Analysis Notes
| General |
The events surrounding Cole Parker and his eventual transformation
into the Persuader pervade this issue. Little of it is really Legion
content, per se, but there is so much pertinent material that
it’s impossible to focus on just select pages and panels. |
| Cover |
This cover makes a pair with Man of Steel #120,
due the following week, where Superman comes out of a phone booth. |
| 1:1 |
This is labelled a “prologue”, but the actual
“Cult of Persuasion” story doesn’t start until #601,
three months after this. |
| 1:2 |
The island is Stryker’s Island prison. Many
Metropolis supervillains end up there. |
| 1:3-4 |
These would be form the DC Universe version of Survivor. |
| 1:5 |
This and other scenes in the issue are from Superman
v2 #171, where Superman fought hard-light hologram versions of the Fatal
Five. And more particularly, it was the Fatal Five from the Superboy’s
Legion universe, not the DC Universe Legion. This Hypertime
burp probably ties to the Silver Age Krypton Superman had encountered
near this time, and perhaps to the variant historic and future times seen
in Young Justice: Our Worlds at War #1. |
| 2:4 |
“Wheel” would be the game show Wheel of
Fortune. (Which of course airs in a different time slot than
Survivor, at least in our world. Or maybe she’s watching
the Game Show Network?) |
| 2:5 |
The redhead is Jimmy Olsen. The other guys (and in
fact anyone else on this page other than Cole Parker) aren’t anyone
we will try to identify or track. |
| 2:8 |
This is Cole Parker, who will later assume the role of
the 21st century Persuader. |
| 4:1 |
This system-wide preemption reminds me of a Jeff Foxworthy
comedy routine, about when he was a kid, there were only three channels,
and if the President was on, your night was over. Bet there were
some really annoyed couch potatoes in Metropolis last night. (Or
else they all just switched to videos and DVDs for the evening.) |
| 9:48 pm is about the right time of day for the finale portion
of Survivor to be airing. |
| 4:2 |
“Pre-War” refers to the recent “Our Worlds
at War” event. Superman v2 #171 immediately preceded
that. |
| 4:4 |
The B13 technology was implanted throughout Metropolis
following the city’s near destruction when Brainiac evolved himself
into Brainiac 13 in Superman: Y2K #1. |
| Superman’s S-shield background was changed to black
following “Our Worlds at War,” as part of his mourning for
the lives lost. |
| 5:2 |
Superman is either using his telescopic vision to view
the Watchtower on the moon, or he is receiving a telepathic summons from
J’Onn J’Onzz. |
| 5:3 |
The query about the signal watch seems
odd. <Did something happen with it either recently or in the
issues just after this?> |
| 5:4 |
Superman is known to have a wedding ring, and thus presumably
a wife. (Although you can imagine the tabloids’ reactions
to there being a wedding ring but no specified woman: “Superman’s
Gay Marriage on the Rocks!” “Superman and Wonder Woman’s
Love Next on the Moon!” “Superman and Batman! Robin
Tells All!”) |
| 6:2 |
Perry is talking about laying off some workers. (You’d
never see that in a 50s Superman story!) It’s unclear if Caeloss
is a person or a company. |
| 7:2 |
What newspaper puts an editorial like this on what is apparently
the front page? (Well, besides the Daily Bugle.) |
| 7:5 |
No idea what would be in the boxes in the background. |
| 8:1 |
Suicide Slum has apparently been reframed from being a
poor immigrant’s ghetto into a n industrial district (this reframing
may be partly because of the B13 tech influx). (Suicide Slum was
introduced by Jack Kirby in the “Fourth World” books, and
had some basis in his upbringing in the slums of New York.) |
| 9:1 |
Perhaps Perry was a cab driver at one time? Take
a ride in one in New York around 2:00 am some time. |
| 9:3 |
Perry is taking an interesting middle stance on this.
