Superman #35: The Men of Tomorrow

Chapter Four: The Quick Fix

Chatting at the watercooler, everyone sees Lois run after Perry White demanding the Ulysses story is hers. Perry has other ideas though and asked anyone for input, even Clark who doesn’t technically work at the Planet. Lois is ‘thrilled’ though she wants the scoop and the game is afoot.

Meanwhile, the police show up at the scene of last issue’s battle where Ulysses just killed the fake Machinist. He’s pretty upset about it (so perhaps he doesn’t revel in slaughter like I thought he might) but then Superman points out that the dead guy was actually killed by one of the mind control bugs before the battle even began. That doesn’t stop him from lecturing Ulysses on the use of deadly force though.

So now the two head out on the trail of the Machinist and end up in the North Atlantic where the Machinist is working on a weapons deal. This is where I start to think the reaper type dude is someone else since the Machinist looks more like Doctor Doom than any reaper – he doesn’t appear with a scyth either. In any case, the heroes lift the freighter carrying the merchandise and the Machinist unleashes a horde of flying robots.

Superman leaves Ulysses to keep the ship outta the water while he deals with the machines. And while this is happening, I get confirmation the reaper type dude is not the Machinist but is watching the whole thing play out. Going back to the action, the duo drop the ship on an island capture the Machinist and try to get him to snitch on his customers. With him uncooperative, Ulysses uses his energy seeking powers to identify all the machines he’s made and Neil is pretty overwhelmed – he basically tapped into every weapon on Earth.

He now wants to destroy every weapon on the planet. Such a disillusionment. He wanted a world of peace and only found our flawed planet with its flawed humans. As Ulysses tours major cities, war zones, and memorials, and gets more upset, The Machinist blows up the freighter and disappears.

Clark heads back to the Planet to try to find Ulysses and low and behold, he shows up on TV and he’s telling the world his origin story. And not only that, he’s offering 6 million people to emigrate to his peaceful world.

This was clearly a critical issue for the story arc and here are a few highlights:

• Apparently Ulysses can control when he is an energy magnet since he and Superman were able to shoot eye beams next to each other during the fight in this issue
• The Machinist is/are two people sewn into one? At least that’s what he said.
• Who is this Mr. Oz the Machinist talks about? Is this the reaper type dude?

The big thing I noticed a lot in this issue is that I like Romita’s pencils. He really puts a sense of contours, shading, and light into each panel with the way he draws and I’m enjoying it.
With the cool art and impact on the story arc, I think this issue was well worth reading so I give it another B+.