Retrospective on Superman's Triangle Era Part 1: 1991

In anticipation of the upcoming Superman film from James Gunn and the newly forged DC Studios, I decided to revisit an unfinished reading project: going through all of the Post-Crisis Superman comics. In doing so, I realized that there's very little discussion concerning Superman's stories after John Byrne left the title outside of a few iconic stories such as The Death and Return of Superman. So I decided to add my two-cents to the discussion, beginning with some retrospectives on the "Triangle Era". 

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, there was a time where Superman had several titles which all shared stories with each other. While they had different series names and issue numbering, the narrative was tied together and were recommended to be read together, making over a decade of Superman comics essentially a weekly experience for readers. The reason behind the name is simply due to the organizational method used for these stories; each issue had a triangle with the year and "reading order" number on it.

While the Triangle Era did properly begin with Superman #51, the narratives roughly started in Superman (Vol 2) #47 with the beginning of the “Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite” arc as seen in the recent Superman: The Triangle Era Omnibus Vol 1 so I will be beginning with that as well. 

The Krimson Kryptonite arc is a rather fun Lex Luthor story involving artificial Red Kryptonite provided to Lex by the ever amusing Mr. Mxyzptlk. Superman loses his powers, Lex and Mxy get into a fight, the good guys win, all is good in the world. The particularly notable part to this story is that Luthor reveals that by using the Red Kryptonite here, he is functionally cementing his demise (his mortality was a consistent subplot for the prior year of stories) and he does indeed die at the end of the arc which sets up many of the subplots for the rest of the stories coming up. Clark also proposes to Lois here with a pair of rather charming scenes between the two. 

The next story I’d like to mention is Adventures of Superman (Vol 1) #474, “Face to Face with Yesterday.” Clearly designed to be an anti-alcohol moral tale for teenagers, I was shocked at how moved I was by the story. Clark is notified that a high school friend of his who was on life support was going to be taken off of said life support soon. As such, Clark goes to visit him one last time in the hospital and reflects on the events that led to him being in the hospital. I don’t want to spoil the whole story, but I was genuinely quite moved by it and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good one-issue Superman tale.

After a few more generic Superman-fights-bad-guy stories, Clark reveals his secret identity to Lois in Action Comics (Vol 1) #662. I love how the reveal and Lois’s reaction to everything is handled. There’s plenty of shock, but also relief at the now explained erratic behavior. There’s also a moment where Clark runs off to save the day as Superman and Lois begins to sit there and worry and then realizes that she is Lois freaking Lane and gets up and goes to investigate what’s going on. And I love that because Lois is awesome in her own right and wouldn’t just become a static worrywart because she knows Superman and Clark are the same person. 

The arc immediately after is called “Time and Time Again” where Superman gets shot pinball-style across time. He visits WWII era America and Germany, the Legion of Superheroes era, Camelot, the mid-Cretaceous period, and more. While superheroes lost in time is a trope almost as old as superheroes themselves, this story really sparked joy in a new way for me. I can’t quite place why, but I just had an absolute blast with it. 

The following major arc after Superman returns home is “The Red Glass Trilogy” where Superman hallucinates a world-gone-wrong after he slaughters his entire rogues gallery, cripples Lois, and abandons the planet. From what I could tell, this story was a bit of a response/refutation to the comparisons between Superman and Alan Moore’s Miracleman run. There’s many visually similar scenes with city-level destruction and explosions. I think this is one of the better stories involving an evil Superman sort of narrative specifically because it refuses to engage with the idea that Superman is someone able to go evil. Really quite stellar.

A throughline of this entire year’s worth of books is the shadow of Lex Luthor. Many of the arcs begin or are resolved as a result of something Lex was involved with before he died. Additionally, there’s a growing tension and conspiratorial belief within Metropolis that Lex may not actually be dead. Action Comics (Vol 1) #668 deals with this directly and is a great issue. 

Superman (Vol 2) #59 is another extraordinary one-shot story. It begins with several outings between Lois and Clark getting interrupted by the need for Superman somewhere. Noticing Lois’s growing frustration here, Superman decides they should talk about their relationship and how him being Superman affects it. During that fateful conversation, Lois asks Clark why he needs to be Superman and his response is perfect, “Because no one else can.” Earlier in the issue, though, there’s a scene which I liked even more. An unhoused man is threatening folks with advanced weaponry he found because he is outraged that there is not enough attention being paid towards the rise of disappearances in Metropolis’s houseless population. Superman attempts to deescalate the situation, but the man pulls out a grenade and attempts to blow himself up with Superman. The blast is blocked as much as possible, but the man is still injured. The police run up to the scene and congratulate Superman for taking him down and refer to him as a “worthless waste of flesh” and exclaim they don’t care if he lives or dies. Superman retorts that he cares and flies the man away to get medical attention. Once the man is stable, there’s a brief discussion with the doctor and Superman about the uncertainty if he will live or die. Superman mentions his feelings of regret that he cannot save everyone. The pair of panels with that statement convey Superman’s crushing weight of responsibility and duty which further informs his conversation to Lois later in the issue. Perhaps the best single Superman issue of the Triangle Era yet. 

Superman: The Man of Steel (Vol 1) #5 was a nod to old-school, pulpy adventure serials with a return of an obscure favorite villain of mine: the Atomic Skull. Fun play with page layouts, too, with the landscape rotation of the comic and the right panels being the current story and the left panels being a mirrored adventure serial story. Unique little book.

Unfortunately, 1991 ends with the “Blackout” storyline. Superman’s memory is wiped and through a series of mishaps, finds himself on a forgotten island with dinosaurs and some fairly racist caricatures who want to marry Superman to their leader’s daughter. During all of this, Metropolis’s tension which had been building for several issues explodes and riots break out, only to be stopped by a man claiming to be a forgotten relative of Lex Luthor’s and was left his company and money. At the end of it all, it is revealed that this is Lex in disguise. The ending was cool, but the story as a whole left a lot to be desired. 

So that was the first year and some change of Superman’s Triangle Era. I am going to try to do one of these posts for every year or so of the era so keep an eye out for that!