Analysis Notes
| General |
In the preboot continuity, the Persuader was a mercenary,
little of whose history was known other than that his Atomic Axe was a
weapon left over from the Atomic Wars of the 27th century. In the
postboot, a false origin was given for him, saying that he was a mutant
bred to fight the Sun-Eater, but no true origin has been supplied.
This Persuader does not match the character design for the postboot one,
but rather for the one seen in the Elseworlds story Superboy’s
Legion; given Cole Parker’s fate, we will thus deem Parker
to be the Superboy’s Legion Persuader. |
| Only pages 1-20 are covered here. |
| 1:3 |
This counts as an appearance for Superman as Clark Kent;
the streak is brown since he hasn’t changed out of the coat yet.
Same thing goes for other fast-moving streaks on page 7, 8, 11, and 12. |
| 1:4 |
The Persuader’s quote doesn’t seem to match
anything from literature. |
| 2 |
Stryker’s Island is the metahuman villain detention
facility in Metropolis Harbor. |
| 3:1 |
Parker was granted power and the axe from someone deemed
to be the Norse god Loki. |
| 3:2 |
This implies that Parker has a mind control power, something
never shown by any version of the Persuader to date. Perhaps he
loses the power in his transition to the Superboy’s Legion
universe? |
| 4:3-5 |
In not letting loose on the men, Superman probably still
broke a few limbs and whatnot, given the way the men are tumbling through
the air. |
| 8:2 |
It’s not clear just what Superman finds familiar.
A “flavor” to the power pointing to Apokolips or Mxyzptlk,
perhaps? This is never followed up on. |
| 9:2 |
The Daily Planet’s logo is a hologram, a construct
of the B-13 technology which remade Metropolis. |
| 11:3 |
This streak only counts as an appearance for Superman.
With no color trace, we can be certain that Parker is present; he could
have, for example, been punted to Stryker’s Island a few second
before Superman streak there (after shoring up the building, for example). |
| 12:1 |
While there’s a certain logic to taking Parker back
to where he escaped from, with Parker’s new powers and the sheer
number of metahumans with a grudge against Superman, this doesn’t
seem like the best of decisions. Wouldn’t the Arctic tundra
or the moon have been better? |
| 12:3 |
Do newscopters just hang around Stryker’s Island
all day, hoping to catch a prison break in action? Although such
things are embarrassingly common, they were probably there for the delivery
of some other high-profile prisoner. |
| 14:1 |
The preboot Persuader’s Axe could allegedly cut through
anything. Superman obviously catch an impact here, but his outfit
isn’t even cut, much less his body, as would have been expected
by the classic Axe. |
| 16:1 |
The Axe’s power to cut through “anything”
has sliced through dimensional walls or something like that. |
| 18:1 |
The Persuader’s power – or at least the red
glow from his eyes – is coming from Parker, not from the armor. |
| 18:3 |
This does not count as an appearance for either character. |
| 20:2 |
It’s not clear what implication should be gleaned
from this event. We will presume that the Persuader was sucked into
the other universe, and that he becomes the Persuader seen in Superboy’s
Legion. But this also means that the Superboy’s Legion
universe is not the same one seen in the “Return to Krypton”
storyline. |
20:3 |
Barring some future revelation about either Parker’s
fate or the Axe, we will presume that the Axe eventually finds its way
into the hand of the 30th century Persuader (who perhaps adopts his name
based on the Axe’s origins), possibly via the Space Museum (later
the Time and Space Museum) taking over the Fortress of Solitude’s
“collection” at some point in the future. |
