Today’s/”Yesterday’s” Comic> Superman #233 (Facsimile Edition)

The facsimile cover because the only version with the original was a shiny variant that cost more.

The original cover.

Superman #233 (facsimile edition)

DC Comics (January, 1971/June, 2025)

“Superman Breaks Loose”

WRITER: Dennis O’Neil

ARTISTS: Curt Swan & Murphy Anderson

The Grand Comic Database has no record of colorists, but claims Ben Oda as letterer.

The Fabulous World Of Krypton: “Jor-El’s Golden Folly”

WRITER: E. Nelson Bridwell

ARTIST: Murphy Anderson

No coloring or lettering credits on this one

In the main feature, Superman comes to the rescue when an experimental Kryptonite reactor explodes. Rather than dying he learns that somehow all Kryptonite in the area, maybe the world, has someone converted to iron. Later, Clark is assigned to be a TV reporter by Morgan Edge, but he luckily finds a way to stop a plan to take over a transcontinental mail rocket, planning to sell the design to foreign powers. Unfortunately for Clark he somehow does a good enough job that Edge puts him permanently on the WGBS broadcasting team above everyone’s objections. Meanwhile, the hole made by Superman’s body near the experiment, an area where Superman’s powers grew weaker while stopping the hijackers, forms into a sandlike version of Superman, which walks away from the scene.

What they got right: Exploring what Superman would be like if he didn’t have to worry about Kryptonite offers some interesting ideas, at least temporarily. While Morgan Edge has the usual misquote of “power tends to corrupt” (they miss that part) “and absolute power corrupts absolutely” in his concern that Superman is now that much more unstoppable unless you have a lot of magic users handy, it is something to think about.

What they got wrong: I don’t know about putting Superman in a position where it’s harder to switch identities to save people. He will come up with ways around it in later stories, but putting him on TV also makes it a bit harder to fool people who will now get a better look at him in his disguise.

After a “Super-Turtle” strip, credited by the GCD but not the comic as by Bridwell, we get the back-up feature. Going back to Krypton, we see Jor-El working on a spaceship design. Only Lara, at the time a test pilot, believes in his design, even stowing away aboard the rocket to prove it. The intended remote controlled rocket runs into trouble between the various gravitational fields and is forced to crash on one planet. Using an anti-grav belt tested earlier in the story on a dog (I guess Jor-El really didn’t like dogs, considering he used Krypto in a later experiment), Jor-El manages to sneak aboard a rocket heading there and rescuing Lara, the two falling in love.

Cute little nods show up here. Jor-El meets with General Zod at one point, his outfit is surprisingly similar to Superman’s right down to colors and the trunks, the early dog testing hinting what would happen to Krypto later, and the story of how Jor-El and Lara met and fell in love. The planet Lara crashes on even has lighter gravity so Jor-El can leap like Superman used to in his early stories (there’s a section later discussing how Superman’s depiction changed during the years along with a promotion for the various back-up stories in Superman connected titles), and the human testing has him flying in a pose similar to Superman’s casual flying.

What I think overall: I first got to see the Superman story in a collection of Superman comics I used to get over and over again at the public library but it’s nice to own the actual comic in color, even as a reprint that didn’t try to use updated coloring–I hate when they do that. It never looks right so it’s good they stuck to the original colors for all three stories. I’m glad I picked up this comic. This would be the last of the comics I bought on Free Comic Book Day to support the stores. The rest of the comics will be free comics plus at some point the Watchmen related collections I won and the misprint graphic novel that became a giveaway.