Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Adventures of Superman (Vol. 1), Issue #575 – “A Night at the Opera”!

Sounds like this is going to be about that Queen album. Oooh, you make me live… This is a standalone issue not packaged with any collection that I can find! In the previous issue of Adventures of Superman Vol. 1, an obsessive woman named Obsession dressed up like Superwoman and tried to seduce Superman 5,000 feet in the air while a group of drugged up ruffian monsters terrorized the city.

Of the Y2K-era Superman series, this one has my favorite art. Use that information in a way you see fit (throw it out a window).

Adventures of Superman (Vol. 1), Issue #575 [February, 2000]
Written by: Mark Millar / Stewart Immonen
“A Night at the Opera”

La MORT du LUTHOR! Lex is gonna die and we’ll never see him again, here in his 575th issue of the Adventures of Superman! Iconic!

“A hush falls upon the crowd.” Narration tells me that a gaggle of useless socialites, aka Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, and a nervous guy with a gun, are getting ready for A NIGHT AT THE OPERA. Spoiler alert!

Lois is in her car on the way to the theater when she is stuck between a red light and a bunch of homeless dudes with squeegees. “First we had the Kryptonite scare. Then all that ‘Mrs. Superman’ hysteria. The Mongul. Then Kelex… now this.” She sighs, disproportionately lumping the current stressful situation in a pile alongside alien beings trying to kill her husband.

“Having a spot of bother with the traffic, ma’am?” Superman appears next Lois’ driver side window, apparently now British. “Let me give you a lift,” he says, hoisting the car above his head and flying off like a total asshole.

He drops the car off in a parking spot. Superman’s got change for the parking meter, Lois has the tickets. Time for A NIGHT AT THE OPERA. She earned these tickets from Lex Luthor in a manner I don’t remember, since I was under the impression that it was SHE who owed HIM. No matter, that guy is going to have LA MORT soon enough!

“Have you figured out what he’s up to yet?” Clarks asks of the bald and tall drink of water.

“Clark, I don’t think Luthor would have sent us two tickets to Don Giovanni. If he was plotting the downfall of Western civilization, he’d find another way to torture you,” she responds, clearly underestimating all the free time Lex has to be a dick.

What a charmer. Who taught Lex Luthor how to be smooth? Rain Man?

Lex greets them both with open arms. They exchange friendliness in a manner that is as genuine as they can muster while Clark scowls openly. Lois admits that Don Giovanni is her favorite opera, and she considers this a coincidence. Lex gets right up in her face and tells her he doesn’t believe in coincidences! More heavy scowling from Clark. If looks could kill, he honestly wouldn’t even stun a fly.

“That’s quite a streak of generosity you’ve had lately, Luthor,” Clark comments upon this act of kindness as well as selling the Daily Planet back to Perry White basically for free. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you were trying to impress someone.”

Yeah, your wife, you dolt.

Lex raises a toast to Clark’s farm-raised simplicity, predictability, and all-around hayseed sensibilities! Enjoy your glass of milk while the rest have champagne, you child. Clark downs his glass with a mighty gulp. “Odd…” he thinks, maybe about the taste of the milk! You never know with this guy and his farm-raised predictability.

Lois asks Lex how fatherhood is treating him, which is news to me. Lex fucks? I refuse to believe that. And Lex refuses to answer, claiming that there’s a lot about him the public doesn’t know and he would like to keep it that way. For the sake of the public, of course. Clark scowls again.

Clark suspects his drink has been spiked. Yeah, buddy. With cum.

Great, now I have to pretend to be filling my pants with diarrhea all night.

“What’s Lex up to?” he asks himself. I would advise him to check Lois’ drink to make sure it’s not filled to the brim with roofies. The man we saw earlier with the gun – well, I saw him earlier. You didn’t see shit – his name is Mr. Hedegard. He clandestinely tells Luthor that there’s a possible storm on the horizon and if he should postpone, ah, “tonight’s business”. Lex tells him no, do not postpone it, and shut the fuck up next time he even has such a thought or his ass is grass. And not the good kind of grass.

Lex announces to the room that the show is about to start. Clark frowns and claims he’s feeling a bit sick all of a sudden. You can see the “heh heh” look on Lex’s face. More like a “heh heh heh” actually, now that I look at it again!

When the two are alone again, Lois asks if he’s faking a cramp to get out of this. Clark slaps the woman six times and tells her, no, he just slipped about three bottles of laxatives into his milk. She tells Clark to just deal with it, Mr. Iron Stomach. Act like you are Superman and are unphased by poop juice.

Lane and Kent join Lex up in one of those private box seats. “Excellent to see you make it back, Kent,” Luthor says somewhat sourly. “I’d have been indescribably disappointed if you missed so much as a second of this magnificent performance.”

You’re positively glowing, ma’am. Have you been vacationing near Chernobyl lately??

Sounds like Lex has been taking conversation lessons from Alfred Pennyworth! The opera begins, the storm rages. Lex compliments Lois on her radiance. Lois takes the compliment happily! He notices that a scowling arms-crossed Clark Kent looks under the weather and that perhaps a medical team should come forthwith to zap him with defibrillator paddles! Clark grunts that he’s fine and that he’s not leaving for nothing. This guy wants him to not be here so badly. Sexual molestation must be on the agenda tonight, and Clark’s not invited.

Outside the theater, a car barrels down the street and smashes into a car standing at a red light. Clark senses something outside and finally decides that maybe he’s not feeling to well after all.

