Reign of the Supermen #490: Captain Tomorrow / Crimson Meteor

Source: Superman 80-Page Giant #1 (1999)
Type: Analog/Precursor
In the story "Too Close to Home" (by Danny Fingeroth and Bob McLeod), Clark Kent gets frazzled by reading a comic strip that seems to be based on his life, right down to a secret identity and marriage to a girl called "Cloris". It's close enough that a kid he saves mistakes him for Captain Tomorrow. Suspecting a hidden agenda, he visits the writer/artist, the aged Willie Schuman, under the pretense of maybe writing an article on him. The meeting ends unpleasantly when Clark gets antagonistic, though I suspect it has something to do with a strip showing the Captain in a new costume. Dude had just gotten back to the red and blues after a stint as Electric Superman after all.
Clark is thrown out for being a dick. So you might think this is a homage to the Silver Age, but it's actually a Golden Age tribute. A second visit, this time as Superman, is much friendly, and Willie admits that his stories, while taking some material from Superman's modern-day exploits, are actually based on HIS own, short-lived career as the Crimson Meteor in the 1940s.
Never heard of him? That's because he operated in Seattle, and Green Arrow probably destroyed all records of any other hero fighting the good fight in his home town. Jerk. So instead of suing him or something (it's a DC comic, it could happen), Superman just takes him out for a quick spin so he can fly again. Awww. And then he's never heard from again.

I sure hope that's not some kind of Siegel/Shuster metaphor.

Comments

Craig Oxbrow said…
I wonder if it's deliberate how much he looks like Ditko's Peter Parker?
Siskoid said…
Like halfway between Ditko's and Romita's, yeah, now that you mention it.
Jude Deluca said…
I legitimately would not put it past Oliver Queen. Hell, I don't put anything past Queen.

I've been thinking. I mean, I know there's an ongoing theme in Multiversity where they're saying one world's reality is another's fiction, but what if they had an Earth specifically for all those "story within a story" heroes? Like Captain Tomorrow and the Simon Petrarch version of Batman, or the Justice Guild of America from the Justice League cartoon.
Siskoid said…
Though sometimes a fiction... is just a fiction ;).

Or is there an Earth where Wuthering Heights happened?