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Title: Don't Try This at Home!
Writer: Scott McCloud
Penciller: Rick Burchett
Inker: Terry Austin
Colorist: Marie Severin
Letterer: Lois Buhalis
Cover Art: Rick Burchett & Terry Austin
Release Date: June 4th, 1997
Cover Price: $1.75 U.S./ $2.50 Canada
Summary:
Toyman
is back and he unleashes some new, even deadlier, toys upon Metropolis and
Superman must stop him, naturally.
Description:
We
open with a huge splash page of row after row of Supermen. What -- ? It turns
out actually that they're Superman toys, which are selling like hotcakes. A
street vendor, who doesn't really answer any questions, has been selling them
and making a hefty profit. When a policeman asks what's going on, the vendor
shoots a gas out of his eyes that makes the policeman decide to go back to the
station and forget all about the odd little sale. Then, rather quickly, see
Superman flying straight at the reader, the city of Metropolis receding behind
him, carrying a bomb. The narration from Lois Lane fills us in; Superman has
taken the bomb from Barry the Bomber and is flying to the stratosphere to try
and get rid of the bomb before it explodes. Down below, they see the explosion,
and there's no sign of Superman for a few moments. Naturally people are worried,
but he returns to Earth knocked out by the blast, and crashes into the ground.
Ow.
When Superman wakes up, he drops the captured
Barry off at prison. A guard shows Superman one of the Superman toys he got and
asks Big Blue to autograph it. He does, but wonders where the toys could have
come from. The policeman take sit home and puts it up on his shelf. Then, when
night falls and everyone's asleep, when it flies away. It gets weirder. The next
morning, at the offices of the Daily Planet, Lois is looking into reports of
over 2,000 robberies. All of the robberies are of small amounts of money and
jewelry with no sign of break ins. Clark does some investigating and discovers
that the thieves could actually be the Superman toys. He does his thing and
looks into the Superman action figure, and discovers the toy is full of
complicated circuitry.
The next night the same thing happens. Superman
sees all of the little toys flying through the air with their cash and follows
them to an abandoned toy factory. Surprise, surprise -- The Toyman is behind the
thefts -- not for gain, but to tarnish Superman's name. After a short fight,
Toyman reveals his robotic duplicate of Superman and sets him loose to The robot
double of Superman heads for the Metropolis prison and frees the prisoners,
including Barry the Mad Bomber what bombs at midnight. This ain't good.
Superman eventually breaks free, fights a bunch
of big toys and watches as Toyman reveals himself to be a robot duplicate which
explodes. And now...the robot Superman is still freeing prisoners when Barry
hurls a bomb at the robot Superman, destroying it. The real Superman shows up
capturing Barry and hands him over to the cops.
Review:
I
hate saying this but it was a cute story. I liked the return of Toyman, very
well done. The art of Burchett has improved allot since his last work in my
opinion. Scott McCloud continues to amaze and astonish as he continues the most
solid run on any Superman comic book ever. Never disappointing. It was a great
read, nothing like a masterpiece, but a great read nonetheless. Overall, great
stuff.
Rating:  ˝
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