Action Comics #719: A Medical Review
Action Comics #719 “Hazard’s Choice”
David Michelinie, writer
Kieron Dwyer, penciler
This is a Superman comic from 1996 that I recently picked up in the quarter bin. It posits an interesting moral dilemma, but the more I thought about it, the more the contrived logic of the story annoyed me.
Lois is dusting her apartment and collapses after touching a Joker doll she has on her shelf. She is rushed to the hospital where the doctor tells Superman that Lois has been poisoned and only has 2 hours to live.
• Superman scanned the doll with his x-ray vision, but didn’t scan it with his microscopic vision, so he missed the poison. You’re dealing with a villain known for his genius with toxins and you forget to look for them? That’s like getting a computer from Brainiac and not bothering to check the software.
• Doctors will never give a hard and fast answer about how long someone will live; there are just too many variables. At best, we’ll give you a hedge: “If things keep going the way they are now, it looks like Lois might make it two hours.” Not to mention that for a previously unknown toxin, the doctor’s surprisingly specific about it’s time course.
Superman flies off the Gotham and meets up with the Batman. The pair follows some blind leads but eventually end up confronting the Joker at Arkham Asylum. He presents Superman with a syringe full of the same poison that is killing Lois. The Joker tells the duo that if he is injected with the poison, his “chemically altered blood” will produce antibodies which can be used to save Lois. The catch is that the poison will kill him. Will Superman take a life to save Lois?
• It took them over an hour and half to figure out the Joker was involved, and track him down — in Arkham?
In the end, Superman realizes that he cannot take a life — even the Joker’s — and flies off to Metropolis to be with Lois. Of course, it turns out that it’s all a moot point. Lois miraculously recovers at the 2 hour mark. It seems the Joker’s toxin was never designed to be fatal and it was all a ploy by the Joker to trick Superman into taking a life. Superman is ecstatic that Lois survived, but she doesn’t seem particularly thrilled at his choice of the Joker’s life over hers.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:23 am
I like the ending, even if the lead up wasn’t too hot. Even though I think a lot of people would kill Joker, I think the part where Joker tries to trick Superman into KILLING him is so Joker. It’s a nice twist, anyway.
Though that part of it is cool, the part where Superman just let’s her die is not Superman. He is supposed to triumph no matter what.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:09 am
{{spoiler alert}}
It kind of reminds me of the dilemma with the ferries from The Dark Knight (itself a take on the classic prisoners’ dilemma) and the way that was handled: refuse the terms of the impossible choice that you are given, so as not to become a party to the Joker’s immoral actions.
re: Frank: triumph at the cost of becoming known as the Superman that kills criminals when it suits his interests? That doesn’t seem very “Superman” to me. Again though, it does tie into TDK and the way that Batman willingly ruined his own reputation.
All in all, I’d say this feels much more like a Batman story than a Superman one, and am kind of surpised that it even exists.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:08 am
@Frank - I agree. After all, we’ve established in the movies that he can turn time backwards by counter-rotating the world, so he could have undone the poison. Or, at least, he could use his Super-Amnesia Kiss to make her forget that he chose the life of the Joker over hers. Or maybe he can use his documented Super-Weaving and Super-Ventriloquism powers to do something…
Personally, my favorite in the “Joker’s Dilemna” plots was the one in Hitman where Tommy Monaghan was assigned to kill the Joker (for all the wrong reasons in this case, as it would have released a Hell on Earth). IIRC, he was able to escape from Batman by giving the Joker a lethal enough wound that Batman would have to stay and provide medical aid. ^_^ Although, just as much fun was the time he was in a Mexican standoff between himself, a thug, and the Batman and used his mind-reading powers to convince the thug that Batman was the greater threat and that they should both be aiming at him. At which point Tommy slipped away, having turned the three-man Mexican standoff into a two-man one (in defense of Batman’s reflexes and general bad-assery, the thug had the barrel of the gun in Batman’s mouth, so dodging would have been more problematic than usual).
