Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Superman: The Computers That Saved Metropolis
Author: Cary Bates, words; Jim Starlin (!) and Dick Giordano, art
Date: 1980
Discovered at: My parents' attic
The Cover Promises: "Compliments of Radio Shack"? "Starring the TRS-80 Computer Whiz Kids"? Ah, shit.
Representative Quotes:
"Please, Superman, can we have a race? My TRS-80 against your super-brain?"
It's bad enough that this one-off story turned the paragon of truth, justice, etc., into a shill for the world's most overpriced supplier of printer cables. His mission: to convince kids to drop $499 on a "microcomputer." Even worse, though, this taught children of the '80s the lesson that Superman Returns confirmed 25 years later: Earth's yellow sun has increased exponentially the great Kryptonian's power to bore.
Here's the story. One morning, Superman flies to a Metropolis elementary school with an urgent message.
Note the blonde boy. He is so distressed that Superman has sold out that he threatens to hitchhike to Gotham, where the local hero isn't such a tool.
That boy annoys Superman throughout the presentation ...
... so Superman uses his secret brain powers to snap the punk's neck.
Always prepared, Superman lugged along a pair of TRS-80s, the early desktop computers manufactured by Tandy, sold at Radio Shack, and moaned about by kids who wished their parents had bought an Apple II, which at least had Lode Runner.
Here, the hero the narration calls "the action ace" recounts the scientific breakthrough that gave the TRS-80 its operating power.
This breakthrough was celebrated with collegial crotch grabbing.
Action time! On page 15, Superman pits his "super-bain" against the processing power of the TRS-80s.
At last, the adventure begins. Turns out a villain named Major Disaster has somehow shut down all of the giant, old-fashioned computers in Metropolis. For some reason, this includes Superman's super-brain. Suddenly, our hero is unable to do calculations!
(Oddly, all cognitive function that does not involve calculator-ready math problems hums along just fine.)
Meanwhile, an airplane is falling from the sky, and Major Disaster starts a flood at the Metropolis reservoir. Superman launches into action only after stationing Alec -- that blonde kid -- and his classmate Shanna at the TRS-80s to solve and then radio to him the the answers to math problems that his mind can't crunch.
That results in moments like this.
This is exactly the kind of problem children should be trusted to solve after 15 minutes of computer instruction. Since the programmers at Tandy thoughtfully programmed every TRS-80 with the potential energy output of Superman's heat vision, the Whiz Kids only had to calculate the following:
Nevertheless ...
(Their answer -- whatever it could possibly have been -- is given off panel.)
From there, Superman flies on to fix a leak in a nuclear reactor. Fortunately, fourth-graders rocking transistor-tube computers find it a snap to calculate the precise speed at which he'll need to circle a contaminated cloud in order to contain and lift it out of the earth's atmosphere and into space. Let's see a Vic-20 do that!
Shocking Detail:
The Computer Whiz Kids turned up in several other comics, including one more freebie with Superman, another with Wonder Woman, and at least eight without high-profile guest stars. Perhaps the issue titled "The Computers That Said No to Drugs" inspired the late Stieg Larsson, author of bestselling computers-can-do-anything thrillers The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire?
Highlight:
The dullest panels in Superman history?
Only BASIC can express the sadness of all this.
10 PRINT "SUPERMAN IS RADIO SHACK'S BITCH ON INFINITE EARTHS"
20 GOTO 10
RUN.
[The Crap Archivist sends big love to the Geeky Chemical Engineer for help schooling this 29 year-old comic boook.]
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Who in hades suspected erecting a mosque at ground zero had to be a wise idea? I am not a great fan of both Glen Beck or Sarah Palin nevertheless compared to Obama and his idiotic administration, those two are prodigies, get real America, there's plenty of strange stuff happening here. Anne.
BRAINIAC: I find it amusing, Kryptonian, that you rate yourself an equal to this puny machine.
Because, seriously: Compared to me, this thing's a retarded flipper-baby.
SUPERMAN: ..... Oh, that's it, you are SO kicked out of the Battery Club.
>NEW
>
>10 REM *** Trever Sucks ***
>20 CLEAR SCREEN
>30 PRINT "TREVER SUCKS"
>40 GOTO 30
>
>RUN
Punks stepping outside, crotch grabbing, and a beam that could potentially blow up the Earth if kids don�t have TRS80s. What more could you ask for? It reminds me of the fun I had with my Tandy 64k color computer back in the day. This is great!
There was a later one for the Tandy as well. This time Superman inhaled kryptonite dust and couldn't think as fast and the computer saved the day
Six million gallons of flood water has about the same volume as 3 homes in south Overland Park, or a single abandoned blight building in KCMO. This, of course, assumes that the south OP houses are empty because the people that bought them stressed themselves so much that they don't have furniture. It also assumes that the corpses and uneducated stupid kids of KCMO that wonder around empty buildings bumping into walls until they are gunned down are first removed.
Isn't it great that back in the 80's a million still meant something?
Isn't it great that today computers (and Presidents) can work in trillions instead of millions?
I'm so glad they taught us Basic programming in junior high just for the comedy.
I had the same comic. None of it even remotely made me want this computer...and I was a DORK for math.
Look, morons--it's the first rule in computer marketing: you sell video games to kids; you sell complex thermochemical equations to hyperparents who foolishly believe their little mouthbreathers will ever be more than a receptacle for government cheese and syphilis.
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