I made it out relatively unscathed (Phew!)

Vitamin C is a wonderful thing. As is a day in bed doing sweet fuck all. I read more of the Superman Collection to end all collections of Superman material. Unfortunately I took notes on my laptop computer and I don't bring it to work anymore so I don't have the great quotations I took (and my lack of scanner means you can read my descriptions rather than see the panels for yourself).

I am nowhere near done this collection since passing in and out of consciousness hampers your reading speed as does Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. I did notice a few things (that everyone else noticed a few months ago when this thing was new).

Jimmy Olsen has a gay-crush on Superman. He actually rubs a ruby tipped staff under the light of a full moon wishing that Superman had a lifelong companion.

Superman really was a dick. I saw the website and all but holy moly it didn't prepare me for this. He's like that obnoxious kid you new who you and your friends would make up a lie and tell him about it and the kid would go along with it then you'd tell the kid it was a lie and he'd pretend he knew it was a lie all along. I hated that kid. I know it's better when Superman doesn't only punch his way out of problems but this isn't even Deus Ex Machina, it's absurd. Good, but absurd. I'd love to have been a hack writer back then. You could write ANYTHING. Anything, I say. You just had to have the third last panel with Superman saying, this was all just a trick, I tricked you good. I had this hoax planned since the beginning. And everyone laughs and they wait for the next trick, which they inevitably fall for. I'm thinking there's too much chlorine in the Metropolis water supply. It was probably unregulated back then.

That being said I love the lengths Superman goes to for his practical jokes. The mermaid story is a perfect example. He poisons them with salt. How? By constructing a fortress of solitude full of working computers to mask salt deposits, giant pearls with hidden salt deposits, and an entire underwater complex to simply hide salt. I'd simply carry extra salt in my pockets as I swam around but that's why I'm not Superman. And his reasoning that this extra salt will poison aliens from a different planet? Great Salt Lake has no fish so an excess of salt should be poison to these ALIENS who are lucky to even be alive in this ecosystem to begin with. He bases his theory on the fact that fresh water fish can't survive in salt water. Did he try to say, poison ocean fish with salt water? Nope, he doesn't have to, he's fricken Superman.

Lion-headed Superman = Genius. Trust me. In every story but this one he's using his telescopic vision to see through hideouts or volcanoes where Kryptonite meteors landed but in this one neither him, nor Lois who bought the tickets, look at the name of the play they go to, either on the tickets or on the large flashing marquee outside the theatre. Maybe there's Kryponite in the water as well. I bet the chlorine masks it.

I have more but I'll post them later, including how I think Hal Jordan was influenced to take so many blows to the head and not think this is a bad thing.