By Jeffrey Kafer
Action Comics #1000. Remember that number.
Charles has lamented, on occasion, when he thinks Gary’s saga should end. I’ve told him that so long as Gary keeps having adventures, I’ll be there to narrate the audiobook version. But how many is too many? At what point do you end at the top? Is The Tournament of Supervillainy his Judas Contract? I don’t think so.
See, that’s the beauty of comics. There is a never-ending world of adventures and traumatic experiences he can subject his hero/villain to. If things get stale, just resurrect a character who died an emotionally devastating death and bring him back to life, thereby trivializing the emotional context of said death (I’m looking at you, Batman’s Death in the Family). There are endless characters he can annoy with his pop culture references that come seemingly out of nowhere all to hide his insecurities. Gary’s insecurities, that is. Not Charles’s.
Although, maybe…
Anyway. Action Comics #1000. That’s where Superman’s adventures are numbered this year. One thousand issues of endless stories about the Mary-Suest of all superheroes. And we still don’t have any logical reason why Kryptonite affects Superman. I mean, it’s just a chunk of rock from the place he was born. Radiation blocking his abilities, blah blah blah. Still, makes little sense. I don’t visit the place of my birth, Virginia, and suddenly break out in hives.
But I digress. What were we talking about?
Crap. I was talking about something super deep about why Charles should keep writing this Supervillainy Saga and not stop and consider this book his swan song. So long as there are stories to tell, keep telling them. Let Gary keep bumbling around. But whatever. Now I’m stuck on the whole Superman/Kryptonite dynamic and I need to Google that to find out if there’s really a canonical answer beyond fanboy justifications.
Because after 1000 issues, you’d think they would’ve fucking figured it out.