Superman 281 // Back Issue Bin
Looking back into our back-issue bin, it’s pretty easy to find Superman adventures where the story promises the death of someone on the cover. Jimmy Olsen? Clark Kent? Lois Lane? Superman himself? Probably a half-dozen covers each.
And they usually lied, or told an imaginary story that had no effect on the canon at large.
At the same time, it’s also easy to find misunderstanding fights, where two heroes wound battle until they realized they had been tricked by a villain or just not asking questions.
But what about a comic that avoided a misunderstanding fight while also promising the death of a main character and using another hero as the antagonist?
Then you have Superman 281, published in November of 1974. As you can see, some gentleman has presented themselves as the murderer of Lois Lane because his own wife was murdered. The stunning implication here is that Superman himself might actually be responsible! So, who is this mysterious chap? The man with the chest hair of Sean Connery (and hairline to match)? The man wearing an open vest, shorts, and knee-high boots like a male stripper about to go onstage?
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Vartox of Valeron.
Design-wise, he is literally a spoof of Sean Connery’s appearance in the science fiction movie Zardoz. Created by Cary Bates and Curt Swan, both heavy hitters in Superman storytelling, they toned down the skin shown, and seem to have mixed in a little of Burt Reynolds with that mustache. Either way, Vartox was designed to be a perfect picture of manliness as defined by the 1970s, and certainly looks like a character made for the era. Coming from a time almost 50 years ahead, the nature of Vartox’s masculinity comes across as what could be best described as an “aging himbo.” It’s downright pleasant to see a man portrayed as less than physically perfect. Even if it’s just a receding hairline, it helps.
While we do not know how he became a superhero, later comics would establish Vartox as a long-standing superhero of the Sombrero Galaxy, and perhaps the only powered hero of his home world Valeron. He fights for justice, and for the peace of his world, so why would he fight against Superman?
First, a brief primer for those who aren’t familiar with Superman of the 70s and early 80s. To make a long story short, DC made the effort to update Superman for the 1970s by having Denny O’Neil write up a re-balancing for Superman’s book. Called Kryptonite Nevermore, the story reduced Superman’s power set but also took pains to remove almost all the random Kryptonite that littered Earth like ants at a picnic. Part of the change up was also turning the Daily Planet into Global News, with Lois and Clark making the weird transition from print to television reporters. Clark would even host the nightly news, and writers after O’Neil seemed to have a blast making Superman figure out how to sneak out between camera takes.
Our tale begins with two women dying from the same gunshot, galaxies apart.
We see Vartox tending to his wife’s body as the doctor tries to see what happened, but no one has any idea.
While it is incredibly unfortunate that his unnamed wife is an early example of a woman in a refrigerator, the fact that Bates and Swan take the time to pause and have Vartox mourn is genuinely a nice character beat. Vartox is alien, but he feels like you and I do. And like you and I, he wants to know what happened.
After months of testing, the scientists of Valeron finally put it all together. She was the “bionic twin” of someone on another world, called Earth. The pain this woman felt would be transmitted to Vartox’s wife, which explains her recurring aches and pains. This kind of tell, don’t show, storytelling was common for the era, but Bates makes it easy to imagine what had gone on in the past here.
It’s just a shame she was never named.
Using the science of his world, Vartox has invented a device known as the Time-Scanscope. While it has been used to help fight crime, he uses it to see the death of the also unnamed woman his wife was bonded to, and is shocked by the brutality of it all. However, Vartox feels he needs to bring this villain to justice.
Vowing to bring his wife’s killer to justice, Vartox travels across the vast expanses of space to Earth. While Superman understands Vartox’s desires, he can’t let Vartox break a criminal out of prison to stand trial on another planet. And so, the fight begins.
Vartox is very old-school in his fighting technique, but he has no problems using his Hyper-Powers. After being thrown by a Kryptonian Judo throw, Vartox uses his powers to teleport around Superman and bring himself back into melee range. Vartox pulls out the strongest weapon in his arsenal!
However, these charges bounce meaninglessly off Superman’s body. And while they do bounce, one of the beam fragments streaks down to Lois Lane, who had been filming their fight!