September 8th, 2008 at 10:04 am
From the perspective of DC, the Joker is a LOT more important than Lois Lane.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
I’ve never understood the “You released the bad guy/created the opurtuity for the accident to happen/what have you- and are thefore responsible for anyone that gets hurt/dead/some sort of traumatized now until who-knows-when because of it.” What? Makes no sense!
September 9th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Although I like the fact that DC still has superheroes who are not sociopaths (unlike Marvel) Joker, at some point, would have to die
He is simply the ultimate, unstoppable, irredeemable recidivist
Now, if you change it so that the Joker is now a psychic entity and, even if you do kill him, he just moves in and takes somebody else (and he doesn’t even cause nosebleeds when he does it… unless he makes the possessee punch themself in the face)
September 9th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Batman’s conga line of recurring villains: proof of our heroes’ principles, or subtle advertisement for the death penalty? YOU decide!
September 9th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
J, lol, I just put that down to the standard comic book status quo ante: It neither helps nor hurts to have stange people dashing about the world in long underoos/really mini skirts/fetishwear.[hero or villain, your call.]
mind, I could have developed that idea because we don’t have the death penalty up in Canuckistan.[Or maybe i just see the basic 'we keep them around even if it makes no sense cause it sells comics & thus makes us more money. part of the reason ive stopped buying comics- the internal unlogic makes my head hurt.]
Oh, heres a thought- is the death penalty thing part of the reason 97.76% of comic books [that take place on earth anyway] are set in the us? Off the top of my head I can think of a couple tolken characters from europe & one team from canada[and those only marvel universe] which makes me curious-again is that because they sell to their target audience? *Ponders this* :P
September 10th, 2008 at 7:48 am
@Sable Hope - Well, most of the superhero books are made and sold in the US (Well, at least the DC and Marvel, etc), so I suspect that it’s to cater to the audience. An occasional exotic location full of savages like Germany or France is nice every once in a while, but we enjoy reading books where we don’t have to wonder whether a particular action or piece of clothing is supposed to stand out and be significant (Oh no! Everyone’s wearing bowler hats! It must be mind control HAX! Oh wait… we’re in a stereotyped UK… they were those over there). Plus, it adds that additional versimilitude of “Hey, I kind of recognize that scene… maybe I could have a superhero experience. Oh, Lex Luthor… that dreamy shiny dome of yours…”
Then again, I want to say that I’ve seen some explanation along the lines of that the high cultural diversity and “can-do attitude” of the United States results in creative energies that just plain lead to super heroes. Not to mention that as a young nation, our days of frontier vigilante justice aren’t that far behind us.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Our days of frontier vigilante justice in the USA are still pretty mainstream. From the movie Shooter to war in Iraq, we still believe that frontier justice is justice on some level.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Sean, yes that makes sense but..
your second paragraph, the bit about being a young nation remembering frontier justice?
Doesnt work. Canada is a much younger nation[1867] with as much [or more] cultural diversity et all.
But ive yet to see a comic about “pony soldiers” or “Jean Claude the metis fur trapper of Manitoba” sitting on a comic book store shelf. If thats correct: where are our superheros? As example: NYC gets batman, the fantastic four, spiderman, the avengers east coast & the xmen. All of canada gets…. Dudley Do-right, Wolverine & Alpha Flight? Thats a bit odd no? XD
September 14th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
I don’t care who dies I’m still on - She’s poisoned by a Joker doll, and the Joker is in Arkham, and it takes Superman and Batman how long to find him?
September 28th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I’m sort of late to the party on this post I guess but it seems like they could have called The Atom in or something and had him clean out her blood. I mean it makes as much sense as the anti-body thing and everyone loves The Fantastic Voyage, right?
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:58 am
Besides, given that it’s the Joker we’re talking about, chances are that the ‘antibodies’ he’d supposedly generate with the injection would turn the non-fatal toxin he hit Lois with into something fatal. He’s that kind of cruel, after all.
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