Superman time! He flies out to the street and finds that a young man had flown through the windshield and inexplicably not died. “Not exactly the White Christmas we were dreaming of, eh?” Superman quips, in February, helping the man up.

Lois is starting to get unnerved by Lex’s bodyguards standing behind them. It’s like, are these guys gonna follow me to the bathroom to watch me pee? Because she hopes so! Also, what the fuck it’s not like she’s going to strangle Lex up here in the box. “They’re only behaving as they’re contractually obliged, my dear,” he says to her, waving her off and starting to get rather grumpy. “You know about obligations. Keeping one’s word on a deal. You wouldn’t go back on yours, would you?”

No, certainly not. He’s referring to their deal: Lex gives back the Daily Planet, Lois kills one story of Lex’s choosing at any time. It sounds like it’s time for her to make good on that promise already. He has been having terrible dreams! He’s suddenly broke. Lexcorp is gone. Metropolis has been destroyed. World in chaos! Teeth missing! Spiders, lots of spiders! Falling! Dying and monsters and running forever! No sex dreams whatsoever, and that sucks. “Does this fear of losing everything betray a lack of confidence in my own considerable abilities, I wonder?”

Lois doesn’t really know what to say. “Who cares?” comes to mind, but she’s nicer than that and tells him that he’s never lost anything in his whole spoiled life. I would say that’s not true and it would do her some good to read Mark Waid’s Superman: Birthright limited series!

“On the contrary. I lost you to that midwestern farm-boy.”

Interesting track record for Lex Luthor. I wonder if he was able to get it up to even consummate half of those marriages.

Meanwhile, the midwestern farm-boy is perplexed by all the hail falling from the sky in February. “Just wish I could shake the feeling that this bizarre weather has been arranged for my benefit. After all, why else would a sudden storm be localized to downtown Metropolis?” He starts using fire eyeballs to push his way up, up, up through the falling hail. “Is someone trying to keep me occupied while they’re up to something really bad?”

Yeah, your wife getting raped. LA MORT DU LUTHOR is imminent, though, so don’t worry. Someone is going to John Wilkes Booth this bitch right through the dome if there’s any God in the universe. And there isn’t.

Lois is getting hella creeped out now, but Luthor keeps pushing it. Oh, he claims he doesn’t want to push Lois into an affair. Far from it! He just wants her to smooch his bone, is all! Plus, what could she possibly see in Clark Kent? He’s a complete doofus. He looks like he doesn’t even know how to wash his butt.

“I just want you to know that I’m not the emotionless vacuum that you believe me to be…” he tells her, cold and emotionless. He has feelings too, you know, and he’s still incredibly hurt that she all but SLAPPED HIS FACE when he asked for her hand in marriage! How rude. “Do you realize you’re the first person in my life who’s ever rejected me and never paid the price?”

Well, that’s not alarming at all.

Superman is still out and about saving all sorts of people from all sorts of life-threatening situations. It’s very odd. Now he just saved a taxi driver who nearly flipped his car hitting a fire hydrant. Who put that there in the first place? Gotta get rid of them next, what have they ever done for anybody?

Lois is about to tell Lex that he’s being an asshole, but he hushes her like an asshole and tells her that his – and her – favorite part of the opera is coming up! Don Giovanni himself spreads his buttcheeks and–

Eh, that’s enough of a nice sentiment for me.

Superman is busy stopping a runaway train while a lot of operatic Italian is sung over several panels. The words are possibly relevant to the situation, but I ain’t barely know me no English let alone Italian. Superman has a hunch that Lois is suddenly in trouble, and that nervous guy with the gun starts doing some nefarious gun stuff.

“LO-IIS!” screams Superman as he flies with his neck unnecessarily strained. It looks like it’s popping out of its neck socket.

Lex Luthor jumps in front of the gunman and kicks him right in the chin; gun knocked of hand and blood gushing out his mouth hole. “Very impressive, Lex. I never knew you had it in you,” Lois swoons while, ahem, CLARK KENT returns from ruining the bathroom.

What a hero! He totally paid this guy to get knocked fucking unconscious to impress one lady. Like the child he is.

Later, Lex is riding in his limo chatting into some electronic bug. “Well, let’s just say that I’m ninety-four percent happy with the final result, but your part of the deal was carried out with the customary professionalism, Mr. Mardon. Expect a very large sum of money to be transferred to your overseas account… and give my regards to Keystone’s other rogues and scoundrels when you get the chance.”

Yeah, I don’t know what any of this is and I don’t care. Mardon? Keystone? Listen, Lex Luthor isn’t supposed to get any help from anybody. That sounds like a character flaw, my good man. Work on it.

He makes a stop at the train station to chat with the gunman, Hedegard. He looks roughed up. Lex grabs him by the scruff and tells him the only reason he isn’t dead is because he carried out the plan without too much of a hitch. Take those tickets get the fuck out of Luthor’s sight, or else you’re gonna be so dead that you won’t even know you’re dead! Heh.

Let’s wrap this up. Superman holds Lois as he flies through town. This whole evening revolved around Luthor impressing Lois and how absolutely, miserably sad is that? Jesus Christ. Anyway, kiss kiss love love happy christmas

Final Thoughts

How very touching. Merry Christmas everyone from all your friends at Tom Writes About Stuff! I don’t care if it’s February right now. Accept my goddamned cheer.