After DC's various war comics, Superman books probably made up the largest chunk of my dad's comics. Most are near the tail-end of the "superdickery" years. Superman still occasionally plays tricks on Lois or Jimmy, or we get the "imaginary" stories where Superman's married with kids, or loses his powers and memories for years because he got exposed to 14 kinds of Kryptonite all at once.
But in most, to the extent he's played as a god thwarting silly mortals' attempts to best him, he tricks the villains instead. In this story, Superman needs the mysterious vault open, for. . .reasons. And for other reasons. . . he needs someone else to do it. Enter Luthor, who considers the fact the vault will open on the occasion of Superman's death a bonus.
In one of the others, Superman matches wits with a pair of mysterious bombers, whose clues require him to research an absurd amount of information on everything from coins to trains (at one point he reads the entire contents of the Library of Congress.) The bombers turn out to be aliens, who intend to drain all the (useless) knowledge from Superman's mind to place it in slaves. Superman thwarts their brain drain with, sigh, super-willpower, but lets the aliens escape thinking they've won. His reasoning (as explained to hapless dope Jimmy Olsen) being, they'll fill those slaves' minds with the equivalent of static, making them useless. Those that buy these people will be really pissed with the ones selling them. So the problem takes care of itself, Jimmy!
Yeah, great work there Superman. Sure hope no one kills those slaves out of frustration or anything.
Clearly, the Superman stuff is not my favorite. Even as a little kid reading these, the notion of "super-willpower" was just too silly to roll with. When it seems like half the stories have to take away or otherwise nerf his powers just to make the conflict take more than five panels to resolve, that seems like a problem. So it's probably not much of a surprise the only other issue of Superman I own isn't really about him. It's the issue #660, where Kurt Busiek positions the Prankster as a showman who devises distractions for other criminals. Superman shows up, but he's almost like the ultimate audience or critic. Someone the Prankster has to keep sufficiently engaged, a true challenge.
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