And with that, the reader snaps back to Vartox at the Time-Scanscope. As it happens, Vartox was merely calculating what could have happened with his Time-Scanscope. Unlike a lot of the weird bait-and-switches, this one actually feels a little more deserved and well thought out. The book never promised that Vartox was going to Earth that moment, and Vartox being heroic actually helps the twist make sense.
Instead, Vartox decides to take the stealthy option to capture his wife’s unintentional murderer.
Well. Subtle for 1974 comic books anyway. The murderer in question is Frank Sykes, who somehow escaped the murder charge due to a legal loophole. The man is free, and doesn’t exactly plan to live a quiet life. Luckily, he has a new friend.
Introducing himself as Vart, Vartox has decided to help Sykes commit crimes with some weird and evolving plan in place to make sure that he gets his man without Superman getting in the way. His first step is to make sure that Sykes is convinced that he has super-powers. One of the many powers Vartox has is the ability to grant limited powers to others, though it never shows up again after this issue. By teleporting with Sykes into a fancy jewelry store, he convinces the crook to steal a massive gem, one whose case explicitly vanishes once they leave.
Meanwhile, Lois Lane has convinced Clark to take up Judo.
It goes about as well as one could expect, when Clark is pretending to be a mild-mannered TV reporter. Clark takes the break he gets from pretending to have thrown a muscle to check on Sykes, and sees that he’s got a new accomplice and a stolen gem. Excusing himself, Clark changes into Superman and breaks into Vartox’s careful plan.
Vartox lends Sykes more of his Hyper Powers, allowing them to escape the Man of Steel. Once they’ve landed on Vartox’s planet of Valeron, however…
When I first read this, I figured it was Vartox pulling the problem of entrapment. However, the gem is forgotten about now that Sykes is on Valeron. The whole thing was an elaborate ploy to have Sykes willingly travel intergalactically to receive punishment for his crimes. It’s morally dubious (which is remarkably weird for DC at this time), but not expressly illegal. Vartox drags Sykes off to court, advising the man that the penalty for murder is 60 years.
Superman arrives on Valeron, and is filled in on what he was missing. Superman figured it was a setup in a weird round-about way, but does ask that Sykes be returned. Guilty or not, he’s still a citizen of Earth.
Well, that’s one way to do it. In a way, Cary Bates has come up with a Superman story that wouldn’t entirely be outside the realm of a Twilight Zone episode. It’s short, sweet, and a really nice little introduction to a hero who would show up many times until being temporarily forgotten about during the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
What’s really interesting is that Vartox would come back several times as a friendly rival, and also as an unintentional villain. Cary Bates would bring Vartox back in Action Comics 475 and 476 with a two-part tale that actually has Vartox suffering from old age. His powers are weakening, and he comes to Superman for help - only to suffer from a mental breakdown when Superman confronted him about his old age.
It’s pure Bronze Age, so don’t expect a full dive into Vartox’s mental processes and his fear of growing old and redundant. However, it’s interesting to see a Superman parallel actually being shown as imperfect and weak.
Vartox would also show up enough times that he would work alongside Superman at Galaxy News, albeit as a weird chief of security that no one minded vanishing for months at a time. Vartox also helped solve the “Lana or Lois” problem for a time, becoming romantically linked with Clark Kent’s high school sweetheart throughout the rest of his time pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths. It’s overall really sweet, and subsequent stories make Vartox into a more fleshed out person to a surprising degree for a Bronze Age hero.
While Vartox did get brought back in 1999 for a brief guest-spot in a Superman story, it wasn’t until 2011 where Justin Grey and Jimmy Palmiotti brought him back for an appearance in their run on Power Girl with Amanda Conner. Vartox was played straight in most respects, and his design was kept the same. However, his 70s machismo and bullheaded personality were certainly amped up to 11.
The trio of Grey, Palmiotti, and Conner would also bring him back in 2016’s Harley Quinn Power Girl, where the stalkerish aspects of his personality from the previous appearances were also amped up to 11, but Harley still found him charming.
While Vartox is certainly little more than a footnote in the vast span of time that is DC Comics, he also goes to show that picking up a comic at random can really result in some fantastic stories. If you have a few bucks to spare, I would highly recommend picking up his issues when you can.
