Sunday, January 25, 2009

A Cool Comic Book Moment

Brian Cronin at Comics Should Be Good! has been examining the two part Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? all week. As a result, he has come up with four bona fide tearjerker moments courtesy of Alan Moore and Curt Swan.

I finally realized that he was never going to get to one of my own favorite moments from this story because it is not really a tearjerker moment (for all that Pete Ross has just been killed). It is, instead, as succinct a statement as one could ask of just how awesome Superman can be -- in fact, how awesome comics storytelling can be.

As he stands in the wreckage of the WGBS television studio, his secret identity revealed, his boyhood best friend dead in his arms, Superman finally speaks. "Toyman...Prankster...Let me ask you one question: Do you know what radio waves look like?"

The reply comes back through the toy Superman: "Huh? No! Why?" But the red-and-blue blur has already disappeared, headed toward the source of the criminals' transmission.

Before the pair can take another breath, Superman is there, bursting through the wall, announcing, "Because I do!"

1 comment:

Jon Maki said...

Good call; I think that's my favorite moment from the story (if I absolutely had to pick one, at any rate). I'm holding out hope that it will still show up as a Cool Comic Book Moment of the non-tearjerker variety somewhere down the line.