Golden Age villains. I’m going to use today’s Superman Thought Victim, a villain called Funnyface, as an example. Funnyface was a villain who opposed the Golden Age Superman. All the way back in Superman #19 he appeared. When the Earth-1/Earth-2 split occurred, he was shunted to Earth-2. Fair enough. He was pretty much forgotten, so it didn’t matter too much. But then, in the late 70s, they decided to start telling new stories about the Earth-2 Superman! Neat, I’m in! (is what I would have said if I’d been reading/born). Occasionally these stories would bring back Golden Age villains, and indeed Funnyface got a comeback story in the early 80s. Funnyface returned, and so did the potential for more returns. But then the Crisis happened. Suddenly the Golden Age didn’t have a home. But Funnyface did return after that. In their new cosmology, DC decided that there had been a team in the 1940s who fought crime (the Justice Society, I believe it was) and then they did a story about that team fighting Funnyface. It was actually a complete retelling of his first appearance with Superman and Lois’s roles filled by a whole team of superheroes*. Somehow, because of all the ridiculous alternate Earth juggling, Funnyface had ceased to be a Superman villain and had become a Golden Age villain. That’s not fair! Make those guys fight their own darn villains! (A more prominent Superman villain, the Ultra-Humanite, went down this same path and that’s much worse, but I will get to that in the future.)

Anyway, to cap that Dumb History lesson, I just want to say that Funnyface ought to make a comeback. Here’s his deal: He’s a frustrated artist, who was probably not very good and was definitely not successful. He developed a way to make characters from comic strips come to life, though he couldn’t get it to work on his own drawings. He used it to summon a bunch of villains from the funny pages and have them do crimes for him. In his second appearance, he used an artists sketch of another villain to make that villain work for him (and that villain had actually been Superman in disguise, so basically Superman had to fight a duplicate of his fake identity). Funnyface, therefore, is a minor variation on Mxyzptlk-style reality warping. In fact, given the chance, I’d tie Funnyface’s powers to the Fifth Dimension**.

But that’s basically why I think he’d be useful. He can provide the wackiness of a Mxy story, with some twists. There are tighter parameters for what he can do, he isn’t omnipotent like Mxy, but we also aren’t tied to a specific ending the way we are with a Mxy story. And it keeps Mxy appearance from becoming less special, and allows for a more vindictive villain than Mxy ought to be.

A handful of Funnyface ideas that someone could steal from me if they wanted:

• Funnyface brings to life a villain that is more cunning and powerful than he is. This especially works if its a villain from Warrior Angel, the comic Clark read on Smallville.
• Funnyface uses a storyboard from a fantasy movie to swarm Metropolis with orcs and rule as their chief.
• Funnyface brings to life a drawing of Superman, drawn by Lois, to save the day when real Superman is in trouble. This one works best if told from the Duplicate Superman’s POV, I think.
• Funnyface steals valuable items at a comic convention and brings to life various villains from the comics around him, which can be used to comment on the genre.

Anyway, that’s enough for this week. Get on this, DCEU.

*It is valid to say that those two are worth a whole team of heroes.

**It occurs to me I haven’t explained what the Fifth Dimension and Mxyzptlk are yet in any of these posts. If someone were following this and didn’t already know Superman stuff, they’d be so confused. Good thing I’ve no readers.

Lana Lang was basically a derivative of Lois Lane. I mean, when they decided they wanted to tell stories about Superman in his youth, they introduced another love interest to complicate his life, who had the same initials. Lana did eventually come to be her own character though, and became one of Clark’s closest childhood friends, alongside Pete Ross. That makes her a handy character to have when flashing back to his upbringing or whatever, but what can we do with Lana in the modern day?

I consider it telling that there is no iconic version of Lana Lang’s adult life. In the Pre-Crisis comics she became a television reporter and worked with Lois and Clark. Post-Crisis she married Pete Ross. In the movies, she stayed back in Smallville until Clark brought her to Metropolis. On the 90s cartoon she got into the fashion industry. On the show Smallville, she got powers and left town or something. In more recent comics, she actually became the hero Superwoman. Basically, there is no consensus on how to use Lana after Clark is grown and Lois comes into the picture.

Well, I’m on board with her becoming a superhero. Lana, like most of the cast, spent a large portion of the Silver Age gaining temporary super powers, but unlike the rest of the cast, she doesn’t have a defined role elsewhere in the mythos, so there’s no shame in latching onto that. If I’m saying that Jimmy is a representative in the story of someone being inspired by Superman to help the world, Lana is that in the past tense. She’s been inspired and, through whichever contrived means, has also gained superhuman powers. Time to get to work.

In the hypothetical run I’m creating, in which the rest of the DC Universe doesn’t exist, we’re going to want other heroes around to help out during the big events. Lana can be that.

It’s worth noting that, in her recent book, she was in a romantic relationship with Steel. I don’t have enough interest in that relationship to care yet if it stays or it goes, but at the very least it would help keep Steel around.

Timebomb is not on anyone’s list of top ten Superman villains. Nor on anyone’s top hundred, probably. Mostly, I don’t think anybody remembers this guy exists. His appearances between two comics in the 90s, both of which were about him being trounced and arrested, add up to about five pages. But there’s just enough there that I think he could be spun into something more.

Now, who is Timebomb? He’s a supervillain with very little known motivation. His powers are exactly those of Marvel’s villain Nitro. He can explode himself (or parts of his self) and then reform himself.

