Comicon Advent Calendar Day 16: A Glimpse Into The Metropolis Mailbag
by Tony Thornley
Famously, thousands of letters to Santa Claus end up in the post office of North Pole, Alaska each year. In today’s entry to the Comicon Advent Calendar, we get a glimpse at a similar situation for the man of steel.
Just shy of a year before the Man of Steel would be killed by Doomsday, writer Dan Jurgens began what would become an annual tradition. For the remainder of his long Superman run, at Christmas Superman would spend time reading the letters addressed to him that ended up in Metropolis’s dead letters department. In Superman #64, Jurgens, Butch Guice, Glenn Whitmore and John Costanza chronicled Superman’s struggle.
This is a story that perfectly captures what makes Superman good. He hates this yearly task. He puts it off as long as he can. And for the first time, Lois Lane joins him and learns why.
In some cases, the letters are just get rich quick schemes. “Dear Superman, come use your X-ray vision to help me strike oil.” “Hey Supes, think you can crush a chunk of coal into a diamond?”
In other cases, it’s small things he can do to help. And he does. He reunites a pair of siblings separated by the Holocaust, and realizes that the letters aren’t hopeless.
But then, he misses a young boy by ten minutes. Not that he could help- the boy was asking for Superman to heal his father’s cancer. But then he realizes that he can help but in a very different way.
It’s a story that’s at times harsh, at others sad, but ultimately hopeful and uplifting. This is what Superman is, and what this season is all about.
