3 out of 5

Steve Gerber has certainly flirted with different styles of comics all along the chain of traditional to experimental during his entire career, whether it was the straight heroics of his various 70s Marvel work up through his Malibu stuff in the 90s and then Hard Time in the 00s, or the out-there trips of, say, Man-Thing,or Void Indigo, or Nevada and Countdown to Mystery.  The latter of those being a good touchpoint for the ’81 adventure ‘The Phantom Zone,’ which works within the established history of a character and flip-flops between Gerber abstract concepts and adventurous, straight plotting to weave a tale that ends up being surprisingly dark – especially, in this case, for Superman – but a little disjointed in terms of composition.  ‘Countdown’s ending was fractured by Steve passing before the issue came out; in PZ it seems we could’ve done with one more issue in addition to the four of the mini-series… hints that scripting ran over can be found in issue four, in which we’re promised a letters page but none appears, this generally a sign of page count running over and, maybe not coincidentally, happening on a few of Gerb’s concluding issues on various titles.

The premise for The Phantom Zone is a lot of fun – pre-Crisis Phantom Zone criminals get together to influence memory wiped Phantom Zone release-ee Charlie Kweskill (Quex-Ul) to steal some sciencey bits to build another Zone projector.  Supes breaks in just in time for Charlie to activate the device, flip-flopping the criminals to Earth and Supes and Charlie into the Zone.  The eventual Legion member Mon-El (hanging out in the Zone until his lead poisoning on Earth can find a cure, ’cause comics have a consistent sense of what’s possible and impossible) points S & C to an exit – through several layers of reality which will take an incredible test of will to surpass.  Test of Will?  Pah!  And Supes leads the way while Phantom Zone criminals start on a typically half-logical Zod plan to redress past woes by imprisoning the Earth, systemically remove the threats of fellow Leaguers like Supergirl and Wonder Woman and Green Lantern.

For about two issues, Steve plays it mostly straight, his skill as a narrator covering so much of the Zone’s history with ease – and here my Superman knowledge leaves me dry to say what was Steve’s addition to the history and what was pre-existing – as well as making the leap to ‘you can now escape the Phantom Zone over this hill’ in a believable Silver Age-y cosmic comic fashion.  Meaning it’s essentially a backdoor, but Steve’s mastery of comic pop story-telling that draws awareness to and away from its own silliness makes it work in context.  He also finds a good ‘voice’ for Superman and his hero-mates, that blend of human worries and boy scout caring that’s made many a writer stumble too much onto one side or the other.  So too goes for the various Phantom Zone members, and this is where the writing is richest, as we can run the gamut from uncaring criminals to mad psychotics and delusional psychotics and they all seem to have their proper place in the story without coming across as place holders or one-note story beats.

The latter half of the tale is where things get a little murky.  As Superman and Charlie descend through levels of the Phantom Zone, Steve goes out on a limb with concepts and though incredibly fascinating – and similar in their abstraction to Nevada’s universe-explaining – it takes away from the more physical threat going on on Earth and Gerb seems to have trouble piecing together how to work Charlie back to Quex-Ul and then all of it back to a status quo.  These two issues are bursting with so many interesting concepts that it becomes too bungled to make much sense, and then, pop, Superman is back on Earth and our last panel hits with the sudden ease of a punch knocking out Zod.  That Steve uses his Zone explorations to underline some darker themes in Superman’s humanity is really brave… and fits with why this series was re-released around the time of the Man of Steel release, but again, there would have been a massive benefit – story-wise, and in terms of effectiveness of those last minute themes – to an extra issue to slow things down.

Still, totally worth a read as a definite surprising sidestep in the Superman legacy, even though all of this stuff has been rendered ‘never happened’ by like twelve crises since.  On a last note, Gene Colan turns in some of his best work here.  I dig Colan, but he does this swoopy thing with his pencils a lot to illustrate movement and emotion that tends to make, to me, some panels really just off looking.  The balance Steve offers him for doing straight action bits and transferring to the surreal Phantom Zone elements seemed to force Colan to use the swoopy stuff just in the Zone, so the art style feels matching to the vibe in every panel, and there wasn’t one moment where I had to sift through the mire to understand the action he was trying to display.  Gorgeous to look at.