I’ve said it before, but I think we need to grow a rotating cast of minor villains who can be used to populate Metropolis’s criminal underworld. Timebomb is pretty perfect for that. He is exactly the type who can be seen in crowd scenes in prison or who can be hired by some mastermind criminal to serve as muscle.

But can such a nonentity as he be given a personality? I think so. Working with the theme of being a “time bomb” I’d make him a guy with anger problems. That’s a trait that could be used in a serious story, but can also be easily condensed for use in short comedic appearances. And the very typical villain desire to prove how tough he is suggests a guy who values violence as a masculine trait. There’s something to contrast against Superman himself.

If I continue my letter grading that I’ve done for previous villains, I think we need to bring Timebomb up to the C-list of Superman villains.

Last week I covered Ron Troupe, who has a bit of a reputation for being “the black guy” of the Daily Planet. And certainly if a named black man is going to show up in a scene at the Planet these days, it’s probably gonna be Ron. But he’s not the first nor the only. (This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list, it’s just me rambling on a topic, same as always.)

The earliest attempt to add a black man to the cast of the Daily Planet that I know of happened in the 70s with a man named Dave Stevens. He had about a dozen appearances in those days, but was forgotten. I do actually think the character should return, but I’d write him as a politician, not a reporter, and that’s something I’ll write about some other day when I’m more willing to give away actual plot ideas that I have.

More significant than another reporter is the owner of the paper. There have been many depicted owners of the Daily Planet, most either actively criminal or complete nonentities. To me, Franklin Stern is the most interesting of them. Like Ron, Stern came to be in the 90s, when the books were consciously working on their diversity. He has had less longevity than Ron, but he was played by James Earl Jones on the Lois and Clark show and that counts for something.

In the comics, Perry and Franklin were long-time friends (though that isn’t true on the show from which I’ve taken the image) but they disagreed on a lot of things, including sometimes, how the Daily Planet should be run. As I’ve said, I want the journalism to be a focus of the Superman books, and I also think it is a cliche when the Planet is bought out by a villain (Luthor, usually) just for cheap drama. I want my drama more nuanced. Stern is a good man, but he can still disagree with the main cast and provide obstacles for them. Let’s use that.

The attempts to add a black woman to the Daily Planet cast have had less long-term success and are, I think, potentially more interesting. I intend to cover that more fully some day, when I’ve got more research done.

Hey, here’s a few characters who have appeared in various Superman comics and shows:

Oh wait, my mistake. In spite of how different they appear, those are all takes on the same character: Ronald Troupe. For those who can’t tell by the one physical feature that is a constant, Ron is basically the franchise’s most prominent black guy (not counting Steel, of course, but I’ll get to him later).

Ron is underused, but he’s also tenacious. Since first appearing in the early 90s, he’s not managed to become an indispensable part of the franchise, but he’s managed to always be around, even if only as a named extra in scenes set in the Daily Planet. Ron made it into the 90s animated show, where he did nothing but appear in the background and occasionally say a sentence. He had an appearance on Smallville that amounted to a cameo. He’s been an unimportant character in arcs like the Death and Return of Superman and All-Star Superman, which guarantee that people who seek out only the most famous Superman stories are technically able to see him. Even, the very week I write this, is there a man in a single panel of Superman’s latest comic who I am sure is meant to be Ron. He sticks around, but nobody notices.

It wasn’t always thus. In the 90s comics, when the supporting cast was at its most valued, we got stories in which Ron did things or was even the point of focus. Over the course of a decade, he went from an aspiring reporter to a successful one working at the Planet. He began a relationship with Lucy Lane, Lois’s sister, and they ended up married and had a child (Sam) together*. But, cameos and background appearances aside, nobody seems to care about Ron anymore. That’s a shame because I can still see a place for him in the franchise.

One complaint I’ve seen tossed Ronward is that he’s “boring”. As someone who proudly considers himself boring, I don’t see the problem. Boring people deserve representation in comics as much as anyone. If only to mock us.

As should be evidenced by my previous Superman Thoughts posts, I’d want to bring focus back to the journalism in the book and that means more Jimmy Olsen. Well, if Jimmy’s idiotic and overeager attempts at being a journalist by running toward danger are back, then why not have level-headed Ron there as his foil. Jimmy and Ron are a natural comedy team. There have been small hints at this in the comics already, but I say we go full-throttle into this. If there’s ever a new Jimmy Olsen book and Ron isn’t his co-star, they don’t know what they’re doing.

Apart from Jimmy, Ron has also been shown to have a rivalry with the Planet’s sports reporter Steve Lombard. Steve, whom I’ll cover one day, has been doing well for appearances in the last decade and the friction between him and Ron gives them both something to do.

Basically, I don’t think I’m saying anything revolutionary about Ron Troupe. I think that most writers who know he exists see how he fits into the Planet’s group dynamics. It basically only matters if that writer cares enough to write about the Planet, or if they’re just writing toward the next DC Universe event and don’t have time for the supporting cast.

* Just think: There was a time when Lois and Clark had a mixed-race nephew. There are people who would be so pissed off by that and those are the exact people who deserve it. Also, little Sam Troupe would give little Jon Kent someone to play with who isn’t a Batman character. That’s a plus in my books. The Ron/Lucy relationship is definitely something I’d want back.