Paneling: What The–?! #2

The success of the Superman and Fantastic Four movies made me think about a panel from a story that brings the Man of Tomorrow and Marvel’s First Family together.

No, not their actual oficial crossover, but rather a parody story written and illustrated by a man who had previously worked on both.

In 1986, John Byrne, who had spoken of being content to be a cog in the machine that is Marvel, apparently stopped being content and jumped ship to head over to DC to relaunch Superman in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

But Byrne, being Byrne, was not destined to stay too long, and so after about two years he jumped ship.

As an aside, at the time, I had a subscription to Superman and Adventures of Superman – my subscription to Action had switched to a subscription to Justice League when the former went weekly and I was offered an alternative to finish out the remainder of my subscription – so I actually got a letter from DC telling me that Byrne was leaving. As with Action, I was presented the opportunity to apply my remaining credits to another subscription. I just stuck with them, as I only had a few months left anyway.

Around that time, Marvel launched What The–?!, a humor mag that poked fun at comicdom, and in the second issue, Byrne revisited both Superman, whose adventures he’d just left, and the Fantastic Four, whose adventures he’d spent five years writing and illustrating right before taking on Superman.

Of course, as a parody story in a parody magazine, they became “Superbman” and the “Fantastical Four,” which is, perhaps, not the most imaginative set of parody names, but it’s not as if other writers for the mag did much better.

In any case, our story, such as it is, involves Superbman giving Nosey Dame a lift to New York for her to cover the story of the Fantastical Four’s latest bankruptcy. However, a chance encounter with the FF’s Human Scorch ruins Nosey’s hairdo, which causes Superbman to bound into action to teach the youngster a lesson.

This particular story has been on my mind thanks to a discussion on Bluesky about Byrne’s approach to the Superman S. He’s stated that as a kid, he didn’t see the S, focusing instead on the yellow negative space, which looked to him like two fish.

So naturally, that’s what he goes with for Superbman’s shield.

In any case, Superbman’s attack on the Human Scorch captures the attention of the Scorch’s friend and teammate, the Thung, which brings us to the actual subject of this post, the panel I often think of when I think of this story, which is the third panel on page four.

Specifically, what stands out about this panel is the note about the Thung’s dialogue, particularly as that note gets revisited in a later panel.

It was a solid gag in a story that, apart from Byrne doing a style parody of his own artistic style, doesn’t really have that much going for it in terms of humor that isn’t sort of inside baseball, as it were.

(It also somewhat presages the fourth wall-breaking approach he would later take with She-Hulk.)

Most of the jokes are Byrne poking fun at himself and his own (fleas and) tics as a writer and artist, particularly as a writer and artist on Superman and the Fantastic Four.

That said, he does get in a good dig against himself for his habit of filling panels with talking heads and far too much expository dialogue.

The story wraps up with Mister Fantastical revealing that there’s no reason for Superbman and the FF to fight, as it was all part of a scheme hatched by Rex Ruthless.

But then Nosey points out that the fight was actually about her hair, not anything Rex had done, and so the fighting resumes, and we close with Rex Ruthless being a creep in a way that many of Byrne’s characters have been known to be creepy. (Make of that what you will.)

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