He isn’t being a suspicious Luddite and saying to get rid of all
the B13 technology, but more that Metropolis should pull back from full
immersion and study it, using it rather than relying on it. This
kind of echoes concerns about whether Superman (and other superheroes)
retard humanity’s progress by helping too much. |
| 9:4 |
The plant workers are being laid-off (downsized) rather
than outright fired, and that involves a severance package. (Probably
a set sum plus bonuses for years of service and the like.) Part
of accepting the severance package usually involves signing papers saying
that you are leaving under your own will, that you won’t sue the
company, and that you’ve been offered outplacement job assistance,
that sort of stuff. Firing for reasons other than screwing up on
the job, in other words, so the company has to be a little bit nice. |
| This dialogue appears to mean that they are not unionized,
which seems a little odd. Although maybe not: union contracts may
prevent the company from firing them outright, which also gives them the
chance to refuse the severance package. |
| 10:2 |
Is the name similarity to “Cole Porter” intentional? |
| 11:1 |
That’s a tape recorder in Clark Kent’s hand. |
| 12:2 |
This squeezing out of the working class is an ongoing problem
in real cities. In San Francisco, for example, the city had to pass
a “living wage” ordinance, a higher local minimum wage law
to bring the wages of the lowest working class citizens up to the point
where the people who run the infrastructure of the city — be they
hotel maids or fast food employees or whatever — can afford to live
in the same city they are serving. (The San Francisco Bay Area got
really bad in the late 1990s in terms of low vacancy rates and skyrocketing
real estate and rental prices, which served to drive poor people away
and kept others from coming in.) |
| 13:1 |
Recall that it looped several times. This sort of
record and react situation may be just what Brainiac 13 wanted. |
| 13:3 |
Is there perhaps some mind control element to this as well? |
| 13:4 |
Note the identical pose to what is on the screen.
Coincidence, choreography on Parker’s part, or subliminal mind control? |
| 14:2 |
This is the parking garage beneath the Daily Planet building. |
| 14:3 |
The reflections don’t count as an appearance for
Cole Parker, since he can’t be identified in the window. |
| 14:5 |
We’ll consider the speaker to be Cole Parker, for
tracking purposes. |
| 15:2-4 |
It’s kind of hard to conceive of Superman snacking
on junk food. |
| 15:3 |
Under the theory that Superman is who Kal-El really is,
and Clark is just a disguise, Superman is only tracked as Clark when he
is wearing the Clark Kent “outfit”. Even in his pajamas,
he is still Superman. |
| 15:4 |
The thought balloon counts as dialogue for Superman. |
| 15:5 |
There’s that old super-vision. |
| 16:2 |
This is the Daily Planet newsroom. |
| 16:2-3 |
The one standing next to Perry is Cole Parker. |
| 17:3 |
Perry has probably already seen Superman sweep into the
room, through the window broken in the previous panel (which conveniently
enabled him to enter without warning Parker). |
| 18:2-3 |
Ever bang a stick or a pipe against a rock and hurt yourself
from the vibrations? Now imagine doing that hard enough to break
an axe handle in the process. Parker can probably hardly stand. |
| 18:4 |
The seepage on Perry’s forehead is actually blood
(see 17:3), miscolored here as sweat. |
| 19:2 |
Parker presumably means the interests of the government,
of big business, and of the heartless establishment which cares only about
numbers, not about people. |
| 20:2 |
“We’ve only just begun.” He’s
praying Carpenters songs? |
| 20:3 |
Jimmy Olsen is taking the photograph. |
| 20:4 |
There are some interesting items in this article.
It’s not very good journalism.
• “Denizens” is an inflammatory,
negative term.
• Parker and company “strike back” at Perry White, implying
that Perry struck first, but there’s no indication of that in the
article. Also, Parker was silent about the purpose of the attack,
so how does the reporter know this?
• Armed only with axes? Axes sound pretty formidable
to me.
• The article
implies that the attack was just against Perry White, with no mention
of the damage to the newsroom.
• Why haven’t the other Cult of Persuasion members been identified?
Perhaps the truth is that their names haven’t been released.
• Parker’s silence
is undoubtedly prompted by his court-appointed lawyer, since he seemed
more that willing to spout off to Superman and Perry White. |
| 21:2 |
Parker is kind of “frat boy” cute,
but most of these catcalls are meant merely to unnerve him. (The
last one is a reference to the film Deliverance: “He’s
got a real purty mouth, ain’t he?”) |
| 21:5 |
Note the prisoner number, with “666” embedded
in it. |
| Whoever this guy is, he’s not a vampire or other
creature which doesn’t have any reflection in a mirror. |
| 22:1 |
“Low-key”? As in “Loki is not just
a tone of voice” (from a Marvel Comic bumper sticker from the late
1980s)? Given the blond looks, we’ll assume that this is Loki
(or perhaps some Apokalips character with a parallel name). |
| 22:3 |
“Age-old story”: undoubtedly another reference
to the Norse god. |
| 22:3 |
At Marvel Comics, Loki was responsible for the formation
of the Avengers, and other Norse gods — Enchantress and Executioner
— were part of the major Avengers enemy group, the Masters of Evil
(along with Baron Zemo, the Black Knight, Melter, and Radioactive Man).
The Fatal Five, in turn, were based on the Masters of Evil: Emerald Empress
= Enchantress, Persuader = Executioner, Tharok = Baron Zemo, Mano = Melter,
and Validus = Radioactive Man. So here (and in the later issues
of this storyline) we have Loki involved in creating the Persuader.
What goes around, comes around. |
| “Fate”: another Norse reference, to the Norns. |
